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.

In the matter of dress there was a marked departure from the
Anglo-Saxon costume, which varied little. Just as long as England
was not in touch with continental ideas and customs, the women of
the country wore the costumes of their ancestors. That dress is
cosmopolitan never entered into their conceptions, any more than it
does into those of any of the Eastern nations who in modern tim