477. tombesteres, female dancers. 'Sir Perdicas, whom that kinge Alysandre made to been his heire in Grece, was of no kinges blod; his dame [mother] was a tombystere'; Testament of Love, Book ii. ed. 1561, fol. ccxcvi b.
Tombestere is the feminine form; the A. S. spelling would be tumbestre; the masc. form is the A. S. tumbere, which is glossed by saltator, i. e. a dancer; the verb is tumbian, to dance, used of Herodias' daughter in the A. S. version of Mark, vi. 22. The medieval idea of tumbling was, that the lady stood on her hands with her heels in the air; see Strutt, Sports, &c. bk. iii. c. 5.
On the feminine termination -ster (formerly -estre, or -stre) see the remarks in Marsh's Lectures on the English Language, printed in (the so-called) Smith's Student's Manual of the English Language, ed. 1862, pp. 207, 208, with an additional note at p. 217. Marsh's remarks are, in this case, less clear than usual. He shews that the termination was not always used as a feminine, and that, in fact, its force was early lost. It is, however, merely a question of chronology. That the termination was originally feminine in Anglo-Saxon, is sufficiently proved by the A. S. version of the Gospels. There we find the word witega frequently used in the sense of prophet; but, in one instance, where it is necessary to express the feminine, we find this accomplished by the use of this very termination. 'And anna waes witegystre (another MS. witegestre)'; i. e. and Anna was a prophetess, Luke, ii. 36. Similar instances might easily be multiplied; see Dr. Morris's Hist. Outlines of Eng. Accidence, pp. 89, 90. Thus, wasshestren (pl.) is used as the
translation of lotrices; Old Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, ii. 57. But it is also true that, in the fourteenth century, the feminine force of this termination was becoming very weak, so that, whilst in P. Plowman, B. v. 306, we find 'Beton the brewestere' applied to a female brewer, we cannot thence certainly conclude that 'brewestere' was always feminine at that period. On the other hand, we may point to one word, spinster, which has remained feminine to this very day.
Dr. Morris remarks that tombestere is a hybrid word; in which I believe that he has been misled by the spelling. It is a pure native word, from the A. S. tumbian, but the scribes have turned it from tumbestere into tombestere, by confusion with the French tomber. Yet even the Fr. tomber was once spelt tumber (Burguy, Roquefort), being, in fact, a word of Germanic origin. An acrobat can still be called a tumbler: we find 'rope-dancers and tumblers' in Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, § 4. Indeed, the Cambridge MS. has here the true spelling tumbesteris, whilst the Corpus, Petworth, and Lansdowne MSS. have the variations tomblisteres and tomblesters. The A. S. masc. form tumbere occurs in Ælfric's Vocabulary.
As to the source of the suffix -ster, it is really a compound suffix, due to composition of the Aryan suffixes -es and -ter-; cf. Lat. mag-is-ter, min-is-ter, poet-as-ter. The feminine use is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon and to some other Teutonic languages.
478. fruytesteres, female sellers of fruit; see note to last line.
479. wafereres, sellers of confectionery, confectioners. The feminine form wafrestre occurs in Piers Plowman, v. 641. From Beaumont and Fletcher we learn that 'wafer-women' were often employed in amorous embassies, as stated in Nares' Glossary, q. v.
483. holy writ. In the margin of the MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. and Hl. is the note—'Nolite inebriari vino, in quo est luxuria,' quoted from the Vulgate version of Eph. v. 18. See vol. iii. p. 444.
487. Cp. Ln. have here two additional spurious lines. Cp. reads—