Glιᵹman, also signified jocista, a jester.
Glιᵹ-ᵹamen, (glee-games), joci. Which Somner renders, merriments, or merry jests, or tricks, or sports, gamboles.
(2) Hence, again, by a common metonymy of the cause for the effect:
Glιe, gaudium, alacritas, lætitia, facetiæ; joy, mirth, gladness, cheerfulness, glee. (Somner.) Which last application of the word still continues, though rather in a low debasing sense.
III.
But however agreeable and delightful the various arts of the minstrels might be to the Anglo-Saxon laity, there is reason to believe, that before the Norman Conquest, at least, they were not much favoured by the clergy; particularly by those of monastic profession. For, not to mention that the sportive talents of these men would be considered by those austere ecclesiastics, as tending to levity and licentiousness, the pagan origin of their art would excite in the monks an insuperable prejudice against it. The Anglo-Saxon harpers and gleemen were the immediate successors and imitators of the Scandinavian scalds, who were the great promoters of Pagan superstition, and fomented that spirit of cruelty and outrage in their countrymen the Danes, which fell with such peculiar severity on the religious and their convents. Hence arose a third application of words derived from Glιᵹᵹ, minstrelsy, in a very unfavourable sense, and this chiefly prevails in books of religion and ecclesiastic discipline. Thus:
(1) Glιg is ludibrium, laughing to scorn.[1114] So in S. Basil. Regul. II. Dι hæꝼꝺon hιm ꞇo ᵹlιᵹe halpenꝺe mιneᵹunᵹe. ludibrio habebant salutarem ejus admonitionm. (10.) This sense of the word was perhaps not ill-founded, for as the sport of rude uncultivated minds often arises from ridicule, it is not improbable but the old minstrels often indulged a vein of this sort, and that of no very delicate kind. So again,
Glιᵹ-man was also used to signify scurra, a saucy jester (Somn.)
Glιᵹ-ᵹeoꞃn, dicax, scurriles jocos supra quàm par est amans. Officium Episcopale, 3.