Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/272

 252 Hifiory of Domejiic Manners the chapel of Whichever fchool, reprefents an individual, perhaps the cellarer or fteward, who has gone into the cellar with a candle, which he carries in this manner, and is there terrified by the appearance of hob- goblins. In the fabliau of the " Chevalier a la Corbeille," an old dueua, employed to watch over her young miftrefs, being difturbed in the night, is obliged to take her candle, and go into the kitchen to light it ; from whence we may fuppofe that it was the cuftom to keep the kitchen fire in all night. An old poem on the troubles of houfekeeping, printed by M. Jubinal in his " Nouveau Recueil de Contes," enumerates candles and a lantern among the neceflaries of a houfe- hold— Orfaut chandeles et lanterne. A manufcript of the thirteenth century in the French National Library (No. 6956) contains an illumination, which has furnillied us with the accompanying cut (No. 178), reprefenting a man holding a lantern of the form then in ufe, and lanterns are not unfrequently mentioned in old writers. It appears to have been a common cufiiom, at leaft among the better clalfes of fociety, to keep a lamp in the chamber to give light during the night. In one of the fabliaux printed in Meon, a man entering the chamber of a knight's lady, finds it lit by a lamp which was ufually left burning in it — Uiie lampe a'voit en la chambre. Par cojlume ardoir i fiaut. In the Englifii romance of •' Sir Eglamour," feveral lamps are defcribed as burning in a lady's chamber — Aftur jopur^ as y yo%u telle, He nvendyd to chaumbur ivhh Cryjlyabelle, There laumpus ivere brennyng bryght . We may fuppofe, notwithftanding thefe words, that a lamp gave but a dim light ; and accordingly we are told in another fabliau that there was little No.%. Man ivith Lantern.