Man Mastered.
[From a rare print after Van Mecken.]
In this story, which affords a curious picture of mediæval life, we learn the origin of the proverb relating to the possession and the wearing of the breeches. Hugues Piancelles concludes his faiblau by recommending every man who has a disobedient wife to treat her in the same manner; and mediæval husbands appear, to have followed his device without fear of laws against the ill-treatment of women.
Van Mecken, a Flemish artist who flourished in the fifteenth century, has left a record of domestic strife in an engraving which shows the wife as victor in the struggle for the breeches; and an ungenerous victor she would seem to have been, judging from the picture, where she is seen engaged at once in putting on the hard-won garments and striking her husband on the head with a distaff. He, poor fellow, is following, under compulsion, some merely feminine occupation, and seems to find it uncongenial.
A Judicial Duel.
[From an old German MS.]
In Germany, during mediæval times, domestic differences were settled by judicial duels between man and wife, and a regular code for their proper conduct was observed. ‘The woman must be so prepared,’ so the instructions run, ‘that a sleeve of her chemise extend a small ell beyond her hand like a little sack: there indeed is put a stone weighing iii pounds; and she has nothing else but her chemise, and that is bound together between the legs with a lace. Then the man makes himself ready in the pit over against his wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle, and one hand is bound at the elbow to the side.’
The seventeenth century seems to have been prolific of domestic broils, for an unusual number of pamphlets exist which have as their subject the attempts of women to obtain the upper hand over their husbands. One there is, called Women’s Fegaries, which is especially bitter. A spirited woodcut on the cover shows a man and woman struggling for a pair of breeches, which certainly would be no gain to either of them, except as a trophy of victory, so immensely large are they. The woman wields a ladle; the man brandishes something that may be either a sword or a cudgel, and both seem in deadly earnest. The contents of this counterblast to women’s efforts are extravagant and amusing; but you shall judge for yourself:—