1 p Co3 II i ^ i Eralialilf Books in i^atural itnotolrligc THE PAST AT OUE DOOES :^^^m. M ACM ILL AN AND CO., Limited LUMOOM • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NKW YOKK • BOSTOX • CUICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO TUE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd TOUOXTO Il'lii, UIIK.NCK CAMK THK MODKKN BLOISK. ^ OJ Frinlrdhy R. S: R. C.akic, T.imitk.i>, Kdinhurgh. TO MY FATHEE AXD MOTHEE ON THEIR GOLDEX WEDDING-DAY November 15, 1910 382704 AUTHOR'S NOTE In presenting this little book to the reader, the writer must content himself %Yith the warning that what we call " civilisation " or " culture " is by no means to be taken as any criterion w^iatever of the mental power of a race. Of this fact the survivals here recorded from Ireland and Scotland in them- selves are proof. On the other hand, the vast mass of ancient usage incorporated in the daily life, even of the most up-to-date Londoner, would surprise many lifelong students of such matters if they had never happened to consider the subject as a whole, and this must be an apology for any incompleteness. The difficulties are increased by the almost incred- ible fact tliat there is no adequate Folk Museum in this country where the development of the national life can be studied. Yet we may find in this research some of the " little things w^e care about," that deep soil of common usage into which the roots of our common patriotism strike. In conclusion I may be permitted to ofler my very grateful thanks to the many friends who have assisted in collecting much valuable information or illustrations, and above all, not only for unfailing ix X THE PAST AT OUR ])OOES help, but also for the stimulus of a great example, to my father the Eev. Professor W. W. Skeat, upon whose work the linguistic part of this book is largely founded. W. W. SKEAT. Rome Land, St. Albans, 1911. NOTE TO NEW EDITION The methods followed in this little book are capable of almost uuhmited extension for the purpose of teaching various kinds of research work, whether in history or geography or otherwise. Such research could moreover be made to serve as a key to almost the whole of our modern civilisation, with an in- calculable gain in the stimulus that would thus be afforded to the awakened intellect of the worker. Xor need investigation of this kind be altogether out of touch with practical affairs. It was alleged to be the red wheat (v. pp. 43-44), still common in Canada, that inspired the effort of the U.S. government to obtain Reciprocity, the IMichigan farmers having discovered that its hard grain was better suited for tlieir modern machine mills than the softer wheat of their own country ! W. W. SKEAT. Rome Land, St, Aluans, I5lh April 1912. CONTENTS 1. The Story of our Food 2. The Story of our Food {continued) 3. The Story of our Dress 4. The Story of our Dress (continued) 5. The Story of our Dress {continued) 6. The Story of our Homes 7. The Story of our Homes {continued) 1 17 50 74 104 122 148 CHAPTER I THE STORY OF OUR FOOD In the present little book an attempt will be made to show that though most of us are wont to consider many everyday objects by which we are surrounded " common " and therefore mean and uninspiring, yet if we trace back their history we shall find it full of a hidden romance, which will raise it in our eyes till it grows as inspiring as the story of the stars. And this history we can, every one of us, " 2i^certain " (in the oldest sense of the word, that is make sure or " certain ") in these days of cheap and good and freely accessible books. We shall find in the course of the following pages many things about which we have probably never thought, because they were part of our everyday life, and therefore appeared too simple and obvious for us to consider. A very little trouble on our part will convince us that the opposite is the case, and that just becay.se these things are part of our everyday experience IS B 2 ' THK PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. they are especially important for us to understand . If this endeavour is successful it will, we hope, be admitted that the subjects here dealt with are ill no way mean or common-place, and that their real history is often vastly different from anything that we might have been able to guess. Whether we choose to make use of such oppor- tunities as we have rests with ourselves alone. The world will always be made up of those who wish to understand the real meaning of what is around them, and those who do not care. It will therefore always be possible to say of these two classes that — ^ Two men stood looking through the bars, One saw the mud, the other the stars. Surely the vault of heaven, " that majestical firma- ment fretted with golden fire," is in the end better worth our attention than the golden dross for which tlie world principally contends, so soon trampled into the mud of the market by the feet of the selfish and reckless crowd. We shall begin by giving examples to show how much we may learn of the ancient racial groups from wliich the main stock of the nation is built, through an inquiry into our iiiodoin food-words ; how much too of liistoric survival is to be traced in the story of such humble implements as the plough and the reaping-machine, in the common customs connected I THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 3 with our meals, and in the national and international circumstances which have affected the introduction of some of our habitual articles of food. A Matter of Meals The idea of breakfast in historic times in England did not usually correspond in the least to what we now understand by the word. It partook rather of the nature of a mere snack, such as is still customary on the Continent and in the East, its purpose being merely to afford some trifle of food to sustain the strength, and in this way actually to " break " the long " fast " which continued from overnight till the principal meal was served. We shall perhaps understand this the better if we realise that our ancestors in the fourteenth century used to dine at an hour but little later than our own breakfast hour, at nine or ten o'clock in fact, though it gradually become later until it was fixed at noon, with supper, the other principal meal of the day, at five or six. To put the matter in another way, the "dinner-time" of the Normans at first roughly coincided with the Anglo-Saxon time for " breakfast." But the original sense of the French word " dinner " was actually to " iinfast," or " break fast," so that there was every reason why both names should have been applied to the earliest 4 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. meal of the day. And the thing itself survives in the labourer's early morning " deiv-hit." In the last century the dinner-hour grew rapidly later, until as at present it has even taken the place of the last meal of the day, the old-time " sup- per," or " sop " of bread soaked in gravy or broth, which now survives as a plainer and simpler meal than dinner, among all but the wealthier classes. " Lunch," a modern abbreviation of " luncheon," was in its original form " lunchin " nothing but a big slice or lump of bread or other eatable. This would be particularly applicable to the big lump of bread or cheese off which a labourer still makes his midday meal. Gay, in 1714, wrote, " I sliced the luncheon from the barley-loaf." The sense of the word was in course of time easily extended to that of the " light " meal we now eat at noon. On the other hand, " lunch " or " luncheon " has been much confused with " nuncheon," which latter, in its original form " noon-shenk," was applied not to food but to drink, " shenk " being an old word, traces of which survive in Shakespeare in the sense of pouring out liquor. And nuncheon is still also called " bever " — the exact Norman equivalent of the English word. Tlius tlie original sense of luncheon was a (noonday) slice or lump of bread or cheese, and that of nuncheon a noonday drink. It may be worth while mentioning here that 1 THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 5 the now familiar " sandwich," which so frequently forms part of an outdoor lunch, gets its name from the fourth Earl of Sandwich (d. 1792), who, be- ing a confirmed gambler, invented it in order to remain at the gaming table without interruption. Tlie same clear blending of Saxon and Xorman influences that appears, as is well known, in the names given to the various forms of meat food, occurs in regard to the appliances made use of at meals. For table, chair, and plate or platter are of Xorman origin, whilst the words board, settle, stool, glass and tray, are Saxon. The first of these was given both to the round table and the taUe dormante, that is, " sleeping," or fixed (Xorman) table as distinguished from the Saxon " board." Low tables, on w^hich bread was set in baskets of British work, were also sometimes used by the Britons. The round table, was at least as old as the square table, and when private rooms for the family were first introduced, became the recognised form of table for the parlour, a fact which no doubt accounts for the relatively large number of cases in which it was so employed down to the latter years of the nineteenth century. In old-fashioned farm-houses it was long the habit, and still is in some parts, for the master and his servants to dine together in the same room, the servants at a long table or " board," in strict G THE PAST AT OUR DOOES chap order of seniority, while the master and his family sat at a small ronnd tal)le near the fire. We all know how ill-mannered it is considered, even at the present day, for a guest to sit out of his place at table, and even in early Britain the question of precedence was held so important that by a law of Cnut any one sitting in his wrong place might be pelted out of it with bones thrown by the company, without privilege of taking offence. Our apparently modern fancy of two lovers eating off the same plate has come down to us from a chivalrous old custom, which was once an act of courtesy between friends, especially between knights and ladies. It gradually fell into disuse, though as late as 1752 the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton in accordance with the ancient custom, ate off the same plate at the head of their table. Trenchers, whence our modern expression " a good trencherman " is derived, were like " platters," occasionally to be seen in actual use in the reign of Queen Victoria, and they are yet used for certain meals ^ by the seventy scholars in collcfjc hall at Win- chester. They were of clean white wood, usually maple, and were often hollow on both sides, so that meat could be served on one side and then pudding on the other. ^ For broad uiid l^ittcr at broakfaht. and also for tea and snj)j)t'r, though not now for dinner. Like Fr. (mnchv, the word once nioant a alice of bread ou which meat was serveil. I THE STOKY OF OUR FOOD 7 Almost the only kind of wooden " trencher " now in general use is that on which bread is cut, and this is now called a " platter "; its earlier name of " trencher " seems going out. Both were long used for fruit served up at the " banquet," which latter term in Shakespeare's time was given, not as now to the feast itself, but to the dessert. At this time, too, Harrison says that " old men of his village still spoke of the exchange of treen or wooden platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin," Gentlemen in those days used to bring their own knives with them to table, and these in Anglo- Saxon times Avere shaped so like our modern razor that on at least one occasion they were identified as " Eoman razors," under which strange designation they once came to be labelled in a museum ! The knives then were laid by the spoons, w^hich were of silver, bone, or wood. " Spoon " really means, in fact, a wooden chip, as in the common expression " spick and span " or (more fully) " spick and span new," where " span " has its original sense of a newly-split '' chip," a meaning which usefully recalls the most ancient form of spoon. Even then, however, the full force of the expression is hard to see, unless we may perhaps conjecture that " spick " in this case has the sense of a wooden " spike," such as we know to have been employed from the remotest ages for holding the meat at meals, before 8 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES chap. the invention of the fork. If so, both " spike and spoon " would have to be always nrii\ for in order to have them clean, they would be cut fresh, like the fork itself in early times/ for every meal. The fork (which was at first two-pronged, like our modern carving-forks) is one of those obvious implements which have no doubt been " invented " over and over again in almost every part of the world. In its application to our food, however, it seems to have been an oriental idea, introduced into Europe by the Venetians. For in the eleventh century we read of a certain princess of Constanti- nople, who had married a Doge or Duke of Venice, and who was thought to be " luxurious beyond all belief " simply because, " instead of eating like other people, she had her food cut up into little pieces and ate the pieces by means of a two-pronged fork." For cooking purposes, forks were used by the Anglo-Saxons, yet Edward I. kept a crystal fork as one of his jewels, and Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., had three silver forks " for eating pears." J)essert forks of tliis kind continued to be treasured by our rulers (as, for instance, by Henry IV., Henry VII.. Henry VIII.) down to Elizabeth. The dinner-fork was not introduced into common use in England till 1608, when Thomas Coryat " ^ An early traveller, in 1253, says the Tatars then used for eating tlicir meat the ])oint of a knife, or little fork, made for the purpose. The usual explanation of "spike and chip" misses this point. I THE STOIIY OF OUli FOOD 9 observed it in Italy and started the custom at his own table in England. Naturally he was much laughed at, the novelty being described by one over- excited person as "an insult to Providence, Who had given us fingers ! " Little by little, however, this much-ridiculed invention made its way. But even now (such a strange thing is custom) the two great branches of the English-speaking race differ in their use of it, for in parts of the United States the usual British fashion of eating with knife and fork is said to excite much amusement. For the custom prevailing there (as in most parts of Europe) is to cut the meat uj) into small pieces and then to lay the knife aside, the eating being done with the fork in the right hand — showing what trivial distinctions may , come to be regarded as national peculiarities. The French, to give another example, still eat cake with a spoon ! The " salt-cellar " or (more properly) " sall-er," that is, sa^^-holder, was in those days one of the most important things on the board, because the station of a guest was indicated by offering him a seat either " above " or " below the salt," as the case might be. It was often of great size, and of precious metal. Edward III. had one "inamelled all over with baboons and little birds," and they were sometimes made like a ship or else like a chariot on wheels, to make it easier to pass them 10 THE PAST AT OUll DOORS down the table. In India and many other parts of the world the eating of a man's salt still forms a bond that cannot be broken, but in England such phrases as " above " or " below the salt " and " worth Uy cunrtesu of Mrs. Stallurtl/: Bj CDUvtcsij of Mrs. Stallanl-l'enoirn'. Fio. 1. — Home-made llw.ii i i,|,, Fig. 2.— Modern fuctory- made or "Diiiiking-Horn," still Horn Glass or Drinking-Horu used by field labourers near ^j.q,,. T^p,vdlpv Stockton (Wore), Bewdley, "om i5e^^tue). and elsewhere. his salt" alone recall the honourable place once filled by the salt-cellar at the tables of our ancestors. As is still the case on the Oontincnt, there were no salt-spoons on the mediieval table. CJ lasses were rare, the usu.d diinking-vessels being large wooden mugs or gobh^ts, wooden l)owls, or diinkiug THE STOIIY OF OUll FOOD 11 horns, which last survive in the West for beer and cider. The Anglo-Saxons filled their cups from pails, which differed entirely from tlie vessels of the Britons and tlie IJomans : they were l)ucket-shaped. Brit Mas. Fig, 3.-^ * 'Feathers " on a Glass Cup, of the Anglo-Saxon type, foimd in Bedfordshire. By coartesj of Mrs. StaUard-i-enoyre. Fig. 4. — Drinking-vessel made from the tip of a bullock's horn. An extremely rare specimen, bought at Conway, and dated 1762. elaborately made with rings and hoops of metal, wood or leather ; these were often highly ornamental and were buried by the Saxons in the graves of their owners. It is remarkable that a large proportion 12 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES phap. of the prizes given at school sports are made in the shape of old English drinking- vessels, such as these very goblets and bowls and tankards we have just described. Some Saxon glasses were literally " tumblers," not made to stand, and these, no doubt, suggested the Jacol^ean self-righting round-bottomed cups, whence our modern tvmhlcrs derive. These earlier forms of drinking-vessels long persisted ; even King Henry III. had but one glass cup, which was a present from Guy de Eousillon. And both pewter and glass drinking-cups, such as we now use, were not in anything like general use before the sixteenth century. As has been said, the Saxon glasses at first had nn foot, tliis feature coming, no doubt, from their being made to resemble the tip of a bullock's horn, which formed the ancient drink- ing-horn of the Norsemen. Markings similar to the featliers that adorn many of our modern drinking-glasses lire in some cases quite l)lainly to be traced on tlie conical drinking - glasses of tlie Anglo - Saxon period. They can, indeed, l)e traced yet further back tlii-ongh intermediate forms to a sort uf running zig-zag (or From J num. A'. .1. Insi. Fig. .'j. — Prehistoric Water vessel, showing zig-z»] pattern. I THE STOKV OF QUE FOOD 13 " dog's tooth ") pattern, found on bowls and other drinking-vessels of the Anglo-Saxons, as on those of many other races from prehistoric times onwards in most parts of the world. But the oddest story of all is perhaps the history of our word hamper, which derives its Xorman name " hanaper " from a basket meant to hold an Anglo- Saxon stemmed drinking-cup of a particular kind called " hnap." The older form of this word hanap-er actually survived till 1832 in the title of one of the officers in the English Exchequer who was called Clerk or Warden of the Hanaper, the hamper or hanaper in this case being a large basket in which writs were deposited. In Ireland election writs still go to the " Clerk of the Hanaper." In the most ancient days, the table-cloth was the skin of a wild beast spread upon the ground, but from a very early period in Britain a cloth was used, as in the peaceful picture of a family meal in England, described in one of the ancient Icelandic books called Eddas, ** Mother took a broidered cloth of bleached flax and covered the table. Then she took thin loaves of white wheat and covered the cloth. She set forth silver-mounted dishes of . . . old [well-cured] ham, and roasted birds. There was wine in a can, and mounted beakers. They drank and talked while the day passed by." In some ancient records of Glastonbury, about 14 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS chap. the year 1250, it is laid down that the lord of the manor should find his men " in food on Christmas day," but that the man " shall take with him a plate, mug and napkin, if he wishes to eat off a cloth, and a faggot of brushwood to cook his food, unless he would have it raw\" The most significant fact, however, connected with the use of food by our ancestors, is that our modern titles of honour — lord and lady — are both founded upon the Saxon name for a loaf. For the word " lord," originally stood for " loaf- ward," and had the meaning of loaf-keeper, whilst " lady " meant " loaf-kneader," two simple facts which tell us volumes with regard to the honour in which such work was held by the Anglo-Saxons. Hence " lord " seems to have arisen as a term of respect used by servants to their master, like the German expression " brot- herr " or " bread-lord " now applied to an employer of labour, and the Swedish and Danish title " meat- mother," also given by servants to their mistress. " Dairy," like " lady," was first associated with bread-making, " day " in this sense being a lady's bread-making help (or "kneader"). Thus the "dairy" or "day-ery " was the place where bread was kneaded. And the pantry (in old I'rench) was the " bread- room " where the loaves were kept when baked. The larder, on the contrary, was the place where tlie bacon or " lard " was kej^t. I THE STOEY OF OUll iOOD 15 The bread when made was doled out to the retainers and dependants of the " loaf-ward " or lord in portions fixed by edicts/ which in Xorman-French were called " assizes." And as the expression "* loaves of assize " by a wrong division of the words became " loaves of a size," this last word (size) came in course of time to express the idea of magnitude which it retains in modern English. The adulteration of bread which is now treated as a comparatively slight offence, was in those days punished with extreme severity. The fraudulent baker, if not stripped and whipped at the cross- roads, was drawn on a hurdle with the offending loaf round his neck, and pilloried, or else for repeating the offence a third time, had his oven destroyed, and was himself forced to forswear the trade for ever. A special offence was putting iron in a loaf to make it heavier. Though " bread " was Saxon, " leaven " (better spelt " leven ") is from a Xorman word which means " lightening," and though " yeast," too, is a Saxon word, we may yet be sure the bread consumed by the Saxon peasantry was chiefly unleavened. The making of good cheese (an art introduced, as the history of its name shows, by the Eomans) was considered in the time of the Saxons quite as ^ Called, like the Assize of Clarendon, after their place of issue, or like the "Assize of Bread and Ale" (the one here signified), after the articles thus regulated. 16 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. much a part of good housewifery as the making of bread (or indeed any other form of housework). We even read of a Countess of Chester, who, though married to a cousin of Henry II., kept a herd of kine ''and made good cheese," three samples of which she presented to the then Archbishop of Canterbury. The making of cheese is a very ancient industry, as appears in the Bible. Ale and beer were anciently regarded in England almost as food and drink, and were hence taken even at breakfast. Ale was for a long period made with- out hops, the term " beer " being generally, though not regularly, reserved for liquor made from hops. Both were for centuries of excellent quality. Indeed, in curious contrast to our own times, the Saxons were so attentive to the quality of their national drink that at Chester any one brewing bad ale was put into a ducking stool, either to be dipped into a muddy pond, or at the best let off with a substantial fine. And in 1434 the brewers of Oxford were compelled to swear by the Evangelists in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that they would each hereafter " brew ale that was good and wholesome so far as his ability and human frailty " allowed ! Although they have always been described as great drinkers, it was nevertheless the Saxons under their King Edgar who adopted the peg-tankard, as it was called, one of the I THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 17 earliest attempts to check the evils of excessive drinki ig. Tht^. ale of those days was often brewed either by women called " alewives " or " brewsters," whose industry survived down to comparatively recent times, or in connexion with monasteries, like that at Burton-on-Trent, in very much the same way that certain cordials are now sometimes connected with religious houses abroad. This fact is held by some authorities to account for the marking of beer barrels with X. This they take to have represented the sign of the Cross (which it is said to have once more closely resembled) employed by the monks as a solemn guarantee that the ale was of good quality. Others, however, hold that the X stood for ten, and indicated ale of a certain quality on which ten shillings duty had been paid. CHAPTEE II THE STORY OF OUR FOOD (continued) England Ever since Saxon times the English were noted on the Continent for living upon a generous and varied diet, and early in the sixteenth century had the reputation of being the greatest eaters in Europe, 18. THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. as contemporary records show. With regard to the quality of their food, some Spanish visitors to this country in the reign of Queen Mary declared that in this respect they " fared as well as the; King." More than 200 years earlier, as we learn from a significant passage in Piers Floiuman, even the poor would eat no bread ] that beans came in, but only the better sorts or else of clean wheat Nor no piece of bacon | but if it be fresh flesh Or fish fried and baked. Above all they avoided rye bread (" black bread"), which was the staple food of the peasants of France. Even in quite recent years, at harvest suppers it was the custom to serve up an immense number and variety of dishes, almost every one of which would be partaken of in turn by each of the guests. Indeed even the usual market-day dinner, or " ordinary " as it is called, attended by farmers, can often show a wonderful record in regard to the amount of food there devoured. There is good old English precedent for customs of this sort, since from the earliest times in England an extraordinary profusion of all kinds of meat, wild game, fish, flesh and fowl covered the tables of the rich, and helped to vary the diet even of the poorest. II THE STOIIY OF OUE FOOD 19 The English word " hunt " and the Xorman " chase " have the same meaning ; and both races were expert at this method of obtaining a supply of fresh food for their table. But the Normans, when they came into power, appear to have carried out their operations upon a yet more royal scale, and in a more organised way than the Saxons. Of all the animals hunted, the deer was the highest in repute, and even in Saxon times had already obtained pre-eminence in this respect, as is proved by the very meaning of its name, "the animal^' that is, the one animal (above all other beasts of the chase). After Xorman times, so closely was the notion of hunting still associated with the chase of the deer, that in course of time the word " venison " came to mean deer -flesh alone, though in old French (as in our own Bible version of the story of Esau) the word still meant the flesh of any animal hunted. Other Xorman metaphors which form part of our language were borrowed in the first instance from expressions used in the chase of the deer. The common phrase "in the toils," is taken from the name given to the great rope nooses suspended at a short height above the ground from a cord stretched across the path of the deer. Again, the familiar " tryst " or " trusting place," is a term now known to have been taken from the Xorman name for the 20 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS chap. fixed stations appointed to the spearmen who took part in the deer-drive. Also, though " hound," like " deer," was English, the expression " at bay " is a literal translation of the picturesque Norman phrase aux dbois, where abois signified the barking of the hounds surrounding a deer who has been run to a standstill, and has turned upon his pursuers in the last stage of the desperate struggle.^ To take yet another phrase relating to dogs, " relay " was in the beginning a Norman hunting term, which meant a supply of released, or rested dogs, but came to mean a set of " rested animals " of other kinds as well. " Quarry," which is now applied indefinitely to the object of any kind of pursuit, comes from the old French cuiree, a heap of skins or hides (from cuir = skin or leather), and hence, as used by the Norman Imntsmen, a heap of slaughtered game." The reason for its adoption was that the portions given to the dogs were wrapped in the skin of the slain animal : indeed, an early hunting book actually explains that "the hounds shall be rew^arded with the ' neck ' and other parts . . . and they shall be ^ It is perhaps worth notinfj that this word ahois, whicli is no doubt of imitative origin, is very near indeed in form to tlio Greek hau hau, to the German wan wau, and even to onr own familiar nursery name for a dof(. - This word in oUl Englisli took (Iii' form of tjucnr, ;ijid fvciifnally turned into 'Spiarry," throut^di the sauu' kind itf in()(lili{Mli()ii us tliat by whieii "cleric" bocauic "clerk." II THE STOEY OF OUE FOOT) 21 eaten under the skiiiy and therefore it is called the qiiarry!' Among words used by trappers, " springe," like " spring-gun," is of course connected with " spring," in the sense of " rebound " and is of English origin, as are also " snare " (a twisted cord or loop) and the word " trap " itself, the last word meaning " step " or " footprint " — in this case something upon which the animal stepped or set its foot. English, too, is certainly the familiar expression stalking-horse, at first a real trained steed, from behind which the huntsmen used to shoot the game, and then (as in Shakespeare) a wooden or canvas " horse " on wheels, behind which fowlers, down to quite recent times, used to hide whilst stalking wildfowl, a practice which gave rise to the modern use of the phrase. Of Norman or old French origin, are the words " gin," short for " engin " — with the accent on the last syllable, as it was at one time pronounced — in the sense of " mechanism," and " trammel " which is now used in the sense of impediment or hindrance, but formerly meant a great net, usually a drag- net, employed first for fish and then for wild-fowl, especially partridges. And in addition to the existence of so many hunting and trapping terms in the language, the high places once occupied by the master of the buckhounds and the hereditary grand falconer in the royal household, show still further 22 THE PAST AT OUK UOOliS chap. the very high esteem in which the pursuit of game was formerly held in Great Britain. We shall now take some examples of our chief modern articles of food, whose names are yet more closely connected with the blending of the elements in the history of our nation. Thus, as is well known, beef, mutton, veal, pork, bacon, and poultry were the names given by the Xorman butcher, who killed the meat, to the ox, sheep, calf, pig and fowl, which were the names employed by the Saxons, who most commonly attended the animals while alive. But, on the other hand, bread, ham, eggs, honey, and the common products of the cottage gardens, such as peas and beans, to this day retain their Saxon names, and certainly formed a substantial part of the food of the Saxon peasant. Next to the question of hunting and of domesti- cating animals, we have to speak of the food grown upon the soil, and the implements used in growing it. Of the various forms of grain it is remarkable that the words " corn," " oats," " rye," " wheat " (the " white " grain), and " barley," as well as the verbs " sow," " reap," " thresh," " mow," and the names of nearly all the chief agricultural implements, the " spade," " scythe," and " rake," and even the " ridge," and " furrow " itself, are one and all of pure Englisli derivation. This is proof — if any were needed — II THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 23 that the Normaus, as a race, stood aloof from field- work, which they left to the Saxon peasantry. Of the various agricultural implements used by the Saxons we will first take the plough, a word which strangely enough seems to be of an uncertain continental origin, the true old English name ("sool" =: " furrow-er ") being only represented — as "zool" — in the local speech of Somerset and the adjacent counties. If we want to ascertain the pedigree of the plough, we must first trace it back from its modern types to the rudest forms of plough still known, or recently known, in Great Britain ; we can then the more satisfactorily compare these simpler forms with those used by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. The now fast disappearing old-style English plough, of which there were a hundred different kinds, is in actual use in more than one part of the Sussex Downs, where it is drawn, as at Chyngton near Seaford,^ by a team of oxen. In Sussex the ^ The present owner of the magnificent black ox-team of Chyng- ton (Mr. E. J. Gorringe, J. P.), courteously sent me the following information : his father and he had between them worked oxen in the neighbourhood (though not on the same farm) for upwards of sixty years, the farm at Chyngton being very hilly, and the gradients very steep, and oxen being better at a dead pull than horses. Half a century ago, upwards of twenty oxen were being worked on Chyng- ton Farm, rollers being very dear, and the treading of the oxen therefore more necessary to break up the ground ; they are not now shoed, as was then the nile. The breed now kept is a South W'ales mountain breed of black cattle called "runts," which have more 24 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap, ii ox«n are always worked in the yoke, but elsewhere in harness ; they are also still used, or have been so in quite recent years, at Southover and Waldron, in Sussex, in Berkshire, the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herts, near Cranbrook, Kent/ and in other parts of the country. The old-style plough used with a team of oxen is itself of local evolution, the result of the experi- ence of generations of Downland ploughmen. But the most remarkable fact about it is, that when, on reaching the end of a furrow, the oxen ''jack round," as it is called, and start on the return journey, the plough throws the sods of the second furrow, not in the opposite way, but in the same way as those of the first. This gives a perfectly level field, which is better for reaping. The modern factory- made steam-driven plough is made upon the same principle. Ploughs of the old-fashioned type, the work of the village wheelwrights, still survive, and several of them are employed at Chyngton alone, whereas pluck than most breeds, the ancient Sussex breed having become too valuable and too much of a fan<;y breed for the work, though they used to be employed and were very good. Mr. Gorringe added that the team here (like the plough) is an undoubted sur- vival, and that he knew of but one other ox-team in the county, "so we n)ay look forward to a time when tlio ox-team will be a thing of the past." ' By Lady Mildred Hope, whose line team of the North Wales breed is very curiously marked. 2G THE PAST AT OUR DOORS thap. in 4he valleys and plains the factoiy-made plough has carried all before it. But of all the forms of plough used in Great Britain, the rudest that has been employed in modern times is the Shetland plough, described by Sir A. Mitchell on the occasion of his visit ; it is still employed in Sutherland, in the Isle of Lewis, at Cunningsburgh in Shetland, and no doubt elsewhere. This early Scottish plough, which was wheelless and had but one handle or " stilt," served indeed to scratch the ground, but did not turn over the soil ; by a singular but barbarous custom, it was not un- frequently drawn, in various parts of Great Britain, by attaching it to a horse's tail. A plough of this form is certainly of vast antiquity, and it is suffi- ciently amazing to find it in such recent use in any part of the British Isles, though ploughs of an equally simple type are still used in various parts of the Continent, for instance on the left bank of the Rhine, between Kreuznach and the Belgian Frontier. Even simpler ploughs, constructed entirely of wood,^ are yet employed in remote parts of the world. The Scottish or '' Shetland " plough, to which we liave referred, is a link with the plough employed Ijy the Anglo-Saxons, which in its simplest form ^ In the South Kensington Museum is a model of a Siamese jtlough, which is all of hard wood, and consists of a sliare, with long curved handle, to which a curved pole is attached in front, to enable it to be drawn. II THE STOEY OF OUR FOOD 27 was also wheelless, and possessed but a single handle. It was drawn by one or more oxen in a yoke, and the ploughman guided the cattle with a goad. A yet more remarkable implement of husbandry was the Scottish " foot-plough," the Gaelic name of which signifies the " crooked foot," it being a kind of bent V-shaped stick with a short blade, and furnished with a peg at the bend for the right Fig. 7. -Ox Plough, with one "stilt" or handle, as employed in Shetland (1822) and still used. The driver or " caller " walks backwards and leads or " calls " his cattle. foot. This curious instrument could be employed on mountain-sides where the ordinary plough was useless, and although its action was that of a spade, it was strangely enough of a shape closely resembling a Y-shaped hoe (like that of the ancient Egyptians, from which latter the old Egyptian plough is known to have been derived). With the help of some rude agricultural imple- ments used in Sweden, we can now reconstruct the earlier stages in the history of the plough. First came the pointed digging-stick of hard wood, then 28 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. a pick, consisting of a digging-stick with a peak to it (the " hacker " of Southern Sweden), then a heavier pick which was dragged through the ground hy hand to cut a furrow, whence it came to be called a furrow-crook. Tliis furrow-crook was eventually shod with iron, and lastly (owing to the substitution of animal labour for that of man) came the " plough- crook," which consisted of a sliare with a handle, and a pole for drawing it. In this form the plough was drawn by cows or mares — the latter fact acquir- ing still greater significance when we remember that the modern French term for a mare {jument) originally meant " yoke-animal " or " yoke-cattle." Yet another of the early English agricultural implements, the "spade," was also, in the first instance, merely an improved digging-stick, specially selected for its breadth at the foot, which enabled it to be sharpened and used as a hlade. Indeed, this general sense of blade receives striking confirmation when we find that the word " paddle " is a mere abbreviation of " spaddle," a diminutive blade, used to clean the share when it got clogged with mould. We have thus seen that the earliest form of the plough was nothing but a hoe or spade dragged through the ground to cut a continuous furrow. We have seen also that the lioe and the spade were merely improvements u})on tlie primitive digging- sticks used in the earliest times by nomad races II THE STOKY OJ^^ OUK lOOJ) 2 9 (even before the simplest kind of agriculture was thought of) to unearth the edible roots and tubers of tlie forest, upon which they lived. Thus were developed, by successive fusion of many elements, the complex steam ploughing-machines of to-day. The story of the harrow is no less curious. Its original form was nothing but a huge rake, such as is used for the purpose by the Siamese and Malays, and by many other races of the Far East to this day. In England in the fourteenth century a tri- angular frame was used, wdiich was after all merely an improvement upon the rake employed by the Anglo-Saxons. The old French name for this simple form of harrow was " herce." As the shape of the " herce " was triangular, the name was transferred to a three-cornered frame stuck full (like the harrow) of iron pins, upon which candles were fixed on certain holy days in the Church, and especially, as time went on, at funeral services. Bishop Gardiner, Privy Councillor to Henry VIII. and Mary, had a " herse of four branches, with gilt candle- sticks." Eventually, from close association between this peculiar arrangement of lights and the frame- work over the bier, the name came to be transferred to the bier itself, one of the strangest developments that has happened to any word in tlie language. When the ground is prepared the seed is sown, and even this apparently simple operation has 30 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES something to teach us. For the seed which was at first thrown " broadcast," or by means of a tube called a drill, is now sown by a machine fitted with a row of such drills, arranged like the pipes of an organ, a plan which is believed to have been suggested to its inventor, a Berkshire man named Jethro Tull, by the fact that he was himself a musician, and played the organ. By courtesy of the London Library. Fig. 8. — Eai^ly Form of Reapiug-Cart, as used in ancient Ganl. The indented edge cuts the ears, which fall into the cart, the machine being pushed from behind by a bullock. We now come to the reaping, and here we may remark that the idea of employing a special machine for this purpose goes back at least so far as the days of the lioman historian (Pliny), who wrote, that " in the vast plains of Gaul [or ancient France] very large wooden machines, armed with teeth on their edges and mounted on two wheels, are forced through the standing corn by an animal propelling them from behind. Thus are the ears cutoff; they fall into the machine." This description is continued. II THE STOEY OF OUII FOOD 31 and a much more detailed account of this strange old-world contrivance is given by anotlier Eoman writer. After this it certainly is a very startling thing to find that machines of this kind have been used in France in quite recent years, and that a similar \ ^ (fjr M # jj^^^gf'; 0r t. By courtesy of the Sujjt. Glasjow Museum iind Art Uallcr;/. Fig. 9. — Toothed Sickle (or " Heuk ") as recently used in Scotland. The teeth were cut with a hammer and chisel on an iron anvil. A Toothed Hook ("No. 00 ") is still in common use in Shetland and in the North of Ireland. machine, called a "header" (from its merely stripping the ears off the straw), is still used, and is, moreover, considered one of the cheapest machines to work, both in some of our own colonies and in the United States. Even the plan of yoking the cattle at the back of the machine, described by the Eoman writers, has had its counterpart in several of our modern reaping-machines, which were made to be propelled by two horses harnessed to a pole at the back. In 32 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES chap. passing we may notice that it was by an indented or toothed edge like that of the early English sickle that the grain was " headed." This early English sickle may therefore be fairly compared witli the curiously curved prehistoric sickles, with toothed-flint blades set in wood, which were discovered some years ago in Egypt. It is, more- over, certain that the words sickle and scythe,^ as well as " saw " and " sedge," are all related in origin, and By courtesy of the H. Arch. Inst. Fig. 10.— Prehistoric Too tiled Sickle of 18th Dynusty, found in Egypt by Professor Petrie, showing saw-like flints set in wooden socket. all have as their root -sense the idea of a sharp- edged and generally saw-like blade. Many other tilling- and reaping-machines are equally good examples, showing how the most simple and ancient principles survive under a modern and sometimes complete disguise. A horse hoe or rake is furnished with a set of small hoes or rakes, all working in a row. \\\ one of the early ' Originally spelt "sitlio" as l.y Milton, the "c" having been inserted by a mistake. THE STOIIY OF OUII FOOD 33 reaping-machines (invented hy Bell) the cutting was done by a row of giant scissors, or double- edged shears, which were soon replaced, however, ¥1 mmmpmw from the ••;orridge, each having a little piece of sodden meat," were brought in by the servants in the house of a Scottish knight. And the same author adds that the " upper mess, instead of porridge had a pullet with some prunes in the broth." The servants sat down with their master and his guest, who observed that " they had no art of cookery, nor furniture of household stuff, but rather rude neglect of both." A very ancient Scottish custom, originally pre- vailing throughout Great Britain, consisted in reserv- ing certain specified joints of a slain animal for the chief and lesser officials. In the Western Islands of Scotland in 1703, whenever the chief of an island killed an animal, he reserved certain parts for his dependents, according to their duties. In the latter part of the eighteenth century (1773), Dr. Samuel Johnson himself described this custom as still prevailing in the Hebrides. " When a beef was killed for the house, particular parts were claimed as fees by the several otlicers or workmen . . . the head belonged to the smith, II THE STORY OF OUR FOOD 41 and the udder of a cow to the piper, the weaver had likewise his particular part ; and so many pieces followed these prescriptive claims that the laird's was at last but little." In this case we have improved upon the original custom, at all events (it may be supposed) from the laird's point of view. For the only reservation made nowadays, consists in offering the best cut of the joint, the wing of a fowl or gamebird, and so forth, to a guest or a lady. Ireland The history of the food of the people in Ireland affords many close parallels to that of Scotland. Thus an English physician in the reign of Henry YIII. wrote that the Irish would "seethe their meat in a beast's skin," the skin being " set on many stakes of wood, and then they will put in the water and the flesh. And then they will make a great fire under the skin betwixt the stakes, and the skin will not greatly burn. And when the meat is eaten, they, for their drink, will drink up the broth." A woodcut in the next reign (1581), of an Irish chieftain at dinner in the open air, shows meat cooked in this very manner at the camp-fire. The custom of reserving certain parts of an animal, already described as anciently prevalent 42 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. in"' Scotland, also continued at least down to the middle of the nineteenth century in Ireland, where the farmers in some parts of the country, on killing an ox or pig, always sent the head to the smith, whose kitchen was often decorated with oreat numbers of the heads thus obtained. Hr^"^' ^t^-^ ^^z fmm ' <^ A W-^^i'&;^^ ^''' £^ Fig. 14.— An Tvish Feast in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, showing the "meat" killed and cooked in skins. The present fondness of the Irish peasant for pork goes back to extreme antiquity. Indeed, an ancient legend, relating how a certain king of the fairies tried to induce a mortal to enter Fairyland, includes among the other -inducements mentioned, that in Fairyland there was plenty of fresh pork. In a later age a member of one John O'Nele's household, being asked by a companion whether beef were preferable to pork, replied, " That is as II THE STORY OF OUR FOOD 43 intricate a question as to ask whether thou art better than O'Xele ! " The baking was done on a hot stone, at least clown to the end of the nineteenth century. The grinding of corn in Ireland w^as no doubt originally effected, as in Scotland, by means of the small hand-mill above mentioned. The oldest form of water-mill, described as a " gig " (or, by a popular error, a " Danish mill ") had its wheel fixed at the foot, so that it " ran horizontally among the water," the millstone, fixed at the top of the same shaft, turning round with the wheel. In England, as has been showm, the name given to the wheat plant is connected with its white colour. But in Ireland its name signified " blood- coloured," the Irish wheat, now becoming rapidly extinct, being distinguished by its red or sanguine hue. It is this fact which gives so dramatic a touch to the description of an historical event which is known to have taken place in connexion with one of these ancient Irish mills. In A.D. 651, two Irish princes, fleeing from the men of Leinster, who had determined to kill them, escaped and hid themselves among the works of the mill in question. The Leinster men, however, forced a woman who controlled the mill-sluice to start the mill again, the result being that the princes were crushed to death in the works. This 44 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. e'^ent was described by a poet of the time in the following sombre but powerful passage : — mill, what hast thou ground ? Precious is thy wheat ! It is not oats thou hast ground, but the offspring of Kervall.^ The grain which the mill has ground is not oats but hlood- red wheat ; With the offshoots of the great tree,- Mailoran's mill was fed. This mill stood near the bridge over the small stream that runs from Lough Owel to Lough Tron, and Mailoran was the name of its owner. The place is called Mullenoran, and the mill which stood upon this very site as late as the end of the eighteenth century, has actually been seen at work by the grandfathers of people who are now living. If, as is certainly the case, the assignment to a guest of his proper place at table is considered a matter of high importance to-day even among ourselves, it was regarded as a yet more vital matter in olden Ireland. Indeed, at the present day not every guest, debarred from his due place of honour, would be able to rise to the height of the famous Irish harper, Arthur O'Neill, who, on receiving an apology on that account from the host at a public dinner in Belfast in the eighteenth century, replied, " My Lord, an apology is unnecessary ; wherever an O'lSTeill sits, tluit is the head of the table !" ' I.e. the two ])rin('es. ^ I.e. the princes, as before, the great tree being Kervall. II THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 45 Food from Abroad In the early days when sugar, which seems to have come into Europe through the Arabs after the crusade, had not been introduced, wild honey from the woods was used instead. Even when introduced (in the form of the violet- and rose-coloured sugar, for instance, which reached England from Alexandria in the reign of Henry III.) it long continued to be regarded as a rare and costly spice, and remained so up to the time of the discovery of America at the end of the fifteenth century. It was first refined and made into loaves by a \ enetian, the " loaves " being mentioned in the reign of Henry YIIL To take another article commonly obtained from the grocer (or " grosser," a name originally applied to traders who dealt in the " gross," but who would be better described as " monopolisers "), what we now call currants were till about one hundred years ago generally termed raisins of Corinth, or Corinths (as coming from the Levant). And currants are still called " Corints " at Tenby, in "Wales. The fresh currants of our gardens, on the other hand, are not really " currants " at all, but a sort of dwarf gooseberries, and when introduced into England in 1533, were called '"'beyond-sea goose- berries." They are still termed " gooseberries " in France. 46 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chaf. ^ Coffee, an article iutroduced from Turkey, is first mentioned in about 1600, and in 1650 the first coffee-houses in England were opened in Oxford and London respectively.^ The London coffee-house was set up by the servant of a certain Mr. Edwards, a merchant trading to Turkey. This servant, a youth named Pasqua Eosee, had accompanied his master home from Smyrna to prepare his coffee for him in the mornings. Tliis excited so much public attention that the servant was allowed to open a coffee-house, the sign-board of which represented the head of Pasqua Eosee himself. We know from the rhymes of Pope and other writers, that " tea " was formerly pronounced " tay," as it still is in Scotland and Ireland and on the continent of Europe. The reason for this (to English people) old-fashioned pronunciation, which is perfectly correct, was that tea first came to us from Amoy, in the south of China, where the word was actually pronounced " tay," instead of " cha " as in other parts of that country. Tea was sold in 1651, by one Garway or Garraway in London, and when introduced cost as much as ten sovereigns a pound. It was the Earl of Arlington who set the habit of drinking what ^ Evelyn, in 1G;5(3, mentions ^)1\o " Xatlianiel Conopios, out of Greece," an the lirst wlioni lie "ever s^aw diink eoll'ee.' II THE STORY OF OUE lOOD 47 was then called a "dish of tea" at court (in 1666), after which it soon became the height of fashion. Marmalade is now usually, though not invariably, made from Seville oranges, but, as its name shows, it was at first made like the Portuguese " marmelada," from the " marmelo " or quince, or rather, perhaps, from a particular kind of honey-apple which was grafted upon a quince tree. And " marmelo " comes from the Latin meli-inclum, of which the English '' honey-apple " is a translation. In 1514, we read of a "box with preserve of quince and marmelade," and later '• marmalade of quinces." But two and a half centuries elapsed before " orange marmalade " was mentioned in 1769. But the most astonishing history of all is that of the word '"' treacle." In the seventeenth century the " Venice treacle," which was especially famous, was sold by an Italian who kept a small shop in Venice, not far from St. Mark's Cathedral. But this was not in the least like what we should call treacle nowadays. It was an extraordinary mixture, composed of many strange and some revolting ingredients, which was also called " viper- wine," and was sold as an antidote against snake-bite, something on the principle of the proverbial " hair from the dog that bit you." Its ingredients included " vipers steeped alive " in white wine (whence its name of " viper- wine "), 48 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. opium, spice, licorice, red roses, the juice of rough sloes, " seeds of the treacle mustard " and many others, to be mixed with honey into a sort of drink. The vipers themselves gave it the name of treacle from an old Greek word theriake, which at first became " triacle '' both in French and English. This Greek word was employed to describe any- thing belonging to a therion or "little wild beast." As this was the expression applied in a verse of the Xew Testament to the viper that came out of the fire and fastened upon the hand of St. Paul, theriakd came to be used of viper-wine too. An old Avriter, More, who lived in the seventeenth century, used the word in its original sense when he wrote of "a most strong treacle [or antidote] against those venomous heresies," and this is what was meant too, by the poet Waller when he wrote the (to us strange-sounding) line : Your vipers treacle yield, and scorpions oil. To conclude this extraordinary history, Henry III. had a great spit of gold (such as was used in place of a fork at that date) in which an alleged petrified •' viper's tongue " ^ was set. This was a remarkably early example of a custom surviving in the island of Malta, where certain small stones, ^ In the original Latin lingua serpentina or serpent's tongue ; no arenfhf kilted fiLriires, appearing in ancient Irish manu- scripts, on monumental crosses, and even on shrines of the eleventh century, the legs are bare. In the year 120 the Irish dress resembled pretty closely, except with regard to the tightness of the " trews," the costume of the ancient Gauls and southern Britons. Its main features consisted of a short-sleeved tunic or shirt, which was after- wards belted, a large mantle with cape and hood, and long close-fitting " trews." Trom the same account we learn that the clothes of the Irish were CI BEj **^fc'i '"■' ^^ifll^/W^ ■ifcrc "ffiS ^S^^H iflK,: ^^^fe m ^t| B \R- ^1 B W Yv . -L - _. i^nt Iri>li Kilr. ; :::,,_- t ■ group of figures on St. Manchan's Shrine, iu Ireland. (See account in Joyce.) 118 THE TAST AT OUE DOOES of thin wool, " and mostly black, because the sheep of Ireland were in general of that colour." In other words they were the natural colour of the undyed (black) wool. But there certainly was then no general agreement to adopt for the cloak any one universal colour. In the Booh of Leinster some warriors in the Ulster army had red cloaks, others "light blue cloaks," yet others liad "deep blue" cloaks, and others again wore them of a green or white or yellow colour, " all bright and fluttering about them ; there was a young red- FiG. 43.— Irish Dress of 1200, show- ing ancient Irish mantle, worn with close-fitting "trews." freckled lad with a crimson cloak [no doubt the son of a chief or a young chief himself] in their midst." Yet once there were rules, no doubt varying from place to place, to restrict the use of colours. For many years B.C. a slave was to be dressed in garments of a single or "self" colour, a farmer in two, and so on up to a, king or (pieen, who woi'o six. Tied (as in tin; instance given above), with TTIE STORY OF OUR DRESS 1 10 green and brown were the colours prescribed for the sons of chiefs, and the natural colours black and white (or grey), varied by yellow, were for the inferior ranks. It is clear that the ancient Irish valued bright colours, though their selection and arrangement differed in various parts of the island. In many cases the colours were blended, especi- ally in the dress of the chiefs. In the thirteenth and following centuries, how- ever, the scarlet cloak seems to have become established grad- ually as a prin- cipal recognised colour for an Irish chief. The cloaks made by command of King John for the Irish chiefs who came to visit him are recorded to have been scarlet, and early in the next century, in the year 1313, among the spoils left by the Fig. 44. — Irish Dress of the Seventeenth Century, showing the scarlet mantle worn by chiefs, and the close-fitting " trews " and conical cap of their followers. 120 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS chap. sons of Brian Rae, wlien they fled from Mortogh, were " shining scarlet cloaks." The scarlet mantle reappears in the portrait of an Irish chief, whose follower wears the close-fitting " trews " and the ancient Irish conical cap, in 1663. The shoes of untanned leather, which were formerly worn as part of the Scottish and Welsh costume, were worn apparently from the earliest times in Ireland as well. It is recorded that a fox once stole St. Ciaran's " brogues " (as shoes of this kind were called) and proceeded to devour them, but was captured just as he had made a meal of the ears and the thongs. Brogues are still worn in the Aran Islands off the coast. The present national Irish colour, green, is of modern origin, and was certainly not adopted before the battle of the Boyne(1690), for at that battle the Irish were distinguished by little strips of white paper, which they wore in their hats, and the English under King William, by small sprays of green : hence at that time green was obviously not the national Irish colour, whicli was in fact royal blue. Tnteiinational Types Having arrived ;it tliis point it is ix-)ssible to take a yet wider survey. For we have seen that tlie dress of each of tlie races tliat <^oes to make V THE STOEY OF OVU DP.ESS 121 up a people (such as, for instauce, the people of Great Britain), though differing in certain minor features, yet agrees to a remarkable extent with the dress of its immediate neighbours. It could, indeed, easily be shown, moreover, that the people of Holland, Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain, Great Britain and France each dress in a style which not only agrees very largely with that of the other members of this group, but at the same time, in a way which, to some extent, helps to express their own national character. Similarly the community of style which affects all these nations as a whole, also distinguishes the European fashion of dress from that of other continents. There is a vast difference in general appearance and effect between the dress of Europeans and that of even the most highly civilised Asiatic communities. In the case of the British Empire the dress of the governing or dominant race shows, on one hand, a strong ten- dency to become the national dress of all the races that fight under its banner. On the other hand, this rule is much qualified by local tendencies. The facts already mentioned will suffice to show that even the most commonplace details of our everyday dress are fraught with problems of the highest possible interest, although not seldom also of very great perplexity. Although the Norman 122 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. fasKions, first introduced at the Conquest, swamped for centuries what might have been the develop- ment of the older forms of English costume in particular, yet in many cases these very same older forms rose under various modern guises once more to the surface. The result is that it is now in any case imperative for those who would understand the full significance of the various aspects of our national dress at the present day, to approach the • subject historically from a racial point of view. In fact it may safely be said that Saxon or Dane or Norman we, Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be, it is impossible quite to ignore these elements if we would unravel rightly the threads that compose this wonderful national web of ours, shot as it is throusjhout with these brilliant gleams of colour. CHATTEE VI THE STOKY OF OUR HOMES Those grandees of Spain, wliom we have already mentioned as having praiseil the large diet of llie English during their visit to this country in the reign of (^)ueen !Mary, ujtun the same occasion vr THE STOr.Y OF OUU TTOMES 123 qualified their praise of our national institutions by remarking that the English of that time made their houses of " sticks and dirt." The old chronicler who records this, evidently took this remark as a reflection upon the national honour, since he observes by way of comment that the Spaniards thus appear to '•' like better of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in their princely habitations and palaces." A more robust patriotism would probably have taught him, in the first place, that the statement, though made perhaps with something less than the vaunted Spanish courtesy of those "spacious days," probably went, nevertheless, to the root of the matter, and secondly that there was a reason, and that by no means a discreditable one, for the fact. Let us read the contemporary accounts that have come down to us of the Englishmen of that age, drawn by the master-hand of Shakespeare, or the praises mingled with mordant criticism in that stirring picture of this " haughty, free, and demo- cratic race," so dangerous to its foes, drawn by the French historian Froissart. We shall then no longer feel doubt that the roughness and plainness of the houses of the English in those days was not due to any incapacity on their part to build better ones, but simply to tlieir inveterate contempt for soft lying and luxury, in other words to the lion-like 124 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. haTcliliood of the race.. The historian Holinshed, indeed, definitely ascribes the fact that the lower classes were then content with straw, rather to an ignorant contempt for a pleasant bed and a soft pillow, than to lack of means to obtain them. It will now be shown, first, that our modern forms of staircase, window and fireside are the result of the slow growth of many centuries, the originally central position of the fireside dating back to the time of prehistoric Britain. Xext it will be shown how one of the chief forms of house in England at the Conquest, and for hundreds of years afterwards, was in fact the hall. This was, at first, of the Saxon style, though modified as years went on by Norman improve- ments. Thus the hall, which w^as in fact the onhj original part of the building, and had rooms in the form of separate houses annexed to it, was developed into what we now call a " house." AVe shall next show that the clock towers of our country churches were originally intended for watch-towers, and were not of especially religious origin. Again, the keep was first meant to be the dwelling-house of tlie Tord of the Castle, tlie manor-house taking the place of the castle at a later period. Also tlie ])lan of some of our most ancient towns is due to their being built upon the site, and indeed sometimes on the very lines of VI THE STORY OF OUR HOMES 125 Roman towns or caniping-groiinds. Finally, in the differences of form of even our private dwellings (as much as in our public buildings), we may find, if w^e look, persisting through ages, the unmistakable impress of race. ROUXD ABOUT OUR HOUSES One of the commonest sights on our railways is the box (as it is called) that is used for signalling, in many examples of which, if we stop to consider, we shall recognise the main features of the ancient pile-dwelling, which was approached by an outside staircase or ladder. If we further observe that these modern signal-boxes are frequently supported upon four or more posts which stand a good height above the ground, the space between them being sometimes left open and sometimes boarded in to serve as a storeroom, we shall have attained a fairly adequate idea of the most important features governing such old-world dwellings as were inhabited by some of our remotest ancestors.^ The ground-floor in early times was frequently a mere storeroom, which in some cases must have been produced by boarding or fencing in the space between the posts of a pile-dwelling — a process ^ The posts or " staddles " of timber or stone upon which many of our barns or granaries arc built, to preserve the grain from the onslaughts of rats and mice, represent the pile-dwelling principle. 126 THE PAST AT OUR DOOES chap. wliicli can still be seen going on in some parts of the world among pile-dwelling races. It did not, Fia. 45. Uld House in Sweedon's Passage, Cnil. StivrU Luiulou (early nineteenth century). "A siu^'ukirly rurious spociinon of an oxlonial wimliuj,' staircase." tlierefore, originidly Ibrin ;i ]»()i'tion uf the house or living-])art of the building, a fact the more easily \ VI THE STORY OF OUR HOMES 127 remembered if we rellect tliat in every storeyed liouse in the country it is not the ground-tloor, but the storey above it, which is called the " first " floor. Down to the reign of King Henry III. an outer stair of wood was much used for manor-houses, and as late as 1773, Dr. Samuel Johnson, travelling in the Hebrides, observed that one of the commonest types of house built in those parts had two storeys, a living-room upstairs, which was reached by an outer staircase, and a mere storeroom on the ground- floor, which could only be entered from above by an iuner stair, descending within the building. The inner staircase, like the outer one, was originally a mere wooden ladder.^ Even King Henry III. reached his chapel from his chamber at Clarendon by means of a " descending trap," and in some old-fashioned country cottages a ladder, with or without a trap, still forms the only means of communication between the two floors. In a majority of cases the use of a wooden ladder is still the only way of reaching the trap-door which opens into the loft. By gradual stages both the outside and inside ladders were made easier. Oaken or stone blocks, roughly hewn, took the place of the rungs, and in the course of a few centuries the " Tudor " staircase resulted. ^ It is chiefly the steepness of the angle that makes a distinction between ladder and stair. 128 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES cuaf. The early house-ladder had consisted of but a single set or flight of steps. Necessarily, however, as the " house " grew upwards and added storey to storey, the ladder grew too, and the stairs in many modern town houses have now so many flights that they are frequently replaced, or supple- mented by lifts. Stairs in counting are reckoned either by pairs, or flights, the word " pair " in this connection meaning, however, not a couple of stairs, but a set. Thus a " three-pair-front " or a " four- pair-back " is a room at the back or front of the house, which is reached by three or four " pairs " or sets of stairs respectively.^ In concluding this matter of the stairs, we may note that the words " balustrade " and " baluster," of which " banister " is a corruption, are from an old Greek word (Ijalcmstion) meaning " wild pomegranate flower," which was at first given to railings carved according to a particular pattern resembling the double curve of the cup or " calyx " of that flower. Another improvement which the Normans, if they did not invent it, at least did much to popu- larise, was the chimney, the older meaning of which was a " fireplace," for which (though in a slightly altered sense) we thus retain the Norman name. ^ A similar oxpressioii once in use was a "pair of cards" (for a "pack "), and a pair of organs meant a set of ori,'an pipes, and lience an organ. VI THE STOEY OF GUI: HOMES 129 111 a liall of the Anglo-Saxon typt', and no doubt at first in Anglo-Xorman halls as well, the hearth was usually placed in the centre of the building, the smoke being allowed to escape through an opening in the roof called a louver (that is, " smoke-hole "), or in later times, when adapted for letting in the light, a " lantern." But of course this arrangement allowed the smoke to wander about the hall, and must at times have caused much discomfort to the guests. Still, the size of the hall must frequently have lessened even this inconvenience, and the Xormans soon improved matters by adding to the hearth a low back wall (or *• reredos ") with a funnel-shaped canopy or hood for catching the smoke, which, from its resemblance to a round cloak or " mantle," they called a mantle-^^iQCQ. But though, so far as is known, no ''side-flue" or chimney in the side wall of Xorman times remains, it is now^ thought certain that such chimneys were introduced at quite an early period, not in the hall but in other parts of the building. It was thus in use at the same time as the central fireplace, and explains the " chamber with a chimney " mentioned in Piers Plovjman. For the hall being open to the roof, there was nothiiig to obstruct the free passage of the smoke upwards. But the chambers at the side of the hall were built one above the other, so that the smoke K 130 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. from the lower rooms would be obstructed by the rooms above them. Hence, from a very early period, side-flues were used, at all events in such chambers. These early chimneys, however, did not lead into each other, and were very unlike our modern chimneys, being little more than a large gradually ascending funnel or cavity made in the thickness of the wall, a sort of elongation of the hood, in fact, with a vertical opening at the small upper end or " throat," towards which the flue rapidly diminished. An example of one of these strange funnels is in the castle wall at Hedingham in Essex. The custom of the central hearth persisted for centuries, and in a few cases survived right down to modern times. The hall of Westminster School had a central fireplace down to 1850, and even within living memory a central fireplace was employed in the hall of Lincoln College at Oxford, and the great hall of St. John's College at Cambridge was warmed by the help of two lighted braziers, standing in the middle of the room. As already stated,' the older meaning of " chimney " was what we should now call a* " fire- place," and the knowledge of this fact enables us to understand the real meaning of the expression " chimney-corner," of which our grandfathers were so fond. This old-fashioned " chimney-corner," wliich was also called the " ingle-nook " (from an vr THE STORY OF OVll HOMES 1 :U old word " iiifjle " which meant '' lire"), was a corner of the fireplace in days not yet passed out of living memory. An open fireplace was then general, and this often of such a size that its sides were hung with hams and flitches of bacon, whilst the inmates of the house sat by, enjoying the cheerful blaze. In many parts of the country these quaint chimney-corners are still to be seen, and with them the spacious old chimneys of former days, so wide that on looking up almost any one of them which liappen to be out of use, we can see the sky, as well as the projecting bricks that stud their sides, arranged ladder- wise from top to bottom inside the flue, as foot- hold for the little sweep-boys wdio had to climb them. It was in " old-fashioned " fireplaces such as those of which we have been speaking that there took place the silent and almost imperceptible revolution to which we owe our modern grate. The word " coal " was for centuries applied to burnt or glowing wood, as in the modern " char-coal." Strange as it may seem, though we first hear of coal in England in the twelfth century (and though it has always been used locally since then, more especially in the coal-fields of the north of England), it was not till quite a late period (the reign of AVilliam III.) that coal-fires came into anything like general use. For this curious fact, popular pre- judice seems to have been mainly responsible. For 132 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. ifc was believed previously that the fumes of coal- smoke were a deadly poison to all who had to breathe them, so much so that the burning of coal was made illegal, and it is recorded that in the reign of Edward I. (1306) a man was actually put to death for burning sea-coal in London. Before this modern popularisation of coal, the customary fuel for many centuries past had been wooden billets, which were supported commonly upon a sort of iron trestles called "andirons" or fire-dogs, between which were placed some lower irons called creepers. The front ends of these were often much decorated. Shakespeare describes the andirons of Imogen's chamber as having two winking cupids Of silver, each on one foot standing nicely, Depending on their brands. These andirons, or, as they were later called, "cob- irons " upon the introduction of coal were connected by bars and thus transformed into a grate or basket (the word is a mere variant of crate) called "dog-grate," because formed from " fire-dogs." And these latter, named from their shape, appear in French in 1317. The "back -plate" followed; a bright metal ornament or " fret," still to be seen especially on kitchen stoves,^ was attached under the lowest bar ; ^ The word stove was originall}' a lieated room, and is mentioned in 1627 as a "stove, or hothouse." In Germany tlie word stubc still retains the meaning of a chamber. VI THE STOKY OF OUR HOMES 133 tlie grate itself was " fixed " for convenience' sake by making the cob-irons fast to the back wall, and the open space at each side, where the chimney-corner had been, filled in with side-piers or " hobs." The latter name was transferred from the two raised stones at each side of the old-fashioned flat open hearth between which the embers were generally confined. The bent pieces of sheet-iron, still used in our kitchens, represent the earliest form of fender, intended to prevent the brands or cinders from falling out upon the wooden floor. It remains to mention the development of our modern fire-irons, which naturally received a fresh impulse from the employment of coal. The intro- duction of a set closely corresponding to those still in use can be approximately dated by a list of wedding presents of the reign of King James I. In this we read of an invention consisting of a '•' fire- shovel, tongs, irons, creepers, and all other furniture of a chimney, of silver," with a " cradle," that is grate, " of silver to burn sea-coal." Although this assuredly does not mean that our present fire-irons were never used in any form before this date, it is certain that all of them, but especially the poker, must have become much more of a necessity when the use of coal became general. We must remember that it was not every house in the old days that had a chimney at all, for in 134 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. about the year 1200, when chimneys were used, only one chhnney was allowed to a castle-hall and one to a manor-house. Other houses were allowed a raised hearth, with a " rere-dos " or back-piece. In later times, these back-pieces developed into .the well-known and often beautifully designed iron " fire-backs "of Sussex. The privilege of having a private hearth was at this time highly valued, and it was not surprising to read that on many occasions, in 1516, for example; the right to use a fire was bequeathed by a dying man to his widow. The use of chimneys did not become at all general till the reign of Elizabeth, when we read of the " multitude of chimneys lately erected." The curfew, of which we have all heard so mucli, was a large copper hood, which, upon the tolling of the curfew bell, was put over the fire as an extinguisher. It was not, as so often stated, a mark of subjection imposed by the Conqueror upon an unwilling country, though no doubt the law enforcing its use was at first harshly administered. The curfew custom at the time of the Xorman invasion was already established in France, Spain, and Italy, and even in Scotland, and had been en- forced locally in England in the reign of King Alfred. It can therefore only be regarded as a perfectly reasonable and even necessary regula- tion of police, adopted as a precaution against fire, VI THE STORY OF OUK HOMES 135 at a titne when nearly all houses were built of timber. The curfew bell is still rung, without any com- pulsion whatever, in many country churches ; and complete lists of all such churches have been com- piled. One of the most curious cases is that of St. Mary -le- Moor at Wallingford in Berkshire where the bell was rung to welcome William the Conqueror on his arrival straight from the battle- field at Hastings. In return for this compliment ■ — -it can scarcely be called loyalty — to his cause, Duke William granted permission for the curfew bell to be rung at 9 P.M., and lights to be put out an hour later than in most other places, a practice which (it is claimed) has been kept up ever since 1066. The word " window^ " originally meant " wind- eye " ^ and unlike '' sky -light " " — a name which equally indicated its original purpose — was at first intended for ventilation rather than light. In the w\alls of barns, even down to the present day, we can see what these early windows were like, and ^ " Windeye" : this is of old Norse origin. The Anglo-Saxon expressions were " eye-thrill " (where "thrill" means "hole" as in nostril = nose-thrill), or "eye-door." 2 The word "light," as applied to what wc should now call a window, is like " lattice " (a structure of crossed laths) of very ancient use, and this sense of the word survives in such an ex- pression as that of "ancient lights," an inscription oflen put on the wall of a building as a warning that the owner will have ground of action against any one who in any way attempts to obstruct the light given by his windows. 136 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. how closely they sometimes resembled the loop- holes in a castle wall. In the earliest times they were often merely narrow vertical slits or perhaps a symmetrical arrangement of small round holes. Before the introduction of glass, when windows, as we now understand the term, were employed for light -giving purposes, they were usually either covered or closed by shutters at night. In the former case they were covered with oiled linen or some other substitute for glass, such as horn, and it is a remarkable fact that horn panes are still to be seen in the windows of the ancient Talbot Inn at Oundle, which was built in 1626. Glass was employed in England before the end of the seventh century, but this was in the form of stained church windows, and then the workmen for this purpose had to be imported {e.g. by l>ishop Benedict at Wearmouth and Jarrow). It was not till some centuries later that it was used to any appreciable extent for private houses, and glass- making was not at all general in England till the reign of William and Mary, who may have en- couraged the industry, long established in Holland. Even the rich do not appear to have made use of glass windows in their mansions at all commonly l)efore the days of Elizabeth, and the great and ])rohibitive cost even then made such windows a luxury beyond the reach of any one else. As glass vr THE STOEY OF OUIl HOMES I'M grew clieaper, tlie windows of tlie wealthy were made as large and as numerous as possible, for the purpose of display. Hardwick Hall, for instance, came to be described in an old rhyme as having *• more glass than wall." In 1753 the window tax was first charged, and some idea of its burdensome- ness can be inferred from the fact that, to take a single examj)le, a tax amounting to fifteen shillings and sixpence levied in that year had risen, by 1817, to nearly ten pounds. Xaturally this not only re- stricted the number of windows, but caused those already existing to be bricked up. This explains why, in old houses of this period, we often see so many bricked-up windows, and why many of those in existence were so small. The hinged " casement," which had grown out of the ancient wooden shutter, was the immediate predecessor of our modern " sashed " window, and so precious were once the squares of glass of which it was composed that even people of rank some- times carried them about in their carriages from one mansion to another, so as to make one set do for several houses, or else had them taken out whenever they left home, and laid up till their return. We may at the same time note, that the word "pane," which is now applied to a window alone, originally meant a patch, rag, or piece of cloth. In the time of Queen Elizabeth it meant either an 138 THE PAST AT OUR DOOES chap, opening or " slash " in a dress (intended for dis- playing the garments beneath or for inserting pieces of cloth of other colours) ; or the diamond- shaped markings made on a quilted coat by sewing it across in diagonal lines, whence it came to be used for the diamond-shaped panes of a casement window. The expression " paned with yellow " of a man's clothing occurs in 1592, and a " pane of glass " thirty -five years later. The diminutive form of " pane," which has much the same meaning, is 'panel. Sashed windows, such as we now use, came in under Charles the First, and were general in the reign of Queen Anne. In the most modern times the general revival of interest in many old institu- tions and customs has led to the revived use of the casement window in many new buildings. This helps us tlie better to realise the descriptions in our poets, from the time of Shakespeare, who describes Juliet's " window " as a " casement," down to that of Keats, who almost within living memory wrote of the song that ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the i'oam Of perilous seas, in faery hinds forlorn — an expression of the rarest felicity, as is the same poet's splendid description of the "casement high and triple-arched " in the JKve of St. Agnes. A ]nece of furniture occasionally influencing the structure of the house is the bed, which among tlie VI THE STORY OF OUli HOMES I'M) ancient Britons was usually of skins spread on the floor, for which the liomans of tlie occupation substituted rushes or heather. The Saxon beds among the poorer classes were sacks filled with fresh straw, which were laid upon benches, thougli actual bedsteads were enjoyed by people of rank. This use of straw continued for centuries after- wards ; indeed it was employed even in the king's bedchamber, down to the earlier part of the fifteenth century. A quaint instruction to the royal bedmakers of that period was that " a yeoman with a dagger was to search the straw of the King's bed, that there be no untruth therein — the bed of down to be cast upon that." But in those early days (as has been said) our robust fellow-country- men had a healthy contempt for a soft couch, and it was not usually therefore due to lack of means if their bed was a hard one. When bedsteads were used they commonly took the forms of what was then called the " standing - bed," and the " truckle " or " trundle-bed," the latter (which was used for servants and children) being a low flat bed on castors, that could be pushed underneath the big bedstead of the master or parents during the daytime, and pulled out again at niglit, if so wished, when required for use. The name of the still familiar '•' tester " is taken from an old French word meaning " head," a tester- 140 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES chap bed being a bed with a large " head," commonly protected by curtains. The old-fashioned " four- poster " was a bed of this kind protected by curtains at the foot as well. Such beds were originally the privilege of rank, but like many other royal fashions, they were eventually copied, first by the nobles, then by people of lower degree. A fact that may seem rather hard to realise at first is that the idea of having a separate bed for each individual was by no means universally prevalent in the Britain of our ancestors, and that it was often considered a mark of respect to set apart a separate bed for a guest. Of ancient Ireland it is recorded that certain poets, who were paying a visit to one of the Kings of Connaught, were so unreasonable as to insist that they should each have a separate bed. To this custom we may ascribe the employment of such huge old beds in England as the " great bed of Ware," which is said to have been twelve feet square, and big enough for at least twenty people. When Shakespeare speaks of " as many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England," it is to this bed that he refers. In liouses of the better class peasantry, the bed was frequently made in a cupboard, or built into a special recess, a fact wliicli may help us to remember tliat in ancient England the "sleeping- VI TIIK STOKY OF OlJl: IIUMKS 111 house " or " bed-house " was very frequently eitlier a separate structure or an annex to tlie halL In many country cottages to this day, particuharly in Scotland, a special recess is made in the wall, into which is fitted a bunk, or perhaps even one of those wonderful contrivances described in Goldsmith's immortal poem as a " bed by night, a chest of drawers by day." Down to quite modern times well-to-do people used to travel with their bed in their carriages ; and an instance of this, no doubt not the latest, was recorded in 1840. This custom now takes the form of travelling by sleeping-car on the railway. At the foot of the bed, as we may see in many old pictures, was usually kept a large chest — of the kind made famous by the sad story of the '' Mistletoe Bough " — in which money and articles of value, or family heirlooms, such as ladies' trousseaux, were safeguarded. These chests were formerly of massive workmanship, and sometimes most richly carved or painted ; examples of such chests may still be met with in England, as well as on the Continent, for instance in Xorway, where beautifully decorated or carved chests of this kind are still quite common.^ The " wardrobe " of those days was, as a rule, not ^ Sir Laurence Gomme tells us that similur chests once held the joint property of the early village community. 142 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. a cupboard but a small room, fitted up with what we should now call '' clothes -cupboards." In London the name of a church called " St. Andrew- by-the- Wardrobe " survives to show that the ward- robe, which in this case was that of the Queen, might even take the form of a separate buildiug. In 1258 an order was given to make two "cup- boards or armoiries " in the " King's upper ward- robe, in Winchester Castle, wliere the King's cloths were deposited." This lecord is of special interest as showing how the " cupboard " came to be used in the same way as the " armoiry " or " armoury," in which the Knights' gear originally hung. In the fifteenth century, however, the original cupboard still survived as a kind of" side-board," that is, an arrangement of shelves or boards at the side of the hall, upon which the services of plate and gold and " cups," or other drinking- vessels were ranged. Even in Elizabeth's reign we meet with the expression " thoroughly gilded, as the silver plate upon their cupboards." One such hall-cupboard, which was used at the wedding of Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII., contained plate worth £20,000, and was built in five stages or steps, which were covered with a cloth, and had the cups displayed upon them. So too abroad, in a German book of 1587 there was a similar picture of one of tliese ancient cupboards, wliich was used during VI THE STOIJY OF OUK HOMES 14.3 the ceremonies at Prague, when the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Austria invested the Emperor and the Grand Dukes Carl and Ernest with tlie order of >C0^k- '■^J mm: Fig. 40.-A l^uyal iLui ,.i li,^ iuu.lc^u^i u. nurruLH century, showing a " Dresser " or " Cup-Board " in five tiers, the prerogative of royalty, for dispKay of plate. [Note the use of the steeple-hat in all stages, and similarity of dress worn both by some of the men and women— the women's hats have veils.] the Golden Fleece. This latter cupboard also had five steps, and this leads us to the fact that by a strange rule of etiquette, cupboards of five such 144 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. steps were at that time the exchisive mark and privilege of royalty ; the nobility of all grades might have cupboards built in from two to four steps only, according to their rank, and plain gentlemen might have cupboards of only a single step. This is a point of much interest, since it helps us the better to recognise in this ancient hall- cupboard our modern kitchen dresser. Quotations show further that the former application of the word " dresser " was to a table in the dining-room or hall, from which dishes were served or on which plate was displayed. In a translation of the works of the French historian Froissart (1525) we read of " all the plate of gold that was served in tlie palace at the dresser." That the courtly practice was imitated by country-folk in a country manner is amusingly shown by the allusion in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shreto (iv. i. 166) and the remark of Harrison, in the middle of the same century, that there were farmers then who had " a fair garnisli of pewter on their cupboards." Thus the modern kitclien dresser represented the old hall cup-board or side-board of a single stage, the space under the step being filled in with a cupboard during the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. Henry VIII. paid a joiner "for eight cup-boards, some with aumbreys [really ar???s-cupboards] and some without." And it was besides in the same king's vr THE STORY OF OUll HOMES 145 reign that the dresser or "dressor," ;i.s it was tlieii called, was discarded from the hall or principal apartment, and the name was first applied, as now, to a piece of kitchen furniture. Even the very " paper " ^ on the walls will tell us something of its history, when we discover that the older name for wall-paper was " wall-hangings," or more simply " hangings." We even find in a Journal called the London Gazette, published in 1718, a reference to " paper painted or stained for hangings," and at a yet later date (1752) we find it still actually called " hanging-paper." So we see that " wall-paper " is merely a modern cheap substitute for the once beautifully figured and embroidered '' hangings " of tapestry, first mentioned in Anglo- saxon times as " w^all-clothing," and portrayed by poets of all ages in our history down to Keats, who gave us that vivid picture of an ancient mansion during a storm, in which The arras, rich with liuntsman, hawk and liound, Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar, And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. The particular kind of tapestry, which went by the appellation of " arras," got its name from the town of Arras in France, where it used to be made, and the English material called " worsted," which was very much employed for wall-hangings in the fourteenth century, came from the village of - See page 199. L 146 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. Worsted, near Norwich. These wall-hangings were anciently called "hallings," and were so valuable that they were frequently bequeathed in wills, an instance being the will of the Black Prince who left to his son Eichard " a hall of worsted — that is, tapestry for a hall — embroidered with mermaids of the sea and a red and black border " vertically striped and " broidered with swans with ladies' heads" as well as a " hall of ostrich feathers, of black tapestry with a red border wrought with swans with ladies' heads " to the church at Canterbury, a " hall " embroidered with eagles and griffins to the Princess his wife. In Scotland it was, however, so rare that even King James V., when he travelled, had to carry tapestry, from one palace to another. Down to the sixteenth century the ceiling was nothing but the under side of the floor above, which was often richly carved or panelled. Its name is corrupted from the Latin word for " heaven," which came to be used to express a similar idea, and traces of this Latin usage also survive in tlie modern French cicl and other modern languages ; indeed even in the German name, the sense of " heaven " is preserved, though the form of the word is different. In 1350, the expression "a heaven of cloth of gold " is employed in the sense of a canopy, and so ffir back as the eleventh century such expressions as " house-heaven " and " heaven- VI THE STORY OF OUK HOMES 147 roof" were the Anglo-Saxon names lor the ceiling of a room. Both wall-hangings and carpets ^ were first used principally for churches — for which purpose carpets were specially made at llamsey in Huntingdonshire. In the thirteenth century, however, Don Sanchez, Archbishop of Toledo, and half-brother of our own queen Eleanor, brought some rich carpets and hangings with him to England for his sister's rooms. This fact occasioned the criticism that the Queen was " having her apartments adorned with costly hang- ings like a cliurch and carpeted after the Spanish fashion." But nevertheless, the royal example was soon eagerly followed, and found its way even into the houses of well-to-do farmers, whence it spread gradually over the entire country. In concluding these remarks we may note that there being no furniture-makers in those early days even the sovereign, as, for example, Henry III., had to order the purchase of " a great beech tree to be made into tables for the royal kitchens at ' Before the use of carpets, floors frequently consisted of the natural soil rammed down. Indeed, the floor of the hall, below the raised platform or "dais," was significantly termed the "marsh." The extreme rarity of boarded floois at this date appears from the fact that King Henry III. ordered a room on the ground-floor in Windsor Castle to be "boarded like a ship," the employment of such a metaphor showing how unfamiliar the idea must then have been. 148 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. Westminster." The " upholsterer " of later clays was at this time an auctioneer, and got his name from being an " upholder " or " uphold-ster " of various articles of furniture; in other words, he " held them up " at auction. This is why we find in Piers Ploivman " upholders on the hill shall have it to sell," the hill in question being the Cornhill in London. Even as late as 1750 at the Grey Coat Hospital in London, an order was given "to Mr. Goff, the upholder, for a bedstead, bedding and curtains," and in 1762 a further sum is again recorded as having been paid to Mr. Goff, " the upholsterer " ; this was certainly the same individual. The Court Upholsterer or Tapissier, as he is called (from being at first a worker in tapestry), is to this day an officer of our own Royal household. CHATTEE VII THE STORY OF OUR HOMES (contmucd) England. The vast majority of the people in those islands dwell in buildings which may be described either as a house (properly so called) or a cottage, the difference between tlie two types consisting in the fact that the house is almost always provided with MI THE STOEY OF OUll HOMES 149 an entrance passage or hall, wliicli is wanting in the cottage. Down to the fifteenth century, labourers' cottages or cabins in England still took the form of a single undivided room, with three apertures for window, door and chimney (often with no fireplace at all), and a hurdle across the centre to separate the children from the pigs, sheep and chickens. These cabins were for the most part extremely small, and till the reign of Henry IT. were not only usually of wood, but of so slight a character that that king was able to issue a command for " the houses of heretics " to be " carried outside the town and burnt." The practice of building in wood went back to Anglo-Saxon times, as is shown by the Anglo- Saxon words " to timber " and " tree-wright," which meant build and builder respectively. Even when stone was substituted for wood as the building material, the ancieut methods of timber construction were still followed, as appears, for instance, very clearly in the tower of the church at Earls Barton. Going back to a much earlier period, although a cabin or " square box " type of hut (either with or without holes for window, door and chimney) was certainly known as far back as the Stone Age, yet the general form which the hut then took was un- doubtedly round, and of this tlicre is plentiful proof in the remains that are found in the remoter parts 150 THE PAST AT OUII DOOES of Great Britain. Of the round type there are several survivals even at the present day. Among these are the round charcoal-burner's hut with its turfed walls, examples of which may he seen as liy courtesy of Mr. S. liazilediiie iVarren Fig. 47. — Charcoal-Burner's Hut, Epping Forest. A modern repre- sentative of one kind of Prehistoric Round Hut, showing tlie upright form of door now taking the phice of tiie inclined doors formerly cut in the slope of the turfed hut-walls. near London as Epping Eorest. There are also the bell tent of our soldiers and the round '' snmvicr- house," still to be ibund in many old-fashioned gardens, which arc similarly built upon the })lan of a round prehistoric cottage. vir THE STOEY OF OUR HOMES 151 The use of the term " summer house " in tlie last instance, indeed, is significant, for the earliest summer-house ^yas a rough temporary shelter erected in summer and for the use of the men who drove the cattle, as was then generally the case, to the upland pastures where they fed in summer. The opposite of this term was winter-house, which was similarly employed in reference to this most ancient and widespread custom of wandering peoples. In the Bible, in the book of Amos, we find " I will smite tlie winter house with the summer house ; and the houses of ivory shall perish . . . saith the Lord." The principal unit from which the English Itouse was ultimately derived was, on the other hand, undoubtedly the hall. Most of us know that even down to the present day the front door frequently opens into what is still called the " hall " — most frequently the merest apology for an entrance or ante-room with rooms above it. This small confined passage, w^hich still in most cases forms a connexion between the living-rooms of the family and the servants' quarters, is certainly the true though degraded survival of the once magnificent banqueting-room of our ancestors, at once in by- gone days the largest, most important, and, indeed, only original part of the ancient dwelling-house.^ 1 Westminster Hall, though not the oklest, is perhaps, out of many, the most illustrious example that yet remains to us. 152 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS chap. Thus we see that, like so many other of the most important factors in our modern civilisation, the English house has been built up by the successive incorporation of several units in one, as a result of the slow but steady growth of centuries. This fact, if we reflect, may lend some interest even to the dullest and most forbidding in appear- ance of all our modern houses. It is, indeed, this old importance of the hall that explains why mauy old manor-houses and other mansions, both in town and country, coming down to us from a time when the hall was an even more prominent feature than in a castle, still retain " The Hall " as their simple designation— a term which is applied by a yet further extension, to the chief house in a parish, irrespective of its form. The ancient Danes, Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons and Germans (and no doubt the Normans too) all built various forms of the hall. But though they each of them moulded it after their own ideas, and in accordance with their own requirements and materials, thus causing much difference of detail, yet the central idea of a joint living-room for the community, supported when large on a double row of pillars and open to the roof, was familiar to all of them. It can be traced to this day throughout Europe as the modern representative of the ancient tribal hwildinj of all the races that employed it. VII THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES ir.3 In those far distant days tlie rooms of wliat we should call a " house " were not combined as a single building under one roof; the hall was, in fact, the primitive house, and any additions that were made to it at first took the form of separate structures, each of which was itself called a " house " as w^ell. This explains why in old records we find what would now be several parts of the same building described separately as the " bake-house," " larder- house," " spinning-house," "fire-house " or hall, and so forth, all of which were under separate roofs. The royal manor-houses of Henry III. comprised an enclosure in which the buildings, still perfectly isolated, were dotted about at random all over the ground. For the sake of convenience, however, they were soon connected by covered ways, in order that, as is actually recorded, the Queen might walk from her chamber to her chapel " with a dry foot." By gradual steps of this kind, the ordinary house, beginning with the hall, acquired private chambers in the form of an annex at the upper end, or side, of the hall for the family, and kitchens, storerooms, barns, and eventually servants' rooms, and other offices at the opposite extremity. As time went on, the hall with these annexes came to be combined under a single roof. One fact that helped to make this development necessary was the oradual disuse and desertion of the hall, 154 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. which of course no longer required to be built of such a size, when tlie practice of sharing the common meal in it came to be abandoned. In Piers PLoivman (1360-1390) we read how this form of luxury gradually crept in, and we may readily guess how stoutly it must have been con- demned and combated by those who (like the poet of the Vision) clung to the ancient fashions : Now hath each rich a rule j to eat by themselves III a private parlour | for poor men's sake,^ Or in a chamber with a chimney ^ | and leave the chief hall, That vi^as made for meals | to be eaten in. This stage in the history of the hall eventually left it as a mere entrance-room or passage, giving communication equally with the rooms occupied by master and servants. It also . gradually helped to bring about a practice either of building the walls higher than before, so as to allow for the conversion of the higher part of the building into an upper storey or "sleeping-loft," or of adding fresh rooms at the side or end of the hall. The " up-floor," as the Saxons had called it, was after- wards lighted by a couple of dormer wiiuh:)ws. The hall part of the house usually stood w^ith its long side to the front, the annexed buildings flank- ing it, usually at right angles, ihish with the front. ^ I.e. to avoid tlic iioor. '•^ 1^'ireplace. VII THE STORY OF OUE HOMES ir>5 This general plan was often adopted for old manor- houses, rectories, and farm-houses, usually, of course, with farm buildings attached. In the towns, the houses were generally erected with the gable-end abutting on the street-front. We have seen how the English hall was made into what we should now call a house, both by bringing together a number of small independent houses under the cover of one roof, and by building fresh rooms above them. Both these principles can be seen carried out, often on an extremely extensive scale, in our modern public buildincjs, and even in many private ones. In some of the huge industrial cities of to-day, the greatly increased cost of building land has stimulated what may be called the " piling-up pro- cess," until the structure becomes in many cases a vast and overpowering mass of masonry of the kind often humorously styled a " sky-scraper." Each successive storey is, usually, the monotonous counterpart of the one that went before, and if during our walks we look at the houses or shop- fronts in almost any large town, we shall even see some characteristic features that once formed a structural part of the first-floor or ground -floor (such as '•' floor " projections and columns or pillars), employed over and over again to decorate each successive storev, until the roof is reached. 156 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. The most picturesque of these characteristic repetitions is perhaps that of the projecting part of the first-floor, which was a development of the timber-built house.^ In England it was called, in the time of Shakespeare at least, a " jutty " or " jetty," from its jutting forwards, this enabling it to protect the goods exposed for sale in the street below. It seems clear from its name that the " solar," or sun-chamber, which was given to the upper storey in earlier times, and is still used on the Con- tinent, was introduced into England by the Normans, who grafted it upon the typical English hall. In a famous old Norman poem of the thirteenth century, the subject of which is the life of St. Alban, a clerk upon arriving at Verulam (the old name of St. Albans) tells us that he there found " a stone Palace which was no cottage " (he means that it was a house of great size), " with solars and storeys, and great cellars below." It is interesting to find the " sun-chamber " here coupled with the " cellar," because the Romans employed the arch for vaulting their cellars, and thus we are led to the fact that this form of con- struction, though adopted by the Normans, must have been originally derived, like the " solar," from tlie Romans themselves. ^ See illustration on p. 188. It is absent from Norman churches ami castles, in which the material used is stone. VII THE STOEY OF 01' K HOMPIS 157 Witli tlie softening of manners in England and the increasing desire for privacy, there liad grown lip, by slow degrees, the idea of liaving private rooms or " chambers " (as the Xormans called tliem), designed for the various requirements of the family. These chambers, which by the thirteentli century were located on the upper floor and were reached by an outer staircase, included the parlour or conversation -room — the name of which is taken from an old Xorman word connected with our own word imrlcy, which properly means to " talk " — the drawing-room — which, down to quite modern times, still retained its early fifteenth -century name of " withdrawing-room," from its being the room to which the family, more especially the ladies, '• withdrew " — and the dining-room or eating-room, which became necessary when the custom of eating in hall was abandoned by the family. Coming to the present day, the gradual develop- ment of the hall, as a single large apartment with annexes into the house of later days, can perhaps best be studied from observing many of our older manor-houses and colleges, in which the hall still retains a prominent position. But a more familiar instance of this development may be seen in many of the ancient farm-houses which are still to be found in out-of-the-way parts of the country. A number of farm-houses are vet in existence which 158 THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS chap. consist of a dwelling-house, barn, and stables under one roof. In a few instances, even, there is a door or passage leading from the house to the barn, though such examples are rare. Farm-houses consisting of a central part with two aisles and a dwelling-house at the upper end, though rare, are still to be seen in some parts of the country, as, for instance, at Upper Midhope in Yorkshire. The cattle in this case are stalled between the pillars in one of the wings or " aisles," whilst the remainder of the space, including the opposite " aisle," is occupied by the threshing-floor. Here it is plain that the part of the building covered by the barn and the stalls corresponds in form to the ancient English hall, wdiile the dwelling part answers to the family apartments, which in olden times were annexed to it. A yet more obvious development of farm buildings from the hall can be seen abroad, as, for instance, in Saxony, where a common type of farm-house con- sists of a long and broad building with two " aisles " in which the horses and cattle are stalled, the servants sleeping above these, and the family at the end of the building. The better-class private country dwelling-houses in the fifteenth century consisted, as a rule, of a single large apartment with an earthen floor, and open to the roof, in which the entire family lived VII THE STORY OF OUK HOMES 150 and dined and slept. lu London itself, wliere the houses frequently had a dug-out cellar, in addition to the ground-floor and first-floor, it was not unusual for the three large apartments thus provided to be each inhabited by a separate family, even in the case of the well-to-do, so that our modern flats are, after all, nothing more than a revival of this most ancient custom. An observant writer has remarked that " in various counties we can scarcely fail to be struck with the differences in the forms of the cottages, as in the height of the buildings, the pitch of the roof, as well as the material." A proper survey of the country from this point of view would surely prove that such differences were to some extent due to the influence of race. The evidence of language, as the following examples will show, would materially assist such an inquiry. As is well known, every little knot or group of Saxon houses — such as grew into the modern many- roomed house — standing in its own grounds, was called a hurgh or tun (our modern " town "), a fact which sufficiently explains the reason for the vast number of places in England at this day, the names of which end in one or other of these terminations. Of these two words, hirr/h (also borough and bury) meant a place of protection or shelter, and is a mere variant of our modern English " burrow," an 160 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. expression which appears, oddly enough, in the first syllable of " hurglaY" The corresponding Danish termination was -oj/. The Anglo-Saxon ending -tmi, on the other hand, meant a homestead or " ham," ^ such as was then frequently enclosed by a rampart of earth, usually formed of soil thrown up from a ditch and sur- mounted by a hedge," in which we may see the forerunner of one of the usual forms of enclosure by which our farmers protect their fields. A fact which makes this clearer is that, originally, sucli hedges were properly employed to enclose liomcstcads, the system prevailing in England almost universally down to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries being that of open fields. Tlie British or Celtic form of " tun " was " dun " or " down," and as tlie British encampments were usually on a hill, " down " came to mean a hill. From M'hat has already been said, we can see how, in many cases, we may still roughly trace upon a map the limits of the settlements of each ^ Frequently confused with the Frieshmd ending "-hamni," a hemmed-\n pLace or enclosure. Both endings are common. 2 A striking example is that of Ramborough, of which we read in the Saxon Chronicle, that one Ida in a.d, 547 "built Ramborougli, which was at first enclosed with a hedge, and afterwards by a wall" ; but the real meaning of this is tliat the rock was pnUmdcd., and the settlement thus became a "l)orough." So, too, Kingsbury near St. Albans got its name from being a royal " Burgh," and was once a stockaded palace of the Saxon kings of Mercia. VII THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES IGl race, of wliich the nation was orii^inally composed, by finding out the oldest forms of the place-names. For example, the common Saxon ending " -inc " occuiis with very great frequency in Sussex, a country which we know to have been overwlielni- ingly Saxon ; whereas the Danish " -by," common in Lincolnshire, does not occur in Kent, Hampshire, or the Isle of Wight, all of which were peopled by Jutes. On the other hand, there are many place- names of Saxon or Norse origin, on and near the coast of South Wales, a part of the country where if we did not stop to reflect we should certainly not have expected to find them. Before leaving the subject of domestic architec- ture, there are one or two features of certain public buildings, as, for instance, churches and castles, which stand in a more or less definite relationship to the " hall," and therefore ought not to be left out of the discussion. At the same time, it can hardly be pointed out too strongly that it is quite beyond the scope of this book, in any way, to deal with even the chief features of the various " styles " in our church and castle buildings. Information of this kind has been very often published, and is readily accessible to all who are interested, tliough, in spite of the quite overwhelming proportion of attention given to it, it is probal}ly not so im- portant from our present point of view, as are 162 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES chap. methods of house-biiildiug of the domestic sort. All that can be here attempted is to direct attention to one or two general aspects of these two forms of public architecture, which happen to illustrate some of the leading principles with which this book is concerned. Both castle-hall and church have this in common, that they are alike intended as meeting-places for the folk of a particular village or district. Both afford examples of some of the principles that we have already seen at work in secular buildings (for example, that of the building up of the unit), and both alike are eloquent of the peculiar cliaracteristics and surroundings of the races by which they were from time to time respectively built. In the earliest times, the church was the common hall of the parish, and often served as a fort in time of attack ; indeed it frequently stood on the very site of the stockade that had been built by the first settlers. Courts were held in it, as is still the practice in northern Spain. Corn and wool were stored in the nave, and the village feasts took place there ; even dancing was permitted at Cliristmas, as late as the seventeenth century, in the churches of Yorkshire. Yet, in the case of our churches and cathedrals, the process of development was almost from the first profoundly modified and complicated by the domination of tlie religious idea, wliicli affected the entire plan of the structure. During VII THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 163 what was called the riomanesque period of church architecture, " cruciform " or cross-shaped cliurches were built, and at one time this became the all but universal style, the Western Church following, as a rule, the shape of what is called the "Roman" cross, and the Eastern Church that of the Greek. On the other hand, the churches of the early- Christians were also very often erected in the form of a long " hall," supported by a double row of pillars, resembling that in which the Roman Governor held his Court. The usual opinion is, that in the ' arly days of Christianity, " halls " of this kind were irequently converted to Christian uses, the ivest end of the building, corresponding to that at which the Roman Governor had formerly sat, becoming, as at Silchester, the Christian sanctuary.-^ Such a Roman hall was called a Basilica, from a Greek word mean- ing " royal," because it was copied from the "Royal" or King's Porch at Athens. This form of building came to be favoured greatly, no doubt from its simplicity and convenience, as well as for the reasons given above, by English church-builders, and the use of the church building as a court, as well as for many other purposes, continued in England for centuries. Perhaps we may sum up by saying that some forms, at least, of our earliest English churches ^ This was about a.d. 300 ; the transference of the altar to the east end took place some centuries later. 164 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. were evolved from non-religious buildings in other lands, but that it was as churches that they appear to have been introduced into England. A fact of supreme importance in the lustory of English church-building was the Norman influence, which, in the course of its own development in England, seems to have substituted stone for timber as the regular material for buildiug, and having thus completely remoulded the architecture of the country, inspired and provided funds for our most active church-building period, which attained its perfection at Durham. This influence has stamped itself deep upon the language, witness such expressions as '•' nave," " arch," ''chancel," " aisle," "tower," " porch," and many other words of Eoman origin, that reached us through the Norman. Hence, although the standard of building reached by tlie Saxons was itself a high one, yet the old writer, Aubrey, is not far from the truth when he remarks, with reference to the Conquest, '' the Normans then came, and taught them [the Saxons] civility and building." The only thing here to guard against is tlie idea that the Normans brought their architecture with them " ready made " (as it were), instead of developing it gradually, as is now believed to have been the case, in England, before the middle of the twelfth century. In some of our still existing churches, it is not VII THK STOIiY OF OUK HOMES 105 difficult to trace the steps by wliich, in order to develop the structure to the reipiisite size or grandeur, one unit or division of the building \vas added to another. In some continental churches, indeed, as in those of Switzerland and Norway, these principles are exhibited with especial clearness. An abbey differed from a cathedral in this, that it was built, as a rule, out of the offerings of pilgrims and other devout persons, and thus grew up gradu- ally around the shrine of some famous Saint. Eound these abbeys and convents, as around many old castles, there developed a tendency, as time went on, for villages or even towns to spring up. There is a very good example of one of these convent-made villages in the north of Hertfordshire. On the very spot where a wayside cross was erected (in or about the year a.d. 1160), a convent was founded by the Lady Eoise or Eohesia, and a priory w^as afterwards built by Eustace de Mere. This was at first called Roise Cross, and afterwards Eoise Town or Eoyston. Lastly, we come to the question of the church - tower. This, as we know, is often called a hcJfry, a name from which there is much to be learnt. The old spelling of the word was not " belfry " but " berfrey," and although this " berfrey " or " bierfrois" was used for a bell-tower as earlv as 122G, yet the 166 THE PAST AT OUR DOGES chap. word had nothing to do with " bell " even when it happened to contain one, but simply meant, origin- ally, a " strong place of refuge." The fact of its being also used for bell-towers no doubt helped to lix the form of the word as " belfry." In its oldest form the " berfrey " was usually a movable tov/er of timber work such as was used in the Middle Ages for besieging fortifications. AVlien the French historian Froissart speaks of " two belfroys of great timber, with three stages (or stories), every belfroy on four great wheels," and adds that each "stage" contained 100 archers, it is this ancient siege- tower to which he alludes. From this usage tlie Xorman " berfrey " came to mean a tower to protect watchmen, and hence a watch-tower, a beacon-tower, and so on. Eeminiscent of its ancient origin is therefore the fact that, like the body of the church itself, the church-tower was much used down to quite modern times for purely secular purposes. The tower of St. Clement Danes — erected in London on tlie very spot where the Danes, driven out of tlie city by Alfred, settled in the nintli century — was sometimes used for a beacon to guide the shipping on the Thames, sometimes as a station for guns to keep order among tlio ])r()ud churchmen and n()))les wlio resided in and about tlie neighbourhood, and soiiu'times too as a i)r(>lec'li()ii against llu! jiirates VII THE STOEY OF OUI: HOMES 1G7 who attacked and plundered those frequenting the river. The church-tower was, in a great many cases, actually employed as a watch-tower or look- out place in the country villages, and often stood quite apart from the church itself. Some of these separate towers have indeed survived to this day. Even at Chichester Cathedral, at Evesham, Berkeley and elsewhere, the tower stands quite apart from the main building and its spire, as is the case in many of the cathedrals on the Continent. At East Dereham, AValston and Elstow the same kind of division may be seen. At St. Albans the town Bell-tower, or '•' clock-house," stands quite alone, having no church attached, and the tower here was remarkable for containing one of the most ancient horologes (the predecessors of our modern church -clocks), made by an abbot of St. Albans in 1326. This particular horologe was unique, being such as then was " nowhere else in Europe," and showed various movements of the heavenly bodies.^ Most of our old church- towers have four windows in the topmost storey, one looking towards ^ Possibly it may have resembled the celestial globe (showing the movements of the sun, moon and planets, impelled by weights and wheels, which pointed out with certainty the hour, night and day) that was sent to the Emperor Frederic II. in 1232 by the Sultan of Egypt. The first mention of the clock as a piece of household furniture occurs in the Roman de In Rose (1305), CHAP. VII THE STOliV OF OLK HOMES 1G9 each point of the compass ; this arrangement was, of course, originally made for the convenience of the watchman's work. ]\Iany old towers were inhabited hy watchmen, as was still in quite recent days the case in Germany, and some yet show traces of former habitation in the shape of fireplaces.^ The tower of Bedale Church, near Eichmond in Yorkshire, which was built for defensive purposes, was actually furnished with a portcullis. Again many of the churches on the East Anglian coast were regularly used as beacon-towers for the guidance of ships at sea. In other parts of the country, as at Newcastle, they were employed to give light to travellers on the then pathless moors. Hence we may see plainly that the original object of these towers was to serve as watch-towers, or for other non-religious purposes, and that they were also intended as a residence for the watchmen, and not merely to contain a peal of bells. In many respects, therefore, the church-tower once served a purpose similar to that of the main tower, or " keep," as it was called, of a castle. The keep was, in the first instance, in particular the domestic part of the castle and contained a set of rooms 1 It may be added that the term " liiffer "-boards (louver-boards) often given to the open weather-boarding at tlie top of a church tower, probably goes back to the time when these boards were really used as " louver-boards," for the escape of the smoke. 170 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS chap. built one above the other for the use of the owner and his family. Such early keeps contained, in addition to sleeping chambers for the family, a large room used as the dining-apartment, and in some cases a chapel as well. The best example that can be given is perhaps the famous " White Tower" of tlie Tower of London, begun by the Conqueror's order, which contains, in addition to many private chambers, a hall no less than 90 ft. long, as well as a chapel. Besides the rooms we have mentioned, the keep of an ancient castle often contained in an upper storey a watchman's room. This was the case at the Peak Castle in Derbyshire, inhabited by two watchmen from the year 1158 onwards. Incident- ally also the keep served, when occasion arose, as a place of refuge against attack, for all who lived within the castle precincts, and paid what was called ward-silver or castle-guard. In tliis respect the keep resembled the Northumbrian " peel " — originally a "palisaded" tower — or, to take a less familiar example, the watch-tower built beside a chief's residence in some parts of North-west India. To conclude, tlie keep was often actually erected — usually upon a rock or other eminence — on tlie very site of an ancient watch-tower or look-out place, which has certainly in some cases existed since prehistoric times. VH THE STOIiV OF OUli HOMES 171 Indeed the circuit of its outer wall, or " curtain," as it was called, may from this point of view be regarded as the counterpart of the rampart of earth, crowned by a palisade, which defended the settle- ments of the early inhabitants of Great Britain. To put the matter in another way, the prehistoric castle, if the term may be allowed, consisted of a fort or earthwork, often of a circular plan, which contained and protected the huts of the defenders. Excellent examples occur in all parts of Great Britain, as well as on the continent of Europe. One of the best in England is perhaps the famous round fort at Grim's Pound on Dartmoor, which measures about 400 feet across, and still shows the round foundations of the defenders' dwellings. We must therefore think of the castle not merely as a single building, but rather as a cluster of buildings, modified through being built and owned by a single individual for military purposes chiefly. Very commonly, in fact, it actually con- sisted in the most ancient times of a single watch- tower or citadel, surrounded by small lightly built houses, in which the lord's retainers lived. Xot until long after the Conquest did the castle become highly specialised and developed, to keep pace with the improved military science of the day. The earliest castles of the Conqueror were mere ramparts of earth, or at most, wooden structures. 172 THE PAST AT QUE DOOES chap. the building of stone castles by the Normans not taking place till the middle of the twelfth century. When at a much later period such buildings began to be designed as private residences, the keep long survived its early use, and was retained as an ornament to the building. In many cases the castle became a true residence, but it is, neverthe- less, chiefly to the manor (in its original sense of "manor-house") tliat w^e must look to supply a link between the ancient military keep and the now old-style farm-house, as well as with the modern " house " properly so called. We now come to the consideration of houses arranged side by side in rows, or, as we should now- adays say, in " streets," a common word whicli we habitually and heedlessly use, without ever recall- ing the fact that — like the name we give to the very umlls of the houses we live in — it is of Eoman introduction. Thus we may, if we stop to reflect, return in spirit to the far-off days when Ih-itain was for about four centuries overshadowed by the wings of the Eoman eagle. In the far-off age, when London first became a town, each house must have stood, like the liouses in modern Dutch towns, in its own enclosure. In the twelfth century tlu^ liouses of London had only one storey above the ground-floor, but in the fourteenth century they began io be built with two VII THE STUKY OF OUK HOMES 173 or even three floors, the upper storey being called a " garret," the meaning of which is " watcli-tower." This garret was made to project after the manner of the lower storey, though to a lesser extent, partly perhaps witli the idea of giving, as has been said, a little more room and shelter to goods in the street, but chiefly, no doubt, from its being built as a mere repetition of the storey below. In houses of this type the garret was utilised as a storeroom or " loft," the first floor being the actual living-room of the family. By studying the streets in almost any of our older towns we can often see clearly how the size and course of some of them have been affected by conditions connected with the old order of things long passed away. Where the successive upper stories projected — each in the direction of the house opposite — on both sides of the street, the effect in the very narrow streets of former times was to bring the top windows very close to each other, so much so, in fact, that people in them might, it is often said, shake hands across the street. Certainly these projecting stories did much to narrow the streets in such old towns, but until the popularisation of the coach this did not much matter, since nearly every one rode on horseback — an idea still commemorated in such names as that of " Knightrider Street " in the City of London. 174 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS chap. All that was then really wanted w\as a some- what broader street for waggons, a feature which is preserved in such a name as " Wain Gate " or " Waggon Street," which is common in the north. The remaining streets were frequently mere alleys, impassable to all but foot-passengers, horses and cattle. These were called by different names in various parts of the country, either by the Norman name " alley " or the English name " row." Of these lanes there are numberless examples, many of them appropriated to particular trades, as in the case of Goldsmiths' Row, Butchers' Row, Carriers' Row, and Paternoster Row, in London. Tlie latter was named from the turners of beads for rosaries, who lived there because of its nearness to St. Paul's, they being popularly called " paternoster- makers," because they manufactured the beads used for counting the repetitions of the Lord's Prayer (" Pater Noster "). In the same way certain parts of the town would often be associated wdth a particular nation- ality, as in the Jewry — a part cc^mmonly found in most large medieval towns — Little Ireland, Little Scotland, Little ]^)ritain, and even l*etty France. In some of our oldest cities, of which York is a type, the whole of the ancient part of the town was surrounded by a wall, and the four main waggon- tracks led to four principal gates, the rest of the THE STOEY OF GUI: HOMES 175 streets being for tlie most part tlie narrow rows to whicli we have referred, except where later improve- ments or alterations have been introduced. The reason for this is that York was laid out as a lioman Fig. 49. — Plan of Cliicliester, sliowiug how closely tlie modern city- follows the lines of the Roman walled town, with four principal gates and streets (North, South, East, and West). military station, and w\as therefore arranged as such a station would be. Indeed, in Saxon times, York was actually called York-" Chester " (that is, "York camp ") or "Chester " only, whilst the present city of Chester was formerly called " West Chester " by way of distinction. 176 THE PAST AT OUK IJOOES chap. The plan varied, of course, according to the ground, and often followed the plan of some pre- existing British encampment ; ^ and the modern city does not always stand upon the same site as the Roman town. At St. Albans the Eoman town of Verulam stood on the opposite side of the valley, with the river Ver and a small lake between it and the modern city, the main street of which is built on the site of the ancient Roman race-course. The shops in front of town houses were shop- fronts, with barred unglazed windows, or of the nature of booths ; the windows, which were furnished with bars by way of protection against thieves, were left perfectly open all day, and only closed at night by means of strong wooden shutters, such as are still used for closing shops in Spain and many other parts of Europe. Another kind of shop (which, if we may go by its name, was a Roman feature adopted by the Normans) was the " tavern." This was really a kind of cellar,^ with a stair leading up into the street, something like the Italian wine-shops, some ^ Both Pevensey and A'ernlamiuni were of an irregnlar oval ; Silchester was of an octa«:i;onal form ; Bath probably pentagonal : and the City of London an obloncjr. The latter (in 1 300) possessed seven double gates, four facinfj the cardinal i>oints, and throe supplementary ones. The num])or of towns of Roman origin in the country is very great ; it is now known that Oxford, like Cambridge, was a Roman station. '^ The corresponding English name was ''shade." VII THE STOllY OF OUli HOMES 177 of which may be seen in London. These stairs at length became so numerous that tliey encroached seriously upon the street, and were forbidden in consequence. The result of this was, that in numerous cases they were turned into cellars, by tlie filling up of the stair-hole and removal of the stairs, and this is said to be the chief reason why there are so many cellars under the pavement in our modern English towns. There are still many of such tow^n " taverns " to be seen abroad. There is much more to be said, but all that can here be added consists of a few additional facts intended to complete the main outlines of the picture. The trade signs, such as then swung over almost every shop, are still to be seen in nearly every town in the country. Some of these were the badges of the noble families of which the shop- owners were retainers, others the symbols of the trades or guilds to which they belonged (as in many continental towns of to-day) ; a third class no doubt were house-marks. The best existing examples of the first class of these signs occur m the signboards of our modern inns, the explanations of many of which are known. The " White Hart " is the badge of King Eichard the Second, and the " Blue Boar " of King Pachard the Third, and innumerable others might be given.^ ^ The tin-smiths alone bad a live sign — sqiiirrels in a cage with bells. 178 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS chap. Of the second class, there are now very few that can be considered historic, the chief of these being the three golden (originally l)lue) balls of the Pawn- broker, which have been identified with the Arms of the Lombards, the first to engage in this form of business in England. Perliaps, too, we may add, the Highlander of the tobacconist, and the strange- looking barber's pole, the latter an emblem going back to the days when the Surgeon, who at first united the office of barber with his own calling, was required to distinguish his pole from that of the barber by adding to it certain emblems indicative of his craft. Even our common slang phrase " to hang out " came from the once general habit of hanging out a sign. Examples of the third class are now but few, thougli we are told on good authority that a house, with wliat is called a " wool-stapler's " mark engraven upon it, and bearing the date 1584, is still to l)e seen at the village of Witney, in Oxford- shire, and that merchant- marks are common at Yarmouth and Norwich. In Denmark and otlier parts of the Continent house-marks are still used ; they were, in fact, necessary before nund)ers were employed to distinguish the liouscs in the towns. These liouse-marks formed part of the general system of marking .ill kinds of private property, and were to the yconicn wliat lierahlic bearings VII THE STOliY OF OUU HOMES 171) were to the noble ; indeed more tliau one knii^ditly family in North Germany still bears its honse-mark {e.g. the pot-hook or kettle-hanger) on its coat of arms. The yeoman's land, cattle, ducks, and implements all bore the same mark, which he drew when he attached his signature to a document, or else cut it upon a piece of wood. This last custom accounts for the knife or rod sometimes affixed as a guarantee to such old deeds. In the earliest times it usually represented son^e indispensable implement of the owner, such as a plough, scythe or sickle, a spade, or the tires of a barrow, as well as mere fanciful emblems, such as stars or anchors. We can thus understand the true nature and origin of our modern trade-marks, as well as of the marks used by stone-masons, livery companies and similar bodies ; or the marks to this day placed upon swans at the periodical swan-upping, or " swan- hopping " as it is often wrongly called. Even the broad arrow-mark placed upon boundary stones (which the old Irishman supposed to be the fossil footprints of some large bird, the " trid of the aigle afore the flood," as he picturesquely put it) as well as on Government stores, the dress of convicts and so forth, is of similar origin, since in all these cases it is simply used as an assertion of the sovereign's paramount authority. There are numberless other survivals and 180 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS chap. reminders of the old r(^l. Iijiuv.l M()ul(liii^L,rs on pmji'rtiiig trout of old IIoum- (Ihc Rising Sun Inn) at SiiU'ron-Waldon. Scottish castles, which were domesticated in the sixteenth century, were also derived from France, and together with a stnnii^ti-looking gable-end, ]»uilt ^ " Tlie "Ancient House" at Ipswii-li of the Sparrows family is a notable exception, dating from 1507. THE STOKY OF OUli HOMES 189 in gradually ascending steps, wliich is called the " corbie " or " crow's step " gable, have been attributed to the effect of the ancient alliance between Scotland and that country. Gables of this kind are chiefly found in Belgium and other parts of the Low Countries, but they are also common in many parts of France and Fig. 52. — A. "Corbie" or Crow-Step" Gables, on the roofs of Stirling Castle (from a view about 1840). B. Detail of " Crow- Step " Gable, etc. Germany, as, for instance, in Liibeck, and also in Denmark. As mentioned above, this style of gable was chiefly popular in Scotland, but it was also employed to some extent in the north and east of England. Examples, which are numerous, are at Brome Hall (Norfolk), and Eeading Street (Kent). Flemish influence also appears on the coast of 190 THE PAST AT QUE DOOES chap, vn Kent, especially in the older buildings at Eye, Deal and Sandwich, the last-named town showing this influence so strongly that it is often said it might be taken for an old-world Flemish town. But perhaps the best example of all is the w^ell-known " beacon " tower of Boston Church in Lincolnshire, which was used for the guidance of mariners entering the port, and is alleged to have been copied bodily from the tower of the great church at Antwerp. The influence of Holland, which can be seen in the curved gables of Eushton Hall (1627) and the double curved gables of the mill at Bourne Pond, near Colchester (1591), was no doubt greatly emphasized by the joint reign of the two Dutch royalties, William and Mary. There are even some traces of the Dutch manner in the work done by Wren at Hampton Court for those two sovereigns. Both curved and " crow-step " gables are extremely common in the newer shop-buildings in London. At the present day Dutch influence is strongest in some of the east coast towns, as at Yarmouth, ibr instance, and King's Lynn, which latter town, owing to its geographical surroundings, has been called the Holland of tlie east coast, l^utch influence is also evident in many old liouses in Guildford and its neighbourliood, and examples may be found else- where by students of tlu' things around us. SU.ME BOOKS FOli liEFEKENCE I'Jl SOME BOOKS, AND PASSAGP:S IN BOOKS, GIVEN FOR FURTHER REFERENCE Adam, Frank. The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands. Edinburgh and Loudon : W. & A. K. Johnston. 190S. Clincii, George. English Costume. London : Methuen & Co. 1910. CUTTS, Rev. E. L. Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. London : A. Moring. 1911. Fairholt, F. W. Costume in England. Third edition, enlarged and revised bv the Hon. H. A. Dillon. Two vols. London : G. Bell k Sons. 1885. GoMME, G. L. (now Sir Laurence). The Village Community (with special reference to survivals in Britain). London : Walter Scott. 1890. Esp. valuable is ch. ix. pp. 275-287. Joyce, P. W. Social History of Ancient Ireland. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1903. Two vols. Esp. II. ch. xxii. pp. 203-212 ; II. ch. xx. pp. 20-58 ; and II. ch. xxi. pp. 104- 144. A standard work upon Ireland for advanced readers. Mitchell, Sir Akthur. The Past in the Present. Edinburgh : D. Douglas. 1880. An admirable introduction to the subject of survivals in Britain, with special reference to Scotland. Planche, J. R. History of British Costume. Third edition. London : George Bell k Sons. 1881. The larger work by this same authority is invaluable for advanced readers. Rhys, Sir J. and D. Brynmor- Jones. The Welsh People. London : Fisher Unwin. 1900. Esp. ch. vi. pp. 199-201 ; 248-252 ; 568-569. A standard book on Wales for advanced readers. Tylor, E. B. (now Sir E. B.) Anthropologv. London : Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1881. Esp. ch. viii.-xi. (the Arts of Life : Food, ' Dress, Dwellings). The well-known and unequalled text- book. Wright, Thomas. The Homes of Other Days. London : Trlibner & Co. 1871. Dictionaries Skeat, Rev. Professor W. W. A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Clarendon Press, Oxford. New edition. 1911. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Xew edition. Revised and enlarged. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1910. Fourth Edition. Murray, Sir James A. H. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Clarendon Press, Oxford. INDEX Abbeys, usually built up round the shrine of a saint, 165 Abroad, food from, 45-50 Ale and beer, 16 "Alley," 174 Almshouses, dress worn in, 80 "Apron," 89 worn by men, 80-81 Architecture, Norman, developed in England, 164 "Armoury," 142 Arras, 145 Arrow, the broad, 179 "At bay," meaning of, 20 "Aumbrey," or ^^ arms- (later confused with alms-) cup- board," 144 " Back- 1)1 ate " of grate, 132 Bag-gloves, 91-3 "Bake-stones," 38, 43 "Balustrade," meaning of, 128 Bangles, 98-9 Banister, t^ee " balustrade " " Basilica," 163 " Bay." See " at bay " Beacons on church-towers, 169 Bear-garden, 180 "Bed," or "bed-stead," 138-41 of Ware, 140 Beer and ale, 16 Beer-barrels marked with "X," 17 Belfry and bell-tower, 165-6, 167 Bell-tents, 150 Bench-marks, 179 Bishop's apron, 81 Black bread, 18 Black coats, contrasted with red, 79 Black dress (in ancient Ireland), 118 Blacksnuth's apron, 81 "Blouse," 83 ; cp. 62 Blue coat in army, 79-80 " Blue coat " schools, 71 Blue Girls' School (Chester), 103 "Bodice" or "boddice," 84 "Body" and skirt, separate, 51 Bonnet, Scottish feather, 115 Boots and shoes, 52, 63-7 Boston " stump " or beacon- tower, 189 "Bowler," (round hat) 69-70 Boy's dress, 73 Bracelet, sacred, of the Danes, 99 Bracelets, 98-9 Bread, 15, 18 " Breakfast," meaning of, 3 " Brewsters," 17 Bristol, dress of Red Maids' School at, 101-2 "Broad arrow," the, 179 l^uckhounds. Master of the, 21 Buildings, foreign influences on Knglish, 186-90 liulloi;k's horn, used as drinkin<;- cup, 12 Bull-ring, ISO "-burgh," "-borough," "bury." meaning of emiings, 1 59 INDEX 193 Butcher's apron, 80-81 Buttons of j)age-hoy, 76-8 Buttons, two, at back of coat, r.7-9 Cabins or huts in England, 149 "Cage," the, 180 Caps, 70 Irish, 120 Scottish, 115 Welsh, 109 Carpets, 147 "Casement" windows, 137-8 "Ca-ssock," a horseman's coat, 55 Castle Rising, dress of "sisters" at Howard Hospital, 106 Castles, 162-171 "Ceiling," 146-7 Cellars in streets, 176-7 Central fireplace, survival of ''Orkney and Shetland), 184-5 Charcoal burner's hut, 150 "Chase" and "hunt," 19 Cheese, 15-16 Chest, family, 141 village, 141 note Chester, Blue Girls' School, 103 Grey Girls' School, 103 " Chesterfield " (overcoat), 54 Children's dress, 73, 85, 101-4 Chimneys, 128-34 '• Chocolate," 49 Christ's Hospital, dress of boys at, 71 "Church" and "hall," 162-4 Churches, altar at west end in early. 163 Church towers, 165-70 Chvngton, black ox - team of, 23-5 Clay pots, 38 Clerical dress, origin of, 81 note Cloaks, English red, 106-7 Irish, 117-20 Scottish, 110 seq. Welsh, 109 " Clock " of a stocking, 90 Clocks, church, 167 Cloth at meals, 14 Coal-fires, 131-2 Coats, 53-62 Cob- irons, 132 Cockades, 74, 75 Cockpit, the, 180 Coffee, 46 Convent-made villages, 165 Convict's dress, 179 " Corbie "' or " crow-step " gable, 189-90 "Corset," 84 Cottages, different shape in various counties, 159 "Craggans" or clay pots, 38 Cramp-rings, 99 Crinolines. 86-7 "Crow-step " gables, 189-90 " Ci;flF," 92 " Cup - board," modern di-esser derived from the, 143-5 ! Cupboard-beds, 140-41, 185 i Curfew, 134-5 ' ''Currant," meaning of, 45 "Curtain," outer wall of a castle. 171 " Cut-away " coat, 55 " Dairy," meaning of, 14 " Danish " mills, 37 Deal watermen, dress of, 80 "Deer," meaning of, 19 "Dinner," meaning of, 3 in open air, 41-2 " Directoire " dress, 87 "Drawing-" or "withdrawing-," room, 157 Dress, international types of, 120- 22 " Dresser," 142-5 Dressing-gown, 82 Drinking- cups and glasses, 10-13 Duke of York's "Red -coat" school, 72 "Dun" or "downi," meaning of 160 Dutch influence on English build- ings, 187-90 J 194 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES Earriugs, 98 Earthen houses aud castles (Scot- land), 184 " Empire " dress, 87 Eton, details of dress at, 73 Evening-dress coat, 56 Falconer, Hereditary Grand, 21 Fans, 96-7 Farm buildings, on plan of the "hall," 158-9 Farming terms, Saxon, 22-3 " Feathers " on drinking-glasses, 11, 12-13 Felt hat or "bowler," 69 Fender, kitchen, 133 Figured mouldings on old house fronts, 187-8 "Fire-backs," 129, 134 " Fire-dogs " or andirons, 132 Fire-irons, 133 Fireplaces, 128-34, 169, 184-5 "Flats." 159 Flemish influence on English buildings, 187-9 Food-names, Norman and Saxon, 19, 22 Footmen, dress of, 58-9, 74, 75, 76 Foot-i)loiigh, 27 Forks, 8-9 Forts and castles, 171 Freemason's apron, 81 French influence on English build- ings, 187-8 " Fret" of a grate, 132 "Fro(!k," 82-3 Frock-coat, 55, 82-3 " Furrow-crook," 28 Gables, foreign inflnence on P^ng- lisli, 189 "Galo(;he," or "galosh," mean- ing of, 66 "Garibaldi," 62, 83-4 "Garlic," meaninir of, 37 "Garment," meaning of, 50 "Garret," a watch-tower, 173 Gibbet, 180 "Gig," or "Danish" mill, 43 " Gin," a kind of trap, 21 "Girdle-cakes," 38 Girls' dress, 101-4 Glass, window, 136-8 Gloves, 90-94 "Gooseberry," 45 "Gown," 81-2 "Grates," 132-3 Great-coats, 53 Greek dress, 87 Green, not originally the national Irish colour, 120 Grey-Coat schools, 71-2 Grey Girls' School, Chester, 103 ; London, 103 "Grocer," meaning of, 45 Groom's belt, 74 Groi;nd floor as store-room, 126 ^/ I "Haggis," 39 I Hair, false, forbidden, 96 j " Half-boot," meaning of, 63 "Hall," a tribal building, 152, 180-81 ' the unit from which the "house" was chiefly de- veloped, 151 desertion and degeneration of, 154 and " church," 162-4 "Hallings," 146 "-ham," and " -hamm," mean- ing of endings, 160 " Hamper," meaning of, 13 Hand-muftlers, Saxon anil Nor- man, 91 " Hanging- paper," 145 " Harrow," meaning of, 29 Hats, 67-70, 96. Set aho Cap "Hay-tedder" or "tosser," 33 "Heml of the table," 44 " Hearse," meaning of, 29 Hearth, central, 129 " Hedging" gloves, 92-3 Heels, use of high, 95 "Hobs," 133 Honu'stead, ancient Irisli, 186 Hooded cloak, Irish, 116 INDEX 195 Hoop skirts, 86-7 Horn cups, or