XI.—BURLESQUE MUSIC.
The minstrels and joculators seem to have had the knack of converting every kind of amusement into a vehicle for merriment, and among others, that of music has not escaped them. Here we see one of these drolls holding a pair of bellows by way of a fiddle, and using the tongs as a substitute for the bow.
97. Burlesque Music.
This, and such like vagaries, were frequently practised in the succeeding times; and they are neatly ridiculed in one of the papers belonging to the Spectator, [885] where the author mentions "a tavern keeper who amused his company with whistling of different tunes, which he performed by applying the edge of a case knife to his lips. Upon laying down the knife he took up a pair of clean tobacco pipes, and after having slid the small ends of them over a table in a most melodious trill, he fetched a tune out of them, whistling to them at the same time in concert. In short the tobacco pipes became musical pipes in the hands of our virtuoso, who," says the writer, "confessed ingenuously that he broke such quantities of pipes that he almost broke himself, before he brought this piece of music to any tolerable perfection." [886] This man also "played upon the frying-pan and gridiron, and declared he had layed down the tongs and key because it was unfashionable." I have heard an accompaniment to the violin exceedingly well performed with a rolling-pin and a salt-box, by a celebrated publican named Price, who kept the Green Man, formerly well known by the appellation of the Farthing Pye House, at the top of Portland Row, St. Mary-le-bone. I have also seen a fellow who used to frequent most of the public houses in and about the town, blow up his cheeks with his breath, and beat a tune upon them with his fists, which feat he seemed to perform with great facility. The butchers have a sort of rough music, made with marrow-bones and cleavers, which they usually bring forward at weddings; and in the Knave in Grain, a play first acted in 1640, [887] ringing of basons is mentioned. This music, or something like it, I believe, is represented by the engraving No. 57.
XII.—DANCING.
To what has been said upon this subject in a former chapter, [888] I shall here add a few words more, and consider it as performed for amusement only. In the middle ages dancing was reckoned among the genteel accomplishments necessary to be acquired by both sexes; and in the romances of those times, the character of a hero was incomplete unless he danced excellently. [889] The knights and the ladies are often represented dancing together, which in the MS. poem of Launfal, in the Cotton Collection, [890] is called playing:
The quene yede to the formeste ende,