Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/332

 12 Hijlory of Dome /lie Manners they were fo much tied to conventional modes of reprefenting things, that uhen, no doubt, they intended to reprefent ladies riding tideways, the latter feem often as if they were riding aftride. But in many inftances, and efpecially in the fcenes of hunting and hawking, there can be no doubt that they were riding in the latter fafliion 5 and it is probable that they were taught to ride both ways, the fide-faddle being confidered the Ko. 209. Ladies Hunting the Stjg. mofl courtly, while it was confidered fafer to fit afl;ride in the chafe. A paffage has been often quoted from Gower's " Confefiio Amantis," in which a troop of ladies is defcribed, all mounted on fair white ambling horfes, with fplendid laddies, and it is added that " everichone {every one) ride on fide," which probably means that this was the mofl: falhionable fi:yle of riding. But, as fiiown in a former chapter (p. 72), it has been rather haflily allumed that this is a proof that it was altogether a new falliion. Our next cut (Xo. 210), taken from a manufcript in the French National Library (No. 7178), of the fourteenth century, reprefents two ladies riding in the modern falhion, except that the left leg appears to be raifed very awkwardly j but this appearance we muft perhaps afcribe only to the bad drawing. It muft be obferved alfo that thefe ladies are feated on the wrong fide of the horfe, which is })robably an error of the draughtfman. Perhaps there was a dili'erent arrangement of the drefs for the two modes of riding, although there was fo little of what we now call delicacy in the mediaeval manners, that this would be by no means neceffary.