where, by their songs, stories, and other performances, they created mirth after dinner. [38] People in the middle ages were so fully conscious of the identity of the mediæval jougleur with the Roman mimus, that the Latin writers often use mimus to signify a jougleur, and the one is interpreted by the others in the vocabularies. Thus, in Latin-English vocabularies of the fifteenth century, we have-- _Hic joculator_, } } _Anglice_ jogulour. _Hic mimus_, } This class of society had become known by another name, the origin of which is not so easily explained. The primary meaning of the Latin word _minister_ was a servant, one who ministers to another, either in his wants or in his pleasures and amusements. It was applied particularly to the cup-bearer. In low Latinity, a diminutive of this word was formed, _minestellus_, or _ministrellus_, a petty servant, or minister. When we first meet with this word, which is not at a very early date, it is used as perfectly synonymous with _joculator_, and, as the word is certainly of Latin derivation, it is clear that it was from it the middle ages derived the French word _menestrel_ (the modern _ménétrier_), and the English _minstrel_. The mimi or jougleurs were perhaps considered as the petty ministers to the amusements of their lord, or of him who for the time employed them. Until the close of the middle ages, the minstrel and the jougleur were absolutely identical. Possibly the former may have been considered the more courtly of the two names. But in England, as the middle ages disappeared, and lost their influence on society sooner than in France, the word minstrel remained attached only to the musical part of the functions of the old mimus, while, as just observed, the juggler took the sleight of hand and the mountebank tricks. In modern French, except where employed technically by the antiquary, the word _ménétrier_ means a fiddler. The jougleurs, or minstrels, formed a very numerous and important, though a low and despised, class of mediæval society. The dulness of every-day life in a feudal castle or mansion required something more than ordinary excitement in the way of amusement, and the old family bard, who continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praises of himself and his ancestors, was soon felt to be a wearisome companion. The mediæval knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make them laugh sufficiently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic performances, should be broad, coarse, and racy, with a good spicing of violence and of the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome to the feudal mansion, and he seldom went away dissatisfied. But the subject of the present chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur than his personal history, and, having traced his origin to the Roman mimus, we will now proceed to one class of his performances.