Herodias is so drawn in a book of Prayers in the Royal Library. [689] There is the subjoined representation a century and a half earlier.
54. Herodias Tumbling with her Servant.
Her servant stands by her side. The drawing occurs in a series of Scripture histories in the Harleian Collection, [690] written and illuminated at the commencement of the thirteenth century.
IV.—ANTIQUITY OF TUMBLING.
The exhibition of dancing, connected with leaping and tumbling, for the entertainment of princes and noblemen on occasions of festivity, is of high antiquity. Homer mentions two dancing tumblers, who stood upon their heads, [691] and moved about to the measure of a song, for the diversion of Menelaüs and his courtiers, at the celebration of his daughter's nuptials. It seems that the astonishment excited by the difficulty of such performances, obviated the absurdity, and rendered them agreeable to persons of rank and affluence. The Saxon princes encouraged the dancers and tumblers; and the courts of the Norman monarchs were crowded with them: we have, indeed, but few of their exertions particularised; for the monks, through whose medium the histories of the middle ages have generally been conveyed to us, were their professed enemies: it is certain, however, notwithstanding the censure promulgated in their disfavour, that they stood their ground, and were not only well received, but even retained, in the houses of the opulent. No doubt, they were then, as in the present day, an immoral and dissolute set of beings, who, to promote merriment, frequently descended to the lowest kinds of buffoonery. We read, for instance, of a tumbler in the reign of Edward II. who rode before his majesty, and frequently fell from his horse in such a manner, that the king was highly diverted, and laughed exceedingly, [692] and rewarded the performer with the sum of twenty shillings, which at that period was a very considerable donation. A like reward of twenty shillings was given, by order of Henry VIII., to a strange tumbler, that is, I suppose, an itinerant who had no particular establishment; a like sum to a tumbler who performed before him at lord Bath's; and a similar reward to the "tabouretts and a tumbler," probably of the household. [693] It should seem that these artists were really famous mirth-makers; for, one of them had the address to excite the merriment of that solemn bigot queen Mary. "After her majesty," observes Strype, "had reviewed the royal pensioners in Greenwich Park, there came a tumbler, and played many pretty feats, the queen and cardinal Pole looking on; whereat she was observed to laugh heartily." [694]