Wherever his fellows collected together in numbers, at courtly residences and tournaments, or in churchyards at great saints' feasts, he quickly pitched his tent and booth by the side of those of traders and pedlers, and began his arts; rope-dancing, jongleur exercises, sham-fights, dramatic representations in masks, shows of curiosities, songs, masked artistic dances, and playing for dances and festive processions. In the churchyard itself, or within the boundaries of some castle, were heard the sounds of noisy pleasure; and the sun-burnt women of the band slipped secretly through side doors into the castle or the priests' house.
Only some of the practices of these vagrants deserve special mention. The influence which these musicians exercised on the progress of epic and lyrical popular poetry, has been already mentioned; it is even now discerned in heroic poetry, for the players often endeavoured to introduce fellows of their own class into the old poetry, and took care that they should play no contemptible rôle. Thus in the Nibelungen, the brilliant form of the hero Volker the fiddler, is the representation of a musician; similar figures, grotesque in appearance, but rougher and coarser, hectored in the later poems and popular legends, as for example the monk Ilsan in the Rosengarten.
But it was not only in the German epos, that the strollers smuggled in, beautiful copies of their own life; despised as they were, they contrived, with all the insolence of their craft, to introduce themselves into the nave and choir of the church, though almost excluded from its holy rites. For even in the first strict ecclesiastical beginnings of the German dramas, they crept into the holy plays of the Easter festivals. Already in the beginning of the middle ages the history of the crucifixion and resurrection had assumed a dramatic colouring; alternate songs between Christ and his disciples, Pilate and the Jews, were sung by the clergy in the church choir; a great crucifix was reverently deposited in an artificial grave in the crypt, and afterwards there was a solemn announcement, on Easter morning, of the resurrection, songs of praise by the whole congregation, and the consecration of psalms. They began early to bring forward more prominently, individual rôles in dramatic songs, to put speeches as well as songs into their mouths, and to distinguish the chief rôles by suitable dress and particular attributes. On other Church festivals the same was done with the legends of the saints, and already in the twelfth century whole pieces were dramatically performed in the German churches, first of all in Latin, by the clergy in the choir. But in the thirteenth century the German language made its way into the dialogue; then the pieces became longer, the number of rôles increased, the laity began to join in it, the dialogues became familiar, sometimes facetious, and contrasted wonderfully with the occasional Latin songs and responses, which were maintained in the midst of them, and which also gradually became German. The personages in the Biblical plays still appear under the same comic figures, with the coarse jokes and street wit which the roving people had introduced into the churchyards. Generally the fool entered as servant of a quack. From the oldest times these strollers had carried about with them through the country, secret remedies, especially such as were suspicious to the Church, primitive Roman superstitions, ancient German forms of exorcism, and others also which were more noxious and dangerous. At the great Church festivals and markets, there were always doctors' booths, in which miraculous remedies and cures were offered for sale to the believing multitudes. These booths also of the wandering doctors are older than the Augustine age; they are to be seen depicted on the Greek vases, and came to Germany through Italy, with the grotesque masks of the doctors themselves and their attendant buffoons, and were the most profitable trade of the strollers. These doctors and their servants were introduced as interludes to the spiritual plays, with long spun out episodes of the holy traffic, in which ribaldry and drubbing are not wanting.
But the strollers introduced another popular person into the holy plays, the devil, probably his first appearance in the church. Long had this spirit of hell spit out fire under the tents of the churchyard, and wagged his tail, and probably he had often been beaten and cheated, to the delight of the spectators, by clever players, before he assisted in the thirteenth century as a much-suffering fellow-actor, in the holy Easter dramas, to the edification of the pious parishioners.
Such was the active industry carried on by these strollers through the middle ages. Serving every class and every tendency of the times, coarse in manners and morals, as privileged jesters both cherished and ill treated, they were probably united amongst themselves in firm fellowship, with secret tokens of recognition; they were distinguished by their outward attire, and chiefly by fantastic finery, and by the absence of long hair and beard, the honourable adornment of privileged people, which they were forbidden to wear.
In the fifteenth century the severity of the laws against them were relaxed, for the whole life of all classes had become more frivolous, daring, and reckless; an inordinate longing after enjoyment, an excessive pleasure in burlesque jesting, in music and dancing, in singing and mimic representations, was general in the wealthy towns. Thus many of the race of strollers contrived to make their peace with the burgher society. They became domestic fools in the courts of princes, the merry-andrews of the towns, associates of the town pipers, and players to the bands of Landsknechte.
But besides the players and their followers, there appeared along the roads of the armies, and in the hiding-places of the woods, other children of misfortune less harmless and far more awful to the people, first of all the gipsies.
The gipsies, from their language and the scanty historical records that there are of them, appear to be a race of northern border Indians, who lost their home, and their connection with their Indian relatives, at a time when the transformation of the ancient Sanscrit into the modern and popular languages had already begun. In their wanderings towards the west, which had gone on for centuries, they must have lived in continual intercourse with Arabians, Persians, and Greeks, for the language of these people has had a marked influence on their own. They were possibly, about the year 430 but more probably about 940, in Persia. They appeared about the twelfth century as Ishmaelites and braziers,[[41]] in Upper Germany. They were settled in the fourteenth century in Cypress, and in the year 1370, as bondsmen is Wallachia. The name of Zingaro or Zitano, is a corruption from their language; they still call themselves Scindians, dwellers on the banks of the Indus; their own statement also, that they came from Little Egypt, may be correct, as Little Egypt appears then to have denoted, not the valley of the Nile, but the frontier lands of Asia.
In the year 1417, they came in great hordes, with laughable pretensions and grotesque processions, from Hungary, into Germany, and shortly afterwards into Switzerland, France, and Italy. A band of three hundred grown-up persons, without counting the children, proceeded as far as the Baltic, under the command of a duke and count, on horseback and on foot; the women and children sitting with the baggage on the carts. They were dressed like comedians, and had sporting dogs with them as a sign of noble birth; but when they really hunted, they did so without dogs, and without noise. They showed recommendations and safe-conducts from princes and nobles, and also from the Emperor Sigismund. They asserted that their bishops had commanded them to wander for seven years through the world. But they were great swindlers, and passed their nights in the open air, for better opportunities of stealing. In 1418, they appeared in many parts of Germany, and the same year went under the command of Duke Michael, from Little Egypt into Switzerland. A rendezvous of many hordes seems to have taken place before Zurich. They numbered according to the lowest computation a thousand heads. They had two dukes and two knights, and pretended to have been driven from Egypt by the Turks: they carried much money in their pockets, and maintained that they had received it from their own people at home: they ate and drank well, and also paid well, but they have never shown themselves again like this. From thence they appear to have turned to France and Italy; in 1422, a band of them came under a duke from Egypt to Bologna and Forli. They stated that the King of Hungary had compelled about 4000 of them to be baptized, and had slain the remainder; the baptized had been condemned to the penance of seven years' wandering. They wished to go to Rome to visit the Pope. In 1427, the same band, probably, appeared before Paris with two dukes. They asserted that they had letters and a blessing from the Pope. The Pope had held council concerning them, and had decided that they were to wander through the world seven years, without lying on a bed; then he would send them to a fine country. For five years they had journeyed about, and their king and queen had died during their wanderings, &c. These were followed by other bands.
In 1424, a new horde appeared before Ratisbon, with letters of safe conduct from the Emperor Sigismund, one of which was dated Zips, 1423, and was published by the chroniclers. In 1438, another horde passed through Bohemia, Austria, and Bavaria; this time they were under a petty king, Zindelo; they also asserted that they came from Egypt, and declared that they were commanded by God to wander for seven years, because their forefathers had refused hospitality to the mother of God and the child Jesus, on their flight into Egypt.