Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/126

 io6 Hijiory of Do?neJiic Manners The in-door amufements of the ordinary claffes of fociety appear not to have undergone much change during the earher Norman period, but the higher claffes Hved more fplendidly and more riotouflyj and, as far as we can judge, they feem to have been coarfer in manners and feehngs. The writer of the Hfe of Hereward has left us a curious pi6ture of Norman revelry. When the Saxon hero returned to Brunne, to the home of his fathers, and found that it had been taken poffeffion of by a Norman intruder, he fecretly took his lodging in the cottage of a villager clofe by. In the night he was roufed from his pillow by loud founds of minftrelfy, accompanied with boifterous indications of merriment, which iffued from his father's hall, and he was told that the new occupants were at their evening cups. He proceeded to the hall, and entered the doorftead unobferved, from whence he obtained a view of the interior of the hall. The new lord of Brunne was furrounded by his knights, who were fcattered about helplefs from the extent of their potations, and reclining in the laps of their women. In the midll of them flood a jougleur, or minftrel, alternately iinging and exciting their mirth with coarfe and brutal jefts. It is a firft rough Iketch of a part of mediaeval manners, which we lliall find more fully developed at a fomewhat later period. The brutality of manners exhibited in the fcene which I have but imperfedly defcribed, and which is confirmed by the ftatements of writers of the following century, foon degenerated into heartlefs ferocity, and when we reach the period of the civil wars of Stephen's reign, we find the amufements of the hall varied with the torture of captive enemies. In his more private hours of relaxation, the Norman knight amused himfelf with games of ikill or hazard. Among thefe, the game of chefs became now very popular, and many of the rudely carved cheffmen ot the twelfth century have been found in our illand, chiefly in the north, where they appear to have been manufadured. They are ufually made of the tulk of the walrus, the native ivory of Weftern Europe, which was known popularly as whale's bone. The whalebone of the middle ages is always defcribed as white, and it was a common object of comparilbn among the early Englifli poets, who, when they would defcribe the delicate complexion of a lady, ufually laid that flie was " white as whale's bone."