Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/68

 Hijiory of Domeftic Ma?inet French verfe — French as it was then fpoken and written in England — has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in Englifli, which commences with man's infancy. "As foon as the child is born/' fays the author, "it muft be fwathed ; lay it to fleep in its cradle, and you muft have a nurfe to rock it to fleep." Kaunt le emfes fera nees, Lors deyt ejlre mayhle%. En foun ber% Penfaunt chochet, De une bercere vus pur-voyet, Ou par fa norke feyt herce. This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of fociety. If we turn to one of the more ferious romances, we find it praftifed among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princefs Parife, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, ihe firft wraps her child in a piece oi feudal, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or fwathels, it with a white cloth : — ha dame le conroie a un pan de cendex, Puis a pris un blanc drap^fi a Jes jians bende: -Parise la Duchesse, i.. 76. When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained fome rich booty, they find that they have ftolen a newly-born infant, "all fwatheled." Lai trcverent Vanffant, trejiot anmalote. — Ibid. p. 80. This cuftom of fwatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is ftill prafitifed in fome parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers fwatheled their children, although the pra6tice is not very clearly defcribed by any of their writers. We derive the -word itfelf from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which befwethan means to fwathe or h (}i,fuethc fignifies a band or fwathe, and firethel or fwcethil, a fwaddling-band. Thefe words appear, however, to have been ufed in a more extenfive fenfe among the Anglo-Saxons than their reprefentatives in