roubadours_ of Provence, which
communicated itself to Spain and Italy, came only into isolated contact
with the beginnings of the religious drama; in northern France the
_jongleurs_, as the _joculatores_ were now called, were confounded with
the _trouveres_, who, to the accompaniment of _vielle_ or harp, sang the
_chansons de geste_ commemorative of deeds of war. As appointed servants
of particular households they were here, and afterwards in England,
called _menestrels_ (from _ministeriales_) or _minstrels_. Such a
_histrio_ or _mimus_ (as he is called) was Taillefer, who rode first
into the fight at Hastings, singing his songs of Roland and Charlemagne,
and tossing his sword in the air and catching it again. In England such
accomplished minstrels easily outshone the less versatile gleemen of
pre-Norman times, and one or two of them appeared as landholders in
Domesday Book, and many enjoyed the favour of the Norman, Angevin and
Plantagenet kings. But here, as elsewhere, the humbler members of the
craft spent their lives in strolling from castle to convent, from
village-green to city-street, and there exhibiting their skill as
dancers, tumblers, jugglers proper, and as masquers and conductors of
bears and other dumb contributors to popular wonder and merriment. Their
only chance of survival finally came to lie in organization under the
protection of powerful nobles; but when, in the 15th century in England,
companies of players issued forth from towns and villages, the
profession, in so far as its members had not secured preference, saw
itself threatened with ruin.

Survivals and adaptations of pagan festive ceremonies and usages.

In any attempt to explain the transmission of dramatic elements from
pagan to Christian times, and the influence exercised by this
transmission upon the beginnings of the medieval drama, account should
finally be taken of the pertinacious survival of popular festive rites
and ceremonies. From the days of Gregory the Great, i.e. from the end of
the 6th century onwards, the Western Church tolerated and even attracted
to her own festivals popular customs, significant of rejoicing, which
were in truth relics of heathen ritual. Such were the Mithraic feast of
the 25th of December, or the egg of Eostre-tide, and a multitude of
Celtic or Teutonic agricultural ceremonies. These rites, originally
symbolical of propitiation or of weather-magic, were of a semi-dramatic
nature--such as the dipping o