Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/328

 316 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE service as the bailiff may direct him ; when the day is over he shall sit upon a stool, and the bailiff shall give him a loaf long enough to reach from his knee to his chin, called the " night loaf." In the documents of Hansbergen, near Strasburg, we read : ' The peasants shall be served twice a year with two dishes of meat, and the meat shall be four fingers wider than the dishes, and there shall be new glasses and new dishes, and enough of wine.' At Alzey 'the peasants, men and women, had to give two days at harvest time. When the women had young children, they must go home three times a day to suckle them. At night each man shall receive such a loaf as the twenty-fourth part of a hogshead of grain will make.' The law was very ex- plicit in regard to the amount of provisions to be allowed to wine carriers, and, while it generously stipu- lated ' two kinds of meat, two kinds of bread, and two kinds of wine,' it took care that they should not take too much of the latter. In the Chronicles (' Weisthiimer 5 ) of the Abbev of Priim we read : ' When the carrier ml arrives at evening at the Moselle he shall be fed with soup and sufficient wine. On the road he shall have one quart of wine to each mile, but he shall not drink so much that he cannot care for goods under his charge. When he comes home he shall have two sorts of meat, two sorts of wine, and two sorts of bread ; but he shall not drink enough to make him strike against the door, else he shall be punished.' The term of body service was generally two days, often one day and one night. The money or service rents of the manor lord or manor tenant, according to law, were delivered by him personally or by his representative to the lord of the soil, and it was not unusual for these payments to be