The Death of a Minstrel - Battle of Hastings Incident

A little bit of medieval humor with an incident from the Battle of Hastings. Before the battle began, a Norman minstrel, Taillefer, attacked the English in a mad attempt to gain glory. This is his story.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• 1066
• Battle
• of
• Hastings
• UK
• England
• Normans
• medieval
• history

[tolkiengenius]

Nice video! :) Where does the footage of the minstrels come from? (The hurdy-gurdy, harp and psaltery-weilding ones, that is...)

[RoninDave]

all the footage comes from the same festival the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings at Battle in October. The battle takes place in the afternoon and before that they have all kinds of activities like the minstrels

[berbove]

your video is great but some mistake.

Taillefer ask william the honor to give the first strike of the battle. Wace in the "roman de Rou" said that he asked "I served you all my life with devotion and honor, let me give the first strike". at this time he sure knowed that he will die, but that history remain his name (and he was true in fact). for a minstrel what a good death.

At each reenactment this episode is full of emotion in our rank. Taillfer was a sort of hero.

:)

[RoninDave]

yeah, I know the story. Artistic license - this is more for humor purposes than historical.

Tell your Norman comrades to check out the vids as well and my blog entries. I've got quite a few photos that they may appear in.

[rm1992]

this information is inacurate taillefer actually killed several english before being killed himself... i should know he is my ancestor

[RoninDave]

Yeah, well they couldn't exactly do that in the re-enactment, now could they?

[BlueMonster78]

@rm1992

I hope you didn't get that from Ancestry.com LOL

[NBreidenbaugh]

Fortunately for us, we have creative license, as we don't know what actually happened. This, to me, seems like a fair approximation. I enjoyed watching it. I would have loved to have been there.

Thanks!

[Stafyn]

How does that mean you know? My ancestor (and given its a thousand years later, the part-ancestor of several hundred or even thousand people) brought almost a hundred norman soldiers to aid William in that battle, doesn't mean I was there myself.

If anything, taillefer probably killed no-one. A single horse against a shield wall? I've seen what happens to loners who rush against shield walls. They bounce.

[SgtExplosion]

yea i agree, his horse woulda been either stabbed, slashed, or gotten tired out after about 3-4 guys. I'll stand firm around 1-4 guys dead.

[redcoatsrule]

rm1992 just because he your ancestor doesn't mean the information that he killed seven men is accurate sounds exaggerated to me.

[stevenstreets3]

Taillefer sounds a lot like Trouvère the northern french(norman)pronunciation of troubadore. Those landless sons from large noble families that sang to get paid or laid in hope of scoring some landed ladies hand and land. That would explain Williams distain for a rescue.I've got two ancestors from that battle including the standard bearer.NORMANS RULE!