Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/440

 420 Hi ft or y of Domejlic Manners Fille, hormis confc£ion, Seullette ne parkz a prebjlre i Laijfe%-les en leur egl'tje ejire, Sans ce quil'x, hantent -vos maijons. Tliefe lines, written and publiflied in a bigoted Roman Catholic country, by a man who was evidently a ftaunch Romanift, and addrcfTed to young women as their rule of behaviour, prefent perhaps one of the flrongeft evidences we could have of the evil influence exercifed by the Romifli clergy on focial morals, a fatt, however, of which there are innumerable other proofs. Whatever may have been the efle6t of fuch teaching on the better educated claiTes, the general charafter of the women of the middle and lower clalfes appears to have been of a defcription little likely to be con- ducive to domeftic happinefs. All the popular materials for focial hiftory reprefent their morals as being very low, and their tempers as overbearing and quarrelfome, the confequence of which was a feparation of domeflic life among the two fexes after marriage, the hulbands, when not engaged at their work or bufinefs, feeking their amufement away from the houfe, and the wives affembling with their " gollips," often at the pubhc taverns, to drink and amufe themfelves. In the old myfteries and morality plays, in which there was a good deal of quiet fatire on the manners of the age in which they were compofed and atted, Noah's wife appears often as the type of the married woman in the burgher clafs, and her temper feems to have become almoll: proverbial. In the " Towneley Myfteries," when Noah acquaints his wife with the approach of the threatened deluge, and of his orders to build the ark, llie abufes him fo groffly as a common carrier of ill news, that he is provoked to ftrike her ; flie returns the blow, and they have a regular battle, in which the hulband has the advantage, but he is glad to efcape from her tongue, and proceed to his work. In the " Chefler Myll:eries," Noah's wife will not go into the ark; and when all is ready, the flood beginning, and the neceliity of taking her in apparent, flie refutes to enter, unlefs flie is allowed to take her goflips with her : — Tea,Jir,fette up youer fade, And roive fourth luith e-vill hade, For ivithoutcn fayle