This courtier did not resemble Charles VI., at whose court the greatest favour was enjoyed, not indeed by a professional wearer of cap and bells, but by a saucy wit of the name of Steffens. The latter had been a clerk, and his readiness of repartee had so endeared him to the monarch, that he elevated him to the rank of Count, and so entirely surrendered himself to the jesting Count’s company, that none of the ministers, not even Prince Eugene himself, could obtain an audience, without being previously kept waiting an hour. I have read however more of Steffens’ reputation for wit than examples of the wit itself. Möser cites an instance which seems to me to have more impertinence in it than true humour. For example, in 1724, Count von Mikosch died of poison. “What is popularly said of Mikosch’s death?” asked Charles of Steffens. “Well,” answered the latter, “I will tell you, if you will make me a present.” The Emperor put some gold pieces in the hand of this mercenary fellow, who rejoined: “The people say that it was the devil who carried off Mikosch; and they add, that if he had lived longer, and you had continued to trust him and follow his counsel, the devil would speedily have come for your Majesty also.” It will be seen by this, that whatever humour there may have been under the ancient fool’s cap, there was not much of it to be found beneath the coronet of this lackered Count Steffens.
The smaller courts of Germany, as a matter of course, followed the fashion set by the Emperors. At Anspach the Margraves were ordinarily their own fools; but towards the end of the last century the little court found intense delight in the religious folly, if I may so speak, of a poor ex-artist named Bayer. He was reasonable and witty on every subject except prophecy and the Apocalypse; and it was precisely from his madness on these points that the Margrave and his courtiers drew most delight, till indeed they nearly drove the poor fellow mad on every other subject as well.
Baden, too, had its fools of various degrees; and indeed the Margrave Philip kept two, Lips and Hänsel von Gingen. The wit or fun of the latter seems to have consisted in his pride, which would never permit him to sit at meat with other jesters who accompanied their lords to the court at Baden. Lips was so great a favourite that he sat in the council-chamber when Philip was presiding. Lips was once asked his opinion on a vexed question which the counsellors could not solve—the admission of the Jews into Baden. “Oh, let them in, let them in,” said Lips, “and then we shall have all religions among us, even a little Christianity!”
The jester had occasionally to endure a very superabundant measure of hardship, as for example, when policy or revenge brought about the murder of Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, on the bridge over the Danube at Kehlheim, in 1231. The great but hidden perpetrators of the deed thought it convenient to lay the crime upon the Duke’s fool, Stich. He was told that his ducal master having exasperated him by sundry bad jokes, Stich had suddenly stabbed the Duke with his bread-knife. “Ah!” said the poor fellow, as he stood at the gallows, “that some one ought to be hanged for murdering the Duke, I can very well comprehend; but that that some one should be me, I do not comprehend at all.”
To another of Louis of Bavaria’s fools, the King of Bohemia once gave a goblet of such strong wine that the tipsy jester declared he could be content to be a fool through eternity, if he might only always be permitted to drink such wine. But this is far inferior to the quiet observation of the Connaught man, after a long pull at a whisky flask; that, had his mother first brought him up on such beverage, he would never have been weaned. And the Bavarian is not less inferior in his wit to another Hibernian, who, on hearing a senseless drunken man pronounced dead, coolly remarked, “Dead is he? I wish I had half his disease.”
It must be confessed, however, that it is difficult to place fairly the German fools or joy-makers before a foreign public. Many of their brightest sayings turn on the point of some sparkling pun which, when rendered into English, is, as the Germans themselves would say, for a translation, completely “overset.” On the other hand, the feats of some of these joy-makers are incredible, although related in solemn Latin by grave bishops, like Dubravius, the diocesan of Olmütz. This prelate speaks at great length, in his ‘History of Bohemia,’ of a certain Zytho, who was brought to the Bohemian court by the Emperor Wenceslaus, in 1389. In that century, and in that which preceded as well as that which followed it, the court at Prague took most delight, not in witty jesters, but in astounding conjurors, jugglers, magicians, and sorcerers. Individuals of this quality were retained in the sovereign’s household, and their achievements were of a nature to do credit to the professions which they exercised. It was when a body of these were exhibiting in presence of Wenceslaus, then on a visit at Prague, that the Emperor produced his own wonderful man, Zytho, ordering him to excel, if he could, those rivals in his vocation. Zytho (so we are seriously told by the episcopal historian) went quietly up to the most accomplished of the wonder-workers, and—swallowed him! The Duke of Bavaria was angry at thus being deprived of his principal performer; and Zytho, at the command of Wenceslaus, reproduced him after a fashion that stirred to thundering laughter that unrefined assembly. The Bishop further tells us that Zytho could change his shape at will; produce any animal required, out of any material, and, in short, work marvels in which the prelate believes, and I do not. On one occasion, at a court banquet, he changed the hands of various of the guests into hoofs, in order to prevent their taking up the costly viands provided; and on another occasion, seeing a courtier put his head out of window, Zytho made spring from his forehead such a gigantic pair of antlers that the poor gentleman could not draw his head in again, whereby, says the right reverend historian, he produced such laughter as was never heard in Bohemia,—the which I can very well believe. I will repeat one other tale recounted of him, as it gave rise to a proverb which I have myself heard applied in Bohemia. Zytho, procuring some wisps of straw, transformed them into swine, which he sold at a good price to a baker named Michael. Zytho simply recommended the purchaser not to take the swine down to the water, which of course Michael did on the first opportunity, out of curiosity, to see the consequence. And he saw it: the swine no sooner touched the water than they were all again transformed into wisps of straw, and went floating away down the stream. Away too went Michael in search of Zytho, whom he found fast asleep on a bench, but at whose leg he pulled so lustily, in order to arouse him, that the leg, thigh and all, came away, and the enraged Zytho summoned him before a magistrate, who awarded him very competent damages. Hence the proverb, applied by a Bohemian to any one who has played him false or put a trick upon him, “You’ll get as much profit from that, as Michael did from the swine.”
Such were the stories rather than the deeds which gave delight to the Ducal court of Bohemia a few centuries ago. According to tradition, Zytho was ultimately carried off by his arch-patron, the devil; not however so much because of his sorcery and satanic deeds, as because he fell into the heresy of John Huss, who, according to the Roman Catholics of that day, and the Univers of this, was himself an agent of Lucifer.
My readers may remember that a pagan Roman Emperor left to a decision of the Senate the question whether Christianity should or should not be tolerated in the Roman dominions. In Iceland, too, the same question was submitted to a similar process, and in both cases it was carried in the affirmative, by narrow majorities. In Bohemia, one similar, but less important in degree, was left to be decided by the issue of a contest between two court fools. In 1461, the Hungarian King, Mathias Corvinus, and the Bohemian King, George Podiebrad, met in conference at Prague. The latter, a Reformer, was the father-in-law of Corvinus, a Roman Catholic, and each had a capacious hut erected, in which, by turns, the august parties, illustriously attended, carried on a course of debates, disputes, hard words, and jollification. From the Pope’s Nuncio down to the two court fools of their majesties, all took active part in every circumstance of the conference. One of the knotty points under discussion was that of religion,—the Reformed or the Roman Catholic.
“Let the two fools fight, and decide it by single combat,” said the Bohemian counsellor, Isdengo, who was secretly in the pay of Corvinus. “Let the two fools settle it!” cried the counsellor. The Papal Nuncio had the decency to protest against the proposition. But the two sovereigns, lacking excitement, and weary with last night’s banquet, thought the idea excellent. The fools were accordingly commanded to fall-to and do their best in behalf of their respective forms of faith. After exasperating each other by sallies of irritating wit, they grappled and commenced wrestling. The spectators stood anxiously looking on while, by such singular argument, the question of the Sacrament in one or both kinds was being discussed. The Bohemian Utraquists were in high spirits, for their champion was a gigantic fellow, while his opponent, the little Hungarian, was not stouter built than ordinary strong men. He maintained the contest, however, manfully, and when the course of combat passed from wrestling to hard blows, he dealt one so well placed, that it would have upset the Utraquist champion, had he not been promptly upheld by a Bohemian in the rear.
Thereupon the whole Hungarian faction roared out, “Shame! Unfair!” etc. The Bohemians shouted loudly in an opposite sense. From exclamations, both parties fell to their swords, and the whole company were speedily hacking at each other, while the fools sat down and laughed at both sides. Their respective royal masters had great difficulty in appeasing the tumult and postponing the debate. Meanwhile, many a good fellow had got a hole in his side or his throat, from which his life-blood went trickling; and, finally, Isdengo was banished for making the proposition, by which he had left a Sacramental question to the arbitrement of a couple of jesters.