Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/346

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

326 Hijiory of Domejlic Manners The traveller alio often carried materials for laying a bed, if benighted on the roadj and he had, above all, to take fufficient money with him in fpecie. He fometimes alfo carried a portable tent with him, or materials for making one. In the Englifli romance of "Ipomydon" (Weber, ii. 343), the maiden melTenger of the heirefs of Calabria carries her tent with her, and ufually lodges at night under it — As they rode by the ivay, The mayde to the divarfc gan faye, " Undo my tente, and Jette it fa fie. For here a ivhyle I luiUe me ryfie.^ Mete and drynke bothe they had. That ivas fro home iv'ith them lad. It may be remarked that in this tlory the hrll thought of every gallant knight who palfes is to treat the lady with violence. All thefe incum- No. 219. Plundering a Trai>elkr. brances, combined with the badnefs of the roads, rendered travelling flow — of which we might quote abundant examples. At the end of the twelfth century, it took Giraldus Cambrenfis four days to travel from Powilland to Haughmond Abbey, near Shrewlbury. The roads, too, were infefted with robbers and banditti, and travellers were only fafe in their numbers, and in being fufficiently well armed to repel attacks. In the accompanying cut (No. 219), from a manufcript of the fourteenth century