CARICATURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.--STATE OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE MIDDLE
AGES.--EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC CARICATURE FROM THE CARVINGS OF THE
MISERERES.--KITCHEN SCENES.--DOMESTIC BRAWLS.--THE FIGHT FOR
THE BREECHES.--THE JUDICIAL DUEL BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE AMONG
THE GERMANS.--ALLUSIONS TO WITCHCRAFT.--SATIRES ON THE TRADES;
THE BAKER, THE MILLER, THE WINE-PEDLAR AND TAVERN-KEEPER, THE
ALE-WIFE, ETC.
The influence of the jougleurs over people's minds generally, with
their stories and satirical pieces, their grimaces, their postures,
and their wonderful performances, was very considerable, and may be
easily traced in mediæval manners and sentiments. This influence would
naturally be exerted upon inventive art, and when a painter had to
adorn the margin of a book, or the sculptor to decorate the ornamental
parts of a building, we might expect the ideas which would first
present themselves to him to be those suggested by the jougleur's
performance, for the same taste had to be indulged in the one as in the
other. The same wit or satire would pervade them both.
[Illustration: _No. 71. A Mediæval Kitchen Scene._]
Among the most popular subjects of satire during the middle ages, were
domestic scenes. Domestic life at that period appears to have been in
its general character coarse, turbulent, and, I should say, anything
but happy. In all its points of view, it presented abundant subjects
for jest and burlesque. There is little room for doubt that the Romish
Church, as it existed in the middle ages, was extremely hostile to
domestic happiness among the middle and lower classes, and that the
interference of the priest in the family was only a source of domestic
trouble. The satirical writings of the period, the popular tales,
the discourses of those who sought reform, even the pictures in the
manuscripts and the sculptures on the walls invariably represent the
female portion of the family as entirely under the influence of the
priests, and that influence as exercised for the worst of purposes.
They encouraged faithlessness as well as disobedience in wives, and
undermined the virtue of daughters, and were consequently regarded with
anything but kindly feeling by the male portion of the population. The
priest, the wife, and the husband, form the usual leading characters
in a mediæval farce. Subjects of this kind are not very unfrequent in
the illuminations of manuscripts, and more especially in the sculptures
of buildings, and those chiefly ecclesiastical, in which monks or
priests are introduced in very equivocal situations. This part of the
subject, however, is one into which we shall not here venture, as we
find the mediæval caricaturists drawing plenty of materials from the
less vicious shades of contemporary life; and, in fact, some of their
most amusing pictures are taken from the droll, rather than from the
vicious, scenes of the interior of the household. Such scenes are
very frequent on the misereres of the old cathedrals and collegiate
churches. Thus, in the stalls at Worcester Cathedral, there is a droll
figure of a man seated before a fire in a kitchen well stored with
flitches of bacon, he himself occupied in attending to the boiling pot,
while he warms his feet, for which purpose he has taken off his shoes.
In a similar carving in Hereford Cathedral, a man, also in the kitchen,
is seen attempting to take liberties with the cook maid, who throws a
platter at his head. A copy of this curious subject is given in cut
No. 71, and the cut No. 72 is taken from a similar miserere in Minster
Church, in the Isle of Thanet. It represents an old lady seated,
occupied industriously in spinning, and accompanied by her cats.
[Illustration: _No. 72. An Old Lady and her Friends._]
[Illustration: _No. 73. The Lady and her Cat._]
We might easily add other examples of similar subjects from the same
sources, such as the scene in our cut No. 73, taken from one of the
stalls of Winchester Cathedral, which seems to be intended to represent
a witch riding away upon her cat, an enormous animal, whose jovial
look is only outdone by that of its mistress. The latter has carried
her distaff with her, and is diligently employed in spinning. A stall
in Sherborne Minster, given in our cut No. 74, represents a scene in a
school, in which an unfortunate scholar is experiencing punishment of
a rather severe description, to the great alarm of his companions, on
whom his disgrace is evidently acting as a warning. The flogging scene
at school appears to have been rather a favourite subject among the
early caricaturists, for the scourge was looked upon in the middle ages
as the grand stimulant to scholarship. In those good old times, when a
man recalled to memory his schoolboy days, he did not say, "When I was
at school," but, "When I was under the rod."
[Illustration: _No. 74. Scholastic Discipline._]
[Illustration: _No. 75. A Point in Dispute._]
An extensive field for the study of this interesting part of our
subject will be found in the architectural gallery in the Kensington
Museum, which contains a large number of calls from stalls and other
sculptures, chiefly selected from the French cathedrals. One of these,
engraved in our cut No. 75, represents a couple of females, seated
before the kitchen fire. The date of this sculpture is stated to be
1382. To judge by their looks and attitude, there is a disagreement
between them, and the object in dispute seems to be a piece of meat,
which one has taken out of the pot and placed on a dish. This lady
wields her ladle as though she were prepared to use it as a weapon,
while her opponent is armed with the bellows. The ale-pot was not
unfrequently the subject of pictures of a turbulent character, and
among the grotesque and monstrous figures in the margins of the noble
manuscript of the fourteenth century, known as the "Luttrell Psalter,"
one represents two personages not only quarrelling over their pots,
which they appear to have emptied, but actually fighting with them. One
of them has literally broken his pot over his companion's head. The
scene is copied in our cut No. 76.
[Illustration: _No. 76. Want of Harmony over the Pot._]
[Illustration: _No. 77. Domestic Strife._]
[Illustration: _No. 78. A Struggle for the Mastery._]
It must be stated, however, that the more common subjects of these
homely scenes are domestic quarrels, and that the man, or his wife,
enjoying their fireside, or similar bits of domestic comfort, only
make their appearance at rare intervals. Domestic quarrels and combats
are much more frequent. We have already seen, in the cut No. 75,
two dames of the kitchen evidently beginning to quarrel over their
cookery. A stall in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon gives us the
group represented in our cut No. 77. The battle has here become
desperate, but whether the male combatant be an oppressed husband or
an impertinent intruder, is not clear. The quarrel would seem to have
arisen during the process of cooking, as the female, who has seized
her opponent by the beard, has evidently snatched up the ladle as
the readiest weapon at hand. The anger appears to be mainly on her
side, and the rather tame countenance of her antagonist contrasts
strangely with her inflamed features. Our next cut, No. 78, is taken
from the sculpture of a column in Ely Cathedral, here copied from an
engraving in Carter's "Specimens of Ancient Sculpture." A man and
wife, apparently, are struggling for the possession of a staff, which
is perhaps intended to be the emblem of mastery. As is generally
represented to be the case in these scenes of domestic strife, the
woman shows more energy and more strength than her opponent, and she
is evidently overcoming him. The mastery of the wife over the husband
seems to have been a universally acknowledged state of things. A stall
in Sherborne Minster, in Dorset, which has furnished the subject of our
cut No. 79, might almost be taken as the sequel of the last cut. The
lady has possessed herself of the staff, has overthrown her husband,
and is even striking him on the head with it when he is down. In our
next cut, No. 80, which is taken from one of the casts of stalls in
the French cathedrals exhibited in the Kensington Museum, it is not
quite clear which of the two is the offender, but, perhaps, in this
case, the archer, as his profession is indicated by his bow and arrows,
has made a gallant assault, which, although she does not look much
displeased at it, the offended dame certainly resists with spirit.
[Illustration: _No. 79. The Wife in the Ascendant._]
[Illustration: _No. 80. Violence Resisted._]
One idea connected with this picture of domestic antagonism appears
to have been very popular from a rather early period. There is a
proverbial phrase to signify that the wife is master in the household,
by which it is intimated that "she wears the breeches." The phrase
is, it must be confessed, an odd one, and is only half understood by
modern explanations; but in mediæval story we learn how "she" first
put in her claim to wear this particular article of dress, how it was
first disputed and contested, how she was at times defeated, but how,
as a general rule, the claim was enforced. There was a French poet of
the thirteenth century, Hugues Piaucelles, two of whose _fabliaux_, or
metrical tales, entitled the "Fabliau d'Estourmi," and the "Fabliau de
Sire Hains et de Dame Anieuse," are preserved in manuscript, and have
been printed in the collection of Barbazan. The second of these relates
some of the adventures of a mediæval couple, whose household was not
the best regulated in the world. The name of the heroine of this
story, Anieuse, is simply an old form of the French word _ennuyeuse_,
and certainly dame Anieuse was sufficiently "ennuyeuse" to her lord
and husband. "Sire Hains," her husband, was, it appears, a maker of
"cottes" and mantles, and we should judge also, by the point on which
the quarrel turned, that he was partial to a good dinner. Dame Anieuse
was of that disagreeable temper, that whenever Sire Hains told her of
some particularly nice thing which he wished her to buy for his meal,
she bought instead something which she knew was disagreeable to him.
If he ordered boiled meat, she invariably roasted it, and further
contrived that it should be so covered with cinders and ashes that
he could not eat it. This would show that people in the middle ages
(except, perhaps, professional cooks) were very unapt at roasting meat.
This state of things had gone on for some time, when one day Sire Hains
gave orders to his wife to buy him fish for his dinner. The disobedient
wife, instead of buying fish, provided nothing for his meal but a dish
of spinage, telling him falsely that all the fish stank. This leads to
a violent quarrel, in which, after some fierce wrangling, especially
on the part of the lady, Sire Hains proposes to decide their difference
in a novel manner. "Early in the morning," he said, "I will take off
my breeches and lay them down in the middle of the court, and the one
who can win them shall be acknowledged to be master or mistress of the
house."
_Le matinet, sans contredire,
Voudrai mes braies deschaucier,
Et enmi nostre cort couchier;
Et qui conquerre les porra,
Par bone reson mousterra
Qu'il ert sire ou dame du nostre._
Barbazan, Fabliaux, tome iii. p. 383.
Dame Anieuse accepted the challenge with eagerness, and each prepared
for the struggle. After due preparation, two neighbours, friend Symon
and Dame Aupais, having been called in as witnesses, and the object
of dispute, the breeches, having been placed on the pavement of the
court, the battle began, with some slight parody on the formalities
of the judicial combat. The first blow was given by the dame, who was
so eager for the fray that she struck her husband before he had put
himself on his guard; and the war of tongues, in which at least Dame
Anieuse had the best of it, went on at the same time as the other
battle. Sire Hains ventured a slight expostulation on her eagerness
for the fray, in answer to which she only threw in his teeth a fierce
defiance to do his worst. Provoked at this, Sire Hains struck at her,
and hit her over the eyebrows, so effectively, that the skin was
discoloured; and, over-confident in the effect of this first blow, he
began rather too soon to exult over his wife's defeat. But Dame Anieuse
was less disconcerted than he expected, and recovering quickly from
the effect of the blow, she turned upon him and struck him on the same
part of his face with such force, that she nearly knocked him over the
sheepfold. Dame Anieuse, in her turn, now sneered over him, and while
he was recovering from his confusion, her eyes fell upon the object of
contention, and she rushed to it, and laid her hands upon it to carry
it away. This movement roused Sire Hains, who instantly seized another
part of the article of his dress of which he was thus in danger of
being deprived, and began a struggle for possession, in which the said
article underwent considerable dilapidation, and fragments of it were
scattered over the court. In the midst of this struggle the actual
fight recommenced, by the husband giving his wife so heavy a blow on
the teeth that her mouth was filled with blood. The effect was such
that Sire Hains already reckoned on the victory, and proclaimed himself
lord of the breeches.
_Hains fiert sa fame enmi les denz
Tel cop, que la bouche dedenz
Li a toute emplie de sancz.
"Tien ore," dist Sire Hains, "anc,
Je cuit que je t'ai bien atainte,
Or t'ai-je de deux colors tainte--
J'aurai les braies toutes voies."_
But the immediate effect on Dame Anieuse was only to render her more
desperate. She quitted her hold on the disputed garment, and fell upon
her husband with such a shower of blows that he hardly knew which way
to turn. She was thus, however, unconsciously exhausting herself, and
Sire Hains soon recovered. The battle now became fiercer than ever,
and the lady seemed to be gaining the upper hand, when Sire Hains gave
her a skilful blow in the ribs, which nearly broke one of them, and
considerably checked her ardour. Friend Symon here interposed, with
the praiseworthy aim of restoring peace before further harm might be
done, but in vain, for the lady was only rendered more obstinate by
her mishap; and he agreed that it was useless to interfere until one
had got a more decided advantage over the other. The fight therefore
went on, the two combatants having now seized each other by the hair
of the head, a mode of combat in which the advantages were rather on
the side of the male. At this moment, one of the judges, Dame Aupais,
sympathising too much with Dame Anieuse, ventured some words of
encouragement, which drew upon her a severe rebuke from her colleague,
Symon, who intimated that if she interfered again there might be two
pairs of combatants instead of one. Meanwhile Dame Anieuse was becoming
exhausted, and was evidently getting the worst of the contest, until at
length, staggering from a vigorous push, she fell back into a large
basket which lay behind her. Sire Hains stood over her exultingly,
and Symon, as umpire, pronounced him victorious. He thereupon took
possession of the disputed article of raiment, and again invested
himself with it, while the lady accepted faithfully the conditions
imposed upon her, and we are assured by the poet that she was a good
and obedient wife during the rest of her life. In this story, which
affords a curious picture of mediæval life, we learn the origin of the
proverb relating to the possession and wearing of the breeches. Hugues
Piaucelles concludes his _fabliau_ by recommending every man who has a
disobedient wife to treat her in the same manner; and mediæval husbands
appear to have followed his advice, without fear of laws against the
ill-treatment of women.
[Illustration: _No. 81. The Fight for the Breeches._]
A subject like this was well fitted for the burlesques on the stalls,
and accordingly we find on one of those in the cathedral at Rouen, the
group given in our cut No. 81, which seems to represent the part of the
story in which both combatants seize hold of the disputed garment, and
struggle for possession of it. The husband here grasps a knife in his
hand, with which he seems to be threatening to cut it to pieces rather
than give it up. The _fabliau_ gives the victory to the husband, but
the wife was generally considered as in a majority of cases carrying
off the prize. In an extremely rare engraving by the Flemish artist
Van Mecken, dated in 1480, of which I give a copy in our cut No. 82.
the lady, while putting on the breeches, of which she has just become
possessed, shows an inclination to lord it rather tyrannically over her
other half, whom she has condemned to perform the domestic drudgery of
the mansion.
[Illustration: _No. 82. The Breeches Won._]
[Illustration: _No. 83. A Legal Combat._]
In Germany, where there was still more roughness in mediæval life, what
was told in England and France as a good story of domestic doings,
was actually carried into practice under the authority of the laws.
The judicial duel was there adopted by the legal authorities as a
mode of settling the differences between husband and wife. Curious
particulars on this subject are given in an interesting paper entitled
"Some observations on Judicial Duels as practised in Germany,"
published in the twenty-ninth volume of the Archæologia of the Society
of Antiquaries (p. 348). These observations are chiefly taken from
a volume of directions, accompanied with drawings, for the various
modes of attack and defence, compiled by Paulus Kall, a celebrated
teacher of defence at the court of Bavaria about the year 1400. Among
these drawings we have one representing the mode of combat between
husband and wife. The only weapon allowed the female, but that a very
formidable one, was, according to these directions, a heavy stone
wrapped up in an elongation of her chemise, while her opponent had only
a short staff, and he was placed up to the waist in a pit formed in
the ground. The following is a literal translation of the directions
given in the manuscript, and our cut No. 83 is a copy of the drawing
which illustrates it:--"The woman must be so prepared, that a sleeve
of her chemise extend a small ell beyond her hand, like a little sack;
there indeed is put a stone weighing three pounds; and she has nothing
else but her chemise, and that is bound together between the legs with
a lace. Then the man makes himself ready in the pit over against his
wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle, and one hand is bound at
the elbow to the side." At this time the practice of such combats in
Germany seems to have been long known, for it is stated that in the
year 1200 a man and his wife fought under the sanction of the civic
authorities at Bâle, in Switzerland. In a picture of a combat between
man and wife, from a manuscript resembling that of Paulus Kall, but
executed nearly a century later, the man is placed in a tub instead
of a pit, with his left arm tied to his side as before, and his right
holding a short heavy staff; while the woman is dressed, and not
stripped to the chemise, as in the former case. The man appears to be
holding the stick in such a manner that the sling in which the stone
was contained would twist round it, and the woman would thus be at
the mercy of her opponent. In an ancient manuscript on the science of
defence in the library at Gotha, the man in the tub is represented as
the conqueror of his wife, having thus dragged her head-foremost into
the tub, where she appears with her legs kicking up in the air.
This was the orthodox mode of combat between man and wife, but it was
sometimes practised under more sanguinary forms. In one picture given
from these old books on the science of defence by the writer of the
paper on the subject in the Archæologia, the two combatants, naked
down to the waist, are represented fighting with sharp knives, and
inflicting upon each other's bodies frightful gashes.
[Illustration: _No. 84. The Witch and the Demon._]
[Illustration: _No. 85. The Witch and her Victim._]
A series of stall carvings at Corbeil, near Paris, of which more will
be said a little farther on in this chapter, has furnished the curious
group represented in our cut No. 84, which is one of the rather rare
pictorial allusions to the subject of witchcraft. It represents a
woman who must, by her occupation, be a witch, for she has so far got
the mastery of the demon that she is sawing off his head with a very
uncomfortable looking instrument. Another story of witchcraft is told
in the sculpture of a stone panel at the entrance of the cathedral of
Lyons, which is represented in our cut No. 85. One power, supposed to
be possessed by witches, was that of transforming people to animals at
will. William of Malmesbury, in his Chronicle, tells a story of two
witches in the neighbourhood of Rome, who used to allure travellers
into their cottage, and there transform them into horses, pigs, or
other animals, which they sold, and feasted themselves with the money.
One day a young man, who lived by the profession of a jougleur, sought
a night's lodging at their cottage, and was received, but they turned
him into an ass, and, as he retained his understanding and his power of
acting, they gained much money by exhibiting him. At length a rich man
of the neighbourhood, who wanted him for his private amusement, offered
the two women a large sum for him, which they accepted, but they warned
the new possessor of the ass that he should carefully restrain him
from going into the water, as that would deprive him of his power of
performing. The man who had purchased the ass acted upon this advice,
and carefully kept him from water, but one day, through the negligence
of his keeper, the ass escaped from his stable, and, rushing to a pond
at no great distance, threw himself into it. Water--and running water
especially--was believed to destroy the power of witchcraft or magic;
and no sooner was the ass immersed in the water, than he recovered his
original form of a young man. He told his story, which soon reached the
ears of the pope, and the two women were seized, and confessed their
crimes. The carving from Lyons Cathedral appears to represent some such
scene of sorcery. The naked woman, evidently a witch, is, perhaps,
seated on a man whom she has transformed into a goat, and she seems to
be whirling the cat over him in such a manner that it may tear his face
with its claws.
There was still another class of subjects for satire and caricature
which belongs to this part of our subject--I mean that of the trader
and manufacturer. We must not suppose that fraudulent trading, that
deceptive and imperfect workmanship, that adulteration of everything
that could be adulterated, are peculiar to modern times. On the
contrary, there was no period in the world's history in which dishonest
dealing was carried on to such an extraordinary extent, in which there
was so much deception used in manufactures, or in which adulteration
was practised on so shameless a scale, as during the middle ages. These
vices, or, as we may, perhaps, more properly describe them, these
crimes, are often mentioned in the mediæval writers, but they were
not easily represented pictorially, and therefore we rarely meet with
direct allusions to them, either in sculpture, on stone or wood, or
in the paintings of illuminated manuscripts. Representations of the
trades themselves are not so rare, and are sometimes droll and almost
burlesque. A curious series of such representations of arts and trades
was carved on the _misereres_ of the church of St. Spire, at Corbeil,
near Paris, which only exist now in Millin's engravings, but they seem
to have been works of the fifteenth century. Among them the first
place is given to the various occupations necessary for the production
of bread, that article so important to the support of life. Thus we
see, in these carvings at Corbeil, the labours of the reaper, cutting
the wheat and forming it into sheaves, the miller carrying it away to
be ground into meal, and the baker thrusting it into the oven, and
drawing it out in the shape of loaves. Our cut No. 86, taken from one
of these sculptures, represents the baker either putting in or taking
out the bread with his peel; by the earnest manner in which he looks at
it, we may suppose that it is the latter, and that he is ascertaining
if it be sufficiently baked. We have an earlier representation of a
mediæval oven in our cut No. 87, taken from the celebrated illuminated
manuscript of the "Romance of Alexandre," in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, which appears to belong to an early period of the fourteenth
century. Here the baker is evidently going to take a loaf out of the
oven, for his companion holds a dish for the purpose of receiving it.
[Illustration: _No. 86. A Baker of the Fifteenth Century._]
[Illustration: _No. 87. A Mediæval Baker._]
In nothing was fraud and adulteration practised to so great an
extent as in the important article of bread, and the two occupations
especially employed in making it were objects of very great dislike and
of scornful satire. The miller was proverbially a thief. Every reader
of Chaucer will remember his character so admirably drawn in that of
the miller of Trumpington, who, though he was as proud and gay "as eny
pecok," was nevertheless eminently dishonest.
_A theef he was for soth of corn and mele,
And that a sleigh_ (sly), _and usyng_ (practised) _for to stele_.
Chaucer's Reeves Tale.
This practice included a large college then existing in Cambridge,
but now forgotten, the Soler Hall, which suffered greatly by his
depredations.
_And on a day it happed in a stounde,
Syk lay the mauncyple on a maledye,
Men wenden wisly that he schulde dye;
For which this meller stal bothe mele and corn
A thousend part more than byforn.
For ther biforn he stal but curteysly;
But now he is a theef outrageously.
For which the wardeyn chidde and made fare,
But therof sette the meller not a tare;
He crakked boost, and swor it was nat so._
Two of the scholars of this college resolved to go with the corn to the
mill, and by their watchfulness prevent his depredations. Those who are
acquainted with the story know how the scholars succeeded, or rather
how they failed; how the miller stole half a bushel of their flour and
caused his wife to make a cake of it; and how the victims had their
revenge and recovered the cake.
As already stated, the baker had in these good old times no better
character than the miller, if not worse. There was an old saying, that
if three persons of three obnoxious professions were put together in a
sack and shaken up, the first who came out would certainly be a rogue,
and one of these was a baker. Moreover, the opinion concerning the
baker was so strong that, as in the phrase taken from the old legends
of the witches, who in their festivals sat thirteen at a table, this
number was popularly called a devil's dozen, and was believed to be
unlucky--so, when the devil's name was abandoned, perhaps for the
sake of euphony, the name substituted for it was that of the baker,
and the number thirteen was called "a baker's dozen." The makers of
nearly all sorts of provisions for sale were, in the middle ages,
tainted with the same vice, and there was nothing from which society in
general, especially in the towns where few made bread for themselves,
suffered so much. This evil is alluded to more than once in that
curious educational treatise, the "Dictionarius" of John de Garlande,
printed in my "Volume of Vocabularies." This writer, who wrote in the
earlier half of the thirteenth century, insinuates that the makers
of pies (_pastillarii_), an article of food which was greatly in
repute during the middle ages, often made use of bad eggs. The cooks,
he says further, sold, especially in Paris to the scholars of the
university, cooked meats, sausages, and such things, which were not
fit to eat; while the butchers furnished the meat of animals which had
died of disease. Even the spices and drugs sold by the apothecaries,
or _épiciers_, were not, he says, to be trusted. John de Garlande
had evidently an inclination to satire, and he gives way to it not
unfrequently in the little book of which I am speaking. He says that
the glovers of Paris cheated the scholars of the university, by selling
them gloves made of bad materials; that the women who gained their
living by winding thread (_devacuatrices_, in the Latin of the time),
not only emptied the scholars' purses, but wasted their bodies also (it
is intended as a pun upon the Latin word); and the hucksters sold them
unripe fruit for ripe. The drapers, he says, cheated people not only
by selling bad materials, but by measuring them with false measures;
while the hawkers, who went about from house to house, robbed as well
as cheated.
M. Jubinal has published in his curious volume entitled "Jongleurs et
Trouvères," a rather jocular poem on the bakers, written in French
of, perhaps, the thirteenth century, in which their art is lauded as
much better and more useful than that of the goldsmith's. The millers'
depredations on the corn sent to be ground at the mill, are laid to the
charge of the rats, which attack it by night, and the hens, which find
their way to it by day; and he explains the diminution the bakings
experienced in the hands of the baker as arising out of the charity of
the latter towards the poor and needy, to whom they gave the meal and
paste before it had even been put into the oven. The celebrated English
poet, John Lydgate, in a short poem preserved in a manuscript in the
Harleian Library in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 2,255, fol. 157,
v^o), describes the pillory, which he calls their Bastile, as the
proper heritage of the miller and the baker:--
_Put out his hed, lyst nat for to dare,
But lyk a man upon that tour to abyde,
For cast of eggys wil not oonys spare,
Tyl he be quallyd body, bak, and syde.
His heed endooryd, and of verray pryde
Put out his armys, shewith abrood his face;
The fenestrallys be made for hym so wyde,
Claymyth to been a capteyn of that place._
_The bastyle longith of verray dewe ryght
To fals bakerys, it is trewe herytage
Severalle to them, this knoweth every wyght,
Be kynde assygned for ther sittyng stage;
Wheer they may freely shewe out ther visage,
Whan they tak oonys their possessioun,
Owthir in youthe or in myddyl age;
Men doon hem wrong yif they take hym down._
_Let mellerys and bakerys gadre hem a gilde,
And alle of assent make a fraternité,
Undir the pillory a letil chapelle bylde,
The place amorteyse, and purchase lyberté,
For alle thos that of ther noumbre be;
What evir it coost afftir that they wende,
They may clayme, be just auctorité,
Upon that bastile to make an ende._
The wine-dealer and the publican formed another class in mediæval
society who lived by fraud and dishonesty, and were the objects of
satire. The latter gave both bad wine and bad measure, and he often
also acted as a pawnbroker, and when people had drunk more than they
could pay for, he would take their clothes as pledges for their money.
The tavern, in the middle ages, was the resort of very miscellaneous
company; gamblers and loose women were always on the watch there to
lead more honest people into ruin, and the tavern-keeper profited
largely by their gains; and the more vulgar minstrel and "jogelour"
found employment there; for the middle classes of society, and even
their betters, frequented the tavern much more generally than at the
present day. In the carved stalls of the church of Corbeil, the liquor
merchant is represented by the figure of a man wheeling a hogshead
in a barrow, as shown in our cut No. 88. The graveness and air of
importance with which he regards it would lead us to suppose that the
barrel contains wine; and the cup and jug on the shelf above show that
it was to be sold retail. The wine-sellers called out their wines
from their doors, and boasted of their qualities, in order to tempt
people in; and John de Garlande assures us that when they entered,
they were served with wine which was not worth drinking. "The criers
of wine," he says, "proclaim with extended throat the diluted wine
they have in their taverns, offering it at four pennies, at six, at
eight, and at twelve, fresh poured out from the gallon cask into the
cup, to tempt people." ("Volume of Vocabularies," p. 126.) The ale-wife
was an especial subject of jest and satire, and is not unfrequently
represented on the pictorial monuments of our forefathers. Our cut No.
89 is taken from one of the misereres in the church of Wellingborough,
in Northamptonshire; the ale-wife is pouring her liquor from her jug
into a cup to serve a rustic, who appears to be waiting for it with
impatience.
[Illustration: _No. 88. The Wine Dealer._]
[Illustration: _No. 89. The Ale-Wife._]
[Illustration: _No. 90. The Ale-Drawer._]
The figure of the ale-drawer, No. 90, is taken from one of the
misereres in the parish church of Ludlow, in Shropshire. The size
of his jug is somewhat disproportionate to that of the barrel from
which he obtains the ale. The same misereres of Ludlow Church furnish
the next scene, cut No. 91, which represents the end of the wicked
ale-wife. The day of judgment is supposed to have arrived, and she has
received her sentence. A demon, seated on one side, is reading a list
of the crimes she has committed, which the magnitude of the parchment
shows to be a rather copious one. Another demon (whose head has been
broken off in the original) carries on his back, in a very irreverent
manner, the unfortunate lady, in order to throw her into hell-mouth, on
the other side of the picture. She is naked with the exception of the
fashionable head-gear, which formed one of her vanities in the world,
and she carries with her the false measure with which she cheated her
customers. A demon bagpiper welcomes her on her arrival. The scene is
full of wit and humour.
[Illustration: _No. 91. The Ale-Wife's End._]
The rustic classes, and instances of their rusticity, are not
unfrequently met with in these interesting carvings. The stalls of
Corbeil present several agricultural scenes. Our cut No. 92 is taken
from those of Gloucester cathedral, of an earlier date, and represents
the three shepherds, astonished at the appearance of the star which
announced the birth of the Saviour of mankind. Like the three kings,
the shepherds to whom this revelation was made were always in the
middle ages represented as three in number. In our drawing from the
miserere in Gloucester cathedral, the costume of the shepherds is
remarkably well depicted, even to the details, with the various
implements appertaining to their profession, most of which are
suspended to their girdles. They are drawn with much spirit, and even
the dog is well represented as an especially active partaker in the
scene.
[Illustration: _No. 92. The Shepherds of the East._]
[Illustration: _No. 93. The Carpenter._]
[Illustration: _No. 94. The Shoemaker._]
Of the two other examples we select from the misereres of Corbeil, the
first represents the carpenter, or, as he was commonly called by our
Anglo-Saxon and mediæval forefathers, the _wright_, which signifies
simply the "maker." The application of this higher and more general
term--for the Almighty himself is called, in the Anglo-Saxon poetry,
_ealra gescefta wyrhta_, the Maker, or Creator, of all things--shows
how important an art that of the carpenter was considered in the
middle ages. Everything made of wood came within his province. In the
Anglo-Saxon "Colloquy" of archbishop Alfric, where some of the more
useful artisans are introduced disputing about the relative value of
their several crafts, the "wright" says, "Who of you can do without
my craft, since I make houses and all sorts of vessels (_vasa_), and
ships for you all?" ("Volume of Vocabularies," p. 11.) And John de
Garlande, in the thirteenth century, describes the carpenter as making,
among other things, tubs, and barrels, and wine-cades. The workmanship
of those times was exercised, before all other materials, on wood
and metals, and the wright, or worker in the former material, was
distinguished by this circumstance from the smith, or worker in metal.
The carpenter is still called a wright in Scotland. Our last cut (No.
94), taken also from one of the misereres at Corbeil, represents the
shoemaker, or as he was then usually called, the cordwainer, because
the leather which he chiefly used came from Cordova in Spain, and was
thence called _cordewan_, or _cordewaine_. Our shoemaker is engaged
in cutting a skin of leather with an instrument of a rather singular
form. Shoes, and perhaps forms for making shoes, are suspended on pegs
against the wall.