Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/86

lxxx Ixxx INTRODUCTION. of it linger down to our own day. Naturally, a lazy race of aristocrats came to be mere spectators, and watched some hireling — jongleur^ minstrel, or what not — harp, sing and mimic their foe in rude dance and gestures. In such case were the Norman revellers whom Hereward surprised ; ^ but earlier and sounder folk danced to their own fun, and not by deputy. Medieval dancers found good sport of this kind in mocking certain weaknesses of the clergy ; ^ and in the schnaderhupfel^ to which South- German peasants dance, there is ample satire of the frankly personal sort. Occasionally one finds a sort of erotic satire, easily passing the bounds of decency, in such guise as the Icelandic mansongr, against which the bishops had to fight so hard ; men and women in the dance exchanged satiric stanzas, mostly spontaneous, and sometimes stretching out to poems.' Among the more innocent kinds of song which served the same turn 1 '* Joculator psallendo, exprobrans genti Anglorum, et in medio domus incompositos quasi angligenas fingens saltus." Gest. Herew.y ed. Michel, Chron. AngL-Norm.<, II, 41. 2 A survival of these adult dances is clearly seen in the Flemish VatCt Pater ken (Willems, Oude Vlaetnsche Liederen, No. 125) which makes mock of monk and nun. Coussemaker {Chants Pop. des Flamands, p. 328 f.) gives it as a game for children, though evidently of adult origin ; but this is the right course. "A children's game, the last stage of many old ballads " (Child, Ballads, II, 346), shows us also the last stage of many an old dance. See Child, I, 354 (Part II), version F of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows." Mullenhoff asserts that these games give us the best notion to be had of the old choral hymns in our pagan worship, and collects some rimes of the sort : Sagen^ pp. ix, xxiv, 484 ff. There is also good material in Newell, Gaines and Songs of American Childreny New York, 1883, and Jeanroy, Origines de la Poisie Lyrique en France y 1889, p. 394 f. ' Mobius in Zacher's Zeitschrift, Erganzungsbandy 1874, p. 54. These duels belong in development to a later stage than the communal satire against one person, like the Faroe fisherman. Digitized by LjOOQIC