A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle AgesWright, Thomas
History
A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages
Wright, Thomas
England -- Social life and customs -- 1066-1485
This, however, appears to have been done as a mark of honour to the
guest, for, even in ducal castles common candles appear to have been
in ordinary use. In a bedroom scene in a fabliau printed by Meon
(tom. i. p. 268), in which the younger ladies of the duke’s family
and their female attendants slept all in beds in one room, they have
but one candle (_chandoile_), and that is attached to the wood of the
bed of the duke’s daughter, so that it would appear to have had no
candlestick. One of the damsels, who was a stranger, and less familiar
than the others, was unwilling to take off her chemise until the light
was extinguished, for it must be remembered that it was the general
custom to sleep in bed quite naked, and the daughter of the duke, whose
bedfellow she was to be, blew the candle out--
_Roseite tantost la soufla,_
_Qu’à s’esponde estoit atachie._
Blowing out the candle was the ordinary manner of extinguishing it.
In the “Ménagier de Paris,” or instructions for the management of a
gentleman’s household, compiled in the latter half of the fourteenth
century, the lady of the house is told, after having each night
ascertained that the house is properly closed and all the fires
covered, to see all the servants to bed, and to take care that each
had a candle in a “flat-bottomed candlestick,” at some distance from
the bed, “and to teach them prudently to extinguish their candles
before they go into their bed with the mouth, or with the hand, and not
with their chemise,” _i. e._, they were to blow their candle out, or
put it out with their fingers, not to extinguish it by throwing their
shifts upon it--another allusion to the practice of sleeping naked.[28]
Extinguishers had not yet come into general use. People went to bed
with a candle placed in a candlestick of a different description from
that used at table; and we learn from a story in the “Ménagier de
Paris” that it was customary for the servant or servants who had charge
of the candles, to accompany them into their bedroom, remain with them
till they were in bed, and then carry the candles away. Candles were,
however, usually left in the chamber or bedroom all night; and there
was frequently a spike, or candlestick, attached to the chimney; as in
the fabliau just quoted there was, no doubt, a similar spike attached
to the wood-work of the bed. The stick, whether fixed or movable, was
made for convenience in placing the candle in the chamber, and not for
the purpose of carrying it about; for the latter purpose, it appears
to have been generally taken off the stick, and carried in the hand.
Our cut No. 177, taken from one of the carved stalls of the chapel
of Winchester school, represents an individual, perhaps the cellarer
or steward, who has gone into the cellar with a candle, which he
carries in this manner, and is there terrified by the appearance of
hobgoblins. In the fabliau of the “Chevalier à la Corbeille,” an old
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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