In York recently, I paused to consider the many
street entertainers in the pedestrianised city centre.
The singers and
musicians were very ‘now’, even if the electric jazz close to the striped
awnings of market stalls in Parliament Street
was wonderfully mellow to the ear. Beneath the shading trees in Saint Sampson’s
Square we stopped for refreshment and to listen to alternating guitarists with
voices as languorous as the summer heat. Walking along mediaeval Stonegate,
teeming with locals and visitors, fleeting strains from an unseen saxophone
teased the ear.
With a nod to the Minster, we
turned into Low Petergate, an even narrower mediaeval street following the
course of the Via Principalis of the Roman fortress beneath its foundations.
Here we came face to face with a man dressed in as near as modern motley as
it’s possible to get, his concentration on elaborate body movements as he
manoeuvred a crystal gravity ball to the fascination of onlookers.
But it was in King’s Square where
the true action was taking place. A master of his audience, a fire-eater was rousing
the crowd prior to juggling burning brands blindfold.
Market stalls and street food,
itinerant entertainers... today, 500 years ago, a millennium past, two
millennium even, all that would be different would be the dress of the
audience. It makes a historical novelist content.