Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/406

 386 Hijiory of Do?neJ}ic Manners M. Achille Jubinal, we fee a lady with a tame fquirrel in her hand, which flie holds by a firing, as reprefented in our cut No. 2j2. The parlour was now the room where the domeftic amufements were introduced. The guefl: in the early tra6l on "Dyce Play," quoted in a former page, tells us, " and, after the table was removed, in came one of the waiters with a fair filver bowl, full of dice and cards. Now, mailers, quoth the goodman, who is fo difpofed, fall too." Gambling was carried to a great height during the fifteenth century, and was feverely con- demned by the moralifls, but without much fuccefs. Dice were the older implements of play, and tables (or backgammon). A religious poem on faints' days, in a manufcript written about the year 1460, warning againft idle amufements, fays — Aljo ufe not to pley at the dice tie at the tablh, Ne none maner gamys., uppon the holidah ; Ufe no ta-vernys lohere be jejiis and Jab lis, Syngyng of leiude balcttes, rondelettes, or virolan. After the middle of the fifteenth century, cards came into very general ufe j and at the beginning of the following century, there was fuch a rage for card- playing, that an attempt was made early in the reign of Henry VIII. to reftri6t their ufe by law to the period of Chriftmas. When, however, people fat down to dinner at noon, and had no other occupation for the refl: of the day, they needed amufement of fome fort to pafs the time j and a poet of the fifteenth century obferves truly, — ji man may dry fe fort he the day that long tyme divellis With harpyng and pipyng, and other mery Jpellis, With gle, and 'zvyth game. Such amufements as thefe mentioned, with games of different kinds in which the ladies took part, and dancing, generally occupied the afternoon, from dinner to fupper, the hour of which latter meal feeras ufually to have