Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/427

 and Sentime?its. 407 fwain,* or hopharlots (I ufe their owne termes), and a good round log under their heads inftead of a bolfter. If it were fo that our fathers, or the good-man of the houfe, had, within feven years after his mariage, purchafed a matteres, or flocke bed, and thereto a facke of chaffe to refte his heade upon, he thought himfelfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, fo well were they contented. Pillowes, faid they, were thought meete onelie for women in child-bed. As for fervants, if they had anie llieet above them it was well, for feldom had they anie under their bodies to keepe them from the pricking ftraws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rafed their hardened hides." A defcription like this could only apply to the lower clafTes in fociety, who had as yet participated but little in the march of focial improvement. As the privacy of the chamber had become greater, it feems now to have been much lefs common in private manfions for feveral people to lleep No. 260. A Truckle-bed. in (he fame room, which appears more rarely to have had more than one Dagswain was a sort of rough material of which the commoner sort of cover- lets were made. A hap-harlot or hop-harlot, was also a very coarse kind of coverlet. Harlot was the term applied to a low class of vagabonds, the ribalds, who wandered from place to place in search of a living; and the name appears to have been given to this rug as being only fit to be the lot or hap of such people. bed.