At that day there was the same tendency that is familiar to-day,--to cast alleged feminine inconsistencies into the form of adages. One of these proverbs is found in the instructions of a baron who was counselling his son on his going out from the paternal roof: "If you should know anything that you would wish to conceal," says this generalizer from a personal experience, "tell it by no means to your wife, if you have one; for if you let her know it, you will repent of it the first time you displease her." The amusements that were popular in the Anglo-Saxon days continued during the Norman period, but hunting and hawking, by reason of the stringent game laws, were sports practically limited to the upper class. The lady kept her falcons and knew well how to set them on the quarry, and with the men she could ride in the hunt to the baying of the hounds. It is interesting to note that with women the usual method of riding was on a side-saddle; seldom are they found seated otherwise in the representations of riding scenes. Among all classes dancing seems to have been in favor. The exercise was more graceful and intricate than the dance of the Saxons. Among the young people of the lower classes it was the chief amusement, and was attended by much mirth and boisterousness. Games of chance were popular among both sexes, and chess was a favorite pastime. The art of the Anglo-Saxon gleemen and maidens under the Normans was represented by two classes of public entertainers, the minstrels and the jongleurs. The minstrels confined themselves for the most part to music and poetry; while the jongleurs were the jugglers, tricksters, and exhibitors of trained animals. But the distinction was not sharply drawn, although in general the minstrels were considered to afford a higher form of entertainment than did the jongleurs. Both sexes were represented in these bands of itinerant amusement purveyors. Companies of them were more or less permanently attached to the retinues of the great barons, for the whiling away of the long evenings and the entertainment of the guests. The sentiments of the songs and stories of these people were full of suggestiveness and coarseness. The merry and licentious lives of the disreputable traffickers in amusement brought them under moral reprobation, even in that rude age. They drew into their ranks many persons of depraved life, who, when the times improved, contributed, by their abandon, to create sentiment against all profligate strollers. Yet these minstrels represented the beginnings of music and of vernacular literature after the conquest of England.