Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/249

 and Sentiments. 2.2.^ Other quieter games were purfued in the chambers. Among thefe the moft dignified was chefs, after which came tables, draughts, and, in the fourteenth century, cards. Sometimes, as defcribed in the preceding chapter, they played at fedentary games, fuch as chefs and tables ; or at No. 159. A Mediaval Dance. diverfions of a ftill more frolicfome charafter. Thefe latter feem to have been moll in vogue in the evening after fupper. The author of the " Menagier de Paris," written about the year 1393 (tom. i. p. 71), defcribes the ladies as playing, in an evening, at games named Iric, and quifery ? (who ftruck ?), and pince merille, and tiers, and others. The firft of thefe games is mentioned about a century and a half earlier by the trouvere Rutebeuf, and by other mediaeval writers ; but all we feem to know of it is, that the players were feated, apparently on the ground, and that one of them was furnilhed with a rod or ftick. We know lefs ftill of pince merille. Quifery? is evidently the game which was, at a later period, called hot-cockles ; and tiers is underftood to be the game now called blindman's buff. Thefe, and other games, are not unfrequently reprefented in the fanciful drawings in the margins of mediaeval illu- minated manufcripts ; but as no names or defcriptions are given with thefe drawings, it is often very difficult to identify them. Our cut (No. 160), which is given by Strutt, from a manufcript in the Bcdleian Library at Oxford, is one of feveral fubjeds reprefenting the game of blindman's buff, or, as it was formerly called in England, hoodnian-llind, becaufe the perlbn blinded had his eyes covered with a hood. It is here