Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/69

 and Sentiments 49 in more recent times, and as I have not met with them apphed in this reftrifted fenfe in Anglo-Saxon writers, I fliould not haftily affume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did fwathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Chrift, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet fpeaks of — Eearnes gebyrda, >a he in b'mne ivas in cildes hiiv cla>um hiivunden. The child's birth, ivhen he in the bin ivas in a child's form ivith cloths ivound rounc Thefe words refer clearly to the pra6tice of fwaddling 5 and, though the Anglo-Saxon artift has not here portrayed his objeft very diftinftly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut (No. 34), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manufcript of Csedmon, the child, which its mother is reprefented as holding, is intended to be fwathed. The word Vm, ufed in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem juft quoted, which means a hutch or a mansrer, has reference, of courfe, to the cir- No. 34. Anglo-Saxon Mother and Child. cumftances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to fignify a cradle. This laft word is itfelf Anglo-Saxon, and has flood its ground in our language fuccefsfully againft the influence of the Anglo- H Norman,