The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran

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СКАЧАТЬ fine fashion, attached to neck-chains, bracelets, or girdle. Knights wore them on their armour, ladies on their zones; and people who were in the very highest of the mode attached them to their shoes. When this was the custom, the continual jingle at tournament or ball must have been deafening; and, what was worse, if cavalier and demoiselle bethought themselves of taking a quiet walk together beneath the oaks in the woods, every rustic near was made the confidant of the pleasant matter, as far as bells could do it. The folly of this was so patent, that we cannot wonder at fools mounting the bells in their caps.

      Indeed, they mounted them not only in their caps, but on every part of the body. This was especially the case in the fifteenth century, when the fashion of wearing bells was abandoned to the professional merry-men. The mode itself, too, would seem to have prevailed in the East. As late as the seventeenth century, Tartar princes seldom stirred abroad in their barbaric splendour without a little knot of quaintly-dressed “Chaouls,” or fools, running in front of the gorgeous company, at whose every step the bells attached to their shoulders, knees, elbows, ankles, etc., jingled merrily. The Chaouls excited the mirth of their rather moody masters by satirical songs as they went along. In this latter custom we find a trace of the old usage of the Roman imperial soldiery who, at the ovations of Emperors, enjoyed full license of tongue, and took advantage of the triumph of their lord, to pelt him in rude songs with sly, rather than censuring, remarks alluding to his known or supposed vices. Suetonius furnishes us with more than one example of this sort.

      As it was said in the olden time that there was no feast without a Levite, so, at a later period, there was no festival without a fool. That the latter custom proved a lack of civilization may perhaps be seen in the fact, that among savage nations a somewhat similar custom prevails. In its extreme form we find it among the old Kamtchatkans, whose gala days were rendered doubly joyous by the performances of the jesters by vocation. One sample however of the jokes of these gentlemen may suffice. This consists in harnessing themselves to sledges like dogs; by their close imitation of which animal in every respect, they excited roars of laughter from their not too delicate audience.

      The fools who bustled about on the tournament ground of our knightly forefathers, were less gross in their merriment. They were for ever busy, before, during, and after the contest. While it was raging, they performed the part of the ancient Chorus, making sharp remarks on the proceedings, now full of pity, anon exulting; and as ready to help a favourite knight to victory, as to tender succour to his foe when fallen.

      The year 1480 was, in one sense, the very jubilee year of German fools. It was then that took place the famous tournament described by Marx Walther, at which were present not less than fifteen professional fools, in splendid but grotesque uniform. Two of these were mounted, and headed the respective companies of opposing knights, playing lustily the while on screeching bagpipes. It was their delight to raise the wildest screaming from these instruments, as the adversaries rushed to the combat. They might not hope to frighten the knights, but they often succeeded in frightening the horses; at which, loudly laughed the gentle company. Of the remainder of the grotesque children of folly, eleven were engaged in racing, leaping, tumbling, and wildly joking. The remaining two galloped about the arena, sometimes with young fools, sometimes young nobles, on their backs. These fought their mock tournaments; and as the fools went prancing to the charge and rolled over one another in the dust, amid volleys of jokes of every possible description, the spectators condescended to be amused therewith till sterner fighters took the scene, and the breath which had been wasted in laughter, was now held in suspense.

      While the combat was proceeding, the most restless of the fools would perhaps try to seek repose with his head reclining on a tin pot, into which, as he remarked, he had stuffed a whole sack-full of feathers to render his pillow softer. When a knight was slain, the fool had at his service a brief epitaph: “Here you are, gentle Sir, quiet for once in your lifetime!” These jokes of the old arena descended to the clowns of the circus; and manuals of wit continue to make mention of their sallies.

      The descent was natural enough. As noble lords and ladies patronized fools who figured in the lists, so common people welcomed them at their village festivals. Some districts kept their own fools. There were others who raised to that distinction any “poor natural” of the locality, out of whose peculiarities or infirmities it was possible to extract something to laugh at. In some places, fools were hired on great occasions, to amuse a company unable to amuse itself. In the sixteenth century this appears to have been the case at notable Greek weddings in the Levant. Schweigger describes the nuptial feast (at which he was present) in 1578, of a patriarchal protonotary with a certain Irene Moschini, at which all the jollity was produced by a Jewish fool and other hirelings of the like amusing vocation.

      The Jews themselves employed jesters to enliven their own wedding feasts. This was the case in Silesia as late as the last century. The company sat gravely enough till the indispensable jokers and tumblers were introduced, and then the fun was of the oddest, if not most refined, sort. But the Silesian Jews were a simple people, unacquainted with the mendacity and dreariness of wedding-breakfast speeches. Their fools had full license to abuse truth, but not to be dreary.

      In passing now to the fools of different courts and localities, I will, by the way, notice a class which may claim precedence, by right of sex. I therefore proceed to say a few words of the Female Fools.

THE FEMALE FOOLS.

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      I do not know any earlier instance of a retained female fool than in the case of the wife of Seneca, who kept in her house one named Harpaste, and whom the philosopher describes as fatua, adding that he himself found no pleasure in such objects; and (as I have quoted in another page) that if he found it necessary to take delight in contemplating a fool, he had not far to go—having only to look in a mirror. Harpaste may have been retained out of charity, for she was so witless that, becoming suddenly blind, she was not conscious of her calamity; but, remarking how very dark it was in the house, asked the pædagogus to lead her out-of-doors.

      Seneca, it will be remembered, loved folly as little in a philosopher as in the fool by vocation. “He,” observes the son of the Cordovaner, “who duly considers the business of life and death, will find that he has little time to spare from that study. And yet, how we trifle away our hours upon niceties and cavils! Will Plato’s imaginary ideas make me an honest man? … A mouse is a syllable, but a syllable does not eat cheese; therefore a mouse does not eat cheese? Oh, these childish follies! … We are jesting, when we should help the miserable—ourselves, as well as others.”

      Jeanne, Queen of Charles I. of France, maintained a female fool of the name of Artaude du Puy, but of whom we know nothing more than that she cost her mistress, or rather the royal treasury, a considerable sum, for dress. There is an unpublished autograph letter of Charles, dated January 3, 1373, an extract from which, printed by the author of ‘Les Monnaies des Évêques,’ etc., shows that the King orders his treasurers to pay Jean Mandoli, furrier and citizen of Paris, the sum of 179 gold francs, for certain gauds and braveries of woman’s dress, furnished “to Artaude du Puy, Fole to our dear companion, the Queen.”

      In 1429, we hear of a moult gracieuse folle (she is so called by St. Remy), whose name was Madame d’Or, and whose wit kept all the nobles laughing at the festival in honour of the institution of the Golden Fleece, at Bruges, in 1429. A folle was also attached to the household of Margaret, the granddaughter of Charles the Bold. Her position in the household is clearly ascertained by the fact that, when moving abroad, she followed her mistress in a chariot, accompanied by the “old ladies in waiting.”

      In the succeeding century, in the year 1561, we find a woman, named La Jardinière, registered as “Fole de la Royne,” attached to the rather gloomy household of the Queen Dowager, Catherine de Medicis. Catherine seems to have patronized this sort of official, for СКАЧАТЬ