r
whom soothing potions or healing salves have to be compounded. This
latter service was generally the work of the lady of the castle, who
as a rule possessed sufficient surgical knowledge to bind a broken
limb. To beguile the weary hours of convalescence, she sings to the
lute, tells stories, recounts legends, or reads aloud a romance lately
bought from some wayfaring packman. Little is it to be wondered at
that the convalescence is protracted, or that the knight delays his
departure from day to day, sometimes to his own and the lady's
undoing.

Beside such varied ministrations, the woman of the Middle Ages rode to
the chase, went out hawking, snared birds with nets, ferreted rabbits,
spun, wove, and embroidered. Embroidering was a really formidable
occupation, for the great hall, and each room, had its special
hangings, and on fete-days every inch of wall-space was covered. One
set would picture an Arthurian legend, and others again were made
bright with flowers, lilies, roses, and columbines. The lady and her
maidens--often girls of noble birth, whom it was customary to send to
some castle to complete their education--worked at the countless yards
such decoration involved, and chatted the while, it may be, of some
coming marriage or tourney, or perchance one among them would tell a
story, and so time passed merrily enough. Then for the educated woman,
of whom there were many, Latin verse offered a wide field of delight,
and the woman of the Middle Ages read and loved her Virgil just as we
of to-day read and love our Shakespeare. When the daylight had faded,
there was always chess-playing, dancing the carole, and singing, and
by the thirteenth century little pastoral ballets, in which a knight,
and a shepherdess and her lover, took part, began to be produced for
the diversion of castle-folk. For daily entertainment, every castle of
any pretension had its own minstrel or minstrels, whilst in the
smaller castles a wandering singer was warmly welcomed. Sometimes the
lady gave audience to a poet, who read his latest idyll, a minstrel,
to the accompaniment of his viol, singing the interspersed lyrics.
Such a scene may be found depicted in miniatures, and suggests how
such a story as "Aucassin and Nicolette," and many another, partly in
prose, partly in verse, was rendered. One such miniature shows a lady
reclining on a couch, with a lordling seated beside her, the poet,
with his small parchment leaflets, declaiming his st