The entertainment of a mediaeval Christmas was diverse. There was the banquet. The Boy Bishop came to court. Carols were sung. New Year gifts were exchanged. _Hastiludia_--jousts or tournaments--were popular and splendid. Minstrels and jugglers made music and mirth. A succession of gaieties filled the Twelve nights from the Nativity to the Epiphany, or even the wider space from St. Thomas’s day to Candlemas. It is, however, in the custom of masquing that I find the most direct legacy to Christmas of the Kalends celebrations in their _bourgeois_ forms. _Larvae_ or masks are prominent in the records and prohibitions of the Feast of Fools from the decretal of Innocent III in 1207 to the letter of the Paris theologians in 1445[1418]. I take them as being, like the characteristic hood of the ‘fool,’ sophistications of the _capita pecudum_, the sacrificial _exuviae_ worn by the rout of worshippers at the _Kalendae_. Precisely such _larvae_, under another name, confront us in the detailed records of two fourteenth-century Christmasses. Amongst the documents of the Royal Wardrobe for the reign of Edward III are lists of stuffs issued for the _ludi domini regis_ in 1347-8 and 1348-9[1419]. For the Christmas of 1347, held at Guildford, were required a number of ‘viseres’ in the likeness of men, women, and angels, curiously designed ‘crestes,’ and other costumes representing dragons, peacocks, and swans[1420]. The Christmas of 1348 held at Ottford and the following Epiphany at Merton yield similar entries[1421]. What were these ‘viseres’ used for? The term _ludi_ must not be pressed. It appears to be distinct from _hastiludia_, which comes frequently in the same documents, although in the _hastiludia_ also ‘viseres’ were used[1422]. But it does not necessarily imply anything dramatic, and the analogies suggest that it is a wide generic term, roughly equivalent to ‘disports,’ or to the ‘revels’ of the Tudor vocabulary[1423]. It recurs in 1388 when the Wardrobe provided linen coifs for twenty-one counterfeit men of the law in the _ludus regis_[1424]. The sets of costumes supplied for all these _ludi_ would most naturally be used by groups of performers in something of the nature of a dance; and they point to some primitive form of masque, such as Froissart describes in contemporary France[1425], the precursor of the long line of development which, traceable from the end of the following century, culminates in the glories of Ben Jonson. The vernacular name for such a _ludus_ in the fourteenth century was ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising[1426].’ Orders of the city of London in 1334, 1393, and 1405 forbid a practice of going about the streets at Christmas _ove visere ne faux visage_, and entering the houses of citizens to play at dice therein[1427]. In 1417 ‘mummyng’ is specifically included in a similar prohibition[1428]; and in a proclamation of the following year, ‘mommyng’ is classed with ‘playes’ and ‘enterludes’ as a variety of ‘disgisyng[1429].’