The features of the minstrels as we trace them obscurely from the sixth to the eleventh century, and then more clearly from the eleventh to the sixteenth, are very largely the features of the Roman _mimi_ as they go under, whelmed in the flood which bore away Latin civilization. But to regard them as nothing else than _mimi_ would be a serious mistake. On another side they have a very different and a far more reputable ancestry. Like other factors in mediaeval society, they represent a merging of Latin and the Teutonic elements. They inherit the tradition of the _mimus_: they inherit also the tradition of the German _scôp_[95]. The earliest Teutonic poetry, so far as can be gathered, knew no _scôp_. As will be shown in a later chapter, it was communal in character, closely bound up with the festal dance, or with the rhythmic movements of labour. It was genuine folk-song, the utterance of no select caste of singers, but of whoever in the ring of worshippers or workers had the impulse and the gift to link the common movements to articulate words. At the festivals such a spokesman would be he who, for whatever reason, took the lead in the ceremonial rites, the _vates_, germ at once of priest and bard. The subject-matter of communal song was naturally determined by the interests ruling on the occasions when it was made. That of daily life would turn largely on the activities of labour itself: that of the high days on the emotions of religion, feasting, and love which were evoked by the primitive revels of a pastoral or agricultural folk.