When no gaiety was going on, the ladies of the household were employed in occupations of a more useful description, among which the principal were spinning, weaving, knitting, embroidering, and sewing. Almost everything of this kind was done at home at the period of which we are now speaking, and equally in the feudal castle or manor, and in the house of the substantial burgher, the female part of the family spent a great part of their time in different kinds of work in the chambers of the lady of the household. Such work is alluded to in mediæval writers, from time to time, and we find it represented in illuminated manuscripts, but not so frequently as some of the other domestic scenes. In the romance of the “Death of Garin le Loherain,” when count Fromont visited the chamber of fair Beatrice, he found her occupied in sewing a very beautiful _chainsil_, or petticoat:-- _Vint en la chambre à la bele Beatriz;_ _Ele cosoit un molt riche chainsil._ --Mort de Garin, p. 10. In the romance of “La Violette,” the daughter of the burgher, in whose house the count Girard is lodged, is described as being “one day seated in her father’s chambers working a stole and amice in silk and gold, very skilfully, and she made in it, with care, many a little cross and many a star, singing all the while a _chanson-à-toile_,” meaning, it is supposed, a song of a grave measure, composed for the purpose of being sung by ladies when weaving:-- _I. jor sist es chambres son pere,_ _Une estole et i. amit pere_ _De soie et d’or molt soutilment,_ _Si i fait ententevement_ _Mainte croisete et mainte estoile,_ _Et dist ceste chanchon à toile._ --Roman de la Violette, p. 113. In one of Rutebeuf’s fabliaux, a woman makes excuse for being up late at night that she was anxious to finish a piece of linen cloth she was weaving:-- _Sire, fet-elle, il me faut traimer_ _A une toile que je fais._