The Troubadour is our missionary magazine and has been published by the Province since Christmas 1938 when the first number was designated Vol. I No. 1.  It appeared monthly after that, price 1d (one old penny).  But it is quite clear from that first number that it already existed even before that as some kind of magazine and that the "Troubadours" were already an organised body mostly of children formed around existing friaries with meetings of their own and a list of members, new recruits having their names published in the magazine. The one name that must be recorded as the man most responsible for starting this movement and this magazine is that of Father Oswin Murphy, OFM, the then Provincial Director of the Franciscan Missionary Union.  At that time he was based in Liverpool, later he was to become Guardian of Edinburgh Friary, where he died. After his death in 1946 he was regularly described on the cover of the Troubadour as founder of the magazine "in 1936", showing that it existed more than a year before its official first number. 
The name "Troubadour" was well chosen.  It might be said to sum up the essence of being Franciscan.  For the original troubadours were those minstrels who in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries travelled about Europe singing poems in praise of courtly love in Provencal, the dialect of Southern France, the language so beloved of St. Francis, who may have learned it from his mother (who very probably came from Provence).  The very name "troubadour" conjures up ideas of chivalry expressed in poetry and music, which inspired St. Francis to sing as "Herald of the Great King" of the Court of Heaven and the love which reigns there and which is revealed in the world around us and in the family of mankind when at peace.  It is a missionary name because the troubadours felt called to travel in order to spread their message.
Now the Troubadour appears two or three times a year.  It is described as "A Missionary Magazine at the service of

1. The Franciscan Misionaries from the United Kingdom working in South India, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania;
2. Franciscans working in disaster areas;
3. The Franciscan Missionary Union."

The provincial administration of the FMU and of the Troubadour is now based in our Friary in Glasgow, where it can rely on a wide circle of generous supporters.