levied upon themselves or upon the bystanders[1148], was an occasion for popular rather than refined merry-making[1149]. That it should perpetuate or absorb folk-customs was also, considering the peasant or small _bourgeois_ extraction of such men, quite natural. The simple psychology of the last two sentences really gives the key to the nature of the feast. It was largely an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock. The vicars hooted and sang improper ditties, and played dice upon the altar, in a reaction from the wonted restraints of choir discipline. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it was almost an obvious sport to burlesque the sacred and tedious ceremonies with which they were only too painfully familiar. Indeed, the reverend founders and reformers of the feast had given a lead to this apishness by the introduction of the symbolical transference of the _baculus_ at the _Deposuit_ in the _Magnificat_. The ruling idea of the feast is the inversion of status, and the performance, inevitably burlesque, by the inferior clergy of functions properly belonging to their betters. The fools jangle the bells (Paris, Amiens, Auxerre), they take the higher stalls (Paris), sing dissonantly (Sens), repeat meaningless words (Châlons, Antibes), say the _messe liesse_ (Laon) or the _missa fatuorum_ (Autun), preach the _sermones fatui_ (Auxerre), cense _praepostere_ (St. Omer) with pudding and sausage (Beauvais) or with old shoes (Paris theologians). They have their chapter and their proctors (Auxerre, Dijon). They install their _dominus festi_ with a ceremony of _sacre_ (Troyes), or shaving (Sens, Dijon). He is vested in full pontificals, goes in procession, as at the _Rabardiaux_ of Laon, gives the benedictions, issues indulgences (Viviers), has his seal (Lille), perhaps his right of coining (Laon). Much in all these proceedings was doubtless the merest horseplay; such ingenuity and humour as they required may have been provided by the wicked wit of the _goliardi_[1150].