Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/80

 6o Hijlory of Domejiic Manners caufed them to be difcontinued and forgotten. Our cut No. 37 repre- fents a party at their ablutions. We conftantly find among the articles in the graves of Anglo-Saxon ladies tweezers, which were evidently intended for eradicating fuperfluous hairs, a circumftance which con- tributes to Ihow that they paid fpecial attention to hair-dreffing. To judge from the colour of the hair in fome of the illuminations, we might be led to fuppofe that fometimes they ftained it. The young men feem to have been more foppifli and vain of their perfons than the ladies, and fome of the old chronicles, fuch as the Ely hiftory, tell us (which we fhould hardly have expefted) that this M'as efpecially a charaderiflic of the Danifli invaders, who, we are told, "following the cuftom of their country, ufed to comb their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, often changed their clothes, and ufed many other fuch frivolous means of fetting off the beauty of their perfons."* There is every reafon for believing that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of gardens and flowers, and many allufions in the writings of that period intimate a warm appreciation of the beauties of nature. The poets not unfrequently take their comparifons from flowers. Thus, in a poem in the Exeter Book, a pleafant fmell is defcribed as being — Sivecca fwttajij Jivylce on fumeres tld Jllnca^ on Jioivum, Jiaielum fajte ^ ivynnum oefter ivongum, ivyrta gehloivene hunig-fioiuende. Of odours fiveettji, fuch as in fummer^ s tide fragrance fend forth in places, fajt in their ftations, joyoufy o''er the plains, bloivn plants honey-floiving, — Exeter Book, p. 178. And one of the poetical riddles in the fame collection contains the lines- Ic eom on fence ftrengre >onne ricels, o>e rofafy, on eor]>an tyrf loynlic iveaxe% ; I am in odour ftronger than incenje, or the rofe is, •which on earth'' s turf pleafant groivs ; sabbatis balneare, saepe etiam vestituram mutare, et foimam corporis miiltis talibus frivoHs adjuvare. — Hist. Eliensis ap. Gale, p. 547.
 * Habebant etiam ex consiietudine patriae iinoquoqiie die comam pectere,