The pause which the masqueraders made, waiting apparently for some
person of the highest authority amongst them, gave those within the
Abbey Church full time to observe all these absurdities. They were at
no loss to comprehend their purpose and meaning.
Few readers can be ignorant, that at an early period, and during the
plenitude of her power, the Church of Rome not only connived at, but
even encouraged, such Saturnalian licenses as the inhabitants of
Kennaquhair and the neighbourhood had now in hand, and that the
vulgar, on such occasions, were not only permitted but encouraged by a
number of gambols, sometimes puerile and ludicrous, sometimes immoral
and profane, to indemnify themselves for the privations and penances
imposed on them at other seasons. But, of all other topics for
burlesque and ridicule, the rites and ceremonial of the church itself
were most frequently resorted to; and, strange to say, with the
approbation of the clergy themselves.
While the hierarchy flourished in full glory, they do not appear to
have dreaded the consequences of suffering the people to become so
irreverently familiar with things sacred; they then imagined the laity
to be much in the condition of the labourer's horse, which does not
submit to the bridle and the whip with greater reluctance, because, at
rare intervals, he is allowed to frolic at large in his pasture, and
fling out his heels in clumsy gambols at the master who usually drives
him.
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