Other quieter games were pursued in the chambers. Among these the most dignified was chess, after which came tables, draughts, and, in the fourteenth century, cards. Sometimes, as described in the preceding chapter, they played at sedentary games, such as chess and tables; or at diversions of a still more frolicsome character. These latter seem to have been most in vogue in the evening after supper. The author of the “Ménagier de Paris,” written about the year 1393 (tom. i. p. 71), describes the ladies as playing, in an evening, at games named _bric_, and _qui fery?_ (who struck?), and _pince merille_, and _tiers_, and others. The first of these games is mentioned about a century and a half earlier by the _trouvère_ Rutebeuf, and by other mediæval writers; but all we seem to know of it is, that the players were seated, apparently on the ground, and that one of them was furnished with a rod or stick. We know less still of _pince merille_. _Qui fery?_ is evidently the game which was, at a later period, called hot-cockles; and _tiers_ is understood to be the game now called blindman’s buff. These, and other games, are not unfrequently represented in the fanciful drawings in the margins of mediæval illuminated manuscripts; but as no names or descriptions are given with these drawings, it is often very difficult to identify them. Our cut (No. 160), which is given by Strutt, from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is one of several subjects representing the game of blindman’s buff, or, as it was formerly called in England, _hoodman-blind_, because the person blinded had his eyes covered with a hood. It is here played by females, but, in other illuminations, or drawings, the players are boys or men--the latter plainly indicated by their beards. The word hoodman-blind is not found at an earlier period than the Elizabethan age, yet this name, from its allusion to the costume, was evidently older. A personage in Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 4) asks-- _What devil was’t_ _That thus hath cozen’d you at_ hoodman-blind?