ons of
distinction, honoured guests, trusted messengers, who often received
from their hosts a more affectionate reward than golden bracelets or
new dresses. They had once upon a time sung to the harp by the
fireside, of the adventurous expedition of the thunder god to the world
of giants, and of the tragic fall of the Nibelungen, then of Attila's
battle, and the wonders of southern lands. But to the new Christian
faith, this treasure of old native songs was obnoxious. The high-minded
Charlemagne made a collection of the heroic songs of the German race,
but his Popish son Louis hated and despised them. These songs
undoubtedly were so thoroughly heathen, that the Church had reason to
remonstrate against them in synodical resolutions and episcopal
decrees. Together with them, the race of singers who carried and spread
them, fell into disfavour with the church. The songs did not however
cease, but the singers sank to a lower scale, and finally a portion of
them at least fell into the class of vagrants, and the people were
accustomed to hear the fairest heritage of their past from the lips of
despised players.

Another heritage also from German heathendom fell to these strollers.
Even before the time of Tacitus there were simple dramatic processions
in Germany; on the great feast days of the German gods, there already
appeared the humorous ideas of the pious German regarding his world of
deities, associating with them comic processions of mummers, the
figures of goblins and giants, gray winter and green spring, the bear
of Donar, and probably the magic white horse of Woden, which in the
oldest form of dramatic play opposed each other either in mimic combat,
or for their rights. The wandering jugglers, with great facility, added
these German masks to the grotesque Roman figures which they had
brought into the country; and in the churchyard of the new Christian
congregation, the bear of the bacchanalian Asen bellowed beside the
followers of the Roman god of wine, and the satyr with his goats' feet
and horns.

Thus this race of wanderers soon Germanized themselves, and during the
whole of the middle ages roved about amongst the people--in the eye of
the law homeless and lawless. The Church continued to rouse suspicion
against these strollers by repeated decrees; the clergy would on no
account see or listen to such rabble, nay, they were denied the right
of taking a part in the Christian sacraments. The old law books allowed