[119] Ibid. iii. 369 (can. 20) ‘ut monasteria ... non sint ludicrarum artium receptacula, hoc est, poetarum, citharistarum, musicorum, scurrorum.’ Can. 12 shows a fear of the influence of the scôp on ritual: ‘ut presbyteri saecularium poetarum modo in ecclesia non garriant, ne tragico sono sacrorum verborum compositionem et distinctionem corrumpant vel confundant.’ Cf. the twelfth-century account of church singers who used ‘histrionicis quibusdam gestis,’ quoted by Jusserand, E. L. 455, from the Speculum Caritatis of Abbot Ælred of Rievaulx.
[120] Bede to Egbert in 734 (Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 315) ‘de quibusdam episcopis fama vulgatum est ... quod ipsi ... secum habeant ... illos qui risui, iocis, fabulis ... subigantur.’
[121] Gutberchtus to Lullus in 764 (Dümmler, Epist. Mer. et Car. in M. G. H. i. 406).
[122] Alcuin, Ep. 124 (797) ‘melius est pauperes edere de mensa tua quam istriones vel luxuriosos quoslibet ... verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio. ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam; sermones patrum, non carmina gentium. quid Hinieldus cum Christo? angusta est domus; utrosque tenere non poterit ... voces legentium audire in domibus tuis, non ridentium turbam in plateis.’ The allusion to a lost epic cycle of Hinieldus (Ingeld) is highly interesting; on it cf. Haupt in Z. f. d. A. xv. 314.
[123] The Vitae of Dunstan (Stubbs, Memorials of Dunstan, R. S. 11, 20, 80, 257) record that he himself learnt the ‘ars citharizandi.’ One day he hung ‘citharam suam quam lingua paterna hearpam vocamus’ on the wall, and it discoursed an anthem by itself. Anthems, doubtless, were his mature recreation, but as a young clerk he was accused ‘non saluti animae profutura sed avitae gentilitatis vanissima didicisse carmina, et historiarum frivovolas colere incantationum naenias.’
[124] Anglo-Saxon Canons of Edgar (906), can. 58 (Wilkins, i. 228), sic Latine, ‘docemus artem, ut nullus sacerdos sit cerevisarius, nec aliquo modo scurram agat secum ipso, vel aliis’; Oratio Edgari Regis (969) pro monachatu propaganda (Wilkins, i. 246) ‘ut iam domus clericorum putentur ... conciliabulum histrionum ... mimi cantant et saltant.’
[125] Strutt, 172 and passim.
[126] Wright-Wülker, 150, 311, 539. A synonym for scôp is leodwyrhta. On 188 lyricus is glossed scôp. But the distinctive use of scôp is not in all cases maintained, e.g. tragicus vel comicus unwurð scôp (188), comicus scôp (283), comicus id est qui comedia scribit, cantator vel artifex canticorum seculorum, idem satyricus, i. scôp, ioculator, poeta (206). Other western peoples in contact with Latin civilization came to make the same classification of poet and buffoon. Wackernagel, i. 51, says that the German liuderi or poet is opposed to the skirnun or tûmarâ, scurra or mimus. The buffoon is looked askance at by the dignified Scandinavian men of letters (Saxo Grammaticus, Hist. Danica, transl. Elton, vi. 186); and Keltic bardism stands equally aloof from the clerwr (cf. p. 76). Of course Kelts and Teutons might conceivably have developed their buffoons for themselves, independently of Roman influence, but so far as the Germans go, Tacitus, Germ. 24, knows no spectaculum but the sweorda-gelác or sword-dance (ch. ix).
[127] Brooke, i. 12; Merbot, 11. The gleómon, according to Merbot, became mixed with the plegman or mimus. In the glosses pleȝa = ludus in the widest sense, including athletics; and pleȝ-stowe = amphitheatrum (Wright-Wülker, 342). A synonym of pleȝa is the etymological equivalent of ludus, lâc (cf. ch. viii). Spil is not A. S., spilian, a loan-word (Kögel, i. 1. 11).
[128] Scôp, the O. H. G. scopf or scof is the ‘shaper,’ ‘maker,’ from skapan, ‘to make’; it is only a West-German word, and is distinct from scopf, a ‘scoff,’ ‘mock,’ and also from O. N. skald. This is not West-German, but both ‘sing’ and ‘say’ are from the same root seg (Kögel, i. 1. 140). Gleómon is from gleo, gleow, gliw, glig = ‘glee,’ ‘mirth.’ The harp, in Beowulf and elsewhere, is the ‘glee-beam,’ ‘glee-wood.’