[273] Ritson, ccxxiv, quotes the following lines, ascribed to Dr. Bull (†1597), from a Harl. MS., as the epitaph of minstrelsy:

[274] Du Vilain au Buffet (Montaiglon-Raynaud, iii. 202):

Cf. p. 67; also the similar list in Wace, Brut, 10823, and Piers Plowman, Passus xvi. 205:

[275] Gautier, ii. 63; Strutt, 207. L. T. Smith, Derby Accounts (Camden Soc.), 109, records a payment by Henry of Bolingbroke when in Prussia in 1390-1 ‘cuidam tumblere facienti ministralciam suam.’ See miniatures of tumblers (Strutt, 211, 212), stilt-dancing (ibid. 226), hoop-vaulting (ibid. 229), balancing (ibid. 232-4), a contortionist (ibid. 235).

[276] Annales Corbeienses, s. a. 1135 (Leibnitz, Rer. Brunsv. Script. ii. 307) ‘funambulus inter lusus suos in terram deiectus.’

[277] Gautier, ii. 64, quotes Annales Basilienses, s. a. 1276 ‘Basileam quidam corpore debilis venit, qui funem protensum de campanili maioris ecclesiae ad domum cantoris manibus et pedibus descendebat’; for later English examples cf. ch. xxiv.

[278] Strutt, 172, 176, 209; Jusserand, i. 214, and E. W. L. 23.

[279] Strutt, 173, 197; Jusserand, E. W. L. 212; Wright, 33-7.

[280] Gautier, ii. 67, quotes Joufrois, 1146:

[281] Strutt, 194, quotes from Cott. MS. Nero, c. viii, a payment ‘Janins le Cheveretter (bagpiper) called le Tregettour,’ for playing before Edw. II. Collier, i. 30, quotes Lydgate, Daunce de Macabre (Harl. 116):

[282] Ducange, s. v. bastaxi; Gautier, ii. 11; C. Magnin, Hist. des Marionnettes en Europe (ed. 2, 1862); cf. ch. xxiv. Bastaxus seems to be the origin of the modern bateleur, used in a wide sense of travelling entertainers.

[283] Du Méril, Com. 74; Strutt, 253; Jusserand, E. W. L. vi. 218. Amongst the letters commendatory of minstrels quoted by Gautier, ii. 109, is one ‘De illo qui scit volucrum exprimere cantilenas et voces asininas.’ Baudouin de Condé mentions a minstrel who ‘fait le cat’ (cf. p. 63, n. 1).

[284] See figures of bears (Strutt, 176, 214, 239, 240), apes (ibid. 240, 241; Jusserand, E. W. L. 218), horses (Strutt, 243, 244), dog (ibid. 246, 249), hare (ibid. 248), cock (ibid. 249). For the ursarius and for lion, marmoset, &c., cf. pp. 53, 68, and Appendix E.

[285] Strutt, 256. A horse-baiting is figured in Strutt, 243.

[286] Strutt, 244, figures a combat between man and horse. Gautier, ii. 66, cites Acta SS. Jan. iii. 257 for the intervention of St. Poppo when a naked man smeared with honey was to fight bears before the emperor Henry IV (†1048).

[287] Strutt, 260, 262.

[288] Adam Davie (†1312):

[289] John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, i. 8 ‘Quorum adeo error invaluit, ut a praeclaris domibus non arceantur, etiam illi qui obscenis partibus corporis oculis omnium eam ingerunt turpitudinem, quam erubescat videre vel cynicus. Quodque magis mirere, nec tunc eiiciuntur, quando tumultuantes inferius crebro sonitu aerem foedant, et turpiter inclusum turpius produnt’; Adam of Bremen (M. G. H.), iii. 38 ‘Pantomimi, qui obscoenis corporis motibus oblectare vulgus solent.’ Raine, Hist. Papers from Northern Registers (R. S.), 398, prints a letter of Archbishop Zouche of York on the indecent behaviour of some clerks of the bishop of Durham in York Minster on Feb. 6, 1349, ‘subtus imaginem crucifixi ventositates per posteriora dorsi cum foedo strepitu more ribaldorum emittere fecerunt pluries ac turpiter et sonore.’

[290] Gautier, ii. 69; Lavoix, La Musique au Siècle de Saint-Louis, i. 315; cf. Appendix C.

[291] W. Mapes, de Nugis Curialium (Camden Soc.), dist. v. prol., ‘Caesar Lucani, Aeneas Maronis, multis vivunt in laudibus, plurimum suis meritis et non minimum vigilantia poetarum; nobis divinam Karolorum et Pepinorum nobilitatem vulgaribus rithmis sola mimorum concelebrat nugacitas.’

[292] Lavoix, ii. 295.

[293] Ibid. ii. 344. The Paris MS. (B. N. f. fr. 2168) of Aucassin et Nicolete preserves the musical notation of the verse sections. Only three musical phrases, with very slight variations, are used. Two of these were probably repeated, alternately or at the singer’s fancy, throughout the tirade; the third provided a cadence for the closing line (Bourdillon, Aucassin et Nicolette (1897), 157).

[294] Chaucer, House of Fame, 1197:

Cf. Sir Thopas, 134; and Gower, Confessio Amantis, vii. 2424:

The evidence of Erasmus is late, of course, for the hey-day of minstrelsy, but in his time there were certainly English minstrels who merely recited, without musical accompaniment; cf. Ecclesiastes (Opera, v. col. 958) ‘Apud Anglos est simile genus hominum, quales apud Italos sunt circulatores, de quibus modo dictum est; qui irrumpunt in convivia magnatum, aut in cauponas vinarias; et argumentum aliquod, quod edidicerunt, recitant; puta mortem omnibus dominari, aut laudem matrimonii. Sed quoniam ea lingua monosyllabis fere constat, quemadmodum Germanica; atque illi studio vitant cantum, nobis latrare videntur verius quam loqui.’

[295] Ten Brink, i. 193, 225, 235, old gleeman tradition was probably less interfered with in the lowlands of Scotland than in England proper; cf. Henderson, Scottish Vernacular Literature, 16.

[296] Ten Brink, i. 322; Jusserand, i. 360; Courthope, i. 197. Minot’s poems have been edited by J. Hall (Oxford, 1887). See also Wright, Political Songs (C.S.) and Political Poems and Songs (R.S.). Many of these, however, are Latin.

[297] On Welsh bardism see H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Intr. à l’Étude de la Litt. celtique, 63; Stephens, Literature of the Kymry, 84, 93, 97, 102; Ernest David, Études historiques sur la Poésie et la Musique dans la Cambrie, 13, 62-103, 147-64. In Wales, an isolated corner of Europe, little touched by Latin influences, the bards long retained the social and national position which it is probable they once had held in all the Aryan peoples. Their status is defined in the laws of Howel Dha (†920) and in those of Gruffyd ab Cynan (1100). The latter code distinguishes three orders of bards proper, the Pryddyd or Chair bards, the Teuluwr or Palace bards, and the Arwyddfardd or heralds, also called Storiawr, the cantores historici of Giraldus Cambrensis. The Pryddyd and Teuluwr differ precisely as poets and executants, trouvères and jougleurs. Below all these come the Clerwr, against whom official bardism from the sixth to the thirteenth century showed an inveterate animosity. These are an unattached wandering folk, players on flutes, tambourines, and other instruments meaner than the telyn or harp, and the crwth or viol which alone the bards proper deigned to use. Many of them had also picked up the mime-tricks of the foreigners. It was probably with these Clerwr that the English and French neighbours of the Kelts came mainly into contact. Padelford, 5, puts this contact as early as the Anglo-Saxon period.

[298] Giraldus Cambrensis, Descriptio Cambriae, i. 17 ‘famosus ille fabulator Bledhericus, qui tempora nostra paulo praevenit.’ Thomas, Tristan (†1170, ed. Michel, ii. 847):

[299] G. Paris, in Hist. Litt. xxx. 1-22; Litt. Fr. §§ 53-5; Nutt, Legend of the Holy Grail, 228; Rhys, Arthurian Legend, 370-90. These views have been vigorously criticized by Prof. Zimmer in Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen (1891), 488, 785, and elsewhere.

[300] David, op. cit. 13, 235; cf. p. 54.

[301] Paris, §§ 118, 122, and Orig. (passim); Jeanroy, 1, 84, 102, 387; Lang. et Litt. i. 345; cf. ch. viii. Texts of chansons à personnages and pastourelles in Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen; of aubes in Bartsch, Chrestomathie de l’ancien français.

[302] Paris, § 126; Orig. (passim); Jeanroy, 45, and in Lang. et Litt. i. 384; Bartsch, Grundriss der prov. Lit. 34; Hueffer, The Troubadours, 112; Stimming in Gröber’s Grundriss, ii. 2. 24.

[303] In 1386 we hear of ‘des compaingnons, pour de jeux de parture juer et esbattre’ at Douai (Julleville, Rép. Com. 323), which looks as if, by the end of the fourteenth century, the partures were being professionally performed.

[304] Paris, § 109; Bédier, 31. A fabliau is properly a ‘conte à rire en vers’; the term dit is applied more generally to a number of short poems which deal, ‘souvent avec agrément, des sujets empruntés à la vie quotidienne.’ Some dits are satirical, others eulogistic of a class or profession, others descriptive. But the distinction is not very well defined, and the fabliaux are often called dits in the MSS.

[305] Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 1; ii. 257. The dit is also called La Jengle au Ribaut et la Contrejengle.

[306] Rutebeuf (ed. Kressner), 99.

[307] Barbazan-Méon, i. 356. Bédier, 33, considers Courtois d’Arras as the oldest French comedy, a jeu dramatique with intercalated narrative by a meneur de jeu. But the fact that it ends with the words Te Deum leads one to look upon it as an adaptation of a religious play; cf. ch. xix.

[308] On the débats in general, see Hist. Litt. xxiii. 216 sqq.; Paris, Litt. fr. §§ 110, 155; Arthur Piaget, Littérature didactique in Lang. et Litt. ii. 208; Jeanroy, 48; R. Hirzel, Der Dialog, ii. 382; Literaturblatt (1887), 76. A full list is given by Petit, Rép. Com. 405-9. The débats merge into such allegorical poems as Henri d’Andeli’s Bataille des Vins (Barbazon-Méon, i. 152) or Le Mariage des Sept Arts et des Sept Vertus (Jubinal, Œuvres de Rutebeuf, ii. 415); cf. Paris, Litt. fr. 158.

[309] Ten Brink, i. 215; Hubatsch, 24; Gummere, B. P. 200, 306. The Débat de l’Yver et de l’Esté has the nearest folk-lore origin; cf. ch. ix. Paris, Origines, 28, mentions several Greek and Latin versions beginning with Aesop (Halm, 414). The most important is the ninth-century Conflictus Veris et Hiemis (Riese, Anth. Lat. i. 2. 145), variously ascribed to Bede (Wernsdorff, Poetae Latini Minores, ii. 239), Alcuin (Alc. Opera, ed. Froben, ii. 612) and others. French versions are printed in Montaiglon-Rothschild, Anc. Poés. fr. vi. 190, x. 41, and Jubinal, N. R. ii. 40. There are imitations in all tongues: cf. M. Émile Picot’s note in Mont.-Rothsch. op. cit. x. 49; Hist. Litt. xxiii. 231; Douhet, 1441.—La Disputoison du Vin et de l’Iaue is printed in Jubinal, N. R. i. 293; Wright, Lat. Poems of Walter Mapes, 299; Carmina Burana, 232. It is based on the Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum (Wright, loc. cit. 87); cf. Hist. Litt. xxiii. 228; Romania, xvi. 366.—On the complicated history of the Débat du Corps et de l’Âme, see T. Batiouchkof in Romania, xx. 1. 513; G. Kleinert, Ueber den Streit von Leib und Seele; Hist. Litt. xxii. 162; P. de Julleville, Répertoire Comique, 5, 300, 347; Wright, Latin Poems, xxiii. 95, 321. Latin, French and other versions are given by Wright, and by Viollet-Leduc, Anc. Thé. fr. iii. 325.—Phillis et Flora, or De Phyllis qui aime un chevalier et de Flora qui aime un prêtre, is also referred by Paris, Orig. 28, to a folk-song beginning; cf. H. L. xxii. 138, 165; Romania, xxii. 536. Latin versions are in Carmina Burana, 155; Wright, Latin Poems of W. Mapes, 258.—A possible influence of the Theocritean and Virgilian eclogues upon these débats, through their neo-Latin forms, must be borne in mind.

[310] Wülker, 384; Brooke, i. 139, ii. 93, 221, 268; Jusserand, i. 75, 443. The passages of dialogue dwelt on by these writers mostly belong to the work of Cynewulf and his school. It has been suggested that some of them, e.g. the A.-S. Descent into Hell (Grein, iii. 175; cf. Anglia, xix. 137), or the dialogue between Mary and Joseph in Cynewulf’s Christ, 163 (ed. Gollancz, p. 16), may have been intended for liturgical use by half-choirs; but of this there is really no proof. Wülker, loc. cit., shows clearly that the notion of a dramatic representation was unfamiliar to the Anglo-Saxons.

[311] Ten Brink, i. 312. Several English versions of the Debate between Body and Soul are given by Wright, loc. cit. 334. An English Debate and Stryfe betwene Somer and Wynter is in W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, iii. 29.

[312] Cf. ch. xx.

[313] Ten Brink, i. 214, 309. The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1216-72), was printed by J. Stevenson (Roxburghe Club); the Thrush and the Nightingale and the Fox and the Wolf, by W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, i. 50, 58. There are also a Debate of the Carpenter’s Tools (Hazlitt, i. 79) and an English version of a Latin Disputacio inter Mariam et Crucem (R. Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, 131); cf. Ten Brink, i. 259, 312. An A.-S. version of the Debate between Body and Soul is in the Exeter Book (Grein, ii. 92).

[314] Ælred (†1166), Speculum Charitatis, ii. 23 (P. L. cxcv. 571) ‘Videas aliquando hominem aperto ore quasi intercluso halitu expirare, non cantare, ac ridiculosa quadam vocis interceptione quasi minitari silentium; nunc agones morientium, vel extasim patientium imitari. Interim histrionicis quibusdam gestibus totum corpus agitatur, torquentur labia, rotant, ludunt humeri; et ad singulas quasque notas digitorum flexus respondet. Et haec ridiculosa dissolutio vocatur religio!... Vulgus ... miratur ... sed lascivas cantantium gesticulationes, meretricias vocum alternationes et infractiones, non sine cachinno risuque intuetur, ut eos non ad oratorium sed ad theatrum, non ad orandum, sed ad spectandum aestimes convenisse.’ Cf. op. cit. ii. 17 ‘Cum enim in tragediis vanisve carminibus quisquam iniuriatus fingitur, vel oppressus ... si quis haec, vel cum canuntur audiens, vel cernens si recitentur ... moveatur’; and Johannes de Janua, s.v. persona (cited Creizenach, i. 381) ‘Item persona dicitur histrio, repraesentator comoediarum, qui diversis modis personat diversas repraesentando personas.’ All these passages, like the ninth-century responsio of arch-bishop Leidradus referred to on p. 36, may be suspected of learning rather than actuality. As for the epitaph of the mime Vitalis (Riese, Anth. Lat. i. 2. 143; Baehrens, P. L. M. iii. 245), sometimes quoted in this connexion, it appears to be classical and not mediaeval at all; cf. Teuffel-Schwabe, §§ 8. 11; 32. 6. Probably this is also the case with the lines De Mimo iam Sene in Wright, Anecdota Literaria, 100, where again ‘theatra’ are mentioned.

[315] Cf. p. 71. The mention of a ‘Disare that played the sheppart’ at the English court in 1502 (Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York) is too late to be of importance here.

[316] Creizenach, i. 383, citing at second-hand from fourteenth-century accounts of a Savoy treasurer ‘rappresentando i costumi delle compagnie inglesi e bretoni.’

[317] Creizenach, i. 380.

[318] Thomas de Cabham mentions the horribiles larvae of some minstrels. A. Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire française (ed. 2, 1886), 444, quotes a sermon of Étienne de Bourbon in MS. B. N. Lat. 15970, f. 352 ‘ad similitudinem illorum ioculatorum qui ferunt facies depictas quae dicuntur artificia gallicè, cum quibus ludunt et homines deludunt.’ Cf. Liudprand, iii. 15 (Pertz, iii. 310) ‘histrionum mimorumve more incedere, qui, ut ad risum facile turbas illiciant, variis sese depingunt coloribus.’ The monstra larvarum, however, of various ecclesiastical prohibitions I take to refer specifically to the Feast of Fools (cf. ch. xiii).

[319] Schack, Gesch. der dram. Litt. und Kunst in Spanien, i. 30, quotes a Carolingian capitulary, from Heineccius, Capit. lib. v. c. 388 ‘si quis ex scenicis vestem sacerdotalem aut monasticam vel mulieris religiosae vel qualicunque ecclesiastico statu similem indutus fuerit, corporali poena subsistat et exilio tradatur.’ This prohibition is as old as the Codex Theodosianus; cf. p. 14.

[320] Œuvres de Rutebeuf (ed. Kressner), 115; cf. Romania, xvi. 496; Julleville, Les Com. 24; Rép. Com. 407.

[321] Creizenach, i. 386, further points out that a stage was not indispensable to the Latin mimus, who habitually played before the curtain and probably with very little setting; that the favourite situations of fifteenth-century French farce closely resemble those of the mimes; and that the use of marionettes is a proof of some knowledge of dramatic methods amongst the minstrels.

[322] On this treatise, cf. ch. xx.

[323] A ‘japer’ is often an idle talker, like a ‘jangler’ which is clearly sometimes confused with a ‘jongleur’; cf. Chaucer, Parson’s Tale, 89 ‘He is a japere and a gabber and no verray repentant that eft-soone dooth thing for which hym oghte repente.’ Langland uses the term in a more technical sense. Activa Vita in Piers Plowman, xvi. 207, is no minstrel, because ‘Ich can not ... japen ne jogelen.’ No doubt a ‘jape’ would include a fabliau. It is equivalent etymologically to ‘gab,’ and Bédier, 33, points out that the jougleurs use gabet, as well as bourde, trufe, and risée for a fabliau.—The use of ‘pleye’ as ‘jest’ may be illustrated by Chaucer, Pardoner’s Tale (C. T. 12712) ‘My wit is greet, though that I bourde and pleye.’—The ‘japis’ of the Tretise are probably the ‘knakkes’ of the passage on ‘japeris’ in Parson’s Tale, 651 ‘right so conforten the vileyns wordes and knakkes of japeris hem that travaillen in the service of the devel.’

[324] Montaiglon-Raynaud, ii. 243. Cf. Hist. Litt. xxiii. 103; Jusserand, Lit. Hist. i. 442. A shorter prose form of the story is found in La Riote du Monde (ed. Fr. Michel, 1834), a popular facétie of which both French and Anglo-Norman versions exist; cf. Paris, Litt. fr. 153. And a Latin form, De Mimo et Rege Francorum is in Wright, Latin Stories, No. 137. The point consists in the quibbling replies with which the jougleur meets the king’s questions. Thus, in La Riote du Monde: ‘Dont ies tu?—Je suis de no vile.—U est te vile?—Entor le moustier.—U est li moustiers?—En l’atre.—U est li atres?—Sor terre.—U siet cele terre?—Sor l’iaue.—Comment apiel-on l’iaue?—On ne l’apiele nient; ele vient bien sans apieler.’

[325] Cf. Appendix V.

[326] Cf. ch. viii.

[327] Ed. P. Meyer, in Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur, vi. 163. The piece was probably written in Flanders, between 1266 and 1290. Cf. Creizenach, i. 398.

[328] See Appendix U. References for the earlier non-dramatic versions in Latin, French, and English of the story are given by Jusserand, Lit. Hist. i. 447. A Cornish dramatic fragment of the fourteenth century is printed in the Athenæum for Dec. 1, 1877, and Revue celtique, iv. 259; cf. Creizenach, i. 401.

[329] Stephens-Hunt, ii. 301; F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, 126. The disciplinary attack seems to have begun with Grosseteste’s predecessor, Hugh de Wells, in 1230 (Wilkins, i. 627), but he, like Roger Weseham, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in 1252 (Annales Monastici, R. S. i. 296), merely condemns ludi, a term which may mean folk-festivals or minstrelsy, or both. A similar ambiguity attaches to the obligation of the anchoresses of Tarrant Keyneston not to look on at a ludus (pleouwe) in the church-yard (Ancren Riwle, C. S. 318).

[330] In 1236 Grosseteste wrote to his archdeacons forbidding ‘arietum super ligna et rotas elevationes, caeterosque ludos consimiles, in quo decertatur pro bravio; cum huiusmodi ludorum tam actores quam spectatores, sicut evidenter demonstrat Isidorus, immolant daemonibus, ... et cum etiam huiusmodi ludi frequenter dant occasiones irae, odii, pugnae, et homicidii.’ His Constitutiones of 1238 say ‘Praecipimus etiam ut in singulis ecclesiis denuncietur solenniter ne quisquam levet arietes super rotas, vel alios ludos statuat, in quibus decertatur pro bravio: nec huiusmodi ludis quisquam intersit, &c.’ About 1244 he wrote again to the archdeacons: ‘Faciunt etiam, ut audivimus, clerici ludos quos vocant miracula: et alios ludos quos vocant Inductionem Maii sive Autumni; et laici scotales ... miracula etiam et ludos supra nominatos et scotales, quod est in vestra potestate facili, omnino exterminetis’ (Luard, Letters of Robert Grosseteste (R. S.) Epp. xxii, lii, cvii, pp. 74, 162, 317). For his condemnations of the Feast of Fools cf. ch. xiv.

[331] Const. Walt. de Cantilupo (Wilkins, i. 673) ‘prohibemus clericis ... nec sustineant ludos fieri de Rege et Regina, nec arietas levari, nec palaestras publicas fieri, nec gildales inhonestas.’ The clergy must also abstain and dissuade the laity from ‘compotationibus quae vocantur scottales’ (Wilkins, i. 672). On ‘ram-raisings,’ &c., cf. ch. vii; on ‘gildales’ and ‘scotales’ ch. viii.

[332] Surely the reference is to the mock kings and queens of the village festivals, and not, as Guy, 521; Jusserand, Litt. Hist. i. 444, suggest, to the question-and-answer game of Le Roi qui ne ment described in Jean de Condé’s Sentier Batu (Montaiglon-Raynaud, iii. 248), although this is called playing ‘as rois et as reines’ in Adan de la Hale’s Robin et Marion (ed. Monmerqué-Michel, 121) and elsewhere (cf. Guy, 222), and possibly grew out of the festival custom. Yet another game of King and Queen, of the practical joke order, is described as played at Golspie by Nicholson, 119.

[333] Wilkins, i. 666.

[334] Anstey, Munimenta Academica (R. S.), i. 18 ‘ne quis choreas cum larvis seu strepitu aliquo in ecclesiis vel plateis ducat, vel sertatus, vel coronatus corona ex foliis arborum, vel florum vel aliunde composita alicubi incedat ... prohibemus.’

[335] Inquisitiones ... de vita et conversatione clericorum et laicorum in Annales de Burton (Ann. Monast. R. S. i. 307) ‘an aliqui laici mercata, vel ludos, seu placita peculiaria fieri faciant in locis sacris, et an haec fuerint prohibita ex parte episcopi.... An aliqui laici elevaverint arietes, vel fieri faciant schothales, vel decertaverint de praeeundo cum vexillis in visitatione matricis ecclesiae.’

[336] Wilkins, ii. 129 ‘c. 13 ... Ne quisquam luctas, choreas, vel alios ludos inhonestos in coemeteriis exercere praesumat; praecipue in vigiliis et festis sanctorum, cum huiusmodi ludos theatrales et ludibriorium spectacula introductos per quos ecclesiarum coinquinatur honestas, sacri ordines detestantur.’

[337] Wilkins, iii. 68 ‘c. 2 ... nec in ipsis [locis sacris] fiant luctationes, sagittationes, vel ludi.’ A special caution is given against ludi ‘in sanctorum vigiliis’ and ‘in exequiis defunctorum.’

[338] T. F. Kirby, Wykeham’s Register (Hampshire Record Soc.), ii. 410, forbids ‘ad pilas ludere, iactaciones lapidum facere ... coreas facere dissolutas, et interdum canere cantilenas, ludibriorum spectacula facere, saltaciones et alios ludos inhonestos frequentare, ac multas alias insolencias perpetrare, ex quibus cimeterii huiusmodi execracio seu pollucio frequencius verisimiliter formidetur.’

[339] Handlyng Synne (ed. Furnivall), p. 148, l. 4684:

This poem is a free adaptation (†1303) of the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman Manuel de Péché, which is probably by William de Wadington, but has been ascribed to Bishop Grosseteste himself. The corresponding lines in this are

Cf. also Handlyng Synne, p. 278, l. 8989:

where the Manuel de Péché has

[340] The Puritan Fetherston, in his Dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lascivious Dancing (1583), sign. D. 7, says that he has ‘hearde of tenne maidens which went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.’ Stubbes, i. 149, has a very similar observation. Cf. the adventures of Dr. Fitzpiers and Suke Damson on Midsummer Eve in Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Woodlanders, ch. xx.

[341] Grosseteste, in 1236, quotes ‘Isidorus’ as to the pagan origin of ‘ludi, in quo decertatur de bravio.’ The reference is to Isidore of Seville (560-636), Etymologiarum, xviii. 27, De ludis circensibus (P. L. lxxxii. 653). This, of course, refers directly to the religious associations of Roman rather than Celto-Teutonic ludi.

[342] Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 30 ‘idolorum cultus insequere, fanorum aedificia everate.’

[343] Bede, Hist. Eccl. i. 30; Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 37 ‘Dicite [Augustino], quid diu mecum de causa Anglorum cogitans tractavi: videlicet quia fana idolorum destrui in eadem gente minime debeant; sed ipsa quae in illis sunt idola destruantur, aqua benedicta fiat, in eisdem fanis aspergatur, altaria construantur, reliquiae ponantur: quia si fana eadem bene constructa sunt, necesse est ut a cultu daemonum in obsequium veri Dei debeant commutari, ut dum gens ipsa eadem fana sua non videt destrui, de corde errorem deponat, et Deum verum cognoscens ac adorans, ad loca, quae consuevit, familiarius concurrat. Et quia boves solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere, debet eis etiam hac de re aliqua solemnitas immutari: ut die dedicationis, vel natalitii sanctorum martyrum quorum illic reliquiae ponuntur, tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias quae ex fanis commutatae sunt, de ramis arborum faciant, et religiosis conviviis sollemnitatem celebrent; nec diabolo iam animalia immolent, sed ad laudem Dei in esum suum animalia occidant, et donatori omnium de satietate sua gratias referant: ut dum eis aliqua exterius gaudia reservantur, ad interiora gaudia consentire facilius valeant. Nam duris mentibus simul omnia abscindere impossibile esse non dubium est, quia et is qui summum locum ascendere nititur gradibus vel passibus non autem saltibus elevatur’....

[344] Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, 37.

[345] H. B. Wheatley, London, Past and Present, iii. 39; Donne, Poems (Muses’ Library), ii. 23.

[346] Bede, ii. 13 ‘iussit sociis destruere ac succendere fanum cum omnibus septis suis.’ In Essex in a time of plague and famine (664), Sigheri and his people ‘coeperunt fana, quae derelicta sunt, restaurare, et adorare simulacra.’ Bp. Jaruman induced them to reopen the churches, ‘relictis sive destructis fanis arisque’ (Bede, iii. 30).

[347] Bede, ii. 15. So too in eighth-century Germany there were priests who were equally ready to sacrifice to Wuotan and to administer the sacrament of baptism (Gummere, 342). See also Grimm, i. 7, and the letter of Gregory the Great to queen Brunichildis in M. G. H. Epist. ii. 1. 7 ‘pervenit ad nos, quod multi Christianorum et ad ecclesias occurrant, et a culturis daemonum non abscedant.’