[187] Bavon or bavette, is from bave, spittle. Hence the middle age Latin term for a fool, bavosus. See Ducange Gloss. This is a very plausible etymology, and might stand well enough by itself; but it must not be concealed that in some of the Northern languages Bavian signifies a monkey or baboon. Whether Fletcher, who seems the only writer that has made use of this word, applied it to the fool in question on account of the monkey tricks that he played, remains to be ascertained. If we could discover the names of the characters in a French, Dutch, or German morris of this time, some light might be thrown on the subject.
[188] See Carter's Specimens of ancient sculpture and painting, vol. ii. pl. xiii. Nos. 5 and 13, and pl. xxxvi.
[189] Edit. 1585, 12mo, p. 299. See likewise the article chironomus in p. [521].
[190] Coryat's Crudities, 1611, 4to, p. 9.
[191] Yet, in the reign of Charles the Second, Thomas Hall, another puritanical writer, published his Funebria Floræ, the Downfall of May-games, 1661, 4to, in which, amidst a great deal of silly declamation against these innocent amusements, he maintains that "Papists are forward to give the people May-poles, and the Pope's holiness with might and main keeps up his superstitious festivals as a prime prop of his tottering kingdome." That "by these sensual sports and carnal-flesh-pleasing wayes of wine, women, dancing, revelling, &c., he hath gained more souls, than by all the tortures and cruel persecutions that he could invent." He adds, "What a sad account will these libertines have to make, when the Lord shall demand of them, where wast thou such a night? why, my Lord, I was with the prophane rabble, stealing May-poles; and where wast thou such a day? why, my Lord, I was drinking, dancing, dallying, ranting, whoring, carousing, &c."
[192] Every man out of his humour, Act II. Scene 1.
[193] Spanish dictionary.
[194] See the plate of ancient cards, xxxi. in Strutt's Sports and pastimes, where a knave or attendant is dressed in this manner.
[195] Churchwardens' accounts at Kingston, in Lysons's Environs of London, i. p. 227, 228.
[196] Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, ubi supra.