[1458] ‘Maske’ first appears in 1514 (Collier, i. 79 ‘iocorum larvatorum, vocat. Maskes, Revelles, and Disguysings’); ‘masque’ is not English until the seventeenth century (Evans, xiii). Skeat derives through the French masque, masquer, masquerer, and the Spanish mascara, mascarada (Ital. mascherata) from the Arabic maskharat, a buffoon or droll (root sakhira, ‘he ridiculed’). The original sense would thus be ‘entertainment’ and that of ‘face-mask’ (larva, ‘vizard,’ ‘viser’) only derivative. But late Latin has already masca, talamasca in this sense; e.g. Burchardus of Worms, Coll. Decretorum (before 1024), bk. ii. c. 161 ‘nec larvas daemonum quas vulgo Talamascas dicunt, ibi ante se ferri consentiat’; cf. Ducange, s.v. Talamasca; Pfannenschmidt, 617, with some incorrect etymology. And the French masque is always the face-mask and never the performance; while se masquier, masquillier, maschurer, are twelfth-to thirteenth-century words for ‘blacken,’ ‘dirty.’ I therefore prefer the derivation of Brotanek, 120, from a Germanic root represented by the M. E. maskel ‘stain’; and this has the further advantage of explaining ‘maskeler,’ ‘maskeling,’ which appear, variously spelt, in documents of †1519-26. Both terms signify the performance, and ‘maskeler’ the performer also (Brotanek, 122). Face-masks were de rigueur in the Mask to a late date. In 1618 John Chamberlain writes ‘the gentlemen of Gray’s Inn came to court with their show, for I cannot call it a masque, seeing they were not disguised, nor had vizards’ (Nichols, James I, iii. 468).
[1459] Ben Jonson, iii. 162. Masque of Augurs (1623) ‘Disguise was the old English word for a masque, sir, before you were an implement belonging to the Revels’; ii. 476, A Tale of a Tub (1634), v. 2:
‘Pan. A masque! what’s that?
Scriben. A mumming or a shew,
With vizards and fine clothes.
Clench. A disguise, neighbour,
Is the true word.’
[1460] Cf. ch. x. Less dramatic performances are described for the ‘guizards’ of the Scottish Lowlands by R. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 169, for the ‘mummers’ of Ireland in N. and Q. 3rd series, viii. 495, for the ‘mummers’ of Yorkshire in F. L. iv. 162. The latter sweep the hearth, humming ‘mumm-m-m.’
[1461] L. H. T. Accounts, i. ccxl, 270, 327; ii. cx, 111, 320, 374, 430, 431; iii. 127. In 1504 is a payment ‘to the barbour helit Paules hed quhen he wes hurt with the Abbot of Unresoun.’ Besides the court Abbot, there was an ‘Abbot of Unresone of Linlithgow’ in 1501, who ‘dansit to the king,’ and an ‘Abbot of Unresoun of the pynouris of Leith’ in 1504. Such entries cease after the Scottish Act of Parliament of 1555 (cf. p. 181).
[1462] Stowe, Survey, 37 ‘There was in the feast of Christmas in the King’s house, wheresoever he was lodged, a Lord of Misrule or Master of Merry Disports; and the like had ye in the house of every nobleman of honour or good worship, were he spiritual or temporal. Among the which, the Mayor of London and either of the Sheriffs had their several Lords of Misrule, ever contending, without quarrel or offence, who should make the rarest pastimes to delight the beholders. These Lords beginning their rule on Allhollons eve, continued the same til the morrow after the feast of the Purification, commonly called Candlemas-day. In all which space there were fine and subtle disguisings, masks and mummeries’; Holinshed (ed. 1587), iii. 1067 ‘What time [at Christmas], of old ordinarie course, there is alwaies one appointed to make sport in the court, called commonlie lord of misrule: whose office is not unknowne to such as haue beene brought up in noble mens houses, & among great house keepers which use liberall feasting in that season.’ The sense of ‘misrule’ in this phrase is ‘disorder’; cf. the ‘uncivil rule’ of Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 132.