III.

But however agreeable and delightful the various arts of the minstrels might be to the Anglo-Saxon laity, there is reason to believe, that before the Norman Conquest, at least, they were not much favoured by the clergy; particularly by those of monastic profession. For, not to mention that the sportive talents of these men would be considered by those austere ecclesiastics, as tending to levity and licentiousness, the pagan origin of their art would excite in the monks an insuperable prejudice against it. The Anglo-Saxon harpers and gleemen were the immediate successors and imitators of the Scandinavian scalds, who were the great promoters of Pagan superstition, and fomented that spirit of cruelty and outrage in their countrymen the Danes, which fell with such peculiar severity on the religious and their convents. Hence arose a third application of words derived from +Gligg+, minstrelsy, in a very unfavourable sense, and this chiefly prevails in books of religion and ecclesiastic discipline. Thus:

(1) +Glig+ is _ludibrium_, laughing to scorn.[1114] So in S. Basil. Regul. II. +Di hæfdon him to glige halpende minegunge.+ _ludibrio habebant salutarem ejus admonitionm_. (10.) This sense of the word was perhaps not ill-founded, for as the sport of rude uncultivated minds often arises from ridicule, it is not improbable but the old minstrels often indulged a vein of this sort, and that of no very delicate kind. So again,

+Glig-man+ was also used to signify _scurra_, a saucy jester (Somn.)

+Glig-georn+, _dicax, scurriles jocos supra quàm par est amans_. Officium Episcopale, 3.

+Glipian+. _Scurrilibus oblectamentis indulgere; scurram agere._ Canon. Edgar. 58.

(2) Again, as the various attempts to please, practised by an order of men who owed their support to the public favour, might be considered by those grave censors, as mean and debasing: Hence came from the same root,

+Gliper+. _Parasitus, assentator_; a fawner, a togger, a parasite, a flatterer.[1115] (Somn.)