In a Saxon manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, C. vi.), among the minstrels attendant on king David (represented in our cut, No. 27), we see a gleeman, who is throwing up and catching knives and balls, a common performance of the later Norman jougleurs, as well as of our modern mountebanks. Some of the tricks and gestures of these performers were of the coarsest description, such as could be only tolerated in a rude state of society. An example will be found in a story told by William of Malmesbury of wandering minstrels, whom he had seen performing at a festival at that monastery when he was a child, and which we can hardly venture to give even under the veil of the original Latin. A poem in the Exeter manuscript describes the wandering character of the Saxon minstrels. He tells us:-- _swa scriþende_ _Thus roving_ _gesceapum hweorfað_ _with their lays go_ _gleo-men gumena_ _the gleemen of men_ _geond grunda fela,_ _over many lands,_ _þearfe secgað,_ _state their wants,_ _þonc-word sprecaþ,_ _utter words of thank,_ _simle suð oþþe norð_ _always south or north,_ _sumne gemetað_ _they find one_ _gydda gleawne,_ _knowing in songs,_ _geofum unhneawne._ _who is liberal of gifts._--Exeter Book, p. 326. [Illustration: _No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels and Gleeman._] We are not to suppose that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers remained at table, merely drinking and listening. On the contrary, the performance of the minstrels appears to have been only introduced at intervals, between which the guests talked, joked, propounded and answered riddles, boasted of their own exploits, disparaged those of others, and, as the liquor took effect, became noisy and quarrelsome. The moral poems often allude to the quarrels and slaughters in which feasts ended. One of these poems, enumerating the various endowments of men, says:-- _sum bið wrœd tæfle;_ _one is expert at dice;_ _sum bið gewittig_ _one is witty_ _æt win-þege,_ _at wine-bibbing,_ _beor-hyrde god._ _a good beer-drinker._--Exeter Book, p. 297. A “Monitory Poem,” in the same collection, thus describes the manners of the guests in hall:--