I. Dancing, Tumbling, and Balancing, part of the Joculator's Profession.—II. Performed by Women.—III. Dancing connected with Tumbling.—IV. Antiquity of Tumbling—much encouraged.—V. Various Dances described.—VI. The Gleemen's Dances.—VII. Exemplification of Gleemen's Dances.—VIII. The Sword Dance—IX. Rope-Dancing and wonderful Performances on the Rope.—X. Rope-Dancing from the Battlements of St. Paul's.—XI. Rope-Dancing from St. Paul's Steeple.—XII. Rope-Dancing from All Saints' Church, Hertford.—XIII. A Dutchman's Feats on St. Paul's Weathercock.—XIV. Jacob Hall the Rope-Dancer.—XV. Modern celebrated Rope-Dancing.—XVI. Rope-Dancing at Sadler's Wells.—XVII. Fool's Dance.—XVIII. Morris Dance.—XIX. Egg Dance.—XX. Ladder Dance.—XXI. Jocular Dances.—XXII. Wire-Dancing.—XXIII. Ballette Dances.—XXIV. Leaping and Vaulting.—XXV. Balancing.—XXVI. Remarkable Feats.—XXVII. The Posture-Master's Tricks.—XXVIII. The Mountebank.—XXIX. The Tinker.—XXX. The Fire-Eater.
I.—JOCULATORS' DANCING.
Dancing, tumbling, and balancing, with variety of other exercises requiring skill and agility, were originally included in the performances exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; and they remained attached to the profession of the joculator after he was separated from those who only retained the first branches of the minstrel's art, that is to say, poetry and music.
II.—WOMEN DANCERS AND TUMBLERS.
The joculators were sometimes excellent tumblers; yet, generally speaking, I believe that vaulting, tumbling, and balancing, were not executed by the chieftain of the gleeman's company, but by some of his confederates; and very often this part of the show was performed by females, who were called glee-maidens, Maꝺen-ᵹlẏƿıenꝺ, by the Saxons; and tumbling women, tomblesteres, and tombesteres, in Chaucer, derived from the Saxon word ꞇomban, to dance, vault, or tumble. The same poet, in the Romance of the Rose, calls them saylours, or dancers, from the Latin word salio. They are also denominated sauters, from saut in French, to leap. Hence, in Pierce Ploughman, one says, "I can neither saylen ne saute." They are likewise in modern language called balancing women, or tymbesteres, players upon the tymbrel, which they also balanced occasionally, as we shall find a little farther on. It is almost needless to add, that the ancient usage of introducing females for the performances of these difficult specimens of art and agility, has been successively continued to the present day.
III.—DANCING CONNECTED WITH TUMBLING.
Dancing, in former times, was closely connected with those feats of activity now called vaulting and tumbling; and such exertions often formed part of the dances that were publicly exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; for which reason, the Anglo-Saxon writers frequently used the terms of leaping and tumbling for dancing. Both the phrases occur in the Saxon versions of St. Mark's Gospel; where it is said of the daughter of Herodias, that she vaulted or tumbled, instead of danced, before king Herod. [685] In a translation of the seventh century, in the Cotton Library, [686] it says she plæᵹeꝺe, ⁊ ᵹelıcaꝺe Heꞃoꝺe; she jumped, or leaped, and pleased Herod. In another Saxon version of the eleventh century, in the Royal Library, [687] she ꞇumbeꝺe, ⁊ hıꞇ lıcoꝺe Heꞃoꝺe; she tumbled, and it pleased Herod. A third reads, Herodias' daughter ꞇumboꝺe þæꞃe, tumbled there, &c.[4] These interpretations of the sacred text might easily arise from a misconception of the translators, who, supposing that no common dancing could have attracted the attention of the monarch so potently, or extorted from him the promise of a reward so extensive as that they found stated in the record; therefore referred the performance to some wonderful displayments of activity, resembling those themselves might have seen exhibited by the glee-maidens, on occasions of solemnity, in the courts of Saxon potentates. We may also observe, that the like explication of the passage was not only received in the Saxon versions of the Gospel, but continued in those of much more modern date; and, agreeably to the same idea, many of the illuminators, in depicting this part of the holy history, have represented the damsel in the action of tumbling, or, at least, of walking upon her hands. Mr. Brand, in his edition of Bourne's Vulgar Antiquities, has quoted one in old English that reads thus: "When the daughter of Herodyas was in comyn, and had tomblyde and pleside Harowde." I have before me a MS. of the Harleian Collection, [688] in French, in the thirteenth century, written by some ecclesiastic, which relates to the church fasts and festivals. Speaking of the death of John Baptist, and finding this tumbling damsel to have been the cause, the pious author treats her with much contempt, as though she had been one of the dancing girls belonging to a company of jugglers, who in his time, it seems, were not considered as paragons of virtue any more than they are in the present day. He says of her, "Bien saveit treschier e tumber;" which may be rendered, "She was well skilled in tumbling and cheating tricks." And accordingly we find the following representation.
53. Herodias Tumbling.