VI.

go to warm baths, nor to a soft bed, was a part of CHAP. a severe penance.69 The general practice of this kind of bath may be also inferred, from its being urged by the canons, as a charitable duty, to give to the poor, meat, mund, fire, fodder, bed, bathing, and clothes. But while warm bathing was in this use and estimation, we find cold bathing so little valued as to be mentioned as a penitentiary punishment.71

The washing of the feet in warm water, especially after travelling, is often mentioned.72 It was a part of indispensable hospitality to offer this refreshment to a visitor ; and this politeness will lead us to suppose, that shoes and stockings, though worn in social life, were little used in travelling. The custom of walking without these coverings in the country, and of putting them on when the traveller approached towns, has existed among the commonalty in North Britain even in the present reign. Among the gifts of Boniface to an AngloSaxon prelate was a shaggy or woolly present, to dry the feet after being washed.73 To wash the feet of the poor was one of the acts of penance to be performed by the rich.74

CHAP. VII.

Their Conviviality and Amusements.

VII.

cess.

BOOK In the ruder states of society melancholy is the

prevailing feature of the mind; the stern or dismal countenances of savages are every where remarkable. Usually the prey of want or passion, they are seldom cheerful till they can riot in exTheir mirth is then violent and transient;

; and they soon relapse into their habitual gloom.

As the agricultural state advances, and the comforts of civilisation accumulate, provident industry secures regular supplies ; the removal of want diminishes care, and introduces leisure; the softer affections then appear with increasing fervour ; the human temper is rendered milder; mirth and joy become habitual ; mankind are delighted to indulge their social feelings, and a large portion of time is devoted to amusement.

The Anglo-Saxons were in this happy state of social improvement; they loved the pleasures of the table, but they had the wisdom to unite with them more intellectual diversions. At their cheerful meetings it was the practice for all to sing in turn ; and Bede mentions an instance in which, for this purpose, the harp was sent round.' The musicians of the day, the wild flowers of their poetry, and the ludicrous jokes and tricks of their buffas, were such essential addi

1

VII.

tions to their conviviality, that the council of CHAP. Cloveshoe, which thought that more solemn manners were better suited to the ecclesiastic, forbade the monks to suffer their mansions to be the receptacle of the “ sportive arts; that is, of poets, harpers, musicians, and buffoons.”2 A previous council, aiming to produce the same effect, had decreed that no ecclesiastic should have harpers, or any music, nor should permit any jokes or plays in their presence. In Edgar's speech on the ex

' pulsion of the clergy, the histriones, or gleemen, are noticed as frequenting the monasteries: “ There are the dice, there are dancing and singing, even to the very middle of the night.”4 Among the canons made in the same king's reign, a priest was forbidden to be an eala-scop, or an ale-poet, or to any wise gliwege, or play the gleeman with himself, or with others. Strutt has given some drawings

5 of the Saxon gleemen from some ancient MSS. I will add his description of the figures.

6

“We there see a man throwing three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them one by one as they fall, but returning them again in rotation. To give the greater appearance of difficulty to this part, it is accompanied with the music of an instrument resembling the modern violin. It is necessary add, that these two figures, as well as those dancing, previously mentioned, form a part only of two larger paintings, which, in their original state, are placed as frontispieces to the Psalms of David ; in both, the artists have represented that monarch seated upon his throne, in the act of playing upon the harp or lyre, and surrounded by the masters of sacred music. In addition to the four figures upon the middle

2 Spel. Concil. 256.

3 Spel. Concil. 159. 4 Ethel. Ab. Riev. p. 360.

5 Ibid. 455. 6 Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, 132, 133. This book was the last publication of this worthy and industrious man.

BOOK
VII.

of the plate, and exclusive of the king, there are four more, all
of them instrumental performers; one playing upon the horn,
another upon the trumpet, and the other two upon a kind of
tabor or drum, which, however, is beaten with a single drum-
stick. The manuscript in which this illumination is preserved
was written as early as the eighth century. The second paint-
ing, which is more modern than the former by two full cen-
turies, contains four figures besides the royal psalmist : the two
not engraved are musicians; the one is blowing a long trumpet,
supported by a staff he holds in his left hand, and the other is
winding a crooked horn. In a short prologue immediately
preceding the Psalms, we read as follows: David, filius Jesse,
in regno suo quatuor elegit qui Psalmos fecerunt, id est Asaph,
Æman, Æthan, et Iduthan ; which may be thus translated
literally: David, the son of Jesse, in his reign, elected four
persons who composed psalms : that is to say, Asaph, Æman,
Æthan, and Iduthan. In the painting, these four names are
separately appropriated, one to each of the four personages
there represented. The player upon the violin is called
Iduthan, and Æthan is tossing up the knives and balls."7

ANOTHER passage may be cited from the same industrious and worthy author.

“ One part of the gleeman's profession, as early as the tenth century, was teaching animals to dance, to tumble, and to put themselves into a variety of attitudes at the command of their masters. Upon the twenty-second plate we see the curious though rude delineation, being little more than an outline, which exhibits a specimen of this pastime. The principal joculator appears in the front, holding a knotted switch in one hand, and a line attached to the bear in the other; the animal is lying down in obedience to his command; and behind them are two more figures, the one playing upon two futes or flageolets, and elevating his left leg while he stands upon his right, supported by a staff that passes under his arm-pit; the other dancing. This performance takes place upon an eminence resembling a stage, made with earth ; and in the original a vast concourse are standing round it in a semicircle as spectators of the sport ; but they are so exceedingly ill drawn, and withal so indistinct,

7 Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 134.

CHAP.
VII.

that I did not think it worth the pains to copy them. The dancing, if I may so call it, of the fute-player, is repeated twice in the same manuscript. I have thence selected two other figures, and placed them upon the seventeenth plate, where we see a youth playing upon a harp with only four strings; and apparently singing at the same time ; while an elderly man is performing the part of a buffoon, or posturemaster, holding up one of his legs, and hopping upon the other to the music.” 8

In a Latin MS. of Prudentius, with Saxon notes, there is a drawing which seems to represent a sort of military dance exhibited for public amusement.

“Two men equipped in martial habits, and each of them armed with a sword and shield, are engaged in a combat ; the performances is enlivened by the sound of a horn; the musician acts in a double capacity, and is, together with a female assistant, dancing round them to the cadence of the music, and probably the actions of the combatants were also regulated by the same measure.” 9

We may remark, that the word commonly used in Anglo-Saxon to express dancing, is the verb tumbian. The Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels mentions that the daughter of Herodias tumbude before Herod; and the Anglo-Saxon word for dancer in tumbere. It is probable that their

. mode of dancing included much tumbling. We may

infer that bear-baiting was an amusement of some importance to our ancestors, as it is

8 Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 134. He adds in a note, that “ both these drawings occur in a MS. Psalter, written in Latin, and apparently about the middle of the tenth century. It contains many drawings, all of them exceedingly rude, and most of them merely out. lines. It is preserved in the Harleian library, and marked 603." His twenty-second plate is in the 182d page of his work; his seventeenth plate in p. 132., to which we refer the reader.

9 Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, p. 166. His plate of it is p.162. The MS. is in the Cotton. Lib. Cleop. C. 8.