CHAPTER IX
EVERYDAY LIFE
KTLE enough is left in England to-day that will give us
y impression of the houses of the medieval peasantry.
Such structures as the Kentish farm-houses, with their
long boarded fronts, and the stone houses of the Cotswolds, the
half-timbered houses scattered up and down the countryside are
all too grand and too large to be of much help to us. Here and
there survivals, such as the old clergy house at Alfriston, or the
few remaining old cottages of the Snowdon district, emphasise
what we have lost in losing the medieval village home. But to
see them, as they were for centuries before the time of Chaucer,
and perhaps as late as the sixteenth century, we must go to rural
France, or Switzerland, or Austria. There, in village after village,
the passage of centuries has scarcely changed the house in which
the peasant lives. They are built of various materials, according
to the local characteristics. Where good stone is to be had stone
houses prevail, while in forest districts wood is used almost
entirely, and so on. But they are still in the rudimentary state of
development they had reached centuries ago. Two rooms suffice
for all their needs: one serving for all purposes of living, eating,
cooking, etc., while the other is kept as a bed-room as far as is
possible. Only as far as is possible, for in these rudimentary
conditions no division can be strictly observed, and chickens and
other animals invade the living room, while some members of a
family too numerous to find beds elsewhere must perforce couch
as best they can amidst the tables and stools and other impedi-
menta of the living room. At their best such houses afforded a bare
shelter, but they easily fell into decay, and patchwork repairs still
left them in the condition so graphically described, for example,
in a recent picture of rural France:
C'etait une cabane bossue et lepreuse, a peine plus haute qu'un
homme; on descendait a rinterieur par deux marches de granit; il y
faisait tres sombre, car le jour n'entrait que par une lucarne a deux
petits carreaux; Phiver, il y avait de 1'eau partout, et cela faisait de la
boue qui n'en finissait pas de secher, sous les lits surtout; il y avait
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