In the ninth and tenth centuries, we find the use of wooden shoes, or sabots, very general throughout Europe, princes of all degrees wearing them. Their reign was of short duration, however, as they were soon relegated to the poorer classes, by whom they have been worn ever since.
Fig. 20.
Fig. 21.
Fig. 22. Fig. 23.
Fig. 24.
One would think, from their clumsy appearance (Fig. [16]), that it must be rather awkward work to walk in them, but the peasants do not seem to find it so, and even indulge in the “light fantastic” with considerable grace and freedom of motion.
Their chief objection, however, is the noise they make. Having lived for some time in the close vicinity of a public school in Brittany, where some one or two hundred children were in daily attendance, wearing these wooden sabots, I have a very distinct recollection of the din and clatter these little ones would make, as they raced each other down the hill on their release from school. Not many years ago an attempt was made to introduce wooden shoes into the United States, but it met with so little success that its projectors were forced to abandon the scheme.