scop

The kings and nobles often attached to them a scop, or maker of verses. […] The banquet was not complete without the songs of the scop. While the warriors ate the flesh of boar and deer and warmed their blood with horns of foaming ale, the scop, standing where the blaze from a pile of logs disclosed to him the grizzly features of the men, sang his most stirring songs, often accompanying them with the music of a rude harp.