At an early period also professional minstrels, called by the Anglo-Saxons scops or
gleemen, disengaged themselves from the crowd and began to gain their living by wandering from village to village or tribe to tribe chanting to the harp either the popular ballads or more formal poetry of their own composition.
* "In December ring / Every day the chimes; / Loud the
gleemen sing / In the streets their merry rhymes.
Eugene
Gleemen's Christmas Holiday Concert will ring in the holiday season with festive songs both old and new sung by an all-male chorus.
He was a supporter of the cultural life of the valley, including the opera and the
Gleemen as well as a big supporter of Maesteg Rugby Club.
I was amazed to read that The Rhondda
Gleemen were victorious at the World's Fair Eisteddfod in Chicago in 1893, while in 1908 Treorchy male choir embarked on a 300-concert, 18-month round-the-world tour.
They moved to the Oddfellows Hall and changed their name to The Annfield Plain
Gleemen and the choir continues today 110 years after its formation now under the direction of Norman Taylor with Patricia Stobbs as accompanist, giving charity concerts around the area.
FOR more than a century, the Annfield Plain
Gleemen have been providing the soundtrack for their community.
They together with Blaydon and the Newbiggin Sea Scouts, disputed the honours with Winlaton White Star and Westerhope, who in their own sphere are analogous in characteristics to the
gleemen and the Wallsend Choir just mentioned, and who have figured just as prominently in the annals of the Tournament.
Cawn glywed am fuddugoliaeth y Rhondda
Gleemen yng nghystadleuaeth gorawl 'Ffair y Byd' yn Chicago yn 1893 ymhlith campau corawl eraill.
Men wearing stag and goat mask-heads,
gleemen training bears to dance, mumming, the Savage man, minstrels, morris- and rope-dancers, mountebanks, jugglers, grinning matches through horse collars, wakes, church ales, fairs, Christmas Lords of Misrule, Saint John bonfires--all are derived from Strutt's text and illustrations, as are Hawthorne's description of the maypole itself, with its "silken banner" (9:55) streaming from the top and its fluttering ribbons, as well as the costumes for the Lord and Lady of the May.
In the opening chapter of The White Goddess, entitled "Poets and
Gleemen," Graves discusses the distinction made by Celtic peoples between the "mere gleeman" and the poet, "who was originally a priest and a judge as well and whose person was sacrosanct.