at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as |304|
women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black
puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass.
They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the
soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a
blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its
theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their
fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent
gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste."{19}

The letter also speaks of "bishops" or "archbishops" of Fools, who wore
mitres and held pastoral staffs. We here see clearly, besides mere
irreverence, an outcrop of pagan practices. Topsy-turvydom, the temporary
exaltation of inferiors, was itself a characteristic of the Kalends
celebrations, and a still more remarkable feature of them was, as we have
seen, the wearing of beast-masks and the dressing up of men in women's
clothes. And what is the "bishop" or "archbishop" but a parallel to, and,
we may well believe, an example of, the mock king whom Dr. Frazer has
traced in so many a folk-festival, and who is found at the _Saturnalia_?

One more feature of the Feast of Fools must be considered, the Ass who
gave to it the not uncommon title of _asinaria festa_. At Bourges, Sens,
and Beauvais, a curious half-comic hymn was sung in church, the so-called
"Prose of the Ass." It begins as follows:--

"Orientis partibus
Adventavit Asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
Hez, Sir Asnes, car chantez,
Belle bouche rechignez,
Vous aurez du foin assez
Et de l'avoine a plantez."

And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention of his
connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes thus:--

"Amen dicas, Asine,
Iam satur de gramine, |305|
Amen, Amen, itera,
Aspernare vetera.
Hez va, hez va! hez va, hez!
Bialx Sire Asnes, car allez:
Belle bouche, car chantez."{20}

An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at Beauvais at
all events, during the singing of this song on the feast of the
Circumcision. On January 14 an extraordinary ceremony took place there. A
girl with a child in her arms rode upon an ass into St. Stephen's church,
to represent the Flight into Egypt. The Introit, "Kyrie," "Gloria," and