JUGGLING. Feats of Jugglers formerly attributed to witchcraft--Anglo-Saxon Gleemen--Norman Jugglers or Tregatours--Chaucer’s Description of the Wonders performed by them--Means probably employed by them--Recipe for making the Appearance of a Flood--Jugglers fashionable in the Reign of Charles II.--Evelyn’s Account of a Fire-eater--Katterfelto--Superiority of Asiatic and Eygptian pretenders to magical Skill--Mandeville’s Account of Juggling at the Court of the Great Khan--Extraordinary Feats witnessed by the Emperor Jehanguire--Ibn Batuta’s Account of Hindustanee Jugglers--Account of a Bramin who sat upon the Air--Egyptian Jugglers--Mr. Lane’s Account of the Performance of one of them--Another fails in satisfying Captain Scott. The mountebanks who now exhibit on the travelling stage or cart, and whose buffoonery pleases only the clown, were formerly thought to practise witchcraft, or deal with some unlawful powers. The joculators, jugglours, or tregatours, of the Normans, were men of much higher pretensions than the gleemen. Some of the delusions which they practised could not have been performed without considerable scientific knowledge. We have the authority of Chaucer for the fact, that they “cheated the eyes with blear illusion,” in a manner which may excuse ignorant spectators for having attributed the effect to supernatural means. “In a large hall they will,” says he, “produce water with boats rowed up and down upon it. Sometimes they will bring in the similitude of a grim lion, or make flowers spring up in a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish, bearing white and red grapes; or show a castle built with stone, and when they please they cause the whole to disappear.” He tells us, too, of a “learned clerk, who showed to a friend forests filled with wild deer, where he saw an hundred of them slain, some with hounds and some with arrows; the hunting being finished, a company of falconers appeared upon the banks of a fair river, where the birds pursued the herons and slew them. He then saw knights jousting upon a plain,” and, which was a more attractive sight, “the resemblance of his beloved lady dancing, which occasioned him to dance also.” But when “the maister that this magike wrought thought fit, he clapped his hands together, and all was gone in an instante.” Another feat, which he describes as having himself witnessed, is still more striking: “There saw I Coll Tregetour, Upon a table of sycamour, Play an uncouth thing to tell; I saw him cary a wynde mell Under a walnote shale.”