‘Now thei beth disgysed,
So diverselych i-diȝt,
That no man may knowe
A mynstrel from a knyȝt
Wel ny.’
The miniatures show minstrels in short coats to the knees and sometimes short capes with hoods. The Act of Apparel (1463, 3 Edw. IV, c. 5) excepts minstrels and ‘players in their interludes.’ The Franciscan story (p. 57) shows that some of the humbler minstrels went shabby enough.
[178] Klein, iii. 635; Du Méril, Or. Lat. 30; Gautier, ii. 104; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Britonum, ix. 1 ‘rasit capillos suos et barbam, cultumque ioculatoris cum cithara cepit.’ Cf. the canon quoted on p. 61 requiring Goliardic clerks to be shorn or shaven, to obliterate the tonsure. The flat shoe had been a mark of the mimi planipedes at Rome.
[179] Gautier, ii. 105. Thus Nicolete (Aucassin et Nicolete, ed. Bourdillon, 120) ‘prist une herbe, si en oinst son cief et son visage, si qu’ele fu tote noire et tainte. Et ele fist faire cote et mantel et cemisse et braies, si s’atorna a guise de jogleor’; cf. King Horn (ed. Hall, 1901), 1471-2:
‘Hi sede, hi weren harpurs,
And sume were gigours.’