The simple joust⑧ was the shock of two knights, who galloped with levelled spears at each other, aiming at breast or head, with the object either of unhorsing the antagonist, or, if he sat his charger well, of splintering the lance upon his helmet or his shield. The mellay hurled together, at the dropping of the prince"s baton, two parties of knights, who hacked away at each other with axe and mace and sword, often gashing limbs and breaking bones in the wild excitement of the fray. Bright eyes glanced from the surrounding galleries upon the brutal sport; and when the victor, with broken plume, and dusty, battered, red-splashed armour, dragged his weary or wounded limbs to the footstool of the beauty who presided as Queen over the festival, her white hands decorated him with the meed of his achievements.
The Normans probably dined at nine in the morning. When they rose they took a light meal; and ate something also after their day"s work, immediately before going to bed. Goose and garlic formed a favourite dish. Their cookery was more elaborate, and, in comparison, more delicate, than the preparations for an English feed; but the character for temperance, which they brought with them from the Continent, soon vanished.
The poorer classes hardly ever ate flesh, living principally on bread, butter, and cheese; -a social fact which seems to underlie that usage of our tongue by which the living animals in field or stall bore English names-ox, sheep, calf, pig, deer; while their flesh, promoted to Norman dishes, rejoiced in names of French origin-beef, mutton, veal, pork, venison. Round cakes, piously marked with a cross, piled the tables, onwhich pastry of various kinds also appeared. In good houses cups of glass held the wine, which was borne from the cellar below in jugs.
Squatted around the door or on the stair leading to the Norman dining-hall, which was often on an upper floor, was a crowd of beggars or lickers,⑨ who grew so insolent in the daysof Rufus, that ushers, armed with rods, were posted outside to beat back the noisy throng, who thought little of snatching the dishes as the cooks carried them to table!
The juggler,⑩ who under the Normans filled the place ofthe English gleeman, tumbled, sang, and balanced knives in the hall; or out in the bailey of an afternoon displayed the acquirements of his trained monkey or bear. The fool, too, clad in coloured patch-work, cracked his ribald jokes and shook his cap and bells at the elbow of roaring barons, when the board was spread and the circles of the wine began.
While knights hunted in the greenwood or tilted in the lists and jugglers tumbled in the noisy hall, the monk in the quiet Scriptorium compiled chronicles of passing events, copied valuable manus, and painted rich borders and brilliant initials on every page. These illuminations form a valuable set of materials for our pictures of life in the Middle Ages.
Monasteries served many useful purposes at the time of which I write. Besides their manifest value as centres of study and literary work, they gave alms to the poor, a supper and a bed to travellers; their tenants were better off and better treated than the tenants of the nobles; the monks could store grain, grow apples, and cultivate their flower-beds with little risk of injury from war, because they had spiritual thunders at their call, which awed even the most reckless of the soldiery into a respect for sacred property.
Splendid structures those monasteries generally were, since that vivid taste for architecture which the Norman possessed in a high degree, and which could not find room for its displayin the naked strength of the solid keep, lavished its entire energy and grace upon buildings lying in the safe shadow of the Cross. Nor was architectural taste the only reason for their magnificence. Since they were nearly all erected as offerings to Heaven, the religion of the age impelled the pious builders to spare no cost in decorating the exterior with fret-work and sculpture of Caen stone, the interior with gilded cornices and windows of painted glass.
