Simplicity of dress was another part of instruction: but there was to be no lack of jewels of price and other splendid ornaments on festive occasions, and, consistently with the general magnificence of religious worship of the age, maidens were commanded to wear their gorgeous robes at church, and not merely at courtly festivals. There was a gravity about chivalry which accorded well with the recommendation for women not quickly to adopt new dresses introduced from strange countries. Modesty of attire was the theme of many a wise discourse, and every castle had its story of the daughter of a knight who lost her marriage by displaying too conspicuously the graces of her figure, and that the cavalier who was her intended suitor preferred her sister who had modesty, though not beauty, for her dower.[208]
Knowledge of medicine.
All the domestic œconomy of the baronial mansion was arranged by these young maidens: and the consideration which this power gave them was not a little heightened by their sharing with the monks in the knowledge which the age possessed of vulnerary medicaments. This attribute of skill over the powers of nature was a clear deduction from that sublime, prophetic, and mysterious character of women in the ages which preceded the times both of feudalism and chivalry. The healing art was not reduced to an elaborate system of principles and rules, for memory to store and talent to apply, but it was thought that the professors of medicine enjoyed a holy intercourse with worlds unknown to common minds. The possession of more than mortal knowledge was readily ascribed to a pure, unearthly being like woman, and the knight who felt to his heart of hearts the charm of her beauty was not slow in believing that she could fascinate the very elements of nature to aid him. There are innumerable passages in the various works which reflect the manners of chivalric times on the medicinal practice of dames and damsels. A pleasing passage of Spenser illustrates their affectionate tendance of the sick.
“Where many grooms and squires ready were
To take him from his steed full tenderly;
And eke the fairest Alma met him there
With balm and wine and costly spicery,
To comfort him in his infirmity.
Eftesoones she caus’d him up to be conveyed,
And of his arms despoiled easily:
In sumptuous bed she made him to be laid,
And, all the while his wounds were dressing, by him stay’d.”[209]
Chirurgical knowledge was also a necessary feminine accomplishment, and we will accept the reason of the cavalier with “high thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy,” for such a remarkable feature in their character. “The art of surgery,” says Sir Philip Sidney, “was much esteemed, because it served to virtuous courage, which even ladies would, even with the contempt of cowards, seem to cherish.”[210] A fair maiden could perform as many wonderful cures as the most renowned and skilful leech. The gentle Nicolette successfully treated an accident which her knight Aucassin met with.
“So prosper’d the sweet lass, her strength alone
Thrust deftly back the dislocated bone;
Then, culling curious herbs of virtue tried,
While her white smock the needful bands supplied:
With many a coil the limb she swath’d around,
And nature’s strength return’d, nor knew its former wound.”
Spenser favours us with the ladies’ method of treating a wound.
“Mekely she bowed down, to weete if life
Yet in his frozen members did remain;
And, feeling by his pulses beating rife
That the weak soul her seat did yet retain,
She cast to comfort him with busy pain:
His double-folded neck she reared upright,
And rubb’d his temples and each trembling vein;
His mailed haberieon she did undight,
And from his head his heavy burganet did light.
Into the woods thenceforth in haste she went,
To seek for herbs that mote him remedy;
For she of herbes had great intendiment,
Taught of the nymph from whom her infancy
Her nourced had in true nobility.
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The soveraine weede betwixt two marbles plain,
She powder’d small, and in pieces bruize;
And then atweene her lily handes twain
Into his wound ye juice thereof did scruze;
And round about, as she could well it use,
The flesh therewith she suppled and did steepe
T’abate all spasm and soke the swelling bruise;
And, after having search’t the intuse deep,
She with her scarf did bind the wound, from cold to keep.”[211]
Every-day life of the maiden.
The every-day life of a young maiden in chivalric times is described with a great deal of spirit in the fine old English tale, of the Squire of Low Degree. I am not acquainted with any other passage of the metrical romances which contains so vivid a picture of the usages of our ancestors. To dissipate his daughter’s melancholy for the loss of her lover, the King of Hungary says,