16th century, Europe, Italian, Italy, lexicon, primary source, quotes
Writing during the latter part of the European jester’s heyday, Giulio Landi (1498-1579) defined the buffone as one without limits to their laughter. It is an interesting definition of fools, complemented by others both more and less favourable. See, for...
3rd millennium BCE, Babylonian, lexicon, Mesopotamia, Middle East, primary source, research
‘The alan.zu/ aluzinnu could sing, play instruments and dance, and in fact from the earliest times (in Mari, Babylonia and in Bogazköy) he is connected with musicians, singers and acrobats who performed at festivals and (para?)religious...
Hebrew / Yiddish, lexicon
A Yiddish term for entertainer, or more charmingly, ‘merry-maker’, echoing the German fröhlich-macher.In his 1929 book on the history of Polish Jewry Emanuel Ringelblum devoted several paragraphs to a description of groups of late eighteenth century Jewish...
Europe, Hebrew / Yiddish, lexicon
Badkhn (or badchen or badchan) refers to Jewish jesters whose role seems to encompass the fool spectrum from village to itinerant to court, including wedding entertainers. Amos Goldberg says they shared the court jester’s licence to mock and ‘mercilessly...
