Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/198

 178 WJlory of Domej^ic Manners and this again from jocus, game), which the Anglo-Saxon fcop held towards the gleeman. Though the mafs of the minftrels did get their living as itinerant fongfters, they might be refpeftable, and fometimes there was a man of high rank who became a minllrel for his pleafure ; but the jougleurs, as a body, belonged to the lowefl and moft degraded clafs of mediaeval fociety, that of the ribalds or letchers, and the more refpe6table minftrels of former days were probably falling gradually into their ranks. It was the clafs which abandoned itfelf without referve to the mere amuferacnt and pleafure of the ariltocracy, and it feems to have been greatly increafed by the Crufades, when the jougleurs of the weft were brought into relations with thofe of the eaft, and learnt a multitude of new ways of exciting attention and making mirth, of which they were previoufly ignorant. The jougleurs had now become, in addition to their older accomplifliments, magicians and conjurers, and wonderfully Ikilled in every defcription of fleight of hand, and it is from thefe qualities that we have derived the modern fignification of the word juggler. They had alfo adopted the profeflion of the eaftern ftory-tellers, as well as their ftories, which, however, they turned into verfe ; and they brought into the weft many other exhibitions which did not tend to raife the ftandard of weftern morals. The chara6ter of the minftrels, or jougleurs, their wandering life, and the eafe with which they were admitted everywhere, caufed them to be employed extenfively as fpies, and as bearers of fecret news, and led people to adopt the difguife of a minftrel, as one which enabled them to pals through ditftculties unobferved and unchallenged. In the ftory of Euftace the monk, when Euftace fought to efcape from England, to avoid the purfuit of king John, he took a fiddle and a bow (a fiddleftick), and drefled himfelf as a minftrel, and in this garb he arrived at the coaft, and, finding a merchant ready to fail, entered the ftiip with him. But the fteerfman, who did not recognife the minftrel as one of the palTengers, ordered him out. Euftace expoftulated, reprefented that he was a min- ftrel, and, after fome difpute, the fteerfman, who feems to have had fome fufpicions either of his difguife or of his fkill, concluded by putting the queftion, " At all events, if thou knoweft any fong, friend, let us have it." The