Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/73

 and Sentiments. 53 read of a Saxon lady, named Ethelfwitha, who retired with her maidens to a houle near Ely, where her mother was buried, and employed herlelf and them in making a rich chafuble for the monks. The four princeffes, the lifters of king Ethelftan, were celebrated for their Ikill in fpinning, weaving, and embroidering ; William of Malmelbury tells us that their father, king Edward, had educated them " in fuch wife, that in child- hood they gave their whole attention to letters, and afterwards employed themfelves in the labours of the diftaff and the needle." The reader will remember in the ftory of the Saxon queen Otburgha, the mother of the great Alfred, how llie fat in her chamber, furrounded by her children, and encouraging them in a tafte for literature. The ladies, when thus occupied, were not inaccellible to their friends of either lex. When Dunftan was a youth, he appears to hae been always a welcome vilitor to the ladies in their "bowers," on account of his Ikill in mulic and in the arts. His contemporary biographer tells us of a noble lady, named Ethelwynn, who, knowing his Ikill in drawing and deligns, obtained his afliftance for the ornaments of a handfome ftole which flie and her women were embroidering. Dunftan is reprefented as bringing his harp with him into the apartment of the ladies, and hanging it up againft the wall, that he might have it ready to play to them in the intervals of their work. Editha, the queen of Edward the Confelfor, was well-known as a Ikilful needle-woman, and as extenfively verfed in literature. Ingulfs ftory of his fchoolboy-days, if it be true (for there is confiderable doubt of the authenticity of Ingulfs "Hiftory"), and of his interviews with queen Edith, gives us a curious pifture of the fim- plicity of an Anglo-Saxon court, even at the lateft period of their monarchy. "I often met her," he fays, "as I came from fchool, and then Ihe queftioned me about my ftudies and my verfes j and willingly pafling from grammar to logic, llie would catch me in the fubtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of money, which were counted to me by her handmaiden, and then lent me to the royal larder to refrefli myfelf. Several circumftances arifing out of certain rivalries of focial infti- tutions render it fomewhat difficult to form an eftimate of the moral charafter