Our Little Lady Read online

  Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

  Our Little Lady--Six Hundred Years Ago, by Emily Sarah Holt.

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  This is one of the approximately thirty books by Emily Holt about lifein the Middle Ages. The language of the book is basically English aswe would understand it, strongly flavoured with words and phrases fromthe Middle Ages. The other thing that comes across strongly is howdifferent the attitudes to life were in those days.

  Avice, one of the elder women in the book, tells the story of how shehad become a nursery-maid in the Royal Palace, first at Windsor, andthen later at Westminster. One of the princesses she had to look afterwas a most beautiful child, but had been born deaf and dumb. She hadvarious gestures with which she communicated, but the sadness was, thatthey never could teach her to pray. Yet they were sure she spoke toChrist in her own way. The poor child died young. This all took placeat the end of the thirteenth century, hence the six hundred years of thetitle.

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  OUR LITTLE LADY, SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO--WHAT THINGS WERE LIKE.

  The afternoon service was over in Lincoln Cathedral, and thecongregation were slowly filing out of the great west door. But thatafternoon service was six hundred years ago, and both the Cathedral andthe congregation would look very strange to us if we saw them now.Those days were well called the Dark Ages, and how dark they were we canscarcely realise in the present day. Let us fancy ourselves coming outof that west door, and try to picture what we should have seen there,six hundred years ago.

  The Cathedral itself is hardly to be known. It is crowded with paintedimages and embroidered banners, and filled with the smoke and scent ofburning incense. The clergy are habited, not in white surplices or inblack gowns, but in large stiff cloaks--copes they are called--ofscarlet silk, heavy with gold embroidery. The Bishop, who is in thepulpit, wears a cope of white, thick with masses of gold, and on hishead is a white and gold mitre. How unlike that upper chamber, wherethe disciples gathered together after the crucifixion of their Master!Is it better or worse, do you ask? Well, I think if the Master were tocome in, it would be easier to see Him in the quiet upper chamber, wherethere was nothing else to see, than in the perfumed and decoratedCathedral where there was so much else!

  But now let us look at the congregation as they pass out. Are they allwomen? for all alike seem to wear long skirts and thick hoods: there areneither trousers, nor hats, nor bonnets. No, there is a fair sprinklingof men; but men and women dressed more alike then than they do now. Youwill see, if you look, that some of these long skirts are open in front,and you may catch a glimpse of a beard here and there under the hood.This is a poor woman who comes now: she wears a serge dress which hascost her about three-halfpence a yard, and a threadbare hood for whichshe may have given sixpence.

  Are things so cheap, then? No, just the other way about; money is sodear. The wages of a mason or a bricklayer are about sixpence a week;haymakers have the same; reapers get from a shilling to half-a-crown,and mowers one and ninepence. The gentlemen who wait on the Kinghimself only receive a shilling a day.

  Here comes one of them, in a long green robe of shining silky stuff,which is called samite; round his neck is a curiously cut collar of darkred cloth, and in his hand he carries a white hood. Men do not confinethemselves to the quiet, sober colours that we are accustomed to see;they are smarter than the ladies themselves. This knight, as he passesout, throws his gown back, before mounting his horse, and you see hisyellow hose striped with black--trousers and stockings all in a piece,as it were--with low black shoes, and gilt spurs.

  But who follows him?--this superbly dressed woman in rich blueglistening samite, with a black and gold hood, under which we see herhair bound with a golden fillet, and a necklace of costly pearls claspedround her throat--for it is a warm day, and she has not tied her hood.She must be somebody of consequence, for a smart gentleman leads her bythe hand, and one with a long staff walks in front, to keep the peoplefrom pressing too close on her. She is indeed somebody of consequence--the Countess of Lincoln herself, by birth an Italian Princess; and sheis so grand, and so rich, and so beautiful and stately--and I am sorryto add, so proud--that people call her the Queen of Lincoln. She hasnot far to go home--only through the archway, and past Saint Michael'sChurch and the Bull Gate, and then the great portcullis of the grim oldCastle lifts its head to receive its lady, and she disappears from oursight.

  Do you notice that carpets are spread along the streets for her?--notcarpets like ours, but the only sort they have, which are a kind ofrough matting. And indeed she needs them, if those purple velvet shoesof hers are not to be quite ruined by the time she reaches home. Forthere are no pavements, and the streets are almost ankle-deep in mud,and worse than mud. Dead cats, rotten vegetables, animal refuse, andevery kind of abominable thing that you could see or think of, all lieabout in heaps, in these narrow, narrow streets, where the sun canhardly get down to the ground, and two people might sometimes shakehands from opposite windows in the upper stories, for they come fartherout than the lower ones. Everybody throws all his rubbish into thestreet; all his slops, all his ashes, all his everything of which hewants to get rid. The smells are something dreadful, as soon as youcome out of the perfumed churches. It is pleasanter to have thechurches perfumed, undoubtedly; but it would be a good deal healthier ifthey kept the streets clean.

  Quietly following the grand young Countess, at a respectful distance,come two women who are evidently mother and daughter. Their dress showsthat they are not absolutely poor, but it tells at least as plainly thatthey are not at all rich. Just as they reach the west door, a littlegirl of ten comes quickly after them, dressed just like themselves, awoman in miniature.

  "Why, Avice, where hast thou been?" says the elder of the two women.

  "I was coming, Grandmother," explains little Avice, "and Father Thomascalled me, and bade me tell you that the holy Bishop would come to seeyou this afternoon, and sup his four-hours with you."

  Four-hours, taken as its name shows at four o'clock, was the meal whichanswered to our tea. Bishops do not often drink tea with women of thisclass, but this was a peculiar Bishop, and the woman to whom he sentthis message was his own foster-sister.

  "Truly, and I shall be glad to see him," says the Grandmother; and onthey go out of the west door.

  The carpets which were spread for the Countess have been rolled away,and our three humble friends pick their steps as best they may among thedirt-heaps, occasionally slipping into a puddle--I am afraid Avice nowand then walks into it deliberately for the fun of the splash!--andfollowing the road taken by the Countess as far as the Bull Gate, theythen turn to the left, leaving the frowning Castle on their right, andbegin to descend the steep slope well named Steephill.

  They have not gone many yards when two people overtake them--a man and awoman. The man stops to speak: the woman marches on with her armsfolded and her head in the air, as if they were invisible.

  "Good morrow, Dan," says the old lady.

  "Good morrow, Mother," answers Dan.

  "What's the matter with Filomena?"

  "A touch of the old complaint, that's all," answers Dan drily. "We'd afew words o' th' road a-coming--leastwise she had, for she got it prettymuch to herself--and for th' next twelve hours or so she'll not be ableto see anybody under a squire."

  "Is she often like that, Dan?"

  "Well, it doesn't come more days than seven i' th' week."

  "Why, you don't mean to say it's so every day?" said Agnes, the youngerwoman of our trio.<
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  Dan shook his head. "Happen there's an odd un now and then as gets letoff," said he. "But I must after her, or there'll be more hot water.And it comes to table boilin', I can tell you. Good morrow!"

  Dan runs rather heavily after his incensed spouse, and our friendscontinue to pick their way down Steephill. For rather more than halfthe way they go, and when just past the Church of Saint Lawrence, theyturn into a narrow street on the left, and in a few yards more they areat home.

  Home is one of the smallest houses you ever saw. It has only two rooms,one above the other; but they are a fair size, being about twenty-fivefeet by sixteen. The upper, of course, is the bedroom; the lower one iskitchen and parlour; and a ladder leads from one to the other. Theupper chamber holds a bed, which is like a box out of which the bottomhas been taken, filled with straw, and on that is a hard straw mattress,two excessively coarse blankets, and a thick, shaggy, woollen rug for acounterpane. There are not any sheets or pillow-cases; but a thick,hard bolster, stuffed like the mattress with straw, serves for a pillow.

  At the foot of the oak bedstead is a large oak chest, big enough to holda man, in which the owners keep all their small property of any value.There are no chairs, but the deep windows have wooden seats, and twowooden stools are in the corners. As to wardrobes, chests of drawers,dressing-tables, and washstands, nobody knows of such things at thatday. The chest serves the purpose of all except the washstand, and theyfind that (as much as they have of it) at the draw-well in the littleback yard. The window is just a square hole in the wall, closed with awooden shutter, so that light and air--if not wind and rain--come intogether. A looking-glass they have, but a poor makeshift it is, beingof metal and rounded; and those who know what a comical aspect your facetakes when you see it in a metal teapot, can guess how far anybody couldsee himself rightly in it. It is nailed up, too, so high on the wallthat it is not easy to see anything. This is all the furniture of thebedroom.

  Downstairs there is more though there are no chairs and tables, unless aleaf-table in the wall, which lets down, can go by that name. There aretwo or three long settles stretching across the wall--the settle wascalled a bench when it had a back to it, and a form if it had not.There is a large bake-stone in one corner; the bread is put on the topto bake, with the fire underneath, and when there is no fire, the topcan be used as a table, a moulding board, or in many other ways. But itmust not be supposed that such bread is in large square or cottageloaves like ours. It is made in flat cakes, large or small, thick orthin. By the side of the bake-stone is the sink, or rather that whichanswers to one, being a rough brick basin, with a plug in the bottom,and just beneath it is a little channel in the brick floor, by which,when the plug is pulled up, the dirty water finds its way out into thestreet under the house door. People who live in this way need--andwear--short gowns and stout shoes.

  The opposite corner holds the pine-torches and chips; they burn nothingbut wood, for though coal is known, it is very little used. This ispartly because it is expensive; but also because it is consideredshockingly unhealthy. The smoke from wood or turf is thought verywholesome; but that from coal is just the reverse. Opposite thebake-stone is the window; a very little one, much wider than it is high,and rilled with exceedingly small diamond-shaped panes of very poorgreenish glass set in lead, there being so much lead and so little glassthat the room is but dark in the brightest sunshine. Indeed, it isdecidedly a sign of gentility that the house has any window at all,beyond the square hole with the wooden shutter.

  Up and down the room there are several stools, high and low; the highones serve when wanted as little movable tables. In the third corner isa bread-rack, filled with hard oat-cake above, and the soft flat cakesof wheat flour below; in the fourth stand several large barrelscontaining salt fish, salt meat, flour, meal, and ale. From the top ofthe room hang hams, herbs in canvas bags, strings of smoked fish, a fewempty baskets and pails, and anything else which can be hung up. Therafters are so low that when the inmates move about they have every nowand then to courtesy to a ham or a pail, which would otherwise hit themon the head. A door by the window leads into the street, and anotherbeyond the barrels gives access to the back yard.

  How would you like to go back, gentle reader, to this style of life?This was the way in which your forefathers lived, six hundred yearsago--unless they were very grand people indeed. Then they lived in abig castle with walls two or three feet thick, and ate from gold orsilver plates, and had the luxury of a chimney in their dining-rooms.But even then, there were a good many little matters in respect of whichI do not fancy you would quite like to change with them! Would you liketo eat with your fingers, and to find creeping creatures everywhere, andto have _no_ books and newspapers, and no letters, and no shops exceptin great towns, and no way of getting about except on foot or horseback,and no lamps, candles, clocks or watches, china, spectacles, nor carpetson the floor? Yet this was the way in which kings and queens lived, sixhundred years ago.

  In respect of clothes, people were much better off. They dressed farmore warmly than we do, and used a great deal of fur, not only fortrimming or out-door wear, but to line their clothes in winter. Buttheir furs comprised much commoner and cheaper skins than we use;ordinary people wore lambskins, with the fur of cats, hares, andsquirrels. Such furs as ermine and miniver were kept for the greatpeople; for there were curious rules and laws about dress in those days.It was not, as it is now, a question of what you could afford to buy,but of what rank you were. You could not wear ermine or samite unlessyou were an earl at the lowest; nor must you sleep on a feather bedunless you were a knight; nor might you eat your dinner from a metalplate, if you were not a gentleman. Such notions may sound ridiculousto us; but they were serious earnest, six hundred years ago. We shouldnot like to find that we had to go before a magistrate and pay a fine,if our shoes were a trifle too long, or our trimmings an inch too wide.But in the time of which I am writing, this was an every-day affair.

  In the house, women wore an odd sort of head-dress called a wimple,which came down to the eyebrows, and was fastened by pins above theears. When they went out of doors, they tied on a fur or woollen hoodabove it. The gown was very loose, and had no particular waist; thesleeves were excessively wide and long. But when women were at work,they had a way of tucking up their dresses at the bottom, so as to keepthem out of the perpetual slop of the stone or brick floor. Rich peopleput rushes on their floors except in winter, and as these were onlymoved once a year, all manner of unspeakable abominations were harbouredunderneath. In this respect the poor were the best off, since theycould have their brick floors as clean as they chose: as, even yet,there are points in which they have the advantage of richer people--ifthey only knew it!

  But our picture is not quite finished yet. Look out of the littlewindow, and notice what you see. Can this be Sunday afternoon in a goodstreet? for every shop is open, and in the doorways stand young mencalling out to the passers-by to come in and look at their goods. "Whatlack you? what lack you?"

  "Cherry ripe!"

  "Buy my fine kerchiefs!"

  "Any thimbles would you, maids?" Such cries as these ring on everyside.

  Yes, it is Sunday afternoon--"the rest of the holy Sabbath unto theLord." But look where you will, you can see no rest. Everywhere therich are at play, and the poor are at work. What does this mean?

  Think seriously of it, friends; for it will be no light matter ifEngland return to such ways as these again, and there are plenty ofpeople who are trying to bring them back. What it means is that ifholiness be lost from the Sabbath, rest will never stay behind. Playfor the few means work for the many. And let play get its head in, andwork will soon follow.

  If you want to walk the road of happiness, and to arrive at the home ofheaven, you must follow after God, for any other guide will lead in theopposite direction. The people who tell you that religion is a gloomything are always the people who have not any themselves. And things arevery different, acco
rding to whether you look at them from inside oroutside. How can you tell what there may be inside a house, so long asall you know of it is walking past a shut door?

  Ever since Adam hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among thetrees of the garden, men and women have been prone to fancy that Godlikes best to see them unhappy. The old heathen always used to supposethat their gods were jealous of them, and they were afraid to be toohappy, lest the gods should be vexed! But the real God "takes pleasurein the prosperity of His people," and "godliness hath the promise of thelife that now is, as well as of that which is to come."

  What language are our three friends talking? It sounds very odd. It isEnglish, and yet it is not. Yes, it is what learned men call "MiddleEnglish"--because it stands midway between the very oldest English, orAnglo-saxon, and the modern English which we speak now. It is about asmuch like our English as broad Scotch is. A few words and expressionsthrough the story will give an idea how different it is; but if I wereto write exactly as they would have spoken, nobody would understand itnow.

  And how do they live inside this tiny house? Well, in some respects, ina poorer and meaner way than the very poorest would live now. Look up,and you will see that there is no chimney, but the smoke finds its wayout through a hole above the fire, and when it is wet the rain comes inand puts the fire out. They know nothing about candles, but burn longshafts of pine-wood instead. There are such things as wax candles,indeed, but they are only used in church; nobody dreams of burning themin houses. And there are lamps, but they are made of gold and silver,and are never seen except in the big castles. There is no crockery; andmetal plates, as I said, are only for the grand people. The middleclasses use wooden trenchers--our friends have two--hollowed out to keepthe gravy in; and the poor have no plates at all beyond a cake of bread.Their drinking-glasses are just cows' horns, with the tip cut off and awooden bottom put in. They have also a few wooden bowls, and oneprecious brass pot; half a dozen knives, rough unwieldy things, and fourwooden spoons; one horn spoon is kept for best. Forks? Oh dear, no;nobody knows anything about forks, except a pitchfork. Table-linen?No, nor body-linen; those luxuries are only in the big castles. Let uswatch Avice's mother as she sets the table for four-hours, rememberingthat they are going to have company, and therefore will try to makethings a little more comfortable than usual.

  In the first place, there will be a table to set. If they were alone,they would use one or two of the high stools. But Agnes goes out intothe little yard, and brings back two boards and a couple of trestles,which she sets up in the middle of the room. This is the table--rathera rickety affair, you may say; and it will be quite as well that nobodyshould lean his elbow on it. Next, she puts on the boards four of thecows' horns, and the two trenchers, with one bowl. She then serves outa knife and spoon for each of four people, putting the horn spoon forthe Bishop. Her preparations are now complete, with the addition of onething which is never forgotten--a very large wooden salt-cellar, whichshe puts almost at one end, for where that stands is a matter ofimportance. Great people--and the Bishop is a very great person--mustsit above the salt, and small insignificant folks are put below. We mayalso notice that the Bishop is honoured with a horn and a trencher tohimself. This is an unusual distinction. Husband and wife always sharethe same plate, and other relatives very frequently. As to Avice, wesee that nothing is set for her. The child will share her mother'sspoon and horn; and if the Bishop brings his chaplain, he will have aspoon and horn for himself, but will eat off the Grandmother's plate.

  Our picture is finished, and now the story may begin.