A burlesque parody on the church service, written in Latin, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” gives us rather a curious picture of tavern manners at that early period. The document is profane,—much more so than any of the parodies for which Hone was prosecuted; but it is only a moderate example of the general laxness in this respect which prevailed, even among the clergy, in what have been called “the ages of faith.” This is entitled “The Mass of the Drunkards,” and contains a running allusion to the throwing of the three dice, and to the loss of clothing which followed; but it is full of Latin puns on the words of the church service, and the greater part of it would not bear a translation.

It will have been already remarked that, in all these anecdotes and stories, the ordinary number of the dice is three. This appears to have been the number used in most of the common games. In our cut No. 151, taken from the illumination in a copy of Jean de Vignay’s translation of Jacobus de Cessolis (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), the dice-player appears to hold but two dice in his hand; but this is to be laid solely to the charge of the draughtsman’s want of skill, as the text tells us distinctly that he has three. We learn also from the text, that in the jug he holds in his right hand he carries his money, a late example of the use of earthen vessels for this purpose. Two dice were, however, sometimes used, especially in the game of hazard, which appears to have been the great gambling game of the middle ages. Chaucer, in the “Pardoneres Tale,” describes the hazardours as playing with two dice. But in the curious scene in the “Towneley Mysteries” (p. 241), a work apparently contemporary with Chaucer, the tormentors, or executioners, are introduced throwing for Christ’s unseamed garment with three dice; the winner throws fifteen points, which could only be thrown with that number of dice.

It would not seem easy to give much ornamentation to the form of dice without destroying their utility, yet this has been attempted at various times, and not only in a very grotesque but in a similar manner at very distant periods. This was done by giving the die the form of a man, so doubled up, that when thrown he fell in different positions, so as to show the points uppermost, like an ordinary die. The smaller example represented in our cut No. 152 is Roman, and made of silver, and several Roman dice of the same form are known. It is singular that the same idea should have presented itself at a much later period, and, as far as we can judge, without any room for supposing that it was by imitation. Our second example, which is larger than the other, and carved in box-wood, is of German work, and apparently as old as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Both are now in the fine and extensive collection of the late lord Londesborough.

The simple throwing of the dice was rather an excitement than an amusement; and at an early period people sought the latter by a combination of the dice-throwing with some other system of movements or calculations. In this way, no doubt, originated the different games enumerated by John of Salisbury, the most popular of which was that of tables (tabula or tabulæ). This game was in use among the Romans, and was in all probability borrowed from them by the Anglo-Saxons, among whom it was in great favour, and who called the game tæfel (evidently a mere adoption of the Latin name), and the dice teoselas and tæfel-stanas. The former evidently represents the Latin tessellæ, little cubes; and the latter seems to show that the Anglo-Saxon dice were usually made of stones. At a later period, the game of tables, used nearly always in the plural, is continually mentioned along with chess, as the two most fashionable and aristocratic games in use. An early and richly illuminated manuscript in the British Museum—perhaps of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1257)—furnishes us with the figures of players at tables represented in our cut No. 153. The table, or board, with bars or points, is here clearly delineated, and we see that the players use both dice and men, or pieces—the latter round discs, like our modern draughtsmen. In another manuscript, belonging to a rather later period of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii. fol. 157, v^o), we have a diagram which shows the board as composed of two tables, represented in our cut No. 154. It was probably this construction which caused the name to be used in the plural; and as the Anglo-Saxons always used the name in the singular, as is the case also with John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, while the plural is always used by the writers of a later date, we seem justified in concluding that the board used by the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans consisted of one table, like that represented in our cut No. 153, and that this was afterwards superseded by the double board. It is hardly necessary to point out to our readers that these two pictures of the boards show us clearly that the mediæval game of tables was identical with our modern backgammon, or rather, we should perhaps say, that the game of backgammon, as now played, is one of the games played on the tables.

In the manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii.) the figure of the board is given to illustrate a very curious treatise on the game of tables, written in Latin, in the fourteenth, or even perhaps in the thirteenth, century. The writer begins by informing us, that “there are many games at tables with dice, of which the first is the long game, and is the game of the English, and it is common, and played as follows” (multi sunt ludi ad tabulas cum taxillis, quorum primus est longus ludus, et est ludus Anglicorum, et est communis, et est talis naturæ), meaning, I presume, that it was the game usually played in England. From the directions given for playing it, this game seems to have had a close general resemblance to backgammon. The writer of the treatise says that it was played with three dice, or with two dice, in which latter case they counted six at each throw for the third dice. In some of the other games described here, two dice only were used. We learn from this treatise the English terms for two modes of winning at the “long game” of tables—the one being called “lympoldyng,” the other “lurchyng;” and a person losing by the former was said to be “lympolded.” The writer of this tract gives directions for playing at several other games of tables, and names some of them—such as “paume carie,” the Lombard’s game (ludus Lombardorum), the “imperial,” the “provincial,” “baralie,” and “faylys.”

This game continued long to exist in England under its old name of tables. Thus Shakespeare:— This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice.
—Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act v. Sc. 2.
The game appears at this time to have been a favourite one in the taverns and ordinaries. Thus, in a satirical tract in verse, printed in 1600, we are told of— An honest vicker, and a kind consort,
That to the alehouse friendly would resort,
To have a game at tables now and than,
Or drinke his pot as soone as any man.
—Letting of Humours Blood, 1600.
And one of the most popular of the satirical writers of that period, Dekker, in his “Lanthorne and Candle-Light,” printed in 1620, says, punningly,—“And knowing that your most selected gallants are the onelye table-men that are plaid withal at ordinaries, into an ordinarye did he most gentleman-like convay himselfe in state.” We learn from another tract of the same author, the “Gul’s Hornbooke,” that the table-men at this time were usually painted.

We hardly perceive how the name of tables disappeared. It seems probable that at this time the game of tables meant simply what we now call backgammon, a word the oldest mention of which, so far as I have been able to discover, occurs in Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” first printed in 1646. It is there written baggamon. In the “Compleat Gamester,” 1674, backgammon and ticktack occur as two distinct games at what would have formerly been called tables; and another similar game was called Irish. Curiously enough, in the earlier part of the last century the game of backgammon was most celebrated as a favourite game among country parsons.

Another game existing in the middle ages, but much more rarely alluded to, was called dames, or ladies, and has still preserved that name in French. In English, it was changed for that of draughts, derived no doubt from the circumstance of drawing the men from one square to another. Our cut No. 155, taken from a manuscript in the British Museum of the beginning of the fourteenth century, known commonly as Queen Mary’s Psalter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a lady and gentleman playing at dames, or draughts, differing only from the character of the game at the present day in the circumstance that the draughtsmen are evidently square.

The mediæval games were gradually superseded by a new contrivance, that of playing-cards, which were introduced into Western Europe in the course of the fourteenth century. It has been suggested that the idea of playing-cards was taken from chess—in fact, that they are the game of chess transferred to paper, and without a board, and they are generally understood to have been derived from the East. Cards, while they possessed some of the characteristics of chess, presented the same mixture of chance and skill which distinguished the game of tables. An Italian writer, probably of the latter part of the fifteenth century, named Cavelluzzo, author of a history of Viterbo, states that “in the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called naib.” Cards are still in Spanish called naipes, which is said to be derived from the Arabic: but they were certainly known in the west of Europe before the date given by Cavelluzzo. Our cut No. 156 is taken from a very fine manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228, fol. 313, v^o), which was written apparently in the south of France between the years 1330 and 1350; it represents a royal party playing at cards, which was therefore considered at that time as the amusement of the highest classes of society. They are, however, first distinctly alluded to in history in the year 1393. In that year Charles VI. of France was labouring under a visitation of insanity; and we find in the accounts of his treasurer, Charles Poupart, an entry to the following effect:—“Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and diversly coloured, and ornamented with several devices, to deliver to the lord the king for his amusement, fifty-six sols of Paris.” It is clear from this entry that the game of cards was then tolerably well known in France, and that it was by no means new, though it was evidently not a common game, and the cards had to be made by a painter—that is, as I suppose, an illuminator of manuscripts. We find as yet no allusion to them in England: and it is remarkable that neither Chaucer, nor any of the numerous writers of his and the following age, ever speak of them. An illuminated manuscript of apparently the earlier part of the fifteenth century, perhaps of Flemish workmanship (it contains a copy of Raoul de Presle’s French translation of St. Augustine’s “Civitas Dei”), presents us with another card-party, which we give in our cut No. 157. Three persons are here engaged in the game, two of whom are ladies. After the date at which three packs of cards were made for the amusement of the lunatic king, the game of cards seems soon to have become common in France; for less than four years later—on the 22nd of January, 1397—the provost of Paris considered it necessary to publish an edict, forbidding working people to play at tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or ninepins, on working days. By one of the acts of the synod of Langres, in 1404, the clergy were expressly forbidden to play at cards. These had now made their way into Germany, and had become so popular there, that early in the fifteenth century card-making had become a regular trade.

In England, in the third year of the reign of Edward IV. (1463), the importation of playing-cards, probably from Germany, was forbidden, among other things, by act of parliament; and as that act is understood to have been called for by the English manufacturers, who suffered by the foreign trade, it can hardly be doubted that cards were then manufactured in England on a rather extensive scale. Cards had then, indeed, evidently become very popular in England; and only twenty years afterwards they are spoken of as the common Christmas game, for Margery Paston wrote as follows to her husband, John Paston, on the 24th of December in 1483:—“Please it you to weet (know) that I sent your eldest son John to my lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in the Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports, but playing at the tables, and the chess, and cards—such disports she gave her folks leave to play, and none other.... I sent your younger son to the lady Stapleton, and she said according to my lady Morley’s saying in that, and as she had seen used in places of worship (gentlemen’s houses) there as she had been.”

From this time the mention of cards becomes frequent. They formed the common amusement in the courts of England and Scotland under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV.; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his first visit to his affianced bride, the young princess Margaret of England, “he founde the quene playing at the cardes.”

It must not be forgotten that it is partly to the use of playing cards that we owe the invention which has been justly regarded as one of the greatest benefits granted to mankind. The first cards, as we have seen, were painted with the hand. They were subsequently made more rapidly by a process called stencilling—that is, by cutting the rude forms through a piece of pasteboard, parchment, or thin metal, which, placed on the cardboard intended to receive the impression, was brushed over with ink or colour, which passed through the cut out lines, and imparted the figure to the material beneath. A further improvement was made by cutting the figures on blocks of wood, and literally printing them on the cards. These card-blocks are supposed to have given the first idea of wood-engraving. When people saw the effects of cutting the figures of the cards upon blocks, they began to cut figures of saints on blocks in the same manner, and then applied the method to other subjects, cutting in like manner the few words of necessary explanation. This practice further expanded itself into what are called block-books, consisting of pictorial subjects, with copious explanatory text. Some one at length hit upon the idea of cutting the pages of a regular book on so many blocks of wood, and taking impressions on paper or vellum, instead of writing the manuscript; and this plan was soon further improved by cutting letters or words on separate pieces of wood, and setting them up together to form pages. The wood was subsequently superseded by metal. And thus originated the noble art of Printing.

CHAPTER XI.
DOMESTIC AMUSEMENTS AFTER DINNER.—THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE.—PET ANIMALS.—OCCUPATIONS AND MANNERS OF THE LADIES.—SUPPER.—CANDLES, LAMPS, AND LANTERNS.

When the dinner was over, and hands washed, a drink was served round, and then the ladies left the table, and went to their chambers or to the garden or fields, to seek their own amusements, which consisted frequently of dancing, in which they were often joined by the younger of the male portion of the household, while the others remained drinking. They seem often to have gone to drink in another apartment, or secondary hall, perhaps in the parlour. In the romance of “La Violette” (p. 159), we read of the father of a family going to sleep after dinner. In the same romance (p. 152), the young ladies and gentlemen of a noble household are described as spreading themselves over the castle, to amuse themselves, attended by minstrels with music. From other romances we find that this amusement consisted often in dancing, and that the ladies sometimes sang for themselves, instead of having minstrels. We find these amusements alluded to in the fabliaux and romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In one of the fabliaux, a knight having been received hospitably at a feudal castle, after dinner they wash, and drink round, and then they go to dance— Ses mains
Lava, et puis l’autre gent toute,
Et puis se burent tout à route,
Et por l’amor dou chevalier
Se vont trestuit apparillier
De faire karoles et dances.
In the early English romance of “Sir Degrevant,” after dinner the ladies go to their chambers to arrange themselves, and then some proceed to amuse themselves in the garden— When the lordys were drawin (withdrawn),
Ladyes rysen, was not to leyn,
And wentten to chaumbur ageyne,
Anon thei hom dythus (dight);
Dame Mildore and hyr may (maid)
Went to the orcherd to play.
In the romance of “Lanfal,” we have the same circumstance of dancing after dinner:— And after mete Syr Gaweyn,
Sir Gyeryes and Agrafayn,
And Syr Launfal also,
Went to daunce upon the grene,
Unther the tour ther lay the quene,
Wyth syxty ladyes and mo.
* * * * *
They hadde menstrayles (minstrels) of moch honours,
Fydelers, sytolyrs, and trompours,
And elles hyt were unryght;
Ther they playde, for sothe to say,
After mete the somerys day,
Alle what (till) hyt was neygh nyght.
It was only on extraordinary occasions, however, that the dancing or walking in the garden continued all day. In the romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” the dinner-party quit the table, to wander in the fields and forests round the castle, and the young hero of the story, on their return thence, goes to play in the chambers with the ladies:—

There were two classes of dances in the middle ages, the domestic dances, and the dances of the jougleurs or minstrels. After the first crusades, the western jougleurs had adopted many of the practices of their brethren in the east, and, among others, it is evident from many allusions in old writers that they had brought westward that of the “almehs,” or eastern dancing-girls. These dances formed, like the vulgar fabliaux, a part of the jougleur’s budget of representations, and were mostly, like those, gross and indecent. The other class of dances were of a simpler character,—the domestic dances, which consisted chiefly of the carole, in which ladies and gentlemen, alternately, held by each other’s hands and danced in a circle. This mode of dance prevailed so generally, that the word carole became used as a general term for a dance, and caroler, to carole, was equivalent with to dance. The accompanying cut (No. 158), taken from a manuscript of the Roman de Tristan, of the fourteenth century, in the National Library at Paris (No. 6956), represents a party dancing the carole to the music of pipe and tabor. A dance of another description is represented in our next cut (No. 159), taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 174), also of the fourteenth century. Here the minstrels themselves appear to be joining in the saltitation which they inspire. It is a good illustration of the scene described from the romance of “La Violette.” On festive occasions this dancing often continued till supper-time.

Other quieter games were pursued in the chambers. Among these the most dignified was chess, after which came tables, draughts, and, in the fourteenth century, cards. Sometimes, as described in the preceding chapter, they played at sedentary games, such as chess and tables; or at diversions of a still more frolicsome character. These latter seem to have been most in vogue in the evening after supper. The author of the “Ménagier de Paris,” written about the year 1393 (tom. i. p. 71), describes the ladies as playing, in an evening, at games named bric, and qui fery? (who struck?), and pince merille, and tiers, and others. The first of these games is mentioned about a century and a half earlier by the trouvère Rutebeuf, and by other mediæval writers; but all we seem to know of it is, that the players were seated, apparently on the ground, and that one of them was furnished with a rod or stick. We know less still of pince merille. Qui fery? is evidently the game which was, at a later period, called hot-cockles; and tiers is understood to be the game now called blindman’s buff. These, and other games, are not unfrequently represented in the fanciful drawings in the margins of mediæval illuminated manuscripts; but as no names or descriptions are given with these drawings, it is often very difficult to identify them. Our cut (No. 160), which is given by Strutt, from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is one of several subjects representing the game of blindman’s buff, or, as it was formerly called in England, hoodman-blind, because the person blinded had his eyes covered with a hood. It is here played by females, but, in other illuminations, or drawings, the players are boys or men—the latter plainly indicated by their beards. The word hoodman-blind is not found at an earlier period than the Elizabethan age, yet this name, from its allusion to the costume, was evidently older. A personage in Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 4) asks— What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Hot-cockles seems formerly to have been a very favourite game. One of the players was blindfolded, and knelt down, with his face on the knee of another, and his hand held out flat behind him; the other players in turn struck him on the hand, and he was obliged to guess at the name of the striker, who, if he guessed right, was compelled to take his place. A part of the joke appears to have consisted in the hardness of the blows. Our cut (No. 161), from the Bodleian manuscript (which was written in 1344), is evidently intended to represent a party of females playing at hot-cockles, though the damsel who plays the principal part is not blindfolded, and she is touched on the back, and not on the hand. Our next cut (No. 162), which represents a party of shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in the same game, is taken from a piece of Flemish tapestry, of the fifteenth century, which is at present to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. Allusions to this game are found in the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the “commendatory verses” to the second edition of “Gondibert” (by William Davenant), printed in 1653, is the following rather curious piece of wit, which explains itself, and is, at the same time, an extremely good description of this game:—

THE POET’S HOT-COCKLES.

Thus poets, passing time away.
Like children at hot-cockles play;
All strike by turn, and Will is strook
(And he lies down that writes a book).
Have at thee, Will, for now I come,
Spread thy hand faire upon thy bomb;
For thy much insolence, bold bard,
And little sense I strike thus hard.
“Whose hand was that?” “’Twas Jaspar Mayne.”
“Nay, there you’re out; lie down again.”
With Gondibert, prepare, and all
See where the doctor comes to maul
The author’s hand, ’twill make him reel;
No, Will lies still, and does not feel.
That book’s so light, ’tis all one whether
You strike with that or with a feather.
But room for one, new come to town,
That strikes so hard, he’ll knock him down;
The hand he knows, since it the place
Has toucht more tender than his face;
Important sheriff, now thou lyst down,
We’ll kiss thy hands, and clap our own.
The game of hot-cockles has only become obsolete in recent times, if it be even now quite out of use. Most readers will remember the passage in Gay’s “Pastorals:”— As at hot-cockles once I laid me down,
And felt the weighty hand of many a clown,
Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I
Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye.
This passage is aptly illustrated by the cut from the tapestry. The same Bodleian manuscript gives us a playful group, reproduced in our cut No. 163, which Strutt believes to be the game called, in more modern times, “frog-in-the-middle.” One of the party, who played frog, sat on the ground, while his comrades surrounded and buffeted him, until he could catch and hold one of them, who then had to take his place. In our cut, the players are females.

Games of questions and commands, and of forfeits, were also common in mediæval society. Among the poems of Baudouin and Jean de Condé (poets of the thirteenth century), we have a description of a game of this kind. “One time,” we are told, “there was play among ladies and damsels; there were among them both clever and handsome; they took up many games, until, at last, they elected a queen to play at roy-qui-ne-ment (the king who does not lie); she, whom they chose, was clever at commands and at questions:”— Une foi ierent en dosnoi
Entre dames et damoiselles;
De cointes i ot et de belles.
De plusieurs deduits s’entremistrent,
Et tant c’une royne fistrent
Pour jouer au roy-qui-ne-ment.
Ele s’en savoit finement
Entremettre de commander
Et de demandes demander.
—Barbazan Fabliaux, tom. i. p. 100.
The aim of the questions was, of course, to provoke answers which would excite mirth; and the sequel of the story shows the great want of delicacy which prevailed in mediæval society. Another sort of amusement was furnished, by what may be called games of chance; in which the players, in turn, drew a character at hazard. These characters were generally written in verse, in burlesque and often very coarse language, and several sets of them have been preserved in old manuscripts. They consist of a series of alternate good and bad characters, sometimes only designed for females, but at others for women and men: two of these sets (printed in my “Anecdota Literaria”) were written in England; one, of the thirteenth century, in Anglo-Norman, the other, of the fifteenth century, in English. From these we learn that the game, in England, was called Rageman, or Ragman, and that the verses, describing the characters, were written on a roll called Ragman’s Roll, and had strings attached to them, by which each person drew his or her chance. The English set has a short preface, in which the author addresses himself to the ladies, for whose special use it was compiled:— My ladyes and my maistresses echone,
Lyke hit unto your humbylle wommanhede
Resave in gré (good part) of my sympille persone
This rolle, which withouten any drede
Kynge Ragman me bad mesoure in brede,
And cristyned yt the meroure of your chaunce;
Draweth a strynge, and that shal streight yow leyde
Unto the verry path of your governaunce—
i. e. it will tell you exactly how you behave yourself, what is your character. This game is alluded to by the poet Gower in the “Confessio Amantis:”— Venus, whiche stant withoute lawe,
In non certeyne, but as men drawe
Of Ragemon upon the chaunce,
Sche leyeth no peys (weight) in the balaunce.
The ragman’s roll, when rolled up for use, would present a confused mass of strings hanging from it, probably with bits of wax at the end, from which the drawer had to select one. This game possesses a peculiar historical interest. When the Scottish nobles and chieftains acknowledged their dependence on the English crown in the reign of Edward I., the deed by which they made this acknowledgment, having all their seals hung to it, presented, when rolled up, much the appearance of the roll used in this game; and hence, no doubt, they gave it in derision the name of the Ragman’s Roll. Afterwards it became the custom to call any roll with many signatures, or any long catalogue, the various headings of which were perhaps marked by strings, by the same name. This game of chance or fortune was continued, under other names, to a late period. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the burlesque characters were often inscribed on the back of roundels, which were no doubt dealt round to the company like cards, with the inscribed side downwards.

Sometimes the ladies and young men indulged within doors in more active games—among which we may mention especially different games with the ball, and also, perhaps, the whipping-top. We learn from many sources that hand-ball was from a very early period a favourite recreation with the youth of both sexes. It is a subject not unfrequently met with in the marginal drawings of mediæval manuscripts. The annexed example (cut No. 164), from MS. Harl. No. 6563, represents apparently two ladies playing with a ball. In other instances, a lady and a gentleman are similarly occupied. Our cut No. 165 is taken from one of the carvings of the miserere seats in Gloucester cathedral. The long tails of the hoods belong to the costume of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The whipping-top was also a plaything of considerable antiquity; I think it may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. Our cut No. 166 is taken from one of the marginal drawings of a well-known manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) of the beginning of the fourteenth century. It may be remarked that the knots on the lashes merely mark a conventional manner of representing a whip, for every boy knows that a knotted whip would not do for a top. Mediæval art was full of such conventionalities.

Most of these recreations of young people in the middle ages were gradually left to a still younger age, and became children’s games, and of these the margins of the illuminated manuscripts furnish abundant examples. One of these (taken from the margin of the Royal MS., 10 E. iv., of the fourteenth century) will be sufficient for the present occasion. A favourite game, during at least the later periods of the middle ages, was that which is now called nine-pins. The French gave it the name quilles, which in our language was corrupted into keyles and kayles. The lad in our cut (No. 167) is not, as at present, bowling at the pins, but throwing with a stick, a form of the game which was called in French the jeu de quilles à baston, and in English club-kayles. Money was apparently played for, and the game was looked upon as belonging to the same class as hazard. In a series of metrical counsels to apprentices, compiled in the fifteenth century, and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” ii. 223, they are recommended to—

When no gaiety was going on, the ladies of the household were employed in occupations of a more useful description, among which the principal were spinning, weaving, knitting, embroidering, and sewing. Almost everything of this kind was done at home at the period of which we are now speaking, and equally in the feudal castle or manor, and in the house of the substantial burgher, the female part of the family spent a great part of their time in different kinds of work in the chambers of the lady of the household. Such work is alluded to in mediæval writers, from time to time, and we find it represented in illuminated manuscripts, but not so frequently as some of the other domestic scenes. In the romance of the “Death of Garin le Loherain,” when count Fromont visited the chamber of fair Beatrice, he found her occupied in sewing a very beautiful chainsil, or petticoat:— Vint en la chambre à la bele Beatriz;
Ele cosoit un molt riche chainsil.
—Mort de Garin, p. 10.
In the romance of “La Violette,” the daughter of the burgher, in whose house the count Girard is lodged, is described as being “one day seated in her father’s chambers working a stole and amice in silk and gold, very skilfully, and she made in it, with care, many a little cross and many a star, singing all the while a chanson-à-toile,” meaning, it is supposed, a song of a grave measure, composed for the purpose of being sung by ladies when weaving:— I. jor sist es chambres son pere,
Une estole et i. amit pere
De soie et d’or molt soutilment,
Si i fait ententevement
Mainte croisete et mainte estoile,
Et dist ceste chanchon à toile.
—Roman de la Violette, p. 113.
In one of Rutebeuf’s fabliaux, a woman makes excuse for being up late at night that she was anxious to finish a piece of linen cloth she was weaving:— Sire, fet-elle, il me faut traimer
A une toile que je fais.
And in another fabliau, that of “Guillaume au Faucon,” a young “bacheler” entering suddenly the chamber of the ladies, finds them all occupied in embroidering a piece of silk with the ensigns of the lord of the castle. Embroidery, indeed, was a favourite occupation: a lady thus employed is represented in our cut No. 168, taken from a richly illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) The ladies, too, not only made up the cloths into dresses and articles of other kinds, but they were extensively employed in the various processes of making the cloth itself. Our cut No. 169, taken from a manuscript of about the same period (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents the process of carding the wool; and the same manuscript furnishes us with another cut (No. 170), in which a lady appears in the employment of spinning it into yarn. Our next cut (No. 171), taken from an illumination in an early French translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid (in the National Library, MS. 6986), represents three ladies (intended for the three Fates) employed in these domestic occupations, and will give us a notion of the implements they used.

Domestic animals, particularly dogs and birds, were favourite companions of the ladies in their chambers. A favourite falcon had frequently its “perche” in a corner of the chamber; and in the illuminations we sometimes see the lady seated with the bird on her wrist. Birds in cages are also not unfrequently alluded to through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the romance of “La Violette” a tame lark plays rather an important part in the story. Our cut No. 172, where we see two birds in a cage together, and which is curious for the form of the cage, is given by Willemin from a manuscript of the fourteenth century at Paris. The hawk, though usually kept only for hunting, sometimes became a pet, and persons carried their hawks on the fist even in social parties within doors. The jay is spoken of as a cage-bird. The parrot, under the name of papejay, popinjay, or papingay, is also often spoken of during the middle ages, although, in all probability, it was very rare. The favourite talking-bird was the pie, or magpie, which often plays a very remarkable part in mediæval stories. The aptness of this bird for imitation led to an exaggerated estimate of its powers, and it is frequently made to give information to the husband of the weaknesses of his wife. Several mediæval stories turn upon this supposed quality. The good chevalier de la Tour-Landry, in his book of counsels to his daughters, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, tells a story of a magpie as a warning of the danger of indulging in gluttony. “I will tell you,” he says, “a story in regard to women who eat dainty morsels in the absence of their lords. There was a lady who had a pie in a cage, which talked of everything which it saw done. Now it happened that the lord of the household preserved a large eel in a pond, and kept it very carefully, in order to give it to some of his lords or of his friends, in case they should visit him. So it happened that the lady said to her female attendant that it would be good to eat the great eel, and accordingly they eat it, and agreed that they would tell their lord that the otter had eaten it. And when the lord returned, the pie began to say to him, ‘My lord, my lady has eaten the eel.’ Then the lord went to his pond, and missed his eel; and he went into the house, and asked his wife what had become of it. She thought to excuse herself easily, but he said that he knew all about it, and that the pie had told him. The result was that there was great quarrelling and trouble in the house; but when the lord was gone away, the lady and her female attendant went to the pie, and plucked all the feathers from his head, saying, ‘You told about the eel.’ And so the poor pie was quite bald. But from that time forward, when it saw any people who were bald or had large foreheads, the pie said to them, ‘Ah! you told about the eel!’ And this is a good example how no woman ought to eat any choice morsel by gluttony without the knowledge of her lord, unless it be to give it to people of honour; for this lady was afterwards mocked and jeered for eating the eel, through the pie which complained of it.” The reader will recognise in this the origin of a much more modern story.

One of the stories in the celebrated mediæval collection, entitled “The Seven Sages,” also turns upon the talkative qualities of this bird. There was a burgher who had a pie which, on being questioned, related whatever it had seen, for it spoke uncommonly well the language of the people. Now the burgher’s wife was a good-for-nothing woman, and as soon as her husband went from home about business, she sent for her friend out of the town; but the pie, which was a great favourite of the burgher, told him all the goings on when he returned, and the husband knew that it always spoke the truth. So he became acquainted with his wife’s conduct. One day the burgher went from home, and told his wife he should not return that night, and she immediately sent for her friend; but he was afraid to enter, for “the pie was hung up in his cage on a high perch in the middle of the porch of the house.” Encouraged, however, by the lady, the friend ventured in, and passed through the hall to the chamber. The pie, which saw him pass, and knew him well on account of some tricks he had played upon it, called out, “Ah, sir! you who are in the chamber there, why don’t you pay your visits when the master is at home?” It said no more all the day, but the lady set her wits to work for a stratagem to avert the danger. So when night came, she called her chamber-maiden, and gave her a great jug full of water, and a lighted candle, and a wooden mallet, and about midnight the maiden mounted on the top of the house, and began to beat with the mallet on the laths, and from time to time showed the light through the crevices, and threw the water right down upon the pie till the bird was wet all over. Next morning the husband came home, and began to question his pie. “Sir,” it said, “my lady’s friend has been here, and stayed all night, and is only just gone away. I saw him go.” Then the husband was very angry, and was going to quarrel with his wife, but the pie went on—“Sir, it has thundered and lightened all night, and the rain was so heavy that I have been wet through.” “Nay,” said the husband, “it has been fine all night, without rain or storm.” “You see,” said the crafty dame, “you see how much your bird is to be believed. Why should you put more faith in him when he tells tales about me, than when he talks so knowingly about the weather?” Then the burgher thought he had been deceived, and turning his wrath upon the pie, drew it from the cage and twisted its neck; but he had no sooner done so than, looking up, he saw how the laths had been deranged. So he got a ladder, mounted on the roof, and discovered the whole mystery. If, says the story, he had not been so hasty, the life of his bird would have been saved. In the English version of this series of tales, printed by Weber, the pie’s cage is made to hang in the hall:— The burgeis hadde a pie in his halle,
That couthe telle tales alle
Apertlich (openly), in French langage,
And heng in a faire cage.
In the other English version, edited by the author of this work for the Percy Society, the bird is said to have been, not a pie, but a “popynjay,” or parrot, and there are other variations in it which show that it had been taken more directly from the Oriental original, in which, as might be expected, the bird is a parrot.