CHAPTER V. I. Dancing, Tumbling, and Balancing, part of the Joculator's Profession.-I. Per- I. JOCULATORS' DANCING. DANCING, tumbling, and balancing, with variety of other exercises requiring skill and agility, were originally included in the performances exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; and they remained attached to the profession of the joculator after he was separated from those who only retained the first branches of the minstrel's art, that is to say, poetry and music. II.-WOMEN DANCERS AND TUMBLERS. The joculators were sometimes excellent tumblers; yet, generally speaking, I believe that vaulting, tumbling, and balancing, were not executed by the chieftain of the gleeman's company, but by some of his confederates; and very often this part of the show was performed by females, who were called glee-maidens, Maɛen-glypiend, by the Saxons; and tumbling women, tomblesteres, and tombesteres, in Chaucer, derived from the Saxon word tomban, to dance, vault, or tumble. The same poet, in the Romance of the Rose, calls them saylours, or dancers, from the Latin word salio. They are also denominated sauters, from saut in French, to leap. Hence, in Pierce Ploughman, one says, "I can neither saylen ne saute." They are likewise in modern language called balancing women, or tymbesteres, players upon the tymbrel, which they also ba It is lanced occasionally, as we shall find a little farther on. almost needless to add, that the ancient usage of introducing females for the performances of these difficult specimens of art and agility, has been successively continued to the present day. III. DANCING CONNECTED WITH TUMBLING. Dancing, in former times, was closely connected with those feats of activity now called vaulting and tumbling; and such exertions often formed part of the dances that were publicly exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; for which reason, the Anglo-Saxon writers frequently used the terms of leaping and tumbling for dancing. Both the phrases occur in the Saxon versions of St. Mark's Gospel; where it is said of the daughter of Herodias, that she vaulted or tumbled, instead of danced, before king Herod. In a translation of the seventh century, in the Cotton Library, it says she plægede, 7 zelicase Perose; she jumped, or leaped, and pleased Herod. In another Saxon version of the eleventh century, in the Royal Library,3 she cumbebe,hiz licose Denose; she tumbled, and it pleased Herod. A third reads, Herodias' daughter cumbose pære, tumbled there, &c.4 These interpretations of the sacred text might easily arise from a misconception of the translators, who, supposing that no common dancing could have attracted the attention of the monarch so potently, or extorted from him the promise of a reward so extensive as that they found stated in the record; therefore referred the performance to some wonderful displayments of activity, resembling those themselves might have seen exhibited by the glee-maidens, on occasions of solemnity, in the courts of Saxon potentates. We may also observe, that the like explication of the passage was not only received in the Saxon versions of the Gospel, but continued in those of much more modern date; and, agreeably to the same idea, many of the illuminators, in depicting this part of the holy history, have represented the damsel in the action of tumbling, or, at least, of walking upon her hands. Mr. Brand, in his edition of Bourne's Vulgar Antiquities, has quoted one in old English that reads thus: "When the daughter of Herodyas was in comyn, and had tomblyde and pleside Harowde." I have before me a MS. of the Harleian Collection,4 in French, in the thirteenth century, St. Mark, chap. vi. ver. 22. 2 Nero, D. iv. written by some ecclesiastic, which relates to the church fasts and festivals. Speaking of the death of John Baptist, and finding this tumbling damsel to have been the cause, the pious author treats her with much contempt, as though she had been one of the dancing girls belonging to a company of jugglers, who in his time, it seems, were not considered as paragons of virtue any more than they are in the present day. He says of her," Bien saveit treschier e tumber;" which may be rendered, "She was well skilled in tumbling and cheating tricks." And accordingly we find the following representation. 53. HERODIAS TUMBLING. Herodias is so drawn in a book of Prayers in the Royal Library. There is the subjoined representation a century and a half earlier. 54. HERODIAS TUMBLING WITH HER SERVANT. Her servant stand by her side. The drawing occurs in a series of Scripture histories in the Harleian Collection,2 written and illuminated at the commencement of the thirteenth century, IV.-ANTIQUITY OF TUMBLING. The exhibition of dancing, connected with leaping aud tumbling, for the entertainment of princes and noblemen on occasions of festivity, is of high antiquity. Homer mentions two dancing tumblers, who stood upon their heads, and moved about to the measure of a song, for the diversion of Menelaüs and his courtiers, at the celebration of his daughter's nuptials. It seems that the astonishment excited by the difficulty of such performances, obviated the absurdity, and rendered them agreeable to persons of rank and affluence. The Saxon princes encouraged the dancers and tumblers; and the courts of the Norman monarchs were crowded with them: we have, indeed, but few of their exertions particularised; for the monks, through whose medium the histories of the middle ages have generally been conveyed to us, were their professed enemies: it is certain, however, notwithstanding the censure promulgated in their disfavour, that they stood their ground, and were not only well received, but even retained, in the houses of the opulent. No doubt, they were then, as in the present day, an immoral and dissolute set of beings, who, to promote merriment, frequently descended to the lowest kinds of buffoonery. We read, for instance, of a tumbler in the reign of Edward II. who rode before his majesty, and frequently fell from his horse in such a manner, that the king was highly diverted, and laughed exceedingly,2 and rewarded the performer with the sum of twenty shillings, which at that period was a very considerable donation. A like reward of twenty shillings was given, by order of Henry VIII., to a strange tumbler, that is, I suppose, an itinerant who had no particular establishment; a like sum to a tumbler who performed before him at lord Bath's; and a similar reward to the "tabouretts and a tumbler," probably of the household. It should seem that these artists were really famous mirth-makers; for, one of them had the address to excite the merriment of that solemn bigot queen Mary. "After her majesty," observes Strype," had reviewed the royal pensioners in Greenwich Park, there came a tumbler, and played many pretty feats, the queen and cardinal Pole looking on; whereat she was observed to laugh heartily."4 Odyssey, lib. iv. lin. 18. The original word is rußig nrηpe, saltatores qui se in capita dejiciunt. De queux le roi rya grantement." Roll of Expenses in the reign of king Edward II, in the possession of Thomas Astle, esq. 3 From a MS. in the Remembrancer's Office, an. 13 Hen. VIIL 4 Eccles. Mem. vol. iii. p. 312, cap. 39. 66 V.-VARIOUS DANCES. Among the pastimes exhibited for the amusement of queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth castle, there were shown, as Laneham says, before her highness, surprising feats of agility, by an Italian, "in goings, turnings, tumblings, castings, hops, jumps, leaps, skips, springs, gambauds, somersaults, caprettings, and flights, forward, backward, sideways, downward, upward, and with sundry windings, gyrings, and circumflections," which he performed with so much ease and lightness, that words are not adequate to the description; "insomuch that I," says Laneham, began to doubt whether he was a man or a spirit;" and afterwards, "As for this fellow, I cannot tell what to make of him; save that I may guess his back to be metalled like a lamprey, that has no bone, but a line like a lute-string." So lately as the reign of queen Anne, this species of performance continued to be fashionable; and in one of the Tatlers we meet with the following passage: "I went on Friday last to the Opera; and was surprised to find a thin house at so noble an entertainment, 'till I heard that the tumbler was not to make his appearance that night."2 Three ancient specimens of the tumbler's art are subjoined. This engraving represents a woman bending herself backwards, from a MS. of the thirteenth century, in the Cottor Library.3 Laneham's Letter, in Mr. Nichols s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, pp. 16, 17. 2 No. 115, dated Jan. 3, 1709. Domitian, A. 2. |