The Mediaeval Stage, Vol I (of 2)

THE MEDIAEVAL STAGE

FIRST EDITION 1903
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY LOWE & BRYDONE, PRINTERS, LTD., LONDON
FROM SHEETS OF THE FIRST EDITION
1925, 1948, 1954, 1963

PREFACE

Some years ago I was thinking of a little book, which now may or may not ever get itself finished, about Shakespeare and the conditions, literary and dramatic, under which Shakespeare wrote. My proper task would have begun with the middle of the sixteenth century. But it seemed natural to put first some short account of the origins of play-acting in England and of its development during the Middle Ages. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that the basis for such a narrative was wanting. The history of the mediaeval theatre had never, from an English point of view, been written. The initial chapter of Collier’s Annals of the Stage is even less adequate than is usual with this slovenly and dishonest antiquary. It is with some satisfaction that, in spite of the barrier set up by an incorrect reference, I have resolved one dramatic representation elaborately described by Collier into a soteltie or sweetmeat. More scholarly writers, such as Dr. A. W. Ward, while dealing excellently with the mediaeval drama as literature, have shown themselves but little curious about the social and economic facts upon which the mediaeval drama rested. Yet from a study of such facts, I am sure, any literary history, which does not confine itself solely to the analysis of genius, must make a start.

An attempt of my own to fill the gap has grown into these two volumes, which have, I fear, been unduly swelled by the inclusion of new interests as, from time to time, they took hold upon me; an interest, for example, in the light-hearted and coloured life of those poverelli of letters, the minstrel folk; a very deep interest in the track across the ages of certain customs and symbols of rural gaiety which bear with them the inheritance of a remote and ancestral heathenism. I can only hope that this disproportionate treatment of parts has not wholly destroyed the unity of purpose at which, after all, I aimed. If I may venture to define for myself the formula of my work, I would say that it endeavours to state and explain the pre-existing conditions which, by the latter half of the sixteenth century, made the great Shakespearean stage possible. The story is one of a sudden dissolution and a slow upbuilding. I have arranged the material in four Books. The First Book shows how the organization of the Graeco-Roman theatre broke down before the onslaught of Christianity and the indifference of barbarism, and how the actors became wandering minstrels, merging with the gleemen of their Teutonic conquerors, entertaining all classes of mediaeval society with spectacula in which the dramatic element was of the slightest, and in the end, after long endurance, coming to a practical compromise with the hostility of the Church. In the Second Book I pass to spectacula of another type, which also had to struggle against ecclesiastical disfavour, and which also made their ultimate peace with all but the most austere forms of the dominant religion. These are the ludi of the village feasts, bearing witness, not only to their origin in heathen ritual, but also, by their constant tendency to break out into primitive forms of drama, to the deep-rooted mimetic instinct of the folk. The Third Book is a study of the process by which the Church itself, through the introduction of dramatic elements into its liturgy, came to make its own appeal to this same mimetic instinct; and of that by which, from such beginnings, grew up the great popular religious drama of the miracle-plays, with its offshoots in the moralities and the dramatic pageants. The Fourth and final Book deals summarily with the transformation of the mediaeval stage, on the literary side under the influence of humanism, on the social and economic side by the emergence from amongst the ruins of minstrelsy of a new class of professional players, in whose hands the theatre was destined to recover a stable organization upon lines which had been departed from since the days of Tertullian.

I am very conscious of the manifold imperfections of these volumes. They are the work, not of a professed student, but of one who only plays at scholarship in the rare intervals of a busy administrative life. They owe much to the long-suffering officials of the British Museum and the London Library, and more recently to the aid and encouragement of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and their accomplished staff. The literary side of the mediaeval drama, about which much remains to be said, I have almost wholly neglected. I shall not, I hope, be accused of attaching too much importance in the first volume to the vague and uncertain results of folk-lore research. One cannot be always giving expression to the minuter shades of probability. But in any investigation the validity of the inferences must be relative to the nature of the subject-matter; and, whether I qualify it in words or not, I do not, of course, make a statement about the intention, say, of primitive sacrifice, with the same confidence which attaches to one about matters of historic record. The burden of my notes and appendices sometimes appears to me intolerable. My excuse is that I wanted to collect, once for all, as many facts with as precise references as possible. These may, perhaps, have a value independent of any conclusions which I have founded upon them. And even now I do not suppose that I have been either exhaustive or accurate. The remorseless ideal of the historian’s duties laid down in the Introduction aux Études Historiques of MM. Langlois and Seignobos floats before me like an accusing spirit. I know how very far I am from having reached that austere standard of scientific completeness. To begin with, I had not the necessary training. Oxford, my most kindly nurse, maintained in my day no École des Chartes, and I had to discover the rules of method as I went along. But the greater difficulty has been the want of leisure and the spacious life. Shades of Duke Humphrey’s library, how often, as I jostled for my turn at the crowded catalogue-shelves of the British Museum, have I not envied those whose lot it is to tread your ample corridors and to bend over your yellowing folios! Amongst such happy scholars, the canons of Clio may claim implicit obedience. A silent company, they ‘class’ their documents and ‘try’ their sources from morn to eve, disturbed in the pleasant ways of research only by the green flicker of leaves in the Exeter garden, or by the statutory inconvenience of a terminal lecture.—

E. K. C.

CONTENTS

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

BOOK I

CHAPTER I THE FALL OF THE THEATRES

Christianity, emerging from Syria with a prejudice against disguisings[1], found the Roman world full of scenici. The mimetic instinct, which no race of mankind is wholly without, appears to have been unusually strong amongst the peoples of the Mediterranean stock. A literary drama came into being in Athens during the sixth century, and established itself in city after city. Theatres were built, and tragedies and comedies acted on the Attic model, wherever a Greek foot trod, from Hipola in Spain to Tigranocerta in Armenia. The great capitals of the later Greece, Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum, rivalled Athens itself in their devotion to the stage. Another development of drama, independent of Athens, in Sicily and Magna Graecia, may be distinguished as farcical rather than comic. After receiving literary treatment at the hands of Epicharmus and Sophron in the fifth century, it continued its existence under the name of mime (μῖμος), upon a more popular level. Like many forms of popular drama, it seems to have combined the elements of farce and morality. Its exponents are described as buffoons (γελωτοποιοί, παιγνιογράφοι) and dealers in indecencies (ἀναισχυντογράφοι), and again as concerning themselves with questions of character and manners (ἠθολόγοι, ἀρεταλόγοι). They even produced what sound singularly like problem plays (ὑποθέσεις). Both qualities may have sprung from a common root in the observation and audacious portrayal of contemporary life. The mime was still flourishing in and about Tarentum in the third century[2].

Probably the Romans were not of the Mediterranean stock, and their native ludi were athletic rather than mimetic. But the drama gradually filtered in from the neighbouring peoples. Its earliest stirrings in the rude farce of the satura are attributed by Livy to Etruscan influence[3]. From Campania came another type of farce, the Oscum ludicrum or fabula Atellana, with its standing masks of Maccus and Bucco, Pappus and Dossennus, in whom it is hard not to find a kinship to the traditional personages of the Neapolitan commedia dell’ arte. About 240 B. C. the Greek Livius Andronicus introduced tragedy and comedy. The play now became a regular element in the spectacula of the Roman festivals, only subordinate in interest to the chariot-race and the gladiatorial show. Permanent theatres were built in the closing years of the Republic by Pompey and others, and the number of days annually devoted to ludi scenici was constantly on the increase. From 48 under Augustus they grew to 101 under Constantius. Throughout the period of the Empire, indeed, the theatre was of no small political importance. On the one hand it was the rallying point of all disturbers of the peace and the last stronghold of a public opinion debarred from the senate and the forum; on the other it was a potent means for winning the affection of the populace and diverting its attention from dynastic questions. The scenici might be thorns in the side of the government, but they were quite indispensable to it. If their perversities drove them from Italy, the clamour of the mob soon brought them back again. Trajan revealed one of the arcana imperii when he declared that the annona and the spectacula controlled Rome[4]. And what was true of Rome was true of Byzantium, and in a lesser degree of the smaller provincial cities. So long as the Empire itself held together, the provision firstly of corn and secondly of novel ludi remained one of the chief preoccupations of many a highly placed official.

The vast popular audiences of the period under consideration cared but little for the literary drama. In the theatre of Pompey, thronged with slaves and foreigners of every tongue, the finer histrionic effects must necessarily have been lost[5]. Something more spectacular and sensuous, something appealing to a cruder sense of humour, almost inevitably took their place. There is evidence indeed that, while the theatres stood, tragedy and comedy never wholly disappeared from their boards[6]. But it was probably only the ancient masterpieces that got a hearing. Even in Greece performances of new plays on classical models cannot be traced beyond about the time of Hadrian. And in Rome the tragic poets had long before then learnt to content themselves with recitations and to rely for victims on the good nature, frequently inadequate, of their friends[7]. The stilted dramas of Seneca were the delight of the Renaissance, but it is improbable that, until the Renaissance, they were ever dignified with representation. Roughly speaking, for comedy and tragedy the Empire substituted farce and pantomime.

Farce, as has been noticed, was the earliest traffic of the Roman stage. The Atellane, relegated during the brief vogue of comedy and tragedy to the position of an interlude or an afterpiece, now once more asserted its independence. But already during the Republic the Atellane, with its somewhat conventional and limited methods, was beginning to give way to a more flexible and vital type of farce. This was none other than the old mime of Magna Graecia, which now entered on a fresh phase of existence and overran both West and East. That it underwent considerable modifications, and probably absorbed much both of Atellane and of Attic comedy, may be taken for granted. Certainly it extended its scope to mythological themes. But its leading characteristics remained unchanged. The ethical element, one may fear, sank somewhat into the background, although it was by no means absent from the work of the better mime-writers, such as Laberius and Publilius Syrus[8]. But that the note of shamelessness was preserved there is no doubt whatever[9]. The favourite theme, which is common indeed to farce of all ages, was that of conjugal infidelity[10]. Unchaste scenes were represented with an astonishing realism[11]. Contrary to the earlier custom of the classical stage, women took part in the performances, and at the Floralia, loosest of Roman festivals, the spectators seem to have claimed it as their right that the mimae should play naked[12]. The mimus—for the same term designates both piece and actor—was just the kind of entertainer whom a democratic audience loves. Clad in a parti-coloured centunculus, with no mask to conceal the play of facial gesture, and planipes, with no borrowed dignity of sock or buskin, he rattled through his side-splitting scenes of low life, and eked out his text with an inexhaustible variety of rude dancing, buffoonery and horse-play[13]. Originally the mimes seem to have performed in monologues, and the action of their pieces continued to be generally dominated by a single personage, the archimimus, who was provided with certain stupidi and parasiti to act as foils and butts for his wit. A satirical intention was frequently present in both mimes and Atellanes, and their outspoken allusions are more than once recorded to have wrung the withers of persons of importance and to have brought serious retribution on the actors themselves. Caligula, for instance, with characteristic brutality, had a ribald playwright burnt alive in the amphitheatre[14].

The farce was the diversion of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of Rome. Petronius, with all the insolence of the literary man, makes Trimalchio buy a troupe of comedians, and insist on their playing an Atellane[15]. The golden and cultured classes preferred the pantomimic dance. This arose out of the ruins of the literary drama. On the Roman stage grew up a custom, unknown in Greece, by which the lyric portions of the text (cantica) were entrusted to a singer who stood with the flute-player at the side of the stage, while the actor confined himself to dancing in silence with appropriate dumb show. The dialogue (diverbia) continued to be spoken by the actors. The next step was to drop the diverbia altogether; and thus came the pantomimus who undertook to indicate the whole development of a plot in a series of dramatic dances, during the course of which he often represented several distinct rôles. Instead of the single flute-player and singer a full choir now supplied the musical accompaniment, and great poets—Lucan and Statius among the number—did not disdain to provide texts for the fabulae salticae. Many of the pantomimi attained to an extreme refinement in their degenerate and sensuous art. They were, as Lucian said, χειρόσοφοι, erudite of gesture[16]. Their subjects were, for the most part, mythological and erotic, not to say lascivious, in character[17]. Pylades the Cilician, who, with his great rival Bathyllus the Alexandrian, brought the dance to its first perfection under Augustus, favoured satyric themes; but this mode does not appear to have endured. Practically the dancers were the tragedians, and the mimes were the comedians, of the Empire. The old Etruscan name for an actor, histrio, came to be almost synonymous with pantomimus[18]. Rome, which could lash itself into a fury over the contests between the Whites and Reds or the Blues and Greens in the circus, was not slow to take sides upon the respective merits of its scenic entertainers. The histrionalis favor led again and again to brawls which set the rulers of the city wondering whether after all the pantomimi were worth while. Augustus had found it to his advantage that the spirit of partisanship should attach itself to a Pylades or a Bathyllus rather than to more illustrious antagonists[19]. But the personal instincts of Tiberius were not so genial as those of Augustus. Early in his principate he attempted to restrain the undignified court paid by senators and knights to popular dancers, and when this measure failed, he expelled the histriones from Italy[20]. The example was followed by more than one of his successors, but Rome clamoured fiercely for its toys, and the period of exile was never a long one[21].

Both mimi and pantomimi had their vogue in private, at the banquets and weddings of the great, as well as in public. The class of scenici further included a heterogeneous variety of lesser performers. There were the rhapsodes who sung the tragic cantica, torn from their context, upon the stage. There were musicians and dancers of every order and from every land[22]. There were jugglers (praestigiatores, acetabuli), rope-walkers (funambuli), stilt-walkers (grallatores), tumblers (cernui, petauristae, petaminarii), buffoons (sanniones, scurrae), beast-tamers and strong men. The pick of them did their ‘turns’ in the theatre or the amphitheatre; the more humble were content with modest audiences at street corners or in the vestibule of the circus. From Rome the entertainers of the imperial race naturally found their way into the theatres of the provinces. Tragedy and comedy no doubt held their own longer in Greece, but the stage of Constantinople under Justinian does not seem to have differed notably from the stage of Rome under Nero. Marseilles alone distinguished itself by the honourable austerity which forbade the mimi its gates[23].

It must not be supposed that the profession of the scenici ever became an honourable one in the eyes of the Roman law. They were for the most part slaves or at best freedmen. They were deliberately branded with infamia or incapacity for civil rights. This infamia was of two kinds, depending respectively upon the action of the censors as guardians of public dignity and that of the praetors as presidents in the law courts. The censors habitually excluded actors from the ius suffragii and the ius honorum, the rights of voting and of holding senatorial or equestrian rank; the praetors refused to allow them, if men, to appear as attorneys, if women, to appoint attorneys, in civil suits[24]. The legislation of Julius Caesar and of Augustus added some statutory disabilities. The lex Iulia municipalis forbade actors to hold municipal honores[25]: the lex Iulia de adulteriis set the example of denying them the right to bring criminal actions[26]; the lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea limited their privileges when freed, and in particular forbade senators or the sons of senators to take to wife women who had been, or whose parents had been, on the stage[27]. On the other hand Augustus confined the ius virgarum, which the praetors had formerly had over scenici, to the actual place and time of performances[28]; and so far as the censorian infamia was concerned, the whole tendency of the late Republic and early Empire was to relax its application to actors. It came to be possible for senators and knights to appear on the stage without losing caste. It was a grievous insult when Julius Caesar compelled the mimograph Laberius to appear in one of his own pieces. But after all Caesar restored Laberius to his rank of eques, a dignity which at a still earlier date Sulla had bestowed on Roscius[29]. Later the restriction broke down altogether, although not without an occasional reforming effort to restore it[30]. Nero himself was not ashamed to take the boards as a singer of cantica[31]. And even an infamis, if he were the boon companion of a prince, might be appointed to a post directly depending on the imperial dignity. Thus Caracalla sent a pantomimus to hold a military command on the frontier, and Heliogabalus made another praefectus urbi in Rome itself[32]. Under Constantine a reaction set in, and a new decree formally excluded scenici from all dignitates[33]. The severe class legislation received only reluctant and piecemeal modification, and the praetorian infamia outlived the Empire itself, and left its mark upon Carolingian jurisprudence[34].

The relaxation of the old Roman austerity implied in the popularity of the mimi and histriones did not pass uncensured by even the pagan moralists of the Empire. The stage has a share in the denunciations of Tacitus and Juvenal, both of whom lament that princes and patricians should condescend to practise arts once relegated to the infames. Martial’s hypocrite rails at the times and the theatres. Three centuries later the soldierly Ammianus Marcellinus finds in the gyrations of the dancing-girls, three thousand of whom were allowed to remain in Rome when it was starving, a blot upon the fame of the state; and Macrobius contrasts the sober evenings of Praetextatus and his friends with revels dependent for their mirth on the song and wanton motions of the psaltria or the jests of sabulo and planipes[35]. Policy compelled the emperors to encourage spectacula, but even they were not always blind to the ethical questions involved. Tiberius based his expulsion of the histriones, at least in part, on moral grounds. Marcus Aurelius, with a philosophic regret that the high lessons of comedy had sunk to mere mimic dexterity, sat publicly in his box and averted his eyes to a state-paper or a book[36]. Julian, weaned by his tutor Mardonius from a boyish love of the stage, issued strict injunctions to the priests of the Sun to avoid a theatre which he despaired of reforming[37]. Christian teachers, unconcerned with the interests of a dynasty, and claiming to represent a higher morality than that either of Marcus Aurelius or of Julian, naturally took even stronger ground. Moreover, they had their special reasons for hostility to the stage. That the actors should mock at the pagan religion, with whose ludi their own performances were intimately connected, made a good dialectical point. But the connexion itself was unpardonable, and still more so the part taken by the mimes during the war of creeds, in parodying and holding up to ridicule the most sacred symbols and mysteries of the church. This feeling is reflected in the legends of St. Genesius, St. Pelagia and other holy folk, who are represented as turning from the scenic profession to embrace Christianity, the conversion in some cases taking place on the very boards of the theatre itself[38]. So far as the direct attack upon the stage is concerned, the key-note of patristic eloquence is struck in the characteristic and uncompromising treatise De Spectaculis of Tertullian. Here theatre, circus, and amphitheatre are joined in a threefold condemnation. Tertullian holds that the Christian has explicitly forsworn spectacula, when he renounced the devil and all his works and vanities at baptism. What are these but idolatry, and where is idolatry, if not in the spectacula, which not only minister to lust, but take place at the festivals and in the holy places of Venus and Bacchus? The story is told of the demon who entered a woman in the theatre and excused himself at exorcism, because he had found her in his own demesne. A fervid exhortation follows. To worldly pleasures Christians have no claim. If they need spectacula they can find them in the exercises of their Church. Here are nobler poetry, sweeter voices, maxims more sage, melodies more dulcet, than any comedy can boast, and withal, here is truth instead of fiction. Moreover, for Christians is reserved the last great spectaculum of all. ‘Then,’ says Tertullian, ‘will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose lamentations will be more poignant for their proper pain. Then will the comedians turn and twist, rendered nimbler than ever by the sting of the fire that is not quenched[39].’ With Tertullian asceticism is always a passion, but the vivid African rhetoric is no unfair sample of a catena of outspoken comment which extends across the third century from Tatian to Lactantius[40]. The judgement of the Fathers finds more cautious expression in the disciplinary regulations of the Church. An early formal condemnation of actors is included in the so-called Canons of Hippolytus[41], and the relations of converts to the stage were discussed during the fourth century by the councils of Elvira (306) and of Arles (314) and by the third and fourth councils of Carthage (397-398)[42]. It was hardly possible for practical legislators to take the extreme step of forbidding Christian laymen to enter the theatre at all. No doubt that would be the counsel of perfection, but in dealing with a deep-seated popular instinct something of a compromise was necessary[43]. An absolute prohibition was only established for the clergy: so far as the laity were concerned, it was limited to Sundays and ecclesiastical festivals, and on those days it was enforced by a threat of excommunication[44]. No Christian, however, might be a scenicus or a scenica, or might marry one; and if a member of the unhallowed profession sought to be baptized, the preliminary of abandoning his calling was essential[45].

It is curious to notice that a certain sympathy with the stage seems to have been characteristic of one of the great heresiarchs. This was none other than Arius, who is said to have had designs of setting up a Christian theatre in rivalry to those of paganism, and his strange work, the Thaleia, may perhaps have been intended to further the scheme. At any rate an orthodox controversialist takes occasion to brand his Arian opponents and their works as ‘thymelic’ or ‘stagy’[46]. But it would probably be dangerous to lay undue stress upon what, after all, is as likely as not to be merely a dialectical metaphor.

After the edict of Milan (313), and still more after the end of the pagan reaction with the death of Julian (363), Christian influences began to make themselves felt in the civil legislation of the Empire. But if the councils themselves were chary of utterly forbidding the theatre, a stronger line was not likely to be taken in rescripts from Constantinople or Ravenna. The emperors were, indeed, in a difficult position. They stood between bishops pleading for decency and humanity and populaces now traditionally entitled to their panem et spectacula. The theatrical legislation preserved in the Code of Theodosius is not without traces of this embarrassment[47]. It is rather an interesting study. The views of the Church were met upon two points. One series of rescripts forbade performances on Sundays or during the more sacred periods of the Christian calendar[48]: another relaxed in favour of Christians the strict caste laws which sternly forbade actresses or their daughters to quit the unhappy profession in which they were born[49]. Moreover, certain sumptuary regulations were passed, which must have proved a severe restriction on the popularity as well as the liberty of actors. They were forbidden to wear gold or rich fabrics, or to ape the dress of nuns. They must avoid the company of Christian women and boys. They must not come into the public places or walk the streets attended by slaves with folding chairs[50]. Some of the rescripts contain phrases pointed with the bitterest contempt and detestation of their victims[51]. Theodosius will not have the portraits of scenici polluting the neighbourhood of his own imagines[52]. It is made very clear that the old court favourites are now to be merely tolerated. But they are to be tolerated. The idea of suppressing them is never entertained. On the contrary the provision of spectacula and of performers for them remains one of the preoccupations of the government[53]. The praetor is expected to be lavish on this item of his budget[54], and special municipal officers, the tribuni voluptatum, are appointed to superintend the arrangements[55]. Private individuals and rival cities must not deport actors, or withdraw them from the public service[56]. The bonds of caste, except for the few freed by their faith, are drawn as tight as ever[57], and when pagan worship ceases the shrines are preserved from demolition for the sake of the theatres built therein[58].

The love of even professing Christians for spectacula proved hard to combat. There are no documents which throw more light on the society of the Eastern Empire at the close of the fourth century than the works of St. Chrysostom; and to St. Chrysostom, both as a priest at Antioch before 397 and as patriarch of Constantinople after that year, the stage is as present a danger as it was to Tertullian two centuries earlier[59]. A sermon preached on Easter-day, 399, is good evidence of this. St. Chrysostom had been attacking the stage for a whole year, and his exhortations had just come to nought. Early in Holy Week there was a great storm, and the people joined the rogatory processions. But it was a week of ludi. On Good Friday the circus, and on Holy Saturday the theatre, were thronged and the churches were empty. The Easter sermon was an impassioned harangue, in which the preacher dwelt once more on the inevitable corruption bound up with things theatrical, and ended with a threat to enforce the sentence of excommunication, prescribed only a few months before by the council of Carthage, upon whoever should again venture to defy the Church’s law in like fashion on Sunday or holy day[60]. Perhaps one may trace the controversy which St. Chrysostom’s deliverance must have awakened, on the one hand in the rescript of the autumn of 399 pointedly laying down that the ludicrae artes must be maintained, on the other in the prohibition of the following year against performances in Holy week, and similar solemn tides.

More than a century after the exile and death of St. Chrysostom the theatre was still receiving state recognition at Constantinople. A regulation of Justinian as to the ludi to be given by newly elected consuls specified a performance on the stage ominously designated as the ‘Harlots’[61]. By this date the status of the theatrical profession had at last undergone further and noticeable modification. The ancient Roman prohibition against the marriage of men of noble birth with scenicae or other infames or the daughters of such, had been re-enacted under Constantine. A partial repeal in 454 had not extended to the scenicae[62]. During the first half of the sixth century, however, a series of decrees removed their disability on condition of their quitting the stage, and further made it an offence to compel slaves or freed women to perform against their will[63]. In these humane relaxations of the rigid laws of theatrical caste has often been traced the hand of the empress Theodora, who, according to the contemporary gossip of Procopius, was herself, before her conversion, one of the most shameless of mimes. But it must be noted that the most important of the decrees in question preceded the accession of Justinian, although it may possibly have been intended to facilitate his own marriage[64]. The history of the stage in the East cannot be traced much further with any certainty. The canons of the Quinisextine council, which met in the Trullan chamber to codify ecclesiastical discipline in 692, appear to contemplate the possibility of performances still being given[65]. A modern Greek scholar, M. Sathas, has made an ingenious attempt to establish the existence of a Byzantine theatrical tradition right through the Middle Ages; but Dr. Krumbacher, the most learned historian of Byzantine literature, is against him, and holds that, so far as our knowledge goes, the theatre must be considered to have perished during the stress of the Saracen invasions which, in the seventh and eighth centuries, devastated the East[66].

The ending of the theatre in the West was in very similar fashion. Chrysostom’s great Latin contemporaries, Augustine and Jerome, are at one with him and with each other in their condemnation of the evils of the public stage as they knew it[67]. Their divergent attitude on a minor point may perhaps be explained by a difference of temperament. The fifth century saw a marked revival of literary interests from which even dignitaries of the Church did not hold themselves wholly aloof. Ausonius urged his grandson to the study of Menander. Sidonius, a bishop and no undevout one, read both Menander and Terence with his son[68]. With this movement Augustine had some sympathy. In a well-known passage of the Confessions he records the powerful influence exercised by tragedy, and particularly erotic tragedy, over his tempestuous youth[69]. And in the City of God he draws a careful distinction between the higher and the lower forms of drama, and if he does not approve, at least does not condemn, the use of tragedies and comedies in a humane education[70]. Jerome, on the other hand, although himself like Augustine a good scholar, takes a more ascetic line, and a letter of his protesting against the reading of comedies by priests ultimately came to be quoted as an authority in Roman canon law[71].

The references to the stage in the works of two somewhat younger ecclesiastical writers are of exceptional interest. Orosius was a pupil of both Jerome and Augustine; and Orosius, endeavouring a few years after the sack of Rome by the Goths to prove that that startling disaster was not due to Christianity, lays great and indeed exaggerated importance on the share of the theatre in promoting the decay of the Empire[72]. About the middle of the fifth century the same note is struck by Salvian in his remarkable treatise De Gubernatione Dei[73]. The sixth book of his work is almost entirely devoted to the spectacula. Like Tertullian, Salvian insists on the definite renunciation of spectacula by Christians in their baptismal vow[74]. Like Orosius, he traces to the weakening of moral fibre by these accursed amusements the failure of the West to resist the barbarians. Moritur et ridet is his epigram on the Roman world. The citizens of Tréves, three times destroyed, still called upon their rulers for races and a theatre. With the Vandals at the very gates of Cirta and of Carthage, ecclesia Carthaginiensis insaniebat in circis, luxuriebat in theatris[75]. Incidentally Salvian gives some valuable information as to the survival of the stage in his day. Already in 400 Augustine had been able to say that the theatres were falling on every side[76]. Salvian, fifty years later, confirms the testimony, but he adds the reason. It was not because Christians had learnt to be faithful to their vows and to the teachings of the Church; but because the barbarians, who despised spectacula, and therein set a good example to degenerate Romans[77], had sacked half the cities, while in the rest the impoverished citizens could no longer pay the bills. He adds that at Rome a circus was still open and a theatre at Ravenna, and that these were thronged with delighted travellers from all parts of the Empire[78]. There must, however, have been a theatre at Rome as well, for Sidonius found it there when he visited the city, twelve years after it had been sacked for the second time, in 467. He was appointed prefect of the city, and in one of his letters expresses a fear lest, if the corn-supply fail, the thunders of the theatre may burst upon his head[79]. In a poem written a few years earlier he describes the spectacula theatri of mimes, pantomimes, and acrobats as still flourishing at Narbonne[80].

The next and the latest records of the stage in the West date from the earlier part of the sixth century, when the Ostrogoths held sway in Italy. They are to be found in the Variae of Cassiodorus, who held important official posts under the new lords of Rome, and they go to confirm the inference which the complaint of Salvian already suggests that a greater menace to the continuance of the theatre lay in the taste of the barbarians than even in the ethics of Christianity.

The Ostrogoths had long dwelt within the frontiers of the Empire, and Theodoric, ruling as ‘King of the Goths and Romans in Italy,’ over a mixed multitude of Italians and Italianate Germans, found it necessary to continue the spectacula, which in his heart he despised. There are many indications of this in the state-papers preserved in the Variae, which may doubtless be taken to express the policy and temper of the masters of Cassiodorus in the rhetorical trappings of the secretary himself. The scenici are rarely mentioned without a sneer, but their performances and those of the aurigae, or circus-drivers, who have now come to be included under the all-embracing designation of histriones, are carefully regulated[81]. The gladiators have, indeed, at last disappeared, two centuries after Constantine had had the grace to suppress them in the East[82]. There is a letter from Theodoric to an architect, requiring him to repair the theatre of Pompey, and digressing into an historical sketch, imperfectly erudite, of the history of the drama, its invention by the Greeks, and its degradation by the Romans[83]. A number of documents deal with the choice of a pantomimus to represent the prasini or ‘Greens,’ and show that the rivalry of the theatre-factions remained as fierce as it had been in the days of Bathyllus and Pylades. Helladius is given the preference over Thorodon, and a special proclamation exhorts the people to keep the peace[84]. Still more interesting is the formula, preserved by Cassiodorus, which was used in the appointment of the tribunus voluptatum, an official whom we have already come across in the rescripts of the emperors of the fourth century. This is so characteristic, in its contemptuous references to the nature of the functions which it confers, of the whole German attitude in the matter of spectacula, that it seems worth while to print it in an appendix[85]. The passages hitherto quoted from the Variae all seem to belong to the period between 507 and 511, when Cassiodorus was quaestor and secretary to Theodoric at Rome. A single letter written about 533 in the reign of Athalaric shows that the populace was still looking to its Gothic rulers for spectacula, and still being gratified[86]. Beyond this the Roman theatre has not been traced. The Goths passed in 553, and Italy was reabsorbed in the Empire. In 568 came the Lombards, raw Germans who had been but little under southern influence, and were far less ready than their predecessors to adopt Roman manners. Rome and Ravenna alone remained as outposts of the older civilization, the latter under an exarch appointed from Constantinople, the former under its bishop. At Ravenna the theatre may conceivably have endured; at Rome, the Rome of Gregory the Great, it assuredly did not. An alleged mention of a theatre at Barcelona in Spain during the seventh century resolves itself into either a survival of pagan ritual or a bull-fight[87]. Isidore of Seville has his learned chapters on the stage, but they are written in the imperfect tense, as of what is past and gone[88]. The bishops and the barbarians had triumphed.

CHAPTER II MIMUS AND SCÔP

The fall of the theatres by no means implied the complete extinction of the scenici. They had outlived tragedy and comedy: they were destined to outlive the stage itself. Private performances, especially of pantomimi and other dancers, had enjoyed great popularity under the Empire, and had become an invariable adjunct of all banquets and other festivities. At such revels, as at the decadence of the theatre and of public morals generally, the graver pagans had looked askance[89]: the Church naturally included them in its universal condemnation of spectacula. Chrysostom in the East[90], Jerome in the West[91], are hostile to them, and a canon of the fourth-century council of Laodicea, requiring the clergy who might be present at weddings and similar rejoicings to rise and leave the room before the actors were introduced, was adopted by council after council and took its place as part of the ecclesiastical law[92]. The permanence of the regulation proves the strength of the habit, which indeed the Church might ban, but was not able to subdue, and which seems to have commended itself, far more than the theatre, to Teutonic manners. Such irregular performances proved a refuge for the dispossessed scenici. Driven from their theatres, they had still a vogue, not only at banquets, but at popular merry-makings or wherever in street or country they could gather together the remnant of their old audiences. Adversity and change of masters modified many of their characteristics. The pantomimi, in particular, fell upon evil times. Their subtle art had had its origin in an exquisite if corrupt taste, and adapted itself with difficulty to the ruder conditions of the new civilizations[93]. The mimi had always appealed to a common and gross humanity. But even they must now rub shoulders and contend for denarii with jugglers and with rope-dancers, with out-at-elbows gladiators and beast-tamers. More than ever they learnt to turn their hand to anything that might amuse; learnt to tumble, for instance; learnt to tell the long stories which the Teutons loved. Nevertheless, in essentials they remained the same; still jesters and buffoons, still irrepressible, still obscene. In little companies of two or three, they padded the hoof along the roads, travelling from gathering to gathering, making their own welcome in castle or tavern, or, if need were, sleeping in some grange or beneath a wayside hedge in the white moonlight. They were, in fact, absorbed into that vast body of nomad entertainers on whom so much of the gaiety of the Middle Ages depended. They became ioculatores, jongleurs, minstrels[94].

The features of the minstrels as we trace them obscurely from the sixth to the eleventh century, and then more clearly from the eleventh to the sixteenth, are very largely the features of the Roman mimi as they go under, whelmed in the flood which bore away Latin civilization. But to regard them as nothing else than mimi would be a serious mistake. On another side they have a very different and a far more reputable ancestry. Like other factors in mediaeval society, they represent a merging of Latin and the Teutonic elements. They inherit the tradition of the mimus: they inherit also the tradition of the German scôp[95]. The earliest Teutonic poetry, so far as can be gathered, knew no scôp. As will be shown in a later chapter, it was communal in character, closely bound up with the festal dance, or with the rhythmic movements of labour. It was genuine folk-song, the utterance of no select caste of singers, but of whoever in the ring of worshippers or workers had the impulse and the gift to link the common movements to articulate words. At the festivals such a spokesman would be he who, for whatever reason, took the lead in the ceremonial rites, the vates, germ at once of priest and bard. The subject-matter of communal song was naturally determined by the interests ruling on the occasions when it was made. That of daily life would turn largely on the activities of labour itself: that of the high days on the emotions of religion, feasting, and love which were evoked by the primitive revels of a pastoral or agricultural folk.

Presently the movements of the populations of Europe brought the Germanic tribes, after separating from their Scandinavian kinsmen, into contact with Kelts, with Huns, with the Roman Empire, and, in the inevitable recoil, with each other. Then for the first time war assumed a prerogative place in their life. To war, the old habits and the old poetry adapted themselves. Tiwaz, once primarily the god of beneficent heaven, became the god of battles. The chant of prayer before the onset, the chant of triumph and thanksgiving after the victory, made themselves heard[96]. From these were disengaged, as a distinct species of poetry, songs in praise of the deeds and deaths of great captains and popular heroes. Tacitus tells us that poetry served the Germans of his day for both chronology and history[97]. Jordanis, four centuries later, has a similar account to give of the Ostrogoths[98]. Arminius, the vanquisher of a Roman army, became the subject of heroic songs[99]: Athalaric has no higher word of praise for Gensimund than cantabilis[100]. The glories of Alboin the Lombard[101], of Charlemagne himself[102], found celebration in verse, and Charlemagne was at the pains to collect and record the still earlier cantilenae which were the chronicle of his race. Such historical cantilenae, mingled with more primitive ones of mythological import, form the basis of the great legendary epics[103]. But the process of epic-making is one of self-conscious and deliberate art, and implies a considerable advance from primitive modes of literary composition. No doubt the earliest heroic cantilenae were still communal in character. They were rondes footed and sung at festivals by bands of young men and maidens. Nor was such folk-song quick to disappear. Still in the eleventh century the deeds of St. William of Orange resounded amongst the chori iuvenum[104]; and spinning-room and village green were destined to hear similar strains for many centuries more[105]. But long before this the cantilenae had entered upon another and more productive course of development: they were in the mouths, not only of the folk, but also of a body of professional singers, the fashioners of the epic that was to be[106]. Like heroic song itself, the professional singers owed their origin to war, and to the prominence of the individual, the hero, which war entailed. Around the person of a great leader gathered his individual following or comitatus, bound to him by ties of mutual loyalty, by interchange of service and reward[107]. Amongst the comitatus room was found for one who was no spearman, but who, none the less honoured for that, became the poet of the group and took over from the less gifted chorus the duty of celebrating the praises of the chieftain. These he sung to the accompaniment, no longer of flying feet, but of the harp, struck when the meal was over in tent or hall. Such a harper is the characteristically Germanic type of professional entertainer. He has his affinities with the Demodokos of a Homeric king. Rich in dignities and guerdons, sitting at the foot of the leader, consorting on equal terms with the warriors, he differs wholly from the scenicus infamis, who was the plaything and the scorn of Rome. Precisely when the shifting of social conditions brought him into being it is hard to say. Tacitus does not mention him, which is no proof, but a presumption, that amongst the tribes on the frontier he had not yet made his appearance in the first century of the Empire. By the fifth century he was thoroughly established, and the earliest records point to his existence at least as early as the fourth. These are not to be found in Latin sources, but in those early English poems which, although probably written in their extant forms after the invasion of these islands, seem to date back in substance to the age when the Angles still dwelt in a continental home around the base of the Jutish peninsula. The English remained to a comparatively late stage of their history remote from Roman influence, and it is in their literature that both the original development of the Teutonic scôp and his subsequent contamination by the Roman mimus can most easily be studied.

The earliest of all English poems is almost certainly Widsith, the ‘far-traveller.’ This has been edited and interpolated in Christian England, but the kernel of it is heathen and continental[108]. It is an autobiographic sketch of the life of Widsith, who was himself an actual or ideal scôp, or rather gleómon, for the precise term scôp is not used in the poem. Widsith was of the Myrgings, a small folk who dwelt hard by the Angles. In his youth he went with Ealhhild, the ‘weaver of peace,’ on a mission to Eormanric the Ostrogoth. Eormanric is the Hermanric of legend, and his death in 375 A. D. gives an approximate date to the events narrated. Then Widsith became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, one who could ‘sing and say a story’ in the ‘mead-hall.’ He describes the nations and rulers he has known. Eormanric gave him a collar of beaten gold, and Guthhere the Burgundian a ring. He has been with Caesar, lord of jocund cities, and has seen Franks and Lombards, Finns and Huns, Picts and Scots, Hebrews, Indians, Egyptians, Medes and Persians. At the last he has returned to the land of the Myrgings, and with his fellow Scilling has sung loud to the harp the praises of his lord Eadgils and of Ealhhild the daughter of Eadwine. Eadgils has given him land, the inheritance of his fathers. The poem concludes with an eulogy of the life of gleemen. They wander through realm upon realm, voice their needs, and have but to give thanks. In every land they find a lord to whom songs are dear, and whose bounty is open to the exalters of his name. Of less undeniable antiquity than Widsith are the lines known as the Complaint of Deor. These touch the seamy side of the singer’s life. Deor has been the scôp of the Heodenings many winters through. But one more skilled, Heorrenda by name—the Horant of the Gudrun saga—has outdone him in song, and has been granted the land-right that once was Deor’s. He finds his consolation in the woes of the heroes of old. ‘They have endured: may not I endure[109]?’ The outline drawn in Widsith and in Deor is completed by various passages in the epic of Beowulf, which may be taken as representing the social conditions of the sixth or early seventh century. In Heorot, the hall of Hrothgar, there was sound of harp, the gleewood. Sweetly sang the scôp after the mead-bench. The lay was sung, the gleeman’s gyd told. Hrothgar’s thanes, even Hrothgar himself, took their turns to unfold the wondrous tale. On the other hand, when a folk is in sorrow, no harp is heard, the glee-beam is silent in the halls[110]. In these three poems, then, is fully limned the singer of Teutonic heathenism. He is a man of repute, the equal of thanes. He holds land, even the land of his fathers. He receives gifts of gold from princes for the praise he does them. As yet no distinction appears between scôp and gleómon. Widsith is at one time the resident singer of a court; at another, as the mood takes him, a wanderer to the ends of the earth. And though the scôp leads the song, the warriors and the king himself do not disdain to take part in it. This is noteworthy, because it gives the real measure of the difference between the Teutonic and the Roman entertainer. For a Nero to perform amongst the scenici was to descend: for a Hrothgar to touch the harp was a customary and an honourable act.

The singing did not cease when the English came to these islands. The long struggle with the Britons which succeeded the invasions assuredly gave rise to many new lays, both in Northumbria and Wessex. ‘England,’ says Mr. Stopford Brooke, ‘was conquered to the music of verse, and settled to the sound of the harp.’ But though Alfred and Dunstan knew such songs, they are nearly all lost, or only dimly discerned as the basis of chronicles. At the end of the sixth century, just as the conquest was completed, came Christianity. The natural development of English poetry was to some extent deflected. A religious literature grew up at the hands of priests. Eadhelm, who, anticipating a notion of St. Francis of Assisi, used to stand on a bridge as if he were a gleeman, and waylay the folk as they hurried back from mass, himself wrote pious songs. One of these, a carmen triviale, was still sung in the twelfth century[111]. This was in Wessex. In Northumbria, always the most literary district of early England, the lay brother Cædmon founded a school of divine poetry. But even amongst the disciples of Cædmon, some, such as the author of the very martial Judith, seem to have designed their work for the mead-hall as well as the monastery[112]. And the regular scôp by no means vanished. The Wanderer, a semi-heathen elegiac poem of the early eighth century, seems to be the lament of a scôp driven from his haunts, not by Christianity, but by the tumults of the day[113]. The great poet of the next generation, Cynewulf, himself took treasure of appled gold in the mead-hall. A riddle on ‘the wandering singer’ is ascribed to him[114], and various poems of his school on the fates or the crafts of man bear witness to the continued existence of the class[115]. With the eighth century, except for the songs of war quoted or paraphrased in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the extant Early English poetry reaches a somewhat inexplicable end. But history comes to the rescue, and enables us still to trace the scôp. It is in the guise of a harp-player that Alfred is reported to have fooled the Danes, and Anlaf in his turn to have fooled the Saxons[116]: and mythical as these stories may be, they would not have even been plausible, had not the presence of such folk by the camp-fire been a natural and common event.

Certainly the scôp survived heathenism, and many Christian bishops and pious laymen, such as Alfred[117], were not ashamed of their sympathy with secular song. Nevertheless, the entertainers of the English folk did not find favour in the eyes of the Church as a whole. The stricter ecclesiastics especially attacked the practice of harbouring them in religious houses. Decrees condemning this were made by the council on English affairs which sat at Rome in 679[118], and by the council of Clovesho in 747[119]. Bede, writing at about the latter date on the condition of church affairs in Northumbria complains of those who make mirth in the dwellings of bishops[120]; and the complaint is curiously illustrated by a letter of Gutbercht, abbot of Newcastle, to an episcopal friend on the continent, in which he asks him for a citharista competent to play upon the cithara or rotta which he already possesses[121]. At the end of the eighth century, Alcuin wrote a letter to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, warning him against the snares of citharistae and histriones[122]: and some two hundred years later, when Edgar and Dunstan[123] were setting themselves to reform the religious communities of the land, the favour shown to such ribald folk was one of the abuses which called for correction[124]. This hostile attitude of the rulers of the Church is not quite explained by anything in the poetry of the scôpas, so far as it is left to us. This had very readily exchanged its pagan for a Christian colouring: it cannot be fairly accused of immorality or even coarseness, and the Christian sentiment of the time is not likely to have been much offended by the prevailing theme of battle and deeds of blood. The probable explanation is a double one. There is the ascetic tendency to regard even harmless forms of secular amusement as barely compatible with the religious life. And there is the fact, which the language of the prohibitions themselves makes plain, that a degeneration of the old Teutonic gleemen had set in. To singing and harping were now added novel and far less desirable arts. Certainly the prohibitions make no exception for poetae and musici; but the full strength of their condemnation seems to be directed against scurrae and their ioca, and against the mimi and histriones who danced as well as sang. These are new figures in English life, and they point to the fact that the merging of the Teutonic with the Latin entertainer had begun. To some extent, the Church itself was responsible for this. The conversion of England opened the remote islands to Latin civilization in general: and it is not to be wondered at, that the mimi, no less than the priests, flocked into the new fields of enterprise. If this was the case already in the eighth century, we can hardly doubt that it was still more so during the next two hundred years of which the literary records are so scanty. Such a view is supported by the numerous miniatures of dancers and tumblers, jugglers and bear-leaders, in both Latin and Early English manuscripts of this period[125], and by the glosses which translate such terms as mimus, iocista, scurra, pantomimus by gligmon, reserving scôp for the dignified poeta[126]. This distinction I regard as quite a late one, consequent upon the degeneracy introduced by mimi from south Europe into the lower ranks of the gleemen. Some writers, indeed, think that it existed from the beginning, and that the scôp was always the resident court poet, whereas the gleómon was the wandering singer, often a borrower rather than a maker of songs, who appealed to the smaller folk[127]. But the theory is inconsistent with the data of Widsith. The poet there described is sometimes a wanderer, sometimes stationary. He is evidently at the height of his profession, and has sung before every crowned head in Europe, but he calls himself a gleómon. Nor does the etymology of the words scôp and gleómon suggest any vital difference of signification[128].

The literary records of the continental Teutons are far scantier than those of the English. But amongst them also Latin and barbaric traditions seem to have merged in the ioculator. Ancestral deeds were sung to the harp, and therefore, it may be supposed, by a scôp, and not a chorus, before the Ostrogoths in Italy, at the beginning of the sixth century[129]. In the year 507 Clovis the Frank sent to Theodoric for a citharoedus trained in the musical science of the South, and Boethius was commissioned to make the selection[130]. On the other hand, little as the barbarians loved the theatre, the mimi and scurrae of the conquered lands seem to have tickled their fancy as they sat over their wine. At the banquet with which Attila entertained the imperial ambassadors in 448, the guests were first moved to martial ardour and to tears by the recital of ancient deeds of prowess, and then stirred to laughter by the antics of a Scythian and a Moorish buffoon[131]. Attila was a Hun and no German; but the Vandals who invaded Africa in 429 are recorded to have taken to the spectacula so extravagantly popular there[132], and Sidonius tells how mimici sales, chastened in view of barbaric conceptions of decency, found a place in the festivities of another Theodoric, king from 462 to 466 of the Visigoths in Gaul[133]. Three centuries later, under Charlemagne, the blending of both types of entertainer under the common designation of ioculator seems to be complete. And, as in contemporary England, the animosity of the Church to the scenici is transferred wholesale to the ioculatores, without much formal attempt to discriminate between the different grades of the profession. Alcuin may perhaps be taken as representing the position of the more rigid disciplinarians on this point. His letter to the English bishop, Higbald, does not stand alone. In several others he warns his pupils against the dangers lurking in ludi and spectacula[134], and he shows himself particularly exercised by the favour which they found with Angilbert, the literary and far from strict-lived abbot of St. Richer[135]. The influence of Alcuin with Charlemagne was considerable, and so far as ecclesiastical rule went, he had his way. A capitulary (†787) excluded the Italian clergy from uncanonical sports[136]. In 789 bishops, abbots, and abbesses were forbidden to keep ioculatores[137], and in 802 a decree applying to all in orders required abstinence from idle and secular amusements[138]. These prohibitions were confirmed in the last year of Charlemagne’s reign (813) by the council of Tours[139]. But as entertainers of the lay folk, the minstrels rather gained than lost status at the hands of Charlemagne. Personally he took a distinct interest in their performances. He treasured up the heroic cantilenae of his race[140], and attempted in vain to inspire the saevitia of his sons with his own enthusiasm for these[141]. The chroniclers more than once relate how his policy was shaped or modified by the chance words of a ioculator or scurra[142]. The later tradition of the jougleurs looked back to him as the great patron of their order, who had given them all the fair land of Provence in fee[143]: and it is clear that the songs written at his court form the basis not only of the chansons de gestes, but also, as we found to be the case with the English war-songs, of many passages in the chronicles themselves[144]. After Charlemagne’s death the minstrels fell for a time on evil days. Louis the Pious by no means shared his father’s love for them. He attempted to suppress the cantilenae on which he had been brought up, and when the mimi jested at court would turn away his head and refuse to smile[145]. To his reign may perhaps be ascribed a decree contained in the somewhat dubious collection of Benedictus Levita, forbidding idle dances, songs and tales in public places and at crossways on Sundays[146], and another which continued for the benefit of the minstrels the legal incapacity of the Roman scenici, and excluded histriones and scurrae from all privilege of pleading in courts of justice[147].

The ill-will of a Louis the Pious could hardly affect the hold which the minstrels had established on society. For good or for bad, they were part of the mediaeval order of things. But their popularity had to maintain itself against an undying ecclesiastical prejudice. They had succeeded irrevocably to the heritage of hate handed down from the scenici infames. To be present at their performances was a sin in a clerk, and merely tolerated in a layman. Largesse to them was declared tantamount to robbery of the poor[148]. It may be fairly said that until the eleventh century at least the history of minstrelsy is written in the attacks of ecclesiastical legislators, and in the exultant notices of monkish chroniclers when this or that monarch was austere enough to follow the example of Louis the Pious, and let the men of sin go empty away[149]. Throughout the Middle Ages proper the same standpoint was officially maintained[150]. The canon law, as codified by Gratian, treats as applicable to minstrels the pronouncements of fathers and councils against the scenici, and adds to them others more recent, in which clergy who attend spectacula, or in any way by word or deed play the ioculator, are uncompromisingly condemned[151]. This temper of the Church did not fail to find its expression in post-Conquest England. The council of Oxford in 1222 adopted for this country the restatement of the traditional rule by the Lateran council of 1215[152]; and the stricter disciplinary authorities at least attempted to enforce the decision. Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln, for instance, pressed it upon his clergy in or about 1238[153]. The reforming provisions of Oxford in 1259 laid down that, although minstrels might receive charitable doles in monasteries, their spectacula must not be given[154]; and a similar prohibition, couched in very uncomplimentary terms, finds a place in the new statutes drawn up in 1319 for the cathedral church of Sarum by Roger de Mortival[155]. A few years later the statutes of St. Albans follow suit[156], while in 1312 a charge of breaking the canons in this respect brought against the minor clergy of Ripon minster had formed the subject of an inquiry by Archbishop Greenfield[157]. Such notices might be multiplied[158]; and the tenor of them is echoed in the treatises of the more strait-laced amongst monkish writers. John of Salisbury[159], William Fitz Stephen[160], Robert Mannyng of Brunne[161], are at one in their disapproval of ioculatores. As the fourteenth century draws to its close, and the Wyclifite spirit gets abroad, the freer critics of church and state, such as William Langland[162] or the imagined author of Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale[163], take up the same argument. And they in their turn hand it on to the interminable pamphleteering of the Calvinistic Puritans[164].

CHAPTER III THE MINSTREL LIFE

The perpetual infamia of the minstrels is variously reflected in the literature of their production. Sometimes they take their condemnation lightly enough, dismissing it with a jest or a touch of bravado. In Aucassin et Nicolete, that marvellous romance of the viel caitif, when the hero is warned that if he takes a mistress he must go to hell, he replies that, to hell will he go, for thither go all the goodly things of the world. ‘Thither go the gold and the silver, and the vair and the grey, and thither too go harpers and minstrels and the kings of the world. With these will I go, so that I have Nicolete, my most sweet friend, with me’[165]. At other times they show a wistful sense of the pathos of their secular lot. They tell little stories in which heaven proves more merciful than the vice-gerents of heaven upon earth, and Virgin or saint bestows upon a minstrel the sign of grace which the priest denies[166]. But often, again, they turn upon their persecutors and rend them with the merciless satire of the fabliaux, wherein it is the clerk, the theologian, who is eternally called upon to play the indecent or ridiculous part[167].

Under spiritual disabilities the minstrels may have been, but so far as substantial popularity amongst all classes went, they had no cause from the eleventh to the fourteenth century to envy the monks. As a social and literary force they figure largely both on the continent and in England. The distinctively Anglo-Saxon types of scôp and gleómon of course disappear at the Conquest. They do not cease to exist; but they go under ground, singing their defiant lays of Hereward[168]; and they pursue a more or less subterranean career until the fourteenth century brings the English tongue to its own again. But minstrelsy was no less popular with the invaders than with the invaded. Whether the skald had yet developed amongst the Scandinavian pirates who landed with Rollo on the coasts of France may perhaps be left undetermined[169]: for a century and a half had sufficed to turn the Northmen into Norman French, and with the other elements of the borrowed civilization had certainly come the ioculator. In the very van of William’s army at Senlac strutted the minstrel Taillefer, and went to his death exercising the double arts of his hybrid profession, juggling with his sword, and chanting an heroic lay of Roncesvalles[170]. Twenty years later, Domesday Book records how Berdic the ioculator regis held three vills and five carucates of land in Gloucestershire, and how in Hampshire Adelinda, a ioculatrix, held a virgate, which Earl Roger had given her[171]. During the reigns of the Angevin and Plantagenet kings the minstrels were ubiquitous. They wandered at their will from castle to castle, and in time from borough to borough, sure of their ready welcome alike in the village tavern, the guildhall, and the baron’s keep[172]. They sang and jested in the market-places, stopping cunningly at a critical moment in the performance, to gather their harvest of small coin from the bystanders[173]. In the great castles, while lords and ladies supped or sat around the fire, it was theirs to while away many a long bookless evening with courtly geste or witty sally. At wedding or betrothal, baptism or knight-dubbing, treaty or tournament, their presence was indispensable. The greater festivities saw them literally in their hundreds[174], and rich was their reward in money and in jewels, in costly garments[175], and in broad acres. They were licensed vagabonds, with free right of entry into the presence-chambers of the land[176]. You might know them from afar by their coats of many colours, gaudier than any knight might respectably wear[177], by the instruments upon their backs and those of their servants, and by the shaven faces, close-clipped hair and flat shoes proper to their profession[178]. This kenspeckle appearance, together with the privilege of easy access, made the minstrel’s dress a favourite disguise in ages when disguise was often imperative. The device attributed by the chroniclers to Alfred and to Anlaf becomes in the romances one of the commonest of clichés[179]. The readiness with which the minstrels won the popular ear made them a power in the land. William de Longchamp, the little-loved chancellor of Richard I, found it worth his while to bring a number of them over from France, that they might sing his praises abroad in the public places[180]. Nor were they less in request for satire than for eulogy. The English speaking minstrels, in particular, were responsible for many songs in derision of unpopular causes and personalities[181]; and we need not doubt that ‘the lay that Sir Dinadan made by King Mark, which was the worst lay that ever harper sang with harp or with any other instruments,’ must have had its precise counterparts in actual life[182]. The Sarum statutes of 1319 lay especial stress on the flattery and the evil speaking with which the minstrels rewarded their entertainers[183]. Sometimes, indeed, they over-reached themselves, for Henry I is related to have put out the eyes of Lucas de Barre, a Norman jougleur, or perhaps rather trouvère, who made and sang songs against him[184]. But Lucas de Barre’s rank probably aggravated his offence, and as a rule the minstrels went scot-free. A wiser churchman here and there was not slow to perceive how the unexampled hold of minstrelsy on the popular ear might be turned to the service of religion. Eadhelm, standing in gleeman’s attire on an English bridge to mingle words of serious wisdom with his carmina trivialia, is one instance[185]. And in the same spirit St. Francis, himself half a troubadour in youth, would call his Minorites ioculatores Domini, and send them singing over the world to beg for their fee the repentance and spiritual joy of their hearers[186]. A popular hymn-writer of the present day is alleged to have thought it ‘hard that the devil should have all the good tunes’; but already in the Middle Ages religious words were being set to secular music, and graced with the secular imagery of youth and spring[187].

But if the minstrels were on the one hand a force among the people, on the other they had the ear of kings. The English court to judge by the payments recorded in the exchequer books, must have been full of them[188]. The fullest and most curious document on the subject dates from the reign of Edward I. It is a roll of payments made on the occasion of a Whitsuntide feast held in London in the year 1306, and a very large number of the minstrels recorded are mentioned by name[189]. At the head of the list come five minstrels with the high-sounding title of le roy[190], and these get five marks apiece. A number of others follow, who received sums varying from one mark upwards. Most of these have French names, and many are said to be in the company of this or that noble or reverend guest at the feast. Finally, two hundred marks were distributed in smaller sums amongst the inferior minstrels, les autres menestraus de la commune, and some of these seem to have been of English birth. Below the roys rank two minstrels, Adam le Boscu and another, who are dignified with the title of maistre, which probably signifies that they were clerks[191]. The other names are mainly descriptive, ‘Janin le Lutour,’ ‘Gillotin le Sautreour,’ ‘Baudec le Taboureur,’ and the like; a few are jesting stage names, such as the inferior performers of our music halls bear to-day[192]. Such are ‘Guillaume sanz Maniere,’ ‘Reginaldus le Menteur,’ ‘le Petit Gauteron,’ ‘Parvus Willielmus,’ and those of the attractive comedians Perle in the Eghe, and Matill’ Makejoye. The last, by the way, is the only woman performer named. The resources of Edward I could no doubt stand the strain of rewarding with royal magnificence the entertainers of his guests. There is plenty of evidence, however, that even on secular grounds the diatribes of the moralists against the minstrels were often enough justified. To the lavish and unthrifty of purse they became blood-suckers. Matilda, the wife of Henry I, is said to have squandered most of her revenues upon them[193]; while the unfortunate Robert of Normandy, if no less a chronicler than Ordericus Vitalis may be believed, was stripped by these rapacious gentry to the very skin[194]. Yet for all the days of honour and all the rich gifts the minstrel life must have had its darker side. Easily won, easily parted with; and the lands and laced mantles did not last long, when the elbow itched for the dice-box. This was the incurable ruin of the minstrel folk[195]. And even that life of the road, so alluring to the fever in the blood, must have been a hard one in the rigours of an English climate. To tramp long miles in wind and rain, to stand wet to the skin and hungry and footsore, making the slow bourgeois laugh while the heart was bitter within; such must have been the daily fate of many amongst the humbler minstrels at least[196]. And at the end to die like a dog in a ditch, under the ban of the Church and with the prospect of eternal damnation before the soul.

Kings and nobles were not accustomed to depend for their entertainment merely upon the stray visits of wandering minstrels. Others more or less domiciled formed a permanent part of the household. These indeed are the minstrels in the stricter sense of that term—ministri, ministeriales. In Domesday Book, as we have seen, one Berdic bears the title of the ioculator regis. Shortly afterwards Henry I had his mimus regis, by name Raherus, who made large sums by his suavitas iocularis, and founded the great priory of St. Bartholomew at Smithfield[197]. Laying aside his parti-coloured coat, he even became himself the first prior of the new community. The old spirit remained with him, however; and it is recorded that the fame of the house was largely magnified by means of some feigned miracles which Raherus put forth. Richard I was a noted lover of song, and the names of more than one minstrel of his are preserved. There was Ambroise, who was present at Richard’s coronation in 1189 and at the siege of Acre in 1191, and who wrote a history, still extant, of the third crusade[198]. And there was that Blondiaux or Blondel de Nesle, the story of whose discovery of his captive master, apocryphal though it may be, is in all the history books[199]. Henry III had his magister Henricus versificator in 1251[200], and his magister Ricardus citharista in 1252[201]. A harper was also amongst the ministri of Prince Edward in the Holy War[202], and when the prince became Edward I, he still retained one in his service. He is mentioned as Walter de Stourton, the king’s harper, in 1290[203], and as the citharista regis in 1300[204]. Edward II had several minstrels, to one of whom, William de Morlee, known as Roy de North, he made a grant of land[205]. By this time the royal minstrels seem to have become a regular establishment of no inconsiderable numbers. Under Edward III they received 7¹⁄₂d. a day[206]. A little later in the reign, between 1344 and 1347, there were nineteen who received 12d. a day in war, when they doubtless formed a military band, and 20s. a year in peace. These included five trumpeters, one citoler, five pipers, one tabouretter, two clarions, one nakerer, and one fiddler, together with three additional minstrels, known as waits[207]. The leader of the minstrels bore the title of rex, for in 1387 we find a licence given by Richard II to his rex ministrallorum, John Caumz, permitting him to pass the seas[208]. Henry V had fifteen minstrels when he invaded France in 1415, and at a later date eighteen, who received 12d. a day apiece[209]. At the end of his reign his minstrels received 100s. a year, and this annuity was continued under Henry VI, who in 1455 had twelve of them, besides a wait. In the next year this king issued a commission for the impressing of boys to fill vacancies in the body[210]. Edward IV had thirteen minstrels and a wait[211]. By 1469 these had been cut down to eight. At their head was a chief, who was now called, not as in Richard II’s time rex, but marescallus[212]. The eight king’s minstrels and their marescallus can be traced through the reign of Henry VII, and so on into the sixteenth century[213].

Nor was the royal household singular in the maintenance of a permanent body of minstrels. The citharista of Margaret, queen of Edward I, is mentioned in 1300, and her istrio in 1302[214]. Philippa, queen of Edward III, had her minstrels in 1337[215], and those of Queen Elizabeth were a regular establishment in the reign of Henry VII[216]. The Scottish court, too, had its recognized troupe, known by the early years of the sixteenth century as the ‘minstrels of the chekkar[217].’ As with kings and queens so with lesser men. The list of minstrels at court in 1306 includes the harpers and other musicians of several lords, both English and foreign[218]. In 1308 the earl of Lancaster had a body of menestralli and an armiger menestrallorum[219]. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entries of payments to the minstrels of a vast number of domini, small and great, are common in the account books[220]. Henry, earl of Derby, took minstrels with him in his expeditions abroad of 1390 and 1392[221]; while the Household Book of the earl of Northumberland (†1512) shows that he was accustomed to entertain ‘a Taberett, a Luyte, and a Rebecc,’ as well as six ‘trompettes[222].’ Minstrels are also found, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the service of the municipal corporations. London, Coventry, Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Chester, York, Beverley, Leicester, Lynn, Canterbury had them, to name no others. They received fixed fees or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a silver scutcheon, played at all local celebrations and festivities, and were commonly known as waits[223]. This term we have already found in use at court, and the ‘Black Book,’ which contains the household regulations of Edward IV, informs us that the primary duty of a wait was to ‘pipe the watch,’ summer and winter, at certain fixed hours of the night[224].

It must not be supposed that established minstrels, whether royal, noble, or municipal, were always in constant attendance on their lords. Certain fixed services were required of them, which were not very serious, except in the case of waits[225]; for the rest of their time they were free. This same ‘Black Book’ of Edward IV is very explicit on the point. The minstrels are to receive a yearly fee and a livery[226]. They must attend at court for the five great feasts of the year. At other times, two or three out of their number, or more if the king desire it, are to be in waiting. The last regulation on the subject is curious. The king forbids his minstrels to be too presumptuous or familiar in asking rewards of any lord of the land; and in support of this he quotes a similar prohibition by the Emperor Henry II[227]. Doubtless, in the intervals of their services, the household minstrels travelled, like their unattached brethren of the road, but with the added advantage of a letter of recommendation from their lord, which ensured them the hospitality of his friends[228]. Such letters were indeed often given, both to the minstrels of a man’s own household and as testimonials to other minstrels who may have especially pleased the giver. Those interesting collections of mediaeval epistolary formulae, the summae dictaminis, contain many models for them, and judging by the lavish eulogy which they employ, the minstrels themselves must have had a hand in drawing them up[229]. Many minstrels probably confined themselves to short tours in the vicinity of their head quarters; others, like Widsith, the Anglo-Saxon scôp, were far travellers. John Caumz received a licence from Richard II to cross the seas, and in 1483 we find Richard III entertaining minstrels of the dukes of Austria and Bavaria[230]. Possibly the object of John Caumz was to visit one of the scolae ministrallorum in France, where experiences might be exchanged and new songs learnt. Beauvais, Lyon, Cambrai were famous for these schools, which were held year by year in Lent, when performances were stopped; and the wardrobe accounts of Edward III record grants of licences and expenses to Barbor and Morlan, two bagpipers, to visit the scolas ministrallis in partibus trans mare[231].

From the fourteenth century it is possible to trace the growth of the household minstrels as a privileged class at the expense of their less fortunate rivals. The freedom of access enjoyed by the entertainers of earlier days was obviously open to abuse. We have seen that in 1317 it led to the offering of an insult to Edward II by an emissary clad as a minstrel at his own table. It was only two years before that a royal proclamation had considerably restrained the liberty of the minstrels. In view of the number of idle persons who ‘under colour of mynstrelsie’ claimed food, drink, and gifts in private houses, it was ordered ‘that to the houses of prelates earls and barons none resort to meate and drynke, unless he be a mynstrel, and of these mynstrels that there come none except it be three or four minstrels of honour at the most in one day, unlesse he be desired of the lorde of the house.’ The houses of meaner men are to be altogether exempt, except at their desire[232]. I think it is probable that by ‘minstrels of honour’ we must here understand ‘household minstrels[233]’; and that the severity of the ordinance must have come upon those irresponsible vagrants who had not the shelter of a great man’s name. With the Statutes of Labourers in the middle of the fourteenth century begins a history of legislation against ‘vacabonds and valiant beggars,’ which put further and serious difficulties in the way of the free movement of the migratory classes through the country[234]. Minstrels, indeed, are not specifically declared to be ‘vacabonds’ until this legislation was codified by William Cecil in 1572[235]; but there is evidence that they were none the less liable to be treated as such, unless they had some protection in the shape of livery or licence. At Chester from the early thirteenth century, and at Tutbury in Staffordshire from 1380, there existed courts of minstrelsy which claimed to issue licences to all performers within their purview. It is not probable that this jurisdiction was very effective. But a step taken by Edward IV in 1469 had for its avowed object to strengthen the hands of what may be called official minstrelsy. Representation had been made to the king that certain rude husbandmen and artificers had usurped the title and livery of his minstrels, and had thus been enabled to gather an illegitimate harvest of fees. He therefore created or revived a regular guild or fraternity of minstrels, putting his own household performers with their marescallus at the head of it, and giving its officers a disciplinary authority over the profession throughout the country, with the exception of Chester. It is not improbable, although it is not distinctly stated, that admission into the guild was practically confined to ‘minstrels of honour.’ Certainly one of the later local guilds which grew up in the sixteenth century, that of Beverley, limited its membership to such as could claim to be ‘mynstrell to some man of honour or worship or waite of some towne corporate or other ancient town, or else of such honestye and conyng as shalbe thought laudable and pleasant to the hearers[236].’ In any case the whole drift of social development was to make things difficult for the independent minstrels and to restrict the area of their wanderings.

The widespread popularity of the minstrels amongst the mediaeval laity, whether courtiers, burghers, or peasants, needs no further labouring. It is more curious to find that in spite of the formal anathemas of the Church upon their art, they were not, as a matter of fact, rigorously held at arm’s length by the clergy. We find them taking a prominent part in the holyday festivities of religious guilds[237]; we find them solacing the slow progress of the pilgrimages with their ready wit and copious narrative or song[238]; we find them received with favour by bishops, even upon their visitations[239], and not excluded from a welcome in the hall of many a monastery. As early as 1180, one Galfridus, a citharoedus, held a ‘corrody,’ or right to a daily commons of food and drink in the abbey of Hyde at Winchester[240]. And payments for performances are frequent in the accounts of the Augustinian priories at Canterbury[241], Bicester, and Maxtoke, and the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Norwich, Thetford, and St. Swithin’s, Winchester[242], and doubtless in those of many another cloistered retreat. The Minorite chroniclers relate, how at the time of the coming of the friars in 1224 two of them were mistaken for minstrels by the porter of a Benedictine grange near Abingdon, received by the prior and brethren with unbecoming glee, and when the error was discovered, turned out with contumely[243]. At such semi-religious foundations also, as the college of St. Mary at Winchester, or Waynflete’s great house of St. Mary Magdalen in Oxford, minstrels of all degrees found, at least by the fifteenth century, ready and liberal entertainment[244].

How, then, is one to reconcile this discrepancy between the actual practice of the monasteries and the strict, the uncompromising prohibition of minstrelsy in rule and canon? An incomplete answer readily presents itself. The monks being merely human, fell short of the ideal prescribed for them. We do not now learn for the first time, that the ambitions of the pious founder, the ecclesiastical law-giver, the patristic preacher, were one thing; the effective daily life of churchmen in many respects quite another. Here, as in matters of even more moment, did mediaeval monasticism ‘dream from deed dissever’—

True enough, but not the whole truth. It doubtless explains the behaviour of the Benedictines of Abingdon; but we can hardly suppose that when Robert de Grosseteste, the sworn enemy of ecclesiastical abuses, kept his harper’s chamber next his own, he was surreptitiously allowing himself an illegitimate gratification which he denied to his clergy. The fact is that the condemnations of the Church, transferred, as we have seen, wholesale from the mimi and histriones of the decaying Empire, were honestly not applicable without qualification, even from the ecclesiastical point of view, to their successors, the mimi and histriones of the Middle Ages. The traditions of the Roman stage, its manners, its topics, its ethical code, became indeed a large part of the direct inheritance of minstrelsy. But, as we have seen, they were far from being the whole of that inheritance. The Teutonic as well as the Latin element in the civilization of western Europe must be taken into account. The minstrel derives from the disreputable planipes; he derives also from the scôp, and has not altogether renounced the very different social and ethical position which the scôp enjoyed. After all, nine-tenths of the secular music and literature, something even of the religious literature, of the Middle Ages had its origin in minstrelsy. Practically, if not theoretically, the Church had to look facts in the face, and to draw a distinction between the different elements and tendencies that bore a single name. The formularies, of course, continued to confound all minstrels under the common condemnation of ioculatores. The Church has never been good at altering its formularies to suit altered conditions. But it has generally been good at practical compromises. And in the case of minstrelsy, a practical compromise, rough enough, was easily arrived at.

The effective conscience of the thirteenth-century Church had clearly come to recognize degrees in the ethical status of the minstrels. No more authoritative exponent of the official morals of his day can be desired than St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Thomas Aquinas is very far from pronouncing an unqualified condemnation of all secular entertainment. The profession of an histrio, he declares, is by no means in itself unlawful. It was ordained for the reasonable solace of humanity, and the histrio who exercises it at a fitting time and in a fitting manner is not on that account to be regarded as a sinner[245]. Another contemporary document is still more explicit. This is the Penitential written at the close of the thirteenth century by Thomas de Cabham, sub-dean of Salisbury and subsequently archbishop of Canterbury[246]. In the course of his analysis of human frailty, Thomas de Cabham makes a careful classification from the ethical point of view, of minstrels. There are those who wear horrible masks, or entertain by indecent dance and gesture. There are those again who follow the courts of the great, and amuse by satire and by raillery. Both these classes are altogether damnable. Those that remain are distinguished by their use of musical instruments. Some sing wanton songs at banquets. These too are damnable, no less than the satirists and posture-mongers. Others, however, sing of the deeds of princes, and the lives of the saints. To these it is that the name ioculatores more strictly belongs, and they, on no less an authority than that of Pope Alexander himself[247], may be tolerated.

Of the three main groups of minstrels distinguished by Thomas de Cabham, two correspond roughly to the two broad types which, from the point of view of racial tradition, we have already differentiated. His musicians correspond to the Teutonic gleemen and their successors; his posture-mongers and buffoons to the Roman mimi and their successors. Who then are Thomas de Cabham’s third and intermediate group, the satirists whose lampoons beset the courts of the great? Well, raillery and invective, as we have seen, were common features of minstrelsy; but Gautier may very likely be right when he surmises that Thomas de Cabham has particularly in mind the scolares vagantes, who brought so much scandal upon the Church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries[248]. Some of these were actually out at elbows and disfrocked clerks; others were scholars drifting from university to university, and making their living meantime by their wits; most of them were probably at least in minor orders. But practically they lived the life of the minstrels, tramping the road with them, sharing the same temptations of wine, women, and dice, and bringing into the profession a trained facility of composition, and at least a flavour of classical learning[249]. They were indeed the main intermediaries between the learned and the vernacular letters of their day; the spilth of their wit and wisdom is to be found in the burlesque Latin verse of such collections as the Carmina Burana, riotous lines, by no means devoid of poetry, with their half-humorous half-pathetic burden,

And especially they were satirists, satirists mainly of the hypocrisy, cupidity and evil living of those in the high places of the Church, for whom they conceived a grotesque expression in Bishop Golias, a type of materialistic prelate, in whose name they wrote and whose pueri or discipuli they declared themselves to be[251]. Goliardi, goliardenses, their reputation in the eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities was of the worst, and their ill practices are coupled with those of the minstrels in many a condemnatory decree[252].

It is not with the goliardi then, that Thomas de Cabham’s relaxation of the strict ecclesiastical rigours is concerned. Neither is it, naturally enough, with the lower minstrels of the mimus tradition. Towards these Thomas de Cabham, like his predecessors, is inexorable. And even of the higher minstrels the musicians and singers, his toleration has its limits. He discriminates. In a sense, a social and professional sense, all these higher minstrels fall into the same class. But from the ethical point of view there is a very marked distinction amongst them. Some there are who haunt taverns and merry-makings with loose songs of love and dalliance. These it is not to be expected that the holy mother Church should in any way countenance. Her toleration must be reserved for those more reputable performers who find material for their verse either in the life and conversation of the saints and martyrs themselves, or at least in the noble and inspiring deeds of national heroes and champions. Legends of the saints and gests of princes: if the minstrels will confine themselves to the celebration of these, then, secure in the pronouncement of a pope, they may claim a hearing even from the devout. It would be rash to assert that even the comparatively liberal theory of Thomas de Cabham certainly justified in all cases the practice of the monasteries. But it is at least noteworthy that in several instances where the subjects of the minstrelsy presented for the delectation of a cowled audience remain upon record, they do fall precisely within the twofold definition which he lays down. At Winchester in 1338 the minstrel Herbert sang the song of Colbrond (or Guy of Warwick), and the gest of the miraculous deliverance of Queen Emma; while at Bicester in 1432 it was the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus that made the Epiphany entertainment of the assembled canons.

If now we set aside the very special class of ribald galiardi, and if we set aside also the distinction drawn by Thomas de Cabham on purely ethical grounds between the minstrels of the love-songs and the minstrels of saintly or heroic gest, the net result is the twofold classification of higher and lower minstrels already familiar to us. Roughly—it must always be borne in mind how roughly—it corresponds on the one hand to the difference between the Teutonic and the Roman tradition, on the other to the distinction between the established ‘minstrel of honour’ and his unattached rival of the road. And there is abundant evidence that such a distinction was generally present, and occasionally became acute, in the consciousness of the minstrels themselves. The aristocrats of minstrelsy, a Baudouin or a Jean de Condé, or a Watriquet de Couvin, have very exalted ideas as to the dignity of their profession. They will not let you, if they can help it, put the grans menestreus on the same level with every-day jangleur of poor attainments and still poorer repute[253]. In the Dit des Taboureurs again it is a whole class, the joueurs de vielle, who arise to vindicate their dignity and to pour scorn upon the humble and uninstructed drummers[254]. But the most instructive and curious evidence comes from Provence. It was in 1273, when the amazing growth of Provençal poetry was approaching its sudden decay, that the last of the great troubadours, Guiraut de Riquier, addressed a verse Supplicatio to Alphonso X of Castile on the state of minstrelsy. He points out the confusion caused by the indiscriminate grouping of poets, singers, and entertainers of all degrees under the title of joglars, and begs the king, as high patron of letters, to take order for it. A reply from Alphonso, also in verse, and also, one may suspect, due to the fertile pen of Guiraut Riquier, is extant. Herein he establishes or confirms a fourfold hierarchy. At the head come two classes, the doctors de trobar and the trobaires, who are composers, the former of didactic, the latter of ordinary songs and melodies. Beneath these are the joglars proper, instrumentalists and reciters of delightful stories, and beneath these again the bufos, the entertainers of common folk, who have really no claim to be considered as joglars at all[255]. One of the distinctions here made is new to us. The difference between doctor de trobar and trobaire is perhaps negligible. But that between the trobaire or composer and the joglar or executant of poetry, is an important one. It is not, however, so far as the Teutonic element in minstrelsy goes, primitive. The scôpas and the French or Anglo-Norman ioculatores up to the twelfth century composed their verses as a class, and sang them as well[256]. In Provence, however, the Teutonic element in minstrelsy must have been of the slightest, and perhaps the Roman tradition, illustrated by the story of Laberius, of a marked barrier between composing and executing, had vaguely lingered. At any rate it is in Provence, in the eleventh century, that the distinction between trobaire and joglar makes its appearance. It never became a very complete one. The trobaire was generally, not always, of gentle or burgess birth; sometimes actually a king or noble. In the latter case he contented himself with writing his songs, and let the joglars spread them abroad. But the bulk of the trobaires lived by their art. They wandered from castle to castle, alone with a vielle, or with joglars in their train, and although they mingled with their hosts on fairly equal terms, they did not disdain to take their rewards of horse or mantle or jewel, just like any common performer. Moreover, they confined themselves to lyric poetry, leaving the writing of epic, so far as epic was abroad in Provence, to the joglars[257]. From Provence, the trobaire spread to other countries, reappearing in the north of France and England as the trouvère. We seem to trace an early trouvère in Lucas de Barre in the time of Henry I. But it is Eleanor of Poitiers, daughter of the trobaire count William of Poitiers, and mother of the trouvère Richard Cœur de Lion, who appears as the chief intermediary between north and south. The intrusion of the trouvère was the first step in the degradation of minstrelsy. Amongst the Anglo-Saxons, even apart from the cantilenae of the folk, the professional singer had no monopoly of song. Hrothgar and Alfred harped with their scôpas. But if there had been a similar tendency amongst the continental Teutons who merged in the French and Norman-French, it had been checked by the complete absorption of all literary energies, outside the minstrel class, in neo-Latin. It was not until the twelfth century, and as has been said, under Provençal influence, that secular-minded clerks, and exceptionally educated nobles, merchants, or officials, began to devote themselves to the vernacular, and by so doing to develop the trouvère type. The trouvère had the advantage of the minstrel in learning and independence, if not in leisure; and though the latter long held his own by the side of his rival, he was fated in the end to give way, and to content himself with the humbler task of spreading abroad what the trouvère wrote[258]. By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, the conquest of literature by the bourgeoisie was complete. The interest had shifted from the minstrel on the hall floor to the burgher or clerk in the puy; the prize of a successful poem was no longer a royal mantle, but a laureate crown or the golden violet of the jeux floraux; and its destiny less to be recited at the banquet, than read in the bower. In England the completion of the process perhaps came a little later, and was coincident with the triumph of English, the tongue of the bourgeois, over French, the tongue of the noble. The full flower of minstrelsy had been the out-at-elbows vagabond, Rutebeuf. The full flower of the trouvère is the comptroller of the customs and subsidies of the port of London, Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first distinction, then, made by Guiraut Riquier, that between trobaire and joglar, implies a development from within minstrelsy itself that was destined one day to overwhelm it. But the second, that between the joglar and the bufo, is precisely the one already familiar to us, between the minstrels of the scôp and the minstrels of the mimus tradition. And, as has been said, it is partly, if not entirely, identical with that which grew up in course of time between the protected minstrels of the court and of great men’s houses, and their vagrant brethren of the road. This general antithesis between the higher and lower mintrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth[259]. And it runs through the whole history of minstrelsy. It became acute, no doubt, with the growth in importance of the minstrels of honour in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But it had probably been just as acute, if not more so, at the very beginning of things, when the clash of Teutonic and Roman civilization first brought the bard face to face with the serious rivalry of the mime. Bard and mime merged without ever becoming quite identical; and even at the moment when this process was most nearly complete, say in the eleventh century, the jouglerie seigneuriale, to use Magnin’s happy terms, was never quite the same thing as the jouglerie foraine et populaire[260], least of all in a country like England where differences of tongue went to perpetuate and emphasize the breach.

Nevertheless, the antithesis may easily be pushed too far. After all, the minstrels were entertainers, and therefore their business was to entertain. Did the lord yawn over a gest or a saintly legend? the discreet minstrel would be well advised to drop high art, and to substitute some less exacting, even if less refined fashion of passing the time. The instincts of boor and baron were not then, of course, so far apart as they are nowadays. And as a matter of fact we find many of the most eminent minstrels boasting of the width and variety of their accomplishments. Thus of Baudouin II, count of Guisnes (1169-1206), it is recorded that he might have matched the most celebrated professionals, not only in chansons de gestes and romans d’aventure but also in the fabliaux which formed the delight of the vulgar bourgeoisie[261]. Less aristocratic performers descended even lower than Baudouin de Guisnes. If we study the répertoires of such jougleurs as the diabolic one in Gautier de Coincy’s miracle[262], or Daurel in the romance of Daurel et Beton[263], or the disputants who vaunt their respective proficiencies in Des Deus Bordeors Ribauz[264], we shall find that they cover not only every conceivable form of minstrel literature proper, but also tricks with knives and strings, sleight of hand, dancing and tumbling. Even in Provence, the Enseignamens for joglars warn their readers to learn the arts of imitating birds, throwing knives, leaping through hoops, showing off performing asses and dogs, and dangling marionettes[265]. So that one discerns the difference between the lower and the higher minstrels to have been not so much that the one did not sink so low, as that the other, for lack of capacity and education, did not rise so high.

The palmy days of minstrelsy were the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The germ of decay, however, which appeared when the separation grew up between trouvère and jougleur, and when men began to read books instead of listening to recitations, was further developed by the invention of printing. For then, while the trouvère could adapt himself readily enough to the new order of things, the jougleur’s occupation was gone. Like Benedick he might still be talking, but nobody marked him. Eyes cast down over a page of Chaucer or of Caxton had no further glitter or tear for him to win[266]. The fifteenth, and still more the sixteenth century, witness the complete break-up of minstrelsy in its mediaeval form. The mimes of course endured. They survived the overthrow of mediaevalism, as they had survived the overthrow of the Empire[267]. The Tudor kings and nobles had still their jugglers, their bearwards, their domestic buffoons, jesters or fools[268]. Bearbaiting in Elizabethan London rivalled the drama in its vogue. Acrobats and miscellaneous entertainers never ceased to crowd to every fair, and there is applause even to-day in circus and music-hall for the old jests and the old somersaults that have already done duty for upwards of twenty centuries. But the jougleur as the thirteenth century knew him was by the sixteenth century no more. Professional musicians there were in plenty; ‘Sneak’s noise’ haunted the taverns of Eastcheap[269], and instrumentalists and vocalists in royal palaces and noble mansions still kept the name and style of minstrels. But they were not minstrels in the old sense, for with the production of literature, except perhaps for a song here and there, they had no longer anything to do. That had passed into other hands, and even the lineaments of the trouvère are barely recognizable in the new types of poets and men of letters whom the Renaissance produced. The old fashioned minstrel in his style and habit as he lived, was to be presented before Elizabeth at Kenilworth as an interesting anachronism[270]. Some of the discarded entertainers, as we shall see, were absorbed into the growing profession of stage-players; others sunk to be ballad singers. For to the illiterate the story-teller still continued to appeal. The ballad indeed, at least on one side of it, was the detritus, as the lai had been the germ, of romance[271], and at the very moment when Spenser was reviving romance as a conscious archaism, it was still possible for a blind fiddler with a ballad to offend the irritable susceptibilities of a Puritan, or to touch the sensitive heart-strings of a Sidney[272]. But as a social and literary force, the glory of minstrelsy had departed[273].

CHAPTER IV THE MINSTREL REPERTORY

The floor of a mediaeval court, thronged with minstrels of every degree, provided at least as various an entertainment as the Roman stage itself[274]. The performances of the mimes, to the accompaniment of their despised tabor or wry-necked fife, undoubtedly made up in versatility for what they lacked in decorum. There were the tombeors, tombesteres or tumbleres, acrobats and contortionists, who twisted themselves into incredible attitudes, leapt through hoops, turned somersaults, walked on their heads, balanced themselves in perilous positions. Female tumblers, tornatrices, took part in these feats, and several districts had their own characteristic modes of tumbling, such as le tour français, le tour romain, le tour de Champenois[275]. Amongst the tombeors must be reckoned the rarer funambuli or rope-walkers, such as he whom the Corvei annals record to have met with a sorry accident in the twelfth century[276], or he who created such a furore in the thirteenth by his aerial descent from the cathedral at Basle[277]. Nor are they very distinct from the crowd of dancers, male and female, who are variously designated as saltatores and saltatrices, ‘sautours,’ ‘sailyours,’ ‘hoppesteres.’ Indeed, in many mediaeval miniatures, the daughter of Herodias, dancing before Herod, is represented rather as tumbling or standing on her head than in any more subtle pose[278]. A second group includes the jugglers in the narrower sense, the jouers des costeax who tossed and caught knives and balls[279], and the practitioners of sleight of hand, who generally claimed to proceed by nigremance or sorcery[280]. The two seem to have shared the names of prestigiatores or tregetours[281]. Other mimes, the bastaxi, or jouers des basteax, brought round, like the Punch and Judy men of our own day, little wooden performing puppets or marionettes[282]. Others, to whom Thomas de Cabham more particularly refers, came in masked as animals, and played the dog, the ass or the bird with appropriate noises and behaviour[283]. Others, again, led round real animals; generally bears or apes, occasionally also horses, cocks, hares, dogs, camels and even lions[284]. Sometimes these beasts did tricks; too often they were baited[285], and from time to time a man, lineal descendant of the imperial gladiators, would step forward to fight with them[286]. To the gladiatorial shows may perhaps also be traced the fight with wooden swords which often formed a part of the fun[287]. And, finally, whatever the staple of the performance, there was the parade or preliminary patter to call the audience together, and throughout the ‘carping,’ a continuous flow of rough witticism and repartee, such as one is accustomed to hear Joey, the clown, in the pauses of a circus, pass off on Mr. Harris, the ring-master[288]. Here came in the especial talents of the scurra, bordeor or japere, to whom the moralists took such marked exception. ‘L’uns fet l’ivre, l’autre le sot’ says the fabliau; and indeed we do not need the testimony of Thomas de Cabham or of John of Salisbury to conclude that such buffoonery was likely to be of a ribald type[289].

Even in the high places of minstrelsy there was some measure of variety. A glance at the pay-sheet of Edward I’s Whitsuntide feast will show that the minstrels who aspired to be musicians were habitually distinguished by the name of the musical instrument on which they played. They are vidulatores, citharistae, trumpatores, vilours, gigours, crouderes, harpours, citolers, lutours, trumpours, taboreurs and the like. The harp (cithara), played by twitching the strings, had been the old instrument of the Teutons, but in the Middle Ages it came second in popularity to the vielle (vidula), which was also a string instrument, but, like the modern fiddle, was played with a bow. The drum (tympanum, tabour) was, as we have seen, somewhat despised, and relegated to the mimes. The trumpeters appear less often singly than in twos and threes, and it is possible that their performances may have been mainly ceremonial and of a purely instrumental order. But the use of music otherwise than to accompany the voice does not seem to have gone, before the end of the thirteenth century, much beyond the signals, flourishes and fanfares required for wars, triumphs and processions. Concerted instrumental music was a later development[290]. The ordinary function of the harp or vielle in minstrelsy was to assist the voice of the minstrel in one of the many forms of poetry which the middle ages knew. These were both lyric and narrative. The distinction is roughly parallel to that made by Thomas de Cabham when he subdivides his highest grades of minstrels into those who sing wanton songs at taverns, and those more properly called ioculatores who solace the hearts of men with reciting the deeds of the heroes and the lives of the saints. The themes of mediaeval lyric, as of all lyric, are largely wantonness and wine; but it must be borne in mind that Thomas de Cabham’s classification is primarily an ethical one, and does not necessarily imply any marked difference of professional status between the two classes. The haunters of taverns and the solacers of the virtuous were after all the same minstrels, or at least minstrels of the same order. That the chansons, in their innumerable varieties, caught up from folk-song, or devised by Provençal ingenuity, were largely in the mouths of the minstrels, may be taken for granted. It was here, however, that the competition of trobaire and trouvère began earliest, and proved most triumphant, and the supreme minstrel genre was undoubtedly the narrative. This was, in a sense, their creation, and in it they held their own, until the laity learned to read and the trouvères became able to eke out the shortness of their memories by writing down or printing their stories. With narrative, no doubt, the minstrels of highest repute mainly occupied themselves. Harp or vielle in hand they beguiled many a long hour for knight and châtelaine with the interminable chansons de gestes in honour of Charlemagne and his heroic band[291], or, when the vogue of these waned, as in time it did, with the less primitive romans d’aventure, of which those that clustered round the Keltic Arthur were the widest famed. Even so their repertory was not exhausted. They had lais, dits and contes of every kind; the devout contes that Thomas de Cabham loved, historical contes, romantic contes of less alarming proportions than the genuine romans. And for the bourgeoisie they had those improper, witty fabliaux, so racy of the French soil, in which the esprit gaulois, as we know it, found its first and not its least characteristic expression. In most of these types the music of the instrument bore its part. The shorter lais were often accompanied musically throughout[292]. The longer poems were delivered in a chant or recitative, the monotony of which was broken at intervals by a phrase or two of intercalated melody, while during the rest of the performance a few perfunctory notes served to sustain the voice[293]. And at times, especially in the later days of minstrelsy, the harp or vielle was laid aside altogether, and the singer became a mere story-teller. The antithesis, no infrequent one, between minstrel, and fabulator, narrator, fableor, conteor, estour, disour, segger, though all these are themselves elsewhere classed as minstrels, sufficiently suggests this[294]. It was principally, one may surmise, the dits and fabliaux that lent themselves to unmusical narration; and when prose crept in, as in time it did, even before reading became universal, it can hardly have been sung. An interesting example is afforded by Aucassin et Nicolete, which is what is known as a cantefable. That is to say, it is written in alternate sections of verse and prose. The former have, in the Paris manuscript, a musical accompaniment, and are introduced with the words ‘Or se cante’; the latter have no music, and the introduction ‘Or content et dient et fablent.’

A further differentiation amongst minstrels was of linguistic origin. This was especially apparent in England. The mime is essentially cosmopolitan. In whatever land he finds himself the few sentences of patter needful to introduce his tour or his nigremance are readily picked up. It is not so with any entertainer whose performances claim to rank, however humbly, as literature. And the Conquest in England brought into existence a class of minstrels who, though they were by no means mimes, were yet obliged to compete with mimes, making their appeal solely to the bourgeoisie and the peasants, because their speech was not that of the Anglo-Norman lords and ladies who formed the more profitable audiences of the castles. The native English gleemen were eclipsed at courts by the Taillefers and Raheres of the invading host. But they still held the road side by side with their rivals, shorn of their dignities, and winning a precarious livelihood from the shrunken purses of those of their own blood and tongue[295]. It was they who sang the unavailing heroisms of Hereward, and, if we may judge by the scanty fragments and records that have come down to us, they remained for long the natural focus and mouthpiece of popular discontent and anti-court sentiment. In the reign of Edward III a gleeman of this type, Laurence Minot, comes to the front, voicing the spirit of an England united in its nationalism by the war against France; the rest are, for the most part, nameless[296]. Naturally the English gleemen did not remain for ever a proscribed and isolated folk. One may suspect that at the outset many of them became bilingual. At any rate they learnt to mingle with their Anglo-Norman confrères: they borrowed the themes of continental minstrelsy; translating roman, fabliau and chanson into the metres and dialects of the vernacular; and had their share in that gradual fusion of the racial elements of the land, whose completion was the preparation for Chaucer.

Besides the Saxons, there were the Kelts. In the provinces of France that bordered on Armorica, in the English counties that marched with Wales, the Keltic harper is no unusual or negligible figure. Whether such minstrels ranked very high in the bardic hierarchy of their own peoples may be doubted; but amid alien folk they achieved popularity[297]. Both Giraldus Cambrensis and Thomas the author of Tristan speak of a certain famosus fabulator of this class, Bledhericus or Breri by name[298]. Through Breri and his like the Keltic traditions filtered into Romance literature, and an important body of scholars are prepared to find in lais sung to a Welsh or Breton harp the origines of Arthurian romance[299]. In England the Welsh, like the English-speaking minstrels, had a political, as well as a literary significance. They were the means by which the spirit of Welsh disaffection under English rule was kept alive, and at times fanned into a blaze. The fable of the massacre of the bards by Edward I is now discredited, but an ordinance of his against Keltic ‘bards and rhymers’ is upon record, and was subsequently repeated under Henry IV[300].

An important question now presents itself. How far, in this heterogeneous welter of mediaeval minstrelsy, is it possible to distinguish any elements which can properly be called dramatic? The minstrels were entertainers in many genres. Were they also actors? An answer may be sought first of all in their literary remains. The first condition of drama is dialogue, and dialogue is found both in lyric and in narrative minstrelsy. Naturally, it is scantiest in lyric. But there is a group of chansons common to northern France and to southern France or Provence, which at least tended to develop in this direction. There are the chansons à danser, which are frequently a semi-dialogue between a soloist and a chorus, the one singing the verses, the other breaking into a burden or refrain. There are the chansons à personnages or chansons de mal mariée, complaints of unhappy wives, which often take the form of a dialogue between the woman and her husband, her friend or, it may be, the poet, occasionally that of a discussion on courtly love in general. There are the aubes, of which the type is the morning dialogue between woman and lover adapted by Shakespeare with such splendid effect in the third act of Romeo and Juliet. And finally there are the pastourelles, which are generally dialogues between a knight and a shepherdess, in which the knight makes love and, successful or repulsed, rides away. All these chansons, like the chansons d’histoire or de toile, which did not develop into dialogues, are, in the form in which we have them, of minstrel origin. But behind them are probably folk-songs of similar character, and M. Gaston Paris is perhaps right in tracing them to the fêtes du mai, those agricultural festivals of immemorial antiquity in which women traditionally took so large a part. A further word will have to be said of their ultimate contribution to drama in a future chapter[301].

Other lyrical dialogues of very different type found their way into the literature of northern France from that of Provence. These were the elaborate disputes about abstract questions, generally of love, so dear to the artistic and scholastic mind of the trobaire. There was the tenson (Fr. tençon) in which two speakers freely discussed a given subject, each taking the point of view which seems good to him. And there was the joc-partitz or partimen (Fr. jeu-parti or parture), in which the challenger proposed a theme, indicated two opposed attitudes towards it, and gave his opponent his choice to maintain one or other[302]. Originally, no doubt the tensons and the jocs-partitz were, as they professed to be, improvised verbal tournaments: afterwards they became little more than academic exercises[303]. To the drama they have nothing to say.

The dialogue elements in lyric minstrelsy thus exhausted, we turn to the wider field of narrative. But over the greater space of this field we look in vain. If there is anything of dialogue in the chansons de gestes and the romans it is merely reported dialogue such as every form of narrative poetry contains, and is not to the purpose. It is not until we come to the humbler branches of narrative, the unimportant contes and dits, that we find ourselves in the presence of dialogue proper. Dits and fabliaux dialogués are not rare[304]. There is the already quoted Deus Bordeors Ribauz in which two jougleurs meet and vaunt in turn their rival proficiencies in the various branches of their common art[305]. There is Rutebeuf’s Charlot et le Barbier, a similar ‘flyting’ between two gentlemen of the road[306]. There is Courtois d’Arras, a version of the Prodigal Son story[307]. There is Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely, a specimen of witty minstrel repartee, of which more will be said immediately. These dialogues naturally tend to become of the nature of disputes, and they merge into that special kind of dit, the débat or disputoison proper. The débat is a kind of poetical controversy put into the mouths of two types or two personified abstractions, each of which pleads the cause of its own superiority, while in the end the decision is not infrequently referred to an umpire in the fashion familiar in the eclogues of Theocritus[308]. The débats thus bear a strong resemblance to the lyric tençons and jeux-partis already mentioned. Like the chansons, they probably owe something to the folk festivals with their ‘flytings’ and seasonal songs. In any case they are common ground to minstrelsy and to the clerkly literature of the Middle Ages. Many of the most famous of them, such as the Débat de l’Hiver et de l’Été, the Débat du Vin et de l’Eau, the Débat du Corps et de l’Âme, exist in neo-Latin forms, the intermediaries being naturally enough those vagantes or wandering scholars, to whom so much of the interaction of learned and of popular literature must be due[309]. And in their turn many of the débats were translated sooner or later into English. English literature, indeed, had had from Anglo-Saxon days a natural affinity for the dialogue form[310], and presents side by side with the translated débats others—strifs or estrifs is the English term—of native origin[311]. The thirteenth-century Harrowing of Hell is an estrif on a subject familiar in the miracle plays: and for an early miracle play it has sometimes been mistaken[312]. Two or three other estrifs of English origin are remarkable, because the interlocutors are not exactly abstractions, but species of birds and animals[313].

Dialogue then, in one shape or another, was part of the minstrel’s regular stock-in-trade. But dialogue by itself is not drama. The notion of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles between at least two performers. Is there anything to be traced in minstrelsy that satisfies these conditions? So far as impersonation is concerned, there are several scattered notices which seem to show that it was not altogether unknown. In the twelfth century for instance, Ælred, abbot of Rievaulx, commenting on certain unpleasing innovations in the church services of the day, complains that the singers use gestures just like those of histriones, fit rather for a theatrum than for a house of prayer[314]. The word theatrum is, however, a little suspicious, for an actual theatre in the twelfth century is hardly thinkable, and with a learned ecclesiastic one can never be sure that he is not drawing his illustrations rather from his knowledge of classical literature than from the real life around him. It is more conclusive, perhaps, when fabliaux or contes speak of minstrels as ‘doing’ l’ivre, or le cat, or le sot[315]; or when it appears from contemporary accounts that at a performance in Savoy the manners of England and Brittany were mimicked[316]. In Provence contrafazedor seems to have been a regular name for a minstrel[317]; and the facts that the minstrels wore masks ‘with intent to deceive’[318], and were forbidden to wear ecclesiastical dresses[319], also point to something in the way of rudimentary impersonation.

As for the distribution of rôles, all that can be said, so far as the débats and dits dialogués go, is, that while some of them may conceivably have been represented by more than one performer, none of them need necessarily have been so, and some of them certainly were not. There is generally a narrative introduction and often a sprinkling of narrative interspersed amongst the dialogue. These parts may have been pronounced by an auctor or by one of the interlocutors acting as auctor, and some such device must have been occasionally necessitated in the religious drama. But there is really no difficulty in supposing the whole of these pieces to have been recited by a single minstrel with appropriate changes of gesture and intonation, and in The Harrowing of Hell, which begins ‘A strif will I tellen of,’ this was clearly the case. The evidences of impersonation given above are of course quite consistent with such an arrangement; or, for the matter of that, with sheer monologue. The minstrel who recited Rutebeuf’s Dit de l’Erberie may readily be supposed to have got himself up in the character of a quack[320].

But the possibilities of secular mediaeval drama are not quite exhausted by the débats and dits dialogués. For after all, the written literature which the minstrels have left us belongs almost entirely to those higher strata of their complex fraternity which derived from the thoroughly undramatic Teutonic scôp. But if mediaeval farce there were, it would not be here that we should look for it. It would belong to the inheritance, not of the scôp, but of the mimus. The Roman mimus was essentially a player of farces; that and little else. It is of course open to any one to suppose that the mimus went down in the seventh century playing farces, and that his like appeared in the fifteenth century playing farces, and that not a farce was played between. But is it not more probable on the whole that, while occupying himself largely with other matters, he preserved at least the rudiments of the art of acting, and that when the appointed time came, the despised and forgotten farce, under the stimulus of new conditions, blossomed forth once more as a vital and effective form of literature? In the absence of data we are reduced to conjecture. But the mere absence of data itself does not render the conjecture untenable. For if such rudimentary, or, if you please, degenerate farces as I have in mind, ever existed in the Middle Ages, the chances were all against their literary survival. They were assuredly very brief, very crude, often improvised, and rarely, if ever, written down. They belonged to an order of minstrels far below that which made literature[321]. And one little bit of evidence which has not yet been brought forward seems to point to the existence of something in the way of a secular as well as a religious mediaeval drama. In the well-known Wyclifite sermon against miracle plays, an imaginary opponent of the preacher’s argument is made to say that after all it is ‘lesse yvels that thei have thyre recreaceon by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis’; and again that ‘to pley in rebaudye’ is worse than ‘to pley in myriclis[322].’ Now, there is of course no necessary dramatic connotation either in the word ‘pley’ or in the word ‘japis,’ which, like ‘bourde’ or ‘gab’ is frequently used of any kind of rowdy merriment, or of the lower types of minstrelsy in general[323]. But on the other hand the whole tone of the passage seems to draw a very close parallel between the ‘japis’ and the undeniably dramatic ‘myriclis,’ and to imply something in the former a little beyond the mere recitation, even with the help of impersonation, of a solitary mime.

Such rude farces or ‘japis’ as we are considering, if they formed part of the travelling equipment of the humbler mimes, could only get into literature by an accident; in the event, that is to say, of some minstrel of a higher class taking it into his head to experiment in the form or to adapt it to the purposes of his own art. And this is precisely what appears to have happened. A very natural use of the farce would be in the parade or preliminary patter, merely about himself and his proficiency, which at all times has served the itinerant entertainer as a means whereby to attract his audiences. And just as the very similar boniment or patter of the mountebank charlatan at a fair became the model for Rutebeuf’s Dit de l’Erberie, so the parade may be traced as the underlying motive of other dits or fabliaux. The Deus Bordeors Ribauz is itself little other than a glorified parade, and another, very slightly disguised, may be found in the discomfiture of the king by the characteristic repartees of the wandering minstrel in Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jougleur d’Ely[324]. The parade, also, seems to be the origin of a certain familiar type of dramatic prologue in which the author or the presenters of a play appear in their own persons. The earliest example of this is perhaps that enigmatic Terentius et Delusor piece which some have thought to point to a representation of Terence somewhere in the dark ages between the seventh and the eleventh century[325]. And there is a later one in the Jeu du Pèlerin which was written about 1288 to precede Adan de la Hale’s Jeu de Robin et Marion.

The renascence of farce in the fifteenth century will call for consideration in a later chapter. It is possible that, as is here suggested, that renascence was but the coming to light again of an earth-bourne of dramatic tradition that had worked its way beneath the ground ever since the theatres of the Empire fell. In any case, rare documents of earlier date survive to show that it was at least no absolutely sudden and unprecedented thing. The jeux of Adan de la Hale, indeed, are somewhat irrelevant here. They were not farces, and will fall to be dealt with in the discussion of the popular fêtes from which they derive their origin[326]. But the French farce of Le Garçon et l’Aveugle, ascribed to the second half of the thirteenth century, is over a hundred years older than any of its extant successors[327]. And even more interesting to us, because it is of English provenance and in the English tongue, is a fragment found in an early fourteenth-century manuscript of a dramatic version of the popular mediaeval tale of Dame Siriz[328]. This bears the heading Hic incipit interludium de Clerico et Puella. But the significance of this fateful word interludium must be left for study at a later period, when the history of the secular drama is resumed from the point at which it must now be dropped.

BOOK II

FOLK DRAMA

CHAPTER V THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK

Minstrelsy was an institution of the folk, no less than of the court and the bourgeoisie. At many a village festival, one may be sure, the taberers and buffoons played their conspicuous part, ravishing the souls of Dorcas and Mopsa with merry and doleful ballads, and tumbling through their amazing programme of monkey tricks before the ring of wide-mouthed rustics on the green. Yet the soul and centre of such revels always lay, not in these alien professional spectacula, but in other entertainments, home-grown and racy of the soil, wherein the peasants shared, not as onlookers only, but as performers, even as their fathers and mothers, from immemorial antiquity, had done before them. A full consideration of the village ludi is important to the scheme of the present book for more than one reason. They shared with the ludi of the minstrels the hostility of the Church. They bear witness, at point after point, to the deep-lying dramatic instincts of the folk. And their substantial contribution to mediaeval and Renaissance drama and dramatic spectacle is greater than has been fully recognized.

Historically, the ludi of the folk come into prominence with the attacks made upon them by the reforming ecclesiastics of the thirteenth century and in particular by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln[329]. Between 1236 and 1244 Grosseteste issued a series of disciplinary pronouncements, in which he condemned many customs prevalent in his diocese. Amongst these are included miracle plays, ‘scotales’ or drinking-bouts, ‘ram-raisings’ and other contests of athletic prowess, together with ceremonies known respectively as the festum stultorum and the Inductio Maii sive Autumni[330]. Very similar are the prohibitions contained in the Constitutions (1240) of Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester[331]. These particularly specify the ludus de Rege et Regina, a term which may be taken as generally applicable to the typical English folk-festival, of which the Inductio Maii sive Autumni, the ‘May-game’ and ‘mell-supper,’ mentioned by Grosseteste, are varieties[332]. Both this ludus, in its various forms, and the less strictly popular festum stultorum, will find ample illustration in the sequel. Walter de Chanteloup also lays stress upon an aggravation of the ludi inhonesti by the performance of them in churchyards and other holy places, and on Sundays or the vigils and days of saints[333].

The decrees of the two bishops already cited do not stand alone. About 1250 the University of Oxford found it necessary to forbid the routs of masked and garlanded students in the churches and open places of the city[334]. These appear to have been held in connexion with the feasts of the ‘nations’ into which a mediaeval university was divided. Articles of visitation drawn up in connexion with the provisions of Oxford in 1253 made inquiry as to several of the obnoxious ludi and as to the measures adopted to check them throughout the country[335]. Prohibitions are upon record by the synod of Exeter in 1287[336], and during the next century by the synod of York in 1367[337], and by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1384[338]; while the denunciations of the rulers of the church find an unofficial echo in that handbook of ecclesiastical morality, Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne[339]. There is, however, reason to suppose that the attitude thus taken up hardly represents that of the average ecclesiastical authority, still less that of the average parish priest, towards the ludi in question. The condemnatory decrees should probably be looked upon as the individual pronouncements of men of austere or reforming temper against customs which the laxer discipline of their fellows failed to touch; perhaps it should rather be said, which the wiser discipline of their fellows found it better to regulate than to ban. At any rate there is evidence to show that the village ludi, as distinct from the spectacula of the minstrels, were accepted, and even to some extent directed, by the Church. They became part of the parochial organization, and were conducted through the parochial machinery. Doubtless this was the course of practical wisdom. But the moralist would find it difficult to deny that Robert Grosseteste and Walter de Chanteloup had, after all, some reason on their side. On the one hand they could point to the ethical lapses of which the ludi were undoubtedly the cause—the drunkenness, the quarrels, the wantonings, by which they were disgraced[340]. And on the other they could—if they were historically minded—recall the origin of the objectionable rites in some of those obscure survivals of heathenism in the rustic blood, which half a dozen centuries of Christianity had failed to purge[341]. For if the comparative study of religions proves anything it is, that the traditional beliefs and customs of the mediaeval or modern peasant are in nine cases out of ten but the detritus of heathen mythology and heathen worship, enduring with but little external change in the shadow of an hostile creed. This is notably true of the village festivals and their ludi. Their full significance only appears when they are regarded as fragments of forgotten cults, the naïve cults addressed by a primitive folk to the beneficent deities of field and wood and river, or the shadowy populace of its own dreams. Not that when even the mediaeval peasant set up his May-pole at the approach of summer or drove his cattle through the bonfire on Midsummer eve, the real character of his act was at all explicit in his consciousness. To him, as to his descendant of to-day, the festival was at once a practice sanctioned by tradition and the rare amusement of a strenuous life: it was not, save perhaps in some unplumbed recesses of his being, anything more definitely sacred. At most it was held to be ‘for luck,’ and in some vague general way, to the interest of a fruitful year in field and fold. The scientific anthropologist, however, from his very different point of view, cannot regard the conversion to Christianity as a complete solution of continuity in the spiritual and social life of western Europe. This conversion, indeed, was clearly a much slower and more incomplete process than the ecclesiastical chroniclers quite plainly state. It was so even on the shores of the Mediterranean. But there the triumph of Christianity began from below. Long before the edict of Milan, the new religion, in spite of persecutions, had got its firm hold upon the masses of the great cities of the Empire. And when, less than a century later, Theodosius made the public profession of any other faith a crime, he was but formally acknowledging a chose jugée. But even in these lands of the first ardour the old beliefs and, above all, the old rituals died hard. Lingering unacknowledged in the country, the pagan, districts, they passed silently into the dim realm of folk-lore. How could this but be more so when Christianity came with the missionaries of Rome or of Iona to the peoples of the West? For with them conversion was hardly a spontaneous, an individual thing. As a rule, the baptism of the king was the starting-point and motive for that of his followers: and the bulk of the people adopted wonderingly an alien cult in an alien tongue imposed upon them by the will of their rulers. Such a Christianity could at best be only nominal. Ancient beliefs are not so easily surrendered: nor are habits and instincts, deep-rooted in the lives of a folk, thus lightly laid down for ever, at the word of a king. The churches of the West had, therefore, to dispose somehow of a vast body of practical heathenism surviving in all essentials beneath a new faith which was but skin-deep. The conflict which followed is faintly adumbrated in the pages of Bede: something more may be guessed of its fortunes by a comparison of the customs and superstitions recorded in early documents of church discipline with those which, after all, the peasantry long retained, or even now retain.

Two letters of Gregory the Great, written at the time of the mission of St. Augustine, are a key to the methods adopted by the apostles of the West. In June 601, writing to Ethelbert of Kent by the hands of abbot Mellitus, Gregory bade the new convert show zeal in suppressing the worship of idols, and throwing down their fanes[342]. Having written thus, the pope changed his mind. Before Mellitus could reach England, he received a letter instructing him to expound to Augustine a new policy. ‘Do not, after all,’ wrote Gregory, ‘pull down the fanes. Destroy the idols; purify the buildings with holy water; set relics there; and let them become temples of the true God. So the people will have no need to change their places of concourse, and where of old they were wont to sacrifice cattle to demons, thither let them continue to resort on the day of the saint to whom the church is dedicated, and slay their beasts no longer as a sacrifice, but for a social meal in honour of Him whom they now worship[343].’ There can be little doubt that the conversion of England proceeded in the main on the lines thus laid down by Gregory. Tradition has it that the church of Saint Pancras outside the walls of Canterbury stands on the site of a fane at which Ethelbert himself once worshipped[344]; and that in London St. Paul’s replaced a temple and grove of Diana, by whom the equivalent Teutonic wood-goddess, Freyja, is doubtless intended[345]. Gregory’s directions were, perhaps, not always carried out quite so literally as this. When, for instance, the priest Coifi, on horseback and sword in hand, led the onslaught against the gods of Northumbria, he bade his followers set fire to the fane and to all the hedges that girt it round[346]. On the other hand, Reduald, king of East Anglia, must have kept his fane standing, and indeed he carried the policy of amalgamation further than its author intended, for he wavered faint-heartedly between the old religion and the new, and maintained in one building an altare for Christian worship and an arula for sacrifice to demons[347]. Speaking generally, it would seem to have been the endeavour of the Christian missionaries to effect the change of creed with as little dislocation of popular sentiment as possible. If they could extirpate the essentials, or what they considered as the essentials, of heathenism, they were willing enough to leave the accidentals to be worn away by the slow process of time. They did not, probably, quite realize how long it would take. And what happened in England, happened also, no doubt, on the continent, save perhaps in such districts as Saxony, where Christianity was introduced vi et armis, and therefore in a more wholesale, if not in the end a more effectual fashion[348].

The measure of surviving heathenism under Christianity must have varied considerably from district to district. Much would depend on the natural temper of the converts, on the tact of the clergy and on the influence they were able to secure. Roughly speaking, the old worships left their trace upon the new society in two ways. Certain central practices, the deliberate invocation of the discarded gods, the deliberate acknowledgement of their divinity by sacrifice, were bound to be altogether proscribed[349]. And these, if they did not precisely vanish, at least went underground, coming to light only as shameful secrets of the confessional[350] or the witch-trial[351], or when the dominant faith received a rude shock in times of especial distress, famine or pestilence[352]. Others again were absorbed into the scheme of Christianity itself. Many of the protective functions, for instance, of the old pantheon were taken over bodily by the Virgin Mary, by St. John, St. Michael, St. Martin, St. Nicholas, and other personages of the new dispensation[353]. And in particular, as we have seen shadowed forth in Pope Gregory’s policy, the festal customs of heathenism, purified so far as might be, received a generous amount of toleration. The chief thing required was that the outward and visible signs of the connexion with the hostile religion should be abandoned. Nor was this such a difficult matter. Cult, the sum of what man feels it obligatory upon him to do in virtue of his relation to the unseen powers, is notoriously a more enduring thing than belief, the speculative, or mythology, the imaginative statement of those relations. And it was of the customs themselves that the people were tenacious, not of the meaning, so far as there was still a meaning, attached to them, or of the names which their priests had been wont to invoke. Leave them but their familiar revels, and the ritual so indissolubly bound up with their hopes of fertility for their flocks and crops, they would not stick upon the explicit consciousness that they drank or danced in the might of Eostre or of Freyr. And in time, as the Christian interpretation of life became an everyday thing, it passed out of sight that the customs had been ritual at all. At the most a general sense of their ‘lucky’ influence survived. But to stop doing them; that was not likely to suggest itself to the rustic mind. And so the church and the open space around the church continued to be, what the temple and the temple precinct had been, the centre, both secular and religious, of the village life. From the Christian point of view, the arrangement had its obvious advantages. It had also this disadvantage, that so far as obnoxious elements still clung to the festivals, so far as the darker practices of heathenism still lingered, it was precisely the most sacred spot that they defiled. Were incantations and spells still muttered secretly for the good will of the deposed divinities? it was the churchyard that was sure to be selected as the nocturnal scene of the unhallowed ceremony. Were the clergy unable to cleanse the yearly wake of wanton dance and song? it was the church itself, by Gregory’s own decree, that became the focus of the riot.

The partial survival of the village ceremonies under Christianity will appear less surprising when it is borne in mind that the heathenism which Christianity combated was itself only the final term of a long process of evolution. The worshippers of the Keltic or Teutonic deities already practised a traditional ritual, probably without any very clear conception of the rationale on which some at least of the acts which they performed were based. These acts had their origin far back in the history of the religious consciousness; and it must not be supposed, because modern scholarship, with its comparative methods, is able to some extent to reconstruct the mental conditions out of which they arose, that these conditions were still wholly operative in the sixth, any more than in the thirteenth or the twentieth century. Side by side with customs which had still their definite and intelligible significance, religious conservatism had certainly preserved others of a very primitive type, some of which survived as mere fossils, while others had undergone that transformation of intention, that pouring of new wine into old bottles, which is one of the most familiar features in the history of institutions. The heathenism of western Europe must be regarded, therefore, as a group of religious practices originating in very different strata of civilization, and only fused together in the continuity of tradition. Its permanence lay in the law of association through which a piece of ritual originally devised by the folk to secure their practical well-being remained, even after the initial meaning grew obscure, irrevocably bound up with their expectations of that well-being. Its interest to the student is that of a development, rather than that of a system. Only the briefest outline of the direction taken by this development can be here indicated. But it must first be pointed out that, whether from a common derivation, or through a similar intellectual structure reacting upon similar conditions of life, it seems, at least up to the point of emergence of the fully formed village cult, to have proceeded on uniform lines, not only amongst the Teutonic and Keltic tribes who inhabited western and northern Europe and these islands, but also amongst all the Aryan-speaking peoples. In particular, although the Teutonic and the Keltic priests and bards elaborated, probably in comparatively late stages of their history, very different god-names and very different mythologies, yet these are but the superstructure of religion; and it is possible to infer, both from the results of folk-lore and from the more scanty documentary evidence, a substantial identity throughout the whole Kelto-Teutonic group, of the underlying institutions of ritual and of the fundamental theological conceptions[354]. I am aware that it is no longer permissible to sum up all the facts of European civilization in an Aryan formula. Ethnology has satisfactorily established the existence on the continent of at least two important racial strains besides that of the blonde invader from Latham-land[355]. But I do not think that any of the attempts hitherto made to distinguish Aryan from pre-Aryan elements in folk-lore have met with any measure of success[356]. Nor is it quite clear that any such distinction need have been implied by the difference of blood. Archaeologists speak of a remarkable uniformity of material culture throughout the whole of Europe during the neolithic period; and there appears to be no special reason why this uniformity may not have extended to the comparatively simple notions which man was led to form of the not-man by his early contacts with his environment. In any case the social amalgamation of Aryan and pre-Aryan was a process already complete by the Middle Ages; and for the purpose of this investigation it seems justifiable, and in the present state of knowledge even necessary, to treat the village customs as roughly speaking homogeneous throughout the whole of the Kelto-Teutonic area.

An analysis of these customs suggests a mental history somewhat as follows. The first relations of man to the not-man are, it need hardly be said, of a practical rather than a sentimental or a philosophic character. They arise out of an endeavour to procure certain goods which depend, in part at least, upon natural processes beyond man’s own control. The chief of these goods is, of course, food; that is to say, in a primitive state of civilization, success in hunting, whether of berries, mussels and ‘witchetty grubs,’ or of more elusive and difficult game; and later, when hunting ceases to be the mainstay of existence, the continued fertility of the flocks and herds, which form the support of a pastoral race, and of the cornfields and orchards which in their turn come to supplement these, on the appearance of agriculture. Food once supplied, the little tale of primitive man’s limited conception of the desirable is soon completed. Fire and a roof-tree are his already. But he asks for physical health, for success in love and in the begetting of offspring, and for the power to anticipate by divination that future about which he is always so childishly curious. In the pursuit, then, of these simple goods man endeavours to control nature. But his earliest essays in this direction are, as Dr. Frazer has recently pointed out, not properly to be called religion[357]. The magical charms by which he attempts to make the sun burn, and the waters fall, and the wind blow as it pleases him, certainly do not imply that recognition of a quasi-human personality outside himself, which any religious definition may be supposed to require as a minimum. They are rather to be regarded as applications of primitive science, for they depend upon a vague general notion of the relations of cause and effect. To assume that you can influence a thing through what is similar to it, or through what has been in contact with it, which, according to Dr. Frazer, are the postulates of magic in its mimetic and its sympathetic form respectively, may be bad science, but at least it is science of a sort, and not religion.

The magical charms play a large part in the village ritual, and will be illustrated in the following chapter. Presently, however, the scientific spirit is modified by that tendency of animism through which man comes to look upon the external world not as mere more or less resisting matter to be moved hither or thither, but rather as a debateable land peopled with spirits in some sense alive. These spirits are the active forces dimly discerned by human imagination as at work behind the shifting and often mysterious natural phenomena—forces of the moving winds and waters, of the skies now clear, now overcast, of the animal races of hill and plain, of the growth waxing and waning year by year in field and woodland. The control of nature now means the control of these powers, and to this object the charms are directed. In particular, I think, at this stage of his development, man conceives a spirit of that food which still remains in the very forefront of his aspirations, of his actual food-plant, or of the animal species which he habitually hunts[358]. Of this spirit he initiates a cult, which rests upon the old magical principle of the mastering efficacy of direct contact. He binds the spirit literally to him by wearing it as a garment, or absorbs it into himself in a solemn meal, hoping by either process to acquire an influence or power over it. Naturally, at this stage, the spirit becomes to the eye of his imagination phytomorphic or theriomorphic in aspect. He may conceive it as especially incarnate in a single sacred plant or animal. But the most critical moment in the history of animism is that at which the elemental spirits come to be looked upon as anthropomorphic, made in the likeness of man himself. This is perhaps due to the identification of them with those other quasi-human spirits, of whose existence man has by an independent line of thought also become aware. These are the ghostly spirits of departed kinsmen, still in some shadowy way inhabiting or revisiting the house-place. The change does not merely mean that the visible phytomorphic and theriomorphic embodiments of mental forces sink into subordination; the plants and animals becoming no more than symbols and appurtenances of the anthropomorphic spirit, or temporary forms with which from time to time he invests himself. A transformation of the whole character of the cult is involved, for man must now approach the spirits, not merely by charms, although conservatism preserves these as an element in ritual, but with modifications of the modes in which he approaches his fellow man. He must beg their favour with submissive speech or buy it with bribes. And here, with prayer and oblation, religion in the stricter sense makes its appearance.

The next step of man is from the crowd of animistic spirits to isolate the god. The notion of a god is much the old notion of an anthropomorphic elemental spirit, widened, exalted, and further removed from sense. Instead of a local and limited home, the god has his dwelling in the whole expanse of heaven or in some distant region of space. He transcends and as an object of cult supplants the more bounded and more concrete personifications of natural forces out of which he has been evolved. But he does not annul these: they survive in popular credence as his servants and ministers. It is indeed on the analogy of the position of the human chief amongst his comitatus that, in all probability, the conception of the god is largely arrived at. Comparative philology seems to show that the belief in gods is common to the Aryan-speaking peoples, and that at the root of all the cognate mythologies there lies a single fundamental divinity. This is the Dyaus of the Indians, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, the Tiwaz (O.H.G. Zîu, O.N. Týr, A.-S. Tîw) of the Teutons. He is an embodiment of the great clear sunlit heavens, the dispenser of light to the huntsman, and of warmth and moisture to the crops. Side by side with the conception of the heaven-god comes that of his female counterpart, who is also, though less clearly, indicated in all the mythologies. In her earliest aspect she is the lady of the woods and of the blossoming fruitful earth. This primary dualism is an extremely important factor in the explanation of early religion. The all-father, the heaven, and the mother-goddess, the earth, are distinct personalities from the beginning. It does not appear possible to resolve one into a mere doublet or derivative of the other. Certainly the marriage of earth and heaven in the showers that fertilize the crops is one of the oldest and most natural of myths. But it is generally admitted that myth is determined by and does not determine the forms of cult. The heaven-god and the earth-goddess must have already had their separate existence before the priests could hymn their marriage. An explanation of the dualism is probably to be traced in the merging of two cults originally distinct. These will have been sex-cults. Tillage is, of course, little esteemed by primitive man. It was so with the Germans, even up to the point at which they first came into contact with the Romans[359]. Yet all the Aryan languages show some acquaintance with the use of grains[360]. The analogy with existing savages suggests that European agriculture in its early stages was an affair of the women. While the men hunted or afterwards tended their droves of cattle and horses, the women grubbed for roots, and presently learnt to scratch the surface of the ground, to scatter the seed, and painfully to garner and grind the scanty produce[361]. As the avocations of the sexes were distinct, so would their magic or their religion be. Each would develop rites of its own of a type strictly determined by its practical ambitions, and each would stand apart from the rites of the other. The interest of the men would centre in the boar or stag, that of the women in the fruit-tree or the wheat-sheaf. To the former the stone altar on the open hill-top would be holy; to the latter the dim recesses of the impenetrable grove. Presently when the god concept appeared, the men’s divinity would be a personification of the illimitable and mysterious heavens beneath which they hunted and herded, from which the pools were filled with water, and at times the pestilence was darted in the sun rays; the women’s of the wooded and deep-bosomed earth out of which their wealth sprang. This would as naturally take a female as that a male form. Agriculture, however, was not for ever left solely to the women. In time pasturage and tillage came to be carried on as two branches of a single pursuit, and the independent sex-cults which had sprung out of them coalesced in the common village worship of later days. Certain features of the primitive differentiation can still be obscurely distinguished. Here and there one or the other sex is barred from particular ceremonies, or a male priest must perform his mystic functions in woman’s garb. The heaven-god perhaps remains the especial protector of the cattle, and the earth-goddess of the corn. But generally speaking they have all the interests of the farm in a joint tutelage. The stone altar is set up in the sacred grove; the mystic tree is planted on the hill-top[362]. Theriomorphic and phytomorphic symbols shadow forth a single godhead[363]. The earth-mother becomes a divinity of light. The heaven-father takes up his abode in the spreading oak.

The historic religions of heathenism have not preserved either the primitive dualistic monotheism, if the phrase may be permitted, or the simplicity of divine functions here sketched. With the advance of civilization the objects of worship must necessarily take upon them new responsibilities. If a tribe has its home by the sea, sooner or later it trusts frail barks to the waters, and to its gods is committed the charge of sea-faring. When handicrafts are invented, these also become their care. When the pressure of tribe upon tribe leads to war, they champion the host in battle. Moral ideas emerge and attach themselves to their service: and ultimately they become identified with the rulers of the dead, and reign in the shadowy world beyond the tomb. Another set of processes combine to produce what is known as polytheism. The constant application of fixed epithets to the godhead tends in the long run to break up its unity. Special aspects of it begin to take on an independent existence. Thus amongst the Teutonic peoples Tiwaz-Thunaraz, the thunderous sky, gives rise to Thunar or Thor, and Tiwaz-Frawiaz, the bounteous sky, to Freyr. And so the ancient heaven-god is replaced by distinct gods of rain and sunshine, who, with the mother-goddess, form that triad of divinities so prominent in several European cults[364]. Again as tribes come into contact with each other, there is a borrowing of religious conceptions, and the tribal deities are duplicated by others who are really the same in origin, but have different names. The mythological speculations of priests and bards cause further elaboration. The friendly national gods are contrasted with the dark hostile deities of foreign enemies. A belief in the culture-hero or semi-divine man, who wrests the gifts of civilization from the older gods, makes its appearance. Certain cults, such as that of Druidism, become the starting-point for even more philosophic conceptions. The personal predilection of an important worshipper or group of worshippers for this or that deity extends his vogue. The great event in the later history of Teutonic heathenism is the overshadowing of earlier cults by that of Odin or Wodan, who seems to have been originally a ruler of the dead, or perhaps a culture-hero, and not an elemental god at all[365]. The multiplicity of forms under which essentially the same divinity presents itself in history and in popular belief may be illustrated by the mother-goddess of the Teutons. As Freyja she is the female counterpart of Freyr; as Nerthus of Freyr’s northern doublet, Njordr. When Wodan largely absorbs the elemental functions, she becomes his wife, as Frîja or Frigg. Through her association with the heaven-gods, she is herself a heaven-as well as an earth-goddess[366], the Eostre of Bede[367], as well as the Erce of the Anglo-Saxon ploughing charm[368]. She is probably the Tanfana of Tacitus and the Nehellenia of the Romano-Germanic votive stones. If so, she must have become a goddess of mariners, for Nehellenia seems to be the Isis of the interpretatio Romana. As earth-goddess she comes naturally into relation with the dead, and like Odin is a leader of the rout of souls. In German peasant-lore she survives under various names, of which Perchta is the most important; in witch-lore, as Diana, and by a curious mediaeval identification, as Herodias[369]. And her more primitive functions are largely inherited by the Virgin, by St. Walpurg and by countless local saints.

Most of the imaginative and mythological superstructure so briefly sketched in the last paragraph must be considered as subsequent in order of development to the typical village cult. Both before and in more fragmentary shape after the death of the old Keltic and Teutonic gods, that continued to be in great measure an amalgam of traditional rites of forgotten magical or pre-religious import. So far as the consciousness of the mediaeval or modern peasant directed it to unseen powers at all, which was but little, it was rather to some of these more local and bounded spirits who remained in the train of the gods, than to the gods themselves. For the purposes of the present discussion, it is sufficient to think of it quite generally as a cult of the spirits of fertilization, without attaching a very precise connotation to that term. Unlike the domestic cult of the ancestral ghosts, conducted for each household by the house-father at the hearth, it was communal in character. Whatever the tenure of land may have been, there seems no doubt that up to a late period ‘co-aration,’ or co-operative ploughing in open fields, remained the normal method of tillage, while the cattle of the community roamed in charge of a public herd over unenclosed pastures and forest lands[370]. The farm, as a self-sufficing agricultural unit, is a comparatively recent institution, the development of which has done much to render the village festivals obsolete. Originally the critical moments of the agricultural year were the same for the whole village, and the observances which they entailed were shared in by all.

The observances in question, or rather broken fragments of them, have now attached themselves to a number of different outstanding dates in the Christian calendar, and the reconstruction of the original year, with its seasonal feasts, is a matter of some difficulty[371]. The earliest year that can be traced amongst the Aryan-speaking peoples was a bipartite one, made up of only two seasons, winter and summer. For some reason that eludes research, winter preceded summer, just as night, in the primitive reckoning, preceded day. The divisions seem to have been determined by the conditions of a pastoral existence passed in the regularly recurring seasons of central Europe. Winter began when snow blocked the pastures and the cattle had to be brought home to the stall: summer when the grass grew green again and there was once more fodder in the open. Approximately these dates would correspond to mid-November and mid-March[372]. Actually, in the absence of a calendar, they would vary a little from year to year and would perhaps depend on some significant annual event, such as the first snowstorm in the one case[373], in the other the appearance of the first violet, butterfly or cockchafer, or of one of those migratory birds which still in popular belief bring good fortune and the summer, the swallow, cuckoo or stork[374]. Both dates would give occasion for religious ceremonies, together with the natural accompaniment of feasting and revel. More especially would this be the case at mid-November, when a great slaughtering of cattle was rendered economically necessary by the difficulty of stall-feeding the whole herd throughout the winter. Presently, however, new conditions established themselves. Agriculture grew in importance, and the crops rather than the cattle became the central interest of the village life. Fresh feasts sprang up side by side with the primitive ones, one at the beginning of ploughing about mid-February, another at the end of harvest, about mid-September. At the same time the increased supply of dry fodder tended to drive the annual slaughtering farther on into the winter. More or less contemporaneously with these processes, the old bipartite year was changed into a tripartite one by the growth of yet another new feast during that dangerous period when the due succession of rain and sun for the crops becomes a matter of the greatest moment to the farmer. Early summer, or spring, was thus set apart from late summer, or summer proper[375]. This development also may be traced to the influence of agriculture, whose interest runs in a curve, while that of herding keeps comparatively a straight course. But as too much sun or too much wet not only spoils the crops but brings a murrain on the cattle, the herdsmen fell into line and took their share in the high summer rites. At first, no doubt, this last feast was a sporadic affair, held for propitiation of the unfavourable fertilization spirits when the elders of the village thought it called for. And to the end resort may have been had to exceptional acts of cult in times of especial distress. But gradually the occasional ceremony became an annual one, held as soon as the corn was thick in the green blade and the critical days were at hand.

So far, there has been no need to assume the existence of a calendar. How long the actual climatic conditions continued to determine the dates of the annual feasts can hardly be said. But when a calendar did make its appearance, the five feasts adapted themselves without much difficulty to it. The earliest calendar that can be inferred in central Europe was one, either of Oriental or possibly of Mediterranean provenance, which divided the year into six tides of threescore days each[376]. The beginnings of these tides almost certainly fell at about the middle of corresponding months of the Roman calendar[377]. The first would thus be marked by the beginning of winter feast in mid-November; two others by the beginning of summer feast and the harvest feast in mid-March and mid-August respectively. A little accommodation of the seasonal feasts of the farm would be required to adapt them to the remaining three. And here begins a process of dislocation of the original dates of customs, now becoming traditional rather than vital, which was afterwards extended by successive stages to a bewildering degree. By this time, with the greater permanence of agriculture, the system of autumn ploughing had perhaps been invented. The spring ploughing festival was therefore of less importance, and bore to be shifted back to mid-January instead of mid-February. Four of the six tides are now provided with initial feasts. These are mid-November, mid-January, mid-March, and mid-September. There are, however, still mid-May and mid-July, and only the high summer feast to divide between them. I am inclined to believe that a division is precisely what took place, and that the hitherto fluctuating date of the summer feast was determined in some localities to mid-May, in others to mid-July[378].

The European three-score-day-tide calendar is rather an ingenious conjecture than an ascertained fact of history. When the Germano-Keltic peoples came under the influence of Roman civilization, they adopted amongst other things the Roman calendar, first in its primitive form and then in the more scientific one given to it under Julius Caesar. The latter divided the year into four quarters and twelve months, and carried with it a knowledge of the solstices, at which the astronomy neither of Kelts nor of Germans seems to have previously arrived[379]. The feasts again underwent a process of dislocation in order to harmonize them with the new arrangement. The ceremonies of the winter feast were pulled back to November 1 or pushed forward to January 1. The high summer feast was attracted from mid-May and mid-July respectively to the important Roman dates of the Floralia on May 1 and the summer solstice on June 24. Last of all, to complete the confusion, came, on the top of three-score-day-tide calendar and Roman calendar alike, the scheme of Christianity with its host of major and minor ecclesiastical festivals, some of them fixed, others movable. Inevitably these in their turn began to absorb the agricultural customs. The present distribution of the five original feasts, therefore, is somewhat as follows. The winter feast is spread over all the winter half of the year from All Souls day to Twelfth night. A later chapter will illustrate its destiny more in detail. The ploughing feast is to be sought mainly in Plough Monday, in Candlemas and in Shrovetide or Carnival[380]; the beginning of summer feast in Palm Sunday, Easter and St. Mark’s day; the early variety of the high summer feast probably also in Easter, and certainly in May-day, St. George’s day, Ascensiontide with its Rogations, Whitsuntide and Trinity Sunday; the later variety of the same feast in Midsummer day and Lammastide; and the harvest feast in Michaelmas. These are days of more or less general observance. Locally, in strict accordance with the policy of Gregory the Great as expounded to Mellitus, the floating customs have often settled upon conveniently neighbouring dates of wakes, rushbearings, kirmesses and other forms of vigil or dedication festivals[381]; and even, in the utter oblivion of their primitive significance, upon the anniversaries of historical events, such as Royal Oak day on May 29[382], or Gunpowder day. Finally it may be noted, that of the five feasts that of high summer is the one most fully preserved in modern survivals. This is partly because it comes at a convenient time of year for the out-of-door holiday-making which serves as a preservative for the traditional rites; partly also because, while the pastoral element in the feasts of the beginnings of winter and summer soon became comparatively unimportant through the subordination of pasturage to tillage, and the ploughing and harvest feasts tended more and more to become affairs of the individual farm carried out in close connexion with those operations themselves, the summer feast retained its communal character and continued to be celebrated by the whole village for the benefit of everybody’s crops and trees, and everybody’s flocks and herds[383]. It is therefore mainly, although not wholly, upon the summer feast that the analysis of the agricultural ritual to be given in the next chapter will be based.

CHAPTER VI VILLAGE FESTIVALS

The central fact of the agricultural festivals is the presence in the village of the fertilization spirit in the visible and tangible form of flowers and green foliage or of the fruits of the earth. Thus, when the peasants do their ‘observaunce to a morn of May,’ great boughs of hawthorn are cut before daybreak in the woods, and carried, with other seasonable leafage and blossom, into the village street. Lads plant branches before the doors of their mistresses. The folk deck themselves, their houses, and the church in green. Some of them are clad almost entirely in wreaths and tutties, and become walking bushes, ‘Jacks i’ the green.’ The revel centres in dance and song around a young tree set up in some open space of the village, or a more permanent May-pole adorned for the occasion with fresh garlands. A large garland, often with an anthropomorphic representation of the fertilization spirit in the form of a doll, parades the streets, and is accompanied by a ‘king’ or ‘queen,’ or a ‘king’ and ‘queen’ together. Such a garland finds its place at all the seasonal feasts; but whereas in spring and summer it is naturally made of the new vegetation, at harvest it as naturally takes the form of a sheaf, often the last sheaf cut, of the corn. Then it is known as the ‘harvest-May’ or the ‘neck,’ or if it is anthropomorphic in character, as the ‘kern-baby.’ Summer and harvest garlands alike are not destroyed when the festival is over, but remain hung up on the May-pole or the church or the barn-door until the season for their annual renewing comes round. And sometimes the grain of the ‘harvest-May’ is mingled in the spring with the seed-corn[384].

The rationale of such customs is fairly simple. They depend upon a notion of sympathetic magic carried on into the animistic stage of belief. Their object is to secure the beneficent influence of the fertilization spirit by bringing the persons or places to be benefited into direct contact with the physical embodiment of that spirit. In the burgeoning quick set up on the village green is the divine presence. The worshipper clad in leaves and flowers has made himself a garment of the god, and is therefore in a very special sense under his protection. Thus efficacy in folk-belief of physical contact may be illustrated by another set of practices in which recourse is had to the fertilization spirit for the cure of disease. A child suffering from croup, convulsions, rickets, or other ailment, is passed through a hole in a split tree, or beneath a bramble rooted at both ends, or a strip of turf partly raised from the ground. It is the actual touch of earth or stem that works the healing[385].

May-pole or church may represent a focus of the cult at some specially sacred tree or grove in the heathen village. But the ceremony, though it centres at these, is not confined to them, for its whole purpose is to distribute the benign influence over the entire community, every field, fold, pasture, orchard close and homestead thereof. At ploughing, the driving of the first furrow; at harvest, the homecoming of the last wain, is attended with ritual. Probably all the primitive festivals, and certainly that of high summer, included a lustration, in which the image or tree which stood for the fertilization spirit was borne in solemn procession from dwelling to dwelling and round all the boundaries of the village. Tacitus records the progress of the earth-goddess Nerthus amongst the German tribes about the mouth of the Elbe, and the dipping of the goddess and the drowning of her slaves in a lake at the term of the ceremony[386]. So too at Upsala in Sweden the statue of Freyr went round when winter was at an end[387]; while Sozomenes tells how, when Ulfilas was preaching Christianity to the Visigoths, Athanaric sent the image of his god abroad in a wagon, and burnt the houses of all who refused to bow down and sacrifice[388]. Such lustrations continue to be a prominent feature of the folk survivals. They are preserved in a number of processional customs in all parts of England; in the municipal ‘ridings,’ ‘shows,’ or ‘watches’ on St. George’s[389] or Midsummer[390] days; in the ‘Godiva’ procession at Coventry[391], the ‘Bezant’ procession at Shaftesbury[392]. Hardly a rural merry-making or wake, indeed, is without its procession; if it is only in the simple form of the quête which the children consider themselves entitled to make, with their May-garland, or on some other traditional pretext, at various seasons of the calendar. Obviously in becoming mere quêtes, collections of eggs, cakes and so forth, or even of small coins, as well as in falling entirely into the hands of the children, the processions have to some extent lost their original character. But the notion that the visit is to bring good fortune, or the ‘May’ or the ‘summer’ to the household, is not wholly forgotten in the rhymes used[393]. An interesting version of the ceremony is the ‘furry’ or ‘faddy’ dance formerly used at Helston wake; for in this the oak-decked dancers claimed the right to pass in at one door and out at another through every house in the village[394].

Room has been found for the summer lustrations in the scheme of the Church. In Catholic countries the statue of the local saint is commonly carried round the village, either annually on his feast-day or in times of exceptional trouble[395]. The inter-relations of ecclesiastical and folk-ritual in this respect are singularly illustrated by the celebration of St. Ubaldo’s eve (May 15) at Gubbio in Umbria. The folk procession of the Ceri is a very complete variety of the summer festival. After vespers the clergy also hold a procession in honour of the saint. At a certain point the two companies meet. An interchange of courtesies takes place. The priest elevates the host; the bearers of the Ceri bow them to the ground; and each procession passes on its way[396]. In England the summer lustrations take an ecclesiastical form in the Rogations or ‘bannering’ of ‘Gang-week,’ a ceremony which itself appears to be based on very similar folk-customs of southern Europe[397]. Since the Reformation the Rogations have come to be regarded as little more than a ‘beating of the bounds.’ But the declared intention of them was originally to call for a blessing upon the fruits of the earth; and it is not difficult to trace folk-elements in the ‘gospel oaks’ and ‘gospel wells’ at which station was made and the gospel read, in the peeled willow wands borne by the boys who accompany the procession, in the whipping or ‘bumping’ of the said boys at the stations, and in the choice of ‘Gang-week’ for such agricultural rites as ‘youling’ and ‘well-dressing[398].’

Some anthropomorphic representation of the fertilization spirit is a common, though not an invariable element in the lustration. A doll is set on the garland, or some popular ‘giant’ or other image is carried round[399]. Nor is it surprising that at the early spring festival which survives in Plough Monday, the plough itself, the central instrument of the opening labour, figures. A variant of this custom may be traced in certain maritime districts, where the functions of the agricultural deities have been extended to include the oversight of seafaring. Here it is not a plough but a boat or ship that makes its rounds, when the fishing season is about to begin. Ship processions are to be found in various parts of Germany[400]; at Minehead, Plymouth, and Devonport in the west of England, and probably also at Hull in the north[401].

The magical notions which, in part at least, explain the garland customs of the agricultural festival, are still more strongly at work in some of its subsidiary rites. These declare themselves, when understood, to be of an essentially practical character, charms designed to influence the weather, and to secure the proper alternation of moisture and warmth which is needed alike for the growth and ripening of the crops and for the welfare of the cattle. They are probably even older than the garland-customs, for they do not imply the animistic conception of a fertilization spirit immanent in leaf and blossom; and they depend not only upon the ‘sympathetic’ principle of influence by direct contact already illustrated, but also upon that other principle of similarity distinguished by Dr. Frazer as the basis of what he calls ‘mimetic’ magic. To the primitive mind the obvious way of obtaining a result in nature is to make an imitation of it on a small scale. To achieve rain, water must be splashed about, or some other characteristic of a storm or shower must be reproduced. To achieve sunshine, a fire must be lit, or some other representation of the appearance and motion of the sun must be devised. Both rain-charms and sun-charms are very clearly recognizable in the village ritual.

As rain-charms, conscious or unconscious, must be classified the many festival customs in which bathing or sprinkling holds an important place. The image or bough which represents the fertilization spirit is solemnly dipped in or drenched with water. Here is the explanation of the ceremonial bathing of the goddess Nerthus recorded by Tacitus. It has its parallels in the dipping of the images of saints in the feast-day processions of many Catholic villages, and in the buckets of water sometimes thrown over May-pole or harvest-May. Nor is the dipping or drenching confined to the fertilization spirit. In order that the beneficent influences of the rite may be spread widely abroad, water is thrown on the fields and on the plough, while the worshippers themselves, or a representative chosen from among them, are sprinkled or immersed. To this practice many survivals bear evidence; the virtues persistently ascribed to dew gathered on May morning, the ceremonial bathing of women annually or in times of drought with the expressed purpose of bringing fruitfulness on man or beast or crop, the ‘ducking’ customs which play no inconsiderable part in the traditions of many a rural merry-making. Naturally enough, the original sense of the rite has been generally perverted. The ‘ducking’ has become either mere horse-play or else a rough-and-ready form of punishment for offences, real or imaginary, against the rustic code of conduct. The churl who will not stop working or will not wear green on the feast-day must be ‘ducked,’ and under the form of the ‘cucking-stool,’ the ceremony has almost worked its way into formal jurisprudence as an appropriate treatment for feminine offenders. So, too, it has been with the ‘ducking’ of the divinity. When the modern French peasant throws the image of his saint into the water, he believes himself to be doing it, not as a mimetic rain-charm, but as a punishment to compel a power obdurate to prayer to grant through fear the required boon.

The rain-charms took place, doubtless, at such wells, springs, or brooks as the lustral procession passed in its progress round the village. It is also possible that there may have been, sometimes or always, a well within the sacred grove itself and hard by the sacred tree. The sanctity derived by such wells and streams from the use of them in the cult of the fertilization spirit is probably what is really intended by the water-worship so often ascribed to the heathen of western Europe, and coupled closely with tree-worship in the Christian discipline-books. The goddess of the tree was also the goddess of the well. At the conversion her wells were taken over by the new religion. They became holy wells, under the protection of the Virgin or one of the saints. And they continued to be approached with the same rites as of old, for the purpose of obtaining the ancient boons for which the fertilization spirit had always been invoked. It will not be forgotten that, besides the public cult of the fertilization spirit for the welfare of the crops and herds, there was also a private cult, which aimed at such more personal objects of desire as health, success in love and marriage, and divination of the future. It is this private cult that is most markedly preserved in modern holy well customs. These may be briefly summarized as follows[402]. The wells are sought for procuring a husband or children, for healing diseases, especially eye-ailments or warts, and for omens, these too most often in relation to wedlock. The worshipper bathes wholly or in part, or drinks the water. Silence is often enjoined, or a motion deasil, that is, with the sun’s course, round the well. Occasionally cakes are eaten, or sugar and water drunk, or the well-water is splashed on a stone. Very commonly rags or bits of wool or hair are laid under a pebble or hung on a bush near the well, or pins, more rarely coins or even articles of food, are thrown into it. The objects so left are not probably to be regarded as offerings; the intention is rather to bring the worshipper, through the medium of his hair or clothes, or some object belonging to him, into direct contact with the divinity. The close connexion between tree-and well-cult is shown by the use of the neighbouring bush on which to hang the rags. And the practice of dropping pins into the well is almost exactly paralleled by that of driving nails ‘for luck’ into a sacred tree or its later representative, a cross or saintly image. The theory may be hazarded that originally the sacred well was never found without the sacred tree beside it. This is by no means the case now; but it must be remembered that a tree is much more perishable than a well. The tree once gone, its part in the ceremony would drop out, or be transferred to the well. But the original rite would include them both. The visitant, for instance, would dip in the well, and then creep under or through the tree, a double ritual which seems to survive in the most curious of all the dramatic games of children, ‘Draw a Pail of Water[403].’

The private cult of the fertilization spirit is not, of course, tied to fixed seasons. Its occasion is determined by the needs of the worshipper. But it is noteworthy that the efficacy of some holy wells is greatest on particular days, such as Easter or the first three Sundays in May. And in many places the wells, whether ordinarily held ‘holy’ or not, take an important place in the ceremonies of the village festival. The ‘gospel wells’ of the Rogation processions, and the well to which the ‘Bezant’ procession goes at Shaftesbury are cases in point; while in Derbyshire the ‘well-dressings’ correspond to the ‘wakes,’ ‘rushbearings,’ and ‘Mayings’ of other districts. Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, as well as the Rogation days, are in a measure Christian versions of the heathen agricultural feasts, and it is not, therefore, surprising to find an extensive use of holy water in ecclesiastical ritual, and a special rite of Benedictio Fontium included amongst the Easter ceremonies[404]. But the Christian custom has been moralized, and its avowed aim is purification rather than prosperity.

The ordinary form of heat-charm was to build, in semblance of the sun, the source of heat, a great fire[405]. Just as in the rain-charm the worshippers must be literally sprinkled with water, so, in order that they may receive the full benefits of the heat-charm, they must come into direct physical contact with the fire, by standing in the smoke, or even leaping through the flames, or by smearing their faces with the charred ashes[406]. The cattle too must be driven through the fire, in order that they may be fertile and free from pestilence throughout the summer; and a whole series of observances had for their especial object the distribution of the preserving influence over the farms. The fires were built on high ground, that they might be visible far and wide. Or they were built in a circle round the fields, or to windward, so that the smoke might blow across the corn. Blazing arrows were shot in the air, or blazing torches carried about. Ashes were sprinkled over the fields, or mingled with the seed corn or the fodder in the stall[407]. Charred brands were buried or stuck upright in the furrows. Further, by a simple symbolism, the shape and motion of the sun were mimicked with circular rotating bodies. A fiery barrel or a fiery wheel was rolled down the hill on the top of which the ceremony took place. The lighted torches were whirled in the air, or replaced by lighted disks of wood, flung on high. All these customs still linger in these islands or in other parts of western Europe, and often the popular imagination finds in their successful performance an omen for the fertility of the year.

On a priori grounds one might have expected two agricultural festivals during the summer; one in the earlier part of it, when moisture was all-important, accompanied with rain-charms; the other later on, when the crops were well grown and heat was required to ripen them, accompanied with sun-charms. But the evidence is rather in favour of a single original festival determined, in the dislocation caused by a calendar, to different dates in different localities[408]. The Midsummer or St. John’s fires are perhaps the most widely spread and best known of surviving heat-charms. But they can be paralleled by others distributed all over the summer cycle of festivals, at Easter[409] and on May-day, and in connexion with the ploughing celebrations on Epiphany, Candlemas, Shrovetide, Quadragesima, and St. Blaize’s day. It is indeed at Easter and Candlemas that the Benedictiones, which are the ecclesiastical versions of the ceremony, appear in the ritual-books[410]. On the other hand, although, perhaps owing to the later notion of the solstice, the fires are greatly prominent on St. John’s day, and are explained with considerable ingenuity by the monkish writers[411], yet this day was never a fire-festival and nothing else. Garland customs are common upon it, and there is even evidence, though slight evidence, for rain-charms[412]. It is perhaps justifiable to infer that the crystallization of the rain-and heat-charms, which doubtless were originally used only when the actual condition of the weather made them necessary, into annual festivals, took place after the exact rationale of them had been lost, and they had both come to be looked upon, rather vaguely, as weather-charms.

Apart from the festival-fires, a superstitious use of sun-charms endured in England to an extraordinarily late date. This was in times of drought and pestilence as a magical remedy against mortality amongst the cattle. A fire was built, and, as on the festivals, the cattle were made to pass through the smoke and flames[413]. On such occasions, and often at the festival-fires themselves, it was held requisite that, just as the water used in the rain-charms would be fresh water from the spring, so the fire must be fresh fire. That is to say, it must not be lit from any pre-existing fire, but must be made anew. And, so conservative is cult, this must be done, not with the modern device of matches, or even with flint and steel, but by the primitive method of causing friction in dry work. Such fire is known as ‘need-fire’ or ‘forced fire,’ and is produced in various ways, by rubbing two pieces of wood together, by turning a drill in a solid block, or by rapidly rotating a wheel upon an axle. Often certain precautions are observed, as that nine men must work at the job, or chaste boys; and often all the hearth-fires in the village are first extinguished, to be rekindled by the new flame[414].

The custom of rolling a burning wheel downhill from the festival-fire amongst the vineyards has been noted. The wheel is, of course, by no means an uncommon solar emblem[415]. Sometimes round bannocks or hard-boiled eggs are similarly rolled downhill. The use of both of these may be sacrificial in its nature. But the egg plays such a large part in festival customs, especially at Easter, when it is reddened, or gilt, or coloured yellow with furze or broom flowers, and popularly regarded as a symbol of the Resurrection, that one is tempted to ask whether it does not stand for the sun itself[416]. And are we to find the sun in the ‘parish top[417],’ or in the ball with which, even in cathedrals, ceremonial games were played[418]? If so, perhaps this game of ball may be connected with the curious belief that if you get up early enough on Easter morning you may see the sun dance[419].

In any case sun-charms, quite independent of the fires, may probably be traced in the circular movements which so often appear invested with a religious significance, and which sometimes form part of the festivals[420]. It would be rash to regard such movements as the basis of every circular dance or ronde on such an occasion; a ring is too obviously the form which a crowd of spectators round any object, sacred or otherwise, must take. But there are many circumambulatory rites in which stress is laid on the necessity for the motion to be deasil, or with the right hand to the centre, in accordance with the course of the sun, and not in the opposite direction, cartuaitheail or withershins[421]. And these, perhaps, may be legitimately considered as of magical origin.

With the growth of animistic or spiritual religion, the mental tendencies, out of which magical practices or charms arise, gradually cease to be operative in the consciousness of the worshippers. The charms themselves, however, are preserved by the conservative instinct of cult. In part they survive as mere bits of traditional ritual, for which no particular reason is given or demanded; in part also they become material for that other instinct, itself no less inveterate in the human mind, by which the relics of the past are constantly in process of being re-explained and brought into new relations with the present. The sprinkling with holy water, for instance, which was originally of the nature of a rain-charm, comes to be regarded as a rite symbolical of spiritual purification and regeneration. An even more striking example of such transformation of intention is to be found in the practice, hardly yet referred to in this account of the agricultural festivals, of sacrifice. In the ordinary acceptation of the term, sacrifice implies not merely an animistic, but an anthropomorphic conception of the object of cult. The offering or oblation with which man approaches his god is an extension of the gift with which, as suppliant, he approaches his fellow men. But the oblational aspect of sacrifice is not the only one. In his remarkable book upon The Religion of the Semites, Professor Robertson Smith has formulated another, which may be distinguished as ‘sacramental.’ In this the sacrifice is regarded as the renewal of a special tie between the god and his worshippers, analogous to the blood-bond which exists amongst those worshippers themselves. The victim is not an offering made to the god; on the contrary, the god himself is, or is present in, the victim. It is his blood which is shed, and by means of the sacrificial banquet and its subsidiary rites, his personality becomes, as it were, incorporated in those of his clansmen[422]. It is not necessary to determine here the general priority of the two types or conceptions of sacrifice described. But, while it is probable that the Kelts and Teutons of the time of the conversion consciously looked upon sacrifice as an oblation, there is also reason to believe that, at an earlier period, the notion of a sacrament had been the predominant one. For the sacrificial ritual of these peoples, and especially that used in the agricultural cult, so far as it can be traced, is only explicable as an elaborate process of just that physical incorporation of the deity in the worshippers and their belongings, which it was the precise object of the sacramental sacrifice to bring about. It will be clear that sacrifice, so regarded, enters precisely into that category of ideas which has been defined as magical. It is but one more example of that belief in the efficacy of direct contact which lies at the root of sympathetic magic. As in the case of the garland customs, this belief, originally pre-animistic, has endured into an animistic stage of thought. Through the garland and the posies the worshipper sought contact with the fertilization spirit in its phytomorphic form; through sacrifice he approaches it in its theriomorphic form also. The earliest sacrificial animals, then, were themselves regarded as divine, and were naturally enough the food animals of the folk. The use made by the Kelto-Teutonic peoples of oxen, sheep, goats, swine, deer, geese, and fowls requires no explanation. A common victim was also the horse, which the Germans seem, up to a late date, to have kept in droves and used for food. The strong opposition of the Church to the sacrificial use of horse-flesh may possibly account for the prejudice against it as a food-stuff in modern Europe[423]. A similar prejudice, however, in the case of the hare, an animal of great importance in folk belief, already existed in the time of Caesar[424]. It is a little more puzzling to find distinct traces of sacrificial customs in connexion with animals, such as the dog, cat, wolf, fox, squirrel, owl, wren, and so forth, which are not now food animals[425]. But they may once have been such, or the explanation may lie in an extension of the sacrificial practice after the first rationale of it was lost.

At every agricultural festival, then, animal sacrifice may be assumed as an element. The analogy of the relation between the fertilization spirit and his worshippers to the human blood bond makes it probable that originally the rite was always a bloody one[426]. Some of the blood was poured on the sacred tree. Some was sprinkled upon the worshippers, or smeared over their faces, or solemnly drunk by them[427]. Hides, horns, and entrails were also hung upon the tree[428], or worn as festival trappings[429]. The flesh was, of course, solemnly eaten in the sacrificial meal[430]. The crops, as well as their cultivators, must benefit by the rites; and therefore the fields, and doubtless also the cattle, had their sprinkling of blood, while heads or pieces of flesh were buried in the furrows, or at the threshold of the byre[431]. A fair notion of the whole proceeding may be obtained from the account of the similar Indian worship of the earth-goddess given in Appendix I. The intention of the ceremonies will be obvious by a comparison with those already explained. The wearing of the skins of the victims is precisely parallel to the wearing of the green vegetation, the sprinkling with blood to the sprinkling with lustral water, the burial in the fields of flesh and skulls to the burial of brands from the festival-fire. In each case the belief in the necessity of direct physical contact to convey the beneficent influence is at the bottom of the practice. It need hardly be said that of such physical contact the most complete example is in the sacramental banquet itself.

It is entirely consistent with the view here taken of the primitive nature of sacrifice, that the fertilization spirit was sacrificed at the village festivals in its vegetable as well as in its animal form. There were bread-offerings as well as meat-offerings[432]. Sacramental cakes were prepared with curious rituals which attest their primitive character. Like the tcharnican or Beltane cakes, they were kneaded and moulded by hand and not upon a board[433]; like the loaf in the Anglo-Saxon charm, they were compounded of all sorts of grain in order that they might be representative of every crop in the field[434]. At the harvest they would naturally be made, wholly or in part, of the last sheaf cut. The use of them corresponded closely to that made of the flesh of the sacrificial victim. Some were laid on a branch of the sacred tree[435]; others flung into the sacred well or the festival-fire; others again buried in the furrows, or crumbled up and mingled with the seed-corn[436]. And like the flesh they were solemnly eaten by the worshippers themselves at the sacrificial banquet. With the sacrificial cake went the sacrificial draught, also made out of the fruits of the earth, in the southern lands wine, but in the vineless north ale, or cider, or that mead which Pytheas described the Britons as brewing out of honey and wheat[437]. Of this, too, the trees and crops received their share, while it filled the cup for those toasts or minnes to the dead and to Odin and Freyja their rulers, which were afterwards transferred by Christian Germany to St. John and St. Gertrude[438].

The animal and the cereal sacrifices seem plausible enough, but they do not exhaust the problem. One has to face the fact that human sacrifice, as Victor Hehn puts it, ‘peers uncannily forth from the dark past of every Aryan race[439]. So far as the Kelts and Teutons go, there is plenty of evidence to show, that up to the very moment of their contact with Roman civilization, in some branches even up to the very moment of their conversion to Christianity, it was not yet obsolete[440]. An explanation of it is therefore required, which shall fall in with the general theory of agricultural sacrifice. The subject is very difficult, but, on the whole, it seems probable that originally the slaying of a human being at an annually recurring festival was not of the nature of sacrifice at all. It is doubtful whether it was ever sacrifice in the sacramental sense, and although in time it came to be regarded as an oblation, this was not until the first meaning, both of the sacrifice and of the human death, had been lost. The essential facts bearing on the question have been gathered together by Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough. He brings out the point that the victim in a human sacrifice was not originally merely a man, but a very important man, none other than the king, the priest-king of the tribe. In many communities, Aryan-speaking and other, it has been the principal function of such a priest-king to die, annually or at longer intervals, for the people. His place is taken, as a rule, by the tribesman who has slain him[441]. Dr. Frazer’s own explanation of this custom is, that the head of the tribe was looked upon as possessed of great magical powers, as a big medicine man, and was in fact identified with the god himself. And his periodical death, says Dr. Frazer, was necessary, in order to renew the vitality of the god, who might decay and cease to exist, were he not from time to time reincarnated by being slain and passing into the body of his slayer and successor[442]. This is a highly ingenious and fascinating theory, but unfortunately there are several difficulties in the way of accepting it. In the first place it is inconsistent with the explanation of the sacramental killing of the god arrived at by Professor Robertson Smith. According to this the sacrifice of the god is for the sake of his worshippers, that the blood-bond with them may be renewed; and we have seen that this view fits in admirably with the minor sacrificial rites, such as the eating and burying of the flesh, as the wearing of the horns and hides. Dr. Frazer, however, obliges us to hold that the god is also sacrificed for his own sake, and leaves us in the position of propounding two quite distinct and independent reasons for the same fact. Secondly, there is no evidence, at least amongst Aryan-speaking peoples, for that breaking down of the very real and obvious distinction between the god and his chief worshipper or priest, which Dr. Frazer’s theory implies. And thirdly, if the human victim were slain as being the god, surely this slaughter should have replaced the slaughter of the animal victim previously slain for the same reason, which it did not, and should have been followed by a sacramental meal of a cannibal type, of which also, in western Europe, there is but the slightest trace[443].

Probably, therefore, the alternative explanation of Dr. Frazer’s own facts given by Dr. Jevons is preferable. According to this the death of the human victim arises out of the circumstances of the animal sacrifice. The slaying of the divine animal is an act approached by the tribe with mingled feelings. It is necessary, in order to renew the all-essential blood-bond between the god and his worshippers. And at the same time it is an act of sacrilege; it is killing the god. There is some hesitation amongst the assembled worshippers. Who will dare the deed and face its consequences? ‘The clansman,’ says Dr. Jevons, ‘whose religious conviction of the clan’s need of communion with the god was deepest, would eventually and after long waiting be the one to strike, and take upon himself the issue, for the sake of his fellow men.’ This issue would be twofold. The slayer would be exalted in the eyes of his fellows. He would naturally be the first to drink the shed blood of the god. A double portion of the divine spirit would enter into him. He would become, for a while, the leader, the priest-king, of the community. At the same time he would incur blood-guiltiness. And in a year’s time, when his sanctity was exhausted, the penalty would have to be paid. His death would accompany the renewal of the bond by a fresh sacrifice, implying in its turn the self-devotion of a fresh annual king[444].

These theories belong to a region of somewhat shadowy conjecture. If Dr. Jevons is right, it would seem to follow that, as has already been suggested, the human death at an annual festival was not initially sacrifice. It accompanied, but did not replace the sacramental slaughter of a divine animal. But when the animal sacrifice had itself changed its character, and was looked upon, no longer as an act of communion with the god, but as an offering or bribe made to him, then a new conception of the human death also was required. When the animal ceased to be recognized as the god, the need of a punishment for slaying it disappeared. But the human death could not be left meaningless, and its meaning was assimilated to that of the animal sacrifice itself. It also became an oblation, the greatest that could be offered by the tribe to its protector and its judge. And no doubt this was the conscious view taken of the matter by Kelts and Teutons at the time when they appear in history. The human sacrifice was on the same footing as the animal sacrifice, but it was a more binding, a more potent, a more solemn appeal.

In whatever way human sacrifice originated, it was obviously destined, with the advance of civilization, to undergo modification. Not only would the growing moral sense of mankind learn to hold it a dark and terrible thing, but also to go on killing the leading man of the tribe, the king-priest, would have its obvious practical inconveniences. At first, indeed, these would not be great. The king-priest would be little more than a rain-maker, a rex sacrorum, and one man might perform the ceremonial observances as well as another. But as time went on, and the tribe settled down to a comparatively civilized life, the serious functions of its leader would increase. He would become the arbiter of justice, the adviser in debate; above all, when war grew into importance, the captain in battle. And to spare and replace, year by year, the wisest councillor and the bravest warrior would grow into an intolerable burden. Under some such circumstances, one can hardly doubt, a process of substitution set in. Somebody had to die for the king. At first, perhaps, the substitute was an inferior member of the king’s own house, or even an ordinary tribesman, chosen by lot. But the process, once begun, was sure to continue, and presently it was sufficient if a life of little value, that of a prisoner, a slave, a criminal, a stranger within the gates, was sacrificed[445]. The common belief in madness or imbecility as a sign of divine possession may perhaps have contributed to make the village fool or natural seem a particularly suitable victim. But to the very end of Teutonic and Keltic heathenism, the sense that the substitute was, after all, only a substitute can be traced. In times of great stress or danger, indeed, the king might still be called upon to suffer in person[446]. And always a certain pretence that the victim was the king was kept up. Even though a slave or criminal, he was for a few days preceding the sacrifice treated royally. He was a temporary king, was richly dressed and feasted, had a crown set on his head, and was permitted to hold revel with his fellows. The farce was played out in the sight of men and gods[447]. Ultimately, of course, the natural growth of the sanctity of human life in a progressive people, or in an unprogressive people the pressure of outside ideals[448], forbids the sacrifice of a man at all. Perhaps the temporary king is still chosen, and even some symbolic mimicked slaying of him takes place; but actually he does not die. An animal takes his place upon the altar; or more strictly speaking, an animal remains the last victim, as it had been the first, and in myth is regarded as a substitute for the human victim which for a time had shared its fate. Of such a myth the legends of Abraham and Isaac and of Iphigeneia at Aulis are the classical examples.

There is another group of myths for which, although they lack this element of a substituted victim, mythologists find an origin in a reformation of religious sentiment leading to the abolition of human sacrifice. The classical legend of Perseus and Andromeda, the hagiological legend of St. George and the Dragon, the Teutonic legend of Beowulf and Grendel, are only types of innumerable tales in which the hero puts an end to the periodical death of a victim by slaying the monster who has enforced and profited by it[449]. What is such a story but the imaginative statement of the fact that such sacrifices at one time were, and are not? It is, however, noticeable, that in the majority of these stories, although not in all, the dragon or monster slain has his dwelling in water, and this leads to the consideration of yet another sophistication of the primitive notion of sacrifice. According to this notion sacrifice was necessarily bloody; in the shedding of blood and in the sacrament of blood partaken of by the worshippers, lay the whole gist of the rite: a bloodless sacrifice would have no raison d’être. On the other hand, the myths just referred to seem to imply a bloodless sacrifice by drowning, and this notion is confirmed by an occasional bit of ritual, and by the common superstition which represents the spirits of certain lakes and rivers as claiming a periodical victim in the shape of a drowned person[450]. Similarly there are traces of sacrifices, which must have been equally bloodless, by fire. At the Beltane festival, for instance, one member of the party is chosen by lot to be the ‘victim,’ is made to jump over the flames and is spoken of in jest as ‘dead[451].’ Various Roman writers, who apparently draw from the second-century B.C. Greek explorer Posidonius, ascribe to the Druids of Gaul a custom of burning human and other victims at quinquennial feasts in colossal images of hollow wickerwork; and squirrels, cats, snakes and other creatures are frequently burnt in modern festival-fires[452]. The constant practice, indeed, of burning bones in such fires has given them the specific name of bonfires, and it may be taken for granted that the bones are only representatives of more complete victims. I would suggest that such sacrifices by water and fire are really developments of the water-and fire-charms described in the last chapter; and that just as the original notion of sacrifice has been extended to give a new significance to the death of a human being at a religious festival, when the real reason for that death had been forgotten, so it has been still further extended to cover the primitive water-and fire-charms when they too had become meaningless. I mean that at a festival the victims, like the image and the worshippers, were doubtless habitually flung into water or passed through fire as part of the charm; and that, at a time when sacrifice had grown into mere oblation and the shedding of blood was therefore no longer essential, these rites were adapted and given new life as alternative methods of effecting the sacrifice.

It is not surprising that there should be but few direct and evident survivals of sacrifice in English village custom. For at the time of the conversion the rite must have borne the whole brunt of the missionary attack. The other elements of the festivals, the sacred garlands, the water-and fire-charms, had already lost much of their original significance. A judgement predisposed to toleration might plausibly look upon them as custom rather than worship. It was not so with sacrifice. This too had had its history, and in divers ways changed its character. But it was still essentially a liturgy. Oblation or sacrament, it could not possibly be dissociated from a recognition of the divine nature of the power in whose honour it took place. And therefore it must necessarily be renounced, as a condition of acceptance in the Church at all, by the most weak-kneed convert. What happened was precisely that to which Gregory the Great looked forward. The sacrificial banquet, the great chines of flesh, and the beakers of ale, cider, and mead, endured, but the central rite of the old festival, the ceremonial slaying of the animal, vanished. The exceptions, however, are not so rare as might at first sight be thought, and naturally they are of singular interest. It has already been pointed out that in times of stress and trouble, the thinly veneered heathenism of the country folk long tended to break out, and in particular that up to a very late date the primitive need-fire was occasionally revived to meet the exigencies of a cattle-plague. Under precisely similar circumstances, and sometimes in immediate connexion with the need-fire, cattle have been known, even during the present century, to be sacrificed[453]. Nor are such sporadic instances the only ones that can be adduced. Here and there sacrifice, in a more or less modified form, remains an incident in the village festival. The alleged custom of annually sacrificing a sheep on May-day at Andreas in the Isle of Man rests on slight evidence[454]; but there is a fairly well authenticated example in the ‘ram feast’ formerly held on the same day in the village of Holne in Devonshire. A ram was slain at a granite pillar or ancient altar in the village ‘ploy-field,’ and a struggle took place for slices which were supposed to bring luck[455]. Still more degenerate survivals are afforded by the Whitsun feast at King’s Teignton, also in Devonshire[456], and by the Whitsun ‘lamb feast’ at Kidlington[457], the Trinity ‘lamb ale’ at Kirtlington[458], and the ‘Whit hunt’ in Wychwood Forest[459], all three places lying close together in Oxfordshire. These five cases have been carefully recorded and studied; but they do not stand alone; for the folk-calendar affords numerous examples of days which are marked, either universally or locally, by the ceremonial hunting or killing of some wild or domestic animal, or by the consumption of a particular dish which readily betrays its sacrificial origin[460]. The appearance of animals in ecclesiastical processions in St. Paul’s cathedral[461] and at Bury St. Edmunds[462] is especially significant; and it is natural to find an origin for the old English sport of bull-baiting rather in a survival of heathen ritual than in any reminiscence of the Roman amphitheatre[463]. Even where sacrifice itself has vanished, the minor rites which once accompanied it are still perpetuated in the superstitions or the festival customs of the peasantry. The heads and hides of horses or cattle, like the exuviae of the sacrificial victims, are worn or carried in dance, procession or quête[464]. The dead bodies of animals are suspended by shepherds or game-keepers upon tree and barn-door, from immemorial habit or from some vague suspicion of the luck they will bring. Although inquiry will perhaps elicit the fallacious explanation that they are there pour encourager les autres[465]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made to show how widely sacrifice is represented in popular amusements and ludi. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to two personages who figure largely in innumerable village festivals. One is the ‘hobby-horse,’ not yet, though Shakespeare will have it so, ‘forgot[466]’: the other the ‘fool’ or ‘squire,’ a buffoon with a pendent cow’s tail, who is in many places de rigueur in Maying or rushbearing[467]. Both of these grotesques seem to be at bottom nothing but worshippers careering in the skins of sacrificed animals.

The cereal or liquor sacrifice is of less importance. Sugar and water, which may be conjectured to represent mead, is occasionally drunk beside a sacred well, and in one instance, at least, bread and cheese are thrown into the depths. Sometimes also a ploughman carries bread and cheese in his pocket when he goes abroad to cut the first furrow[468]. But the original rite is probably most nearly preserved in the custom of ‘youling’ fruit-trees to secure a good crop. When this is done, at Christmas or Ascension-tide, ale or cider is poured on the roots of the trees, and a cake placed in a fork of the boughs. Here and there a cake is also hung on the horn of an ox in the stall[469]. Doubtless the ‘feasten’ cake, of traditional shape and composition, which pervades the country, is in its origin sacramental[470]. Commonly enough, it represents an animal or human being, and in such cases it may be held, while retaining its own character of a cereal sacrifice, to be also a substitute for the animal or human sacrifice with which it should by rights be associated[471].

An unauthenticated and somewhat incredible story has been brought from Italy to the effect that the mountaineers of the Abruzzi are still in the habit of offering up a human sacrifice in Holy week[472]. In these islands a reminiscence of the observance is preserved in the ‘victim’ of the Beltane festival[473], and a transformation of it in the whipping of lads when the bounds are beaten in the Rogations[474]. Some others, less obvious, will be suggested in the sequel. In any case one ceremony which, as has been seen, grew out of human sacrifice, has proved remarkably enduring. This is the election of the temporary king. Originally chosen out of the lowest of the people for death, and fêted as the equivalent or double of the real king-priest of the community, he has survived the tragic event which gave him birth, and plays a great part as the master of the ceremonies in many a village revel. The English ‘May-king,’ or ‘summer-king,’ or ‘harvest-lord[475],’ or ‘mock-mayor[476],’ is a very familiar personage, and can be even more abundantly paralleled from continental festivals[477]. To the May-king in particular we shall return. But in concluding this chapter it is worth while to point out and account for two variants of the custom under consideration. In many cases, probably in the majority of cases so far as the English May-day is concerned, the king is not a king, but a queen. Often, indeed, the part is played by a lad in woman’s clothes, but this seems only to emphasize the fact that the temporary ruler is traditionally regarded as a female one[478]. It is probable that we have here no modern development, but a primitive element in the agricultural worship. Tacitus records the presence amongst the Germans of a male priest ‘adorned as women use[479],’ while the exchange of garments by the sexes is included amongst festival abuses in the ecclesiastical discipline-books[480]. Occasionally, moreover, the agricultural festivals, like those of the Bona Dea at Rome, are strictly feminine functions, from which all men are excluded[481]. Naturally I regard these facts as supporting my view of the origin of the agricultural worship in a women’s cult, upon which the pastoral cult of the men was afterwards engrafted. And finally, there are cases in which not a king alone nor a queen alone is found, but a king and a queen[482]. This also would be a reasonable outcome of the merging of the two cults. Some districts know the May-queen as the May-bride, and it is possible that a symbolical wedding of a priest and priestess may have been one of the regular rites of the summer festivals. For this there seem to be some parallels in Greek and Roman custom, while the myth which represents the heaven as the fertilizing husband of the fruitful earth is of hoar antiquity amongst the Aryan-speaking peoples. The forces which make for the fertility of the fields were certainly identified in worship with those which make for human fertility. The waters of the sacred well or the blaze of the festival fire help the growth of the crops; they also help women in their desire for a lover and for motherhood. And it may be taken for granted that the summer festivals knew from the beginning that element of sexual licence which fourteen centuries of Christianity have not wholly been able to banish[483].

CHAPTER VII FESTIVAL PLAY

The charms, the prayer, the sacrifice, make up that side of the agricultural festival which may properly be regarded as cult: they do not make up the whole of it. It is natural to ask whether, side by side with the observances of a natural religion, there were any of a more spiritual type; whether the village gods of our Keltic and Teutonic ancestors were approached on festival occasions solely as the givers of the good things of earth, or whether there was also any recognition of the higher character which in time they came to have as the guardians of morality, such as we can trace alike in the ritual of Eleusis and in the tribal mysteries of some existing savage peoples. It is not improbable that this was so; but it may be doubted whether there is much available evidence on the matter, and, in any case, it cannot be gone into here[484]. There is, however, a third element of the village festival which does demand consideration, and that is the element of play. The day of sacrifice was also a day of cessation from the ordinary toil of the fields, a holiday as well as a holy day. Sacred and secular met in the amorous encounters smiled upon by the liberal wood-goddess, and in the sacramental banquet with its collops of flesh and spilth of ale and mead. But the experience of any bank holiday will show that, for those who labour, the suspension of their ordinary avocations does not mean quiescence. When the blood is heated with love and liquor, the nervous energies habitually devoted to wielding the goad and guiding the plough must find vent in new and for the nonce unprofitable activities. But such activities, self-sufficing, and primarily at least serving no end beyond themselves, are, from pushpin to poetry, exactly what is meant by play[485].

The instinct of play found a foothold at the village feast in the débris which ritual, in its gradual transformation, left behind. It has already been noted as a constant feature in the history of institutions that a survival does not always remain merely a survival; it may be its destiny, when it is emptied of its first significance, to be taken up into a different order of ideas, and to receive a new lease of vitality under a fresh interpretation. Sacrifice ceases to be sacrament and becomes oblation. Dipping and smoking customs, originally magical, grow to be regarded as modes of sacrificial death. Other such waifs of the past become the inheritance of play. As the old conception of sacrifice passed into the new one, the subsidiary rites, through which the sacramental influence had of old been distributed over the worshippers and their fields, although by no means disused, lost their primitive meaning. Similarly, when human sacrifice was abolished, that too left traces of itself, only imperfectly intelligible, in mock or symbolical deaths, or in the election of the temporary king. Thus, even before Christianity antiquated the whole structure of the village festivals, there were individual practices kept alive only by the conservatism of tradition, and available as material for the play instinct. These find room in the festivals side by side with other customs which the same instinct not only preserved but initiated. Of course, the antithesis between play and cult must not be pushed too far. The peasant mind is tenacious of acts and forgetful of explanations; and the chapters to come will afford examples of practices which, though they began in play, came in time to have a serious significance of quasi-ritual, and to share in the popular imagination the prestige as fertility charms of the older ceremonies of worship with which they were associated. The ludi to be immediately discussed, however, present themselves in the main as sheer play. Several of them have broken loose from the festivals altogether, or, if they still acknowledge their origin by making a special appearance on some fixed day, are also at the service of ordinary amusement, whenever the leisure or the whim of youth may so suggest.

To begin with, it is possible that athletic sports and horse-racing are largely an outcome of sacrificial festivals. Like the Greeks around the pyre of Patroclus, the Teutons celebrated games at the tombs of their dead chieftains[486]. But games were a feature of seasonal, no less than funeral feasts. It will be remembered that the council of Clovesho took pains to forbid the keeping of the Rogation days with horse-races. A bit of wrestling or a bout of quarter-staff is still de rigueur at many a wake or rushbearing, while in parts of Germany the winner of a race or of a shooting-match at the popinjay is entitled to light the festival fire, or to hold the desired office of May-king[487]. The reforming bishops of the thirteenth century include public wrestling-bouts and contests for prizes amongst the ludi whose performance they condemn; and they lay particular stress upon a custom described as arietum super ligna et rotas elevationes. The object of these ‘ram-raisings’ seems to be explained by the fact that in the days of Chaucer a ram was the traditional reward proposed for a successful wrestler[488]; and this perhaps enables us to push the connexion with the sacrificial rite a little further. I would suggest that the original object of the man who wrestled for a ram, or climbed a greasy pole for a leg of mutton, or shot for a popinjay, was to win a sacrificial victim or a capital portion thereof, which buried in his field might bring him abundant crops. The orderly competition doubtless evolved itself from such an indiscriminate scrimmage for the fertilizing fragments as marks the rites of the earth-goddess in the Indian village feast[489]. Tug-of-war would seem to be capable of a similar explanation, though here the desired object is not a portion of the victim, but rather a straw rope made out of the corn divinity itself in the form of the harvest-May[490]. An even closer analogy with the Indian rite is afforded by such games as hockey and football. The ball is nothing else than the head of the sacrificial beast, and it is the endeavour of each player to get it into his own possession, or, if sides are taken, to get it over a particular boundary[491]. Originally, of course, this was the player’s own boundary; it has come to be regarded as that of his opponents; but this inversion of the point of view is not one on which much stress can be laid. In proof of this theory it may be pointed out that in many places football is still played, traditionally, on certain days of the year. The most notable example is perhaps at Dorking, where the annual Shrove Tuesday scrimmage in the streets of the town and the annual efforts of the local authorities to suppress it furnish their regular paragraph to the newspapers. There are several others, in most of which, as at Dorking, the contest is between two wards or districts of the town[492]. This feature is repeated in the Shrove Tuesday tug-of-war at Ludlow, and in annual faction-fights elsewhere[493]. It is probably due to that συνοικισμός of village communities by which towns often came into being. Here and there, moreover, there are to be found rude forms of football in which the primitive character of the proceeding is far more evident than in the sophisticated game. Two of these deserve especial mention. At Hallaton in Leicestershire a feast is held on Easter Monday at a piece of high ground called Hare-pie Bank. A hare—the sacrificial character of the hare has already been dwelt upon—is carried in procession. ‘Hare-pies’ are scrambled for; and then follows a sport known as ‘bottle-kicking.’ Hooped wooden field-bottles are thrown down and a scrimmage ensues between the men of Hallaton and the men of the adjoining village of Medbourne. Besides the connexion with the hare sacrifice, it is noticeable that each party tries to drive the bottle towards its own boundary, and not that of its opponents[494]. More interesting still is the Epiphany struggle for the ‘Haxey hood’ at Haxey in Lincolnshire. The ‘hood’ is a roll of sacking or leather, and it is the object of each of the players to carry it to a public-house in his own village. The ceremony is connected with the Plough Monday quête, and the ‘plough-bullocks’ or ‘boggons’ led by their ‘lord duke’ and their ‘fool,’ known as ‘Billy Buck,’ are the presiding officials. On the following day a festival-fire is lit, over which the fool is ‘smoked.’ The strongest support is given to my theory of the origin of this type of game, by an extraordinary speech which the fool delivers from the steps of an old cross. As usual, the cross has taken the place of a more primitive tree or shrine. The speech runs as follows: ‘Now, good folks, this is Haxa’ Hood. We’ve killed two bullocks and a half, but the other half we had to leave running field: we can fetch it if it’s wanted. Remember it’s

In this case then, the popular memory has actually preserved the tradition that the ‘hood’ or ball played with is the half of a bullock, the head that is to say, of the victim decapitated at a sacrifice[495].

Hockey and football and tug-of-war are lusty male sports, but the sacrificial survival recurs in some of the singing games played by girls and children. The most interesting of these is that known as ‘Oranges and Lemons.’ An arch is formed by two children with raised hands, and under this the rest of the players pass. Meanwhile rhymes are sung naming the bells of various parishes, and ending with some such formula as

As the last word is sung, the hands forming the arch are lowered, and the child who is then passing is caught, and falls in behind one of the leaders. When all in turn have been so caught, a tug-of-war, only without a rope, follows. The ‘chopping’ obviously suggests a sacrifice, in this case a human sacrifice. And the bell-rhymes show the connexion of the game with the parish contests just described. There exists indeed a precisely similar set of verses which has the title, Song of the Bells of Derby on Football Morning. The set ordinarily used in ‘Oranges and Lemons’ names London parishes, but here is a Northamptonshire variant, which is particularly valuable because it alludes to another rite of the agricultural festival, the sacramental cake buried in a furrow:

Other games of the same type are ‘How many Miles to Babylon,’ ‘Through the Needle Eye,’ and ‘Tower of London.’ These add an important incident to ‘Oranges and Lemons,’ in that a ‘king’ is said to be passing through the arch. On the other hand, some of them omit the tug-of-war[497]. With all these singing games it is a little difficult to say whether they proceed from children’s imitations of the more serious proceedings pf their elders, or whether they were originally played at the festivals by grown men and maidens, and have gradually, like the May quête itself, fallen into the children’s hands. The ‘Oranges and Lemons’ group has its analogy to the tug-of-war; the use of the arch formation also connects it with the festival ‘country’ dances which will be mentioned in the next chapter.

The rude punishments by which the far from rigid code of village ethics vindicates itself against offenders, are on the border line between play and jurisprudence. These also appear to be in some cases survivals, diverted from their proper context, of festival usage. It has been pointed out that the ducking which was a form of rain-charm came to be used as a penalty for the churlish or dispirited person, who declined to throw up his work or to wear green on the festival day. In other places this same person has to ‘ride the stang.’ That is to say, he is set astride a pole and borne about with contumely, until he compounds for his misdemeanour by a fine in coin or liquor[498]. ‘Riding the stang,’ however, is a rural punishment of somewhat wide application[499]. It is common to England and to France, where it can be traced back, under the names of charivari and chevauchée, to the fifteenth century[500]. The French sociétés joyeuses, which will be described in a later chapter, made liberal use of it[501]. The offences to which it is appropriate are various. A miser, a henpecked husband or a wife-beater, especially in May, and, on the other hand, a shrew or an unchaste woman, are liable to visitation, as are the parties to a second or third marriage, or to one perilously long delayed, or one linking May to December. The precise ceremonial varies considerably. Sometimes the victim has to ride on a pole, sometimes on a hobby-horse[502], or on an ass with his face turned to the tail[503]. Sometimes, again, he does not appear at all, but is represented by an effigy or guy, or, in France, by his next-door neighbour[504]. This dramatic version is, according to Mr. Barrett, properly called a ‘skimmington riding,’ while the term ‘riding the stang’ is reserved for that in which the offender figures in person. The din of kettles, bones, and cleavers, so frequent an element in rustic ceremonies, is found here also, and in one locality at least the attendants are accustomed to blacken their faces[505]. It may perhaps be taken for granted that ‘riding the stang’ is an earlier form of the punishment than the more delicate and symbolical ‘skimmington riding’; and it is probable that the rider represents a primitive village criminal haled off to become the literal victim at a sacrificial rite. The fine or forfeit by which in some cases the offence can be purged seems to create an analogy between the custom under consideration and other sacrificial survivals which must now be considered. These are perhaps best treated in connexion with Hock-tide and the curious play proper to that festival at Coventry[506]. This play was revived for the entertainment of Elizabeth when she visited the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in July, 1575, and there exists a description of it in a letter written by one Robert Laneham, who accompanied the court, to a friend in London[507]. The men of Coventry, led by one Captain Cox, who presented it called it an ‘olld storiall sheaw,’ with for argument the massacre of the Danes by Ethelred on Saint Brice’s night 1002[508]. Laneham says that it was ‘expressed in actionz and rymez,’ and it appears from his account to have been a kind of sham fight or ‘barriers’ between two parties representing respectively Danish ‘launsknights’ and English, ‘each with allder poll marcially in their hand[509].’ In the end the Danes were defeated and ‘many led captiue for triumph by our English wéemen.’ The presenters also stated that the play was of ‘an auncient beginning’ and ‘woont too bee plaid in oour Citee yeárely.’ Of late, however, it had been ‘laid dooun,’ owing to the importunity of their preachers, and ‘they woold make theyr humbl peticion vntoo her highnes, that they myght haue theyr playz vp agayn.’ The records of Coventry itself add but little to what Laneham gathered. The local Annals, not a very trustworthy chronicle, ascribe the invention of ‘Hox Tuesday’ to 1416-7, and perhaps confirm the Letter by noting that in 1575-6 the ‘pageants on Hox Tuesday’ were played after eight years[510]. We have seen that, according to the statement made at Kenilworth, the event commemorated by the performance was the Danish massacre of 1002. There was, however, another tradition, preserved by the fifteenth-century writer John Rous, which connected it rather with the sudden death of Hardicanute and the end of the Danish usurpation at the accession of Edward the Confessor[511]. It is, of course, possible that local cantilenae on either or both of these events may have existed, and may have been worked into the ‘rymez’ of the play. But I think it may be taken for granted that, as in the Lady Godiva procession, the historical element is comparatively a late one, which has been grafted upon already existing festival customs. One of these is perhaps the faction-fight just discussed. But it is to be noticed that the performance as described by Laneham ended with the Danes being led away captive by English women; and this episode seems to be clearly a dramatization of a characteristic Hock-tide ludus found in many places other than Coventry. On Hock-Monday, the women ‘hocked’ the men; that is to say, they went abroad with ropes, caught and bound any man they came across, and exacted a forfeit. On Hock-Tuesday, the men retaliated in similar fashion upon the women. Bishop Carpenter of Worcester forbade this practice in his diocese in 1450[512], but like some other festival customs it came to be recognized as a source of parochial revenue, and the ‘gaderyngs’ at Hock-tide, of which the women’s was always the most productive, figure in many a churchwarden’s budget well into the seventeenth century[513]. At Shrewsbury in 1549 ‘hocking’ led to a tragedy. Two men were ‘smothered under the Castle hill,’ hiding themselves from maids, the hill falling there on them[514].’ ‘Hockney day’ is still kept at Hungerford, and amongst the old-fashioned officers elected on this occasion, with the hay-ward and the ale-tasters, are the two ‘tything men’ or ‘tutti men,’ somewhat doubtfully said to be so named from their poles wreathed with ‘tutties’ or nose-gays, whose function it is to visit the commoners, and to claim from every man a coin and from every woman a kiss[515]. The derivation of the term Hock-tide has given rise to some wild conjectures, and philologists have failed to come to a conclusion on the subject[516]. Hock-tide is properly the Monday and Tuesday following the Second Sunday after Easter, and ‘Hokedaie’ or Quindena Paschae is a frequent term day in leases and other legal documents from the thirteenth century onwards[517].

‘Hocking’ can be closely paralleled from other customs of the spring festivals. The household books of Edward I record in 1290 a payment ‘to seven ladies of the queen’s chamber who took the king in bed on the morrow of Easter, and made him fine himself[518].’ This was the prisio which at a later date perturbed the peace of French ecclesiastics. The council of Nantes, for instance, in 1431, complains that clergy were hurried out of their beds on Easter Monday, dragged into church, and sprinkled with water upon the altar[519]. In this aggravated form the prisio hardly survived the frank manners of the Middle Ages. But it was essentially identical with the ceremonies in which a more modern usage has permitted the levying of forfeits at both Pasque and Pentecost. In the north of England, women were liable to have their shoes taken on one or other of these feasts, and must redeem them by payment. On the following day they were entitled to retaliate on the shoes of the men[520]. A more widely spread method of exacting the droit is that of ‘heaving.’ The unwary wanderer in some of the northern manufacturing towns on Easter Monday is still liable to find himself swung high in the air by the stalwart hands of factory girls, and will be lucky if he can purchase his liberty with nothing more costly than a kiss. If he likes, he may take his revenge on Easter Tuesday[521]. Another mediaeval custom described by Belethus in the twelfth century, which prescribed the whipping of husbands by wives on Easter Monday and of wives by husbands on Easter Tuesday, has also its modern parallel[522]. On Shrove Tuesday a hockey match was played at Leicester, and after it a number of young men took their stand with cart whips in the precincts of the Castle. Any passer-by who did not pay a forfeit was liable to lashes. The ‘whipping Toms,’ as they were called, were put down by a special Act of Parliament in 1847[523]. The analogy of these customs with the requirement made of visitors to certain markets or to the roofs of houses in the building to ‘pay their footing’ is obvious[524].

In all these cases, even where the significant whipping or sprinkling is absent, the meaning is the same. The binding with ropes, the loss of the shoes, the lifting in the air, are symbols of capture. And the capture is for the purposes of sacrifice, for which no more suitable victim, in substitution for the priest-king, than a stranger, could be found. This will, I think, be clear by comparison with some further parallels from the harvest field and the threshing-floor, in more than one of which the symbolism is such as actually to indicate the sacrifice itself, as well as the preliminary capture. In many parts of England a stranger, and sometimes even the farmer himself, when visiting a harvest field, is liable to be asked for ‘largess’[525]. In Scotland, the tribute is called ‘head-money,’ and he who refuses is seized by the arms and feet and ‘dumped’ on the ground[526]. Similar customs prevail on the continent, in Germany, Norway, France; and the stranger is often, just as in the ‘hocking’ ceremony, caught with straw ropes, or swathed in a sheaf of corn. It is mainly in Germany that the still more elaborate rites survive. In various districts of Mecklenburg, and of Pomerania, the reapers form a ring round the stranger, and fiercely whet their scythes, sometimes with traditional rhymes which contain a threat to mow him down. In Schleswig, and again in Sweden, the stranger in a threshing-floor is ‘taught the flail-dance’ or ‘the threshing-song.’ The arms of a flail are put round his neck and pressed so tightly that he is nearly choked. When the madder-roots are being dug, a stranger passing the field is caught by the workers, and buried up to his middle in the soil[527].

The central incident of ‘hocking’ appears therefore to be nothing but a form of that symbolical capture of a human victim of which various other examples are afforded by the village festivals. The development of the custom into a play or mock-fight at Coventry may very well have taken place, as the town annals say, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. Whether it had previously been connected by local tradition with some event in the struggles of Danes and Saxons or not, is a question which one must be content to leave unsolved. A final word is due to the curious arrangement by which in the group of customs here considered the rôles of sacrificers and sacrificed are exchanged between men and women on the second day; for it lends support to the theory already put forward that a certain stage in the evolution of the village worship was marked by the merging of previously independent sex-cults.

CHAPTER VIII THE MAY-GAME

The foregoing chapter has illustrated the remarkable variety of modes in which the instinct of play comes to find expression. But of all such the simplest and most primitive is undoubtedly the dance. Psychology discovers in the dance the most rudimentary and physical of the arts, and traces it to precisely that overflow of nervous energies shut off from their normal practical ends which constitutes play[528]. And the verdict of psychology is confirmed by philology; for in all the Germanic languages the same word signifies both ‘dance’ and ‘play,’ and in some of them it is even extended to the cognate ideas of ‘sacrifice’ or ‘festival[529]’. The dance must therefore be thought of as an essential part of all the festivals with which we have to deal. And with the dance comes song: the rhythms of motion seem to have been invariably accompanied by the rhythms of musical instruments, or of the voice, or of both combined[530].

The dance had been from the beginning a subject of contention between Christianity and the Roman world[531]; but whereas the dances of the East and South, so obnoxious to the early Fathers, were mainly those of professional entertainers, upon the stage or at banquets, the missionaries of the West had to face the even more difficult problem of a folk-dance and folk-song which were amongst the most inveterate habits of the freshly converted peoples. As the old worship vanished, these tended to attach themselves to the new. Upon great feasts and wake-days, choruses of women invaded with wanton cantica and ballationes the precincts of the churches and even the sacred buildings themselves, a desecration against which generation after generation of ecclesiastical authorities was fain to protest[532]. Clerkly sentiment in the matter is represented by a pious legend, very popular in the Middle Ages, which told how some reprobate folk of Kölbigk in Anhalt disobeyed the command of a priest to cease their unholy revels before the church of Saint Magnus while he said mass on Christmas day, and for their punishment must dance there the year round without stopping[533]. The struggle was a long one, and in the end the Church never quite succeeded even in expelling the dance from its own doors. The chapter of Wells about 1338 forbade choreae and other ludi within the cathedral and the cloisters, chiefly on account of the damage too often done to its property[534]. A seventeenth-century French writer records that he had seen clergy and singing-boys dancing at Easter in the churches of Paris[535]; and even at the present day there are some astounding survivals. At Seville, as is well known, the six boys, called los Seises, dance with castanets before the Holy Sacrament in the presence of the archbishop at Shrovetide, and during the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Corpus Christi[536]. At Echternach in Luxembourg there is an annual dance through the church of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Willibrord[537], while at Barjols in Provence a ‘tripe-dance’ is danced at mass on St. Marcel’s day in honour of the patron[538].

Still less, of course, did dance and song cease to be important features of the secular side of the festivals. We have already seen how cantilenae on the great deeds of heroes had their vogue in the mouths of the chori of young men and maidens, as well as in those of the minstrels[539]. The Carmina Burana describe the dances of girls upon the meadows as amongst the pleasures of spring[540]. William Fitzstephen tells us that such dances were to be seen in London in the twelfth century[541], and we have found the University of Oxford solemnly forbidding them in the thirteenth. The romans and pastourelles frequently mention chansons or rondets de carole, which appear to have been the chansons used to accompany the choric dances, and to have generally consisted of a series of couplets sung by the leader, and a refrain with which the rest of the band answered him. Occasionally the refrains are quoted[542]. The minstrels borrowed this type of folk chanson, and the conjoint dance and song themselves found their way from the village green to the courtly hall. In the twelfth century ladies carolent, and more rarely even men condescend to take a part[543]. Still later carole, like tripudium, seems to become a term for popular rejoicing in general, not necessarily expressed in rhythmical shape[544].

The customs of the village festival gave rise by natural development to two types of dance[545]. There was the processional dance of the band of worshippers in progress round their boundaries and from field to field, from house to house, from well to well of the village. It is this that survives in the dance of the Echternach pilgrims, or in the ‘faddy-dance’ in and out the cottage doors at Helston wake. And it is probably this that is at the bottom of the interesting game of ‘Thread the Needle.’ This is something like ‘Oranges and Lemons,’ the first part of which, indeed, seems to have been adapted from it. There is, however, no sacrifice or ‘tug-of-war,’ although there is sometimes a ‘king,’ or a ‘king’ and his ‘lady’ or ‘bride’ in the accompanying rhymes, and in one instance a ‘pancake.’ The players stand in two long lines. Those at the end of each line form an arch with uplifted arms, and the rest run in pairs beneath it. Then another pair form an arch, and the process is repeated. In this way long strings of lads and lasses stream up and down the streets or round and about a meadow or green. In many parts of England this game is played annually on Shrove Tuesday or Easter Monday, and the peasants who play it at Châtre in central France say that it is done ‘to make the hemp grow.’ Its origin in connexion with the agricultural festivals can therefore hardly be doubtful[546]. It is probable that in the beginning the players danced rather than ran under the ‘arch’; and it is obvious that the ‘figure’ of the game is practically identical with one familiar in Sir Roger de Coverley and other old English ‘country’ dances of the same type.

Just as the ‘country’ dance is derived from the processional dance, so the other type of folk-dance, the ronde or ‘round,’ is derived from the comparatively stationary dance of the group of worshippers around the more especially sacred objects of the festival, such as the tree or the fire[547]. The custom of dancing round the May-pole has been more or less preserved wherever the May-pole is known. But ‘Thread the Needle’ itself often winds up with a circular dance or ronde, either around one of the players, or, on festival occasions, around the representative of the earlier home of the fertilization divinity, the parish church. This custom is popularly known as ‘clipping the church[548].’

Naturally the worshippers at a festival would dance in their festival costume; that is to say, in the garb of leaves and flowers worn for the sake of the beneficent influence of the indwelling divinity, or in the hides and horns of sacrificial animals which served a similar purpose. Travellers describe elaborate and beautiful beast-dances amongst savage peoples, and the Greeks had their own bear-and crane-dances, as well as the dithyrambic goat-dance of the Dionysia. They had also flower dances[549]. In England the village dancers wear posies, but I do not know that they ever attempt a more elaborate representation of flowers. But a good example of the beast-dance is furnished by the ‘horn-dance’ at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, held now at a September wake, and formerly at Christmas. In this six of the performers wear sets of horns. These are preserved from year to year in the church, and according to local tradition the dance used at one time to take place in the churchyard on a Sunday. The horns are said to be those of the reindeer, and from this it may possibly be inferred that they were brought to Abbots Bromley by Scandinavian settlers. The remaining performers represent a hobby-horse, a clown, a woman, and an archer, who makes believe to shoot the horned men[550].

The motifs of the dances and their chansons must also at first have been determined by the nature of the festivals at which they took place. There were dances, no doubt, at such domestic festivals as weddings and funerals[551]. In Flanders it is still the custom to dance at the funeral of a young girl, and a very charming chanson is used[552]. The development of epic poetry from the cantilenae of the war-festival has been noted in a former chapter. At the agricultural festivals, the primary motif is, of course, the desire for the fertility of the crops and herds. The song becomes, as in the Anglo-Saxon charm, so often referred to, practically a prayer[553]. With this, and with the use of ‘Thread the Needle’ at Châtre ‘to make the hemp grow,’ may be compared the games known to modern children, as to Gargantua, in which the operations of the farmer’s year, and in particular his prayer for his crops, are mimicked in a ronde[554]. Allusions to the process of the seasons, above all to the delight of the renouveau in spring, would naturally also find a place in the festival songs. The words of the famous thirteenth-century lyric were perhaps written to be sung to the twinkling feet of English girls in a round. It has the necessary refrain:

The savour of the spring is still in the English May songs, the French maierolles or calendes de mai and the Italian calen di maggio. But for the rest they have either become little but mere quête songs, or else, under the influence of the priests, have taken on a Christian colouring[556]. At Oxford the ‘merry ketches’ sung by choristers on the top of Magdalen tower on May morning were replaced in the seventeenth century by the hymn now used[557]. Another very popular Mayers’ song would seem to show that the Puritans, in despair of abolishing the festival, tried to reform it.

Another religious element, besides prayer, may have entered into the pre-Christian festival songs; and that is myth. A stage in the evolution of drama from the Dionysiac dithyramb was the introduction of mythical narratives about the wanderings and victories of the god, to be chanted or recited by the choragus. The relation of the choragus to the chorus bears a close analogy to that between the leader of the mediaeval carole and his companions who sang the refrain. This leader probably represents the Keltic or Teutonic priest at the head of his band of worshippers; and one may suspect that in the north and west of Europe, as in Greece, the pauses of the festival dance provided the occasion on which the earliest strata of stories about the gods, the hieratic as distinguished from the literary myths, took shape. If so the development of divine myth was very closely parallel to that of heroic myth[559].

After religion, the commonest motif of dance and song at the village festivals must have been love. This is quite in keeping with the amorous licence which was one of their characteristics. The goddess of the fertility of earth was also the goddess of the fertility of women. The ecclesiastical prohibitions lay particular stress upon the orationes amatoriae and the cantica turpia et luxuriosa which the women sang at the church doors, and only as love-songs can be interpreted the winileodi forbidden to the inmates of convents by a capitulary of 789[560]. The love-interest continues to be prominent in the folk-song, or the minstrel song still in close relation to folk-song, of mediaeval and modern France. The beautiful wooing chanson of Transformations, which savants have found it difficult to believe not to be a supercherie, is sung by harvesters and by lace-makers at the pillow[561]. That of Marion, an ironic expression of wifely submission, belongs to Shrove Tuesday[562]. These are modern, but the following, from the Chansonnier de St. Germain, may be a genuine mediaeval folk-song of Limousin provenance:

The ‘queen’ here is, of course, the festival queen or lady of the May, the regina avrillosa of the Latin writers, la reine, la mariée, l’épousée, la trimousette of popular custom[564]. The defiance of the jelos, and the desire of the queen and her maidens to dance alone, recall the conventional freedom of women from restraint in May, the month of their ancient sex-festival, and the month in which the mediaeval wife-beater still ran notable danger of a chevauchée.

The amorous note recurs in those types of minstrel song which are most directly founded upon folk models. Such are the chansons à danser with their refrains, the chansons de mal mariées, in which the ‘jalous’ is often introduced, the aubes and the pastourelles[565]. Common in all of these is the spring setting proper to the chansons of our festivals, and of the ‘queen’ or ‘king’ there is from time to time mention. The leading theme of the pastourelles is the wooing, successful or the reverse, of a shepherdess by a knight. But the shepherdess has generally also a lover of her own degree, and for this pair the names of Robin and Marion seem to have been conventionally appropriated. Robin was perhaps borrowed by the pastourelles from the widely spread refrain

The borrowing may, of course, have been the other way round, but the close relation of the chanson à danser with its refrain to the dance suggests that this was the earliest type of lyric minstrelsy to be evolved, as well as the closest to the folk-song pattern. The pastourelle forms a link between folk-song and drama, for towards the end of the thirteenth century Adan de la Hale, known as ‘le Bossu,’ a minstrel of Arras, wrote a Jeu de Robin et Marion, which is practically a pastourelle par personnages. The familiar theme is preserved. A knight woos Marion, who is faithful to her Robin. Repulsed, he rides away, but returns and beats Robin. All, however, ends happily with dances and jeux amongst the peasants. Adan de la Hale was one of the train of Count Robert of Artois in Italy. The play may originally have been written about 1283 for the delectation of the court of Robert’s kinsman, Charles, king of Naples, but the extant version was probably produced about 1290 at Arras, when the poet was already dead. Another hand has prefixed a dramatic prologue, the Jeu du Pèlerin, glorifying Adan, and has also made some interpolations in the text designed to localize the action near Arras. The performers are not likely to have been villagers: they may have been the members of some puy or literary society, which had taken over the celebration of the summer festival. In any case the Jeu de Robin et Marion is the earliest and not the least charming of pastoral comedies[567].

It is impossible exactly to parallel from the history of English literature this interaction of folk-song and minstrelsy at the French fête du mai. For unfortunately no body of English mediaeval lyric exists. Even ‘Sumer is icumen in’ only owes its preservation to the happy accident which led some priest to fit sacred words to the secular tune; while the few pieces recovered from a Harleian manuscript of the reign of Edward I, beautiful as they are, read like adaptations less of English folk-song, than of French lyric itself[568]. Nevertheless, the village summer festival of England seems to have closely resembled that of France, and to have likewise taken in the long run a dramatic turn. A short sketch of it will not be without interest.

I have quoted at the beginning of this discussion of folk-customs the thirteenth-century condemnations of the Inductio Maii by Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln and of the ludi de Rege et Regina by Bishop Chanteloup of Worcester. The ludus de Rege et Regina is not indeed necessarily to be identified with the Inductio Maii, for the harvest feast or Inductio Autumni of Bishop Grosseteste had also its ‘king’ and ‘queen,’ and so too had some of the feasts in the winter cycle, notably Twelfth night[569]. It is, however, in the summer feast held usually on the first of May or at Whitsuntide[570], that these rustic dignitaries are more particularly prominent. Before the middle of the fifteenth century I have not come across many notices of them. That a summer king was familiar in Scotland is implied by the jest of Robert Bruce’s wife after his coronation at Scone in 1306[571]. In 1412 a ‘somerkyng’ received a reward from the bursar of Winchester College[572]. But from about 1450 onwards they begin to appear frequently in local records. The whole ludus is generally known as a ‘May-play’ or ‘May-game,’ or as a ‘king-play[573],’ ‘king’s revel[574],’ or ‘king-game[575].’ The leading personages are indifferently the ‘king’ and ‘queen,’ or ‘lord’ and ‘lady.’ But sometimes the king is more specifically the ‘somerkyng’ or rex aestivalis. At other times he is the ‘lord of misrule[576],’ or takes a local title, such as that of the ‘Abbot of Marham,’ ‘Mardall,’ ‘Marrall,’ ‘Marram,’ ‘Mayvole’ or ‘Mayvoll’ at Shrewsbury[577], and the ‘Abbot of Bon-Accord’ at Aberdeen[578]. The use of an ecclesiastical term will be explained in a later chapter[579]. The queen appears to have been sometimes known as a ‘whitepot’ queen[580]. And finally the king and queen receive, in many widely separated places, the names of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and are accompanied in their revels by Little John, Friar Tuck, and the whole joyous fellowship of Sherwood Forest[581]. This affiliation of the ludus de Rege et Regina to the Robin Hood legend is so curious as to deserve a moment’s examination[582].

The earliest recorded mention of Robin Hood is in Langland’s Piers Plowman, written about 1377. Here he is coupled with another great popular hero of the north as a subject of current songs:

In the following century his fame as a great outlaw spread far and wide, especially in the north and the midlands[584]. The Scottish chronicler Bower tells us in 1447 that whether for comedy or tragedy no other subject of romance and minstrelsy had such a hold upon the common folk[585]. The first of the extant ballads of the cycle, A Gest of Robyn Hode, was probably printed before 1500, and in composition may be at least a century earlier. A recent investigator of the legend, and a very able one, denies to Robin Hood any traceable historic origin. He is, says Dr. Child, ‘absolutely a creation of the ballad muse.’ However this may be, the version of the Elizabethan playwright Anthony Munday, who made him an earl of Huntingdon and the lover of Matilda the daughter of Lord Fitzwater, may be taken as merely a fabrication. And whether he is historical or not, it is difficult to see how he got, as by the sixteenth century he did get, into the May-game. One theory is that he was there from the beginning, and that he is in fact a mythological figure, whose name but faintly disguises either Woden in the aspect of a vegetation deity[586], or a minor wood-spirit Hode, who also survives in the Hodeken of German legend[587]. Against this it may be pointed out, firstly that Hood is not an uncommon English name, probably meaning nothing but ‘à-Wood’ or ‘of the wood[588],’ and secondly that we have seen no reason to suppose that the mock king, which is the part assigned to Robin Hood in the May-game, was ever regarded as an incarnation of the fertilization spirit at all. He is the priest of that spirit, slain at its festival, but nothing more. I venture to offer a more plausible explanation. It is noticeable that whereas in the May-game Robin Hood and Maid Marian are inseparable, in the early ballads Maid Marian has no part. She is barely mentioned in one or two of the latest ones[589]. Moreover Marian is not an English but a French name, and we have already seen that Robin and Marion are the typical shepherd and shepherdess of the French pastourelles and of Adan de la Hale’s dramatic jeu founded upon these. I suggest then, that the names were introduced by the minstrels into English and transferred from the French fêtes du mai to the ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ of the corresponding English May-game. Robin Hood grew up independently from heroic cantilenae, but owing to the similarity of name he was identified with the other Robin, and brought Little John, Friar Tuck and the rest with him into the May-game. On the other hand Maid Marian, who does not properly belong to the heroic legend, was in turn, naturally enough, adopted into the later ballads. This is an hypothesis, but not, I think, an unlikely hypothesis.

Of what, then, did the May-game, as it took shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, consist? Primarily, no doubt, of a quête or ‘gaderyng.’ In many places this became a parochial, or even a municipal, affair. In 1498 the corporation of Wells possessed moneys ‘provenientes ante hoc tempus de Robynhode[590].’ Elsewhere the churchwardens paid the expenses of the feast and accounted for the receipts in the annual parish budget[591]. There are many entries concerning the May-game in the accounts of Kingston-on-Thames during some half a century. In 1506 it is recorded that ‘Wylm. Kempe’ was ‘kenge’ and ‘Joan Whytebrede’ was ‘quen.’ In 1513 and again in 1536 the game went to Croydon[592]. Similarly the accounts of New Romney note that in 1422 or thereabouts the men of Lydd ‘came with their may and ours[593],’ and those of Reading St. Lawrence that in 1505 came ‘Robyn Hod of Handley and his company’ and in 1507 ‘Robyn Hod and his company from ffynchamsted[594].’ In contemporary Scotland James IV gave a present at midsummer in 1503 ‘to Robin Hude of Perth[595].’ It would hardly have been worth while, however, to carry the May-game from one village or town to another, had it been nothing but a procession with a garland and a ‘gaderyng’; and as a matter of fact we find that in England as in France dramatic performances came to be associated with the summer folk-festivals. The London ‘Maying’ included stage plays[596]. At Shrewsbury lusores under the Abbot of Marham acted interludes ‘for the glee of the town’ at Pentecost[597]. The guild of St. Luke at Norwich performed secular as well as miracle plays, and the guild of Holy Cross at Abingdon held its feast on May 3 with ‘pageants, plays and May-games,’ as early as 1445[598]. Some of these plays were doubtless miracles, but so far as they were secular, the subjects of them were naturally drawn, in the absence of pastourelles, from the ballads of the Robin Hood cycle[599]. Amongst the Paston letters is preserved one written in 1473, in which the writer laments the loss of a servant, whom he has kept ‘thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham[600].’ Moreover, some specimens of the plays themselves are still extant. One of them, unfortunately only a fragment, must be the very play referred to in the letter just quoted, for its subject is ‘Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham,’ and it is found on a scrap of paper formerly in the possession of Sir John Fenn, the first editor of the Paston Letters[601]. A second play on ‘Robin Hood and the Friar’ and a fragment of a third on ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’ were printed by Copland in the edition of the Gest of Robyn Hode published by him about 1550[602]. The Robin Hood plays are, of course, subsequent to the development of religious drama which will be discussed in the next volume. They are of the nature of interludes, and were doubtless written, like the plays of Adan de la Hale, by some clerk or minstrel for the delectation of the villagers. They are, therefore, in a less degree folk-drama, than the examples which we shall have to consider in the next chapter. But it is worthy of notice, that even in the hey-day of the stage under Elizabeth and James I, the summer festival continued to supply motives to the dramatists. Anthony Munday’s Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon[603], Chapman’s May-Day, and Jonson’s delightful fragment The Sad Shepherd form an interesting group of pastoral comedies, affinities to which may be traced in the As You Like It and Winter’s Tale of Shakespeare himself.

As has been said, it is impossible to establish any direct affiliation between the Robin Hood plays and earlier caroles on the same theme, in the way in which this can be done for the jeu of Adan de la Hale, and the Robin and Marion of the pastourelles. The extant Robin Hood ballads are certainly not caroles; they are probably not folk-song at all, but minstrelsy of a somewhat debased type. The only actual trace of such caroles that has been come across is the mention of ‘Robene hude’ as the name of a dance in the Complaynt of Scotland about 1548[604]. Dances, however, of one kind or another, there undoubtedly were at the May-games. The Wells corporation accounts mention puellae tripudiantes in close relation with Robynhode[605]. And particularly there was the morris-dance, which was so universally in use on May-day, that it borrowed, almost in permanence, for its leading character the name of Maid Marian. The morris-dance, however, is common to nearly all the village feasts, and its origin and nature will be matter for discussion in the next chapter.

In many places, even during the Middle Ages, and still more afterwards, the summer feast dropped out or degenerated. It became a mere beer-swilling, an ‘ale[606].’ And so we find in the sixteenth century a ‘king-ale[607]’ or a ‘Robin Hood’s ale[608],’ and in modern times a ‘Whitsun-ale[609],’ a ‘lamb-ale[610]’ or a ‘gyst-ale[611]’ beside the ‘church-ales’ and ‘scot-ales’ which the thirteenth-century bishops had already condemned[612]. On the other hand, the village festival found its way to court, and became a sumptuous pageant under the splendour-loving Tudors. For this, indeed, there was Arthurian precedent in the romance of Malory, who records how Guenever was taken by Sir Meliagraunce, when ‘as the queen had mayed and all her knights, all were bedashed with herbs, mosses, and flowers, in the best manner and freshest[613].’ The chronicler Hall tells of the Mayings of Henry VIII in 1510, 1511, and 1515. In the last of these some hundred and thirty persons took part. Henry was entertained by Robin Hood and the rest with shooting-matches and a collation of venison in a bower; and returning was met by a chariot in which rode the Lady May and the Lady Flora, while on the five horses sat the Ladies Humidity, Vert, Vegetave, Pleasaunce and Sweet Odour[614]. Obviously the pastime has here degenerated in another direction. It has become learned, allegorical, and pseudo-classic. At the Reformation the May-game and the May-pole were marks for Puritan onslaught. Latimer, in one of his sermons before Edward VI, complains how, when he had intended to preach in a certain country town on his way to London, he was told that he could not be heard, for ‘it is Robyn hoodes daye. The parishe are gone a brode to gather for Robyn hoode[615].’ Machyn’s Diary mentions the breaking of a May-pole in Fenchurch by the lord mayor of 1552[616], and the revival of elaborate and heterogeneous May-games throughout London during the brief span of Queen Mary[617]. The Elizabethan Puritans renewed the attack, but though something may have been done by reforming municipalities here and there to put down the festivals[618], the ecclesiastical authorities could not be induced to go much beyond forbidding them to take place in churchyards[619]. William Stafford, indeed, declared in 1581 that ‘May-games, wakes, and revels’ were ‘now laid down[620],’ but the violent abuse directed against them only two years later by Philip Stubbes, which may be taken as a fair sample of the Puritan polemic as a whole, shows that this was far from being really the case[621]. In Scotland the Parliament ordered, as early as 1555, that no one ‘be chosen Robert Hude, nor Lytill Johne, Abbot of vnressoun, Quenis of Maij, nor vtherwyse, nouther in Burgh nor to landwart in ony tyme to cum[622].’ But the prohibition was not very effective, for in 1577 and 1578 the General Assembly is found petitioning for its renewal[623]. And in England no similar action was taken until 1644 when the Long Parliament decreed the destruction of such May-poles as the municipalities had spared. Naturally this policy was reversed at the Restoration, and a new London pole was erected in the Strand, hard by Somerset House, which endured until 1717[624].

CHAPTER IX THE SWORD-DANCE

The last two chapters have afforded more than one example of village festival customs ultimately taking shape as drama. But neither the English Robin Hood plays, nor the French Jeu de Robin et Marion, can be regarded as folk-drama in the proper sense of the word. They were written not by the folk themselves, but by trouvères or minstrels for the folk; and at a period when the independent evolution of the religious play had already set a model of dramatic composition. Probably the same is true of the Hox Tuesday play in the form in which we may conjecture it to have been presented before Elizabeth late in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless it is possible to trace, apart from minstrel intervention and apart from imitation of miracles, the existence of certain embryonic dramatic tendencies in the village ceremonies themselves. Too much must not be made of these. Jacob Grimm was inclined to find in them the first vague beginnings of the whole of modern drama[625]. This is demonstrably wrong. Modern drama arose, by a fairly well defined line of evolution, from a threefold source, the ecclesiastical liturgy, the farce of the mimes, the classical revivals of humanism. Folk-drama contributed but the tiniest rill to the mighty stream. Such as it was, however, a couple of further chapters may be not unprofitably spent in its analysis.

The festival customs include a number of dramatic rites which appear to have been originally symbolical expressions of the facts of seasonal recurrence lying at the root of the festivals themselves. The antithesis of winter and summer, the renouveau of spring, are mimed in three or four distinct fashions. The first and the most important, as well as the most widespread of these, is the mock representation of a death or burial. Dr. Frazer has collected many instances of the ceremony known as the ‘expulsion of Death[626].’ This takes place at various dates in spring and early summer, but most often on the fourth Sunday in Lent, one of the many names of which is consequently Todten-Sonntag. An effigy is made, generally of straw, but in some cases of birch twigs, a beechen bough, or other such material. This is called Death, is treated with marks of fear, hatred or contempt, and is finally carried in procession, and thrust over the boundary of the village. Or it is torn in pieces, buried, burnt, or thrown into a river or pool. Sometimes the health or other welfare of the folk during the year is held to depend on the rite being duly performed. The fragments of Death have fertilizing efficacy for women and cattle; they are put in the fields, the mangers, the hens’ nests. Here and there women alone take part in the ceremony, but more often it is common to the whole village. The expulsion of Death is found in various parts of Teutonic Germany, but especially in districts such as Thuringia, Bohemia, Silesia, where the population is wholly or mainly Slavonic. A similar custom, known both in Slavonic districts and in Italy, France, and Spain, had the name of ‘sawing the old woman.’ At Florence, for instance, the effigy of an old woman was placed on a ladder. At Mid Lent it was sawn through, and the nuts and dried fruits with which it was stuffed scrambled for by the crowd. At Palermo there was a still more realistic representation with a real old woman, to whose neck a bladder of blood was fitted[627].

The ‘Death’ of the German and Slavonic form of the custom has clearly come to be regarded as the personification of the forces of evil within the village; and the ceremony of expulsion may be compared with other periodical rites, European and non-European, in which evil spirits are similarly expelled[628]. The effigy may even be regarded in the light of a scapegoat, bearing away the sins of the community[629]. But it is doubtful how far the notion of evil spirits warring against the good spirits which protect man and his crops is a European, or at any rate a primitive European one[630]; and it may perhaps be taken for granted that what was originally thought to be expelled in the rite was not so much either ‘Death’ or ‘Sin’ as winter. This view is confirmed by the evidence of an eighth-century homily, which speaks of the expulsion of winter in February as a relic of pagan belief[631]. Moreover, the expulsion of Death is often found in the closest relation to the more widespread custom of bringing summer, in the shape of green tree or bough, into the village. The procession which carries away the dead effigy brings back the summer tree; and the rhymes used treat the two events as connected[632].

The homily just quoted suggests that the mock funeral or expulsion of winter was no new thing in the eighth century. On the other hand, it can hardly be supposed that customs which imply such abstract ideas as death, or even as summer and winter, belong to the earliest stages of the village festival. What has happened is what happens in other forms of festival play. The instinct of play, in this case finding vent in a dramatic representation of the succession of summer to winter, has taken hold of and adapted to its own purposes elements in the celebrations which, once significant, have gradually come to be mere traditional survivals. Such are the ceremonial burial in the ground, the ceremonial burning, the ceremonial plunging into water, of the representative of the fertilization spirit. In particular, the southern term ‘the old woman’ suggests that the effigy expelled or destroyed is none other than the ‘corn mother’ or ‘harvest-May,’ fashioned to represent the fertilization spirit out of the last sheaf at harvest, and preserved until its place is taken by a new and green representative in the spring.

There are, however, other versions of the mock death in which the central figure of the little drama is not the representative of the fertilization spirit itself, but one of the worshippers. In Bavaria the Whitsuntide Pfingstl is dressed in leaves and water-plants with a cap of peonies. He is soused with water, and then, in mimicry, has his head cut off. Similar customs prevail in the Erzgebirge and elsewhere[633]. We have seen this Pfingstl before. He is the Jack in the green, the worshipper clad in the god under whose protection he desires to put himself[634]. But how can the killing of him symbolize the spring, for obviously it is the coming summer, not the dying winter, that the leaf-clad figure must represent? The fact is that the Bavarian drama is not complete. The full ceremony is found in other parts of Germany. Thus in Saxony and Thuringia a ‘wild man’ covered with leaves and moss is hunted in a wood, caught, and executed. Then comes forward a lad dressed as a doctor, who brings the victim to life again by bleeding[635]. Even so annually the summer dies and has its resurrection. In Swabia, again, on Shrove Tuesday, ‘Dr. Eisenbart’ bleeds a man to death, and afterwards revives him. This same Dr. Eisenbart appears also in the Swabian Whitsuntide execution, although here too the actual resurrection seems to have dropped out of the ceremony[636]. It is interesting to note that the green man of the peasantry, who dies and lives again, reappears as the Green Knight in one of the most famous divisions of Arthurian romance[637].

The mock death or burial type of folk-drama resolves itself, then, into two varieties. In one, it is winter whose passing is represented, and for this the discarded harvest-May serves as a nucleus. In the other, which is not really complete without a resurrection, it is summer, whose death is mimed merely as a preliminary to its joyful renewal; and this too is built up around a fragment of ancient cult in the person of the leaf-clad worshipper, who is, indeed, none other than the priest-king, once actually, and still in some sort and show, slain at the festival[638]. In the instances so far dealt with, the original significance of the rite is still fairly traceable. But there are others into which new meanings, due to the influence of Christian custom, have been read. In many parts of Germany customs closely analogous to those of the expulsion of winter or Death take place on Shrove Tuesday, and have suffered metamorphosis into ‘burial of the Carnival[639].’ England affords the ‘Jack o’ Lent’ effigy which is taken to represent Judas Iscariot[640], the Lincoln ‘funeral of Alleluia[641],’ the Tenby ‘making Christ’s bed[642],’ the Monkton ‘risin’ and buryin’ Peter[643].’ The truth that the vitality of a folk custom is far greater than that of any single interpretation of it is admirably illustrated.

Two other symbolical representations of the phenomena of the renouveau must be very briefly treated. At Briançon in Dauphiné, instead of a death and resurrection, is used a pretty little May-day drama, in which the leaf-clad man falls into sleep upon the ground and is awakened by the kiss of a maiden[644]. Russia has a similar custom; and such a magic kiss, bringing summer with it, lies at the heart of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Indeed, the marriage of heaven and earth seems to have been a myth very early invented by the Aryan mind to explain the fertility of crops beneath the rain, and it probably received dramatic form in religious ceremonies both in Greece and Italy[645]. Finally, there is a fairly widespread spring custom of holding a dramatic fight between two parties, one clad in green to represent summer, the other in straw or fur to represent winter. Waldron describes this in the Isle of Man[646]; Olaus Magnus in Sweden[647]. Grimm says that it is found in various districts on both sides of the middle Rhine[648]. Perhaps both this dramatic battle and that of the Coventry Hox Tuesday owe their origin to the struggle for the fertilizing head of a sacrificial animal, which also issued in football and similar games. Dr. Frazer quotes several instances from all parts of the world in which a mock fight, or an interchange of abuse and raillery taking the place of an actual fight, serves as a crop-charm[649]. The summer and winter battle gave to literature a famous type of neo-Latin and Romance débat[650]. In one of the most interesting forms of this, the eighth-or ninth-century Conflictus Veris et Hiemis, the subject of dispute is the cuckoo, which spring praises and winter chides, while the shepherds declare that he must be drowned or stolen away, because summer cometh not. The cuckoo is everywhere a characteristic bird of spring, and his coming was probably a primitive signal for the high summer festival[651].

The symbolical dramas of the seasons stand alone and independent, but it may safely be asserted that drama first arose at the village feasts in close relation to the dance. That dancing, like all the arts, tends to be mimetic is a fact which did not escape the attention of Aristotle[652]. The pantomimes of the decadent Roman stage are a case in point. Greek tragedy itself had grown out of the Dionysiac dithyramb, and travellers describe how readily the dances of the modern savage take shape as primitive dramas of war, hunting, love, religion, labour, or domestic life[653]. Doubtless this was the case also with the caroles of the European festivals. The types of chanson most immediately derived from these are full of dialogue, and already on the point of bursting into drama. That they did do this, with the aid of the minstrels, in the Jeu de Robin et de Marion we have seen[654]. A curious passage in the Itinerarium Cambriae of Giraldus Cambrensis (†1188) describes a dance of peasants in and about the church of St. Elined, near Brecknock on the Gwyl Awst, in which the ordinary operations of the village life, such as ploughing, sewing, spinning were mimetically represented[655]. Such dances seem to survive in some of the rondes or ‘singing-games,’ so frequently dramatic, of children[656]. On the whole, perhaps, these connect themselves rather with the domestic than with the strictly agricultural element in village cult. A large proportion of them are concerned with marriage. But the domestic and the agricultural cannot be altogether dissociated. The game of ‘Nuts in May,’ for instance, seems to have as its kernel a reminiscence of marriage by capture; but the ‘nuts’ or rather ‘knots’ or ‘posies’ ‘in May’ certainly suggest a setting at a seasonal festival. So too, with ‘Round the Mulberry Bush.’ The mimicry here is of domestic operations, but the ‘bush’ recalls the sacred tree, the natural centre of the seasonal dances. The closest parallels to the dance described by Giraldus Cambrensis are to be found in the rondes of ‘Oats and Beans and Barley’ and ‘Would you know how doth the Peasant?’, in which the chief, though not always the only, subjects of mimicry are ploughing, sowing and the like, and which frequently contain a prayer or aspiration for the welfare of the crops[657].

I have treated the mimetic element of budding drama in the agricultural festivals as being primarily a manifestation of the activities of play determined in its direction by the dominant interests of the occasion, and finding its material in the débris of ritual custom left over from forgotten stages of religious thought. It is possible also to hold that the mimesis is more closely interwoven with the religious and practical side of the festivals, and is in fact yet another example of that primitive magical notion of causation by the production of the similar, which is at the root of the rain-and sun-charms. Certainly the village dramas, like the other ceremonies which they accompany, are often regarded as influencing the luck of the farmer’s year; just as the hunting-and war-dances of savages are often regarded not merely as amusement or as practice for actual war and hunting, but as charms to secure success in these pursuits[658]. But it does not seem clear to me that in this case the magical efficacy belongs to the drama from the beginning, and I incline to look upon it as merely part of the sanctity of the feast as a whole, which has attached itself in the course of time even to that side of it which began as play.

The evolution of folk-drama out of folk-dance may be most completely studied through a comparison of the various types of European sword-dance with the so-called ‘mummers’,’ ‘guisers’,’ or ‘Pace-eggers’’ play of Saint George. The history of the sword-dance has received a good deal of attention from German archaeologists, who, however, perhaps from imperfect acquaintance with the English data, have stopped short of the affiliation to it of the play[659]. The dance itself can boast a hoar antiquity. Tacitus describes it as the one form of spectaculum to be seen at the gatherings of the Germans with whom he was conversant. The dancers were young men who leapt with much agility amongst menacing spear-points and sword-blades[660]. Some centuries later the use of sweorda-gelac as a metaphor for battle in Beowulf shows that the term was known to the continental ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons[661]. Then follows a long gap in the record, bridged only by a doubtful reference in an eighth-century Frankish homily[662], and a possible representation in a ninth-century Latin and Anglo-Saxon manuscript[663]. The minstrels seem to have adopted the sword-dance into their repertory[664], but the earliest mediaeval notice of it as a popular ludus is at Nuremberg in 1350. From that date onwards until quite recent years it crops up frequently, alike at Shrovetide, Christmas and other folk festivals, and as an element in the revels at weddings, royal entries, and the like[665]. It is fairly widespread throughout Germany. It is found in Italy, where it is called the mattaccino[666], and in Spain (matachin), and under this name or that of the danse des bouffons it was known both in France and England at the Renaissance[667]. It is given by Paradin in his Le Blason des Danses and, with the music and cuts of the performers, by Tabourot in his Orchésographie (1588)[668]. These are the sophisticated versions of courtly halls. But about the same date Olaus Magnus describes it as a folk-dance, to the accompaniment of pipes or cantilenae, in Sweden[669]. In England, the main area of the acknowledged sword-dance is in the north. It is found, according to Mr. Henderson, from the Humber to the Cheviots; and it extends as far south as Cheshire and Nottinghamshire[670]. Outlying examples are recorded from Winchester[671] and from Devonshire[672]. In Scotland Sir Walter Scott found it among the farthest Hebrides, and it has also been traced in Fifeshire[673].

The name of danse des bouffons sometimes given to the sword-dance may be explained by a very constant feature of the English examples, in which the dancers generally include or are accompanied by one or more comic or grotesque personages. The types of these grotesques are not kept very distinct in the descriptions, or, probably, in fact. But they appear to be fundamentally two. There is the ‘Tommy’ or ‘fool,’ who wears the skin and tail of a fox or some other animal, and there is the ‘Bessy,’ who is a man dressed in a woman’s clothes. And they can be paralleled from outside England. A Narr or Fasching (carnival fool) is a figure in several German sword-dances, and in one from Bohemia he has his female counterpart in a Mehlweib[674].

With the cantilenae noticed by Olaus Magnus may be compared the sets of verses with which several modern sword-dances, both in these islands and in Germany, are provided. They are sung before or during part of the dances, and as a rule are little more than an introduction of the performers, to whom they give distinctive names. If they contain any incident, it is generally of the nature of a quarrel, in which one of the dancers or one of the grotesques is killed. To this point it will be necessary to return. The names given to the characters are sometimes extremely nondescript; sometimes, under a more or less literary influence, of an heroic order. Here and there a touch of something more primitive may be detected. Five sets of verses from the north of England are available in print. Two of these are of Durham provenance. One, from Houghton-le-Spring, has, besides the skin-clad ‘Tommy’ and the ‘Bessy,’ five dancers. These are King George, a Squire’s Son also called Alick or Alex, a King of Sicily, Little Foxey, and a Pitman[675]. The other Durham version has a captain called True Blue, a Squire’s Son, Mr. Snip a tailor, a Prodigal Son (replaced in later years by a Sailor), a Skipper, a Jolly Dog. There is only one clown, who calls himself a ‘fool,’ and acts as treasurer. He is named Bessy, but wears a hairy cap with a fox’s brush pendent[676]. Two other versions come from Yorkshire. At Wharfdale there are seven dancers, Thomas the clown, his son Tom, Captain Brown, Obadiah Trim a tailor, a Foppish Knight, Love-ale a vintner, and Bridget the clown’s wife[677]. At Linton in Craven there are five, the clown, Nelson, Jack Tar, Tosspot, and Miser a woman[678]. The fifth version is of unnamed locality. It has two clowns, Tommy in skin and tail, and Bessy, and amongst the dancers are a Squire’s Son and a Tailor[679]. Such a nomenclature will not repay much analysis. The ‘Squire,’ whose son figures amongst the dancers, is identical with the ‘Tommy,’ although why he should have a son I do not know. Similarly, the ‘Bridget’ at Wharfdale and the ‘Miser’ at Linton correspond to the ‘Bessy’ who appears elsewhere.

The Shetland dance, so far as the names go, is far more literary and less of a folk affair than any of the English examples. The grotesques are absent altogether, and the dancers belong wholly to that heroic category which is also represented in a degenerate form at Houghton-le-Spring. They are in fact those ‘seven champions of Christendom’—St. George of England, St. James of Spain, St. Denys of France, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Anthony of Italy, and St. Andrew of Scotland—whose legends were first brought together under that designation by Richard Johnson in 1596[680].

Precisely the same divergence between a popular and a literary or heroic type of nomenclature presents itself in such of the German sword-dance rhymes as are in print. Three very similar versions from Styria, Hungary, and Bohemia are traceable to a common ‘Austro-Bavarian’ archetype[681]. The names of these, so far as they are intelligible at all, appear to be due to the village imagination, working perhaps in one or two instances, such as ‘Grünwald’ or ‘Wilder Waldmann,’ upon stock figures of the folk festivals[682]. It is the heroic element, however, which predominates in the two other sets of verses which are available. One is from the Clausthal in the Harz mountains, and here the dancers represent the five kings of England, Saxony, Poland, Denmark, and Moorland, together with a serving-man, Hans, and one Schnortison, who acts as leader and treasurer of the party[683]. In the other, from Lübeck, the dancers are the ‘worthies’ Kaiser Karl, Josua, Hector, David, Alexander, and Judas Maccabaeus. They fight with one Sterkader, in whom Müllenhoff finds the Danish hero Stercatherus mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus; and to the Hans of the Clausthal corresponds a Klas Rugebart, who seems to be the red-bearded St. Nicholas[684].

In view of the wide range of the sword-dance in Germany, I do not think it is necessary to attach any importance to the theories advanced by Sir Walter Scott and others that it is, in England and Scotland, of Scandinavian origin. It is true that it appears to be found mainly in those parts of these islands where the influence of Danes and Northmen may be conjectured to have been strongest. But I believe that this is a matter of appearance merely, and that a type of folk-dance far more widely spread in the south of England than the sword-dance proper, is really identical with it. This is the morris-dance, the chief characteristic of which is that the performers wear bells which jingle at every step. Judging by the evidence of account-books, as well as by the allusions of contemporary writers, the morris was remarkably popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries[685]. Frequently, but by no means always, it is mentioned in company with the May-game[686]. In a certain painted window at Betley in Staffordshire are represented six morris-dancers, together with a May-pole, a musician, a fool, a crowned man on a hobby-horse, a crowned lady with a pink in her hand, and a friar. The last three may reasonably be regarded as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck[687]. The closeness of the relation between the morris-dance and the May-game is, however, often exaggerated. The Betley figures only accompany the morris-dance; they do not themselves wear the bells. And besides the window, the only trace of evidence that any member of the Robin Hood cortège, with the exception of Maid Marian, was essential to the morris-dance, is a passage in a masque of Ben Jonson’s, which so seems to regard the friar[688]. The fact is that the morris-dance was a great deal older, as an element in the May-game, than Robin Hood, and that when Robin Hood’s name was forgotten in this connexion, the morris-dance continued to be in vogue, not at May-games only, but at every form of rustic merry-making. On the other hand, it is true that the actual dancers were generally accompanied by grotesque personages, and that one of these was a woman, or a man dressed in woman’s clothes, to whom literary writers at least continued to give the name of Maid Marian. The others have nothing whatever to do with Robin Hood. They were a clown or fool, and a hobby-horse, who, if the evidence of an Elizabethan song can be trusted, was already beginning to go out of fashion[689]. A rarer feature was a dragon, and it is possible that, when there was a dragon, the rider of the hobby-horse was supposed to personate St. George[690]. The morris-dance is by no means extinct, especially in the north and midlands. Accounts of it are available from Lancashire and Cheshire[691], Derbyshire[692], Shropshire[693], Leicestershire[694], and Oxfordshire[695]; and there are many other counties in which it makes, or has recently made, an appearance[696]. The hobby-horse, it would seem, is now at last, except in Derbyshire, finally ‘forgot’; but the two other traditional grotesques are still de rigueur. Few morris-dances are complete without the ‘fool’ or clown, amongst whose various names that of ‘squire’ in Oxfordshire and that of ‘dirty Bet’ in Lancashire are the most interesting. The woman is less invariable. Her Tudor name of Maid Marian is preserved in Leicestershire alone; elsewhere she appears as a shepherdess, or Eve, or ‘the fool’s wife’; and sometimes she is merged with the ‘fool’ into a single nondescript personage.

The morris-dance is by no means confined to England. There are records of it from Scotland[697], Germany[698], Flanders[699], Switzerland[700], Italy[701], Spain[702], and France[703]. In the last-named country Tabourot described it about 1588 under the name of morisque[704], and the earlier English writers call it the morisce, morisk, or morisco[705]. This seems to imply a derivation of the name at least from the Spanish morisco, a Moor. The dance itself has consequently been held to be of Moorish origin, and the habit of blackening the face has been considered as a proof of this[706]. Such a theory seems to invert the order of facts. The dance is too closely bound up with English village custom to be lightly regarded as a foreign importation; and I would suggest that the faces were not blackened, because the dancers represented Moors, but rather the dancers were thought to represent Moors, because their faces were blackened. The blackened face is common enough in the village festival. Hence, as we have seen, May-day became proper to the chimney-sweeps, and we have found a conjectural reason for the disguise in the primitive custom of smearing the face with the beneficent ashes of the festival fire[707]. Blackened faces are known in the sword-dance as well as in the morris-dance[708]; and there are other reasons which make it probable that the two are only variants of the same performance. Tabourot, it is true, distinguishes les bouffons, or the sword-dance, and le morisque; but then Tabourot is dealing with the sophisticated versions of the folk-dances used in society, and Cotgrave, translating les buffons, can find no better English term than morris for the purpose[709]. The two dances appear at the same festivals, and they have the same grotesques; for the Tommy and Bessy of the English sword-dance, who occasionally merge in one, are obviously identical with the Maid Marian and the ‘fool’ of the morris-dance, who also nowadays similarly coalesce. There are traces, too, of an association of the hobby-horse with the sword-dance, as well as with the morris-dance[710]. Most conclusive of all, however, is the fact that in Oxfordshire and in Shropshire the morris-dancers still use swords or wooden staves which obviously represent swords, and that the performers of the elaborate Revesby sword-dance or play, to be hereafter described, are called in the eighteenth-century manuscript ‘morrice dancers[711].’ I do not think that the floating handkerchiefs of the morris-dance are found in its congener, nor do I know what, if any, significance they have. Probably, like the ribbons, they merely represent rustic notions of ornament. Müllenhoff lays stress on the white shirts or smocks which he finds almost universal in the sword-dance[712]. The morris-dancers are often described as dressed in white; but here too, if the ordinary work-a-day costume is a smock, the festal costume is naturally a clean white smock. Finally, there are the bells. These, though they have partially disappeared in the north, seem to be proper to the morris-dance, and to differentiate it from the sword-dance[713]. But this is only so when the English examples are alone taken into consideration, for Müllenhoff quotes one Spanish and three German descriptions of sword-dances in which the bells are a feature[714]. Tabourot affords similar evidence for the French version[715]; while Olaus Magnus supplements his account of the Scandinavian sword-dance with one of a similar performance, in which the swords were replaced by bows, and bells were added[716]. The object of the bells was probably to increase or preserve the musical effect of the clashing swords. The performers known to Tacitus were nudi, and no bells are mentioned. One other point with regard to the morris-dance is worth noticing before we leave the subject. It is capable of use both as a stationary and a processional dance, and therefore illustrates both of the two types of dancing motion naturally evolved from the circumstances of the village festival[717].

Müllenhoff regards the sword-dance as primarily a rhythmic Abbild or mimic representation of war, subsequently modified in character by use at the village feasts[718]. It is true that the notice of Tacitus and the allusion in Beowulf suggest that it had a military character; and it may fairly be inferred that it formed part of that war-cult from which, as pointed out in a previous chapter, heroic poetry sprang. This is confirmed by the fact that some at least of the dramatis personae of the modern dances belong to the heroic category. Side by side with local types such as the Pitman or the Sailor, and with doublets of the grotesques such as Little Foxey or the Squire’s Son[719], appear the five kings of the Clausthal dance, the ‘worthies’ of the Lübeck dance, and the ‘champions of Christendom’ of the Shetland dance. These particular groups betray a Renaissance rather than a mediaeval imagination; as with the morris-dance of The Two Noble Kinsmen, the village schoolmaster, Holophernes or another, has probably been at work upon them[720]. Some of the heterogeneous English dramatis personae, Nelson for instance, testify to a still later origin. On the other hand, the Sterkader or Stercatherus of the Lübeck dance suggests that genuine national heroes were occasionally celebrated in this fashion. At the same time I do not believe, with Müllenhoff, that the sword-dance originated in the war-cult. Its essentially agricultural character seems to be shown by the grotesques traditionally associated with it, the man in woman’s clothes, the skin or tail-wearing clown and the hobby-horse, all of which seem to find their natural explanation in the facts of agricultural worship[721]. Again, the dance makes its appearance, not like heroic poetry in general as part of the minstrel repertory, but as a purely popular thing at the agricultural festivals. To these festivals, therefore, we may reasonably suppose it to have originally belonged, and to have been borrowed from them by the young warriors who danced before the king. They, however, perhaps gave it the heroic element which, in its turn, drifted into the popular versions. We have already seen that popular heroic cantilenae existed together with those of minstrelsy up to a late date. Nor does Müllenhoff’s view find much support from the classical sword-dances which he adduces. As to the origin of the lusus Troiae or Pyrrhic dance which the Romans adopted from Doric Greece, I can say nothing[722]; but the native Italian dance of the Salii or priests of Mars in March and October is clearly agricultural. It belongs to the cult of Mars, not as war-god, but in his more primitive quality of a fertilization spirit[723].

Further, I believe that the use of swords in the dance was not martial at all; their object was to suggest not a fight, but a mock or symbolical sacrifice. Several of the dances include figures in which the swords are brought together in a significant manner about the person of one or more of the dancers. Thus in the Scandinavian dance described by Olaus Magnus, a quadrata rosa of swords is placed on the head of each performer. A precisely similar figure occurs in the Shetland and in a variety of the Yorkshire dances[724]. In the Siebenbürgen dances there are two figures in which the performers pretend to cut at each other’s heads or feet, and a third in which one of them has the swords put in a ring round his neck[725]. This latter evolution occurs also in a variety of the Yorkshire dance[726] and in a Spanish one described by Müllenhoff after a seventeenth-century writer. And here the figure has the significant name of la degollada, ‘the beheading[727].’

CHAPTER X THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

Northumberland.

Cumberland.

Lancashire.

Shropshire.

Staffordshire.

Leicestershire.

Worcestershire.

Warwickshire.

Oxfordshire.

Berkshire.

Middlesex.

Sussex.

Hampshire.

Dorsetshire.

Cornwall.

Wales.

Ireland.

Uncertain Locality.

The degollada figures of certain sword-dances preserve with some clearness the memory of an actual sacrifice, abolished and replaced by a mere symbolic dumb show. Even in these, and still more in the other dances, the symbolism is very slight. It is completely subordinated to the rhythmic evolutions of a choric figure. There is an advance, however, in the direction of drama, when in the course of the performance some one is represented as actually slain. In a few dances of the type discussed in the last chapter, such a dramatic episode precedes or follows the regular figures. It is recorded in three or four of the German examples[728]. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine describes a Yorkshire dance in which ‘the Bessy interferes while they are making a hexagon with their swords, and is killed.’ Amongst the characters of this dance is a Doctor, and although the writer does not say so, it may be inferred that the function of the Doctor is to bring the Bessy to life again[729]. It will be remembered that a precisely similar device is used in the German Shrove Tuesday plays to symbolize the resurrection of the year in spring after its death in winter. The Doctor reappears in one of the Durham dances, and here there is no doubt as to the part he plays. At a certain point the careful formations of the dance degenerate into a fight. The parish clergyman rushes in to separate the combatants. He is accidentally slain. There is general lamentation, but the Doctor comes forward, and revives the victim, and the dance proceeds[730].

It is but a step from such dramatic episodes to the more elaborate performances which remain to be considered in the present chapter, and which are properly to be called plays rather than dances. They belong to a stage in the evolution of drama from dance, in which the dance has been driven into the background and has sometimes disappeared altogether. But they have the same characters, and especially the same grotesques, as the dances, and the general continuity of the two sets of performances cannot be doubted. Moreover, though the plays differ in many respects, they have a common incident, which may reasonably be taken to be the central incident, in the death and revival, generally by a Doctor, of one of the characters. And in virtue of this central incident one is justified in classing them as forms of a folk-drama in which the resurrection of the year is symbolized.

I take first, on account of the large amount of dancing which remains in it, the play acted at the end of the eighteenth century by ‘The Plow Boys or Morris Dancers’ of Revesby in Lincolnshire[731]. There are seven dancers: six men, the Fool and his five sons, Pickle Herring, Blue Breeches, Pepper Breeches, Ginger Breeches, and Mr. Allspice[732]; and one woman, Cicely. The somewhat incoherent incidents are as follows. The Fool acts as presenter and introduces the play. He fights successively a Hobby-horse and a ‘Wild Worm’ or dragon. The dancers ‘lock their swords to make the glass,’ which, after some jesting, is broken up again. The sons determine to kill the Fool. He kneels down and makes his will, with the swords round his neck[733]; is slain and revived by Pickle Herring stamping with his foot. This is repeated with variations. Hitherto, the dancers have ‘footed it’ round the room at intervals. Now follow a series of sword-dances. During and after these the Fool and his sons in turn woo Cicely, the Fool taking the name of ‘Anthony[734],’ Pickle Herring that of ‘the Lord of Pool,’ and Blue Breeches that of ‘the Knight of Lee.’ There is nothing particularly interesting about this part of the play, obviously written to ‘work in’ the woman grotesque. In the course of it a morris-dance is introduced, and a final sword-dance, with an obeisance to the master of the house, winds up the whole.

Secondly, there are the Plough Monday plays of the east Midlands[735]. These appear in Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. Two printed versions are available. The first comes from Cropwell in Nottinghamshire[736]. The actors are ‘the plough-bullocks.’ The male characters are Tom the Fool, a Recruiting Sergeant, and a Ribboner or Recruit, three farm-servants, Threshing Blade, Hopper Joe[737], and the Ploughman, a Doctor, and Beelzebub[738]. There are two women, a young Lady and old Dame Jane. Tom Fool is presenter. The Ribboner, rejected by the young Lady, enlists as a recruit. The Lady is consoled by Tom Fool. Then enter successively the three farm-servants, each describing his function on the farm. Dame Jane tries to father a child on Tom Fool. Beelzebub knocks her down[739], and kills her. The Doctor comes in, and after some comic business about his travels, his qualifications and his remedies[740], declares Dame Jane to be only in a trance, and raises her up. A country dance and songs follow, and the performance ends with a quête. The second version, from Lincolnshire, is very similar[741]. But there are no farm-servants, and instead of Beelzebub is a personage called ‘old Esem Esquesem,’ who carries a broom. It is he, not an old woman, who is killed and brought to life. There are several dancers, besides the performers; and these include ‘Bessy,’ a man dressed as a woman, with a cow’s tail.

The distinction between a popular and a literary or heroic type of personification which was noticeable in the sword-dances persists in the folk-plays founded upon them. Both in the Revesby play and in the Plough Monday plays, the drama is carried on by personages resembling the ‘grotesques’ of the sword-and morris-dances[742]. There are no heroic characters. The death is of the nature of an accident or an execution. On the other hand, in the ‘mummers’ play’ of St. George, the heroes take once more the leading part, and the death, or at least one of the deaths, is caused by a fight amongst them. This play is far more widely spread than its rivals. It is found in all parts of England, in Wales, and in Ireland; in Scotland it occurs also, but here some other hero is generally substituted as protagonist for St. George[743]. The following account is based on the twenty-nine versions, drawn from chap-books or from oral tradition, enumerated in the bibliographical note. The list might, doubtless, be almost indefinitely extended. As will soon be seen, the local variations of the play are numerous. In order to make them intelligible, I have given in full in an appendix a version from Lutterworth in Leicestershire. This is chosen, not as a particularly interesting variant, for that it is not, but on the contrary as being comparatively colourless. It shows very clearly and briefly the normal structure of the play, and may be regarded as the type from which the other versions diverge[744].

The whole performance may be divided, for convenience of analysis, into three parts, the Presentation, the Drama, the Quête. In the first somebody speaks a prologue, claiming a welcome from the spectators[745], and then the leading characters are in turn introduced. The second consists of a fight followed by the intervention of a doctor to revive the slain. In the third some supernumerary characters enter, and there is a collection. It is the dramatic nucleus that first requires consideration. The leading fighter is generally St. George, who alone appears in all the versions. Instead of ‘St. George,’ he is sometimes called ‘Sir George,’ and more often ‘Prince George’ or ‘King George,’ modifications which one may reasonably suppose to be no older than the present Hanoverian dynasty. At Whitehaven and at Falkirk he is ‘Prince George of Ville.’ George’s chief opponent is usually one of two personages, who are not absolutely distinct from each other[746]. One is the ‘Turkish Knight,’ of whom a variant appears to be the ‘Prince of Paradine’ (Manchester), or ‘Paradise’ (Newport, Eccleshall), perhaps originally ‘Palestine.’ He is sometimes represented with a blackened face[747]. The other is variously called ‘Slasher,’ ‘Captain Slasher,’ ‘Bold Slasher,’ or, by an obvious corruption, ‘Beau Slasher.’ Rarer names for him are ‘Bold Slaughterer’ (Bampton), ‘Captain Bluster’ (Dorset [A]), and ‘Swiff, Swash, and Swagger’ (Chiswick). His names fairly express his vaunting disposition, which, however, is largely shared by the other characters in the play. In the place of, or as minor fighters by the side of George, the Turkish Knight and Bold Slasher, there appear, in one version or another, a bewildering variety of personages, of whom only a rough classification can be attempted. Some belong to the heroic cycles. Such are ‘Alexander’ (Newcastle, Whitehaven), ‘Hector’ (Manchester), ‘St. Guy’ (Newport), ‘St. Giles’ (Eccleshall)[748], ‘St. Patrick’ (Dorset [A], Wexford), ‘King Alfred’ and ‘King Cole’ (Brill), ‘Giant Blunderbore’ (Brill), ‘Giant Turpin’ (Cornwall). Others again are moderns who have caught the popular imagination: ‘Bold Bonaparte’ (Leigh)[749], and ‘King of Prussia’ (Bampton, Oxford)[750], ‘King William’ (Brill), the ‘Duke of Cumberland’ (Oxford) and the ‘Duke of Northumberland’ (Islip), ‘Lord Nelson’ (Stoke Gabriel, Devon)[751], ‘Wolfe’ and ‘Wellington’ (Cornwall)[752], even the ‘Prince Imperial’ (Wilts)[753], all have been pressed into the service. In some cases characters have lost their personal names, if they ever had any, and figure merely as ‘Knight,’ ‘Soldier,’ ‘Valiant Soldier,’ ‘Noble Captain,’ ‘Bold Prince,’ ‘Gracious King.’ Others bear names which defy explanation, ‘Alonso’ (Chiswick), ‘Hy Gwyer’ (Hollington), ‘Marshalee’ and ‘Cutting Star’ (Dorset [B]). The significance of ‘General Valentine’ and ‘Colonel Spring’ (Dorset [A]) will be considered presently; and ‘Room’ (Dorset [B]), ‘Little Jack,’ the ‘Bride’ and the ‘Fool’ (Brill), and the ‘King of Egypt’ (Newcastle, Whitehaven) have strayed in amongst the fighters from the presenters. The fighting generally takes the form of a duel, or a succession of duels. In the latter case, George may fight all comers, or he may intervene to subdue a previously successful champion. But an important point is that he is not always victorious. On the contrary, the versions in which he slays and those in which he is slain are about equal in number. In two versions (Brill, Steyning) the fighting is not a duel or a series of duels, but a mêlée. The Brill play, in particular, is quite unlike the usual type. A prominent part is taken by the Dragon, with whom fight, all at once, St. George and a heterogeneous company made up of King Alfred and his Bride, King Cole, King William, Giant Blunderbore, Little Jack and a morris-dance Fool.

Whatever the nature of the fight, the result is always the same. One or more of the champions falls, and then appears upon the scene a Doctor, who brings the dead to life again. The Doctor is a comic character. He enters, boasting his universal skill, and works his cure by exhibiting a bolus, or by drawing out a tooth with a mighty pair of pliers. At Newbold he is ‘Dr. Brown,’ at Islip ‘Dr. Good’ (also called ‘Jack Spinney’), at Brill ‘Dr. Ball’; in Dorsetshire (A) he is an Irishman, ‘Mr. Martin’ (perhaps originally ‘Martyr’) ‘Dennis.’ More often he is nameless. Frequently the revival scene is duplicated; either the Doctor is called in twice, or one cure is left to him, and another is effected by some other performer, such as St. George (Dorset [B]), ‘Father Christmas’ (Newbold, Steyning), or the Fool (Bampton).

The central action of the play consists, then, in these two episodes of the fight and the resurrection; and the protagonists, so to speak, are the heroes—a ragged troop of heroes, certainly—and the Doctor. But just as in the sword-dances, so in the plays, we find introduced, besides the protagonists, a number of supernumerary figures. The nature of these, and the part they take, must now be considered. Some of them are by this time familiar. They are none other than the grotesques that have haunted this discussion of the village festivals from the very beginning, and that I have attempted to trace to their origin in magical or sacrificial custom. There are the woman, or lad dressed in woman’s clothes, the hobby-horse, the fool, and the black-faced man. The woman and the hobby-horse are unmistakable; the other two are a little more Protean in their modern appearance. The ‘Fool’ is so called only at Manchester and at Brill, where he brings his morris-dance with him. At Lutterworth he is the ‘Clown’; in Cornwall, ‘Old Squire’; at Newbold, ‘Big Head and Little Wits.’ But I think that we may also recognize him in the very commonly occurring figure ‘Beelzebub,’ also known in Cornwall as ‘Hub Bub’ and at Chiswick as ‘Lord Grubb.’ The key to this identification is the fact that in several cases Beelzebub uses the description ‘big head and little wit’ to announce himself on his arrival. Occasionally, however, the personality of the Fool has been duplicated. At Lutterworth Beelzebub and the Clown, at Newbold Beelzebub and Big Head and Little Wits appear in the same play[754]. The black-faced man has in some cases lost his black face, but he keeps it at Bampton, where he is ‘Tom the Tinker,’ at Rugby, where he is ‘Little Johnny Sweep,’ and in a Sussex version, where he is also a sweep[755]. The analogy of the May-day chimney-sweeps is an obvious one. A black face was a feature in the mediaeval representation of devils, and the sweep of some plays is probably in origin identical with the devil, black-faced or not, of others. This is all the more so, as the devil, like the sweep, usually carries a besom[756]. One would expect his name, and not the Fool’s, to be Beelzebub. He is, however, ‘Little Devil Dout’ or ‘Doubt,’ ‘Little Jack Doubt’ or ‘Jack Devil Doubt.’ At Leigh Little Devil Doubt also calls himself ‘Jack,’

and perhaps we may therefore trace a further avatar of this same personage in the ‘John’ or ‘Johnny Jack’ who at Salisbury gives a name to the whole performance[757]. He is also ‘Little Jack’ (Brill, St. Mary Bourne), ‘Fat Jack’ (Islip), ‘Happy Jack’ (Berkshire, Hollington), ‘Humpty Jack’ (Newbold). He generally makes the remark about his wife and family. What he does carry upon his back is sometimes a hump, sometimes a number of rag-dolls. I take it that the hump came first, and that the dolls arose out of Jack’s jocular explanation of his own deformity. But why the hump? Was it originally a bag of soot? Or the saccus with which the German Knechte Ruperte wander in the Twelve nights?[758] At Hollington and in a Hampshire version Jack has been somewhat incongruously turned into a press-gang. In this capacity he gets at Hollington the additional name of ‘Tommy Twing-twang.’

Having got these grotesques, traditional accompaniments of the play, to dispose of somehow, what do the playwrights do with them? The simplest and most primitive method is just to bring them in, to show them to the spectators when the fighting is over. Thus Beelzebub, like the Fool at one point in the Revesby play, often comes in with

‘Ain’t been yit!’ Could a more naïve explanation of the presence of a ‘stock’ character on the stage be imagined? Similarly in Cornwall the woman is worked in by making ‘Sabra,’ a persona muta, come forward to join St. George[759]. In the play printed in Sharpe’s London Magazine the ‘Hobby-horse’ is led in. Obviously personages other than the traditional four can be introduced in the same way, at the bidding of the rustic fancy. Thus at Bampton ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Little John’ briefly appear, in both the Irish plays and at Tenby ‘Oliver Cromwell,’ at Belfast ‘St. Patrick,’ at Steyning the ‘Prince of Peace.’

Secondly, the supernumeraries may be utilized, either as presenters of the main characters or for the purposes of the quête at the end. Thus at Leigh the performance is begun by Little Devil Doubt, who enters with his broom and sweeps a ‘room’ or ‘hall’ for the actors, just as in the sword-dances a preliminary circle is made with a sword upon the ground[760]. In the Midlands this is the task of the woman, called at Islip and in Berkshire ‘Molly,’ and at Bright-Walton ‘Queen Mary[761].’ Elsewhere the business with the broom is omitted; but there is nearly always a short prologue in which an appeal is made to the spectators for ‘room.’ This prologue may be spoken, as at Manchester by the Fool, or as at Lutterworth by one of the fighters. The commonest presenter, however, is a personification of the festal season at which the plays are usually performed, ‘Old Father Christmas.’

At St. Mary Bourne Christmas is accompanied by ‘Mince-Pie,’ and in both the Dorset versions, instead of calling for ‘room,’ he introduces ‘Room’ as an actual personage. Similarly, at Newport and Eccleshall, the prologue speaker receives the curious soubriquet of ‘Open-the-Door.’ After the prologue, the fighters are introduced. They stand in a clump outside the circle, and in turns step forward and strut round it[762]. Each is announced, by himself or by his predecessor or by the presenter, with a set of rhymes closely parallel to those used in the sword-dances. With the fighters generally comes the ‘King of Egypt’ (occasionally corrupted into the ‘King of England’), and the description of St. George often contains an allusion to his fight with the dragon and the rescue of Sabra, the King of Egypt’s daughter. In one or two of the northern versions (Newcastle, Whitehaven) the King of Egypt is a fighter; generally he stands by. In one of the Dorset versions (A) he is called ‘Anthony.’ Sabra appears only in Cornwall, and keeps silence. The Dragon fights with St. George in Cornwall, and also, as we have seen, in the curious Brill mêlée.

The performance, naturally, ends with a quête. This takes various forms. Sometimes the presenter, or the whole body of actors, comes forward, and wishes prosperity to the household. Beelzebub, with his frying-pan or ladle, goes round to gather in the contributions. In the version preserved in Sharpe’s London Magazine, this is the function of a special personage, ‘Boxholder.’ In a considerable number of cases, however, the quête is preceded by a singular action on the part of Little Devil Dout. He enters with his broom, and threatens to sweep the whole party out, or ‘into their graves,’ if money is not given. In Shropshire and Staffordshire he sweeps up the hearth, and the custom is probably connected with the superstition that it is unlucky to remove fire or ashes from the house on Christmas Day. ‘Dout’ appears to be a corruption of ‘Do out[763].’

Another way of working in the grotesques and other supernumeraries is to give them minor parts in the drama itself. Father Christmas or the King of Egypt is utilized as a sort of chorus, to cheer on the fighters, lament the vanquished, and summon the Doctor. At Newbold the woman, called ‘Moll Finney,’ plays a similar part, as mother of the Turkish Knight. At Stoke Gabriel, Devon, the woman is the Doctor’s wife[764]. Finally, in three cases, a complete subordinate dramatic episode is introduced for their sake. At Islip, after the main drama is concluded, the presenter Molly suddenly becomes King George’s wife ‘Susannah.’ She falls ill, and the Doctor’s services are requisitioned to cure her. The Doctor rides in, not on a hobby-horse, but on one of the disengaged characters who plays the part of a horse. In Dorsetshire the secondary drama is quite elaborate. In the ‘A’ version ‘Old Bet’ calls herself ‘Dame Dorothy,’ and is the wife of Father Christmas, named, for the nonce, ‘Jan.’ They quarrel about a Jack hare, which he wants fried and she wants roasted. He kills her, and at the happy moment the Doctor is passing by, and brings her to life again. Version ‘B’ is very similar, except that the performance closes by Old Bet bringing in the hobby-horse for Father Christmas to mount.

I do not think that I need further labour the affiliation of the St. George plays to the sword-dances. Placed in a series, as I have placed them in these chapters, the two sets of performances show a sufficiently obvious continuity. They are held together by the use of the swords, by their common grotesques, and by the episode of the Doctor, which connects them also with the German Shrovetide and Whitsun folk-ceremonies. They are properly called folk-drama, because they are derived, with the minimum of literary intervention, from the dramatic tendencies latent in folk-festivals of a very primitive type. They are the outcome of the instinct of play, manipulating for its own purposes the mock sacrifice and other débris of extinct ritual. Their central incident symbolizes the renouveau, the annual death of the year or the fertilization spirit and its annual resurrection in spring[765]. To this have become attached some of those heroic cantilenae which, as the early mediaeval chroniclers tell us, existed in the mouths of the chori iuvenum side by side with the cantilenae of the minstrels. The symbolism of the renouveau is preserved unmistakably enough in the episode of the Doctor, but the cantilenae have been to some extent modified by the comparatively late literary element, due perhaps to that universal go-between of literature and the folk, the village school-master. The genuine national heroes, a Stercatherus or a Galgacus, have given way to the ‘worthies’ and the ‘champions of Christendom,’ dear to Holophernes. The literary tradition has also perhaps contributed to the transformation of the chorus or semi-dramatic dance into drama pure and simple. In the St. George plays dancing holds a very subordinate place, far more so than in the ‘Plow-boys’ play of Revesby. Dances and songs are occasionally introduced before the quête, but rarely during the main performance. In the eccentric Brill version, however, a complete morris-dance appears. And of course it must be borne in mind that the fighting itself, with its gestures and pacings round the circle and clashing of swords, has much more the effect of a sword-dance than of a regular fight. So far as it is a fight, the question arises whether we ought to see in it, besides the heroic element introduced by the cantilenae, any trace of the mimic contest between winter and summer, which is found here and there, alternating with the resurrection drama, as a symbolical representation of the renouveau. The fight does not, of course, in itself stand in any need of such an explanation; but it is suggested by a singular passage which in several versions is put in the mouth of one or other of the heroes. St. George, or the Slasher, or the Turkish Knight, is made to boast something as follows:

It does not much matter who speaks these words in the versions of Holophernes, but there are those who think that they originally belonged to the representative of winter, and contained an allusion to the hardness of the frost-bound earth[766]. Personally I do not see why they should refer to anything but the armour which a champion might reasonably be supposed to wear.

A curious thing about the St. George play is the width of its range. All the versions, with the possible exception of that found at Brill, seem to be derived from a common type. They are spread over England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and only in the eastern counties do they give way to the partly, though not wholly, independent Plough Monday type. Unfortunately, the degeneracy of the texts is such that any closer investigation into their inter-relations or into the origin and transmission of the archetype would probably be futile. Something, however, must be said as to the prominence, at any rate outside Scotland, of the character of St. George. As far as I can see, the play owes nothing at all to John Kirke’s stage-play of The Seven Champions of Christendom, printed in 1638[767]. It is possible, however, that it may be a development of a sword-dance in which, as in the Shetland dance, the ‘seven champions’ had usurped the place of more primitive heroes. If so the six champions, other than St. George, have singularly vanished[768]. In any case, there can have been no ‘seven champions,’ either in sword-dance or mummers’ play, before Richard Johnson brought together the scattered legends of the national heroes in his History of the Seven Champions in 1596[769]. This fact presents no difficulty, for the archetype of our texts need certainly not be earlier than the seventeenth century[770]. By this time the literary dramatic tradition was fully established, even in the provinces, and it may well have occurred to Holophernes to convert the sword-dance into the semblance of a regular play.

On the other hand, the mediaeval period had its dramatic or semi-dramatic performances in which St. George figured, and possibly it is to these, and not to the ‘seven champions,’ that his introduction into the sword-dance is due. These performances generally took the form of a ‘riding’ or procession on St. George’s day, April 23. Such ridings may, of course, have originally, like the Godiva processions or the midsummer shows, have preserved the memory of the pre-Christian perambulations of the fields in spring, but during the period for which records are available they were rather municipal celebrations of a semi-ecclesiastical type. St. George was the patron saint of England, and his day was honoured as one of the greater feasts, notably at court, where the chivalric order of the Garter was under his protection[771]. The conduct of the ridings was generally, from the end of the fourteenth century onwards, in the hands of a guild, founded not as a trade guild, but as a half social, half religious fraternity, for the worship of the saint, and the mutual aid and good fellowship of its members. The fullest accounts preserved are from Norwich where the guild or company of St. George was founded in 1385, received a charter from Henry V in 1416, and by 1451 had obtained a predominant share in the government of the city[772]. The records of this guild throw a good deal of light on the riding. The brethren and ‘sustren’ had a chapel in the choir of the cathedral, and after the Reformation held their feasts in a chapel of the common hall of the city, which had formerly been the church of a Dominican convent. The riding was already established by 1408 when the court of the guild ordered that ‘the George shall go in procession and make a conflict with the Dragon and keep his estate both days.’ The George was a man in ‘coat armour beaten with silver,’ and had his club-bearer, henchmen, minstrels and banners. He was accompanied by the Dragon, the guild-priest, and the court and brethren of the guild in red and white capes and gowns. The procession went to ‘the wood’ outside the city, and here doubtless the conflict with the dragon took place. By 1537 there had been added to the dramatis personae St. Margaret, also called ‘the lady,’ who apparently aided St. George in his enterprise[773]. Strange to say, the guild survived the Reformation. In 1552, the court ordered, ‘there shall be neither George nor Margaret, but for pastime the dragon to come and show himself, as in other years.’ But the feast continued, and in spite of an attempt to get rid of him under the Long Parliament, the Dragon endured until 1732 when the guild was dissolved. Eighteenth-century witnesses describe the procession as it then existed. The Dragon was carried by a man concealed in its body. It was of basket work and painted cloth, and could move or spread its wings, and distend or contract its head. The ranks were kept by ‘whifflers’ who juggled with their swords, and by ‘Dick Fools,’ in motley and decked with cats’ tails and small bells. There is one more point of interest about the Norwich guild. In the fifteenth century it included many persons of distinction in Norfolk. Sir John Fastolf gave it an ‘angell silver and guylt.’ And amongst the members in 1496 was Sir John Paston. I have already quoted the lament in the Paston Letters over William Woode, the keeper, whom the writer ‘kepyd thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham,’ and who at a critical moment went off to Bernysdale and left his master in the lurch[774]. I have also identified his Robin Hood play, and now it becomes apparent where he played ‘Seynt Jorge.’ It is curious how the fragments of the wreckage of time fit into one another. The riding of the George is not peculiar to Norwich. We find it at Leicester[775], at Coventry[776], at Stratford[777], at Chester[778], at York, at Dublin[779]. An elaborate programme for the Dublin procession is preserved. It included an emperor and empress with their train, St. George on horse-back, the dragon led by a line and the king and queen of Dele. But no princess is mentioned. The ‘may’ or maiden figured at York, however, and there was also a St. Christopher. At other places, such as Reading, Aston[780] and Louth[781], an equestrian figure, called a ‘George,’ is known to have stood on a ‘loft’ in the church, and here, too, an annual ‘riding’ may be presumed.

There is no proof that the dramatic element in these ‘ridings’ was anything more than a mystère mimé, or pageant in dumb show. On the other hand, there were places where the performance on St. George’s day took the form of a regular miracle-play. The performance described by Collier as taking place before Henry V and the Emperor Sigismund at Windsor in 1416 turns out on examination of Collier’s authority to be really a ‘soteltie,’ a cake or raised pie of elaborate form. But the town of Lydd had its St. George play in 1456, and probably throughout the century; while in 1490 the chaplain of the guild of St. George at New Romney went to see this Lydd play with a view to reproducing it at the sister town. In 1511 again a play of St. George is recorded to have been held at Bassingbourne in Cambridgeshire, not on St. George’s, but on St. Margaret’s day[782].

Obviously the subject-matter of all these pageants and miracles was provided by the familiar ecclesiastical legend of St. George the dragon-slayer, with which was occasionally interwoven the parallel legend of St. Margaret[783]. Similar performances can be traced on the continent. There was one at Mons called le lumeçon[784]. Rabelais describes one at Metz, of which, however, the hero was not St. George, but yet another dragon-slayer, St. Clement[785]. There is no need to ascribe to them a folk origin, although the dragon-slaying champion is a common personage in folk-tale[786]. They belong to the cycle of religious drama, which is dealt with in the second volume of this book. And although in Shropshire at least they seem to have been preserved in a village stage-play up to quite a recent date[787], they obviously do not directly survive in the folk-play with which we are concerned. As far as I know, that nowhere takes place on St. George’s day. The Dragon is very rarely a character, and though St. George’s traditional exploit is generally mentioned, it is, as that very mention shows, not the motive of the action. On the other hand the legend, in its mediaeval form, has no room for the episode of the Doctor[788]. At the same time the Dragon does sometimes occur, and the traditional exploit is mentioned, and therefore if any one chooses to say that the fame of St. George in the guild celebrations as well as the fame of the ‘seven champions’ romance determined his choice as the hero of the later sword-dance rhymes, I do not see that there is much to urge against the view[789].

With regard to the main drift of this chapter, the criticism presents itself; if the folk-plays are essentially a celebration of the renouveau of spring, how is it that the performances generally take place in mid-winter at Christmas? The answer is that, as will be shown in the next chapter, none of the Christmas folk-customs are proper to mid-winter. They have been attracted by the ecclesiastical feast from the seasons which in the old European calendar preceded and followed it, from the beginning of winter and the beginning of summer or spring. The folk-play has come with the rest. But the transference has not invariably taken place. The Norfolk versions belong not to Christmas but to Plough Monday, which lies immediately outside the Christmas season proper, and is indeed, though probably dislocated from its primitive date, the earliest of the spring feasts. The St. George play itself is occasionally performed at Easter, and even perhaps on May-day, whilst versions, which in their present form contain clear allusions to Christmas, yet betray another origin by the title which they bear of the ‘Pace-eggers’’ or ‘Pasque-eggers’’ play[790]. Christmas, however, has given to the play the characteristic figure of Old Father Christmas. And the players are known as ‘mummers’ and ‘guisers,’ or, in Cornwall, ‘geese-dancers,’ because their performance was regarded as a variety of the ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising’ which, as we shall see, became a regular name for the Christmas revel or quête[791].

CHAPTER XI THE BEGINNING OF WINTER

So far this study has concerned itself, on the one hand with the general character of the peasant festivals, on the other with the special history of such of these as fall within the summer cycle of the agricultural year, from ploughing to harvest. The remaining chapters will approach the corresponding festivals, centring around Christmas, of winter. These present a somewhat more difficult problem, partly because their elements are not quite so plainly agricultural, partly because of the remarkable dislocations which the development and clash of civilizations have brought about.

It must, I think, be taken as established that the Germano-Keltic tribes had no primitive mid-winter feast, corresponding directly to the modern Christmas[792]. They had no solstitial feast, for they knew nothing of the solstices. And although they had a winter feast of the dead, belonging rather to the domestic than to the elemental side of cult, this probably fell not at the middle, but at the beginning of the season. It was an aspect in the great feast with which not the winter only but the Germano-Keltic year began. This took place when the advance of snow and frost drove the warriors back from foray and the cattle from the pastures. The scarcity of fodder made the stall-feeding of the whole herd an impossibility, and there was therefore an economic reason for a great slaughtering. This in its turn led to a great banquet on the fresh meat, and to a great sacrifice, accompanied with the usual perambulations, water-rites and fire-rites which sacrifice to the deities of field and flock entailed[793]. The vegetation spirit would again be abroad, no longer, as in spring or summer, in the form of flowers and fresh green boughs, but in that of the last sheaf or ‘kern-baby’ saved from harvest, or in that of such evergreens or rarer blossoms as might chance to brave the snows. The particular ‘intention’ of the festival would be to secure the bounty of the divine powers for the coming year, and a natural superstition would find omens for the whole period in the events of the initial day. The feast, however, would be domestic, as well as seasonal. The fire on the hearth was made ‘new,’ and beside it the fathers, resting from the toils of war, or herding or tillage, held jollification with their children. Nor were the dead forgotten. Minni were drunk in honour of ancestors and ancestral deities; and a share of the banquet was laid out for such of these as might be expected, in the whirl of the wintry storm, to revisit the familiar house-place.

Originally, no doubt, the time of the feast was determined by the actual closing of the war-ways and the pastures. Just as the first violet or some migratory bird of March was hailed for the herald of summer, so the first fall of snow gave the signal that winter was at hand[794]. In the continental home of the Germano-Keltic tribes amongst the forests of central Europe this would take place with some regularity about the middle of November[795]. A fixed date for the feast could only arise when, at some undefined time, the first calendar, the ‘three-score-day-tide’ calendar of unknown origin, was introduced[796]. Probably it was thenceforward held regularly upon a day corresponding to either November the 11th or the 12th in our reckoning. If it is accurately represented by St. Martin’s day, it was the 11th[797], if by the Manx Samhain, the 12th[798]. It continued to begin the year, and also the first of the six tides into which that year was divided. As good fortune will have it, the name of that tide is preserved to us in the Gothic term Iiuleis for November and December[799], in the Anglo-Saxon Giuli or Geola which, according to Bede, applied both to December and to January[800], and in Yule, the popular designation, both in England and Scandinavia, of Christmas itself[801]. The meaning of this name is, however, more doubtful. The older philology, with solstices running in its brain, supposed that it applied primarily to a mid-winter feast, and connected it with the Anglo-Saxon hwéol, a wheel[802]. Bede himself, learned in Roman lore, seems to hint at such an explanation[803]. The current modern explanation derives the word from a supposed Germanic jehwela, equivalent to the Latin ioculus[804]. It would thus mean simply a ‘feast’ or ‘rejoicing,’ and some support seems to be lent to this derivation by the occasional use of the English ‘yule’ and the Keltic gwyl to denote feasts other than that of winter[805]. Other good authorities, however, prefer to trace it to a Germanic root jeula-from which is derived the Old Norse él, ‘a snowstorm’; and this also, so far as its application to the feast and tide of winter is concerned, seems plausible enough[806]. It is possible that to the winter feast originally belonged the term applied by Bede to December 24 of Modranicht or Modraneht[807]. It would be tempting to interpret this as ‘the night which gives birth to the year’; but philologists say that it can only mean ‘night of mothers,’ and we must therefore explain it as due to some cult of the Matres or triad of mother-goddesses, which took place at the feast[808].

The subsequent history of the winter feast consists in its gradual dislocation from the original mid-November position, and dispersion over a large number of dates covering roughly the whole period between Michaelmas and Twelfth night. For this process a variety of causes are responsible. Some of these are economic. As civilization progressed, mid-November came to be, less than of old, a signal turning-point in the year. In certain districts to which the Germano-Keltic tribes penetrated, in Gaul, for instance, or in Britain with its insular climate, the winter tarried, and the regular central European closing of the pastures was no longer a law. Then again tillage came gradually to equal or outstrip pasturage in importance, and the year of tillage closed, even in Germany, at the end of September rather than in mid-November. The harvest feast began to throw the winter feast rather into the shade as a wind-up of the year’s agricultural labours. This same development of tillage, together with the more scientific management of pasturage itself, did more. It provided a supply of fodder for the cattle, and by making stall-feeding possible put off further and further into the winter the necessity of the great annual slaughter. The importance in Germany, side by side with St. Martin’s day (November 11), of St. Andrew’s day (November 30), and still more St. Nicholas’ day (December 6)[809], as folk-feasts, seems to suggest a consequent tendency to a gradual shifting of the winter festival.

These economic causes came gradually into operation throughout a number of centuries. In displacing the November feast, they prepared the way for and assisted the action of one still more important. This was the influence of Roman usage. When the Germano-Keltic tribes first came into contact with the Roman world, the beginning of the Roman year was still, nominally at least, upon the Kalends, or first of March. This did not, so far as I know, leave any traces upon the practice of the barbarians[810]. In 45 B.C. the Julian calendar replaced the Kalends of March by those of January. During the century and a half that followed, Gaul became largely and Britain partially Romanized, while there was a steady infiltration of Roman customs and ideas amongst the German tribes about and even far beyond the Rhine. With other elements of the southern civilization came the Roman calendar which largely replaced the older Germanic calendar of three-score-day-tides. The old winter festival fell in the middle of a Roman month, and a tendency set in to transfer the whole or a part of its customs either to the beginning of this month[811] or, more usually, to the beginning of the Roman year, a month and a half later. This process was doubtless helped by the fact that the Roman New Year customs were not in their origin, or even at the period of contact, essentially different from those of their more northerly cousins. It remained, of course, a partial and incomplete one. In Gaul, where the Roman influence was strongest, it probably reached its maximum. But in Germany the days of St. Martin[812] and St. Nicholas[813] have fully maintained their position as folk-feasts by the side of New Year’s day, and even Christmas itself; while St. Martin’s day at least has never been quite forgotten in our islands[814]. The state of transition is represented by the isolated Keltic district known as the Isle of Man. Here, according to Professor Rhys, the old Samhain or Hollantide day of November 12 is still regarded by many of the inhabitants as the beginning of the year. Others accept January 1; and there is considerable division of opinion as to which is the day whereon the traditional New Year observances should properly be held[815].

A final factor in the dislocation of the winter feast was the introduction of Christianity, and in especial the establishment of the great ecclesiastical celebration of Christmas. When Christianity first began to claim the allegiance of the Roman world, the rulers of the Church were confronted by a series of southern winter feasts which together made the latter half of December and the beginning of January into one continuous carnival. The nature and position of these feasts claim a brief attention.

To begin with, there were the feasts of the Sun. The Bruma (brevissima) or Brumalia was held on November 24, as the day which ushered in the period of the year during which the sun’s light is diminished. This seems to have been a beginning of winter feast, adopted by Rome from Thrace[816]. The term bruma was also sometimes applied to the whole period between November 24 and the solstice, and ultimately even to the solstitial day itself, fixed somewhat incorrectly by the Julian calendar on December 25[817]. On this day also came a festival, which probably owed its origin to the Emperor Aurelian (270-75), whose mother was a semi-Oriental priestess of the Sun, in one of his Syrian forms as Baal or Belus[818], and who instituted an official cult of this divinity at Rome with a temple on the Quirinal, a collegium of pontifices, and ludi circenses held every fourth year[819]. These fell on the day of the solstice, which from the lengthening of the sun’s course was known as the ‘birthday’ of Sol Novus or Sol Invictus[820]. This cult was practised by Diocletian and by Constantine before his conversion, and was the rallying-point of Julian in his reaction against Christianity[821]. Moreover, the Sol Invictus was identified with the central figure of that curious half-Oriental, half-philosophical worship of Mithra, which at one time threatened to become a serious rival to Christianity as the religion of the thinking portion of the Roman world[822]. That an important Mithraic feast also fell on December 25 can hardly be doubted, although there is no direct evidence of the fact[823].

The cult of the Sol Invictus was not a part of the ancient Roman religion, and, like the Brumalia, the solstitial festival in his honour, however important to the educated and official classes of the empire, was not a folk-festival. It lay, however, exactly between two such festivals. The Saturnalia immediately preceded it; a few days later followed the January Kalends.

The Saturnalia, so far as the religious feast of Saturn was concerned, took place on December 17. Augustus, however, added two days to the feriae iudiciariae, during which the law-courts were shut, and popular usage extended the festival to seven. Amongst the customs practised was that of the sigillariorum celebritas, a kind of fair, at which the sigillaria, little clay dolls or oscilla, were bought and given as presents. Originally, perhaps, these oscilla were like some of our feasten cakes, figures of dough. Candles (cerei or candelae) appear also to have been given. On the second and third days it was customary to bathe in the early morning[824]. But the chief characteristic of the feast was the licence allowed to the lower classes, to freedmen and to slaves. During the libertas Decembris both moral and social restraints were thrown off[825]. Masters made merry with their servants, and consented for the time to be on a footing of strict equality with them[826]. A rex Saturnalitius, chosen by lot, led the revels, and was entitled to claim obedience for the most ludicrous commands[827].

The similarity of the Saturnalia to the folk-feasts of western Europe will be at once apparent. The name Saturnus seems to point to a ploughing and sowing festival, although how such a festival came to be held in mid-December must be matter of conjecture[828]. The Kalends, on the other hand, are clearly a New Year festival. They began on January 1, with the solemn induction of the new consuls into office. As in the case of the Saturnalia, the feriae lasted for more than one day, covering at least a triduum. The third day was the day of vota or solemn wishes of prosperity for the New Year to the emperor. The houses were decked with lights and greenery, and once more the masters drank and played dice with their slaves. The resemblance in this respect between the Kalends and the Saturnalia was recognized by a myth which told how when Saturn came bringing the gifts of civilization to Italy he was hospitably received by Janus, who then reigned in the land[829]. Another Kalends custom, the knowledge of which we owe to the denunciations of the Fathers, was the parading of the city by bands of revellers dressed in women’s clothes or in the skins of animals. And, finally, a series of superstitious observances testified to the belief that the events of the first day of the year were ominous for those of the year itself. A table loaded all night long with viands was to ensure abundance of food; such necessaries of life as iron and fire must not be given or lent out of the house, lest the future supply of them should fail. To this order of ideas belonged, ultimately at least, if not originally, the central feature of the whole feast, the strenae or presents so freely exchanged between all classes of society on the Kalends. Once, so tradition had it, the strenae were nothing more than twigs plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia, associated with Janus in the feast[830]; but in imperial times men gave honeyed things, that the year of the recipient might be full of sweetness, lamps that it might be full of light, copper and silver and gold that wealth might flow in amain[831].

Naturally, the Fathers were not slow to protest against these feasts, and, in particular, against the participation in them of professing Christians. Tertullian is, as usual, explicit and emphatic in his condemnation[832]. The position was aggravated when, probably in the fourth century, the Christian feast of the Birthday of Christ came to be fixed upon December 25, in the very heart of the pagan rejoicings and upon the actual day hitherto sacred to Sol Invictus. The origin of Christmas is wrapped in some obscurity[833]. The earliest notices of a celebration of the birth of Christ in the eastern Church attach it to that of his baptism on the Epiphany. This feast is as old as the second century. By the fourth it was widespread in the East, and was known also in Gaul and probably in northern Italy[834]. At Rome it cannot be traced so early; but it was generally adopted there by the beginning of the fifth, and Augustine blames the Donatists for rejecting it, and so cutting themselves off from fellowship with the East[835]. Christmas, on the other hand, made its appearance first at Rome, and the East only gradually and somewhat grudgingly accepted it. The Paulician Christians of Armenia to this day continue to feast the birth and the baptism together on January 6, and to regard the normal Christian practice as heretical. An exact date for the establishment of the Roman feast cannot be given, for the theory which ascribed it to Pope Liberius in 353 has been shown to be baseless[836]. But it appears from a document of 336 that the beginning of the liturgical year then already fell between December 8 and 27[837]. Christmas may, therefore, be assumed to have been in existence at least by 336.

It would seem, then, that the fourth century witnessed the establishment, both at Rome and elsewhere, of Christmas and Epiphany as two distinct feasts, whereas only one, although probably not everywhere the same one, had been known before. This fact is hardly to be explained by a mere attempt to accommodate varying local uses. The tradition of the Armenian doctors, who stood out against Christmas, asserts that their opponents removed the birthday of Christ from January 6 out of ‘disobedience[838].’ This points to a doctrinal reason for the separate celebration of the birth and the baptism. And such a reason may perhaps be found in the Adoptionist controversies. The joint feast appeared to lend credence to the view, considered a heresy, but still adhered to by the Armenian Church, that Christ was God, not from his mother’s womb, but only from his adoption or spiritual birth at the baptism in Jordan. It was needful that orthodox Christians should celebrate him as divine from the very moment of his carnal birth[839].

The choice of December 25 as the day for the Roman feast cannot be supposed to rest upon any authentic tradition as to the historic date of the Nativity. It is one of several early patristic guesses on the subject. It is not at all improbable that it was determined by an attempt to adopt some of the principal Christian festivals to the solstices and equinoxes of the Roman calendar[840]. The enemies of Roman orthodoxy were not slow to assert that it merely continued under another name the pagan celebration of the birthday of Sol Invictus[841]. Nor was the suggestion entirely an empty one. The worshippers of Sol Invictus, and in particular the Mithraic sect, were not quite on the level of the ordinary pagans by tradition. Mithraism had claims to be a serious and reasonable rival to Christianity, and if its adherents could be induced by argument to merge their worship of the physical sun in that of the ‘Sun of Righteousness,’ they were well worth winning[842]. On the other hand there were obvious dangers in the Roman policy which were not wholly averted, and we find Leo the Great condemning certain superstitious customs amongst his flock which it is difficult to distinguish from the sun-worship practised alike by pagans and by Saint Augustine’s heretical opponents, the Manichaeans[843].

From Rome the Christmas feast gradually made its way over East and West. It does not seem to have reached Jerusalem until at least the sixth century, and, as we have seen, the outlying Church of Armenia never adopted it. But it was established at Antioch about 375 and at Alexandria about 430[844]. At Constantinople an edict of 400 included it in the list of holy days upon which ludi must not be held[845]. In 506 the council of Agatha recognized the Nativity as one of the great days of the Christian year[846], while fasting on that day was forbidden by the council of Braga in 561 as savouring of Priscillianist heresy[847]. The feast of the Epiphany, meanwhile, was relegated to a secondary place; but it was not forgotten, and served as a celebration, in addition to the baptism, of a number of events in the life of Christ, which included the marriage at Cana and the feeding of the five thousand, and of which the visit of the Magi gradually became the leading feature. The Dodecahemeron, or period of twelve days, linking together Christmas and Epiphany, was already known to Ephraim Syrus as a festal tide at the end of the fourth century[848], and was declared to be such by the council of Tours in 567[849].

To these islands Christmas came, if not with the Keltic Church, at least with St. Augustine in 592. On Christmas day, 598, more than ten thousand English converts were baptized[850], and by the time of Bede (†734) Christmas was established, with Epiphany and Easter, as one of the three leading festivals of the year[851]. The Laws of Ethelred (991-1016) and of Edward the Confessor ordain it a holy tide of peace and concord[852]. Continental Germany received it from the synod of Mainz in 813[853], while Norway owed it to King Hakon the Good in the middle of the tenth century[854].

Side by side with the establishment of Christmas proceeded the ecclesiastical denunciation of those pagan festivals whose place it was to take. Little is heard in Christian times of the Saturnalia, which do not seem to have shared the popularity of the Kalends outside the limits of Rome itself. But these latter, and especially the Kalends, are the subject of attack in every corner of the empire. Jerome of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Maximus of Turin, Chrysologus of Ravenna, assail them in Italy; Augustine in Africa; Chrysostom and Asterius and the Trullan council in the East. In Spain, Bishop Pacian of Barcelona made a treatise upon one of the most objectionable features of the festival which, as he says with some humour, probably tended to increase its vogue. In Gaul, Caesarius of Arles initiated a vigorous campaign. To cite all the ecclesiastical pronouncements on the subject would be tedious. Homily followed homily, canon followed canon, capitulary followed capitulary, penitential followed penitential, for half a thousand years. But the Kalends died hard. When Boniface was tackling them amongst the Franks in the middle of the eighth century, he was sorely hampered by the bad example of their continued prevalence at the very gates of the Vatican; and when Burchardus was making his collection of heathen observances in the eleventh century, those of the Kalends were still to be included. In England there is not much heard of them, but a reference in the so-called Penitential of Egbert about 766 proves that they were not unknown. It need hardly be said that all formal religious celebration of the Kalends disappeared with the official victory of Christianity. But this element had never been of great importance in the feast; and the terms in which the ecclesiastical references from beginning to end are couched prove that they relate mainly to popular New Year customs common to the Germanic and the more completely Latinized populations[855].

It appears from a decree of the council of Tours in 567 that, ad calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem, the fourth-century Fathers established on the first three days of January a triduum ieiunii, with litanies, in spite of the fact that these days fell in the very midst of the festal period of the Dodecahemeron[856]. At the same time January 1 was kept as the octave of Christmas, and the early Roman ritual-books show two masses for that day, one in octavis Domini, the other ad prohibendum ab idolis. The Jewish custom by which circumcision took place eight days after birth made it almost inevitable that there should be some celebration of the circumcision of Christ upon the octave of his Nativity. This was the case from the sixth century, and ultimately, about the eighth, the attempt to keep up a fast on January 1 was surrendered, and the festival of the Circumcision took its place[857].

Some tendency was shown by the Church not merely to set up Christmas as a rival to the pagan winter feasts, but also to substitute it for the Kalends of January as the beginning of the year. But the innovation never affected the civil year, and was not maintained even by ecclesiastical writers with any consistency, for even they prefer in many cases a year dating from the Annunciation, or more rarely from Easter. The so-called Annunciation style found favour even for many civil purposes in Great Britain, and was not finally abandoned until 1753[858]. But although Christmas cannot be said to have ever become a popular New Year’s day, yet its festal importance and its propinquity to January 1 naturally led to a result undesired and possibly undreamt of by its founders, namely, the further transference to it of many of the long-suffering Germano-Keltic folk-customs, which had already travelled under Roman influence from the middle of November to the beginning of January[859]. Already in the sixth century it had become necessary to forbid the abuses which had gathered around the celebration of Christmas eve[860]; and the Christmas customs of to-day, even where their name does not testify to their original connexion with the Kalends[861], are in a large number of cases, so far of course as they are not simply ecclesiastical, merely doublets of those of the New Year.

What is true of Christmas is true also of Epiphany or Twelfth night; and the history of the other modern festivals of the winter cycle is closely parallel. The old Germanic New Year’s day on November 11 became the day of St. Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours, and the pervigiliae of St. Martin, like those of the Nativity itself, already caused a scandal in the sixth century[862]. The observances of the deferred days of slaughter clustered round the feasts of St. Andrew on November 30, and more especially St. Nicholas on December 6. The Todtenfest, which had strayed to the beginning of November, was continued in the feasts of All Saints or Hallowmas, the French Toussaint, on November 1, and its charitable supplement of All Souls, on November 2. That which had strayed still further to the time of harvest became the Gemeinwoche or week-wake, and ultimately St. Michael and All Angels. Nor is this all. Very similar customs attached themselves to the minor feasts of the Dodecahemeron, St. Stephen’s, St. John the Evangelist’s, Innocents’ days, to the numerous dedication wakes that fell on days, such as St. Luke’s[863], in autumn or early winter, or to the miscellaneous feasts closely approaching the Christmas season, St. Clement’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas’s, with which indeed in many localities that season is popularly supposed to begin[864]. Nor was this process sensibly affected by the establishment in the sixth century of the ieiunium known as Advent, which stretched for a Quadragesima, or period of forty days, from Martinmas onwards. And finally, just as in May village dipping customs attached themselves in the seventeenth century to Royal Oak day, so in the same century we find the winter festival fires turned to new account in the celebration of the escape of King and Parliament from the nefarious machinations of Guy Fawkes.

CHAPTER XII NEW YEAR CUSTOMS

It is the outcome of the last chapter that all the folk-customs of the winter half of the year, from Michaelmas to Plough Monday, must be regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of a single original feast. This was a New Year’s feast, held by the Germano-Keltic tribes at the beginning of the central European winter when the first snows fell about the middle of November, and subsequently dislocated and dispersed by the successive clash of Germano-Keltic civilization with the rival schemes of Rome and of Christianity. A brief summary of the customs in question will show clearly their common character. For purposes of classification they may be divided into several groups. There are such customs belonging to the agricultural side of the old winter feast as have not been transferred with the growing importance of tillage to the feast of harvest. There are the customs of its domestic side, as a feast of the family hearth and of the dead ancestors. There are the distinctively New Year customs of omen and prognostication for the approaching twelve months. There are the customs of play, common more or less to all the village festivals. And, finally, there are a small number of customs, or perhaps it would be truer to say legends, which appear to owe their origin not merely to heathenism transformed by Christianity, but to Christianity itself. Each of these groups may well claim a more thoroughgoing consideration than can here be given to any one of them.

The agricultural customs are just those of the summer feasts over again. Once more the fertilization spirit is abroad in the land. The embodiment of it in vegetation takes several forms. Obviously the last foliage and burgeoning flowers of spring and summer are no longer available. But there is, to begin with, the sheaf of corn or ‘harvest-May’ in which the spirit appeared at harvest, and which is called upon once more to play its part in the winter rites. This, however, is not a very marked part. A Yorkshire custom of hanging a sheaf on the church door at Christmas is of dubious origin[865]. But Swedish and Danish peasants use the grain of the ‘last sheaf’ to bake the Christmas cake, and both in Scandinavia and Germany the ‘Yule straw’ serves various superstitious purposes. It is scattered on barren fields to make them productive. It is strewed, instead of rushes, upon the house floor and the church floor. It is laid in the mangers of the cattle. Fruit-trees are tied together with straw ropes, that they may bear well and are said to be ‘married[866].’

More naturally the fertilization spirit may be discerned at the approach of winter in such exceptional forms of vegetation as endure the season. In November the apples and the nuts still hang upon their boughs, and these are traditional features in the winter celebrations. Then there are the evergreens. Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom tell how on the Kalends the doors of houses throughout the Roman empire were crowned with bay. Martin of Braga forbade the ‘pagan observance’ in a degree which found its way into the canon law. The original strena which men gave one another on the same day for luck was nothing but a twig plucked from a sacred grove; and still in the fifth century men returned from their new year auguries laden with ramusculi that they might thereafter be laden with wealth[867]. It is not necessary to dwell upon the surviving use of evergreens in the decoration at Christmas of houses and churches[868]. The sacredness of these is reflected in the taboo which enjoins that they shall not be cast out upon the dust-heap, but shall, when some appropriate day, such as Candlemas, arrives, be solemnly committed to the flames[869]. Obviously amongst other evergreens the holly and the ivy, with their clustering pseudo-blossoms of coral and of jet, are the more adequate representatives of the fertilization spirit[870]; most of all the mistletoe, perched an alien visitant, faintly green and white, amongst the bared branches of apple or of oak. The mistletoe has its especial place in Scandinavian myth[871]: Pliny records the ritual use of it by the Druids[872]; it is essential to the winter revels in their amorous aspect; and its vanished dignities still serve, here to bar it from, there to make it imperative in, the edifices of Christian worship[873]. A more artificial embodiment of the fertilization spirit is the ‘Christmas tree’ par excellence, adorned with lights and apples, and often with a doll or image upon the topmost sprig. The first recorded Christmas tree is at Strassburg in 1604. The custom is familiar enough in modern England, but there can be little doubt that here it is of recent introduction, and came in, in fact, with the Hanoverians[874].

Finally, there can be little wonder that the popular imagination found a special manifestation of the fertilization spirit in the unusual blossoming of particular trees or species of trees in the depths of winter. In mild seasons a crab or cherry might well adorn the old winter feast in November. A favourable climate permits such a thing even at mid-winter. Legend, at any rate, has no doubt of the matter, and connects the event definitely with Christmas. A tenth-century Arabian geographer relates how all the trees of the forest stand in full bloom on the holy night. In the thirteenth-century Vita of St. Hadwigis the story is told of a cherry-tree. A fifteenth-century bishop of Bamberg tells it of two apple-trees, and to apple-trees the miracle belongs, in German folk-belief, to this day[875]. In England the stories of Christmas-flowering hawthorns or blackthorns are specific and probably not altogether baseless[876]. The belief found a special location at Glastonbury, where the famous thorn is said by William of Malmesbury and other writers to have budded from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who there ended his wanderings with the Holy Grail. Where winter-flowering trees are not found, a custom sometimes exists of putting a branch of cherry or of hawthorn in water some weeks before Christmas in order that it may blossom and serve as a substitute[877].

It may fairly be conjectured that at the winter, as at the summer feast, the fertilization spirit, in the form of bush or idol, was borne about the fields. The fifteenth-century writer, Alsso, records the calendisationes of the god Bel in Bohemia, suppressed by St. Adalbert[878]. In modern England, a ‘holly-bough’ or ‘wesley-bob,’ with or without an image or doll, occasionally goes its rounds[879]. But a definite lustration of the bounds is rare[880], and, for the most part, the winter procession either is merely riotous or else, like too many of the summer processions themselves, has been converted, under the successive influence of the strenae and the cash nexus, into little more than a quête. Thus children and the poor go ‘souling’ for apples and ‘soul-cakes’ on All Souls’ day; on November 5 they collect for the ‘guy’; on November 11 in Germany, if not in England, for St. Martin; on St. Clement’s day (November 23) they go ‘clemencing’; on St. Catherine’s (November 25) ‘catherning.’ Wheat is the coveted boon on St. Thomas’s day (December 21) or ‘doling day,’ and the quête is variously known as ‘thomasing,’ ‘mumping,’ ‘corning,’ ‘gooding,’ ‘hodening,’ or ‘hooding[881].’ Christmas brings ‘wassailing’ with its bowl of lamb’s-wool and its bobbing apple, and this is repeated on New Year’s day or eve[882]. The New Year quête is probably the most widespread and popular of all. Ducange records it at Rome[883]. In France it is known as l’Aguilaneuf[884], in Scotland and the north of England as Hogmanay, terms in which the philologists meet problems still unsolved[885]. Other forms of the winter quête will crop up presently, and the visits of the guisers with their play or song, the carol singers and the waits may be expected at any time during the Christmas season. As at the summer quêtes, some reminiscence of the primitive character of the processions is to be found in the songs sung, with their wish of prosperity to the liberal household and their ill-will to the churl[886].

In the summer festivals both water-rites and fire-rites frequently occur. In those of winter, water-rites are comparatively rare, as might naturally be expected at a season when snow and ice prevail. There is some trace, however, of a custom of drawing ‘new’ water, as of making ‘new’ fire, for the new year[887]. Festival fires, on the other hand, are widely distributed, and agree in general features with those of summer. Their relation to the fertility of crop and herd is often plainly enough marked. They are perhaps most familiar to-day in the comparatively modern form of the Guy Fawkes celebration on November 5[888], but they are known also on St. Crispin’s day (October 25)[889], Hallow e’en[890], St. Martin’s day[891], St. Thomas’s day[892], Christmas eve[893], New Year[894], and Twelfth night[895]. An elaborate and typical example is the ‘burning of the clavie’ at the little fishing village of Burghead on the Moray Firth[896]. This takes place on New Year’s eve, or, according to another account[897], Christmas eve (O.S.). Strangers to the village are excluded from any share in the ritual. The ‘clavie’ is a blazing tar-barrel hoisted on a pole. In making it, a stone must be used instead of a hammer, and must then be thrown away. Similarly, the barrel must be lit with a blazing peat, and not with lucifer matches. The bearers are honoured, and the bridegroom of the year gets the ‘first lift.’ Should a bearer stumble, it portends death to himself during the year and ill-luck to the town. The procession passes round the boundaries of Burghead, and formerly visited every boat in the harbour. Then it is carried to the top of a hillock called the ‘Doorie,’ down the sides of which it is finally rolled. Blazing brands are used to kindle the house fires, and the embers are preserved as charms.

The central heathen rite of sacrifice has also left its abundant traces upon winter custom. Bede records the significant name of blôt-monath, given to November by the still unconverted Anglo-Saxons[898]. The tradition of solemn slaughter hangs around both Martinmas and Christmas. ‘Martlemas beef’ in England, St. Martin’s swine, hens, and geese in Germany, mark the former day[899]. At Christmas the outstanding victim seems to be the boar. Caput apri defero: reddens laudem Domino, sings the taberdar at Queen’s College, Oxford, as the manciple bears in the boar’s head to the Christmas banquet. So it was sung in many another mediaeval and Elizabethan hall[900], while the gentlemen of the Inner Temple broke their Christmas fast on ‘brawn, mustard, and malmsey[901],’ and in the far-off Orkneys each householder of Sandwick must slay his sow on St. Ignace’s or ‘Sow’ day, December 17[902]. The older mythologists, with the fear of solstices before their eyes, are accustomed to connect the Christmas boar with the light-god, Freyr[903]. If the cult of any one divinity is alone concerned, the analogous use of the pig in the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter would make the earth-goddess a more probable guess[904]. A few more recondite customs associated with particular winter anniversaries may be briefly named. St. Thomas’s day is at Wokingham the day for bull-baiting[905]. On St. Stephen’s day, both in England and Germany, horses are let blood[906]. On or about Christmas, boys are accustomed to set on foot a hunt of victims not ordinarily destined to such a fate[907]; owls and squirrels, and especially wrens, the last, be it noted, creatures which at other times of the year a taboo protects. The wren-hunt is found on various dates in France, England, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, and is carried out with various curious rituals. Often the body is borne in a quête, and in the Isle of Man the quêteurs give a feather as an amulet in return for hospitality. There are other examples of winter quêtes, in which the representation of a sacrificial victim is carried round[908]. ‘Hoodening’ in Kent and other parts of England is accompanied by a horse’s head or hobby-horse[909]. The Welsh ‘Mari Lwyd’ is a similar feature[910], while at Kingscote, in Gloucestershire, the wassailers drink to a bull’s head called ‘the Broad[911].’

The hobby-horse is an example of an apparently grotesque element which is found widespread in folk-processions, and which a previous chapter has traced to its ritual origin. The man clad in a beast-skin is the worshipper putting himself by personal contact under the influence and protection of the sacrificed god. The rite is not a very salient one in modern winter processions, although it has its examples, but its historical importance is great. A glance at the ecclesiastical denunciations of the Kalends collected in an appendix will disclose numerous references to it. These are co-extensive with the western area of the Kalends celebrations. In Italy, in Gaul, in southern Germany, apparently also in Spain and in England, men decked themselves for riot in the heads and skins of cattle and the beasts of the chase, blackened their faces or bedaubed them with filth, or wore masks fit to terrify the demons themselves. The accounts of these proceedings are naturally allusive rather than descriptive; the fullest are given by a certain Severian, whose locality and date are unknown, but who may be conjectured to speak for Italy, by Maximus of Turin and Chrysologus of Ravenna in the fifth century, and by Caesarius of Arles in the beginning of the sixth. Amongst the portenta denounced is a certain cervulus, which lingers in the Penitentials right up to the tenth century, and with which are sometimes associated a vitula or iuvenca. Caesarius adds a hinnicula, and St. Eadhelm, who is my only authority for the presence of the cervulus in England, an ermulus. These seem to be precisely of the nature of ‘hobby-horses.’ Men are said cervulum ambulare, cervulum facere, in cervulo vadere, and Christians are forbidden to allow these portenta to come before their houses. The Penitential of the Pseudo-Theodore tells us that the performers were those who wore the skins and heads of beasts. Maximus of Turin, and several writers after him, put the objection to the beast-mimicry of the Kalends largely on the ground that man made in the image of God must not transform himself into the image of a beast. But it is clear that the real reason for condemning it was its unforgettable connexion with heathen cult. Caesarius warns the culprit that he is making himself into a sacrificium daemonum, and the disguised reveller is more than once spoken of as a living image of the heathen god or demon itself. There is some confusion of thought here, and it must be remembered that the initial significance of the skin-wearing rite was probably buried in oblivion, both for those who practised it and for those who reprobated. But it is obvious that the worshipper wearing a sacrificial skin would bear a close resemblance to the theriomorphic or semi-theriomorphic image developed out of the sacrificial skin nailed on a tree-trunk; and it is impossible not to connect the fact that in the prohibitions a cervulus or ‘hobby-buck’ rather than a ‘hobby-horse’ is prominent with the widespread worship throughout the districts whence many of these notices come of the mysterious stag-horned deity, the Cernunnos of the Gaulish altars[912]. On the whole I incline to think that at least amongst the Germano-Keltic peoples the agricultural gods were not mimed in procession by human representatives. It is true that in the mediaeval German processions which sprang out of those of the Kalends St. Nicholas plays a part, and that the presence of St. Nicholas may be thought to imply that of some heathen precursor. It will, however, be seen shortly that St. Nicholas may have got into these processions through a different train of ideas, equally connected with the Kalends, but not with the strictly agricultural aspect of that festival. But of the continuity of the beast-masks and other horrors of these Christmas processions with those condemned in the prohibitions, there can be no doubt[913]. A few other survivals of the cervulus and its revel can be traced in various parts of Europe[914].

The sacrifices of cereals and of the juice of the vine or the barley are exemplified, the one by the traditional furmenty, plum-porridge, mince-pie, souling-cake, Yule-dough, Twelfth night cake, pain de calende, and other forms of ‘feasten’ cake[915]; the other by the wassail-bowl with its bobbing apple[916]. The summer ‘youling’ or ‘tree-wassailing’ is repeated in the orchard[917], and a curious Herefordshire custom represents an extension of the same principle to the ox-byre[918]. A German hen-yard custom requires mixed corn, for the familiar reason that every kind of crop must be included in the sacrifice[919].

Human sacrifice has been preserved in the whipping of boys on Innocents’ day, because it could be turned into the symbol of a Christian myth[920]. It is preserved also, as throughout the summer, in the custom, Roman as well as Germano-Keltic, of electing a mock or temporary king. Of such the Epiphany king or ‘king of the bean’ is, especially in France, the best known[921]. Here again, the association with the three kings or Magi has doubtless prolonged his sway. But he is not unparalleled. The rex autumnalis of Bath is perhaps a harvest rather than a beginning of winter king[922]. But the shoemakers choose their King Crispin on October 25, the day of their patron saints, Crispin and Crispinian; on St. Clement’s (November 23) the Woolwich blacksmiths have their King Clem, and the maidens of Peterborough and elsewhere a queen on St. Catherine’s (November 25). Tenby, again, elects its Christmas mock mayor[923]. At York, the proclaiming of Yule by ‘Yule’ and ‘Yule’s wife’ on St. Thomas’s day was once a notable pageant[924]. At Norwich, the riding of a ‘kyng of Crestemesse’ was the occasion of a serious riot in 1443[925]. These may be regarded as ‘folk’ versions of the mock king. Others, in which the folk were less concerned, will be the subject of chapters to follow.

Before passing to a fresh group of Christmas customs, I must note the presence of one more bit of ritual closely related to sacrificial survivals. That is, the man masquerading in woman’s clothes, in whom we have found a last faint reminiscence of the once exclusive supremacy of women in the conduct of agricultural worship. At Rome, musicians dressed as women paraded the city, not on the Kalends, but on the Ides of January[926]. The Fathers, however, know such disguising as a Kalends custom, and a condemnation of it often accompanies that of beast-mimicry, from the fourth to the eighth century[927].

The winter festival is thus, like the summer festivals, a moment in the cycle of agricultural ritual, and is therefore shared in by the whole village in common. It is also, and from the time of the institution of harvest perhaps preeminently, a festival of the family and the homestead. This side of it finds various manifestations. There is the solemn renewal of the undying fire upon the hearth, the central symbol and almost condition of the existence of the family as such. This survives in the institution of the ‘Yule-log,’ which throughout the Germano-Keltic area is lighted on Christmas or more rarely New Year’s eve, and must burn, as local custom may exact, either until midnight, or for three days, or during the whole of the Twelve-night period, from Christmas to Epiphany[928]. Dr. Tille, intent on magnifying the Roman element in western winter customs, denies any Germano-Keltic origin to the Christmas blaze, and traces it to the Roman practice of hanging lamps upon the house-doors during the Saturnalia and the Kalends[929]. It is true that the Yule-log is sometimes supplemented or even replaced by the Christmas candle[930], but I do not think that there can be any doubt which is the primitive form of rite. And the Yule-log enters closely into the Germano-Keltic scheme of festival ideas. The preservation of its brands or ashes to be placed in the mangers or mingled with the seed-corn suggests many and familiar analogies. Moreover, it is essentially connected with the festival fire of the village, from which it is still sometimes, and once no doubt was invariably, lit, affording thus an exact parallel to the Germano-Keltic practice on the occasion of summer festival fires, or of those built to stay an epidemic.

Another aspect of the domestic character of the winter festival is to be found in the prominent part which children take in it. As quêteurs, they have no doubt gradually replaced the elder folk, during the process through which, even within the historical purview, ritual has been transformed into play. But St. Nicholas, the chief mythical figure of the festival, is their patron saint; for their benefit especially, the strenae or Christmas and New Year’s gifts are maintained; and in one or two places it is their privilege, on some fixed day during the season, to ‘bar out’ their parents or masters[931].

Thirdly, the winter festival included a commemoration of ancestors. It was a feast, not only of riotous life, but of the dead. For, to the thinking of the Germano-Keltic peoples, the dead kinsmen were not altogether outside the range of human fellowship. They shared with the living in banquets upon the tomb. They could even at times return to the visible world and hover round the familiar precincts of their own domestic hearth. The Germans, at least, heard them in the gusts of the storm, and imagined for them a leader who became Odin. From another point of view they were naturally regarded as under the keeping of earth, and the earth-mother, in one aspect a goddess of fertility, was in another the goddess of the dead. As such she was worshipped under various names and forms, amongst others in the triad of the Matres or Matronae. In mediaeval superstition she is represented by Frau Perchte, Frau Holda and similar personages, by Diana, by Herodias, by St. Gertrude, just as the functions of Odin are transferred to St. Martin, St. Nicholas, St. John, Hellequin. It was not unnatural that the return of the spirits, in the ‘wild hunt’ or otherwise, to earth should be held to take place especially at the two primitive festivals which respectively began the winter and the summer. Of the summer or spring commemoration but scant traces are to be recovered[932]; that of winter survives, in a dislocated form, in more than one important anniversary. Its observances have been transferred with those of the agricultural side of the feast to the Gemeinwoche of harvest[933]; but they are also retained, at or about their original date, on All Saints’ and All Souls’ days[934]; and, as I proceed to show, they form a marked and interesting part of the Christmas and New Year ritual. I do not, indeed, agree with Dr. Mogk, who thinks that the Germans held their primitive feast of the dead in the blackest time of winter, for it seems to me more economical to suppose that the observances in question have been shifted like others from November to the Kalends. But I still less share the view of Dr. Tille, who denies that any relics of a feast of the dead can be traced in the Christmas season at all[935].

Bede makes the statement that the heathen Anglo-Saxons gave to the eve of the Nativity the name of Modranicht or ‘night of mothers,’ and in it practised certain ceremonies[936]. It is a difficult passage, but the most plausible of various explanations seems to be that which identifies these ceremonies with the cult of those Matres or Matronae, corresponding with the Scandinavian disar, whom we seem justified in regarding as guardians and representatives of the dead. Nor is there any particular difficulty in guessing at the nature of the ceremonies referred to. Amongst all peoples the cult of the dead consists in feeding them; and there is a long catena of evidence for the persistent survival in the Germano-Keltic area of a Christmas and New Year custom closely parallel to the alfablót and disablót of the northern jul. When the household went to bed after the New Year revel, a portion of the banquet was left spread upon the table in the firm belief that during the night the ancestral spirits and their leaders would come and partake thereof. The practice, which was also known on the Mediterranean, does not escape the animadversion of the ecclesiastical prohibitions. The earlier writers who speak of it, Jerome, Caesarius, Eligius, Boniface, Zacharias, the author of the Homilia de Sacrilegiis, if they give any explanation at all, treat it as a kind of charm[937]. The laden table, like the human over-eating and over-drinking, is to prognosticate or cause a year of plentiful fare. The preachers were more anxious to eradicate heathenism than to study its antiquities. Burchardus, however, had a touch of the anthropologist, and Burchardus says definitely that food, drink, and three knives were laid on the Kalends table for the three Parcae, figures of Roman mythology with whom the western Matres or ‘weird sisters’ were identified[938]. Mediaeval notices confirm the statement of Burchardus. Martin of Amberg[939], the Thesaurus Pauperum[940] and the Kloster Scheyern manuscript[941] make the recipient of the bounty Frau Perchte. In Alsso’s Largum Sero it is for the heathen gods or demons[942]; in Dives and Pauper for ‘Atholde or Gobelyn[943].’ In modern survivals it is still often Frau Perchte or the Perchten or Persteln for whom fragments of food are left; in other cases the custom has taken on a Christian colouring, and the ancestors’ bit becomes the portion of le bon Dieu or the Virgin or Christ or the Magi, and is actually given to quêteurs or the poor[944].

It is the ancestors, perhaps, who are really had in mind when libations are made upon the Yule-log, an observance known to Martin of Braga in the sixth century[945], and still in use in France[946]. Nor can it be doubted that the healths drunk to them, and to the first of them, Odin, lived on in the St. John’s minnes, no less than in the St. Martin’s minnes, of Germany[947]. Apart from eating and drinking, numerous folk-beliefs testify to the presence of the spirits of the dead on earth in the Twelve nights of Christmas. During these days, or some one of them, Frau Holle and Frau Perchte are abroad[948]. So is the ‘wild hunt[949].’ Dreams then dreamt come true[950], and children then born see ghosts[951]. The werwolf, possessed by a human spirit, is to be dreaded[952]. The devil and his company dance in the Isle of Man[953]: in Brittany the korrigans are unloosed, and the dolmens and menhirs disclose their hidden treasures[954]. Marcellus in Hamlet declares:

The folk-lorist can only reply, ‘So have I heard, and do not in the least believe it.’

The wanderings of Odin in the winter nights must be at the bottom of the nursery myth that the Christian representatives of this divinity, Saints Martin and Nicholas (the Santa Claus of modern legend), are the nocturnal givers of strenae to children. In Italy, the fairy Befana (Epiphania), an equivalent of Diana, has a similar function[956]. It was but a step to the actual representation of such personages for the greater delight of the children. In Anspach the skin-clad Pelzmarten, in Holland St. Martin in bishop’s robes, make their rounds on St. Martin’s day with nuts, apples, and such-like[957]. St. Nicholas does the same on St. Nicholas’ day in Holland and Alsace-Lorraine, at Christmas in Germany[958]. The beneficent saints were incorporated into the Kalends processions already described, which in the sixteenth-century Germany included two distinct groups, a dark one of devils and beast-masks, terrible to children, and a white or kindly one, in which sometimes appeared the Jesus-Kind himself[959]. It is perhaps a relic of the same merging which gives the German and Flemish St. Nicholas a black Moor as companion in his nightly peregrinations[960].

Besides the customs which form part of the agricultural or the domestic observances of the winter feasts, there are others which belong to these in their quality as feasts of the New Year. To the primitive mind the first night and day of the year are full of omen for the nights and days that follow. Their events must be observed as foretelling, nay more, they must as far as possible be regulated as determining, those of the larger period. The eves and days of All Saints, Christmas, and the New Year itself, as well as in some degree the minor feasts, preserve in modern folk-lore this prophetic character. It is but an extension and systematization of the same notion that ascribes to each of the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany a special influence upon one of the twelve months of the year[961]. This group of customs I can only touch most cursorily. The most interesting are those which, as I have just said, attempt to go beyond foretelling and to determine the arrival of good fortune. Their method is symbolic. In order that the house may be prosperous during the year, wealth during the critical day must flow in and not flow out. Hence the taboos which forbid the carrying out in particular of those two central elements of early civilization, fire[962] and iron[963]. Hence too the belief that a job of work begun on the feast day will succeed, which conflicts rather curiously in practice with the universal rustic sentiment that to work or make others work on holidays is the act of a churl[964]. Nothing, again, is more important to the welfare of the household during the coming year than the character of the first visitor who may enter the house on New Year’s day. The precise requirements of a ‘first foot’ vary in different localities; but as a rule he must be a boy or man, and not a girl or woman, and he must be dark-haired and not splay-footed[965]. An ingenious conjecture has connected the latter requirements with the racial antagonism of the high-instepped dark pre-Aryan to the flat-footed blonde or red-haired invading Kelt[966]. A Bohemian parallel enables me to explain that of masculinity by the belief in the influence of the sex of the ‘first foot’ upon that of the cattle to be born during the year[967]. I regret to add that there are traces also of a requirement that the ‘first foot’ should not be a priest, possibly because in that event the shadow of celibacy would make any births at all improbable[968].

Some of the New Year observances are but prophetic by second intention, having been originally elements of cult. An example is afforded by the all-night table for the leaders of the dead, which, as has been pointed out, was regarded by the Fathers who condemned it as merely a device, with the festal banquet itself, to ensure carnal well-being. Another is the habit of giving presents. This, though widespread, is apparently of Italian and not Germano-Keltic origin[969]. It has gone through three phases. The original strena played a part in the cult of the wood-goddess. It was a twig from a sacred tree and the channel of the divine influence upon the personality of him who held or wore it. The later strena had clearly become an omen, as is shown by the tradition which required it to be honeyed or light-bearing or golden[970]. To-day even this notion may be said to have disappeared, and the Christmas-box or étrenne is merely a token of goodwill, an amusement for children, or a blackmail levied by satellites.

The number of minor omens by which the curiosity, chiefly of women, strives on the winter nights to get a peep into futurity is legion[971]. Many of them arise out of the ordinary incidents of the festivities, the baking of the Christmas cakes[972], the roasting of the nuts in the Hallow-e’en fire[973]. Some of them preserve ideas of extreme antiquity, as when a girl takes off her shift and sits naked in the belief that the vision of her future husband will restore it to her. Others are based upon the most naïve symbolism, as when the same girl pulls a stick out of the wood-pile to see if her husband will be straight or crooked[974]. But however diversified the methods, the objects of the omens are few and unvarying. What will be the weather and what his crops? How shall he fare in love and the begetting of children? What are his chances of escaping for yet another year the summons of the lord of shadows? Such are the simple questions to which the rustic claims from his gods an answer.

Finally, the instinct of play proved no less enduring in the Germano-Keltic winter feasts than in those of summer. The priestly protests against the invasion of the churches by folk-dance and folk-song apply just as much to Christmas as to any other festal period. It is, indeed, to Christmas that the monitory legend of the dancers of Kölbigk attaches itself. A similar pious narrative is that in the thirteenth-century Bonum Universale de Apibus of Thomas of Cantimpré, which tells how a devil made a famous song of St. Martin, and spread it abroad over France and Germany[975]. Yet a third is solemnly retailed by a fifteenth-century English theologian, who professes to have known a man who once heard an indecent song at Christmas, and not long after died of a melancholy[976]. During the seventeenth century folk still danced and cried ‘Yole’ in Yorkshire churches after the Christmas services[977]. Hopeless of abolishing such customs, the clergy tried to capture them. The Christmas crib was rocked to the rhythms of a dance, and such great Latin hymns as the Hic iacet in cunabulis and the Resonat in laudibus became the parents of a long series of festival songs, half sacred, half profane[978]. In Germany these were known as Wiegenlieder, in France as noëls, in England as carols; and the latter name makes it clear that they are but a specialized development of those caroles or rondes which of all mediaeval chansons came nearest to the type of Germano-Keltic folk-song. A single passage in a Byzantine writer gives a tantalizing glimpse of such a folk-revel or laiks at a much earlier stage. Constantine Porphyrogennetos describes amongst the New Year sports and ceremonies of the court of Byzantium in the tenth century one known as τὸ Γοτθικόν. In this the courtiers were led by two ‘Goths’ wearing skins and masks, and carrying staves and shields which they clashed together. An intricate dance took place about the hall, which naturally recalls the sword-dance of western Europe. A song followed, of which the words are preserved. They are only partly intelligible, and seem to contain allusions to the sacrificial boar and to the Gothic names of certain deities. From the fact that they are in Latin, the scholars who have studied them infer that the Γοτθικόν drifted to Byzantium from the court of the great sixth-century Ostrogoth, Theodoric[979].

CHAPTER XIII THE FEAST OF FOOLS

The New Year customs, all too briefly summed up in the last chapter, are essentially folk customs. They belong to the ritual of that village community whose primitive organization still, though obscurely, underlies the complex society of western Europe. The remaining chapters of the present volume will deal with certain modifications and developments introduced into those customs by new social classes which gradually differentiated themselves during the Middle Ages from the village folk. The churchman, the bourgeois, the courtier, celebrated the New Year, even as the peasant did. But they put their own temper into the observances; and it is worth while to accord a separate treatment to the shapes which these took in such hands, and to the resulting influence upon the dramatic conditions of the sixteenth century.

The discussion must begin with the somewhat startling New Year revels held by the inferior clergy in mediaeval cathedrals and collegiate churches, which may be known generically as the ‘Feast of Fools.’ Actually, the feast has different names in different localities. Most commonly it is the festum stultorum, fatuorum or follorum; but it is also called the festum subdiaconorum from the highest of the minores ordines who, originally at least, conducted it, and the festum baculi from one of its most characteristic and symbolical ceremonies; while it shares with certain other rites the suggestive title of the ‘Feast of Asses,’ asinaria festa.

The main area of the feast is in France, and it is in France that it must first of all be considered. I do not find a clear notice of it until the end of the twelfth century[980]. It is mentioned, however, in the Rationale Divinorum Officium (†1182-90) of Joannes Belethus, rector of Theology at Paris, and afterwards a cathedral dignitary at Amiens. ‘There are four tripudia’ Belethus tells us, ‘after Christmas. They are those of the deacons, priests, and choir-children, and finally that of the sub-deacons, quod vocamus stultorum, which is held according to varying uses, on the Circumcision, or on Epiphany, or on the octave of Epiphany[981].’ Almost simultaneously the feast can be traced in the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Paris, through an epigram written by one Leonius, a canon of the cathedral, to a friend who was about to pay him a visit for the festum baculi at the New Year[982]. The baculus was the staff used by the precentor of a cathedral, or whoever might be conducting the choir in his place[983]. Its function in the Feast of Fools may be illustrated from an order for the reformation of the Notre-Dame ceremony issued in 1199. This order was made by Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris, together with the dean and other chapter officers[984]. It recites a mandate sent to them by cardinal Peter of Capua, then legate in France. The legate had been informed of the improprieties and disorders, even to shedding of blood, which had given to the feast of the Circumcision in the cathedral the appropriate name of the festum fatuorum. It was not a time for mirth, for the fourth crusade had failed, and Pope Innocent III was preaching the fifth. Nor could such spurcitia be allowed in the sanctuary of God. The bishop and his fellows must at once take order for the pruning of the feast. In obedience to the legate they decree as follows. The bells for first Vespers on the eve of the Circumcision are to be rung in the usual way. There are to be no chansons, no masks, and no hearse lights, except on the iron wheels or on the penna at the will of the functionary who is to surrender the cope[985]. The lord of the feast is not to be led in procession or with singing to the cathedral or back to his house. He is to put on his cope in the choir, and with the precentor’s baculus in his hand to start the singing of the prose Laetemur gaudiis[986]. Vespers, Compline, Matins and Mass are to be sung in the usual festal manner. Certain small functions are reserved for the sub-deacons, and the Epistle at Mass is to be ‘farced[987].’ At second Vespers Laetemur gaudiis is to be again sung, and also Laetabundus[988]. Then comes an interesting direction. Deposuit is to be sung where it occurs five times at most, and ‘if the baculus has been taken,’ Vespers are to be closed by the ordinary officiant after a Te Deum. Throughout the feast canons and clerks are to remain properly in their stalls[989]. The abuses which it was intended to eliminate from the feast are implied rather than stated; but the general character of the ceremony is clear. It consisted in the predominance throughout the services, for this one day in the year, of the despised sub-deacons. Probably they had been accustomed to take the canons’ stalls. This Eudes de Sully forbids, but even, in the feast as he left it the importance of the dominus festi, the sub-deacons’ representative, is marked by the transfer to him of the baculus, and with it the precentor’s control. Deposuit potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles occurs in the Magnificat, which is sung at Vespers; and the symbolical phrase, during which probably the baculus was handed over from the dominus of one year to the dominus of the next, became the keynote of the feast, and was hailed with inordinate repetition by the delighted throng of inferior clergy[990].

Shortly after the Paris reformation a greater than Eudes de Sully and a greater than Peter de Capua was stirred into action by the scandal of the Feast of Fools and the cognate tripudia. In 1207, Pope Innocent III issued a decretal to the archbishop and bishops of the province of Gnesen in Poland, in which he called attention to the introduction, especially during the Christmas feasts held by deacons, priests and sub-deacons, of larvae or masks and theatrales ludi into churches, and directed the discontinuance of the practice[991]. This decretal was included as part of the permanent canon law in the Decretales of Gregory IX in 1234[992]. But some years before this it found support, so far as France was concerned, in a national council held at Paris by the legate Robert de Courcon in 1212, at which both regular and secular clergy were directed to abstain from the festa follorum, ubi baculus accipitur[993].

It was now time for other cathedral chapters besides that of Paris to set their houses in order, and good fortune has preserved to us a singular monument of the attempts which they made to do so. The so-called Missel des Fous of Sens may be seen in the municipal library of that city[994]. It is enshrined in a Byzantine ivory diptych of much older date than itself[995]. It is not a missal at all. It is headed Officium Circumcisionis in usum urbis Senonensis, and is a choir-book containing the words and music of the Propria or special chants used in the Hours and Mass at the feast[996]. Local tradition at Sens, as far back as the early sixteenth century, ascribed the compilation of this office to that very Petrus de Corbolio who was associated with Eudes de Sully in the Paris reformation[997]. Pierre de Corbeil, whom scholastics called doctor opinatissimus and his epitaph flos et honor cleri, had a varied ecclesiastical career. As canon of Notre-Dame and reader in the Paris School of Theology he counted amongst his pupils one no less distinguished than the future Pope Innocent III himself. He became archdeacon of Evreux, coadjutor of Lincoln (a fact of some interest in connexion with the scanty traces of the Feast of Fools in England), bishop of Cambrai, and finally archbishop of Sens, where he died in 1222. There is really no reason to doubt his connexion with the Officium. The handwriting of the manuscript and the character of the music are consistent with a date early in the thirteenth century[998]. Elaborate and interpolated offices were then still in vogue, and the good bishop enjoyed some reputation for literature as well as for learning. He composed an office for the Assumption, and is even suspected of contributions in his youth to goliardic song[999]. It is unlikely that he actually wrote much of the text of the Officium Circumcisionis, very little of which is peculiar to Sens. But he may well have compiled or revised it for his own cathedral, with the intention of pruning the abuses of the feast; and, in so doing, he evidently admitted proses and farsurae with a far more liberal hand than did Eudes de Sully. The whole office, which is quite serious and not in the least burlesque, well repays study. I can only dwell on those parts of it which throw light on the general character of the celebration for which it was intended.

The first Vespers on the eve of the Circumcision are preceded by four lines sung in ianuis ecclesiae:

These lines are interesting, because they show that the thirteenth-century name for the feast at Sens was the asinaria festa, the ‘Feast of the Ass.’ They are followed by what is popularly known as the ‘Prose of the Ass,’ but is headed in the manuscript Conductas ad tabulam. A conductus is a chant sung while the officiant is conducted from one station to another in the church[1000], and the tabula is the rota of names and duties pro cantu et lectura, with the reading of which the Vespers began[1001]. The text of the Prose of the Ass, as used at Sens and elsewhere, is given in an appendix[1002]. Next come a trope and a farsed Alleluia, a long interpolation dividing ‘Alle-’ and ‘-luia,’ and then another passage which has given a wrong impression of the nature of the office:

The phrase in falso does not really mean ‘out of tune.’ It means, ‘with the harmonized accompaniment known as en faux bourdon’, and is opposed to in voce, ‘in unison[1004].’ The Vespers, with many further interpolations, then continue, and after them follow Compline, Matins, Lauds[1005], Prime, Tierce, the Mass, Sext, and second Vespers. These end with three further pieces of particular interest from our point of view. The first is a Conductus ad Bacularium, the name Bacularius being doubtless that given at Sens to the dominus festi[1006]. This opens in a marked festal strain:

The Bacularius is then, one may assume, led out of the church, with the Conductus ad Poculum, which begins,

The manuscript ends, so far as the Feast of the Circumcision is concerned, with some Versus ad Prandium, to be sung in the refectory, taken from a hymn of Prudentius[1007].

The Sens Missel des Fous has been described again and again. Less well known, however, is the very similar Officium of Beauvais, and for the simple reason that although recent writers on the Feast of Fools have been aware of its existence, they have not been aware of its habitat. I have been fortunate enough to find it in the British Museum, and only regret that I am not sufficiently acquainted with textual and musical palaeography to print it in extenso as an appendix to this chapter[1008]. The date of the manuscript is probably 1227-34[1009]. Like that of Sens it contains the Propria for the Feast of the Circumcision from Vespers to Vespers. Unluckily, there is a lacuna of several pages in the middle[1010]. The office resembles that of Sens in general character, but is much longer. There are two lines of opening rubric, of which all that remains legible is ... medio stantes incipit cantor. Then comes the quatrain Lux hodie similarly used at Sens, but with the notable variant of praesentia festa for asinaria festa. Then, under the rubric, also barely legible, Conductus, quando asinus adducitur[1011], comes the ‘Prose of the Ass.’ At the end of Lauds is the following rubric: Postea omnes eant ante ianuas ecclesiae clausas. Et quatuor stent foris tenentes singli urnas vino plenas cum cyfis vitreis. Quorum unus canonicus incipiat Kalendas Ianuarias. Tunc aperiantur ianuae. Here comes the lacuna in the manuscript, which begins again in the Mass. Shortly before the prayer for the pope is a rubric Quod dicitur, ubi apponatur baculus, which appears to be a direction for a ceremony not fully described in the Officium. The ‘Prose of the Ass’ occurs a second time as the Conductus Subdiaconi ad Epistolam, and on this occasion the musical accompaniment is harmonized in three parts[1012]. I can find nothing about a Bacularius at second Vespers, but the office ends with a series of conductus and hymns, some of which are also harmonized in parts. The Officium is followed in the manuscript by a Latin cloister play of Daniel[1013].

An earlier manuscript than that just described was formerly preserved in the Beauvais cathedral library. It dated from 1160-80[1014]. It was known to Pierre Louvet, the seventeenth-century historian of Beauvais[1015], and apparently to Dom Grenier, who died in 1789[1016]. According to Grenier’s account it must have closely resembled that in the British Museum.

‘Aux premières vêpres, le chantre commençait par entonner au milieu de la nef: Lux hodie, lux laetitiae, etc.... À laudes rien de particulier que le Benedictus et son répons farcis. Les laudes finies on sortait de l’église pour aller trouver l’âne qui attendait à la grande porte. Elle était fermée. Là, chacun des chanoines s’y trouvant la bouteille et le verre à la main, le chantre entonnait la prose: Kalendas ianuarias solemne Christe facias. Voici ce que porte l’ancien cérémonial: dominus cantor et canonici ante ianuas ecclesiae clausas stent foris tenentes singuli urnas vini plenas cum cyfis vitreis, quorum unus cantor incipiat: Kalendas ianuarias, etc. Les battants de la porte ouverts, on introduisait l’âne dans l’église, en chantant la prose: Orientis partibus. Ici est une lacune dans le manuscrit jusque vers le milieu du Gloria in excelsis.... On chantait la litanie: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, dans laquelle on priait pour le pape Alexandre III, pour Henri de France, évêque de Beauvais, pour le roi Louis VII et pour Alixe ou Adèle de Champagne qui était devenue reine en 1160; par quoi on peut juger de l’antiquité de ce cérémonial. L’Évangile était précédé d’une prose et suivi d’une autre. Il est marqué dans le cérémonial de cinq cents ans que les encensements du jour de cette fête se feront avec le boudin et la saucisse: hac die incensabitur cum boudino et saucita.’

Dom Grenier gives as the authority for his last sentence, not the Officium, but the Glossary of Ducange, or rather the additions thereto made by certain Benedictine editors in 1733-6. They quote the pudding and sausage rubric together with that as to the drinking-bout, which occurs in both the Officia, as from a Beauvais manuscript. This they describe as a codex ann. circiter 500[1017]. It seems probable that this was not an Officium at all, but something of the nature of a Processional, and that it was identical with the codex 500 annorum from which the same Benedictines derived their amazing account of a Beauvais ceremony which took place not on January 1 but on January 14[1018]. A pretty girl, with a child in her arms, was set upon an ass, to represent the Flight into Egypt. There was a procession from the cathedral to the church of St. Stephen. The ass and its riders were stationed on the gospel side of the altar. A solemn mass was sung, in which Introit, Kyrie, Gloria and Credo ended with a bray. To crown all, the rubrics direct that the celebrant, instead of saying Ite, missa est, shall bray three times (ter hinhannabit) and that the people shall respond in similar fashion. At this ceremony also the ‘Prose of the Ass’ was used, and the version preserved in the Glossary is longer and more ludicrous than that of either the Sens or the Beauvais Officium.

On a review of all the facts it would seem that the Beauvais documents represent a stage of the feast unaffected by any such reform as that carried out by Pierre de Corbeil at Sens. And the nature of that reform is fairly clear. Pierre de Corbeil provided a text of the Officium based either on that of Beauvais or on an earlier version already existing at Sens. He probably added very little of his own, for the Sens manuscript only contains a few short passages not to be found in that of Beauvais. And as the twelfth-century Beauvais manuscript seems to have closely resembled the thirteenth-century one still extant, Beauvais cannot well have borrowed from him. At the same time he doubtless suppressed whatever burlesque ceremonies, similar to the Beauvais drinking-bout in the porch and censing with pudding and sausage, may have been in use at Sens. One of these was possibly the actual introduction of an ass into the church. But it must be remembered that the most extravagant of such ceremonies would not be likely at either place to get into the formal service-books[1019]. As the Sens Officium only includes the actual service of January 1 itself, it is impossible to compare the way in which the semi-dramatic extension of the feast was treated in the two neighbouring cathedrals. But Sens probably had this extension, for as late as 1634 there was an annual procession, in which the leading figures were the Virgin Mary mounted on an ass and a cortège of the twelve Apostles. This did not, however, at that time take part in the Mass[1020].

The full records of the Feast of Fools at Sens do not begin until the best part of a century after the probable date of its Officium. But one isolated notice breaks the interval, and shows that the efforts of Pierre de Corbeil were not for long successful in purging the revel of its abuses. This is a letter written to the chapter in 1245 by Odo, cardinal of Tusculum, who was then papal legate in France. He calls attention to the antiqua ludibria of the feasts of Christmas week and of the Circumcision, and requires these to be celebrated, not iuxta pristinum modum, but with the proper ecclesiastical ceremonies. He specifically reprobates the use of unclerical dress and the wearing of wreaths of flowers[1021].

A little later in date than either the Sens or the Beauvais Officium is a Ritual of St. Omer, which throws some light on the Feast of Fools as it was celebrated in the northern town on the day of the Circumcision about 1264. It was the feast of the vicars and the choir. A ‘bishop’ and a ‘dean’ of Fools took part in the services. The latter was censed in burlesque fashion, and the whole office was recited at the pitch of the voice, and even with howls. There cannot have been much of a reformation here[1022].

A few other scattered notices of thirteenth-century Feasts of Fools may be gathered together. The Roman de Renard is witness to the existence of such a feast, with jeux and tippling, at Bayeux, about 1200[1023]. At Autun, the chapter forbade the baculus anni novi in 1230[1024]. Feasts of Fools on Innocents’ and New Year’s days are forbidden by the statutes of Nevers cathedral in 1246[1025]. At Romans, in Dauphiné, an agreement was come to in 1274 between the chapter, the archbishop of Vienne and the municipal authorities, that the choice of an abbot by the cathedral clerks known as esclaffardi should cease, on account of the disturbances and scandals to which it had given rise[1026]. The earliest mention of the feast at Laon is about 1280[1027]; while it is provided for as the sub-deacons’ feast by an Amiens Ordinarium of 1291[1028]. Nor are the ecclesiastical writers oblivious of it. William of Auxerre opens an era of learned speculation in his De Officiis Ecclesiasticis, by explaining it as a Christian substitute for the Parentalia of the pagans[1029]. Towards the end of the century, Durandus, bishop of Mende, who drew upon both William of Auxerre and Belethus for his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, gave an account of it which agrees closely with that of Belethus[1030]. Neither William of Auxerre nor Durandus shows himself hostile to the Feast of Fools. Its abuses are, however, condemned in more than one contemporary collection of sermons[1031].

With the fourteenth century the records of the Feast of Fools become more frequent. In particular, the account-books of the chapter of Sens throw some light on the organization of the feast in that cathedral[1032]. The Compotus Camerarii has, from 1345 onwards, a yearly entry pro vino praesentato vicariis ecclesiae die Circumcisionis Domini. Sometimes the formula is varied to die festi fatuorum. In course of time the whole expenses of the feast come to be a charge on the chapter, and in particular, it would appear, upon the sub-deacon canons[1033]. In 1376 is mentioned, for the first time, the dominus festi, to whom under the title of precentor et provisor festi stultorum a payment is made. The Compotus Nemorum shows that by 1374 a prebend in the chapter woods had been appropriated to the vicars pro festo fatuorum. Similar entries occur to the end of the fourteenth century and during the first quarter of the fifteenth[1034]. Then came the war to disturb everything, and from 1420 the account-books rarely show any traces of the feast. Nor were civil commotions alone against it. As in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so in the fourteenth and fifteenth the abuses which clung about the Feasts of Fools rendered them everywhere a mark for the eloquence of ecclesiastical reformers. About 1400 the famous theologian and rector of Paris University, Jean-Charlier de Gerson, put himself at the head of a crusade against the ritus ille impiissimus et insanus qui regnat per totam Franciam, and denounced it roundly in sermons and conclusiones. The indecencies of the feast, he declares, would shame a kitchen or a tavern. The chapters will do nothing to stop them, and if the bishops protest, they are flouted and defied. The scandal can only be ended by the interposition of royal authority[1035]. According to Gerson, Charles the Sixth did on one occasion issue letters against the feast; and the view of the reformers found support in the diocesan council of Langres in 1404[1036], and the provincial council of Tours, held at Nantes in 1431[1037]. It was a more serious matter when, some years after Gerson’s death, the great council of Basle included a prohibition of the feast in its reformatory decrees of 1435[1038]. By the Pragmatic Sanction issued by Charles VII at the national council of Bourges in 1438, these decrees became ecclesiastical law in France[1039], and it was competent for the Parlements to put them into execution[1040]. But the chapters were obstinate; the feasts were popular, not only with the inferior clergy themselves, but with the spectacle-loving bourgeois of the cathedral towns; and it was only gradually that they died out during the course of the next century and a half. The failure of the Pragmatic Sanction to secure immediate obedience in this matter roused the University of Paris, still possessed with the spirit of Gerson, to fresh action. On March 12, 1445, the Faculty of Theology, acting through its dean, Eustace de Mesnil, addressed to the bishops and chapters of France a letter which, from the minuteness of its indictment, is perhaps the most curious of the many curious documents concerning the feast[1041]. It consists of a preamble and no less than fourteen conclusiones, some of which are further complicated by qualificationes. The preamble sets forth the facts concerning the festum fatuorum. It has its clear origin, say the theologians, in the rites of paganism, amongst which this Janus-worship of the Kalends has alone been allowed to survive. They then describe the customs of the feast in a passage which I must translate:

‘Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste[1042].’

There follows a refutation of the argument that such ludi are but the relaxation of the bent bow in a fashion sanctioned by antiquity. On the contrary, they are due to original sin, and the snares of devils. The bishops are besought to follow the example of St. Paul and St. Augustine, of bishops Martin, Hilarius, Chrysostom, Nicholas and Germanus of Auxerre, all of whom made war on sacrilegious practices, not to speak of the canons of popes and general councils, and to stamp out the ludibria. It rests with them, for the clergy will not be so besotted as to face the Inquisition and the secular arm[1043].

The conclusiones thus introduced yield a few further data as to the ceremonies of the feast. It seems to be indifferently called festum stultorum and festum fatuorum. It takes place in cathedrals and collegiate churches, on Innocents’ day, on St. Stephen’s, on the Circumcision, or on other dates. ‘Bishops’ or ‘archbishops’ of Fools are chosen, who wear mitres and pastoral staffs, and have crosses borne before them, as if they were on visitation. They take the Office, and give Benedictions to the readers of the lessons at Matins, and to the congregations. In exempt churches, subject only to the Holy See, a ‘pope’ of Fools is naturally chosen instead of a ‘bishop’ or an ‘archbishop.’ The clergy wear the garments of the laity or of fools, and the laity put on priestly or monastic robes. Ludi theatrales and personagiorum ludi are performed.

The manifesto of the Theological Faculty helped in at least one town to bring matters to a crisis. At Troyes the Feast of Fools appears to have been celebrated on the Circumcision in the three great collegiate churches of St. Peter, St. Stephen, and St. Urban, and on Epiphany in the abbey of St. Loup. The earliest records are from St. Peter’s. In 1372 the chapter forbade the vicars to celebrate the feast without leave. In 1380 and 1381 there are significant entries of payments for damage done: in the former year Marie-la-Folle broke a candelabrum; in the latter a cross had to be repaired and gilded. In 1436, the year after the council of Basle, leave was given to hold the feast without irreverence. In 1439, the year after the Pragmatic Sanction, it was forbidden. In 1443, it was again permitted. But it must be outside the church. The ‘archbishop’ might wear a rochet, but the supper must take place in the house of one of the canons, and not at a tavern. The experiment was not altogether a success, for a canon had to be fined twenty sous pour les grandes sottises et les gestes extravagants qu’il s’était permis à la fête des fols[1044]. Towards the end of 1444, when it was proposed to renew the feast, the bishop of Troyes, Jean Leguisé, intervened. The clergy of St. Peter’s were apparently willing to submit, but those of St. Stephen’s stood out. They told the bishop that they were exempt from his jurisdiction, and subject only to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Sens; and they held an elaborate revel with even more than the usual insolence and riot. On the Sunday before Christmas they publicly consecrated their ‘archbishop’ in the most public place of the town with a jeu de personnages called le jeu du sacre de leur arcevesque, which was a burlesque of the saint mistère de consécration pontificale. The feast itself took place in St. Stephen’s Church. The vicar who was chosen ‘archbishop’ performed the service on the eve and day of the Circumcision in pontificalibus, gave the Benediction to the people, and went in procession through the town. Finally, on Sunday, January 3, the clergy of all three churches joined in another jeu de personnages, in which, under the names of Hypocrisie, Faintise and Faux-semblant, the bishop and two canons who had been most active in opposing the feast, were held up to ridicule. Jean Leguisé was not a man to be defied with impunity. On January 23 he wrote a letter to the archbishop of Sens, Louis de Melun, calling his attention to the fact that the rebellious clerks had claimed his authority for their action. He also lodged a complaint with the king himself, and probably incited the Faculty of Theology at Paris to back him up with the protest already described. The upshot of it all was a sharp letter from Charles VII to the bailly and prévost of Troyes, setting forth what had taken place, and requiring them to see that no repetition of the scandalous jeux was allowed[1045]. Shortly afterwards the chapter of St. Peter’s sent for their Ordinarium, and solemnly erased all that was derogatory to religion and the good name of the clergy in the directions for the feast. What the chapter of St. Stephen’s did, we do not know. The canons mainly to blame had already apologized to the bishop. Probably it was thought best to say nothing, and let it blow over. At any rate, it is interesting to note that in 1595, a century and a half later, St. Stephen’s was still electing its archevesque des saulx, and that droits were paid on account of the vicars’ feast until all droits tumbled in 1789[1046].

The proceedings at Troyes seem to have reacted upon the feast at Sens. In December, 1444, the chapter had issued an elaborate order for the regulation of the ceremony, in which they somewhat pointedly avoided any reference to the council of Basle or the Pragmatic Sanction, and cited only the legatine statute of Odo of Tusculum in 1245. The order requires that divine service shall be devoutly and decently performed, prout iacet in libro ipsius servitii. By this is doubtless meant the Officium already described. There must be no mockery or impropriety, no unclerical costume, no dissonant singing. Then comes what, considering that this is a reform, appears a sufficiently remarkable direction. Not more than three buckets of water at most must be poured over the precentor stultorum at Vespers. The custom of ducking on St. John’s eve, apparently the occasion when the precentor was elected, is also pruned, and a final clause provides that if nobody’s rights are infringed the stulti may do what they like outside the church[1047]. Under these straitened conditions the feast was probably held in 1445. There was, however, the archbishop as well as the chapter to be reckoned with. It was difficult for Louis de Melun, after the direct appeal made to him by his suffragan at Troyes, to avoid taking some action, and in certain statutes promulgated in November, 1445, he required the suppression of the whole consuetudo and ordered the directions for it to be erased from the chant-books[1048]. There is now no mention of the feast until 1486, from which date an occasional payment for la feste du premier jour de l’an begins to appear again in the chapter account-books[1049]. In 1511, the servitium divinum after the old custom is back in the church. But the chapter draws a distinction between the servitium and the festum stultorum, which is forbidden. The performance of jeux de personnages and the public shaving of the precentor’s beard on a stage are especially reprobated[1050]. The servitium was again allowed in 1514, 1516, 1517, and in 1520 with a provision that the lucerna precentoris fatuorum must not be brought into the church[1051]. In 1522, both servitium and festum were forbidden on account of the war with Spain; the shaving of the precentor and the ceremony of his election on the feast of St. John the Evangelist again coming in for express prohibition[1052]. In 1523 the servitium was allowed upon a protest by the vicars, but only with the strict exclusion of the popular elements[1053]. In 1524 even the servitium was withheld, and though sanctioned again in 1535, 1539 and 1543, it was finally suppressed in 1547[1054]. Some feast, however, would still seem to have been held, probably outside the church, until 1614[1055], and even as late as 1634 there was a trace of it in the annual procession of the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, already referred to.

This later history of the feast at Sens is fairly typical, as the following chapter will show, of what took place all over France. The chapters by no means showed themselves universally willing to submit to the decree promulgated in the Pragmatic Sanction. In many of them the struggle between the conservative and the reforming parties was spread over a number of years. Councils, national, provincial and diocesan, continued to find it necessary to condemn the feast, mentioning it either by name or in a common category with other ludi, spectacula, choreae, tripudia and larvationes[1056]. In one or two instances the authority of the Parlements was invoked. But in the majority of cases the feast either gradually disappeared, or else passed, first from the churches into the streets, and then from the clerks to the bourgeois, often to receive a new life under quite altered circumstances at the hands of some witty and popular compagnie des fous[1057].

CHAPTER XIV THE FEAST OF FOOLS ( continued )

The history of the Feast of Fools has been so imperfectly written, that it is perhaps worth while to bring together the records of its occurrence, elsewhere than in Troyes and Sens, from the fourteenth century onwards. They could probably be somewhat increased by an exhaustive research amongst French local histories, archives, and the transactions of learned societies. Of the feast in Notre-Dame at Paris nothing is heard after the reformation carried out in 1198 by Eudes de Sully[1058]. The bourgeois of Tournai were, indeed, able to quote a Paris precedent for the feast of their own city in 1499; but this may have been merely the feast of some minor collegiate body, such as that founded in 1303 by cardinal Le Moine[1059]; or of the scholars of the University, or of the compagnie joyeuse of the Enfants-sans-Souci. At Beauvais, too, there are only the faintest traces of the feast outside the actual twelfth-and thirteenth-century service-books[1060]. But there are several other towns in the provinces immediately north and east of the capital, Île de France, Picardy, Champagne, where it is recorded. The provision made for it in the Amiens Ordinarium of 1291 has been already quoted. Shortly after this, bishop William de Macon, who died in 1303, left his own pontificalia for the use of the ‘bishop of Fools[1061].’ When, however, the feast reappears in the fifteenth century the dominus festi is no longer a ‘bishop,’ but a ‘pope.’ In 1438 there was an endowment consisting of a share in the profits of some lead left by one John le Caron, who had himself been ‘pope[1062].’ In 1520 the feast was held, but no bells were to be jangled[1063]. It was repeated in 1538. Later in the year the customary election of the ‘pope’ on the anniversary of Easter was forbidden, but the canons afterwards repented of their severity[1064]. In 1540 the chapter paid a subsidy towards the amusements of the ‘pope’ and his ‘cardinals’ on the Sunday called brioris[1065]. In 1548 the feast was suppressed[1066]. At Noyon the vicars chose a ‘king of Fools’ on Epiphany eve. The custom is mentioned in 1366 as ‘le gieu des roys.’ By 1419 it was forbidden, and canon John de Gribauval was punished for an attempt to renew it by taking the sceptre off the high altar at Compline on Epiphany. In 1497, 1499, and 1505 it was permitted again, with certain restrictions. The cavalcade must be over before Nones; there must be no licentious or scurrilous chansons, no dance before the great doors; the ‘king’ must wear ecclesiastical dress in the choir. In 1520, however, he was allowed to wear his crown more antiquo. The feast finally perished in 1721, owing to la cherté des vivres[1067]. At Soissons, the feast was held on January 1, with masquing[1068]. At Senlis, the dominus festi was a ‘pope.’ In 1403 there was much division of opinion amongst the chapter as to the continuance of the feast, and it was finally decided that it must take place outside the church. In 1523 it came to an end. The vicars of the chapter of Saint-Rieul had in 1501 their separate feast on January 1, with a ‘prelate of Fools’ and jeux in the churchyard[1069]. From Laon fuller records are available[1070]. A ‘patriarch of Fools’ was chosen with his ‘consorts’ on Epiphany eve after Prime, by the vicars, chaplains and choir-clerks. There was a cavalcade through the city and a procession called the Rabardiaux, of which the nature is not stated[1071]. The chapter bore the expenses of the banquet and the masks. The first notice is about 1280. In 1307 one Pierre Caput was ‘patriarch.’ In 1454 the bishop upheld the feast against the dean, but it was decided that it should take place outside the church. A similar regulation was made in 1455, 1456, 1459. In 1462 the servitium was allowed, and the jeu was to be submitted to censorship. In 1464 and 1465 mysteries were acted before the Rabardiaux. In 1486 the jeu was given before the church of St.-Martin-au-Parvis. In 1490 the jeux and cavalcade were forbidden, and the banquet only allowed. In 1500 a chaplain, Jean Hubreland, was fined for not taking part in the ceremony. In 1518 the worse fate of imprisonment befell Albert Gosselin, another chaplain, who flung fire from above the porch upon the ‘patriarch’ and his ‘consorts.’ By 1521 the servitium seems to have been conducted by the curés of the Laon churches, and the vicars and chaplains merely assisted. The expense now fell on the curés, and the chapter subsidy was cut down. In 1522 and 1525 the perquisites of the ‘patriarch’ were still further reduced by the refusal of a donation from the chapter as well as of the fines formerly imposed on absentees. In 1527 a protest of Laurent Brayart, ‘patriarch,’ demanding either leave to celebrate the feast more antiquo or a dispensation from assisting at the election of his successor, was referred to the ex-‘patriarch.’ In this same year canons, vicars, chaplains and habitués of the cathedral were forbidden to appear at the farces of the fête des ânes[1072]. In 1531 the ‘patriarch’ Théobald Bucquet, recovered the right to play comedies and jeux and to take the absentee fines; but in 1541 Absalon Bourgeois was refused leave pour faire semblant de dire la messe à liesse. The feast was cut down to the bare election of the ‘patriarch’ in 1560, and seems to have passed into the hands of a confrérie; all that was retained in the cathedral being the Primes folles on Epiphany eve, in which the laity occupied the high stalls, and all present wore crowns of green leaves.

At Rheims, a Feast of Fools in 1490 was the occasion for a satirical attack by the vicars and choir-boys on the fashion of the hoods worn by the bourgeoises. This led to reprisals in the form of some anti-ecclesiastical farces played on the following dimanche des Brandons by the law clerks of the Rheims Basoche[1073]. At Châlons-sur-Marne a detailed and curious account is preserved of the way in which the Feast of Fools was celebrated in 1570[1074]. It took place on St. Stephen’s day. The chapter provided a banquet on a theatre in front of the great porch. To this the ‘bishop of Fools’ was conducted in procession from the maîtrise des fous, with bells and music upon a gaily trapped ass. He was then vested in cope, mitre, pectoral cross, gloves and crozier, and enjoyed a banquet with the canons who formed his ‘household.’ Meanwhile some of the inferior clergy entered the cathedral, sang gibberish, grimaced and made contortions. After the banquet, Vespers were precipitately sung, followed by a motet[1075]. Then came a musical cavalcade round the cathedral and through the streets. A game of la paume took place in the market; then dancing and further cavalcades. Finally a band gathered before the cathedral, howled and clanged kettles and saucepans, while the bells were rung and the clergy appeared in grotesque costumes.

Flanders also had its Feasts of Fools. That of St. Omer, which existed in the twelfth century, lasted to the sixteenth[1076]. An attempt was made to stop it in 1407, when the chapter forbade any one to take the name of ‘bishop’ or ‘abbot’ of Fools. But Seraphin Cotinet was ‘bishop’ of Fools in 1431, and led the gaude on St. Nicholas’ eve[1077]. The ‘bishop’ is again mentioned in 1490, but in 1515 the feast was suppressed by Francis de Melun, bishop of Arras and provost of St. Omer[1078]. Some payments made by the chapter of Béthune in 1445 and 1474 leave it doubtful how far the feast was really established in that cathedral[1079]. At Lille the feast was forbidden by the chapter statutes of 1323 and 1328[1080]. But at the end of the fourteenth century it was in full swing, lasting under its ‘bishop’ or ‘prelate’ from the vigil to the octave of Epiphany. Amongst the payments made by the chapter on account of it is one to replace a tin can (kanne stannee) lost at the banquet. The ‘bishop’ was chosen, as elsewhere, by the inferior clergy of the cathedral; but he also stood in some relation to the municipality of Lille, and superintended the miracle plays performed at the procession of the Holy Sacrament and upon other occasions. In 1393 he received a payment from the duke of Burgundy for the fête of the Trois Rois. Municipal subsidies were paid to him in the fifteenth century; he collected additional funds from private sources and offered prizes, by proclamation soubz nostre seel de fatuité, for pageants and histoires de la Sainte Escripture; was, in fact, a sort of Master of the Revels for Lille. He was active in 1468, but in 1469 the town itself gave the prizes, in place de l’evesque des folz, qui à présent est rué jus. The chapter accounts show that he was reappointed in 1485 hoc anno, de gratia speciali. In 1492 and 1493 the chapter payments were not to him but sociis domus clericorum, and from this year onwards he appears neither in the chapter accounts nor in those of the municipality[1081]. Nevertheless, he did not yet cease to exist, for a statute was passed by the chapter for his extinction, together with that of the ludus, quem Deposuit vocant, in 1531[1082]. Five years before this the canons and vicars were still wearing masks and playing comedies in public[1083]. The history of the feast at Tournai is only known to me through certain legal proceedings which took place before the Parlement of Paris in 1499. It appears that the young bourgeois of Tournai were accustomed to require the vicars of Notre-Dame to choose an évesque des sotz from amongst themselves on Innocents’ day. In 1489 they took one Matthieu de Porta and insulted him in the church itself. The chapter brought an action in the local court against the prévost et jurez of the town; and in the meantime obtained provisional letters inhibitory from Charles VIII, forbidding the vicars to hold the feast or the bourgeois to enforce it. All went well for some years, but in 1497 the bourgeois grumbled greatly, and in 1498, with the connivance of the municipal authorities themselves, they broke out. On the eve of the Holy Innocents, between nine and ten o’clock, Jacques de l’Arcq, mayor of the Edwardeurs, and others got into the house of Messire Pasquier le Pâme, a chaplain, and dragged him half naked, through snow and frost, to a cabaret. Seven or eight other vicars, one of whom was found saying his Hours in a churchyard, were similarly treated, and as none of them would be made évesque des sotz they were all kept prisoners. The chapter protested to the prévost et jurez, but in vain. On the following day the bourgeois chose one of the vicars évesque, baptized him by torchlight with three buckets of water at a fountain, led him about for three days in a surplice, and played scurrilous farces. They then dismissed the vicar, and elected as évesque a clerk from the diocese of Cambrai, who defied the chapter. They drove Jean Parisiz, the curé of La Madeleine, who had displeased them, from his church in the midst of Vespers, and on Epiphany day made him too a prisoner. In the following March the chapter and Messire Jean Parisiz brought a joint action before the High Court at Paris against the delinquents and the municipal authorities, who had backed them up. The case came on for hearing in November, when it was pleaded that the custom of electing an évesque des sotz upon Innocents’ day was an ancient one. The ceremony took place upon a scaffold near the church door; there were jeux in the streets for seven or eight days, and a final convici in which the canons and others of the town were satirized. The chapter and some of the citizens sent bread and wine. The same thing was done in many dioceses of Picardy, and even in Paris. It was all ad solacium populi, and divine service was not disturbed, for nobody entered the church. The vicar who had been chosen évesque thought it a great and unexpected honour. There would have been no trouble had not the évesque when distributing hoods with ears at the end of the jeux unfortunately included certain persons who would rather have been left out, and who consequently stirred up the chapter to take action. The court adjourned the case, and ultimately it appears to have been settled, for one of the documents preserved is endorsed with a note of a concordat between the chapter and the town, by which the feast was abolished in 1500[1084].

Of the Feast of Fools in central France I can say but little. At Chartres, the Papi-Fol and his cardinals committed many insolences during the first four days of the year, and exacted droits from passers-by. They were suppressed in 1479 and again in 1504[1085]. At Tours a Ritual of the fourteenth century contains elaborate directions for the festum novi anni, quod non debet remanere, nisi corpora sint humi. This is clearly a reformed feast, of which the chief features are the dramatic procession of the Prophetae, including doubtless Balaam on his ass, in church, and a miraculum in the cloister[1086]. The ‘Boy Bishop’ gives the benediction at Tierce, and before Vespers there are chori (carols, I suppose) also in the cloisters. At Vespers Deposuit is sung three times, and the baculus may be taken. If so, the thesaurarius is beaten with baculi by the clergy at Compline, and the new cantor is led home with beating of baculi on the walls[1087]. At Bourges, the use of the ‘Prose of the Ass’ in Notre-Dame de Sales seems to imply the existence of the feast, but I know no details[1088]. At Avallon the dominus festi seems to have been, as at Laon, a ‘patriarch,’ and to have officiated on Innocents’ day. A chapter statute regulated the proceedings in 1453, and another abolished them in 1510[1089]. At Auxerre, full accounts of a long chapter wrangle are preserved in the register[1090]. It began in 1395 with an order requiring the decent performance of the servitium, and imposing a fee upon newly admitted canons towards the feast. In 1396 the feast was not held, owing to the recent defeat of Sigismund of Hungary and the count of Nevers by Bajazet and his Ottomans at Nicopolis[1091]. In 1398 the dean entered a protest against a grant of wine made by the chapter to the thirsty revellers. In 1400 a further order was passed to check various abuses, the excessive ringing of bells, the licence of the sermones fatui, the impounding of copes in pledge for contributions, the beating of men and women through the streets, and all derisiones likely to bring discredit on the church[1092]. In the following January, the bishop of Auxerre, Michel de Crency, intervened, forbidding the fatui to form a ‘chapter,’ or to appoint ‘proctors,’ or clamare la fête aux fous after the singing of the Hours in the church. This led to a storm. The bishop brought an action in the secular court, and the chapter appealed to the ecclesiastical court of the Sens province. In June, however, it was agreed as part of a general concordat between the parties, that all these proceedings should be non avenu[1093]. It seems, however, to have been understood that the chapter would reform the feast. On December 2, the abbot of Pontigny preached a sermon before the chapter in favour of the abolition of the feast, and on the following day the dean came down and warned the canons that it was the intention of the University of Paris to take action, even if necessary, by calling in the secular arm[1094]. It was better to reform themselves than to be reformed. It was then agreed to suppress the abuses of the feast, the sermons and the wearing of unecclesiastical garb, and to hold nothing but a festum subdiaconorum on the day of the Circumcision. Outside the church, however, the clergy might dance and promenade (chorizare ... et ... spatiare) on the place of St. Stephen’s. These regulations were disregarded, on the plea that they were intended to apply only to the year in which they were made. In 1407 the chapter declared that they were to be permanent, but strong opposition was offered to this decision by three canons, Jean Piqueron, himself a sub-deacon, Jean Bonat, and Jean Berthome, who maintained that the concordat with the bishop was for reform, not for abolition. The matter was before the chapter for the last time, so far as the extant documents go, in 1411. On January 2, the dean reported that in spite of the prohibition certain canonici tortrarii[1095], chaplains and choir-clerks had held the feast. A committee of investigation was appointed, and in December the prohibition was renewed. Jean Piqueron was once more a protestant, and on this occasion obtained the support of five colleagues[1096]. It may be added that in the sixteenth century an abbas stultorum was still annually elected on July 18, beneath a great elm at the porch of Auxerre cathedral. He was charged with the maintenance of certain small points of choir discipline[1097].

In Franche Comté and Burgundy, the Feast of Fools is also found. At Besançon it was celebrated by all the four great churches. In the cathedrals of St. John and St. Stephen, ‘cardinals’ were chosen on St. Stephen’s day by the deacons and sub-deacons, on St. John’s day by the priests, on the Holy Innocents’ day by the choir-clerks and choir-boys. In the collegiate churches of St. Paul and St. Mary Magdalen, ‘bishops’ or ‘abbots’ were similarly chosen. All these domini festorum seem to have had the generic title of rois des fous, and on the choir-feast four cavalcades went about the streets and exchanged railleries (se chantaient pouille) when they met. In 1387 the Statutes of cardinal Thomas of Naples ordered that the feasts should be held jointly in each church in turn; and in 1518 the cavalcades were suppressed, owing to a conflict upon the bridge which had a fatal ending. Up to 1710, however, reges were still elected in St. Mary Magdalen’s; not, indeed, those for the three feasts of Christmas week, but a rex capellanorum and a rex canonicorum, who officiated respectively on the Circumcision and on Epiphany[1098]. At Autun the feast of the baculus in the thirteenth century has already been recorded. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some interesting notices are available in the chapter registers[1099]. In 1411 the feast required reforming. The canons were ordered to attend in decent clothes as on the Nativity; and the custom of leading an ass in procession and singing a cantilena thereon was suppressed[1100]. In 1412 the abolition of the feast was decreed[1101]. But in 1484 it was sanctioned again, and licence was given to punish those who failed to put in an appearance at the Hours by burning at the well[1102]. This custom, however, was forbidden in 1498[1103]. Nothing more is heard of the asinus, but it is possible that he figured in the play of Herod which was undoubtedly performed at the feast, and which gave a name to the dominus festi[1104]. Under the general name of festa fatuorum was included at Autun, besides the feast of the Circumcision, also that of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, and a missa fatuorum was sung ex ore infantium from the Innocents’ day to Epiphany[1105]. In 1499 Jean Rolin, abbot of St. Martin’s and dean of Autun, led a renewed attack upon the feast. He had armed himself with a letter from Louis XI, and induced the chapter, in virtue of the Basle decree, to suppress both Herod and the ‘bishop’ of Innocents[1106]. In 1514 and 1515 the play of Herod was performed; but in 1518, when application was made to the chapter to sanction the election of both a ‘Herod’ and the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, they applied to the king’s official for leave, and failed to get it. Finally in 1535 the chapter recurred to the Basle decree, and again forbade the feast, particularly specifying under the name of Gaigizons the obnoxious ceremony of ‘ducking.[1107]’ The feast held in the ducal, afterwards royal chapel of Dijon yields documents which are unique, because they are in French verse. The first is a mandement of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1454, confirming, on the request of the haut-Bâtonnier, the privilege of the fête, against those who would abolish it. He declares

In 1477 Louis XI seized Burgundy, and in 1482 his representatives, Jean d’Amboise, bishop and duke of Langres, lieutenant of the duchy, and Baudricourt the governor, accorded to Guy Baroset

a fresh confirmation for the privilege of the feast held by

There was a second feast in Dijon at the church of St. Stephen. In 1494 it was the custom here, as at Sens, to shave the ‘precentor’ of Fools upon a stage before the church. In 1621 the vicars still paraded the streets with music and lanterns in honour of their ‘precentor[1109].’ In 1552, however, the Feasts of Fools throughout Burgundy had been prohibited by an arrêt of the Parlement of Dijon. This was immediately provoked by the desire of the chapter of St. Vincent’s at Châlons-sur-Saône to end the scandal of the feast under their jurisdiction. It was, however, general in its terms, and probably put an end to the Chapelle feast at Dijon, since to about this period may be traced the origin of the famous compagnie of the Mère-Folle in that city[1110].

In Dauphiné there was a rex et festum fatuorum at St. Apollinaire’s in Valence, but I cannot give the date[1111]. At Vienne the Statutes of St. Maurice, passed in 1385, forbid the abbas stultorum seu sociorum, but apparently allow rois on the Circumcision and Epiphany, as well as in the three post-Nativity feasts. They also forbid certain ludibria. No pasquinades are to be recited, and no one is to be carried in Rost or to have his property put in pawn[1112]. More can be said of the feast at Viviers. A Ceremonial of 1365 contains minute directions for its conduct[1113]. On December 17 the sclafardi et clericuli chose an abbas stultus to be responsible, as at Auxerre, for the decorum of the choir throughout the year. He was shouldered and borne to a place of honour at a drinking-bout. Here even the bishop, if present, must do him honour. After the drinking, the company divided into two parts, one composed of inferior clergy, the other of dignitaries, and sang a doggerel song, each endeavouring to sing its rival down. They shouted, hissed, howled, cackled, jeered and gesticulated; and the victors mocked and flouted the vanquished. Then the door-keeper made a proclamation on behalf of the ‘abbot,’ calling on all to follow him, on pain of having their breeches slit, and the whole crew rushed violently out of the church. A progress through the town followed, which was repeated daily until Christmas eve[1114]. On the three post-Nativity feasts, a distinct dominus festi, the episcopus stultus, apparently elected the previous year, took the place of the abbas. On each of these days he presided at Matins, Mass, and Vespers, sat in full pontificals on the bishop’s throne, attended by his ‘chaplain,’ and gave the Benedictions. Both on St. Stephen’s and St. John’s days these were followed by the recitation of a burlesque formula of indulgence[1115]. The whole festivity seems to have concluded on Innocents’ day with the election of a new episcopus, who, after the shouldering and the drinking-bout, took his stand at a window of the great hall of the bishop’s palace, and blessed the people of the city[1116]. The episcopus was bound to give a supper to his fellows. In 1406 one William Raynoard attempted to evade this obligation. An action was brought against him in the court of the bishop’s official, by the then abbas and his predecessor. It was referred to the arbitration of three canons, who decided that Raynoard must give the supper on St. Bartholomew’s next, August 24, at the accustomed place (a tavern, one fears) in the little village of Gras, near Viviers[1117].

Finally, there are examples of the Feast of Fools in Provence. At Arles it was held in the church of St. Trophime, and is said to have been presented, out of its due season, it may be supposed, for the amusement of the Emperor Charles IV at his coronation in 1365, to have scandalized him and so to have met its end[1118]. Nevertheless in the fifteenth century an ‘archbishop of Innocents,’ alias stultus, still sang the ‘O’ on St. Thomas’s day, officiated on the days of St. John and the Innocents, and on St. Trophime’s day (Dec. 29) paid a visit to the abadesse fole of the convent of Saint-Césaire. The real abbess of this convent was bound to provide chicken, bread and wine for his regaling[1119]. At Fréjus in 1558 an attempt to put down the feast led to a riot. The bishop, Léon des Ursins, was threatened with murder, and had to hide while his palace was stormed[1120]. At Aix the chapter of St. Saviour’s chose on St. Thomas’s day, an episcopus fatuus vel Innocentium from the choir-boys. He officiated on Innocents’ day, and boys and canons exchanged stalls. The custom lasted until at least 1585[1121]. Antibes, as late as 1645, affords a rare example of the feast held by a religious house. It was on Innocents’ day in the church of the Franciscans. The choir and office were left to the lay-brothers, the quêteurs, cooks and gardeners. These put on the vestments inside out, held the books upside down, and wore spectacles with rounds of orange peel instead of glasses. They blew the ashes from the censers upon each other’s faces and heads, and instead of the proper liturgy chanted confused and inarticulate gibberish. All this is recorded by the contemporary free-thinker Mathurin de Neuré in a letter to his leader and inspirer, Gassendi[1122].

It will be noticed that the range of the Feast of Fools in France, so far as I have come across it, seems markedly to exclude the west and south-west of the country. I have not been able to verify an alleged exception at Bordeaux[1123]. Possibly there is some ethnographical reason for this. But on the whole, I am inclined to think that it is an accident, and that a more complete investigation would disclose a sufficiency of examples in this area. Outside France, the Feast of Fools is of much less importance. The Spanish disciplinary councils appear to make no specific mention of it, although they know the cognate feast of the Boy Bishop, and more than once prohibit ludi, choreae, and so forth, in general terms[1124]. In Germany, again, I do not know of a case in which the term ‘Fools’ is used. But the feast itself occurs sporadically. As early as the twelfth century, Herrad von Landsberg, abbess of Hohenburg, complained that miracle-plays, such as that of the Magi, instituted on Epiphany and its octave by the Fathers of the Church, had given place to licence, buffoonery and quarrelling. The priests came into the churches dressed as knights, to drink and play in the company of courtesans[1125]. A Mosburg Gradual of 1360 contains a series of cantiones compiled and partly written by the dean John von Perchausen for use when the scholarium episcopus was chosen at the Nativity[1126]. Some of these, however, are shown by their headings or by internal evidence to belong rather to a New Year’s day feast, than to one on Innocents’ day[1127]. A festum baculi is mentioned and an episcopus or praesul who is chosen and enthroned. One carol has the following refrain[1128]:

Another is so interesting, for its classical turn, and for the names which it gives to the ‘bishop’ and his crew that I quote it in full[1129].

The reforms of the council of Basle were adopted for Germany by the Emperor Albrecht II in the Instrumentum Acceptationis of Mainz in 1439. In 1536 the council of Cologne, quoting the decretal of Innocent III, condemned theatrales ludi in churches. A Cologne Ritual preserves an account of the sub-deacons’ feast upon the octave of Epiphany[1130]. The sub-deacons were hederaceo serto coronati. Tapers were lit, and a rex chosen, who acted as hebdomarius from first to second Vespers. Carols were sung, as at Mosburg[1131].

John Huss, early in the fifteenth century, describes the Feast of Fools as it existed in far-off Bohemia[1132]. The revellers, of whom, to his remorse, Huss had himself been one as a lad, wore masks. A clerk, grotesquely vested, was dubbed ‘bishop,’ set on an ass with his face to the tail, and led to mass in the church. He was regaled on a platter of broth and a bowl of beer, and Huss recalls the unseemly revel which took place[1133]. Torches were borne instead of candles, and the clergy turned their garments inside out, and danced. These ludi had been forbidden by one archbishop John of holy memory.

It would be surprising, in view of the close political and ecclesiastical relations between mediaeval France and England, if the Feast of Fools had not found its way across the channel. It did; but apparently it never became so inveterate as successfully to resist the disciplinary zeal of reforming bishops, and the few notices of it are all previous to the end of the fourteenth century. It seems to have lasted longest at Lincoln, and at Beverley. Of Lincoln, it will be remembered, Pierre de Corbeil, the probable compiler of the Sens Officium, was at one time coadjutor bishop. Robert Grosseteste, whose attack upon the Inductio Maii and other village festivals served as a starting-point for this discussion, was no less intolerant of the Feast of Fools. In 1236 he forbade it to be held either in the cathedral or elsewhere in the diocese[1134]; and two years later he included the prohibition in his formal Constitutions[1135]. But after another century and a half, when William Courtney, archbishop of Canterbury, made a visitation of Lincoln in 1390, he found that the vicars were still in the habit of disturbing divine service on January 1, in the name of the feast[1136]. Probably his strict mandate put a stop to the custom[1137]. At almost precisely the same date the Feast of Fools was forbidden by the statutes of Beverley minster, although the sub-deacons and other inferior clergy were still to receive a special commons on the day of the Circumcision[1138]. Outside Lincoln and Beverley, the feast is only known in England by the mention of paraphernalia for it in thirteenth-century inventories of St. Paul’s[1139], and Salisbury[1140], and by a doubtful allusion in a sophisticated version of the St. George play[1141].

A brief summary of the data concerning the Feast of Fools presented in this and the preceding chapter is inevitable. It may be combined with some indication of the relation in which the feast stands with regard to the other feasts dealt with in the present volume. If we look back to Belethus in the twelfth century we find him speaking of the Feast of Fools as held on the Circumcision, on Epiphany or on the octave of Epiphany, and as being specifically a feast of sub-deacons. Later records bear out on the whole the first of these statements. As a rule the feast focussed on the Circumcision, although the rejoicings were often prolonged, and the election of the dominus festi in some instances gave rise to a minor celebration on an earlier day. Occasionally (Noyon, Laon) the Epiphany, once at least (Cologne) the octave of the Epiphany, takes the place of the Circumcision. But we also find the term Feast of Fools extended to cover one or more of three feasts, distinguished from it by Belethus, which immediately follow Christmas. Sometimes it includes them all three (Besançon, Viviers, Vienne), sometimes the feast of the Innocents alone (Autun, Avallon, Aix, Antibes, Arles), once the feast of St. Stephen (Châlons-sur-Marne)[1142]. On the other hand, the definition of the feast as a sub-deacons’ feast is not fully applicable to its later developments. Traces of a connexion with the sub-deacons appear more than once (Amiens, Sens, Auxerre, Beverley); but as a rule the feast is held by the inferior clergy known as vicars, chaplains, and choir-clerks, all of whom are grouped at Viviers and Romans under the general term of esclaffardi. At Laon a part is taken in it by the curés of the various parishes in the city. The explanation is, I think, fairly obvious. Originally, perhaps, the sub-deacons held the feast, just as the deacons, priests, and boys held theirs in Christmas week. But it had its vogue mainly in the great cathedrals served by secular canons[1143], and in these the distinction between the canons in different orders—for a sub-deacon might be a full canon[1144]—was of less importance than the difference between the canons as a whole and the minor clergy who made up the rest of the cathedral body, the hired choir-clerks, the vicars choral who, originally at least, supplied the place in the choir of absent canons, and the chaplains who served the chantries or small foundations attached to the cathedral[1145]. The status of spiritual dignity gave way to the status of material preferment. And so, as the vicars gradually coalesced into a corporation of their own, the Feast of Fools passed into their hands, and became a celebration of the annual election of the head of their body[1146]. The vicars and their associates were probably an ill-educated and an ill-paid class. Certainly they were difficult to discipline[1147]; and it is not surprising that their rare holiday, of which the expenses were met partly by the chapter, partly by dues levied upon themselves or upon the bystanders[1148], was an occasion for popular rather than refined merry-making[1149]. That it should perpetuate or absorb folk-customs was also, considering the peasant or small bourgeois extraction of such men, quite natural.

The simple psychology of the last two sentences really gives the key to the nature of the feast. It was largely an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock. The vicars hooted and sang improper ditties, and played dice upon the altar, in a reaction from the wonted restraints of choir discipline. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it was almost an obvious sport to burlesque the sacred and tedious ceremonies with which they were only too painfully familiar. Indeed, the reverend founders and reformers of the feast had given a lead to this apishness by the introduction of the symbolical transference of the baculus at the Deposuit in the Magnificat. The ruling idea of the feast is the inversion of status, and the performance, inevitably burlesque, by the inferior clergy of functions properly belonging to their betters. The fools jangle the bells (Paris, Amiens, Auxerre), they take the higher stalls (Paris), sing dissonantly (Sens), repeat meaningless words (Châlons, Antibes), say the messe liesse (Laon) or the missa fatuorum (Autun), preach the sermones fatui (Auxerre), cense praepostere (St. Omer) with pudding and sausage (Beauvais) or with old shoes (Paris theologians). They have their chapter and their proctors (Auxerre, Dijon). They install their dominus festi with a ceremony of sacre (Troyes), or shaving (Sens, Dijon). He is vested in full pontificals, goes in procession, as at the Rabardiaux of Laon, gives the benedictions, issues indulgences (Viviers), has his seal (Lille), perhaps his right of coining (Laon). Much in all these proceedings was doubtless the merest horseplay; such ingenuity and humour as they required may have been provided by the wicked wit of the goliardi[1150].

Now I would point out that this inversion of status so characteristic of the Feast of Fools is equally characteristic of folk-festivals. What is Dr. Frazer’s mock king but one of the meanest of the people chosen out to represent the real king as the priest victim of a divine sacrifice, and surrounded, for the period of the feast, in a naïve attempt to outwit heaven, with all the paraphernalia and luxury of kingship? Precisely such a mock king is the dominus festi with whom we have to do. His actual titles, indeed, are generally ecclesiastical. Most often he is a ‘bishop,’ or ‘prelate’ (Senlis); in metropolitan churches an ‘archbishop,’ in churches exempt from other authority than that of the Holy See, a ‘pope’ (Amiens, Senlis, Chartres). More rarely he is a ‘patriarch’ (Laon, Avallon), a ‘cardinal’ (Paris, Besançon), an ‘abbot’ (Vienne, Viviers, Romans, Auxerre)[1151], or is even content with the humbler dignity of ‘precentor,’ ‘bacularius’ or ‘bâtonnier’ (Sens, Dijon). At Autun he is, quite exceptionally, ‘Herod.’ Nevertheless the term ‘king’ is not unknown. It is found at Noyon, at Vienne, at Besançon, at Beverley, and the council of Basle testifies to its use, as well as that of ‘duke.’ Nor is it, after all, of much importance what the dominus festi is called. The point is that his existence and functions in the ecclesiastical festivals afford precise parallels to his existence and functions in folk-festivals all Europe over.

Besides the ‘king’ many other features of the folk-festivals may readily be traced at the Feast of Fools. Some here, some there, they jot up in the records. There are dance and chanson, tripudium and cantilena (Noyon, Châlons-sur-Marne, Paris theologians, council of Basle). There is eating and drinking, not merely in the refectory, but within or at the doors of the church itself (Paris theologians, Beauvais, Prague). There is ball-playing (Châlons-sur-Marne). There is the procession or cavalcade through the streets (Laon, Châlons-sur-Marne, &c.). There are torches and lanterns (Sens, Tournai). Men are led nudi (Sens); they are whipped (Tours); they are ceremonially ducked or roasted (Sens, Tournai, Vienne, les Gaigizons at Autun)[1152]. A comparison with earlier chapters of the present volume will establish the significance which these points, taken in bulk, possess. Equally characteristic of folk-festivals is the costume considered proper to the feasts. The riotous clergy wear their vestments inside out (Antibes), or exchange dress with the laity (Lincoln, Paris theologians). But they also wear leaves or flowers (Sens, Laon, Cologne) and women’s dress (Paris theologians); and above all they wear hideous and monstrous masks, larvae or personae (decretal of 1207, Paris theologians, council of Basle, Paris, Soissons, Laon, Lille). These masks, indeed, are perhaps the one feature of the feast which called down the most unqualified condemnation from the ecclesiastical authorities. We shall not be far wrong if we assume them to have been beast-masks, and to have taken the place of the actual skins and heads of sacrificial animals, here, as so often, worn at the feast by the worshippers.

An attempt has been made to find an oriental origin for the Feast of Fools[1153]. Gibbon relates the insults offered to the church at Constantinople by the Emperor Michael III, the ‘Drunkard’ (842-67)[1154]. A noisy crew of courtiers dressed themselves in the sacred vestments. One Theophilus or Grylus, captain of the guard, a mime and buffoon, was chosen as a mock ‘patriarch.’ The rest were his twelve ‘metropolitans,’ Michael himself being entitled ‘metropolitan of Cologne.’ The ‘divine mysteries’ were burlesqued with vinegar and mustard in a golden cup set with gems. Theophilus rode about the streets of the city on a white ass, and when he met the real patriarch Ignatius, exposed him to the mockery of the revellers. After the death of Michael, this profanity was solemnly anathematized by the council of Constantinople held under his successor Basil in 869[1155]. Theophilus, though he borrowed the vestments for his mummery, seems to have carried it on in the streets and the palace, not in the church. In the tenth century, however, the patriarch Theophylactus won an unenviable reputation by admitting dances and profane songs into the ecclesiastical festivals[1156]; while in the twelfth, the patriarch Balsamon describes his own unavailing struggle against proceedings at Christmas and Candlemas, which come uncommonly near the Feast of Fools. The clergy of St. Sophia’s, he says, claim as of ancient custom to wear masks, and to enter the church in the guise of soldiers, or of monks, or of four-footed animals. The superintendents snap their fingers like charioteers, or paint their faces and mimic women. The rustics are moved to laughter by the pouring of wine into pitchers, and are allowed to chant Kyrie eleison in ludicrous iteration at every verse[1157]. Balsamon, who died in 1193, was almost precisely a contemporary of Belethus, and the earlier Byzantine notices considerably ante-date any records that we possess of the Feast of Fools in the West. A slight corroboration of this theory of an eastern origin may be derived from the use of the term ‘patriarch’ for the dominus festi at Laon and Avallon. It would, I think, be far-fetched to find another in the fact that Theophilus, like the western ‘bishops’ of Fools, rode upon an ass, and that the Prose de l’Âne begins:

In any case, the oriental example can hardly be responsible for more than the admission of the feast within the doors of the church. One cannot doubt that it was essentially an adaptation of a folk-custom long perfectly well known in the West itself. The question of origin had already presented itself to the learned writers of the thirteenth century. William of Auxerre, by a misunderstanding which I shall hope to explain, traced the Feast of Fools to the Roman Parentalia: Durandus, and the Paris theologians after him, to the January Kalends. Certainly Durandus was right. The Kalends, unlike the more specifically Italian feasts, were co-extensive with the Roman empire, and were naturally widespread in Gaul. The date corresponds precisely with that by far the most common for the Feast of Fools. A singular history indeed, that of the ecclesiastical celebration of the First of January. Up to the eighth century a fast, with its mass pro prohibendo ab idolis, it gradually took on a festal character, and became ultimately the one feast in the year in which paganism made its most startling and persistent recoil upon Christianity. The attacks upon the Kalends in the disciplinary documents form a catena which extends very nearly to the point at which the notices of the Feast of Fools begin. In each alike the masking, in mimicry of beasts and probably of beast-gods or ‘demons,’ appears to have been a prominent and highly reprobated feature. It is true that we hear nothing of a dominus festi at the Kalends; but much stress must not be laid upon the omission of the disciplinary writers to record any one point in a custom which after all they were not describing as anthropologists, and it would certainly be an exceptional Germano-Keltic folk-feast which had not a dominus. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of a rex in the accounts of the pre-Christian Kalends in Italy itself. There was a rex at the Saturnalia, and this, together with an allusion of Belethus in a quite different connexion to the libertas Decembrica[1158], has led some writers to find in the Saturnalia, rather than the Kalends, the origin of the Feast of Fools[1159]. This is, I venture to think, wrong. The Saturnalia were over well before December 25: there is no evidence that they had a vogue outside Italy: the Kalends, like the Saturnalia, were an occasion at which slaves met their masters upon equal terms, and I believe that the existence of a Kalends rex, both in Italy and in Gaul, may be taken for granted.

But the parallel between Kalends and the Feast of Fools cannot be held to be quite perfect, unless we can trace in the latter feast that most characteristic of all Kalends customs, the Cervulus. Is it possible that a representative of the Cervulus is to be found in the Ass, who, whether introduced from Constantinople or not, gave to the Feast of Fools one of its popular names? The Feast of Asses has been the sport of controversialists who had not, and were at no great pains to have, the full facts before them. I do not propose to awake once more these ancient angers[1160]. The facts themselves are briefly these. The ‘Prose of the Ass’ was used at Bourges, at Sens, and at Beauvais. As to the Bourges feast I have no details. At Sens, the use of the Prose by Pierre de Corbeil is indeed no proof that he allowed an ass to appear in the ceremony. But the Prose would not have much point unless it was at least a survival from a time when an ass did appear; the feast was known as the asinaria festa; and even now, three centuries after it was abolished, the Sens choir-boys still play at being âne archbishop on Innocents’ day[1161]. At Beauvais the heading Conductus quando asinus adducitur in the thirteenth-century Officium seems to show that there at least the ass appeared, and even entered the church. The document, also of the thirteenth century, quoted by the editors of Ducange, certainly brings him, in the ceremony of January 14, into the church and near the altar. An imitation of his braying is introduced into the service itself. At Autun the leading of an ass ad processionem, and the cantilena super dictum asinum were suppressed in 1411. At Châlons-sur-Marne in 1570 an ass bore the ‘bishop’ to the theatre at the church door only. At Prague, on the other hand, towards the end of the fourteenth century, an ass was led, as at Beauvais, right into the church. These, with doubtful references to fêtes des ânes at St. Quentin about 1081, at Béthune in 1474, and at Laon in 1527, and the Mosburg description of the ‘bishop’ as asinorum dominus, are all the cases I have found in which an ass has anything to do with the feast. But they are enough to prove that an ass was an early and widespread, though not an invariable feature. I may quote here a curious survival in a ronde from the west of France, said to have been sung at church doors on January 1[1162]. It is called La Mort de l’Âne, and begins:

This, like the Sens choir-boys’ custom of calling their ‘archbishop’ âne, would seem to suggest that the dominus festi was himself the ass, with a mask on; and this may have been sometimes the case. But in most of the mediaeval instances the ass was probably used to ride. At Prague, so far as one can judge from Huss’s description, he was a real ass. There is no proof in any of the French examples that he was, or was not, merely a ‘hobby-ass.’ If he was, he came all the nearer to the Cervulus.

It has been pointed out, and will, in the next volume, be pointed out again, that the ecclesiastical authorities attempted to sanctify the spirit of play at the Feast of Fools and similar festivities by diverting the energies of the revellers to ludi of the miracle-play order. In such ludi they found a place for the ass. He appears for instance as Balaam’s ass in the later versions from Laon and Rouen of the Prophetae, and at Rouen he gave to the whole of this performance the name of the festum or processio asinorum[1163]. At Hamburg, by a curious combination, he is at once Balaam’s ass and the finder of the star in a ludus Trium Regum[1164]. His use as the mount of the Virgin on January 14 at Beauvais, and on some uncertain day at Sens, seems to suggest another favourite episode in such ludi, that of the Flight into Egypt. At Varennes, in Picardy, and at Bayonne, exist carved wooden groups representing this event. That of Varennes is carried in procession; that of Bayonne is the object of pilgrimage on the fêtes of the Virgin[1165].

Not at the Feast of Fools alone, or at the miracle-plays connected with this feast, did the ass make its appearance in Christian worship. It stood with the ox, on the morning of the Nativity, beside the Christmas crib. On Palm Sunday it again formed part of a procession, in the semblance of the beast on which Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem[1166]. A Cambrai Ordinarium quoted by Ducange directs that the asina picta shall remain behind the altar for four days[1167]. Kirchmeyer describes the custom as it existed during the sixteenth century in Germany[1168]; and the stray tourist who drops into the wonderful collection of domestic and ecclesiastical antiquities in the Barfüsserkirche at Basle will find there three specimens of the Palmesel, including a thirteenth-century one from Bayern and a seventeenth-century one from Elsass. The third is not labelled with its provenance, but it is on wheels and has a hole for the rope by which it was dragged round the church. All three are of painted wood, and upon each is a figure representing Christ[1169].

The affiliation of the ecclesiastical New Year revelries to the pagan Kalends does not explain why those who took part in them were called ‘Fools.’ The obvious thing to say is that they were called ‘Fools’ because they played the fool; and indeed their mediaeval critics were not slow to draw this inference. But it is noteworthy that pagan Rome already had its Feast of Fools, which, indeed, had nothing to do with the Kalends. The stultorum feriae on February 17 was the last day on which the Fornacalia or ritual sacrifice of the curiae was held. Upon it all the curiae sacrificed in common, and it therefore afforded an opportunity for any citizen who did not know which his curia was to partake in the ceremony[1170]. I am not prepared to say that the stultorum feriae gave its name to the Feast of Fools; but the identity of the two names certainly seems to explain some of the statements which mediaeval scholars make about that feast. It explains William of Auxerre’s derivation of it from the Parentalia, for the stultorum feriae fell in the midst of the Parentalia[1171]. And I think it explains the remark of Belethus, and, following him, of Durandus, about the ordo subdiaconorum being incertus. The sub-deacons were a regular ordo, the highest of the ordines minores from the third century[1172]. But Belethus seems to be struggling with the notion that the sub-deacons’ feast, closing the series of post-Nativity feasts held by deacons, priests and choir-boys, was in some way parallel to the feriae of the Roman stulti who were incerti as to their curia.

CHAPTER XV THE BOY BISHOP

Joannes Belethus, the learned theologian of Paris and Amiens, towards the end of the twelfth century, describes, as well as the Feast of Fools, no less than three other tripudia falling in Christmas week[1173]. Upon the days of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and the Holy Innocents, the deacons, the priests, the choir-boys, held their respective revels, each body in turn claiming that pre-eminence in the divine services which in the Feast of Fools was assigned to the sub-deacons. The distinction drawn by Belethus is not wholly observed in the ecclesiastical prohibitions either of the thirteenth or of the fifteenth century. In many of these the term ‘Feast of Fools’ has a wide meaning. The council of Nevers in 1246 includes under it the feasts of the Innocents and the New Year; that of Langres in 1404 the ‘festivals of the Nativity’; that of Nantes in 1431 the Nativity itself, St. Stephen’s, St. John’s, and the Innocents’. For the council of Basle it is apparently synonymous with the ‘Feast of Innocents or Boys’; the Paris theologians speak of its rites as practised on St. Stephen’s, the Innocents’, the Circumcision, and other dates. The same tendency to group all these tripudia together recurs in passages in which the ‘Feast of Fools’ is not in so many words mentioned. The famous decretal of Pope Innocent III is directed against the ludibria practised in turns by deacons, priests, and sub-deacons during the feasts immediately following upon Christmas. The irrisio servitii inveighed against in the Rememoratio of Gerson took place on Innocents’ day, on the Circumcision, on the Epiphany, or at Shrovetide.

Local usage, however, only partly bears out this loose language of the prohibitions. At Châlons-sur-Marne, in 1570, the ‘bishop’ of Fools sported on St. Stephen’s day. At Besançon, in 1387, a distinct dominus festi was chosen on each of the three days after Christmas, and all alike were called rois des fous. At Autun, during the fifteenth century, the regna of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents and of ‘Herod’ at the New Year were known together as the festa folorum. Further south, the identification is perhaps more common. At Avallon, Aix, Antibes, the Feast of Fools was on Innocents’ day; at Arles the episcopus stultorum officiated both on the Innocents’ and on St. John’s, at Viviers on all three of the post-Nativity feasts. But these are exceptions, and, at least outside Provence, the rule seems to have been to apply the name of ‘Feast of Fools’ to the tripudium, originally that of the sub-deacons, on New Year’s day or the Epiphany, and to distinguish from this, as does Belethus, the tripudia of the deacons, priests, and choir-boys in Christmas week.

We may go further and say, without much hesitation, that the three latter feasts are of older ecclesiastical standing than their riotous rival. Belethus is the first writer to mention the Feast of Fools, but he is by no means the first writer to mention the Christmas tripudia. They were known to Honorius of Autun[1174], early in the twelfth century, and to John of Avranches[1175], late in the eleventh. They can be traced at least from the beginning of the tenth, more than two hundred and fifty years before the Feast of Fools is heard of. The earliest notice I have come across is at the monastery of St. Gall, hard by Constance, in 911. In that year King Conrad I was spending Christmas with Bishop Solomon of Constance. He heard so much of the Vespers processions during the triduum at St. Gall that he insisted on visiting the monastery, and arrived there in the midst of the revels. It was all very amusing, and especially the procession of children, so grave and sedate that even when Conrad bade his train roll apples along the aisle they did not budge[1176]. That the other Vespers processions of the triduum were of deacons and priests may be taken for granted. I do not know whether the triduum originated at St. Gall, but the famous song-school of that monastery was all-important in the movement towards the greater elaboration of church ceremonial, and even more of chant, which marked the tenth century. This gave rise to the tropes, of which much will be said in the next volume; and it is in a tropary, an English tropary from Winchester, dating from before 980, that the feasts of the triduum next occur. The ceremonies of those feasts, as described by Belethus, belong mainly to the Office, and the tropes are mainly chanted elaborations of the text of the Mass: but the Winchester tropes for the days of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents clearly imply the respective connexion of the services, to which they belong, with deacons, priests, and choir-boys[1177]. Of the sub-deacons, on Circumcision or Epiphany, there is as yet nothing. John of Avranches, Honorius of Autun, and Belethus bridge a gap, and from the thirteenth century the triduum is normal in service-books, both continental and English, throughout the Middle Ages[1178]. It is provided for in the Nantes Ordinarium of 1263[1179], in the Amiens Ordinarium of 1291[1180], and in the Tours Rituale of the fourteenth century[1181]. It required reforming at Vienne in 1385, but continued to exist there up to 1670[1182]. In the last three cases it is clearly marked side by side with, but other than, the Feast of Fools. In Germany, it is contemplated in the Ritual of Mainz[1183]. In England I trace it at Salisbury[1184], at York[1185], at Lincoln[1186], at St. Albans[1187]. These instances could doubtless be multiplied, although there were certainly places where the special devotion of the three feasts to the three bodies dropped out at an early date. The Rheims Ordinarium of the fourteenth century, for instance, knows nothing of it[1188]. The extent of the ceremonies, again, would naturally be subject to local variation. The germ of them lay in the procession at first Vespers described by Ekkehard at St. Gall. But they often grew to a good deal more than this. The deacons, priests, or choir-boys, as the case might be, took the higher stalls, and the whole conduct of the services; the Deposuit was sung; epistolae farcitae were read[1189]; there was a dominus festi.

The main outlines of the feasts of the triduum are thus almost exactly parallel, so far as the divine servitium is concerned, to those of the Feast of Fools, for which indeed they probably served as a model. And like the Feast of Fools, they had their secular side, which often became riotousness. Occasionally they were absorbed in, or overshadowed by, the more popular and wilder merry-making of the inferior clergy. But elsewhere they have their own history of reformations or suppression, or are grouped with the Feast of Fools, as by the decretal of Innocent III, in a common condemnation. The diversity of local practice is well illustrated by the records of such acts of discipline. Sometimes, as at Paris[1190], or Soissons[1191], it is the deacons’ feast alone that has become an abuse; sometimes, as at Worms, that of the priests’[1192]; sometimes two of them[1193], sometimes all three[1194], require correction. I need only refer more particularly to two interesting English examples. One is at Wells, where a chapter statute of about 1331 condemns the tumult and ludibrium with which divine service was celebrated from the Nativity to the octave of the Innocents, and in particular the ludi theatrales and monstra larvarum introduced into the cathedral by the deacons, priests, sub-deacons, and even vicars during this period[1195]. Nor was the abuse easy to check, for about 1338 a second statute was required to reinforce and strengthen the prohibition[1196]. So, too, in the neighbouring diocese of Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson records the mandates against ludi inhonesti addressed by him in 1360 to the chapters of Exeter cathedral, and of the collegiate churches of Ottery, Crediton, and Glasney. These ludi were performed by men and boys at Vespers, Matins, and Mass on Christmas and the three following days. They amounted to a mockery of the divine worship, did much damage to the church vestments and ornaments, and brought the clergy into disrepute[1197]. These southern prohibitions are shortly before the final suppression of the Feast of Fools in the north at Beverley and Lincoln. The Wells customs, indeed, probably included a regular Feast of Fools, for the part taken by the sub-deacons and vicars is specifically mentioned, and the proceedings lasted over the New Year. But it is clear that even where the term ‘Feast of Fools’ is not known to have been in use, the temper of that revel found a ready vent in other of the winter rejoicings. Nor was it the triduum alone which afforded its opportunities. More rarely the performances of the Pastores on Christmas day itself[1198], or the suppers given by the great officers of cathedrals and monasteries, when they sang their ‘Oes,’ on the nights between December 16 and Christmas[1199], were the occasions for excesses which called for reprehension.

Already, when Conrad visited St. Gall in 911, the third feast of the triduum was the most interesting. In after years this reached an importance denied to the other two. The Vespers procession was the germ of an annual rejoicing, secular as well as ritual, which became for the pueri attached as choir-boys and servers to the cathedrals and great churches very much what the Feast of Fools became for the adult inferior clergy of the same bodies. Where the two feasts were not merged in one, this distinction of personnel was retained. A good example is afforded by Sens. Here, from the middle of the fourteenth century, the chapter accounts show an archiepiscopus puerorum side by side with the dominus of the Feast of Fools. Each feast got its own grant of wine from the chapter, and had its own prebend in the chapter woods. In the fifteenth century the two fell and rose together. In the sixteenth, the Feast of Boys was the more flourishing, and claimed certain dues from a market in Sens, which were commuted for a small money payment by the chapter. Finally, both feasts are suppressed together in 1547[1200]. It is to be observed that the original celebration of the Holy Innocents’ day in the western Church was not of an unmixed festal character. It commemorated a martyrdom which typified and might actually have been that of Christ himself, and it was therefore held cum tristitia. As in Lent or on Good Friday itself, the ‘joyful chants,’ such as the Te Deum or the Alleluia, were silenced. This characteristic of the day was known to Belethus, but even before his time it had begun to give way to the festal tendencies. Local practice differed widely, as the notices collected by Martene show, but even when John of Avranches wrote, at the end of the eleventh century, the ‘modern’ custom was to sing the chants[1201].

Many interesting details of the Feast of Boys, as it was celebrated in France, are contained in various ceremonial books. The Officium Infantum of Rouen may be taken as typical[1202]. After second Vespers on St. John’s day the boys marched out of the vestry, two by two, with their ‘bishop,’ singing Centum quadraginta. There was a procession to the altar of the Holy Innocents, and Hi empti sunt was sung[1203]. Then the ‘bishop’ gave the Benediction. The feast of the following day was ‘double,’ but the boys might make it ‘triple,’ if they would. There was a procession, with the Centum quadraginta, at Matins. At Mass, the boys led the choir. At Vespers the baculus was handed over, while the Deposuit potentes was being sung[1204]. At Bayeux the feast followed the same general lines, but the procession at first Vespers was to the altar, not of the Holy Innocents, but of St. Nicholas[1205]. Precise directions are given as to the functions of the ‘bishop.’ He is to wear a silk tunic and cope, and to have a mitre and pastoral staff, but not a ring. The boys are to do him the same reverence that is done to the real bishop. There are also to be a boy cantor and a boy ‘chaplain.’ The ‘bishop’ is to perform the duties of a priest, so long as the feast lasts, except in the Mass. He is to give the benediction after Benedicamus at first Vespers. Then the boys are to take the higher stalls, and to keep them throughout the following day, the ‘bishop’ sitting in the dean’s chair. The boys are to say Compline as they will. The ‘bishop’ is to be solemnly conducted home with the prose Sedentem, and on the following day he is to be similarly conducted both to and from service. At Mass he is to cense and be censed like the ‘great bishop’ on solemn occasions. He is also to give the benediction at Mass. There is a minute description of the ceremony of Deposuit, from which it is clear that, at Bayeux at least, the handing over of the baculus was from an incoming to an outgoing ‘bishop,’ to whom the former was in turn to act as ‘chaplain[1206].’ The rubrics of the Coutances feast are even more minute[1207]. The proceedings began after Matins on St. John’s day, when the boys drew up a tabula appointing their superiors to the minor offices of the coming feast. This, however, they were to do without impertinence[1208]. The vesting of the ‘bishop’ and the Vespers procession are exactly described. As at Bayeux the boys take the high stalls for Compline. The canon who holds a particular prebend is bound to carry the candle and the collectarium for the ‘bishop.’ After Compline the ‘bishop’ is led home with Laetabundus, but not in pontificals. Throughout the services of the following day the ‘bishop’ plays his part, and when Vespers comes gives way to a ‘bishop’-elect at the Deposuit[1209]. The ‘bishop’ of St. Martin of Tours was installed in the neighbouring convent of Beaumont, whither all the clericuli rode for the purpose after Prime on St. John’s day. He was vested in the church there, blessed the nuns, then returned to Tours, was installed in his own cathedral, and blessed the populace[1210]. The secular side of the feast comes out in the Toul Statutes of 1497[1211]. Here it may be said to have absorbed in its turn the Feast of Fools, for the ‘bishop’ was a choir-boy chosen by the choir-boys themselves and also by the sub-deacons, who shared with them the name of Innocentes[1212]. The election took place after Compline on the first Sunday in Advent, and the ‘bishop’ was enthroned with a Te Deum. He officiated in the usual way throughout the Innocents’ day services. In the morning he rode at the head of a cortège to the monasteries of St. Mansuetus and St. Aper, sang an anthem and said a prayer at the door of each church, and claimed a customary fee[1213]. After Vespers he again rode in state with mimes and trumpeters through the city[1214]. On the following day, all the ‘Innocents’ went masked into the city, where, if it was fine enough, farces and apparently also moralities and miracles were played[1215]. On the octave the ‘bishop’ and his cortège went to the church of St. Geneviève. After an anthem and collect they adjourned to the ‘church-house,’ where they were entertained by the hospital at a dessert of cake, apples and nuts, during which they chose disciplinary officers for the coming year[1216]. The expenses of the feast, with the exception of the dinner on the day after Innocents’ day which came out of the disciplinary fines, are assigned by the statutes to the canons in the order of their appointment. The responsible canon must give a supper on Innocents’ day, and a dessert out of what is over on the following day. He must also provide the ‘bishop’ with a horse, gloves, and a biretta when he rides abroad. At the supper a curious ceremony took place. The canon returned thanks to the ‘bishop,’ apologized for any short-comings in the preparations, and finally handed the ‘bishop’ a cap of rosemary or other flowers, which was then conferred upon the canon to whose lot it would fall to provide the feast for the next anniversary[1217]. Should the canon disregard his duties the boys and sub-deacons were entitled to hang up a black cope on a candlestick in the middle of the choir in illius vituperium for as long as they might choose[1218].

I cannot pretend to give a complete account of all the French examples of the Boy Bishop with which I have met, and it is the less necessary, as the feast seems to have been far more popular and enduring in England than the Feast of Fools. I content myself with giving references for its history at Amiens[1219], St. Quentin[1220], Senlis[1221], Soissons[1222], Roye[1223], Peronne[1224], Rheims[1225], Brussels[1226], Lille[1227], Liège[1228], Laon[1229], Troyes[1230], Mans[1231], Bourges[1232], Châlons-sur-Saône[1233], Grenoble[1234]. Not unnaturally it proved less of a scandal to ecclesiastical reformers than the Feast of Fools; for the choir-boys must have been more amenable to discipline, even in moments of festivity, than the adult clerks. But it shared in the general condemnation of all such customs, and was specifically arraigned by more than one council, rather perhaps for puerility than for any graver offence[1235]. Gradually therefore, it vanished, leaving only a few survivals to recent centuries[1236]. As was the case with the Feast of Fools, the question of its suppression sometimes set a chapter by the ears. Notably was this so at Noyon, where the act of his reforming colleagues in 1622 was highly disapproved of by the dean, Jacques Le Vasseur. In a letter written on the occasion he declares that the Boy Bishop had flourished in Noyon cathedral for four hundred years, and brands the reformers as brute beasts masquerading in the robes and beards of philosophy[1237].

I have no special records of the Boy Bishop in Spain except the council decrees already quoted. In Germany he appears to have been more widely popular than his rival of Fools. My first notice, however, is two centuries after the visit of Conrad to the triduum at St. Gall. The chronicle of the monastery of St. Petersburg, hard by Halle, mentions an accident in ludo qui vocatur puerorum, by which a lad was trodden to death. This was in 1137[1238]. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries yield more examples. In 1249 Pope Innocent IV complained to the bishop of Ratisbon that the clerks and scholars of that cathedral, when choosing their anniversary ‘bishop,’ did violence to the abbey of Pruviningen[1239]. In 1357 the Ratisbon feast was stained with homicide, and was consequently suppressed[1240]. In 1282 the feast was forbidden at Eichstädt[1241]. In 1304 it led to a dispute between the municipality and the chapter of Hamburg, which ended in a promise by the scholares to refrain from defamatory songs either in Latin or German[1242]. Similarly at Worms in 1307 the pueri were forbidden to sing in the streets after Compline, as had been the custom on the feasts of St. Nicholas and St. Lucy, on Christmas and the three following days, and on the octave of the Holy Innocents’[1243]. At Lübeck the feast was abolished in 1336[1244]. I have already quoted the long reference to the scholarium episcopus in the Mosburg Gradual of 1360[1245]. He may be traced also at Regensburg[1246] and at Prague[1247]. But the fullest account of him is from Mainz[1248]. Here he was called the Schul-Bischoff, and in derision Apffeln-Bischoff. He was chosen before St. Nicholas’ day by the ludi magister of the schola trivialis. He had his equites, his capellani, and his pedelli. On St. Nicholas’ day, and on that of the Holy Innocents’, he had a seat near the high altar, and took part in the first and second Vespers. In the interval he paid a visit with his company to the palace of the elector, sang a hymn[1249], and claimed a banquet or a donation. The custom was not altogether extinct in Mainz by 1779[1250]. In other German towns, also, it well outlived the Middle Ages. At Cologne, for instance, it was only suppressed by the statutes of Bishop Max Heinrich in 1662[1251].

In England, the Boy Bishop weathered the storms of discipline which swept away the Feast of Fools in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He was widely popular in the later Middle Ages, and finally fell before an austerity of the Reformation. The prerogative instance of the custom is in the church of Salisbury. Here the existence of the Boy Bishop is already implied by the notice of a ring for use at the ‘Feast of Boys’ in an inventory of 1222[1252]. A century later, the statutes of Roger de Mortival in 1319 include elaborate regulations for the ceremony. The ‘bishop’ may perform the officium as is the use, but he must hold no banquet, and no visitation either within or without the cathedral. He may be invited to the table of a canon, but otherwise he must remain in the common house, and must return to his duties in church and school immediately after the feast of Innocents. The statute also regulates the behaviour of the crowds which were wont to press upon and impede the boys in their annual procession to the altar of the Holy Trinity, and the rest of their ministry[1253]. Two of the great service-books of the Sarum use, the Breviary and the Processional, give ample details as to the ‘ministry’ of the Boy Bishop and his fellows. The office, as preserved in these, will be found in an appendix[1254]. The proceedings differ in some respects from the continental models already described. There is no mention of the Deposuit; and the central rite is still the great procession between Vespers and Compline on the eve of the Holy Innocents. This procession went from the choir either to the altar of the Holy Innocents or to that of the Holy Trinity and All Saints in the Lady chapel, and at its return the boys took the higher stalls and kept them until the second Vespers of the feast. For this procession the boys were entitled to assign the functions of carrying the book, the censer, the candles, and so forth to the canons. Some miscellaneous notices of the Salisbury feast are contained in the chapter register between 1387 and 1473. From 1387 the oblations on the feast appear to have been given to the ‘bishop.’ In 1413 he was allowed a banquet. In 1448 the precentor, Nicholas Upton, proposed that the boys, instead of freely electing a ‘bishop,’ should be confined to a choice amongst three candidates named by the chapter. But this innovation was successfully resisted[1255]. Cathedral documents also give the names of twenty-one boys who held the office[1256]. There is in Salisbury cathedral a dwarf effigy of a bishop, dating from the latter part of the thirteenth century. Local tradition, from at least the beginning of the seventeenth century, has regarded this as the monument of a Boy Bishop who died during his term of office. But modern archaeologists repudiate the theory. Such miniature effigies are not uncommon, and possibly indicate that the heart alone of the person commemorated is buried in the spot which they mark[1257].

The gradual adoption of the use of Sarum by other dioceses would naturally tend to carry with it that of the Boy Bishop. But he is to be found at Exeter and at St. Paul’s before the change of use, as well as at Lincoln and York which retained their own uses up to the Reformation. At Exeter Bishop Grandisson’s Ordinale of 1337 provides an Officium puerorum for the eve and day of the Innocents which, with different detail, is on the same general lines as that of Salisbury[1258]. At St. Paul’s there was a Boy Bishop about 1225, when a gift was made to him of a mitre by John de Belemains, prebendary of Chiswick. This appears, with other vestments for the feast, in an inventory drawn up some twenty years later[1259]. By 1263 abuses had grown up, and the chapter passed a statute to reform them[1260]. They required the election of the praesul and his chapter and the drawing up of the tabula to take place in the chapter-house instead of in the cathedral, on account of the irreverence of the crowds pressing to see. The great dignitaries must not be put down on the tabula for the servers’ functions, but only the clergy of the second or third ‘form.’ The procession and all the proceedings in the cathedral must be orderly and creditable to the boys[1261]. Minute directions follow as to the right of the ‘bishop’ to claim a supper on the eve from one of the canons, and as to the train he may take with him, as well as for the dinner and supper of the feast-day itself. After dinner a cavalcade is to start from the cathedral for the blessing of the people. The dean must find a horse for the ‘bishop,’ and each canon residentiary one for the lad who personates him[1262]. Other statutes of earlier date make it incumbent on a new residentiary to entertain his own boy-representative cum daunsa et chorea et torchiis on Innocents’ day, and to sit up at night for the ‘bishop’ and all his cortège on the octave. If he is kept up very late, he may ‘cut’ Matins next morning[1263]. The Boy Bishop of St. Paul’s was accustomed to preach a sermon which, not unnaturally, he did not write himself. William de Tolleshunte, almoner of St. Paul’s in 1329, bequeathed to the almonry copies of all the sermons preached by the Boy Bishops in his time. Probably he was himself responsible for them[1264]. One such sermon was printed by Wynkyn de Worde before 1500[1265]. Another was written by Erasmus, and exists both in Latin and English[1266]. When Dean Colet drew up the statutes of St. Paul’s School in 1512 he was careful to enact that the scholars should attend the cathedral on Childermass day, hear the sermon, and mass, and give a penny to the ‘bishop[1267].’

The earliest notice of the Boy Bishop at York, or for the matter of that, in England, is in a statute (before 1221), which lays on him the duty of finding rushes for the Nativity and Epiphany feasts[1268]. After this, there is nothing further until the second half of the fourteenth century, when some interesting documents become available. The chapter register for 1367 requires that in future the ‘bishop’ shall be the boy who has served longest and proved most useful in the cathedral. A saving clause is added: dum tamen competenter sit corpore formosus[1269]. This shows a sense of humour in the chapter, for at York, as at Salisbury, Corpore enim formosus es, O fili was a respond for the day. In 1390, was added a further qualification that the ‘bishop’ must be a lad in good voice[1270]. Doubtless the office was much coveted, for it was a very remunerative one. The visitation forbidden at Salisbury by Roger de Mortival was permitted at York, and the profits were considerable. Robert de Holme, who was ‘bishop’ in 1369, received from the choirmaster, John Gisson, who acted as his treasurer, no less a sum than £3 15s. 1¹⁄₂d.[1271] In 1396 the amount was only £2 0s. 6¹⁄₂d. But this was only a small portion of the total receipts. The complete Computus for this year happens to be preserved, and shows that the Boy Bishop made a quête at intervals during the weeks between Christmas and Candlemas, travelling with a ‘seneschal,’ four singers and a servant to such distant places as Bridlington, Leeds, Beverley, Fountains abbey and Allerton. Their principal journey lasted a fortnight. The oblations on Christmas and Innocents’ days and the collection from the dignitaries in the cloister realized £2 15s. 5d. In the city they got 10s. and abroad £5 10s. Out of this there were heavy expenses. The supper given by the ‘bishop’ cost 15s. 6¹⁄₂d. Purchased meals had to supplement hospitality at home and abroad. Horse hire and stable expenses had to be met. There were the ‘bishop’s’ outfit, candles to be borne in procession, fees to the minor cathedral officials, gloves for presents to the vicars and schoolmasters. There was the ‘bishop’s’ own company to be rewarded for its services. The £2 0s. 6¹⁄₂d. represents the balance available for his private use[1272]. The most generous contributor to the quête was the countess of Northumberland, who gave 20s. and a gold ring. This is precisely the amount of the reward prescribed about 1522 for the ‘barne bishop’ of York, as well as for his brother of Beverley in the Household Book of the fifth earl of Northumberland[1273].

The printed service-books of the use of York do not deal as fully with the Feast of Boys as do those of Sarum; but a manuscript missal of the fifteenth century used in the cathedral itself contains some additional rubrics with regard to the functions of the ‘bishop’ and his ‘precentor’ at Mass[1274]. The names of some of the York ‘bishops’ are preserved, and show that the ceremony prevailed up to the Reformation[1275]. And this is confirmed by a list of ornaments for the ‘bishop’ in a sixteenth-century inventory[1276].

I am unable to give such full data for Lincoln as for the cathedrals already named; but regulations of 1300 and 1527 provide for the supply of candles to the ‘bishop’ and the rest of the choir at Vespers on the eve and matins on the day of the Innocents[1277], and an inventory of 1536 mentions a cope for the ‘barne busshop’ with a moral ‘scriptur’ embroidered on it[1278]. Nor can I hope to supply any exhaustive list of localities where the Boy Bishop flourished. These include minor cathedrals such as Hereford[1279], Lichfield[1280], Gloucester[1281], and Norwich[1282], great collegiate churches such as Beverley minster[1283], St. Peter’s, Canterbury[1284], and Ottery St. Mary’s[1285], college chapels such as Magdalen[1286] and All Souls[1287], at Oxford, the private chapels of the king[1288] and the earl of Northumberland[1289], and many parish churches both in London[1290], and throughout the length and breadth of England[1291] and Scotland[1292].

Nor is this all. Unlike the Feast of Fools, the Feast of Boys enjoyed a considerable vogue in religious houses. When John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, was drawing up his constitutions for such communities in 1279, he found it necessary to limit the duration of this feast to the eve and day of the Holy Innocents[1293]. Traces of the Boy Bishop are to be found in the archives of more than one great monastery. A Westminster inventory of 1388 gives minute descriptions of vestments and ornaments for his use, many of which appear to have been quite recently provided by the ‘westerer’ or vestiarius, Richard Tonworthe[1294]. There was a mitre with silvered and gilt plates and gems, and the inscription Sancte Nicholae ora pro nobis set in pearls. There was a baculus with images of St. Peter and St. Edward the Confessor upon thrones. There were two pair of cheveril gloves, to match the mitre. There were an amice, a rochet and a surplice. There were two albs and a cope of blood colour worked with gryphons and other beasts and cisterns spouting water. There was another ‘principal’ cope of ruby and blood-coloured velvet embroidered in gold, and with the ‘new arms of England’ woven into it. An older mitre and pair of gloves and a ring had been laid aside as old-fashioned or worn out. Evidently the feast was celebrated with some splendour. Several of the vestments are again inventoried in 1540[1295]. A payment for the feast is recorded in a Computus of 1413-14[1296]. The accounts of the obedientiaries of Durham priory show from 1369 onwards many payments by nearly all these officers to a Boy Bishop of the almonry. He also received a gift up to 1528 from the dependent house or ‘cell’ of Finchale priory. This payment was made at the office of the feretrarius or keeper of Saint Cuthbert’s shrine. The ‘bishop’ is called episcopus puerilis, episcopus eleemosynariae, or the like. In 1405 he was not elected, propter guerras eo tempore. In 1423 and 1434 there was also an episcopus de Elvett or Elvetham, a manor of the priory[1297]. The abbey of Bury St. Edmunds had its episcopus sancti Nicolai in 1418 and for at least a century longer[1298]. At Winchester each of the great monasteries held a Feast of Boys; the abbey of Hyde on St. Nicholas’ day[1299]; the priory of St. Swithin’s on that of the Holy Innocents. Here, too, the accounts of the obedientiaries contain evidence of the feast in payments between 1312 and 1536 for beer or wine sent to the episcopus iuvenum. Nearly all the officers whose rolls are preserved, the chamberlain, the curtarian, the cellarian, the almoner, the sacristan, the custos operum, the hordarian, seem to have contributed[1300]. A Computus of 1441 contains a payment to the pueri eleemosynariae who, with the pueri of St. Elizabeth’s chapel, visited St. Mary’s convent, dressed as girls, and danced, sang and sported before the abbess and the nuns[1301]. We have had some French instances in which the Boy Bishop visited a neighbouring convent. But the nuns were not always dependent on outside visitors for their revel. In some places they held their own feast, with an ‘abbess’ instead of a ‘bishop.’ Archbishop John Peckham, in addition to his general constitution already quoted, issued a special mandate to Godstow nunnery, forbidding the office and prayers to be said per parvulas on Innocents’ day[1302]. Three centuries later, in 1526, a visitation of Carrow nunnery by Richard Nicke, bishop of Norwich, disclosed a custom of electing a Christmas ‘abbess’ there, which the bishop condemned[1303]. Continental parallels to these examples are available. An eighth-century case, indeed, which is quoted by some writers, has probably been the subject of a misinterpretation[1304]. But the visitation-books of Odo Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen (1248-69) record that he forbade the ludibria of the younger nuns at the Christmas feasts and the feast of St. Mary Magdalen in more than one convent of his diocese. One of these was the convent of the Holy Trinity at Caen, in which an ‘abbess’ was still chosen by the novices in 1423[1305]. All the monastic examples here quoted come from houses of the older foundations. The Statutes, however, of the Observant Franciscans made at Barcelona in 1401, expressly forbid the use of secular garments or the loan of habits of the order for ludi on St. Nicholas’ or Innocents’ days[1306]; whence it may be inferred that the irregularities provided against were not unknown.

Mediaeval education began with the song-school: and although the universities and other great seats of learning came to be much more than glorified choirs, they still retained certain traces of their humble origin. Amongst these was the Boy Bishop. The students of Paris regularly chose their Boy Bishops on St. Nicholas’ day. In 1275, indeed, the Faculty of Arts forbade the torchlight processions which took place on that day and on St. Catherine’s, the two great common holidays of the clerks[1307]. But in 1367 such processions were held as of ancient custom, and it would appear that every little group of students gathered together under the protection and in the house of a master of arts considered itself entitled to choose a ‘bishop,’ and to lead him in a rout through the streets. In that year the custom led to a tragic brawl which came under the cognizance of the Parlement of Paris[1308]. The scholars of one Peter de Zippa, dwelling in vico Bucherie ultra Parvum Pontem, had chosen as ‘bishop’ Bartholomew Divitis of Ypres. On St. Nicholas’ eve, they were promenading, with a torch but unarmed, to the houses of the rector of the Faculty and others causa solacii et iocosa, when they met with the watch. Peter de Zippa was with them, and the watch had a grudge against Peter. On the previous St. Catherine’s day they had arrested him, but he had been released by the préfet. They now attacked the procession with drawn swords, and wounded Jacobus de Buissono in the leg. As the scholars were remonstrating, up came Philippus de Villaribus, miles gueti, and Bernardus Blondelli, his deputy, and cried ‘Ad mortem’. The scholars fled home, but the watch made an attack on the house. Peter de Zippa attempted to appease them from a window, and was wounded four fingers from a mortal spot. As the watch were on the point of breaking in, the scholars surrendered. The house was looted, and the inmates beaten. One lad was pitched out on his head and driven into the Seine, out of which he was helped by a woman. Peter de Zippa and twenty-four others were rolled in the mud and then carried off to the Châtelet, where they were shut up in a dark and malodorous cell. Worst of all, the ‘bishop’ had disappeared altogether. It was believed that the watch had slain him, and flung the body into the Seine. A complaint was brought before the Parlement, and a commission of inquiry appointed. The watch declared that Peter de Zippa was insubordinate to authority and, although warned, as a foreigner, both in French and Latin[1309], that they were the king’s men, persisted in hurling logs and stones out of his window, with the result of knocking four teeth out of Peter Patou’s mouth, and wounding the horse of Philip de Villaribus. This defence was apparently thought unsatisfactory, and a further inquiry was held, with the aid of torture. Finally the court condemned the offending watch to terms of imprisonment and the payment of damages. They had also to offer a humble apology, with bare head and bent knee, to the bishop of Paris, the rector of the Faculty, Peter de Zippa, and the injured scholars, in the cloister or the chapter-house of St. Mathurin’s. The case of the alleged murder of the ‘bishop,’ Bartholomew Divitis, was not to be prejudiced by this judgement, and Peter de Zippa was warned to be more submissive to authority in future. The whole episode is an interesting parallel to the famous ‘town and gown’ at Oxford on St. Scholastica’s day, 1353[1310].

Provision is made for a Boy Bishop in the statutes of more than one great English educational foundation. William of Wykeham ordained in 1400 that one should be chosen at Winchester College, and at New College, Oxford, and should recite the office at the Feast of the Innocents[1311]. Some notices in the Winchester College accounts during the fifteenth century show that he also presided at secular revels. In 1462 he is called Episcopus Nicholatensis, and on St. Nicholas’ day he paid a visit of ceremony to the warden, who presented him, out of the college funds, with fourpence[1312]. The example of William of Wykeham was followed, forty years later, in the statutes of the royal foundations of Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. But there was one modification. These colleges were dedicated to the Virgin and to St. Nicholas, and it was carefully laid down that the performance of the officium by the ‘bishop’ was to be on St. Nicholas’ day, ‘and by no means on that of the Innocents[1313].’ The Eton ‘bishop’ is said by the Elizabethan schoolmaster Malim, who wrote a Consuetudinarium of the college in 1561, to have been called episcopus Nihilensis, and to have been chosen on St. Hugh’s day (November 17). Probably Nihilensis is a scribal mistake for Nicholatensis[1314]. The custom had been abolished before Malim wrote, but was extant in 1507, for in that year the ‘bishop’s’ rochet was mended[1315]. Some Eton historians have thought that the Boy Bishop ceremony was the origin of the famous ‘Montem’; but as the ‘Montem’ was held on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and as Malim mentions both customs independently, this is improbable[1316].

Smaller schools than Winchester or Eton had none the less their Boy Bishops. Archbishop Rotherham, who founded in 1481 a college at his native place of Rotherham in Yorkshire, left by will in 1500 a mitre for the ‘barnebishop[1317].’ The grammar school at Canterbury had, or should have had, its Boy Bishop in 1464[1318]. Aberdeen was a city of which St. Nicholas was the patron, and at Aberdeen the master of the grammar school was paid by a collection taken when he went the rounds with the ‘bishop’ on St. Nicholas’ day[1319]. Dean Colet, on the other hand, when founding St. Paul’s school did not provide for a ‘bishop’ in the school itself, but, as we have seen, directed the scholars to attend the mass and sermon of the ‘bishop’ in the cathedral.

Naturally the Reformation made war on the Boy Bishop. A royal proclamation of July 22, 1541, forbade the ‘gatherings’ by children ‘decked and apparalid to counterfaite priestes, bysshopps, and women’ on ‘sainte Nicolas, sainte Catheryne, sainte Clement, the holye Innocentes, and such like,’ and also the singing of mass and preaching by boys on these days[1320]. Naturally also, during the Marian reaction the Boy Bishop reappeared. On November 13, 1554, Bishop Bonner issued an order permitting all clerks in the diocese of London to have St. Nicholas and to go abroad; and although this order was annulled on the very eve of the festival, apparently because Cardinal Pole had appointed St. Nicholas’ day for a great ceremony of reconciliation at Lambeth, yet the custom was actually revived in several London parishes, including St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and St. Nicholas Olave, Bread Street[1321]. In 1556 it was still more widely observed[1322]. But upon the accession of Elizabeth it naturally fell again into disuse, and it has left few, if any, traces in modern folk-custom[1323].

I need not, after the last two chapters, attempt an elaborate analysis of the customs connected with the Boy Bishop. In the main they are parallel to those of the Feast of Fools. They include the burlesque of divine service, the quête, the banquet, the dominus festi. Like the Feast of Fools, they probably contain a folk as well as an ecclesiastical element. But the former is chastened and subdued, the strength of ecclesiastical discipline having proved sufficient, in the case of the boys, to bar for the most part such excesses as the adult clerks inherited from the pagan Kalends. On one point, however, a little more must be said. The dominus festi, who at the Feast of Fools bears various names, is almost invariably at the Feast of Boys a ‘bishop[1324].’ This term must have been familiar by the end of the eleventh century for it lends a point of sarcasm to the protest made by Yves, bishop of Chartres, in a letter to Pope Urban II against the disgraceful nomination by Philip I of France of a wanton lad to be bishop of Orleans in 1099[1325]. In later documents it appears in various forms, episcopus puerorum, episcopellus[1326], episcopus puerilis or parvulus, ‘boy bishop,’ ‘child bishop,’ ‘barne bishop.’ In some English monasteries it is episcopus eleemosynariae (‘of the almonry’); in Germany, Schul-Bischof, or, derisively, Apfeln-Bischof. More significant than any of these is the common variant episcopus Nicholatensis, ‘Nicholas bishop.’ For St. Nicholas’ day (December 6) was hardly less important in the career of the Boy Bishop than that of the Holy Innocents itself. At this feast he was generally chosen and began his quête through the streets. In more than one locality, Mainz for instance in Germany, Eton in England, it was on this day as well as, or in substitution for, that of the Innocents that he made his appearance in divine service[1327]. St. Nicholas was, of course, the patron saint of schoolboys and of children generally[1328]. His prominence in the winter processions of Germany and the presents which in modern folk-belief he brings to children have been touched upon in an earlier chapter. It now appears that originally he took rather than gave presents, and that where he appeared in person he was represented by the Boy Bishop. And this suggests the possibility that it was this connexion with St. Nicholas, and not the profane mummings of Michael the Drunkard at Constantinople, which led to the use of the term ‘bishop’ for the dominus festi, first at the Feast of Boys, and ultimately at the other Christmas feasts as well. For St. Nicholas was not only the boys’ saint par excellence; he was also, owing to the legend of his divinely ordered consecration when only a layman as bishop of Myra, the bishop saint par excellence[1329]. However this may be, I think it is a fair guess that St. Nicholas’ day was an older date for a Feast of Boys than that of the Holy Innocents, and that the double date records an instance of the process, generally imperfect, by which, under Roman and Christian influence, the beginning of winter customs of the Germano-Keltic peoples were gradually transformed into mid-winter customs[1330]. The beginning of winter feast was largely a domestic feast, and the children probably had a special part in it. It is possible also to trace a survival of the corresponding beginning of summer feast in the day of St. Gregory on March 12, which was also sometimes marked by the election of a Schul-Bischof[1331].

CHAPTER XVI GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS

The conclusion of this volume must call attention to certain traces left by the ecclesiastical ludi of the New Year, themselves extinct, upon festival custom, and, through this, upon dramatic tradition. The Feast of Fools did not altogether vanish with its suppression in the cathedrals. It had had its origin in the popular celebration of the Kalends. Throughout it did not altogether lack a popular element. The bourgeois crowded into the cathedral to see and share in the revel. The Fool Bishop in his turn left the precincts and made his progress through the city streets, while his satellites played their pranks abroad for the entertainment of the mob. The feast was a dash of colour in the civic as well as the ecclesiastical year. The Tournai riots of 1499 show that the jeunesse of that city had come to look upon it as a spectacle which they were entitled to claim from the cathedral. What happened in Tournai doubtless happened elsewhere. And the upshot of it was that when in chapter after chapter the reforming party got the upper hand and the official celebration was dropped, the city and its jeunesse themselves stepped into the breach and took measures to perpetuate the threatened delightful dynasty. It was an easy way to avert the loss of a holiday. And so we find a second tradition of Feasts of Fools, in which the fous are no longer vicars but bourgeois, and the dominus festi is a popular ‘king’ or ‘prince’ rather than a clerical ‘bishop.’ A mid-fifteenth-century writer, Martin Franc, attests the vogue of the prince des folz in the towns of northern France:

The term Roi or Prince des Sots is perhaps the most common one for the new dominus festi, and, like sots or folz themselves, is generic. But there are many local variants, as the Prévôt des Étourdis at Bouchain[1333], the Roi des Braies at Laon, the Roi de l’Epinette at Lille, and the Prince de la Jeunesse at St. Quentin[1334]. The dominus festi was as a rule chosen by one or more local guilds or confréries into which the jeunesse were organized for the purpose of maintaining the feast. The fifteenth century was an age of guilds in every department of social life, and the compagnies des fous or sociétés joyeuses are but the frivolous counterparts of religious confréries or literary puys. The most famous of all such sociétés, that of l’Infanterie Dijonnaise at Dijon, seems directly traceable to the fall of an ecclesiastical Feast of Fools. Such a feast was held, as we have seen, in the ducal, afterwards royal, chapel, and was abolished by the Parlement of Dijon in 1552. Before this date nothing is heard of l’Infanterie. A quarter of a century later it is in full swing, and the character of its dignitaries and its badges point clearly to a derivation from the chapel feast[1335]. The Dijon example is but a late one of a development which had long taken place in many parts of northern France and Flanders. It would be difficult to assert that a société joyeuse never made its appearance in any town before the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools had died out therein. Occasionally the two institutions overlap[1336]. But, roughly speaking, the one is the inheritor of the other; ‘La confrérie des sots, c’est la Fête des Fous sécularisée[1337].’ Amongst the chief of these sociétés are the Enfants-sans-Souci of Paris, the Cornards or Connards of Rouen and Evreux[1338], the Suppôts du Seigneur de la Coquille of Lyons[1339]. The history of these has been written excellently well by M. Petit de Julleville, and I do not propose to repeat it. A few general points, however, deserve attention.

The ecclesiastical Feast of Fools flourished rather in cathedrals than in monasteries. The sociétés however, like some more serious confréries[1340], seem to have preferred a conventual to a capitular model for their organization[1341]. The Cornards, both at Rouen and Evreux, were under an Abbé. Cambrai had its Abbaye joyeuse de Lescache-Profit, Chalons-sur-Saône its Abbé de la Grande Abbaye, Arras its Abbé de Liesse, Poitiers its Abbé de Mau Gouverne[1342]. The literary adaptation of this idea by Rabelais in the Abbaye de Thélème is familiar. This term abbaye is common to the sociétés, with some at least of the Basoches or associations of law-clerks to the Parlements of Paris and the greater provincial towns. The Basoches existed for mutual protection, but for mutual amusement also, and on one side at least of their activity they were much of the nature of sociétés joyeuses[1343]. At Rheims in 1490 a Basoche entered into rivalry of dramatic invective with the celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools[1344]. The Basoche of Paris was in the closest relations to, if not actually identical with, the société of the Enfants-sans-Souci[1345]. Just as the law-clerks of Paris were banded together in their Basoche, so were the students of Paris in their ‘university,’ ‘faculties,’ ‘nations,’ and other groups; and in 1470, long after the regular Feast of Fools had disappeared from the city, the students were still wont to put on the fool habit and elect their rex fatuorum on Twelfth night[1346]. Yet other guilds of a more serious character, generally speaking, than the sociétés joyeuses, none the less occasionally gave themselves over to joyeuseté. The Deposuit brought rebuke upon religious confréries up to a quite late date[1347]; and traces of the fous are to be found amongst the recreations of no less a body than the famous and highly literary puy of Arras. The sociétés joyeuses, like the puys, were primarily associations of amateur, rather than professional merry-makers, a fact which distinguishes them from the corporations of minstrels described in a previous chapter[1348]. But minstrels and trouvères were by no means excluded. The poet Gringoire was Mère-Sotte of the Paris Enfants-sans-Souci. Clément Marot was a member of the same body. In the puy of Arras the minstrels traditionally held an important place; and as the literary and dramatic side of the sociétés grew, it is evident that the men who were professionally ready with their pens must everywhere have been in demand.

The primary function of the sociétés joyeuses and their congeners was the celebration of the traditional Feast of Fools at or about the New Year. In Paris, Twelfth night was a day of festival for the Basoche as well as for the minor association of exchequer clerks known as the Empire de Galilée. In mid-January came the fête des Braies at Laon, and the fête of the Abbaye de Lescache-Profit at Cambrai. That of the Prince des Sots at Amiens was on the first of January itself[1349]. On the same day three sociétés joyeuses united in a fête de l’âne at Douai[1350]. But January was no clement month for the elaborated revels of increasingly luxurious burghers; and it is not surprising to find that many of the sociétés transferred their attention to other popular feasts which happened to fall at more genial seasons of the year. To the celebration of these, the spring feast of the carnival or Shrovetide, the summer feasts of May-day or Midsummer, they brought all the wantonness of the Feast of Fools. The Infanterie Dijonnaise, the Cornards of Rouen and Evreux, the third Parisian law association, that of the Châtelet, especially cultivated the carnival. The three obligatory feasts of the Basoche included, besides that of Twelfth night, one on May-day and one at the beginning of July[1351]. On May-day, too, a guild in the parish of St. Germain at Amiens held its fête des fous[1352]. It may be noted that these summer extensions of the reign of folly are not without parallels of a strictly ecclesiastical type. At Châlons-sur-Marne, as late as 1648, a chapter procession went to the woods on St. John’s eve to cut boughs for the decking of the church[1353]. At Evreux a similar custom grew into a very famous revel[1354]. This was the procession noire, otherwise known as the cérémonie de la Saint-Vital, because the proceedings began on the day of St. Vitalis (April 28) and lasted to the second Vespers on May 1. Originally the canons, afterwards the choir-clerks, chaplains, and vicars, went at day-break on May morning to gather branches in the bishop’s woods. Their return was the signal for riotous proceedings. The bells were violently rung. Masks were worn. Bran was thrown in the eyes of passers-by, and they were made to leap over broomsticks. The choir-clerks took the high stalls, and the choir-boys recited the office. In the intervals the canons played at skittles over the vaults; there were dancing and singing and the rest, ‘as at the time of the Nativity[1355].’ The abuses of this festival must have begun at an early date, for two canons of the cathedral, one of whom died in 1206, are recorded to have been hung out of the belfry windows in a vain attempt to stop the bell-ringing. Its extension to St. Vitalis’ day is ascribed to another canon, singularly named Bouteille, who is said to have founded about 1270 a very odd obit. He desired that a pall should lie on the pavement of the choir, and that on each corner and in the middle of this should stand a bottle of wine, to be drunk by the singing-men. The canon Bouteille may be legendary, but the wine-bottle figured largely in the festival ceremonies. While the branches were distributed in the bishop’s wood, which came to be known as the bois de la Bouteille, the company drank and ate cakes. Two bottle-shaped holes were dug in the earth and filled with sand. On the day of the obit an enormous leather bottle, painted with marmosets, serpents, and other grotesques, was placed in the choir. These rites were still extant at Evreux in 1462, when a fresh attempt to suppress the bell-jangling led to a fresh riot. No explanation is given of the term procession noire as used at Evreux, but a Vienne parallel suggests that, as in some other seasonal festivals, those who took part in the procession had their faces blacked. At Vienne, early on May 1, four men, naked and black, started from the archbishop’s palace and paraded the city. They were chosen respectively by the archbishop, the cathedral chapter, and the abbots of St. Peter’s and St. John’s. Subsequently they formed a cortège for a rex, also chosen by the archbishop, and a regina from the convent of St. Andrew’s. A St. Paul, from the hospital dedicated to that saint, also joined in the procession, and carried a cup of ashes which he sprinkled in the faces of those he met. This custom lasted to the seventeenth century[1356].

But the seasonal feasts did not exhaust the activities of the sociétés. Occasional events, a national triumph, a royal entry, not to speak of local faits divers, found them ready with appropriate celebrations[1357]. The Infanterie Dijonnaise made a solemn function of the admission of new members[1358]. And more than one société picked up from folk-custom the tradition of the charivari, constituting itself thus the somewhat arbitrary guardian of burgess morality[1359]. M. Petit de Julleville analyses a curious jeu filled with chaff against an unfortunate M. Du Tillet who underwent the penalty at Dijon in 1579 for the crime of beating his wife in the month of May[1360]. At Lyon, too, chevauchées of a similar type seem to have been much in vogue[1361].

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the entertainment of the sociétés joyeuses was largely dramatic. We find them, as indeed we find the participants in the strictly clerical feasts of Fools[1362] and of Boys[1363], during the same period, occupied with the performance both of miracles and of the various forms of contemporary comedy known as farces, moralities, sotties and sermons joyeux[1364]. Of their share in the miracles the next volume may speak[1365]: their relations to the development of comedy require a word or two here. That normal fifteenth-century comedy, that of the farce and the morality, in any way had its origin in the Feast of Fools, whether clerical or lay, can hardly be admitted. It almost certainly arose out of the minstrel tradition, and when already a full-blown art was adapted by the fous, as by other groups of amateur performers, from minstrelsy. With the special forms of the sottie and the sermon joyeux it is otherwise. These may reasonably be regarded as the definite contribution of the Feast of Fools to the types of comedy. The very name of the sermon joyeux, indeed, sufficiently declares its derivation. It is parody of a class, the humour of which would particularly appeal to revelling clerks: it finds its place in the general burlesque of divine worship, which is the special note of the feast[1366]. The character of the sotties, again, does not leave their origin doubtful; they are, on the face of them, farces in which the actors are sots or fous. Historically, we know that some at least of the extant sotties were played by sociétés joyeuses at Paris, Geneva and elsewhere; and the analysis of their contents lays bare the ruling idea as precisely that expressed in the motto of the Infanterie Dijonnaise—‘Stultorum numerus est infinitus.’ It is their humour and their mode of satire to represent the whole world, from king to clown, as wearing the cap and bells, and obeying the lordship of folly. French writers have aptly compared them to the modern dramatic type known as the revue[1367]. The germ of the sottie is to be found as early as the thirteenth century in the work of that Adan de la Hale, whose anticipation of at least one other form of fifteenth-century drama has called for comment[1368]. Adan’s Jeu de la Feuillée seems to have been played before the puy of Arras, perhaps, as the name suggests, in the tonnelle of a garden, on the eve of the first of May, 1262. It is composed of various elements: the later scenes are a féerie in which the author draws upon Hellequin and his mesnie and the three fées, Morgue, Maglore and Arsile, of peasant tradition. But there is an episode which is sheer sottie. The relics of St. Acaire, warranted to cure folly, are tried upon the good burgesses of Arras one by one; and there is a genuine fool or dervés, who, like his lineal descendant Touchstone, ‘uses his folly as a stalking-horse to shoot his wit’ in showers of arrowy satire upon mankind[1369]. Of the later and regular sotties, the most famous are those written by Pierre Gringoire for the Enfants-sans-Souci of Paris. In these, notably the Jeu du Prince des Sotz, and in others by less famous writers, the conception of the all-embracing reign of folly finds constant and various expression[1370]. Outside France some reflection of the sottie is to be found in the Fastnachtspiele or Shrovetide plays of Nuremberg and other German towns. These were performed mainly, but not invariably, at Shrovetide, by students or artisans, not necessarily organized into regular guilds. They are dramatically of the crudest, being little more than processions of figures, each of whom in turn sings his couplets. But in several examples these figures are a string of Narren, and the matter of the verses is in the satirical vein of the sotties[1371]. The Fastnachtspiele are probably to be traced, not so much to the Feast of Fools proper, as to the spring sword-dances in which, as we have seen, a Narr or ‘fool’ is de rigueur. They share, however, with the sotties their fundamental idea of the universal domination of folly.

The extension of this idea may indeed be traced somewhat widely in the satirical and didactic literature of the later Middle Ages and the Renascence. I cannot go at length into this question here, but must content myself with referring to Professor Herford’s valuable account of the cycle, which includes the Speculum Stultorum of Wireker, Lydgate’s Order of Fools, Sebastian Brandt’s Narrenschiff and its innumerable imitations, the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus, and Robert Armin the player’s Nest of Ninnies[1372].

Wireker was an Englishman, and the ‘Order’ founded in the Speculum by Brunellus, the Ass, was clearly suggested by the sociétés joyeuses. Traces of such sociétés in England are, however, rare. Some of the titles of local lords of misrule, such as the Abbot of Marrall at Shrewsbury or the Abbot of Bon-Accord at Aberdeen, so closely resemble the French nomenclature as to suggest their existence; but the only certain example I have come across is in a very curious record from Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson contains under the date July 11, 1348, a mandate to the archdeacon and dean of Exeter and the rector of St. Paul’s, requiring them to prohibit the proceedings of a certain ‘sect of malign men’ who call themselves the ‘Order of Brothelyngham.’ These men, says the bishop, wear a monkish habit, choose a lunatic fellow as abbot, set him up in the theatre, blow horns, and for day after day beset in a great company the streets and places of the city, capturing laity and clergy, and exacting ransom from them ‘in lieu of a sacrifice.’ This they call a ludus, but it is sheer rapine[1373]. Grandisson’s learned editor thinks that this secta was a sect of mediaeval dissenters, but the description clearly points to a société joyeuse. And the recognition of the droits exacted as being loco sacrificii is to a folk-lorist most interesting.

More than one of the records which I have had occasion to quote make mention of an habit des fous as of a recognized and familiar type of dress. These records are not of the earliest. The celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools wore larvae or masks. Laity and clergy exchanged costumes: and the wearing of women’s garments by men probably represents one of the most primitive elements in the custom. But there can be little doubt as to the nature of the traditional ‘habit des fous’ from the fourteenth century onwards. Its most characteristic feature was that hood garnished with ears, the distribution of which to persons of importance gave such offence at Tournai in 1499. A similar hood, fitting closely over the head and cut in scollops upon the shoulders, reappears in the bâton, dated 1482, of the fools in the ducal chapel of Dijon. Besides two large asses’ ears, it also bears a central peak or crest[1374]. The eared hood became the regular badge of the sociétés joyeuses. It is found on most of the seals and other devices of the Infanterie Dijonnaise, variously modified, and often with bells hung upon the ears and the points of the scollops[1375]. It was used at Amiens[1376], and at Rouen and Evreux probably gave a name to the Cornards[1377]. Marot describes it as appropriate to a sot de la Basoche at Paris[1378]. It belongs also to the Narren of Nuremberg[1379], and is to be seen in innumerable figured representations of fools in miniatures, woodcuts, carvings, the Amiens monetae, and so forth, during the later Middle Ages and the Renascence[1380]. Such a close-fitting hood was of course common wear in the fourteenth century. It is said to be of Gaulish origin, and to be retained in the religious cowl. The differentiae of the hood of a ‘fool’ from another must be sought in the grotesque appendages of ears, crest and bells[1381]. Already an eared hood, exactly like that of the ‘fools,’ distinguishes a mask, perhaps Gaulish, of the Roman period[1382]. It may therefore have been adopted in the Kalendae at an early date. But it is not, I think, unfair to assume that it was originally a sophistication of a more primitive headdress, namely the actual head of a sacrificial animal worn by the worshipper at the New Year festival. That the ears are asses’ ears explains itself in view of the prominence of that animal at the Feast of Fools. It must be added that the central crest is developed in some of the examples figured by Douce into the head and neck, in others into the comb only, of a cock[1383]. With the hood, in most of the examples quoted above, goes the marotte. This is a kind of doll carried by the ‘fool,’ and presents a replica of his own head and shoulders with their hood upon the end of a short staff. In some of Douce’s figures the marotte is replaced or supplemented by some other form of bauble, such as a bladder on a stick, stuffed into various shapes, or hollow and containing peas[1384]. Naturally the colours of the ‘fools’ were gay and strikingly contrasted. Those of the Paris Enfants-sans-Souci were yellow and green[1385]. But it may be doubted whether these colours were invariable, or whether there is much in the symbolical significance attributed to them by certain writers[1386]. The Infanterie Dijonnaise in fact added red to their yellow and green[1387]. The colours of the Clèves Order of Fools were red and yellow[1388].

It will not have escaped notice that the costume just described, the parti-coloured garments, the hood with its ears, bells and coxcomb, and the marotte, is precisely that assigned by the custom of the stage to the fools who appear as dramatis personae in several of Shakespeare’s plays[1389]. Yet these fools have nothing to do with sociétés joyeuses or the Feast of Fools; they represent the ‘set,’ ‘allowed,’ or ‘all-licensed’ fool[1390], the domestic jester of royal courts and noble houses. The great have always found pleasure in that near neighbourhood of folly which meaner men vainly attempt to shun. Rome shared the stultus with her eastern subjects and her barbarian invaders alike; and the ‘natural,’ genuine or assumed, was, like his fellow the dwarf, an institution in every mediaeval and Renascence palace[1391]. The question arises how far the habit of the sociétés joyeuses was also that of the domestic fool. In France there is some evidence that from the end of the fourteenth century it was occasionally at least taken as such. The tomb in Saint Maurice’s at Senlis of Thévenin de St. Leger, fool to Charles V, who died in 1374, represents him in a crested hood with a marotte[1392]. Rabelais describes the fool Seigni Joan, apparently intended for a court fool, as having a marotte and ears to his hood. On the other hand, he makes Panurge present Triboulet, the fool of Louis XII, with a sword of gilt wood and a bladder[1393]. A little later Jean Passerat speaks of the hood, green and yellow, with bells, of another royal fool[1394]. In the seventeenth century the green and yellow and an eared hood formed part of the fool’s dress which the duke of Nevers imposed upon a peccant treasurer[1395]. But in France the influence of the sociétés joyeuses was directly present. I do not find that the data quoted by Douce quite bear out his transference of the regular French habit de fou to England. Hoods were certainly required as part of the costume for ‘fools,’ ‘disards,’ or ‘vices’ in the court revels of 1551-2, together with ‘longe’ coats of various gay colours[1396]; but these were for masks, and on ordinary occasions the fools of the king and the nobles seem to have worn the usual dress of a courtier or servant[1397]. Like Triboulet, they often bore, as part of this, a gilded wooden sword[1398]. A coxcomb, however, seems to have been a recognized fool ensign[1399], and once, in a tale, the complete habit is described[1400]. Other fool costumes include a long petticoat[1401], the more primitive calf-skin[1402], and a fox tail hanging from the back[1403]. The two latter seem to bring us back to the sacrificial exuviae, and form a link between the court fool and the grotesque ‘fool,’ or ‘Captain Cauf Tail’ of the morris dances and other village revels.

Whatever may have been the case with the domestic fool of history, it is not improbable that the tradition of the stage rightly interprets the intention of Shakespeare. The actual texts are not very decisive. The point that is most clear is that the fool wears a ‘motley’ or ‘patched’ coat[1404]. The fool in Lear has a ‘coxcomb[1405]’; Monsieur Lavache in All’s Well a ‘bauble,’ not of course necessarily a marotte[1406]; Touchstone, in As You Like It, is a courtier and has a sword[1407]. The sword may perhaps be inherited from the ‘vice’ of the later moralities[1408]; and, in other respects, it is possible that Shakespeare took his conception of the fool less from contemporary custom, for indeed we hear of no fool at Elizabeth’s court, than from the abundant fool-literature, continental and English, above described. The earliest of his fools, Feste in Twelfth Night, quotes Rabelais, in whose work, as we have just seen, the fool Triboulet figures[1409]. It is noticeable that the appearance of fools as important dramatis personae in the plays apparently coincides with the substitution for William Kempe as ‘comic lead’ in the Lord Chamberlain’s company of Robert Armin[1410], whose own Nest of Ninnies abounds in reminiscences of the fool-literature[1411]. But whatever outward appearance Shakespeare intended his fools to bear, there can be no doubt that in their dramatic use as vehicles of general social satire they very closely recall the manner of the sotties. Touchstone is the type: ‘He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit[1412].’

CHAPTER XVII MASKS AND MISRULE

Already in Saxon England Christmas was becoming a season of secular merry-making as well as of religious devotion[1413]. Under the post-Conquest kings this tendency was stimulated by the fixed habit of the court. William the Bastard, like Charlemagne before him, chose the solemn day for his coronation; and from his reign Christmas takes rank, with Easter, Whitsuntide, and, at a much later date, St. George’s day, as one of the great courtly festivals of the year. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is at the pains to record the place of its celebration, twelvemonth after twelvemonth[1414]. Among the many forgotten Christmassings of mediaeval kings, history lays a finger on a few of special note: that at which Richard II, with characteristic extravagance and the consumption of ‘200 tunns of wine and 2,000 oxen with their appurtenances,’ entertained the papal legate in 1398; and that, more truly royal, at which Henry V, besieging Rouen in 1418, ‘refreshed all the poore people with vittels to their great comfort and his high praise[1415].’ The Tudors were not behindhand with any opportunity for pageantry and display, nor does the vogue of Christmas throughout the length and breadth of ‘merrie England’ need demonstration[1416]. The Puritans girded at it, as they did at May games, and the rest of the delightful circumstance of life, until in 1644 an ordinance of the Long Parliament required the festival to give place to a monthly fast with the day fixed for which it happened to coincide[1417].

The entertainment of a mediaeval Christmas was diverse. There was the banquet. The Boy Bishop came to court. Carols were sung. New Year gifts were exchanged. Hastiludia—jousts or tournaments—were popular and splendid. Minstrels and jugglers made music and mirth. A succession of gaieties filled the Twelve nights from the Nativity to the Epiphany, or even the wider space from St. Thomas’s day to Candlemas. It is, however, in the custom of masquing that I find the most direct legacy to Christmas of the Kalends celebrations in their bourgeois forms. Larvae or masks are prominent in the records and prohibitions of the Feast of Fools from the decretal of Innocent III in 1207 to the letter of the Paris theologians in 1445[1418]. I take them as being, like the characteristic hood of the ‘fool,’ sophistications of the capita pecudum, the sacrificial exuviae worn by the rout of worshippers at the Kalendae. Precisely such larvae, under another name, confront us in the detailed records of two fourteenth-century Christmasses. Amongst the documents of the Royal Wardrobe for the reign of Edward III are lists of stuffs issued for the ludi domini regis in 1347-8 and 1348-9[1419]. For the Christmas of 1347, held at Guildford, were required a number of ‘viseres’ in the likeness of men, women, and angels, curiously designed ‘crestes,’ and other costumes representing dragons, peacocks, and swans[1420]. The Christmas of 1348 held at Ottford and the following Epiphany at Merton yield similar entries[1421]. What were these ‘viseres’ used for? The term ludi must not be pressed. It appears to be distinct from hastiludia, which comes frequently in the same documents, although in the hastiludia also ‘viseres’ were used[1422]. But it does not necessarily imply anything dramatic, and the analogies suggest that it is a wide generic term, roughly equivalent to ‘disports,’ or to the ‘revels’ of the Tudor vocabulary[1423]. It recurs in 1388 when the Wardrobe provided linen coifs for twenty-one counterfeit men of the law in the ludus regis[1424]. The sets of costumes supplied for all these ludi would most naturally be used by groups of performers in something of the nature of a dance; and they point to some primitive form of masque, such as Froissart describes in contemporary France[1425], the precursor of the long line of development which, traceable from the end of the following century, culminates in the glories of Ben Jonson. The vernacular name for such a ludus in the fourteenth century was ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising[1426].’ Orders of the city of London in 1334, 1393, and 1405 forbid a practice of going about the streets at Christmas ove visere ne faux visage, and entering the houses of citizens to play at dice therein[1427]. In 1417 ‘mummyng’ is specifically included in a similar prohibition[1428]; and in a proclamation of the following year, ‘mommyng’ is classed with ‘playes’ and ‘enterludes’ as a variety of ‘disgisyng[1429].’ But the disport which they denied to less dignified folk the rulers of the city retained for themselves as the traditional way of paying a visit of compliment to a great personage. A fragmentary chronicle amongst Stowe’s manuscripts describes such a visit paid to Richard II at the Candlemas preceding his accession in 1377. The ‘mummers’ were disguised with ‘vizards’ to represent an emperor and a pope with their cortèges. They rode to Kennington, entered the hall on foot, invited the prince and the lords to dice and discreetly lost, drank and danced with the company, and so departed[1430]. This is the first of several such mummings upon record. Some chroniclers relate that it was at a mumming that the partisans of Richard II attempted to seize Henry IV on Twelfth night in 1400[1431]. In the following year, when the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople spent Christmas with Henry at Eltham, the ‘men of London maden a gret mommyng to hym of xij aldermen and there sons, for whiche they hadde gret thanke[1432].’ In 1414 Sir John Oldcastle and his Lollards were in their turn accused of using a mumming as a cloak of sedition[1433]. Thus the London distrust of false visages had its justification, and it is noteworthy that so late as 1511 an Act of Parliament forbade the visits of mummers disguised with visors to great houses on account of the disorders so caused. Even the sale of visors was made illegal[1434].

So far there is nothing to point to the use of any dialogue or speeches at mummings. The only detailed account is that of 1377, and the passage which describes how the mummers ‘saluted’ the lords, ‘shewing a pair of dice upon a table to play with the prince,’ reads rather as if the whole performance were in dumb show. This is confirmed by the explanation of the term ‘mummynge’ given in a contemporary glossary[1435]. The development of the mumming in a literary direction may very likely have been due to the multifarious activity of John Lydgate. Amongst his miscellaneous poems are preserved several which are stated by their collector Shirley to have been written for mummings or disguisings either before the king or before the lord mayor of London[1436]. They all seem to belong to the reign of Henry VI and probably to the years 1427-30. And they show pretty clearly the way in which verses got into the disguisings. Two of them are ‘lettres’ introducing mummings presented by the guilds of the mercers and the goldsmiths to lord mayor Eastfield[1437]. They were doubtless read aloud in the hall. A balade sent to Henry and the queen mother at Eltham is of the same type[1438]. Two ‘devyses’ for mummings at London and Windsor were probably recited by a ‘presenter.’ The Windsor one is of the nature of a prologue, describing a ‘myracle’ which the king is ‘to see[1439].’ The London one was meant to accompany the course of the performance, and describes the various personages as they enter[1440]. Still more elaborate is a set of verses used at Hertford. The first part of these is certainly spoken by a presenter who points out the ‘vpplandishe’ complainants to whom he refers. But the reply is in the first person, and apparently put in the mouths of the ‘wyues’ themselves, while the conclusion is a judgement delivered, again probably by the presenter, in the name of the king[1441].

Whether Lydgate was the author of an innovation or not, the introduction of speeches, songs, and dialogues was common enough in the fully-developed mummings. For these we must look to the sumptuous courts of the early Tudors. Lydgate died about 1451, and the Wars of the Roses did not encourage revelry. The Paston Letters tell how the Lady Morley forbade ‘dysguysyngs’ in her house at Christmas after her husband’s death in 1476[1442]. There were ludi in Scotland under James III[1443]. But those of his successor, James IV, although numerous and varied[1444], probably paled before the elaborate ‘plays’ and ‘disguisings’ which the contemporary account-books of Henry VII reveal[1445]. Of only one ‘disguising,’ however, of this period is a full account preserved. It took place in Westminster Hall after the wedding of Prince Arthur with Katharine of Spain on November 18, 1501, and was ‘convayed and showed in pageants proper and subtile.’ There was a castle, bearing singing children and eight disguised ladies, amongst whom was one ‘apparelled like unto the Princesse of Spaine,’ a Ship in which came Hope and Desire as Ambassadors, and a Mount of Love, from which issued eight knights, and assaulted the castle. This allegorical compliment, which was set forth by ‘countenance, speeches, and demeanor,’ ended, the knights and ladies danced together and presently ‘avoided.’ Thereupon the royal party themselves fell to dancing[1446]. ‘Pageants’ are mentioned in connexion with other disguisings of the reign, and on one occasion the disguising was ‘for a moryce[1447].’ Further light is thrown upon the nature of a disguising by the regulations contained in a contemporary book of ‘Orders concerning an Earl’s House.’ A disguising is to be introduced by torch-bearers and accompanied by minstrels. If there are women disguised, they are to dance first, and then the men. Then is to come the morris, ‘if any be ordeynid.’ Finally men and women are to dance together and depart in the ‘towre, or thing devised for theim.’ The whole performance is to be under the control of a ‘maister of the disguisinges’ or ‘revills[1448].’

It is possible to distinguish a simpler and a more elaborate type of masked entertainment, side by side, throughout the splendid festivities of the court of Henry VIII. For the more or less impromptu ‘mumming,’ the light-hearted and riotous king had a great liking. In the first year of his reign we find him invading the queen’s chamber at Westminster ‘for a gladness to the queen’s grace’ in the guise of Robin Hood, with his men ‘in green coats and hose of Kentish Kendal’ and a Maid Marian[1449]. The queen subsequently got left out, but there were many similar disports throughout the reign. One of these, in which the king and a party disguised as shepherds broke in upon a banquet of Wolsey’s, has been immortalized by Shakespeare[1450]. Such mummings were comparatively simple, and the Wardrobe was as a rule only called upon to provide costumes and masks, although on one occasion a lady in a ‘tryke’ or ‘spell’ wagon was drawn in[1451]. But the more formal ‘disguisings’ of the previous reign were also continued and set forth with great splendour. In 1527 a ‘House of Revel’ called the ‘Long House’ was built for their performance and decorated by Holbein[1452], and there was constant expenditure on the provision of pageants. ‘The Golldyn Arber in the Arche-yerd of Plesyer,’ ‘the Dangerus Fortrees,’ ‘the Ryche Mount,’ ‘the Pavyllon un the Plas Parlos,’ ‘the Gardyn de Esperans,’ ‘the Schatew Vert’[1453] are some of the names given to them, and these well suggest the kind of allegorical spectacular entertainment, diversified with dance and song, which the chroniclers describe.

The ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising,’ then, as it took shape at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a form of court revel, in which, behind the accretions of literature and pageantry, can be clearly discerned a nucleus of folk-custom in the entry of the band of worshippers, with their sacrificial exuviae, to bring the house good luck. The mummers are masked and disguised folk who come into the hall uninvited and call upon the company gathered there to dice and dance. It is not necessary to lay stress upon the distinction between the two terms, which are used with some indifference. When they first make their appearance together in the London proclamation of 1418 the masked visit is a ‘mumming,’ and is included with the ‘enterlude’ under the generic term of ‘disguising.’ In the Henry VII documents ‘mumming’ does not occur, and in those of Henry VIII ‘mumming’ and ‘disguising’ are practically identical, ‘disguising,’ if anything, being used of the more elaborate shows, while both are properly distinct from ‘interlude.’ But I do not think that ‘disguising’ ever quite lost its earlier and widest sense[1454]. It must now be added that early in Henry VIII’s reign a new term was introduced which ultimately supplanted both the others. The chronicler Hall relates how in 1513 ‘On the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the kyng with a xi other were disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande, thei were appareled in garmentes long and brode, wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes of gold & after the banket doen, these Maskers came in, with sixe gentlemen disguised in silke bearyng staffe torches, and desired the ladies to daunce, some were content, and some that knewe the fashion of it refused, because it was not a thyng commonly seen. And after thei daunced and commoned together, as the fashion of the Maske is, thei tooke their leaue and departed, and so did the Quene, and all the ladies[1455].’

The good Hall is not particularly lucid in his descriptions, and historians of the mask have doubted what, beyond the name, was the exact modification introduced ‘after the maner of Italie’ in 1512. A recent writer on the subject, Dr. H. A. Evans, thinks that it lay in the fact that the maskers danced with the spectators, as well as amongst themselves[1456]. But the mummers of 1377 already did this, although of course the custom may have grown obsolete before 1513. I am rather inclined to regard it as a matter of costume. The original Revels Account for this year—and Hall’s reports of court revels are so full that he must surely have had access to some such source—mentions provision for ‘12 nobyll personages, inparylled with blew damaske and yelow damaske long gowns and hoods with hats after the maner of maskelyng in Etaly[1457].’ Does not this description suggest that the ‘thing not sene afore in England’ was of the nature of a domino? In any case from 1513 onwards ‘masks,’ ‘maskelers’ or ‘maskelings’ recur frequently in the notices of the revels[1458]. The early masks resembled the simpler type of ‘mumming’ rather than the more elaborate and spectacular ‘disguising,’ but by the end of the reign both of the older terms had become obsolete, and all Elizabethan court performances in which the visor and the dance played the leading parts were indifferently known as masks[1459]. Outside the court, indeed, the nomenclature was more conservative, and to this day the village performers who claim the right to enter your house at Christmas call themselves ‘mummers,’ ‘guisers’ or ‘geese-dancers.’ Sometimes they merely dance, sing and feast with you, but in most places, as a former chapter has shown, they have adopted from another season of the year its characteristic rite, which in course of time has grown from folk-dance into folk-drama[1460].

I now pass from the mask to another point of contact between the Feast of Fools and the Tudor revels. This was the dominus festi. A special officer, told off to superintend the revels, pastimes and disports of the Christmas season, is found both in the English and the Scottish court at the end of the fifteenth century. In Scotland he bore the title of Abbot of Unreason[1461]; in England he was occasionally the Abbot, but more usually the Lord of Misrule. Away from court, other local designations present themselves: but Lord of Misrule or Christmas Lord are the generic titles known to contemporary literature[1462]. The household accounts of Henry VII make mention of a Lord or Abbot of Misrule for nearly every Christmas in the reign[1463]. Under Henry VIII a Lord was annually appointed, with one exception, until 1520[1464]. From that date, the records are not available, but an isolated notice in 1534 gives proof of the continuance of the custom[1465]. In 1521 a Lord of Misrule held sway in the separate household of the Princess Mary[1466], and there is extant a letter from the Princess’s council to Wolsey asking whether it were the royal pleasure that a similar appointment should be made in 1525[1467]. Little information can be gleaned as to the functions of the Lord of Misrule during the first two Tudor reigns. It is clear that he was quite distinct from the officer known as the ‘Master of the Revels,’ in whose hands lay the preparation and oversight of disguisings or masks and similar entertainments. The Master of the Revels also makes his first appearance under Henry VII. Originally he seems to have been appointed only pro hac vice, from among the officials, such as the comptroller of the household, already in attendance at court[1468]. This practice lasted well into the reign of Henry VIII, who was served in this capacity by such distinguished courtiers, amongst others, as Sir Henry Guildford and Sir Anthony Browne[1469]. Under them the preparation of the revels and the custody of the properties were in the hands of a permanent minor official. At first such work was done in the royal Wardrobe, but under Henry VIII it fell to a distinct ‘serjeant’ who was sometimes, but not always, also ‘serjeant’ to the king’s tents. In 1545, however, a permanent Master of the Revels was appointed in the person of Sir Thomas Cawarden, one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber[1470]. Cawarden formed the Revels into a regular office with a clerk comptroller, yeoman, and clerk, and a head quarters, at first in Warwick Inn, and afterwards in the precinct of the dissolved Blackfriars, of which he obtained a grant from the king. This organization of the Revels endured in substance until after the Restoration[1471]. Not unnaturally there were some jealousies and conflicts of authority between the permanent Master of the Revels and the annual Lord of Misrule, and this comes out amusingly enough from some of Cawarden’s correspondence for 1551-3, preserved in the muniment room at Loseley. For the two Christmases during this period the Lordship of Misrule was held by George Ferrers, one of the authors of the Mirrour for Magistrates[1472]; and Cawarden seems to have put every possible difficulty in the way of the discharge of his duties. Ferrers appealed to the lords of the council, and it took half a dozen official letters, signed by the great master of the household, Mr. Secretary Cecil, and a number of other dignitaries, to induce the Master of the Revels to provide the hobby horses and fool’s coat and what not, that were required[1473]. Incidentally this correspondence and the account books kept by Cawarden give some notion of the sort of amusement which the Lord of Misrule was expected to organize. In 1551 he made his entry into court ‘out of the mone.’ He had his fool ‘John Smith’ in a ‘vice’s coote’ and a ‘dissard’s hoode,’ a part apparently played by the famous court fool, Will Somers. He had a ‘brigandyne’; he had his ‘holds, prisons, and places of execuc’on, his cannypie, throne, seate, pillory, gibbet, hedding block, stocks, little ease, and other necessary incydents to his person’; he had his ‘armury’ and his stables with ‘13 hobby horses, whereof one with 3 heads for his person, bought of the carver for his justs and challenge at Greenwich.’ The masks this year were of apes and bagpipes, of cats, of Greek worthies, and of ‘medyoxes’ (‘double visaged, th’ one syde lyke a man, th’ other lyke death’)[1474]. The chief difficulty with Cawarden arose out of a visit to be paid by the Lord to London on January 4. The apparel provided for his ‘viij counsellors’ on that occasion was so ‘insufficient’ that he returned it, and told Cawarden that he had ‘mistaken y^e persons that sholde weere them, as S^r Rob^t Stafford and Thom^s Wyndesor, w^h other gentlemen that stande also upon their reputac̃on, and wold not be seen in London, so torche-berer lyke disgysed, for as moche as they are worthe or hope to be worthe[1475].’ After all it took a letter from the council to get the fresh apparel ready in time. It was ready, for Machyn’s Diary records the advent of the Lord and his ‘consell’ to Tower Wharf, with a ‘mores danse,’ and the ‘proclamasyon’ made of him at the Cross in Cheap, and his visit to the mayor and the lord treasurer, ‘and so to Bysshopgate, and so to Towre warff, and toke barge to Grenwyche[1476].’ Before the following Christmas of 1552 Ferrers was careful to send note of his schemes to Cawarden in good time[1477]. This year he would come in in ‘blewe’ out of ‘vastum vacuum, the great waste.’ The ‘serpente with sevin heddes called hidra’ was to be his arms, his crest a ‘wholme bush’ and his ‘worde’ semper ferians. Mr. Windham was to be his admiral, Sir George Howard his master of the horse, and he required six councillors, ‘a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a phisician, a potecarie, a m^r of requests, a sivilian, a disard, John Smyth, two gentleman ushers, besides jugglers, tomblers, fooles, friers, and suche other.’ Again there was a challenge with hobby horses, and again the Lord of Misrule visited London on January 6, and was met by Sergeant Vauce, Lord of Misrule to ‘master Maynard the Shreyff’ whom he knighted. He then proceeded to dinner with the Lord Mayor[1478]. As he rode his cofferer cast gold and silver abroad, and Cawarden’s accounts show that ‘coynes’ were made for him by a ‘wyer-drawer,’ after the familiar fashion of the Boy Bishops in France[1479]. These accounts also give elaborate details of his dress and that of his retinue, and of a ‘Triumph of Venus and Mars[1480].’ In the following year Edward was dead, and neither Mary nor Elizabeth seems to have revived the appointment of a Lord of Misrule at court[1481].

But the reign of the Lord of Misrule extended far beyond the verge of the royal palace. He was especially in vogue at those homes of learning, the Universities and the Inns of Court, where Christmas, though a season of feasting and ludi, had not yet become an occasion for general ‘going down.’ Anthony à Wood records him in several Oxford colleges, especially in Merton and St. John’s, and ascribes his downfall, justly, no doubt, in part, to the Puritans[1482]. At Merton he bore the title of Rex fabarum or Rex regni fabarum[1483]. He was a fellow of the college, was elected on November 19, and held office until Candlemas, when the winter festivities closed with the Ignis Regentium in the hall. The names of various Reges fabarum between 1487 and 1557 are preserved in the college registers, and the last holder of the office elected in the latter year was Joseph Heywood, the uncle of John Donne, in his day a famous recusant[1484]. At St. John’s College a ‘Christmas Lord, or Prince of the Revells,’ was chosen up to 1577. Thirty years later, in 1607, the practice was for one year revived, and a detailed account of this experiment was committed to manuscript by one Griffin Higgs[1485]. The Prince, who was chosen on All Saints’ day, was Thomas Tucker. He was installed on November 5, and immediately made a levy upon past and present members of the college to meet the necessary expenses. Amongst the subscribers was ‘Mr. Laude.’ On St. Andrew’s day, the Prince was publicly installed with a dramatic ‘deuise’ or ‘showe’ called Ara Fortunae. The hall was a great deal too full, a canopy fell down, and the ‘fool’ broke his staff. On St. Thomas’s day, proclamation was made of the style and title of the Prince and of the officers who formed his household[1486]. He also ratified the ‘Decrees and Statutes’ promulgated in 1577 by his predecessor and added some rather pretty satire on the behaviour of spectators at college and other revels. On Christmas day the Prince was attended to prayers, and took the vice-president’s chair in hall, where a boar’s head was brought in, and a carol sung. After supper was an interlude, called Saturnalia. On St. John’s day ‘some of the Prince’s honest neighbours of St. Giles’s presented him with a maske or morris’; and the ‘twelve daies’ were brought in with appropriate speeches. On December 29 was a Latin tragedy of Philomela, and the Prince, who played Tereus, accidentally fell. On New Year’s day were the Prince’s triumphs, introduced by a ‘shew’ called Time’s Complaint; and the honest chronicler records that this performance ‘in the sight of the whole University’ was ‘a messe of absurdityes,’ and that ‘two or three cold plaudites’ much discouraged the revellers. However, they went on with their undertaking. On January 10 were two shews, one called Somnium Fundatoris, and the other The Seven Days of the Weeke. The dearth in the city caused by a six weeks’ frost made the President inclined to stop the revels, as in a time of ‘generall wo and calamity’; but happily a thaw came, and on January 15 the college retrieved its reputation by a most successful public performance of a comedy Philomathes. The Seven Days of the Weeke, too, though acted in private, had been so good that the vice-chancellor was invited to see a repetition of it, and thus Sunday, January 17, was ‘spent in great mirth.’ On the Thursday following there was a little contretemps. The canons of Christ Church invited the Prince to a comedy called Yuletide, and in this ‘many things were either ill ment by them, or ill taken by vs.’ The play in fact was full of satire of ‘Christmas Lords,’ and it is not surprising that an apology from the dean, who was vice-chancellor that year, was required to soothe the Prince’s offended feelings. Term had now begun, but the revels were renewed about Candlemas. On that day was a Vigilate or all-night sitting, with cards, dice, dancing, and a mask. At supper a quarrel arose. A man stabbed his fellow, and the Prince’s stocks were requisitioned in deadly earnest. After supper the Prince was entertained in the president’s lodging with ‘a wassall called the five bells of Magdalen church.’ On February 6, ‘beeing egge Satterday,’ some gentlemen scholars of the town brought a mask of Penelope’s Wooers to the Prince, which, however, fell through; and finally, on Shrove Tuesday, after a shew called Ira seu Tumulus Fortunae, the Prince was conducted to his private chamber in a mourning procession, and his reign ended. Even yet the store of entertainment provided was not exhausted. On the following Saturday, though it was Lent, an English tragedy of Periander was given, the press of spectators being so great that ‘4 or 500’ who could not get in caused a tumult. And still there remained ‘many other thinges entended,’ but unperformed. There was the mask of Penelope’s Wooers, with the State of Telemachus and a Controversy of Irus and his Ragged Company. There were an Embassage from Lubberland, a Creation of White Knights of the Order of Aristotle’s Well, a Triumph of all the Founders of Colleges in Oxford, not to speak of a lottery ‘for matters of mirth and witt’ and a court leet and baron to be held by the Prince. So much energy and invention in one small college is astonishing, and it was hard that Mr. Griffin Higgs should have to complain of the treatment meted out to its entertainers by the University at large. ‘Wee found ourselves,’ he says, ‘(wee will say justly) taxed for any the least errour (though ingenious spirits would have pardoned many things, where all things were entended for their owne pleasure) but most vnjustly censured, and envied for that which was done (wee daresay) indifferently well.’

Amongst other colleges in which the Lord of Misrule was regularly or occasionally chosen, Anthony à Wood names, with somewhat vague references, New College and Magdalen[1487]. To these may certainly be added Trinity, where the Princeps Natalicius is mentioned in an audit-book of 1559[1488]. But the most singular of all the Oxford documents bearing on the subject cannot be identified with any particular college. It consists of a series of three Latin letters[1489]. The first is addressed by Gloria in excelsis to all mortals sub Natalicia ditione degentibus. They are bidden keep peace during the festal season and wished pleasant headaches in the mornings. The vicegerent of Gloria in excelsis upon earth is an annually constituted praelatia, that so a longer term of office may not beget tyranny. The letter goes on to confirm the election to the kingly dignity of Robertus Grosteste[1490], and enjoins obedience to him secundum Natalicias leges. It is datum in aere luminoso supra Bethlemeticam regionem ubi nostra magnificentia fuit pastoribus promulgata. The second letter is addressed to R[obert] Regi Natalicio and his proceres by Discretio virtutum omnium parens pariter ac regina. It is a long discourse on the value of moderation, and concludes with a declaration that a moderate laetitia shall rule until Candlemas, and then give way to a moderate clerimonia. The third is more topical and less didactic in its tone. It parodies a papal letter to a royal sovereign. Transaetherius, pater patrum ac totius ecclesiasticae monarchiae pontifex et minister complains, R. Regi Natalicio, of certain abuses of his rule. His stolidus senescallus, madidus marescallus and parliamenti grandiloquus sed nugatorius prolocutor have ut plura possent inferre stipendia assaulted and imprisoned on the very night of the Nativity, Iohannem Curtibiensem episcopum. In defence of these proceedings the Rex has pleaded quasdam antiquas regni tui, non dico consuetudines, sed potius corruptelas. Transaetherius gives the peccant officials three hours in which to make submission. If they fail, they shall be excommunicated, and Iohannes de Norwico, the warden of Jericho, will have orders to debar them from that place and confine them to their rooms. The letter is datum in vertice Montis Cancari, pontificatus nostri anni non fluxibili sed aeterno. I think it is clear that these letters are not a mere political skit, but refer to some actual Christmas revels. The waylaying of Iohannes Curtibiensis episcopus to make him ‘pay his footing’ is exactly the sort of thing that happened at the Feast of Fools, and the non consuetudines, sed potius corruptelas is the very language of the decretal of 1207[1491]. But surely they are not twelfth-or early thirteenth-century revels, as they must be if ‘Robertus Grosteste’ is taken literally as the famous bishop of Lincoln[1492]. There was no parliamenti prolocutor, for instance, in his day. They are fourteenth-, fifteenth-, or even sixteenth-century fooling, in connexion with some Rex Natalicius who adopted, to season his jest, the name of the great mediaeval legislator against all such ludi.

At Cambridge an order of the Visitors of Edward VI in 1549 forbade the appointment of a dominus ludorum in any college[1493]. But the prohibition did not endure, and more than one unsuccessful Puritan endeavour to put down Lords of Misrule is recorded by Fuller[1494]. Little, however, is known of the Cambridge Lords; their bare existence at St. John’s[1495] and Christ’s Colleges[1496]; and at Trinity the fact that they were called imperatores, a name on the invention of which one of the original fellows of the college, the astronomer John Dee, plumes himself[1497]. At schools such as Winchester and Eton, the functions of Lord of Misrule were naturally supplied by the Boy Bishop. At Westminster there was a paedonomus, and Bryan Duppa held the office early in the seventeenth century[1498].

The revels of the Inns of Court come into notice in 1422, when the Black Book of Lincoln’s Inn opens with the announcement Ceux sont les nouns de ceux qe fuerunt assignes de continuer yci le nowel[1499]. They are mentioned in the Paston Letters in 1451[1500], and in Sir Fortescue’s De laudibus Legum Angliae about 1463[1501]. Space compels me to be very brief in summarizing the further records for each Inn.

Lincoln’s Inn had in 1430 its four revels on All Hallows’ day, St. Erkenwold’s (April 30), Candlemas and Midsummer day, under a ‘Master of the Revels.’ In 1455 appears a ‘marshal,’ who was a Bencher charged to keep order and prevent waste from the last week of Michaelmas to the first of Hilary term. Under him were the Master of the Revels, a butler and steward for Christmas, a constable-marshal, server, and cup-bearer. In the sixteenth century the ‘grand Christmassings’ were additional to the four revels, and those of Candlemas were called the ‘post revels.’ Christmas had its ‘king.’ In 1519 it was ordered that the ‘king’ should sit on Christmas day, that on Innocents’ day the ‘King of Cokneys’[1502] should ‘sytt and haue due seruice,’ and that the marshal should himself sit as king on New Year’s day. In 1517 some doors had been broken by reason of ‘Jake Stray,’ apparently a popular anti-king or pretender, and the order concludes, ‘Item, that Jack Strawe and all his adherentes be from hensforth uttrely banyshed and no more to be used in Lincolles Inne.’ In 1520 the Bench determine ‘that the order of Christmas shall be broken up’; and from that date a ‘solemn Christmas’ was only occasionally kept, by agreement with the Temples. Both Lincoln’s Inn and the Middle Temple had a ‘Prince,’ for instance, in 1599. In 1616 the choice of a ‘Lieutenant’ at Christmas was forbidden by the Bench as ‘not accordinge to the auncyant Orders and usages of the House.’ In 1624 the Christmas vacation ceased to be kept. There were still ‘revels’ under ‘Masters of the Revels’ in Michaelmas and Hilary terms, and there are notices of disorder at Christmas in 1660 and 1662. But the last ‘Prince’ of Lincoln’s Inn, was probably the Prince de la Grange of 1661, who had the honour of entertaining Charles II[1503].

The Inner Temple held ‘grand Christmasses’ as well as ‘revels’ on All Saints’, Candlemas, and Ascension days. The details of the Christmas ceremonies have been put together from old account books by Dugdale. They began on St. Thomas’s day and ended on Twelfth night. On Christmas day came in the boar’s head. On St. Stephen’s day a cat and a fox were hunted with nine or ten couple of hounds round the hall[1504]. In the first few days of January a banquet with a play and mask was given to the other Inns of Court and Chancery. The Christmas officers included a steward, marshal, butler, constable-marshal, master of the game, lieutenant of the tower, and one or more masters of the revels. The constable-marshal was the Lord of Misrule. He held a fantastic court on St. Stephen’s day[1505], and came into hall ‘on his mule’ to devise sport on the banquetting night. In 1523 the Bench agreed not to keep Christmas, but to allow minstrels to those who chose to stay. Soon after 1554 the Masters of Revels cease to be elected[1506]. Nevertheless there was a notable revel in 1561 at which Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards earl of Leicester, was constable-marshal. He took the title of ‘Palaphilos, prince of Sophie,’ and instituted an order of knights of Pegasus in the name of his mistress Pallas[1507]. In 1594 the Inner Temple had an emperor, who sent an ambassador to the revels of Gray’s Inn[1508]. In 1627 the appointment of a Lord of Misrule led to a disturbance between the ‘Temple Sparks’ and the city authorities. The ‘lieutenant’ claimed to levy a ‘droit’ upon dwellers in Ram Alley and Fleet Street. The lord mayor intervened, an action which led to blows and the committal of the lieutenant to the counter, whence he escaped only by obtaining the mediation of the attorney-general, and making submission[1509]. A set of orders for Christmas issued by the Bench in 1632 forbade ‘any going abroad out of the Circuit of this House, or without any of the Gates, by any Lord or other Gentleman, to break open any House, or Chamber; or to take anything in the name of Rent, or a distress[1510].’

The Middle Temple held its ‘solemn revels’ and ‘post revels’ on All Saints and Candlemas days, and on the Saturdays between these dates; likewise its ‘solemn Christmasses[1511].’ An account of the Christmas of 1599 was written by Sir Benjamin Rudyerd under the title of Noctes Templariae: or, A Briefe Chronicle of the Dark Reigne of the Bright Prince of Burning Love. ‘Sur Martino’ was the Prince, and one ‘Milorsius Stradilax’ served as butt and buffoon to the company. A masque and barriers at court, other masques and comedies, a progress, a mock trial, a ‘Sacrifice of Love,’ visits to the Lord Mayor and to and from Lincoln’s Inn, made up the entertainment[1512]. In 1631 orders for Christmas government were made by the Bench[1513]. In 1635 a Cornish gentleman, Francis Vivian, sat as Prince d’Amour. It cost him £2,000, but after his deposition he was knighted at Whitehall. His great day was February 24, when he entertained the Princes Palatine, Charles, and Rupert, with Davenant’s masque of the Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour[1514].

There is no very early mention of revels at Gray’s Inn, but they were held on Saturdays between All Saints and Candlemas about 1529, and by 1550 the solemn observation of Christmas was occasionally used. In 1585 the Bench forbade that any one should ‘in time of Christmas, or any other time, take upon him, or use the name, place, or commandment of Lord, or any such other like[1515].’ Nevertheless in 1594 one of the most famous of all the legal ‘solemn Christmasses’ was held at this Inn. Mr. Henry Helmes, of Norfolk, was ‘Prince of Purpoole[1516],’ and he had the honour of presenting a mask before Elizabeth. This was written by Francis Davison, and Francis Bacon also contributed to the speeches at the revels. But the great glory of this Christmas came to it by accident. On Innocents’ day there had been much confusion, and the invited Templarians had retired in dudgeon. To retrieve the evening ‘a company of base and common fellows’ was brought in and performed ‘a Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus his Menaechmus[1517].’ In 1617 there was again a Prince of Purpoole, on this occasion for the entertainment of Bacon himself as Lord Chancellor[1518]. Orders of 1609 and 1628 mention respectively the ‘twelve’ and the ‘twenty’ days of Christmas as days of license, when caps may be doffed and cards or dice played in the hall[1519]: and the duration of the Gray’s Inn revels is marked by notices of Masters of the Revels as late as 1682 and even 1734[1520].

Nobles and even private gentlemen would set up a Lord of Misrule in their houses. The household regulations of the fifth earl of Northumberland include in a list of rewards usually paid about 1522, one of twenty shillings if he had an ‘Abbot of Miserewll’ at Christmas, and this officer, like his fellow at court, was distinct from the ‘Master of the Revells’ for whom provision is also made[1521]. In 1556 the marquis of Winchester, then lord treasurer, had a ‘lord of mysrulle’ in London, who came to bid my lord mayor to dinner with ‘a grett mene of musysyonars and dyssegyssyd’ amongst whom ‘a dullvyll shuting of fyre’ and one ‘lyke Deth with a dart in hand[1522].’ In 1634 Richard Evelyn of Wotton, high sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, issued ‘Articles’ appointing Owen Flood his trumpeter ‘Lord of Misrule of all good Orders during the twelve dayes[1523].’ The custom was imitated by more than one municipal ape of gentility. The lord mayor and sheriffs of London had their Lords of Misrule until the court of common council put down the expense in 1554[1524]. Henry Rogers, mayor of Coventry, in 1517, and Richard Dutton, mayor of Chester, in 1567, entertained similar officers[1525].

I have regarded the Lord of Misrule, amongst the courtly and wealthy classes of English society, as a direct offshoot from the vanished Feast of Fools. The ecclesiastical suggestion in the alternative title, more than once found, of ‘Abbot of Misrule,’ seems to justify this way of looking at the matter. But I do not wish to press it too closely. For after all the Lord of Misrule, like the Bishop of Fools himself, is only a variant of the winter ‘king’ known to the folk. In some instances it is difficult to say whether it is the folk custom or the courtly custom with which you have to do. Such is the ‘kyng of Crestemesse’ of Norwich in 1443[1526]. Such are the Lords of Misrule whom Machyn records as riding to the city from Westminster in 1557 and Whitechapel in 1561[1527]. And there is evidence that the term was freely extended to folk ‘kings’ set up, not at Christmas only, but at other times in the year[1528]. It was a folk and a Christmas Lord whose attempted suppression by Sir Thomas Corthrop, the reforming curate of Harwich, got him into trouble with the government of Henry VIII in 1535[1529]. And it was folk rather than courtly Lords which, when the reformers got their own way, were hardest hit by the inhibitions contained in the visitation articles of archbishop Grindal and others[1530]. So this discussion, per ambages atque aequora vectus, comes round to the point at which it began. It is a far cry from Tertullian to Bishop Grosseteste and a far cry from Bishop Grosseteste to Archbishop Grindal, but each alike voices for his own day the relentless hostility of the austerer clergy during all ages to the ineradicable ludi of the pagan inheritance.

END OF VOL. I

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