822 The DomesMmtion of Animals in the Middle Ag& t 



watching from the battlements, the shoemaker took his knife, 

 and drew the back or blunt edge of the blade several times 

 across his throat, and then turned the other edge to it, and so 

 on alternately, like a man sharpening his knife on a whetstone. 

 He then left his shop, and made a longer absence than usual. 

 The ape, which had been attentively watching the shoemakers 

 proceedings, immediately descended from the castle wall, and, 

 entering his workshop, seized the knife, and, imitating the 

 movements it had just witnessed, cut its own throat and died. 



The ape was a common adjunct to the stock-in-trade of the 

 wandering jougleur, or minstrel, who exhibited his tricks for 

 gain. Alexander Neckam tells us one or two stories illustra- 

 tive of this practice. There was an aged jougleur, who carried 

 his ape with him from place to place on horseback, and gained 

 his living by its many tricks, and especially by its dancing ; 

 but, having treated it on one occasion with unnecessary harsh- 

 ness, it took its revenge very craftily, and would have killed 

 him had he not been unexpectedly rescued. Another jougleur 

 had two apes, which, among other tricks, he taught to perform 

 a tournament, which caused great amusement to those who 

 witnessed it. Two dogs were taught to act as horses, and the 

 apes, fully armed with shield, spear, sword, and spurs, urged 

 forward their steeds, broke their lances, and fought with 

 swords with all the earnestness of gallant knights. 



There were two especially favourite birds in the castle and 

 baronial mansion. The parrot was a much more common cage 

 bird in the middle ages than we might be led to suppose. 

 The parrot appears to have been known to the Anglo-Saxons 

 under the name of rago-finc, the latter part of the word 

 meaning simply a finch, but what the first part means I know 

 not, unless it represents hrcege, a goat, and why the parrot 

 should be called a goat-finch is not clear. Alexander Neckam 

 calls the parrot the jougleur, or minstrel, of the birds; not, be 

 it remarked, on account of the beauty of its song, but because 

 of its power of mimicry, and of its tricks and drollery. He 

 speaks in another place of the mischievous cunning of this 

 bird, and of its skill in imitating the human voice, and adds 

 that it was more clever and amusing even than the jougleurs 

 themselves. These qualities caused this bird to be looked 

 upon with a certain amount of superstition, and it was thought 

 that, in addition to the language of birds, by which they all 

 understood one another, and which was the foundation of 

 many mediaeval fables and legends, the parrot understood the 

 languages of man also. " There was," Neckam tells us, " a 

 knight in Great Britain who possessed a parrot of high 

 breeding, to which he was much attached. " One day this knight 

 was travelling in the East, in the neighbourhood of Mount 



