ning class was needed to keep the
streets clear for the throng of craftsmen, and as likewise the yearly
outlay was beyond their means, the sons of the great houses took a pride
in paying goodly sums for the right of taking a place in the procession.
And as for our high-spirited young lord, skilled as he was with his
weapon, he had seen and taken part in many such gay carnival doings
among the Italians, and it was a delight to him to join in the like
sport at home, and many were fain to gaze at him rather than at the
guilds.

They assembled under the walls in two bands, and marched past the town
hall and from thence to a dance of both guilds. Each had a dance of its
own. The Fleshers' was such a dance as in England is called a country
dance and they held leather-straps twisted to look like sausages; the
cutlers' dance was less clumsy, and they carried naked swords.

But the show which most delighted the bystanders was the procession
of masks, wherein, indeed, there were many things pleasant and fair to
behold.

A party of men in coarse raiment called the men of the woods, carrying
sheaves of oak boughs with acorns, and a number of mummers in fools'
garb, wielding wooden bats, cleared the way for the procession; first
then came minstrels, with drums and pipes and trumpets and bag-pipes,
and merry bells ringing out withal. Next came one on horseback with
nuts, which he flung down among the children, whereat there was merry
scuffling and screaming on the ground. From the windows likewise and
balconies there was no end of the laughter and cries; the young squires
gave the maids and ladies who sat there no peace for the flowers and
sweetmeats they cast up at them, and eggs filled with rose-water.

This year, whereof I write, many folks in the procession wore garments
of the same color and shape; but among them there were some who loved a
jest, and were clothed as wild men and women, or as black-amoors, ogres
that eat children, ostrich-birds, and the like. Last of all came the
chief glory of the show, various great buildings and devices drawn by
horses: a Ship of Fools, and behind that a wind-mill, and a fowler's
decoy wherein Fools, men and women both, were caught, and other such
pastimes.

My Herdegen had mingled with this wondrous fellowship arrayed as a
knight crusader leading three captive Saracen princes; namely, the two
young Masters Loffelholz and Schlebitzer, who had stirred him to dress
in the fencing-school, m