(From MS. 10 E. IV.)
Minstrels, however, as singers of songs, propagators of thoughts, tellers of romances, were to disappear. An age was beginning when books and the art of reading spread among the people, and a more and more numerous public would read and cease to listen; the theatres were, moreover, about to offer a spectacle much superior to that of the little troop of musicians and wandering singers, and would compete with them more powerfully than the “rude husbandmen and artificers of various crafts,” against whose impertinence Edward IV was so indignant. Replaced, unwanted, the minstrels proper ceased to exist as a class, leaving however behind them a variety of men who could claim them as ancestors, street musicians, mirth mongers, or the “blind crouder with no rougher voice then rude stile,” who sang for Sir Philip Sidney “the olde song of Percy and Douglas.”
In fact, the period of the Taillefers who would go to death in the fight while singing of Charlemagne was a limited one; the lustre which the jongleurs or trouvères of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who confined themselves to the recitation of poetry, had shed on their profession, was effaced in proportion as they associated {217} more closely with the mannerless bands of tumblers, jugglers, leaders of performing bears (ursinarii, the Latin documents of the time name them),[289] conjurors, and ribalds of all kinds.[290]
These bands had always existed, but the chanters of romances, tellers of knights’ high deeds, and of saints’ edifying examples, admitted even into the cloister, finding grace before St. Thomas Aquinas,[291] had, in the heyday of their fame stood above them, or apart from them. At all times, however, in castles and at fairs, were to be found buffoons and jugglers, whose coarseness exhilarated the spectators. The precise details which the contemporaries give as to their performances show not only that their jokes would not be tolerated among the rich of to-day, but that there are even few out of the way villages where {218} peasants on a festival would accept them without disgust. The great of former days found pleasure, however, in them, and in the troop of mummers and tumblers who went about wherever mirth was wanted, there always were some who excited laughter by the ignoble means described in John of Salisbury’s “Polycraticus”—“so shameful that even a cynic would blush at seeing them.”[292] But people of high degree did not blush, they laughed. Two hundred years later, some sacrilegious clerks, out of hate for the Archbishop of York, made themselves guilty of the same monstrous buffooneries in his very cathedral, and the episcopal letter relating their misdeeds with the precision of a legal report, adds that they were committed more ribaldorum.[293] Langland, at the same epoch, shows that one of his personages is not a true minstrel, either of the higher or of the lower sort, since he is neither able to “telle faire gestes,” nor to practise those welcome turpitudes.[294]
The greater was the feast, the coarser were often the deeds and songs of the mirth-mongers. In this way, in particular, were they accustomed to celebrate Christmas. Thomas Gascoigne, in the sort of theological dictionary compiled by him, beseeches his readers to abstain from hearing such Christmas songs, for they leave on the mind images and ideas which it is almost impossible afterwards to wash out. He adds as a warning the story of a man he personally knew: “I have known, I, Gascoigne, Doctor in Divinity, who am writing this book, a man who had heard at Christmas some of those repulsive songs. {219} It so happened that the shameful things he had heard had made such a deep impression on his mind that he could never in after time get rid of those remembrances nor wipe away those images. So he fell into such a deep melancholy that at length it proved deadly to him.”[295]
41. FAVOURITE DANCES IN MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND.
(From MS. 10 E. IV.)
The representations of the dance of Salome to be found in mediæval stained glass or manuscripts give an idea of the sort of tricks and games considered the fittest to amuse people of importance while sitting in their hall or having their dinner. It is by dancing on her hands, head downwards, that the young woman gains the suffrages of Herod. As the idea of such a dance could not be drawn from the Bible, it obviously arose from the customs of the time. At Clermont-Ferrand, in the stained glass of the cathedral (thirteenth century), Salome dances on knives which she holds with each hand, she also having her head downwards. In a window at the Lincoln cathedral she has no knives, but her “dance” is of the same sort and her red-stockinged feet touch the upper line of the glass panel. At Verona, she is represented on the {220} most ancient of the bronze gates of St. Zeno (ninth century) bending backwards and touching her feet with her head. Those standing by are filled with surprise and admiration, one puts his hand to his mouth, the other to his cheek, in an involuntary gesture of amazement. She may be seen in the same posture in several manuscripts in the British Museum; Herod is sitting at his table with his lords, while the young woman dances head downwards.[296] In another manuscript, also of the fourteenth century, minstrels are shown playing on their instruments, while a professional dancing girl belonging to their troop performs as usual head downwards, but this time, as at Clermont, her hands rest on two swords. The accounts of the royal exchequer of England sometimes mention sums paid to passing dancers, who, no doubt, must also have performed surprising feats, for the payments are considerable. Thus, in the third year of his reign, Richard II pays to John Katerine, a dancer of Venice, six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence for having played and danced before him.[297]
