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CHAPTER XVII.

FLUTE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE—POET FLAUTISTS.

Early English references—Chaucer—Flute and fife in Shakespeare—In the early dramatists—In the poets—References to the qualities of the flute—Epithets applied to it—Cowper—Longfellow—Other poets—Prose references—In modern novelists—Dickens—A weird flute story—Flute in American authors—Sidney Lanier—Other literary flautists—Legends.

The earliest mention of the flute that I can find occursEarly
English
References in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1386). In the Prologue to that work, the gay young squire is described as singing or “floytynge” all the day. In The House of Fame, iii., 130 (c. 1394), the poet speaks of "many thousand times twelve"

"That craftily begunne to pipe,
Both in doucet [? flute-douce] and in rede. . . .
And many floute and liltyng horne
And pipés made of grené corne,"

and he mentions three ancient flute-players by name—Atiteris [? Tityrus], Proserus [? Pronomus], and "Marcia that lost her skyn" (Dante in his Paradise, 1, 13-27, had already turned Marsyas into a woman). Again in the Romaunt of the Rose (c. 1400), "floytes" and

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