supported by the numerous miniatures of dancers and tumblers, jugglers and bear-leaders, in both Latin and Early English manuscripts of this period[125], and by the glosses which translate such terms as _mimus_, _iocista_, _scurra_, _pantomimus_ by _gligmon_, reserving _scôp_ for the dignified _poeta_[126]. This distinction I regard as quite a late one, consequent upon the degeneracy introduced by _mimi_ from south Europe into the lower ranks of the gleemen. Some writers, indeed, think that it existed from the beginning, and that the _scôp_ was always the resident court poet, whereas the _gleómon_ was the wandering singer, often a borrower rather than a maker of songs, who appealed to the smaller folk[127]. But the theory is inconsistent with the data of _Widsith_. The poet there described is sometimes a wanderer, sometimes stationary. He is evidently at the height of his profession, and has sung before every crowned head in Europe, but he calls himself a _gleómon_. Nor does the etymology of the words _scôp_ and _gleómon_ suggest any vital difference of signification[128]. The literary records of the continental Teutons are far scantier than those of the English. But amongst them also Latin and barbaric traditions seem to have merged in the _ioculator_. Ancestral deeds were sung to the harp, and therefore, it may be supposed, by a _scôp_, and not a _chorus_, before the Ostrogoths in Italy, at the beginning of the sixth century[129]. In the year 507 Clovis the Frank sent to Theodoric for a _citharoedus_ trained in the musical science of the South, and Boethius was commissioned to make the selection[130]. On the other hand, little as the barbarians loved the theatre, the _mimi_ and _scurrae_ of the conquered lands seem to have tickled their fancy as they sat over their wine. At the banquet with which Attila entertained the imperial ambassadors in 448, the guests were first moved to martial ardour and to tears by the recital of ancient deeds of prowess, and then stirred to laughter by the antics of a Scythian and a Moorish buffoon[131]. Attila was a Hun and no German; but the Vandals who invaded Africa in 429 are recorded to have taken to the _spectacula_ so extravagantly popular there[132], and Sidonius tells how _mimici sales_, chastened in view of barbaric conceptions of decency, found a place in the festivities of another Theodoric, king from 462 to 466 of the Visigoths in Gaul[133]. Three centuries later, under Charlemagne, the blending of both types of entertainer under the common designation of _ioculator_ seems to be complete. And, as in contemporary England, the animosity of the Church to the _scenici_ is transferred wholesale to the _ioculatores_, without much formal attempt to discriminate between the different grades of the profession. Alcuin may perhaps be taken as representing the position of the more rigid disciplinarians on this point. His letter to the English bishop, Higbald, does not stand alone.