spears, and Olaus Magnus that the Goths, &c., had military dances:
still the military dances in English MSS. (figs. 31, 32) seem more
like those of a Pyrrhic character, which Julius Caesar, the conqueror
of England, introduced into Rome. The illustration (fig. 29) of what
is probably a Saxon gleemen's dance shows us the kind of amusement
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 Sauté."

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