No. 194. A. Mediæval Garden Scene.
There is an early Latin story of a man who had a cross-grained wife. One day he invited some friends to dinner, and set out his table in his garden, by the side of a river (fecit poni mensam in hortu suo prope aquam). The lady seated herself by the water-side, at a little distance from the table, and cast a very forbidding look upon her husband’s guests; upon which he said to her, “Show a pleasant countenance to our guests, and come nearer the table;” but she only moved further off, and nearer the brink of the river, with her back turned to the water. He repeated his invitation in a more angry tone, in reply to which, to show her ill-humour, she drew further back, with a quick movement of ill-temper, through which, forgetting the nearness of the river, she fell into it, and was drowned. The husband, pretending great grief, sent for a boat, and proceeded up the stream in search of her body. This excited some surprise among his neighbours, who suggested to him that he should go down the stream, and not up. “Ah!” said he, “you did not know my wife—she did everything in contradiction, and I firmly believe that her body has floated against the current, and not with it.”
Even among the aristocratic class the garden was often the place for giving audience and receiving friends. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” a messenger sent to the count Fromont, one of the great barons, finds him sitting in a garden surrounded by his friends—
Trouva Fromont seant en un jardin;
Environ lui avoit de ses amins.
—Roman de Garin, i. 282.
A favourite occupation of the ladies in the middle ages was making garlands and chaplets of flowers. In the “Lai d’Aristote” (Barbazan, iii. 105, 107), king Alexander’s beautiful mistress is described as descending early in the morning, walking in the garden alone, and making herself a chaplet of flowers. In another fabliau, published in Germany by Adelbert Keller, a Saracenic maiden descends from her chamber into the garden, performs her toilette at the fountain there, and then makes herself a chaplet of flowers and leaves, which she puts on her head. So Emelie, in Chaucer’s “Knights Tale,”— Iclothed was sche fressh for to devyse.
Hire yolwe (yellow) heer was browdid in a tresse
Byhynde hire bak, a yerde long, I gesse.
And in the gardyn at the sonne uprise (sun-rise)
Sche walketh up and doun wheer as hire liste;
Sche gadereth floures, partye whyte and reede,
To make a certeyn gerland for hire heede,
And as an aungel hevenly sche song.
A little further on, Arcyte goes at daybreak into the fields to make him a chaplet, of the leaves of woodbine or hawthorn, for it must be remembered that this takes place in the month of May, which was especially the season for wearing garlands. In “Blonde of Oxford,” Jean of Dammartin, seeking his mistress, finds her in a meadow making herself a chaplet of flowers— A dont de la chambre s’avance,
De là le vit en i. prael
U ele faisoit un capiel.
—Blonde of Oxford, p. 30.
Our cut [No. 195], taken from a well-known manuscript in the British Museum, of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a party of ladies in the garden, gathering flowers, and making garlands. The love of flowers, as I have stated in a former chapter, seems to have prevailed generally among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and affectionate allusions to them occur, not unfrequently, in the literary remains of that early period. Many of our old favourite garden-flowers are, I believe, derived from the Anglo-Saxon gardens. Proofs of a similar attachment to flowers might be quoted in abundance from the writings of the periods subsequent to the entrance of the Normans. The wearing of garlands or chaplets of flowers was a common practice with both sexes. In the romantic history of the Fitz-Warines, written in the thirteenth century, the hero, in travelling, meets a young knight who, in token of his joyous humour, carries a chaplet of flowers on his head. In the later English romance of the “Squyer of Lowe Degree,” when the “squyer” was preparing to do his office of carver in the hall— There he araied him in scarlet red,
And set a chaplet upon his hed;
A belte about his sydes two,
White brod barres to and fro.
Walter de Biblesworth talks of ladies dancing the carole, their heads crowned with garlands of the blue-bottle flower— Mener karole
Desouz chapeau de blaverole.
—Vocabularies, p. 161.
Garlands of flowers were also the common rewards for success in the popular games.
No. 195. Ladies making Garlands.
All these enjoyments naturally rendered the garden a favourite and important part of every man’s domestic establishment; during the warmer months of the year it was a chosen place of resort, especially after dinner. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” Begues is represented as descending from his palace, after dinner, to walk with his fair wife Beatrice in his garden— En son palais fu Begues de Belin;
Après mangier entra en un jardin,
Aveuc lui fu la belle Biatris.
—Roman de Garin, vol. ii. p. 97.
In another part of the same romance, Begues de Belin and his barons, on rising from the table, went to seek recreation in the fields— Quant mangié ont et beu à loisir,
Les napes ostent, et en prés sunt sailli.
—Ibid., vol. i. p. 203.
The manuscript in the British Museum, from which we took our last illustration, furnishes the accompanying representation of a group of ladies walking in the garden, and gathering flowers ([No. 196]).
