Jongleur

“ Cap-du-Loup loatheth jongleurs and monks! Your douce there he might take—but no, I think that he [298] would not. She is not fair, and she has the look of one with claws—”
“I have claws, sister,” said Jael. “But I know how to keep them sheathed.” She yawned. “This good fire makes you sleepy. Pretty children, let me rest my head upon that log for a bit! Play to us, Elias, if you cannot sing.”
She put her head down, closed her eyes, lying in the firelight. The jongleur played and he played strange quaint airs that made the washerwomen laugh, nod their heads, and pat with their hands. ”

“ The troubadour, the jongleur, and the joculator, are natural productions of all time, in a certain proportion to the bulk of their kind. Accordingly, all through the various grades of society, we find clever people, exhibiting a gift for music, for mirth-making, for narration, and for dramatic effect. ”

“ It is needless to follow through the Middle Ages the history of the troubadour, the minstrel and the jongleur, who played so large part in the social life [Pg 16] of those times. Many of them were retainers of noblemen and kings; but others roamed about from place to place, singing their lays and reciting their stories (for they dealt in prose as well as verse) , very much in the manner of the Indian bards just mentioned. Their stock-in-trade must have been partly traditional and partly of their own composition. In this respect they were probably less hide-bound than their Indian brethren are. ”

“ Prince Gaucelm rose, the Venetian with him, and crossed to Alazais’s side. The girl of the silken cushion had ended her story. The jongleurs distant in the hall began to play viol, lute and harp. “Let us [149] go hearken,” said the princess; and, quitting the chess-table, went to sit beside her step-dame. She had affection for Alazais, and Alazais for Audiart. Stephen the Marshal followed. All drew together to listen to sung poesy.
A favourite jongleur had come forward, harp in hand. He was a dark, wiry, eastern-appearing man, fantastically dressed in brown dashed and streaked with orange. ”

“ Nevertheless, God knows that people must be amused, and jongleurs are almost indispensable. Besides, as we have seen, not all are of this sinful class. The higher grade of jongleurs sometimes travel in considerable companies. ”

“ In performing their works, they did not, like their western brethren, have recourse to hired accompanists, or Jongleurs, but supported the vocal part by playing on a small viol. The Jongleurs were essentially a French institution, and no class of musicians similar to them existed in Germany. The Minnesingers, like the Troubadours, were amateurs, and aimed to keep free from the taint of professionalism. Men of the highest rank were proud to belong to this order of musicians, and emperors, princes, and famous knights are found among them. ”

“ A juggler, he says, one of the Kaan’s slaves, made his appearance, and at the Amir’s bidding, began to display his surprising accomplishments. Taking a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, he laid hold of one of these, and slung the ball into the air. It went so high, that the spectators wholly lost sight of it. Observe, that the scene was the palace-court, sub Jove. There remained only a little of the end of the thong in the juggler’s hand, and of this he desired a juvenile assistant to lay hold, and mount. ”

“ They carried about with them for exhibition tame bears, monkeys, and other animals, taught to perform the actions of men. As early as the thirteenth century, we find them including among their other accomplishments that of dancing upon the tight-rope. Finally, the jougleurs performed tricks of sleight of hand, and were often conjurers and magicians. As, in modern times, the jougleurs of the middle ages gradually passed away, sleight of hand appears to have become their principal accomplishment, and the name only was left in the modern word juggler. ”

“ This faculty I wished to acquire and apply to sleight-of-hand; still, as music could not afford me the necessary elements, I had recourse to the juggler’s art, in which I hoped to meet with an analogous result.
It is well known that the trick with the balls wonderfully improves the touch, but does it not improve the vision at the same time? In fact, when a juggler throws into the air four balls crossing each other in various directions, he requires an extraordinary power of sight to follow the direction his hands have given to each of the balls. ”

“ For all the art of the juggler, he could show naught of magic more unnatural, more ghastly, than the face of the lime-burner as it appeared through the medium of the heated air arising from the primitive kiln,—protean, distorted by every current of the night’s breath,—although it was of much significance to him, and later he came to know it well to his cost. ”

“ As of late he had fallen into the habit, with the opportunity afforded at meal-times, of contemplating her with swift and furtive glances, more than once their eyes met, to the visible embarrassment of both; the juggler, to his astonishment, coloring furiously as might any country boy, and a touch of surprise and almost inquiry becoming visible in the eyes of Euphemia. Strange that so poor and primitive a contrivance as a pallid tallow dip could set such stars of radiant beauty in those long-lashed pensive orbs. ”

“ IX.—PRIVILEGES OF THE JOCULATORS AT PARIS—THE KING'S JOCULATOR.
The joculator regis, or king's juggler, was anciently an officer of note in the royal household; and we find, from Domesday Book, that Berdic, who held that office in the reign of the Conqueror, was a man of property. [678] In the succeeding century, or soon afterwards, the title of rex juglatorum, or king of the jugglers, was conferred upon the chief performer of the company, and the rest, I presume, were under his control. ”

“ I was riding home from Narkeet, and while coming along the road through the jungle, which was at that time almost deserted by the natives on account of the ravages of the man eater whom the Doctor afterwards shot, I heard a scream. Galloping forward, I came upon the brute, standing with one paw upon a prostrate girl, while a man, the juggler, was standing frantically waving his arms. On the impulse of the moment I sprang from my horse and lashed the tiger across the head with that heavy dog whip I carry, and the brute was so astonished that it bolted in the jungle. ”

“ Perhaps they were as well content, however, with the appearance of two live rabbits from the folds of the large white silk handkerchief of an old gentleman in the crowd, borrowed for the purpose, and the little boy who came up to receive the article for restoration to its owner went into an ecstasy of cackling delight, with the whole front row in delirious refrain, to find that he had one of the live rabbits in each of the pockets of his jacket, albeit the juggler had merely leaned over the footlights to hand him back the handkerchief. ”

“ Said the hesitating manager, unconscious of this interlude, “I don’t half like that basket trick.”
“Why?” demanded the juggler, surprised. “It’s the best thing I can do. And when we rehearsed it, I thought we had it down to a fine point.”
“Yes,” still hesitating, “but I’m afraid it’s dangerous.”
The juggler burst into laughter. “It’s as dangerous as a pistol loaded with blank cartridges! See here,” he cried joyously, turning with outspread arms to the group of youths fantastic in their stage toggery, “I call you all to witness—if ever Millden Seymour hurts me, I intended to let him do it. ”

“ The science of “putting down” any available subject is capable of utilizing and amalgamating unpromising elements, and as Parson Greenought cast up his eyes while he sang, and preserved a certain sanctimonious swaying of the body to and fro with the rhythm of the hymn he “lined out,” the triumph of “simulating” [157] these several discordant mental processes cost him no conscious effort and scarcely a realized impulse.
The juggler looked about him with a sort of averse curiosity; the traits of ignorant people appealed in no respect to his somewhat finical prepossessions. ”

“ The danger had come very near. Rough handling might well be encountered amongst these primitive wights, inflamed by pulpit oratory and religious excitement, and abetted by their pastoral guide. “In two minutes,” he went on, “I can teach you to perform this simple feat which seems to you impossible to human agency. It is nothing but sleight of hand, a sort of knack.”
For one moment Parson Greenought hesitated, beguiled. His eye kindled with curiosity and eagerness; he made as though he would leave the bench whereon he was ensconced, to approach the alluring juggler. ”

“ As for pulling ribbons out of your mouth, it is somewhat a stale jest, whereby jugglers get money from maids by selling laces by the yard, putting into their mouth one round bottom as fast as they pull out another, and at the exact end of every yard they tie a knot so as the same rests upon their teeth, they then cut off the same, and to the beholders are double and treble deceived, seeing as much lace as will fill a hat, and the name of what colour you list; to be drawn so by even yards out of your mouth, and yet the juggler to talk as though there were nothing in his mouth. ”

“ He was wonderfully quick in learning, even quick in acquiring any mechanical art that struck his attention. He had really become a skillful prestidigitator (how the juggler blessed the six-pronged unpronounceable word as Euphemia struggled to take hold of it, and finally left it as incomprehensible!) : and this came about partly through his extraordinary quickness, and partly because no one could resist his fascinating bonhomie, and many a traveling artist in legerdemain had imparted his professional secrets to him from sheer good will and liking. ”

“ As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing concealed in its folds.
[12] “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green herb grows for the service of men. ”

“ If a raylet fell to earth in the forest, it was not appreciable in the sombre depths, and the juggler, with all his craft, might hardly have made shift to follow his companion but for the spark and the light luminous smoke of the mountaineer’s pipe. Suddenly, as they turned a sharp edge of a series of great rocks, that like flying buttresses projected out from the steep perpendicular wall of a crag above them, all at once growing visible, a white flare shone before their eyes, illumining all the surrounding woods. ”

“ How should he care to note the null, impassive countenance of the one man, the grizzled stolid bourgeois aspect of the other?
The manager, keenly alive to the success of the [386] entertainment, advanced a number of the programme since the pistol trick was discarded. Having observed the fate of this from the wings, he handed to Royce a flower-pot filled with earth for a feat which it had been his intention to reserve until after the first act of the play.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the juggler, “oblige me by looking at this acorn. It is considered quite harmless. ”

“ The suggestiveness of this lyric of two tones was not lost on the juggler. He was pierced by the poignancy of exile. He could hardly realize that he was of the same species as the beings who [28] had formed the “cultivated and intellectual audience” he had had the honor to entertain. Not one process of his mind could be divined by them; not one throb of their superstitious terrors could he share. ”

“ And if in the ensuing excitements his mind did not match his lowly attitude, the juggler is not the only man who has ever been upon his knees with no prayer in his heart. Taking license from the stir near at hand, he too shifted his posture that his furtive glance might command a view of the man thus deputed to pray.
The suppliant was among the congregation, but his face, as he knelt in an open space near the pulpit, was irradiated by the slant of the sunset glow. Beheld above the benches and the kneeling congregation, it had a singularly detached effect,—it was like the painting of a head ”

“ In the midst of the clamor of denial of any greater possible proficiency, from the two old people, [208] who had not heard the juggler’s reading during the afternoon, she involuntarily cast upon him so appealing, so disarming a glance that for once he was ashamed to even secretly laugh at them.
“If it’s erudition that goes,” he said afterward, lighting his pipe under the stars and finding the grace to laugh instead at himself, “I am the learned man to suit the occasion.” ”

“ A juggler tosses rings, balls, and knives in the air, and spins plates on top of a twenty-foot pole. His colleague balances a big bamboo on one shoulder, and a small boy climbs it and goes through wonderful feats on the cross-piece at the top. A ring of gaping admirers surrounds a master of the black art, who swallows a lighted pipe, drinks, whistles, produces the pipe for a puff or two, swallows it again, and complacently emits fanciful rings and wreaths of smoke. Hair-pins, rosaries, toys, and sweets are everywhere for sale. ”