No. 91. The Ale-Wife’s End.
The rustic classes, and instances of their rusticity, are not unfrequently met with in these interesting carvings. The stalls of Corbeil present several agricultural scenes. Our cut No. 92 is taken from those of Gloucester cathedral, of an earlier date, and represents the three shepherds, astonished at the appearance of the star which announced the birth of the Saviour of mankind. Like the three kings, the shepherds to whom this revelation was made were always in the middle ages represented as three in number. In our drawing from the miserere in Gloucester cathedral, the costume of the shepherds is remarkably well depicted, even to the details, with the various implements appertaining to their profession, most of which are suspended to their girdles. They are drawn with much spirit, and even the dog is well represented as an especially active partaker in the scene.
No. 92. The Shepherds of the East.
No. 93. The Carpenter.
No. 94. The Shoemaker.
Of the two other examples we select from the misereres of Corbeil, the first represents the carpenter, or, as he was commonly called by our Anglo-Saxon and mediæval forefathers, the wright, which signifies simply the “maker.” The application of this higher and more general term—for the Almighty himself is called, in the Anglo-Saxon poetry, ealra gescefta wyrhta, the Maker, or Creator, of all things—shows how important an art that of the carpenter was considered in the middle ages. Everything made of wood came within his province. In the Anglo-Saxon “Colloquy” of archbishop Alfric, where some of the more useful artisans are introduced disputing about the relative value of their several crafts, the “wright” says, “Who of you can do without my craft, since I make houses and all sorts of vessels (vasa), and ships for you all?” (“Volume of Vocabularies,” p. 11.) And John de Garlande, in the thirteenth century, describes the carpenter as making, among other things, tubs, and barrels, and wine-cades. The workmanship of those times was exercised, before all other materials, on wood and metals, and the wright, or worker in the former material, was distinguished by this circumstance from the smith, or worker in metal. The carpenter is still called a wright in Scotland. Our last cut (No. 94), taken also from one of the misereres at Corbeil, represents the shoemaker, or as he was then usually called, the cordwainer, because the leather which he chiefly used came from Cordova in Spain, and was thence called cordewan, or cordewaine. Our shoemaker is engaged in cutting a skin of leather with an instrument of a rather singular form. Shoes, and perhaps forms for making shoes, are suspended on pegs against the wall.