127. Reward thy toil. The MS. goes on thus: "Get thee an ape, and then at once Thou mayst renounce the warder's lance, And trudge through borough and through land, The leader of a juggler band." Scott has the following note here: "The jongleurs, or jugglers, as we learn from the elaborate work of the late Mr. Strutt, on the sports and pastimes of the people of England, used to call in the aid of various assistants, to render these performances as captivating as possible. The glee-maiden was a necessary attendant. Her duty was tumbling and dancing; and therefore the Anglo-Saxon version of Saint Mark's Gospel states Herodias to have vaulted or tumbled before King Herod. In Scotland these poor creatures seem, even at a late period, to have been bondswomen to their masters, as appears from a case reported by Fountainhall: 'Reid the mountebank pursues Scot of Harden and his lady for stealing away from him a little girl, called the tumbling-lassie, that dance upon his stage; and he claimed damages, and produced a contract, whereby he bought her from her mother for £30 Scots. But we have no slaves in Scotland, and mothers cannot sell their bairns; and physicians attested the employment of tumbling would kill her; and her joints were now grown stiff, and she declined to return; though she was at least a 'prentice, and so could not run away from her master; yet some cited Moses's law, that if a servant shelter himself with thee against his master's cruelty, thou shalt surely not deliver him up. The Lords, renitente cancellario, assoilzied Harden on the 27th of January (1687)' (Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i. p. 439)."
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