they afforded and how they followed classic usages.

[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Anglo-Saxon sword dance. From the MS.
Cleopatra, C. viii., British Museum.] The gleemen were reciters,
singers and dancers; and the lower orders were tumblers,
sleight-of-hand men and general entertainers. What may have been the
origin of our hornpipe is illustrated in fig. 30, where the figures
dance to the sound of the horn in much the same attitudes as in the
modern hornpipe, with a curious resemblance to the position in some
Muscovite dances.

[Illustration: Fig. 32.--Sword dance to bagpipes, 14th century. From 2
B vii., Royal MS., British Museum.]

The Norman minstrel, successor of the gleeman, used the double-pipe,
the harp, the viol, trumpets, the horn and a small flat drum, and it
is not unlikely that from Sicily and their South Italian possessions
the Normans introduced classic ideas.

Piers the Plowman used words of Norman extraction for them, as he
speaks of their "Saylen and Saute."

The minstrel and harpist does not appear to have danced very much, but
to have left this to the joculator, and dancing and tumbling and even
acrobatic women and dancers appear to have become common before the
time of Chaucer's "Tomblesteres."

[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Herodias tumbling. From a MS. end of 13th
century (Addl. 18,719, f. 253b), British Museum.]

That this tumbling and dancing was common in the thirteenth century is
shown by the illustration from the sculpture at Rouen Cathedral (fig.
34), the illustrations from a MS. in the British Museum (fig. 33) of
Herodias tumbling and of a design in glass in Lincoln, and other
instances at Ely; Idsworth Church, Hants; Ponce, France, and
elsewhere. It is suggested that the camp followers of the Crusaders
brought back certain dances and amongst these some of an acrobatic
nature, and many that were reprehensible, which brought down the anger
of the Clergy.

[Illustration: Fig. 34.--A tumbler, as caryatid. Rouen Cathedral, 13th
century.]

In the fourteenth century, from a celebrated MS. (2 B. vii.) in the
British Museum and other cognate sources we get a fair insight of the
amusement afforded by these dancers and joculators. In the
illustration (fig. 35) we get A and C tumblers, male and female; D, a
woman and bear dance; and E, a dance of fools to the organ and
bagpipe. It will be observed that they have bells on their caps, and
it must have required much skill and practice to sound their v