No. 39. Anglo-Saxon Punishments.
We have little information on the secrets of the toilette of the Anglo-Saxons. We know from many sources that washing and bathing were frequent practices among them. The use of hot baths they probably derived from the Romans. The vocabularies give thermæ as the Latin equivalent. They are not unfrequently mentioned in the ecclesiastical laws, and in the canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, warm baths and soft beds are proscribed as domestic luxuries which tended to effeminacy. If these were really the thermæ of the Romans, it is perhaps the hostility of the ascetic part of the Romish clergy which caused them to be discontinued and forgotten. Our cut [No. 37] represents a party at their ablutions. We constantly find among the articles in the graves of Anglo-Saxon ladies tweezers, which were evidently intended for eradicating superfluous hairs, a circumstance which contributes to show that they paid special attention to hair-dressing. To judge from the colour of the hair in some of the illuminations, we might be led to suppose that sometimes they stained it. The young men seem to have been more foppish and vain of their persons than the ladies, and some of the old chronicles, such as the Ely history, tell us (which we should hardly have expected) that this was especially a characteristic of the Danish invaders, who, we are told, “following the custom of their country, used to comb their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, often changed their clothes, and used many other such frivolous means of setting off the beauty of their persons.”[13]
There is every reason for believing that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of gardens and flowers, and many allusions in the writings of that period intimate a warm appreciation of the beauties of nature. The poets not unfrequently take their comparisons from flowers. Thus, in a poem in the Exeter Book, a pleasant smell is described as being— Swecca swetast, Of odours sweetest, swylce on sumeres tid such as in summer’s tide stincað on stowum, fragrance send forth in places, staþelum fæste, fast in their stations, wynnum æfter wongum, joyously o’er the plains, wyrta geblowene blown plants hunig-flowende. honey-flowing. —Exeter Book, p. 178. And one of the poetical riddles in the same collection contains the lines— Ic eom on stence I am in odour strengre þonne ricels, stronger than incense, oþþe rosa sy, or the rose is, on eorþan tyrf which on earth’s turf wynlic weaxeð; pleasant grows; ic eom wræstre þonne heo. I am more delicate than it. þeah þa lilie sy though that the lily be leof mon-cynne, dear to mankind, beorht on blostman, bright in blossom, ic eom betre þonne heo. I am better than it. —Exeter Book, p. 423. So in another of these poems we read—
Fæger fugla reord, Sweet was the song of birds, folde geblowen, the earth was covered with flowers, geacas gear budon. cuckoos announced the year. —Ibid. p. 146.
Before we quit entirely the Saxon hall, and its festivities and ceremonies, we must mention one circumstance connected with them. The laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxons earnestly enjoined the duty of almsgiving, and a multitude of persons partook of the hospitality of the rich man’s mansion, who were not worthy to be admitted to his tables. These assembled at meal-times outside the gate of his house, and it was a custom to lay aside a portion of the provisions to be distributed among them, with the fragments from the table. In Alfric’s homily for the second Sunday after Pentecost, the preacher, after dwelling on the story of Lazarus, who was spurned from the rich man’s table, appeals to his Anglo-Saxon audience—“many Lazaruses ye have now lying at your gates, begging for your superfluity.” Bede tells us of the good king Oswald, that when he was once sitting at dinner, on Easter-day, with his bishop, having a silver dish full of dainties before him, as they were just ready to bless the bread, the servant whose duty it was to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons from all parts were sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king. The latter immediately ordered the provisions set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish to be cut in pieces and divided among them. In the picture of a Saxon house given in our first chapter (p. 15), we see the lord of the household on a sort of throne at the entrance to his hall, presiding over the distribution of his charity. This seat, generally under an arch or canopy, is often represented in the Saxon manuscripts, and the chief or lord seated under it, distributing justice or charity. In the accompanying cut, [No. 40], taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius, the lady Wisdom is represented seated on such a throne. It was, perhaps, the burh-geat-setl, or seat at the burh-gate, mentioned as characteristic of the rank of the thane in the following extract from a treatise on ranks in society, printed with the Anglo-Saxon laws: “And if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church (or perhaps private chapel), and kitchen (kycenan), bell-house, and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king’s hall, then was he thenceforth worthy of the dignity of thane.”
No. 40. Wisdom on her Throne.
CHAPTER IV.
OUT OF DOOR AMUSEMENTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—HUNTING AND HAWKING.—HORSES AND CARRIAGES.—TRAVELLING.—MONEY-DEALINGS.
The progress of society from its first formation to the full development of civilization, has been compared not inaptly to the life of man. In the childhood and youth of society, when the population was not numerous, and a servile class performed the chief part of the labour necessary for administering to the wants or luxuries of life, people had a far greater proportion of time on their hands to fill up with amusements than at a later period, and many that are now considered frivolous, or are only indulged in at rare intervals of relaxation, then formed the principal occupations of men’s lives. We have glanced at the in-door amusements of the Anglo-Saxons in a previous chapter; but their out-door recreations, although we have little information respecting them, were certainly much more numerous. The multitude of followers who, in Saxon times, attended on each lord or rich man as their military chief, or as their domestic supporter, had generally no serious occupation during the greater part of the day; and this abundance of unemployed time was not confined to one class of society, for the artisan had to work less to gain his subsistence, and both citizen and peasant were excused from work altogether during the numerous holidays of the year.
That the Anglo-Saxons were universally fond of play (plega) is proved by the frequent use of the word in a metaphorical sense. They even applied it to fighting and battle, which, in the language of the poets, were plega-gares (play of darts), æsc-plega (play of shields), and hand-plega (play of hands).[14] In the glossaries, plegere (a player), and plega-man (a playman), are used to represent the Roman gladiator; and plega-hús (a playhouse), and plega-stow (a play-place), express a theatre, or more probably an amphitheatre. Recent discoveries have shown that there was a theatre of considerable dimensions in the Roman town of Verulamium (near St. Alban’s); and old writers tell us there was one at the Silurian Isca (Caerleon), though these buildings were doubtless of rare occurrence; but every Roman town of any importance in the island had its amphitheatre outside the walls for gladiatorial and other exhibitions. The result of modern researches seems to prove that most of the Roman towns continued to exist after the Saxon settlement of the island, and we can have no doubt that the amphitheatres, at least for awhile, continued to be devoted to their original purposes, although the performances were modified in character. Some of them (like that at Richborough, in Kent, lately examined), were certainly surrounded by walls, while others probably were merely cut in the ground, and surrounded by a low embankment formed of the material thrown out. The first of these, the Saxons would naturally call a play-house, while the other would receive the no less appropriate appellation of a play-stow, or place for playing. Among the illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl., No. 603), to which we have so often had occasion to refer, there is a very curious picture, evidently intended to represent an amphitheatre outside a town. It is copied in our cut [No. 41]. The rude Anglo-Saxon draughtsman has evidently intended to represent an embankment, occupied by the spectators, around the spot where the performances take place. The spectator to the left is expressing his approbation by clapping with his hands. The performances themselves are singular: we have a party of minstrels, one of them playing on the Roman double pipes, so often represented in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, while another is dancing to him, and the third is performing with a tame bear, which is at the moment of the representation simulating sleep. Games of this kind with animals, succeeded no doubt among the Saxons to the Roman gladiatorial fights, but few have imagined that the popular English exhibition of the dancing bear dated from so remote a period. The manuscripts show that the double pipe was in use among the Anglo-Saxons; with a little modification, and a bag or bellows to supply the place of the human lungs, this instrument was transformed into a bagpipe.