Minstrelsy was an institution of the folk, no less than of the court and the _bourgeoisie_. At many a village festival, one may be sure, the taberers and buffoons played their conspicuous part, ravishing the souls of Dorcas and Mopsa with merry and doleful ballads, and tumbling through their amazing programme of monkey tricks before the ring of wide-mouthed rustics on the green. Yet the soul and centre of such revels always lay, not in these alien professional _spectacula_, but in other entertainments, home-grown and racy of the soil, wherein the peasants shared, not as onlookers only, but as performers, even as their fathers and mothers, from immemorial antiquity, had done before them. A full consideration of the village _ludi_ is important to the scheme of the present book for more than one reason. They shared with the _ludi_ of the minstrels the hostility of the Church. They bear witness, at point after point, to the deep-lying dramatic instincts of the folk. And their substantial contribution to mediaeval and Renaissance drama and dramatic _spectacle_ is greater than has been fully recognized. Historically, the _ludi_ of the folk come into prominence with the attacks made upon them by the reforming ecclesiastics of the thirteenth century and in particular by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln[329]. Between 1236 and 1244 Grosseteste issued a series of disciplinary pronouncements, in which he condemned many customs prevalent in his diocese. Amongst these are included miracle plays, ‘scotales’ or drinking-bouts, ‘ram-raisings’ and other contests of athletic prowess, together with ceremonies known respectively as the _festum stultorum_ and the _Inductio Maii sive Autumni_[330]. Very similar are the prohibitions contained in the _Constitutions_ (1240) of Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester[331]. These particularly specify the _ludus de Rege et Regina_, a term which may be taken as generally applicable to the typical English folk-festival, of which the _Inductio Maii sive Autumni_, the ‘May-game’ and ‘mell-supper,’ mentioned by Grosseteste, are varieties[332]. Both this _ludus_, in its various forms, and the less strictly popular _festum stultorum_, will find ample illustration in the sequel. Walter de Chanteloup also lays stress upon an aggravation of the _ludi inhonesti_ by the performance of them in churchyards and other holy places, and on Sundays or the vigils and days of saints[333].