After the entrance of the Normans, we begin to find more frequent allusions to the convivial meetings of the middle and lower orders in ordinary inns or private houses. Thus, we have a story in Reginald of Durham, of a party of the parishioners of Kellow, who went to a drinking party at the priest’s, and passed in this manner a great portion of the night.[22] This occurred in the time of bishop Geoffrey Rufus, between 1133 and 1140. A youth and his monastic teacher are represented on another occasion as going to a tavern, and passing the whole of the night in drinking, till one of them becomes inebriated, and cannot be prevailed on to return home. Another of Reginald’s stories describes a party in a private house, sitting and drinking round the fire. We are obliged thus to collect together slight and often trivial allusions to the manners of a period during which we have so few detailed descriptions. Hospitality was at this time exercised among all classes freely and liberally; the misery of the age made people meet together with more kindliness. The monasteries had their open guest-houses, and the unknown traveller was seldom refused a place at the table of the yeoman. In towns, most of the burgesses or citizens were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers, in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular _hospitia_ or taverns. Travelling, indeed, was more usual under the Normans than it had been under the Saxons, for it was facilitated by the more extensive use of horses. But this also brought serious evils upon the country; for troops of followers and rude retainers who attended on the proud and tyrannical aristocracy, were in the habit of taking up their lodgings at will and discretion, and living upon the unfortunate householders without pay. It had been, even during the Anglo-Saxon period, a matter of pride and ostentation among men of rank--especially the king’s officers--to travel about accompanied with a great multitude of followers,[23] and this practice certainly did not diminish under the Normans. But, whether in great numbers or in small, the travellers of the twelfth century sought the means of amusing themselves during their journey, and these amusements resembled some of those which were employed at the dinner-table--they told stories, or repeated episodes from romances, or sung, and they sometimes had minstrels to accompany them. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Huon, on his journey from his native city to Paris, asks his brother Gerard to sing, to enliven them on the road,-- _Cante, biau frere, pour nos cors esjoir._--Huon de Bordeaux, p. 18.