Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/227

 and Sentimejits. 207 d'Aymon," where the agents of Regnault go to arreft the duke Richard of Normandy, and find him phiying at chefs, is thus told quaintly in the Englilh verfion, printed by Copeland : — "When duke Richarde faw that thefe fergeauntes had him thus by the arm, and helde in his hande a lady of ivery, wherewith he would have given a mate to Yonnet, he withdrew his arme, and gave to one of the fergeauntes fuch a ftroke with it into the forehead, that he made him tumble over and over at his feete} and than he tooke a rooke, and fmote another withall upon his head, that he all to-broft it to the brayne." The chefT-boards were naturally large, and were fometimes made of the precious metals, and of other rich materials. In one romance, the chelf-board and men are made of cryftal j in another, that of "Alexander," the men are made of fapphires and topazes. A chelf-board, prefer'ed in the mufeum of the Hotel de Cluny, at Paris, and faid to have been the one given by the old man of the mountains (the sheikh of the Haflaflins) to St. Louis, is made of rock-cryftal, and mounted in filver gilt. In the romances, however, the chelf-board is fometimes fpoken of as made of orm'ier, or elm. In fad, when the game of chefs came into extenfive ufe, it became neceffary not only to make the cheff-board and men of lefs expenfive materials and fmaller, but to give to the latter fimple conven- tional forms, inftead of making them elaborate fculptures. The founda- tion for this latter pradtice had already been laid by the Arabs, whofe tenets, contrary to thofe of the Perfians, profcribed all images of living beings. The mediaeval conventional form of the rook, a figure with a bi-parted head, fomewhat approaching to the heraldic form of the fleur- de-lis, appears to have been taken dire6tly from the Arabs. The knight was reprefented by a fmall upright column, the upper part of it bent to one fide, and is fuppofed to have been meant for a rude reprefentation of the horfe's head. The aufin, or bilhop, had the fame form as the knight, except that the bent end was cleft, probably as an indication of the epifcopal mitre. The accompanying figure of a cheff-board (No. 144), taken from a manufcript of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Cotton. Cleopat. B. ix.), l)ut no doubt copied from one of the latter part of the tliirteenlh century, when the Anglo-Norman metrical treatife on