but, having regard to the patience of those who have so often borne
patiently with me, I will only trace the Eastern jester down to modern
times. Till after the commencement of the present century, the courts
of the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia were never without the
mirthful official. The latter was usually an Armenian. Indeed, there
were, ordinarily, several at each court. Their duty was to amuse their
lord when he was at table, by every means in their power, by strange
remarks, by droll stories, or by burlesques more or less extravagant.
In processions, they walked before their masters, and carried long
staves covered with silver bells. Since they fell into disuse, the
Gipsies succeeded to the exercise of one part of their office,
and these are admitted to the palaces of the great, on particular
festivals, to amuse their illustrious hearers with national and comic
songs.
From a very early period, the public and private buffoons of the
East seem to have been selected from among the Armenians. Joinville
introduces to us some very sprightly professionals of this sort, in his
‘History of St. Louis.’ “There came with the Prince,” he says, “three
minstrels from Armenia (trois ménestriers de la Grande Hyrménie). They
carried three horns, and when they began to perform on them, you might
have taken the sound for that of swans. They produced the softest
melody....” He then informs us how, having fulfilled their office of
minstrels, they performed that of buffoons, for the amusement of the
illustrious personages present. “They made three marvellous leaps
(_sauts_); ... a cloth (_touaille_) being placed beneath their feet,
they threw a somersault upon it, without any spring, and two of them
leaped in this way, head backwards.”
The old fashion in the East did not altogether expire till a very
recent period, for we find a jester at the court of the father of the
present Sultan of Turkey. It was said of some eminent individual,
that he had made two centuries illustrious; and something like it
may be said of this oriental jester, who flourished at the court
of Constantinople at the close of the last, and above a quarter of
the present century. In 1836 died Abdi Bey, who, for nearly half a
century previous, had been the favourite jester of successive Sultans.
He worked hard and reaped a large fortune. In the early part of his
career, his masters treated him as a mere brutish buffoon, on whom they
might play any trick. Sometimes they set him off in a gallop, mounted
on a giraffe, or tumbled him headlong into a pond, to the danger of
his life. The late Sultan Mahmoud had no stomach for such sorry jokes,
and Abdi Bey devoted his capacity to keep his patron in good spirits by
amusing him with smart sayings and pleasant stories. He must have been
an incomparable fool in his time, or his masters must have been greater
fools than he, for out of their imperial bounty, he contrived to save
£150,000, which he left to his grateful and deeply-resigned heirs. It
was nearly as much as the late Mr. Greenough made by the manufacture of
lozenges--“ten a penny!”
Abdi Bey has been called the last of the household buffoons. But this
is not the case; for though the official fool has disappeared from
Court, he is still to be found attached to families, or heads of
families. We even meet with this rather impudent than merry fellow in
the household of Christian Patriarchs. Only a few years ago, when the
Nestorian Patriarch was flying, with a large number of his followers,
from their would-be murderers in the mountains, they found refuge at
Mosul, in the houses of the English Consul and the Rev. Mr. Fletcher.
The latter gentleman, in his ‘Notes from Nineveh,’ so describes his
reverence’s buffoon as to induce us to believe that to have much to
do with him was really “no joke at all.” “My new guests,” he says,
“were very orderly in their manners, though wild in their appearance.
Only one decided quarrel broke out among them during their abode with
me; and this was occasioned by a half-crazy old man who served the
Patriarch in the double capacity of a domestic and buffoon. This worthy
was addicted, like many of his countrymen, to the vice of intoxication;
and having on one occasion partaken rather freely of the juice of the
grape, he grew riotous, and addressed a reproachful epithet to one
of his companions. The fiery nature of the mountaineer was excited,
and he retorted in no complimentary terms. The old buffoon drew his
dagger, and made a rush at his antagonist, who retreated into an
inner apartment and shut the door. Nothing could equal the rage of old
Yohanan at being thus baulked of his vengeance. Two or three times he
burst from those who were restraining him, and drove his knife into the
hard wood of the door. At length he was quieted, and after sleeping-off
his drunkenness, appeared the next morning with a sober and abashed
countenance.” I suppose old Yohanan was past being amusing, for we are
subsequently told, that to raise the drooping spirits of the Patriarch,
an itinerant Italian juggler was hired. At _his_ tricks and witticisms
the pious head of the Nestorian Church forgot the slaughter of his
friends and the devastation of their and his homesteads. The saintly
and sympathetic man laughed till he could hardly sit upright on his
cushions, and only ceased then because some wonderful stroke of the
juggler’s art induced him suddenly to suspect that such marvellous
proficiency was only an inspiration of the devil.
* * * * *
By way of supplement to this Chapter, I will add a few short
illustrations of the jester at other barbarous courts than those of the
East;--and first, of “that beyond the Atlantic.”
When Cortez first visited the court of Montezuma, he found there
various instances of high civilization:--among others, light ladies,
strong drinks, court fools, and a spirit of infidelity against the
established church, inspired by an influence called the “Rational
Owl.” The Aztec monarch resembled Heliogabalus in one respect;--“he
had a museum,” says Brantz Mayer, in his excellent work, ‘Mexico,
Aztec, Spanish, and Republican,’ “in which, with an oddity of taste
unparalleled in history, there had been collected a vast number of
human monsters, cripples, dwarfs, albinos, and other freaks and
caprices of nature.” Bernal Diaz saw the monarch at dinner, and among
the incidents recorded by the old Spaniard, is, that, “at different
intervals during the time of dinner, there entered certain Indians,
hump-backed, very deformed and ugly, who played tricks of buffoonery;
and others, who they said were jesters.” The fashion of maintaining the
latter was followed by the nobles. “The principal men,” says Acoste,
quoted by Prescott, “had also buffoons and jugglers in their service,
who amused them, and astonished the Spaniards by their feats of
dexterity and strength.”
Montezuma patronized rather the witty buffoons than the skilful
jugglers. “Indeed, he used to say, that more instruction was to be
gathered from them than from wiser men, for they dared to tell the
truth.” Prescott adds in a note, founded on Clavigero, that “the Aztec
mountebanks had such repute, that Cortez sent two of them to Rome,
to amuse his Holiness, Clement VII.” This was only an exchange of
personages of similar profession, for the European official house fool
had already been imported into America. In 1519, at St. Jago, when
Velasquez the governor was beginning to be suspicious of the designs of
Cortez to supplant him, the two great men were walking together towards
the port. As they passed on, the fool of the former called aloud, “Have
a care, Master Velasquez, or we shall have to go a-hunting, some day or
other, after this same captain of ours.” “Do you hear what the rogue
says?” exclaimed the Governor to his companion. “Do not heed him,” said
Cortez, “he is a saucy knave, and deserves a good whipping.” The hint
of the fool, however, heightened the suspicions of his master; but how
the latter was too slow of wit and action to profit thereby, is known
to all who have read the graphic pages which tell of the conquest of
Mexico.
But neither Aztec nor Spanish monarch rivalled their less civilized
brother of Monomotapa in this peculiar department of his household.
Gallienus alone deserves to be mentioned, in this respect, with the
African potentate, who never stirred abroad with less than five
hundred official fools in his vast and noisy retinue!
There were, as late as the last century, and there probably still
linger on the Gold Coast, traditions of the mythological jester of
Africa, Nanni, son of the Spider. His busy parent had spun all the
human race from the thread of his bowels, and found no gratitude from
the living produce of his labours. The Fetis seduced all creation to
sin, and the Spider bethought him how to annoy the Fetis. With what
little material he had left, he spun the last man, and educated him at
his own paternal feet, on the edge of the domestic web. The tricks the
father taught his boy were long the delight of polished and perspiring
African tribes. Nanni was the ebony Owlglas of the land of Ham. He
served the Fetis, but only as Jocrisse did his master, to his great
vexation. Was Nanni commissioned to provide a chicken for dinner,
he knew how, after devouring the bird himself, to replace bones and
skin, and place it before his employer, the very model of a plump
pullet. Was an egg ordered for breakfast, Nanni first sucked out the
contents through a minute orifice, and filled up the shell with the
finest sand. Nanni, too, was a married man, with numberless children,
and more wives than “that Sardanapalus of Snobs,” Brigham Young. In a
time of scarcity, when even a bean was worth more than its weight in
gold, the hungry wives and offspring of Nanni drove him forth by their
importunity, to seek food. He came upon a company of boys and girls who
had been left by their father in charge of a quantity of beans, to dry
and turn them in the air. Nanni leaped in among them, made them shriek
with laughter at his jokes, and stamp with delight at his dancing.
The latter exercise he concluded by rolling his well-oiled body among
the beans, with which, sticking to him as he rose, he made off, after
bidding the children look at his hands, to see that he carried nothing
away with him. By repeating this feat, he nourished his household
for days; and the alarmed owner of the precious vegetables could not
account for their diminution from any account rendered by the young
guardians. But detecting Nanni in the fact, the owner chopped off both
his hands, as he lay rolling his greased body among the beans. The wit
of the national jester had been grievously at fault, and his household
becoming more hungry and angry than ever, his wives broke into open
revolt, and eloped in a body, in search of another mate. But Nanni
was beforehand with them in every respect; for taking the guise of a
woodman, and having recovered his lost members, he met them in their
flight, without being recognized by them. They told him of the fate
of their husband, and of their intentions, concluding with a gentle
hint that they were well enough inclined to accept a well-built young
wood-cutter for their common husband. “No! no!” cried Nanni, “times
are so very hard, that I have been obliged to dismiss forty-nine of
my wives, and to live as well as I can with one!” This speech alarmed
the ladies, who forthwith hurried homeward; but the active Nanni
encountered them at the threshold, over which he would not allow them
to pass till they had entered into stipulations whereby he was secured
in full and despotic authority over his entire family.
The jokes of Nanni, son of the Spider, for a long time formed all the
history, literature, and amusement of Negro circles. A thousand times
over have his tricks been told and acted, in a semi-dramatic way, to
delighted groups of swarthy listeners beneath the African moon. I
may notice that the story-teller has always been a greater favourite
in Africa than the mere jester. I remember, indeed, having read of
one potentate, the Kaffir chief Tshaka, or Chaka, who would tolerate
neither, at his horridly solemn court. On one occasion, however, and
in full council, a merry fellow gave utterance to a frolicsome thought
which he could not repress. It succeeded admirably,--gloomy king and
grave counsellors were thrown into the most convulsive hilarity. When
they had all recovered, the chief, pointing towards the jester, showed
his grateful sense of a rare delight, by exclaiming, “Take that dog
out, and kill him; he has _made me laugh_!”
To make his patron laugh was the especial and variously-rewarded
vocation of the jester whom I now proceed to introduce to my readers.
The English Court Fool was a very peculiar fellow, and in the history
of some members of the order of Motley, in this country, there are
incidents unparalleled in the history of the official jesters of any
other nation. Let us see whence they came, as well as who they were.
ENGLISH MINSTREL AND JESTER.
All writers who have taken the ancient English minstrels for a subject,
agree in stating that the old Saxon invaders of our land brought with
them bards, and a profound reverence for the bards themselves and the
art they professed. These highly-esteemed personages were rhyming
historians, chroniclers, theologians, and philosophers. They held the
key, or, what was the same thing to them, men believed that they held
the key, of many secrets appertaining, not only to earth, but heaven.
They were mighty personages in their day; but they could not withstand
a ray from the Star of Bethlehem. When the Saxons became Christians, or
at least professed Christianity, the vocation of the old, mysterious,
rapt, inspired bard, with his eternal memory of the past, and his
prophetic view into a long future, was entirely gone. He had been a
sort of god, and he became a mortal who sang for hire. The Jupiter
of yesterday was now, in most cases, and in most men’s eyes, only a
Jupiter Scapin.
In _most_ cases, but not in all; for, such as were scholars among
the bards devoted themselves to the cultivation of poetry. There
were others, like the early German jester who remarked that he did
not know the Lord’s Prayer, but only the tune of it. They had more
music in their souls,--such as the music was, and such as their souls
were,--than religion. These turned minstrels, and sang and played for a
reward.
With the superior class above noticed, I have nothing further to
do; but have to keep companionship with the hired minstrel,--or the
itinerating minstrel, who exercised his vocation for bread. The latter
was not altogether wanting to the Anglo-Saxon, previous to the period
of their conversion. The native gleeman who then exercised his welcome
office, is described by Dr. Lingard, in his ‘History and Antiquities of
the Anglo-Saxon Church,’ as being a minstrel who was “either attached
to the service of a particular chieftain, or wandering from place to
place, and subsisting on the bounty of his hearers.” Mr. Eccleston,
in his ‘Introduction to English Antiquities,’ describes the gleeman
as all-important to the in-door life of the Anglo-Saxons, before whom
he “sang, played, danced, and performed sleight-of-hand tricks for
the pleasure of the company.” This would hardly seem to show that the
gleeman was, as some have asserted, of a higher grade than the common
minstrel of later years. It is certain that he was the popular minstrel
of his day; his songs were sung in castle and farmyard; and when the
great St. Adhelm was sensible of a call to preaching, and was desirous
of getting together a congregation, he knew no better method than to
assume the character of the gleeman. Thus accoutred, harp in hand, he
would station himself at some cross-road, or at the corner of a bridge,
and rattle forth a series of popular songs on passing and popular
subjects. He soon drew an audience around him; and when he had fairly
got them into a train of attention, he would gradually slip away from
his comic songs and lively airs on the harp, and fulfil his office of
Christian missionary, with as much success as he had played that of the
vivacious gleeman.
There is another legend, showing how the guise of the minstrel was
assumed for a different purpose. The legend to which I allude is that
of Alfred entering the Danish camp in this false character, and spying
out the weakness of his enemies, while he amused them with his songs to
the harp. The story is altogether apocryphal, and was never heard of
in Alfred’s time, nor till two centuries had elapsed since his death.
It is certain that Alfred could not have safely entered the camp as
a Saxon; and if he found admission as a Dane, his accent would have
betrayed him as a spy. It has been suggested, that if he ever went at
all, he went as a _mimus_, or buffoon (a word which had already been
applied to minstrels), and that he amused his fierce enemies by the
ordinary tricks, tumblings, and other performances of the jester.
For, in course of time, _minstrel_ and _buffoon_ came to be terms of
much the same signification. This we find by another popular legend,
which is supposed to have very little truth for a basis;--namely, the
legend which tells of the faithful Blondel de Nesle, minstrel to King
Richard I., seeking for his captured master, and discovering him by
means of a song, sung outside the prison, to which the royal captive
answered from within. Whether this story be true or not, it was
accepted as truth at an early period, and in ‘Les Soirées de Guillaume
Bouchet,’ we find, as a comment upon it, the following query:--“I
just beg to ask you, if the wisest man in the world could have done
more for his master; and if this buffoon of a minstrel (_ce boufon de
ménestrier_) was not of more profit to King Richard, his lord, than the
wisest scholars at court.”
For a long period, the minstrel seems to have been very well paid
for the exercise of his art, at least in presence of royalty. At
the marriage of the Countess of Holland, daughter of Edward I.,
every king-minstrel present received forty shillings! This guerdon,
represented in modern money, would be not much under as many pounds
sterling in value. The above was, perhaps, an exceptional occasion;
but even the ordinary guerdon, of twenty and thirty shillings for a
single night’s attendance, shows at what an early period the musical
profession was exorbitantly remunerated;--for the individuals here
alluded to were actual _cantatores_, and not mere _joculatores_.
The Court always thought better of them than the Church. “Actors and
jesters,” says John of Salisbury (1160 _circ._), “may not be admitted
to the Sacrament.--_Histriones et mimi non possunt recipere sacram
Communionem._” And forty years later, there were some people who as
much objected to marry their daughters to the King’s jesters, as the
coachman of George II. did to his son marrying a maid-of-honour. One
of the Pipe Rolls, supposed to be of the date of 1200, informs us
that “Nicola, wife of Girard of Canville, accounts to the King for
one hundred marks, for the privilege of marrying her daughter Maud to
whatever person she pleases,--the King’s jester excepted--_exceptis
mimicis Regis_. The _mimici_, whatever their exact office was, had
as part of their duty, evidently, to amuse the King (John), and
they would appear, from the reference made to them, to have been
but a disreputable set of fellows. They were probably a sort of
actors,--pantomimic, if not altogether dramatic;--for the descent of
the ancient minstrel through poet and player to mere jester, is easy to
be traced in the history of the profession in nearly every nation.
As I have but recently remarked, however, the minstrel proper, as well
as he who joined _gestas_ and _joculatoria_ to his minstrelsy, was
very much better paid than the clergy. Just so in the present day:
we pay a _tenore robusto_ a higher salary than the State awards to a
general-in-chief or an admiral of the fleet, while a curate is more
shabbily rewarded than the handicraftsman who makes his garments. To
be sure, the “tenore robusto” _can_ sing, while not one in ten of our
curates knows how to read with effect. Perhaps, for some such reason,
the minstrels of old had the advantage of the priest. Warton, in his
second volume, notices the presence, in 1430, of a dozen priests and a
dozen minstrels, at the festival of the Holy Cross at Abingdon. Both
parties sang their best; but the clerics only received fourpence apiece
for their pains, while the more lucky minstrels, who probably had some
good jests for the Prior’s table, afterwards, received two shillings
and fourpence each, and food for man and horse. Eleven years later,
we are told of a feast held at the Priory of Maxtoke, near Coventry.
Eight priests from Coventry were present, and half-a-dozen _Mimi_. The
latter were players and jesters belonging to Lord Clinton, of Maxtoke.
Well, priests and mimes sang, harped, and played, or sported,--the
latter doubtless being the additional work of the “Mimi,” while the
monks enjoyed themselves in the refectory. The Mimes received four
shillings each, but the priests were supposed to be sufficiently
well paid with just half the sum. Some such difference will be found
by future examiners of court account-rolls regarding the payment of
foreign and English singers of a very much later period. But, to return
to the festival at Maxtoke, it is further to be observed, that the poor
priests had no further compliment paid them, whereas the Sub-Prior
invited Lord Clinton’s _Mimi_ to sup with him “in the painted chamber,”
and the chamberlain did honour to the occasion by putting eight massy
wax tapers on the board. The incidents of this convent supper have
not been recorded, but we may, without being uncharitable, judge
them to have been of the jolliest aspect, with the Sub-Prior in the
chair! At what time Lord Clinton saw his _Mimi_ return to his castle,
is not stated. The only further incident we hear of the conventual
body at Maxtoke is, that for a sermon preached before its members by
a travelling “Doctor Prædicans,” the Prior paid the preacher with
sixpence! But, on consideration, that may have been as much as the
sermon was worth.
If any doubt could exist of the identity of the minstrel and the
jester, it might be removed by remembering that the jester alone had
free access to the King, at any hour of the day or night, without
let or hindrance, and without his being required to make previous
application for permission. I believe no other official could enter the
King’s chamber uninvited, unlicensed, or unannounced. Now I find the
Serjeant Minstrel of King Edward IV. doing this, and on a very critical
occasion. The King was in the North. The year was 1470; Edward had
just quelled, or checked, the Lincolnshire insurrection, and he was
passing his time in York, in gallantries and amusements, while Warwick
was proclaiming Henry VI. One night his Serjeant Minstrel, Alexander
Carlisle, rushed into the room where the monarch lay in bed, and bade
him instantly arise, for enemies were abroad, and it would be well for
him to be on the alert. We shall find a similar bold service enacted
by the jester of William of Normandy, when we come to make record of
the individual jesters, rather than of their profession generally. The
above incident will help to show the identity of minstrel and jester;
and the fact that Richard II., when he went to Ireland, had not only
_minstrels_, but _harpers_, in his train, will serve to prove that the
former was _not_ identical with the latter. The minstrel, indeed, sang
or acted, or did both, some _Gest_ or story, from Scripture or romance.
Hence probably the English term Jester,--originally the reciter and
actor of some made-up poetical legend, with incidents added according
to the taste of the hearers. The harper probably only accompanied the
reciter of the Gest on his instrument.