CHAPTER X
"MERRIE ENGLAND"
THE picture which has slowly been building itself up in
these pages has shown the medieval peasant in his home
and in his fields, at church and at the Manor Court, and
has occupied itself with many of his activities. But what, it may
be asked, of his leisure? Where is the "Merrie England" which
for long has been associated with this age? The questions demand
an answer, both because so much absurdity has been written
about a past which never existed in reality, and also because it
would be a patently untrue picture of any society which omitted
all account of its lighter moments.
Yet, as a preliminary, let us take one more rapid survey of the
peasant's daily life, superficial and imperfect though it must in-
evitably be. We cannot too constantly remember that much that
to us is picturesque or even amusing, bore a different aspect to
the men of the thirteenth century, and we must ever be on our
guard lest we impute our feelings and ideas to those remote
times. When Dr Dryasdust of York, as Sir Walter Scott
remarks,
is placed in his own snug parlour, and surrounded by all the comforts
of an Englishman's fireside, he is not half so much inclined to believe
that his own ancestors led a very different life from himself—that the
shattered tower, which now forms a vista from his window, held a
baron who would have hung him up at his own door without any
form of trial—that the hinds, by whom his little pet farm is managed,
would, a few centuries ago, have been his slaves.
We shall be making a rough guess at the medieval peasant's
condition if we observe the present circumstances of the small
peasant-proprietor in France, Germany or Austria. Tens of
thousands of French "small-holders" are facing the daily
struggle now that their forbears endured many generations ago.
They are freed of week-works and boon-works, they no longer
are subject to certain "customs of the country" which exact
tallage or chevage, or the like, nor are they forced to grind here