Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/309

 and Sentunents. chaplet, of the leaves of woodbine or hawthorn, for it muft be remem- bered that this takes place in the month of May, which was efpecially the feafon for wearing garlands. In "Blonde of Oxford," Jean of Dammartin, feeking his miftrels, finds her in a meadow making herfelf a chaplet of flowers — Adont de la chambre J^ a-vance, De la le -vit en i. frael U eh Faijoit un cafiel. — IMonde of Oxford, p. 30. Our cut No. 195, taken from a well-known manufcript in the Britilh Mufeum, of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), reprefents a party of ladies in the garden, gathering flowers, and making No. 195. Ladies making Garlands. garlands. The love of flowers, as I have ftated in a former chapter, feems to have prevailed generally among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and affedionate allufions to them occur, not unfrequently, in the literary remains of that early period. Many of our old favourite garden-flowers are, I believe, derived from the Anglo-Saxon gardens. Proofs of a fimilar attachment to flowers might be quoted in abundance from the writings of the periods fubfequent to the entrance of the Normans. The wearing of garlands or chaplets of flowers was a common pra6tice with both lexes. [n the romantic hiftor)- of the Fitz-Warines, written in the thirteenth P p centur}'.