CHAPTER VII.

No. 66. Heads and Hats.

Caricatures on costume are by no means uncommon among the artistic remains of the middle ages, and are not confined to illuminated manuscripts. The fashionable dresses of those days went into far more ridiculous excesses of shape than anything we see in our times—at least, so far as we can believe the drawings in the manuscripts; but these, however seriously intended, were constantly degenerating into caricature, from circumstances which are easily explained, and which have, in fact, been explained already in their influence on other parts of our subject. The mediæval artists in general were not very good delineators of form, and their outlines are much inferior to their finish. Conscious of this, though perhaps unknowingly, they sought to remedy the defect in a spirit which has always been adopted in the early stages of art-progress—they aimed at making themselves understood by giving a special prominence tothe peculiar characteristics of the objects they wished to represent. These were the points which naturally attracted people’s first attention, and the resemblance was felt most by people in general when these points were put forward in excessive prominence in the picture. The dresses, perhaps, hardly existed in the exact forms in which we see them in the illuminations, or at least those were only exceptions to the generally more moderate forms; and hence, in using these pictorial records as materials for the history of costume, we ought to make a certain allowance for exaggeration—we ought, indeed, to treat them almost as caricatures. In fact, much of what we now call caricature, was then characteristic of serious art, and of what was considered its high development. Many of the attempts which have been made of late years to introduce ancient costume on the stage, would probably be regarded by the people who lived in the age which they were intended to represent, as a mere design to turn them into ridicule. Nevertheless, the fashions in dress were, especially from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, carried to a great degree of extravagance, and were not only the objects of satire and caricature, but drew forth the indignant declamations of the Church, and furnished a continuous theme to the preachers. The contemporary chronicles abound with bitter reflections on the extravagance in costume, which was considered as one of the outward signs of the great corruption of particular periods; and they give us not unfrequent examples of the coarse manner in which the clergy discussed them in their sermons. The readers of Chaucer will remember the manner in which this subject is treated in the “Parson’s Tale.” In this respect the satirists of the Church went hand in hand with the pictorial caricaturists of the illuminated manuscripts, and of the sculptures with which we sometimes meet in contemporary architectural ornamentation. In the latter, this class of caricature is perhaps less frequent, but it is sometimes very expressive. The very curiousmisereresin the church of Ludlow, in Shropshire, present the caricature reproduced in our cut No. 67. It represents an ugly, and, to judge by the expression of the countenance, an ill-tempered old woman, wearing the fashionable head-dress of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, which seems to have been carried to its greatestextravagance in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. It is the style of coiffure known especially as the horned head-dress, and the very name carries with it a sort of relationship to an individual who was notoriously horned—the spirit of evil. This dashing dame of the olden time appears to have struck terror into two unfortunates who have fallen within her influence, one of whom, as though he took her for a new Gorgon, is attempting to cover himself with his buckler, while the other, apprehending danger of another kind, is prepared to defend himself with his sword. The details of the head-dress in this figure are interesting for the history of costume.

No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty.

No. 68. A Man of War.

Our next cut, No. 68, is taken from a manuscript in private possession, which is now rather well known among antiquaries by the name of the “Luttrell Psalter,” and which belongs to the fourteenth century. It seems to involve a satire on the aristocratic order of society—on the knight who was distinguished by his helmet, his shield, and his armour. The individual here represented presents a type which is anything but aristocratic. While he holdsa helmet in his hand to show the meaning of the satire, his own helmet, which he wears on his head, is simply a bellows. He may be a knight of the kitchen, or perhaps a merequistron, or kitchen lad.

No. 69. A Lady’s Head-dress.

We have just seen a caricature of one of the ladies’ head-dresses of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, and our cut No. 69, from an illuminated manuscript in the British Museum of the latter half of the same century (MS. Harl., No. 4379), furnishes us with a caricature of a head-dress of a different character, which came into fashion in the reign of our Edward IV. The horned head-dress of the previous generation had been entirely laid aside, and the ladies adopted in its place a sort of steeple-shaped head-dress, or rather of the form of a spire, made by rolling a piece of linen into the form of a long cone. Over this lofty cap was thrown a piece of fine lawn or muslin, which descended almost to the ground, and formed, as it were, two wings. A short transparent veil was thrown over the face, and reached not quite to the chin, resembling rather closely the veils in use among our ladies of the present day (1864). The whole head-dress, indeed, has been preserved by the Norman peasantry; for it may be observed that, during the feudal ages, the fashions in France and England were always identical. These steeple head-dresses greatly provoked the indignation of the clergy, and zealous preachers attacked them roughly in their sermons. A French monk, named Thomas Conecte, distinguished himself especially in this crusade, and inveighed against the head-dress with such effect, that we are assured that many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of the sermon, and made a bonfire of them at its conclusion. The zeal of the preacher soon extended itself to the populace, and, for a while, when ladies appeared in this head-dress in public, they were exposed to be pelted by the rabble. Under such a double persecution it disappeared for a moment, but when the preacher was no longer present, it returned again, and, to use thewords of the old writer who has preserved this anecdote, “the women who, like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.” The caricaturist would hardly overlook so extravagant a fashion, and accordingly the manuscript in the British Museum, just mentioned, furnishes us with the subject of our cut No. 69. In those times, when the passions were subjected to no restraint, the fine ladies indulged in such luxury and licentiousness, that the caricaturist has chosen as their fit representative a sow, who wears the objectionable head-dress in full fashion. The original forms one of the illustrations of a copy of the historian Froissart, and was, therefore, executed in France, or, more probably, in Burgundy.

The sermons and satires against extravagance in costume began at an early period. The Anglo-Norman ladies, in the earlier part of the twelfth century, first brought in vogue in our island this extravagance in fashion, which quickly fell under the lash of satirist and caricaturist. It was first exhibited in the robes rather than in the head-dress. These Anglo-Norman ladies are understood to have first introduced stays, in order to give an artificial appearance of slenderness to their waists; but the greatest extravagance appeared in the forms of their sleeves. The robe, or gown, instead of being loose, as among the Anglo-Saxons, was laced close round the body, and the sleeves, which fitted the arm tightly till they reached the elbows, or sometimes nearly to the wrist, then suddenly became larger, and hung down to an extravagant length, often trailing on the ground, and sometimes shortened by means of a knot. The gown, also, was itself worn very long. The clergy preached against these extravagances in fashion, and at times, it is said, with effect; and they fell under the vigorous lash of the satirist. In a class of satires which became extremely popular in the twelfth century, and which produced in the thirteenth the immortal poem of Dante—the visions of purgatory and of hell—these contemporary extravagances in fashion are held up to public detestation, and are made the subject of severe punishment. They were looked upon as among the outward forms of pride. It arose, no doubt, from this taste—from the darker shade which spread over men’s minds in the twelfth century—that demons, instead of animals, wereintroduced to personify the evil-doers of the time. Such is the figure (cut No. 70) which we take from a very interesting manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Nero, C iv.). The demon is here dressed in the fashionable gown with its long sleeves, of which one appears to have been usually much longer than the other. Both the gown and sleeve are shortened by means of knots, while the former is brought close round the waist by tight lacing. It is a picture of the use of stays made at the time of their first introduction.

No. 70. Sin in Satins.

This superfluity of length in the different parts of the dress was a subject of complaint and satire at various and very distant periods, and contemporary illuminations of a perfectly serious character show that these complaints were not without foundation.

PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.—THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR.—HISTORY OF POPULAR STORIES.—THE FABLIAUX.—ACCOUNT OF THEM.—THE CONTES DEVOTS.

I have already remarked that, upon the fall of the Roman empire, the popular institutions of the Romans were more generally preserved to the middle ages than those of a higher and more refined character. This is understood without difficulty, when we consider that the lower class of the population—in the towns, what we might perhaps call the lower and middle classes—continued to exist much the same as before, while the barbarian conquerors came in and took the place of the ruling classes. The drama, which had never much hold upon the love of the Roman populace, was lost, and the theatres and the amphitheatres, which had been supported only by the wealth of the imperial court and of the ruling class, were abandoned and fell into ruin; but themimus, who furnished mirth to the people, continued to exist, and probably underwent no immediate change in his character. It will be well to state again the chief characteristics of the ancientmimus, before we proceed to describe his mediæval representative.

The grand aim of themimuswas to make people laugh, and he employed generally every means he knew of for effecting this purpose, by language, by gestures or motions of the body, or by dress. Thus he carried, strapped over his loins, a wooden sword, which was calledgladius histricusandclunaculum, and wore sometimes a garment made of a great number of small pieces of cloth of different colours, which was hence calledcentunculus, or the hundred-patched dress.[35]These twocharacteristics have been preserved in the modern harlequin. Other peculiarities of costume may conveniently be left undescribed; the female mimæ sometimes exhibited themselves unrestricted by dress. They danced and sung; repeated jokes and told merry stories; recited or acted farces and scandalous anecdotes; performed what we now call mimicry, a word derived from the name of mimus; and they put themselves in strange postures, and made frightful faces. They sometimes acted the part of a fool or zany (morio), or of a madman. They added to these performances that of the conjurer or juggler (præstigiator), and played tricks of sleight of hand. The mimi performed in the streets and public places, or in the theatres, and especially at festivals, and they were often employed at private parties, to entertain the guests at a supper.

We trace the existence of this class of performers during the earlier period of the middle ages by the expressions of hostility towards them used from time to time by the ecclesiastical writers, and the denunciations of synods and councils, which have been quoted in a former chapter.[36]Nevertheless, it is evident from many allusions to them, that they found their way into the monastic houses, and were in great favour not only among the monks, but among the nuns also; that they were introduced into the religious festivals; and that they were tolerated even in the churches. It is probable that they long continued to be known in Italy and the countries near the centre of Roman influence, and where the Latin language was continued, by their old name ofmimus. The writers of the mediæval vocabularies appear all to have been much better acquainted with the meaning of this word than of most of the Latin words of the same class, and they evidently had a class of performers existing in their own times to whom they considered that the name applied. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies interpret the Latinmimusbyglig-mon, a gleeman. In Anglo-Saxon,gligorgliumeant mirth and game of every description, and as the Anglo-Saxon teachers who compiled the vocabularies give, as synonyms ofmimus, the wordsscurra,jocista, andpantomimus, it is evident that all these were included in the characterof the gleeman, and that the latter was quite identical with his Roman type. It was the Romanmimusintroduced into Saxon England. We have no traces of the existence of such a class of performers among the Teutonic race before they became acquainted with the civilisation of imperial Rome. We know from drawings in contemporary illuminated manuscripts that the performances of the gleeman did include music, singing, and dancing, and also the tricks of mountebanks and jugglers, such as throwing up and catching knives and balls, and performing with tamed bears, &c.[37]

But even among the peoples who preserved the Latin language, the wordmimuswas gradually exchanged for others employed to signify the same thing. The wordjocushad been used in the signification of a jest, playfulness,jocarisignified to jest, andjoculatorwas a word for a jester; but, in the debasement of the language,jocuswas taken in the signification of everything which created mirth. It became, in the course of time the French wordjeu, and the Italiangioco, orgiuoco. People introduced a form of the verb,jocare, which became the Frenchjuer, to play or perform.Joculatorwas then used in the sense ofmimus. In French the word becamejogléor, orjougléor, and in its later formjougleur. I may remark that, in mediæval manuscripts, it is almost impossible to distinguish between theuand then, and that modern writers have misread this last word asjongleur, and thus introduced into the language a word which never existed, and which ought to be abandoned. In old English, as we see in Chaucer, the usual form wasjogelere. The mediæval joculator, or jougleur, embraced all the attributes of the Romanmimus,[38]and perhaps more. In the firstplace he was very often a poet himself, and composed the pieces which it was one of his duties to sing or recite. These were chiefly songs, or stories, the latter usually told in verse, and so many of them are preserved in manuscripts that they form a very numerous and important class of mediæval literature. The songs were commonly satirical and abusive, and they were made use of for purposes of general or personal vituperation. Out of them, indeed, grew the political songs of a later period. There were female jougleurs, and both sexes danced, and, to create mirth among those who encouraged them, they practised a variety of performances, such as mimicking people, making wry and ugly faces, distorting their bodies into strange postures, often exposing their persons in a very unbecoming manner, and performing many vulgar and indecent acts, which it is not necessary to describe more particularly. They carried about with them for exhibition tame bears, monkeys, and other animals, taught to perform the actions of men. As early as the thirteenth century, we find them including among their other accomplishments that of dancing upon the tight-rope. Finally, the jougleurs performed tricks of sleight of hand, and were often conjurers and magicians. As, in modern times, the jougleurs of the middle ages gradually passed away, sleight of hand appears to have become their principal accomplishment, and the name only was left in the modern wordjuggler. The jougleurs of the middle ages, like the mimi of antiquity, wandered about from place to place, and often from country to country, sometimes singly and at others in companies, exhibited their performances in the roads and streets, repaired to all great festivals, and were employed especially in the baronial hall, where, by their songs, stories, and other performances, they created mirth after dinner.

This class of society had become known by another name, the origin of which is not so easily explained. The primary meaning of the Latin wordministerwas a servant, one who ministers to another, either in his wants or in his pleasures and amusements. It was applied particularly to the cup-bearer. In low Latinity, a diminutive of this word was formed,minestellus, orministrellus, a petty servant, or minister. When we first meet with this word, which is not at a very early date, it is used asperfectly synonymous withjoculator, and, as the word is certainly of Latin derivation, it is clear that it was from it the middle ages derived the French wordmenestrel(the modernménétrier), and the Englishminstrel. The mimi or jougleurs were perhaps considered as the petty ministers to the amusements of their lord, or of him who for the time employed them. Until the close of the middle ages, the minstrel and the jougleur were absolutely identical. Possibly the former may have been considered the more courtly of the two names. But in England, as the middle ages disappeared, and lost their influence on society sooner than in France, the word minstrel remained attached only to the musical part of the functions of the old mimus, while, as just observed, the juggler took the sleight of hand and the mountebank tricks. In modern French, except where employed technically by the antiquary, the wordménétriermeans a fiddler.

The jougleurs, or minstrels, formed a very numerous and important, though a low and despised, class of mediæval society. The dulness of every-day life in a feudal castle or mansion required something more than ordinary excitement in the way of amusement, and the old family bard, who continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praises of himself and his ancestors, was soon felt to be a wearisome companion. The mediæval knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make them laugh sufficiently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic performances, should be broad, coarse, and racy, with a good spicing of violence and of the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome to the feudal mansion, and he seldom went away dissatisfied. But the subject of the present chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur than his personal history, and, having traced his origin to the Roman mimus, we will now proceed to one class of his performances.

It has been stated that the mimus and the jougleurs told stories. Of those of the former, unfortunately, none are preserved, except, perhaps, in a few anecdotes scattered in the pages of such writers as Apuleius and Lucian, and we are obliged to guess at their character, but of the stories of the jougleurs a considerable number has been preserved. It becomes an interesting question how far these stories have been derived from themimi, handed down traditionally from mimus to jougleur, how far they are native in our race, or how far they were derived at a later date from other sources. And in considering this question, we must not forget that the mediæval jougleurs were not the only representatives of the mimi, for among the Arabs of the East also there had originated from them, modified under different circumstances, a very important class of minstrels and story-tellers, and with these the jougleurs of the west were brought into communication at the commencement of the crusades. There can be no doubt that a very large number of the stories of the jougleurs were borrowed from the East, for the evidence is furnished by the stories themselves; and there can be little doubt also that the jougleurs improved themselves, and underwent some modification, by their intercourse with Eastern performers of the same class.

On the other hand, we have traces of the existence of these popular stories before the jougleurs can have had communication with the East. Thus, as already mentioned, we find, composed in Germany, apparently in the tenth century, in rhythmical Latin, the well-known story of the wife of a merchant who bore a child during the long absence of her husband, and who excused herself by stating that her pregnancy had been the result of swallowing a flake of snow in a snow-storm. This, and another of the same kind, were evidently intended to be sung. Another poem in popular Latin verse, which Grimm and Schmeller, who edited it,[39]believe may be of the eleventh century, relates a very amusing story of an adventurer named Unibos, who, continually caught in his own snares, finishes by getting the better of all his enemies, and becoming rich, by mere ingenious cunning and good fortune. This story is not met with among those of the jougleurs, as far as they are yet known, but, curiously enough, Lover found it existing orally among the Irish peasantry, and inserted the Irish story among his “Legends of Ireland.” It is a curious illustration of the pertinacity with which the popular stories descend along with peoples through generations from theremotest ages of antiquity. The same story is found in an oriental form among the tales of the Tartars published in French by Guenlette.

The people of the middle ages, who took their wordfablefrom the Latinfabula, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for any short narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and jougleurs; but, in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by which they intended to express familiarity and attachment, applied to them more particularly the Latinfabella, which in the old French becamefablel, or, more usually,fabliau. The fabliaux of the jougleurs form a most important class of the comic literature of the middle ages. They must have been wonderfully numerous, for a very large quantity of them still remain, and these are only the small portion of what once existed, which have escaped perishing like the others by the accident of being written in manuscripts which have had the fortune to survive; while manuscripts containing others have no doubt perished, and it is probable that many were only preserved orally, and never written down at all.[40]The recital of these fabliaux appears to have been the favourite employment of the jougleurs, and they became so popular that the mediæval preachers turned them into short stories in Latin prose, and made use of them as illustrations in their sermons. Many collections of these short Latin stories are found in manuscripts which had served as note-books to the preachers,[41]and out of them was originally compiled that celebrated mediæval book called the “Gesta Romanorum.”

It is to be regretted that the subjects and language of a large portion of these fabliaux are such as to make it impossible to present them before modern readers, for they furnish singularly interesting and minute pictures of mediæval life in all classes of society. Domestic scenes are among those most frequent, and they represent the interior of the mediævalhousehold in no favourable point of view. The majority of these tell loose stories of husbands deceived by their fair spouses, or of tricks played upon unsuspecting damsels. In some instances the treatment of the husband is perhaps what may be called of a less objectionable character, as in the fabliau of La Vilain Mire (the clown doctor), printed in Barbazan (iii. 1), which was the origin of Molière’s well-known comedy of“Le Médecin malgré lui.”A rich peasant married the daughter of a poor knight; it was of course a marriage of ambition on his part, and of interest on hers—one of those ill-sorted matches which, according to feudal sentiments, could never be happy, and in which the wife was considered as privileged to treat her husband with all possible contempt. In this instance the lady hit upon an ingenious mode of punishing her husband for his want of submission to her ill-treatment. Messengers from the king passed that way, seeking a skilful doctor to cure the king’s daughter of a dangerous malady. The lady secretly informed these messengers that her husband was a physician of extraordinary talent, but of an eccentric temper, for he would never acknowledge or exercise his art until first subjected to a severe beating. The husband is seized, bound, and carried by force to the king’s court, where, of course, he denies all knowledge of the healing art, but a severe beating obliges him to compliance, and he is successful by a combination of impudence and chance. This is only the beginning of the poor man’s miseries. Instead of being allowed to go home, his fame has become so great that he is retained at court for the public good, and, with a rapid succession of patients, fearful of the results of his conscious ignorance, he refuses them all, and is subjected in every case to the same ill-treatment to force his compliance. The examples in which the husband, on the other hand, outwits the wife are few. A fabliau by a poet who gives himself the name of Cortebarbe, printed also by Barbazan (iii. 398), relates how three blind beggars were deceived by a clerc, or scholar, of Paris, who met them on the road near Compiègne. The clerk pretended to give the three beggars a bezant, which was then a good sum of money, and they hastened joyfully to the next tavern, where they ordered a plentiful supper, and feasted to their hearts’ content. But, in fact, the clerk had not given them a bezant atall, although, as he said he did so, and they could only judge by their hearing, they imagined that they had the coin, and each thought that it was in the keeping of one of his companions. Thus, when the time of paying came, and the money was not forthcoming, in the common belief that one of the three had received the bezant and intended to keep it and cheat the others, they quarrelled violently, and from abuse soon came to blows. The landlord, drawn to the spot by the uproar, and informed of the state of the case, accused the three blind men of a conspiracy to cheat him, and demanded payment with great threats. The clerk of Paris, who had followed them to the inn, and taken his lodging there in order to witness the result, delivered the blind men by an equally ingenious trick which he plays upon the landlord and the priest of the parish.

Some of these stories have for their subject tricks played among thieves. In one printed by Méon (i. 124), we have the story of a rich but simple villan, or countryman, named Brifaut, who is robbed at market by a cunning sharper, and severely corrected by his wife for his carelessness. Robbery, both by force and by sleight of hand and craft, prevailed to an extraordinary degree during the middle ages. The plot of the fabliau of Barat and Haimet, by Jean de Boves (Barbazan, iv. 233), turns upon a trial of skill among three robbers to determine who shall commit the cleverest act of thievery, and the result is, at least, an extremely amusing story. It may be mentioned as an example of the numerous stories which the jougleurs certainly obtained from the East, that the well-known story of the Hunchback in the “Arabian Nights” appears among them in two or three different forms.

The social vices of the middle ages, their general licentiousness, the prevalence of injustice and extortion, are very fully exposed to view in these compositions, in which no class of society is spared. The villan, or peasant, is always treated very contemptuously; he formed the class from which the jougleur received least benefit. But the aristocracy, the great barons, the lords of the soil, come in for their full share of satire, and they no doubt enjoyed the ridiculous pictures of their own order. I will not venture to introduce the reader to female life in the baronial castle, as itappears in many of these stories, and as it is no doubt truly painted, although, of course, in many instances, much exaggerated. We have already seen how in the story of Reynard, the character of mediæval society was represented by the long struggle between brute force represented by the wolf, the emblem of the aristocratic class, and the low astuteness of the fox, or the unaristocratic class. The success of the craft of the human fox over the force of his lordly antagonist is often told in the fabliaux in ludicrous colours. In that of Trubert, printed by Méon (i. 192), the “duke” of a country, with his wife and family, become repeatedly the dupes of the gross deceptions of a poor but impudent peasant. These satires upon the aristocracy were no doubt greatly enjoyed by the goodbourgeoisie, who, in their turn, furnished abundance of stories, of the drollest description, to provoke the mirth of the lords of the soil, between whom and themselves there was a kind of natural antipathy. Nor are the clergy spared. The priest is usually described as living with a concubine—his order forbade marrying—and both are considered as fair game to the community; while the monk figures more frequently as the hero of gallant adventures. Both priest and monk are usually distinguished by their selfishness and love of indulgence. In the fabliau Du Bouchier d’Abbeville, in Barbazan (iv. 1), a butcher, on his way home from the fair, seeks a night’s lodging at the house of an inhospitable priest, who refuses it. But when the former returns, and offers, in exchange for his hospitality, one of his fat sheep which he has purchased at the fair, and not only to kill it for their supper, but to give all the meat they do not eat to his host, he is willingly received into the house, and they make an excellent supper. By the promise of the skin of the sheep, the guest succeeds in seducing both the concubine and the maid-servant, and it is only after his departure the following morning, in the middle of a domestic uproar caused by the conflicting claims of the priest, the concubine, and the maid, to the possession of the skin, that it is discovered that the butcher had stolen the sheep from the priest’s own flock.

The fabliaux, as remarked before, form the most important class of the extensive mass of the popular literature of the middle ages, and thewriters, confident in their strong hold upon public favour, sometimes turn round and burlesque the literature of other classes, especially the long heavy monotony of style of the great romances of chivalry and the extravagant adventures they contained, as though conscious that they were gradually undermining the popularity of the romance writers. One of these poems, entitled“De Audigier,”and printed in Barbazan (iv. 217), is a parody on the romance writers and on their style, not at all wanting in spirit or wit, but the satire is coarse and vulgar. Another printed in Barbazan (iv. 287), under the title“De Berengier,”is a satire upon a sort of knight-errantry which had found its way into mediæval chivalry. Berengier was a knight of Lombardy, much given to boasting, who had a beautiful lady for his wife. He used to leave her alone in his castle, under pretext of sallying forth in search of chivalrous adventures, and, after a while, having well hacked his sword and shield, he returned to vaunt the desperate exploits he had performed. But the lady was shrewd as well as handsome, and, having some suspicions of his truthfulness as well as of his courage, she determined to make trial of both. One morning, when her husband rode forth as usual, she hastily disguised herself in a suit of armour, mounted a good steed, and hurrying round by a different way, met the boastful knight in the middle of a wood, where he no sooner saw that he had to encounter a real assailant, than he displayed the most abject cowardice, and his opponent exacted from him an ignominious condition as the price of his escape. On his return home at night, boasting as usual of his success, he found his lady taking her revenge upon him in a still less respectful manner, but he was silenced by her ridicule.

Thetrouvères, or poets, who wrote the fabliaux—I need hardly remark thattrouvèreis the same word astrobador, but in the northern dialect of the French language—appear to have flourished chiefly from the close of the twelfth century to the earlier part of the fourteenth. They all composed in French, which was a language then common to England and France, but some of their compositions bear internal evidence of having been composed in England, and others are found in contemporary manuscripts written in this island. The scene of a fabliau,printed by Méon (i. 113), is laid at Colchester; and that of La Male Honte, printed in Barbazan (iii. 204), is laid in Kent. The latter, however, was written by a trouvère named Hugues de Cambrai. No objection appears to have been entertained to the recital of these licentious stories before the ladies of the castle or of the domestic circle, and their general popularity was so great, that the more pious clergy seem to have thought necessary to find something to take their place in the post-prandial society of the monastery, and especially of the nunnery; and religious stories were written in the same form and metre as the fabliaux. Some of these have been published under the title of“Contes Devots,”and, from their general dulness, it may be doubted if they answered their purpose of furnishing amusement so well as the others.

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.

No. 71. A Mediæval Kitchen Scene.

No. 72. An Old Lady and her Friends.

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 themanuscripts 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 akitchen 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.

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.”

No. 74. Scholastic Discipline.

No. 75. A Point in Dispute.

No. 76. Want of Harmony over the Pot.

No. 77. Domestic Strife.

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 wereprepared 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.

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 oran 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 heropponent, 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.

No. 79. The Wife in the Ascendant.

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 whosefabliaux, 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 wordennuyeuse, 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 fiercewrangling, 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.”

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