"Sketch for a History of Russian Culture," quotes one of the austere moralists of mediæval times who condemns mirth as a snare of the evil one; "laughter does not edify or save us; on the contrary it is the ruin of edification. Laughter displeases the Holy Spirit and drives out virtue, because it makes men forget death and eternal punishment. Lord, put mirth away from me; give me rather tears and lamentations." So persistent and effectual was the repression of all secular enjoyments that one monkish chronicler was able to remark with evident satisfaction that, for the time being, "there was silence in all the land of Russia." Under these conditions the primitive music had little chance of development. Driven from the centres of dawning civilisation, it took refuge in forest settlements and remote villages. With it fled the bards and the mummers, the gleemen--those "merry lads" as the Russians called them--so dear to the hearts of the people. These musicians were originally of two classes: minstrels and _gusslee_ players (harpists), such as the famous Skald, Bayan; and the _Skomorokhi_, or mummers, who sang and juggled for the diversion of the people. In course of time we find allusions to several subdivisions in the band of _Skomorokhi_, all of which may now be said to have their modern equivalents in Russia. There was the _Skomorokh-pievets_, or singer of the mythical or heroic songs, who afterwards became absorbed into the ranks of the poets with the rise of a school of poetry at the close of the sixteenth century; the _Skomorokh-goudets_, who played for dancing, and was afterwards transformed into the orchestral player, exchanging his _gusslee_ or _dombra_ for some more modern western instrument; the _Skomorokh-plyassoun_, the dancer, now incorporated in the corps-de-ballet; and the _Skomorokh-gloumosslovets_, the buffoon or entertainer, who eventually became merged in the actor.