No. 31. A Lamp and Stand.
We have no information to explain to us how the bower or chamber was warmed. In the hall, it is probable that the fire gave warmth and light at the same time, although, in the fragment of the Anglo-Saxon poem relating to the fight at Finnesburg, there is an indistinct intimation that the hall was sometimes lighted with horns, or cressets; but, in the chamber, during the long evenings of winter, it was necessary to have an artificial light to enable its occupants to read, or work, or play. The Anglo-Saxon name for this article, so necessary for domestic comfort, was candel or condel (our candle); and, so general was the application of this term, that it was even used figuratively as we now use the word lamp. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon poets spoke of the sun as rodores candel (the candle of the firmament), woruld-candel (the candle of the world), heofon-condel (the candle of heaven), wyn-condel (the candle of glory). The candle was, no doubt, originally a mere mass of fat plastered round a wick (candel-weoc), and stuck upon an upright stick. Hence the instrument on which it was afterwards supported received the name of candel-sticca or candel-stæf, a candlestick; and the original idea was preserved even when the candle supporter had many branches, it being then called a candel-treow, or candle-tree. The original arrangement of the stick was also preserved; for, down to a very recent period, the candle was not inserted in a socket in the candlestick as at present, but it was stuck upon a spike. The Anglo-Saxon writers speak of candel-snytels, or snuffers. Other names less used, for a candle or some article for giving light, were blacern or blæcern, which is explained in glossaries by the Latin lucerna, and thæcela, the latter signifying merely a light. It was usual, also, among our Saxon forefathers, as among ourselves, to speak of the instrument for illumination as merely leoht, a light—“bring me a light.” A candlestick and candle are represented in one of the cuts in our last chapter (cut [No. 19]). The Anglo-Saxons, no doubt, derived the use of lamps from the Romans; and they were so utterly at a loss for a word to describe this mode of illumination, that they always called it leoht-fæt, a light-vat, or vessel of light. In our cut ([No. 31]) we have an Anglo-Saxon lamp, placed on a candelabrum or stand, exactly in the Roman manner. It will be remembered that Asser, a writer of somewhat doubtful authenticity, ascribes to king Alfred the invention of lanterns, as a protection to the candle, to prevent it from swealing in consequence of the wind entering through the crevices of the apartments—not a very bright picture of the comforts of an Anglo-Saxon chamber. The candles were made of wax as well as tallow. The candlestick was of different materials. In one instance we find it termed, in Anglo-Saxon, a leoht-isern, literally a light-iron: perhaps this was the term used for the lamp-stand, as figured in our last cut. In the inventories we have mention of ge-bonene candel-sticcan (candlesticks of bone), of silver-gilt candlesticks, and of ornamented candlesticks.
No. 32. Anglo-Saxon Beds.
A bed was a usual article of furniture in the bower or chamber; though there were, no doubt, in large mansions, chambers set apart as bedrooms, as well as chambers in which there was no bed, or in which a bed could be made for the occasion. The account given by Gaimar, as quoted above, of the visit of king Osbert to Beorn’s lady, seems to imply that the chamber in which the lady gave the king his meal had a bed in it. The bed itself seems usually to have consisted merely of a sack (sæccing) filled with straw, and laid on a bench or board. Hence words used commonly to signify the bed itself were bænce (a bench), and streow (straw): and even in king Alfred’s translation of Bede, the statement, “he ordered to prepare a bed for him,” is expressed in Anglo-Saxon by, he heht him streowne ge-gearwian, literally, he ordered to prepare straw for him. All, in fact, that had to be done when a bed was wanted, was to take the bed-sack out of the cyst, or chest, fill it with fresh straw, and lay it on the bench. In ordinary houses it is probable that the bench for the bed was placed in a recess at the side of the room, in the manner we still see in Scotland; and hence the bed itself was called, among other names, cota, a cot; cryb, a crib or stall; and clif or clyf, a recess or closet. From the same circumstance a bedroom was called bed-clyfa or bed-cleofa, and bed-cofa, a bed-closet or bed-cove. Our cut ([No. 32]), taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis (Claudius, B. iv.), represents beds of this description. Benches are evidently placed in recesses at the side of the chamber, with the beds laid upon them, and the recesses are separated from the rest of the apartment by a curtain, bed-warft or hryfte. The modern word bedstead means, literally, no more than “a place for a bed;” and it is probable that what we call bedsteads were then rare, and only possessed by people of rank. Two examples are given in the annexed cut ([No. 33]), taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603. Under the head were placed a bolstar and a pyle (pillow), which were probably also stuffed with straw. The clothes with which the sleeper was covered, and which appear in the pictures scanty enough, were scyte, a sheet, bed-felt, a coverlet, which was generally of some thicker material, and bed-reaf, bed-clothes. We know from a multitude of authorities, that it was the general custom of the middle ages to go into bed quite naked. The sketchy character of the Anglo-Saxon drawings renders it difficult sometimes to judge of minute details; but, from the accompanying cuts, it appears that an Anglo-Saxon going into bed, having stripped all his or her clothes off, first wrapped round his body a sheet, and then drew over him the coverlet. Sharon Turner has given a list of the articles connected with the bed, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills and inventories. In the will of a man we find bed-clothes (bed-reafes), with a curtain (hyrfte), and sheet (hopp-scytan), and all that thereto belongs; and he gives to his son the bed-reafe, or bed-cloth, and all its appurtenances. An Anglo-Saxon lady gives to one of her children two chests and their contents, her best bed-curtain, linen, and all the clothes belonging to it. To another child she leaves two chests, and “all the bed-clothes that to one bed belong.” On another occasion we read of pulvinar unum de palleo: not a pillow of straw, as Sharon Turner very erroneously translates it, but a pillow of a sort of rich cloth made in the middle ages. A goat-skin bed-covering was sent to an Anglo-Saxon abbot; and bear-skins are sometimes noticed, as if a part of bed furniture.
No. 33. Anglo-Saxon Beds.
The bed-room, or chamber, and the sitting-room were usually identical; for we must bear in mind that in the domestic manners of the middle ages the same idea of privacy was not connected with the sleeping-room as at the present day. Gaimar has preserved an anecdote of Anglo-Saxon times curiously illustrative of this point. King Edgar—a second David in this respect—married the widow of Ethelwold, whom he had murdered in order to clear his way to her bed. The king and queen were sleeping in their bed, which is described as surrounded by a rich curtain, made of a stuff which we cannot easily explain, when Dunstan, uninvited, but unhindered, entered the chamber to expostulate with them on their wickedness, and came to the king’s bedside, where he stood over them, and entered into conversation— A Londres ert Edgar li reis; King Edgar was at London; En son lit jut e la raine, He lay in his bed with the queen, Entur els out une curtine Round them was a curtain Delgé, d’un paille escariman. Spread, made of scarlet paille. Este-vus l’arcevesque Dunstan Behold archbishop Dunstan Très par matin vint en la chambre Came into the chamber very early in the morning. Sur un pecul de vermail lambre On a bed-post of red plank S’est apué cel arcevesque. The archbishop leaned. In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert by the instrumentality of the queen of king Offa, as it is told by Roger of Wendover, we see the queen ordering to be prepared for the royal guest, a chamber, which was adorned for the occasion with sumptuous furniture, as his bed-room. “Near the king’s bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked, and surrounded with curtains; and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug.” Into this pit the king was precipitated the moment he trusted himself on the treacherous seat. It is clear from the context that the chamber thus prepared for the king was a building apart, and that it had only a ground-floor.
It was in the chamber that the child, while an infant, was brought up by its mother. We have few contemporary notices of the treatment of children at this early age by the Anglo-Saxons, but probably it differed little from the general practice of a later period. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, an Englishman named Walter de Bibblesworth, who wrote, as a great proportion of English writers at that day did, in French verse—French as it was then spoken and written in England—has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in English, which commences with man’s infancy. “As soon as the child is born,” says the author, “it must be swathed; lay it to sleep in its cradle, and you must have a nurse to rock it to sleep.” Kaunt le emfès sera nées,
Lors deyt estre maylolez,
En soun berz l’enfaunt chochet,
De une bercere vus purvoyet,
Où par sa norice seyt bercé.
This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of society. If we turn to one of the more serious romances, we find it practised among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princess Parise, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, she first wraps her child in a piece of sendal, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or swathels, it with a white cloth:— La dame le conroie à un pan de cendex,
Puis a pris un blanc drap, si a ses fians bendez.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 76.
When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained some rich booty, they find that they have stolen a newly-born infant, “all swatheled.” Lai troverent l’anffant, trestot anmaloté.
—Ibid. p. 80.
This custom of swatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is still practised in some parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers swatheled their children, although the practice is not very clearly described by any of their writers. We derive the word itself from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which beswethan means to swathe or bind, suethe signifies a band or swathe, and swethel or swæthil, a swaddling-band. These words appear, however, to have been used in a more extensive sense among the Anglo-Saxons than their representatives in more recent times, and as I have not met with them applied in this restricted sense in Anglo-Saxon writers, I should not hastily assume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did swathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Christ, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet speaks of— Bearnes gebyrda, The child’s birth, þa he in binne wæs when he in the bin was in cildes hiw in a child’s form claþum biwunden. with cloths wound round. These words refer clearly to the practice of swaddling; and, though the Anglo-Saxon artist has not here portrayed his object very distinctly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut ([No. 34]), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Cædmon, the child, which its mother is represented as holding, is intended to be swathed.