Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/457

 I The People in Country and Town 421 peasant jewels in the world ; for his mother a fox skin which he had pulled off a priest ; for his sister Gotelind a silken band and a tagged lace that would better have befitted a noble dame he had taken it from a peddler. And he said: "I must to sleep; I have ridden far; I need rest to-night." So he slept far into the next day in the bed over which his sister Gotelind had spread out a new-washed shirt for a coverlet was there unknown. So the son tarried at his father's for a week. Then the father asked his son how court etiquette was in the place where he had been living. " I myself," said he, "when I was a boy, went once to court with cheeses and eggs ; in those days there were knights of other sort, courteous and well mannered ; they practiced knightly feats of arms, then they danced with ladies and sang to their dancing. Then came the musician with his fiddle; and when he began, the ladies stood up, the knights went up to them, took them politely by the hand and danced gracefully, and, when that was over, came another man and read aloud out of a book about somebody named Ernst. "All in those days was merry good-fellowship. Some shot with bows at a mark, others went hunting and fishing; the worst one then would be the best nowadays. For now the man is prized who can spy and lie ; truth and honor are turned into falsehood; not even the tourneys of the old sort are in fashion any more others are all the rage. Then one used to hear in knightly sport the shout: ' Heia, knight, good cheer!' Now there rings through the air: ' Chase him, knight, chase him, chase him ; stab him, hit him, maim him, cut me that fellow's foot off, hew me this one's hands off, hang me that one, catch this rich man, he '11 pay us a good hundred pounds.' So it was, methinks, better in the old days than now. Tell me, my son, more of the new customs." " That I '11 do. Nowadays court etiquette is : * Drink, sir, drink, drink ; if you '11 drink this, I '11 drink that.' One doesn't sit any more with women, only with the wine. Take my word for it, the life of the old fogies who live as