Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/136

 ii6 Hijlory of Domejiic Ma?i72ers the faddle-cloth {famine) was wonderfully made 3 flie had thirty little bells behind the cuirie, which^ when the mule ambled, made fo great a melody that harp or viol were worth nothing in comparifon." The Anglo-Norman hiftorian, Ordericus Vitalis, has preferved a legend of a vilion of purgatory, in which the priell who is fuppofed to have feen it defcribes, among other fuftering perfons, " a crowd of women who feemed to him to be innumerable. They were mounted on horfeback, riding in female fafliion, with women's faddles In this company the priefi: recognifed feveral noble ladies, and beheld the pallreys and mules, with the women's litters, of others who were ftill alive." The Trinity College Pfalter furniflies us with the two figures of cars given in our cut No. 785 but they are fo fanciful in fliape, that we can hardly help con- cluding they muft have been mere rude and grotefque attempts at imitating clafTical forms. The manufcript laft mentioned affords us two other curious illuftrations of the manners of the earlier half of the twelfth century. The firfl: of No. 78. Cars. No. 79. TAe Stocks. thefe (No. 79) reprefents two men in the fiocks, one held by one leg only, the other by both. The men to the left are hooting and infulting them. The fecond, reprefented in our cut No. 80, is the interior of a Norman fchool. We give only a portion of the original, where the bench, on which the fcholars are feated, forms a complete circle. The two writers, the