Women of England. Bartlett Burleigh James
men of that day. The weak and the sickly were regarded as superfluous members of society. If the infant were deformed, or not wanted for any reason, it was either killed outright, exposed, or sold into slavery. We like to believe that when the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain and found themselves under more comfortable conditions of living than those to which they had been accustomed in the inhospitable clime whence they came, with its constant threat of famine, they discarded this dreadful practice; but customs die slowly, and, as the parent had absolute rights in the person of his child, sentiment against the practice required time to become general. The rugged Teuton, teeming with an overflowing vitality, had not adopted the modern method of birth restriction as a solution of the problem of sustenance. There was no Malthus in the forests of Germany to discourse on the economic effect of an overplus of population and to awaken inquiry as to the best way to limit the human family within the bounds of possible sustenance. It was a condition and not a theory that faced the Teuton, and he met the situation in the only way known to him. As the problem passed away, the practice went also, though isolated cases of exposure of infants continued down to the tenth century.
In the form of exposing children of clouded birth, the practice of infanticide grew with the lowering of morals; but in the case of legitimate offspring the custom declined. The Church imposed heavy penalties on those found guilty of the practice. Fortunately for the infants so treated, there was a prevailing superstition that to adopt one of these foundlings brought good luck. The great prevalence of the crime at some periods is shown by the rewards offered by the different monarchs to those who would adopt foundlings. All rights in the child passed to the one who adopted it. The general willingness to adopt such children led to many abuses. Mothers thus relieved themselves of the duty of caring for their offspring, while those to whom the children were committed often looked upon them as so many units of labor, and made life very hard for them. Homicide was frequently one of the effects of the baleful practice, and generally occurred under conditions that made it difficult to fix the guilt.
It is interesting to note, as Gummere points out, that the barbaric custom of exposing infants "lies at the foundation of the most exquisite myths—Lohengrin the swan-knight, Arthur the forest foundling, and that mystic child who in the prelude of our national epic, Beowulf, drifts in his boat, a child of destiny, to the shores of a kingless land."
Grimm quotes from a Danish ballad, where a mother puts her babe in a chest, lays with it consecrated salt and candles, and goes to the waterside:
"Thither she goes along the strand
And pushes the chest so far from land,
Casts the chest so far from shore:
'To Christ the Mighty I give thee o'er;
To the mighty Christ I surrender thee,
For thou hast no longer a mother in me.'"
The custom of exposing illegitimate offspring shows a retrogression from the standards of rugged chastity which were characteristic of the earlier period of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain. In those times, as we have seen, the German women were models of virtue; the slightest departure from morality was viewed with horror and visited with severe punishment. If the one guilty of misconduct were married, she was shorn of her hair, the greatest degradation to which she could be subjected, and then driven naked from her husband's house, her own relatives giving their countenance and aid to the husband in thus banishing her. She was expelled from the village, and not allowed to return. At a later date, such a woman, married or unmarried, was made to strangle herself with her own hands; her refusal to do so availed nothing, as the women of the neighborhood stripped off her garments to the waist, and then with knives, whips, and stones hunted her from village to village until death mercifully relieved her from further torture.
In spite of such harsh penalties, the moral standard could not be maintained at a high level. It is more than likely that its decline was due in part to the women whom the Northmen brought with them. When they touched the shores of Britain, it was often after piratical voyages that had taken them to the coasts of France, Spain, Italy, and even Africa. When this was the case, they were always accompanied by large numbers of female slaves from these countries. Then, too, the greater part of the British women were reduced to slavery by the new masters of the country, and none of these were treated with the consideration for their sex that was accorded the German women. The repute of the women of the Anglo-Saxons remained unimpaired, excepting as to particular classes and particular times; the women not of Anglo-Saxon origin were, perforce, the chief offenders against morality.
The era of the Danish invasion was a time of almost unbridled license. Female character could not withstand the tide of immorality that came in with the new wave of heathen invaders. The women whom the Vikings brought with them were captives of the lowest grade, ravished from their homes for the pleasure of their captors on their long sea voyage. On their arrival they were made slaves of the camp, following the army wearily in its marches from place to place. This miserable degradation was forced upon many pure English women by the brutal lords of the sea. When the invaders settled down to live at peace with the English, and, by amalgamation, to be absorbed into the larger race, it was centuries before the country recovered from the blight of immorality that had fallen upon it; but, with its rare powers of recuperation, Anglo-Saxon virtue reasserted its principles and caused its conquerors to subscribe to them.
Before considering the dress, the amusements, and the employments of the women, a description of the Anglo-Saxon house will serve to illustrate much of the common life of the women. This was not evolved from that of the Briton; it marks a departure in the architecture of the country. Neither the rude houses of the poorer of the Britons nor the villa of the Roman provincial appealed to the forest nomads, who were accustomed to light, tentlike structures that could be readily taken down and erected elsewhere as their changing habitat directed.
The Anglo-Saxon town of the earliest period was only a cluster of wooden houses—a family centre constantly added to by the increase and dividing of the household, until the settlement assumed something of the proportions of a town. Stone was not in favor with the Teutons for their dwellings. They saw in it the relic of the demigods of a remote past; stone masonry seemed supernatural, and they called it "the giants' ancient work." The house of the Teutons was probably a development of the ancient burrow; as Heyn expresses the process of its evolution: "Little by little rose the roof of turf, and the cavern under the house served at last only for winter and the abode of the women." The summer house of wattles, twigs and branches, bound together by cords, and with a thatched roof, a rough door, and no windows, seemed to serve these unsettled people, whose surroundings abounded with the materials for substantial edifices.
The architecture of the Germans developed rapidly. Soon there was a substantial hall, or main house, which was the place of gathering and feasting and the sleeping place of the men. The women slept, and we may say dwelt, in the bower. Necessary outbuildings were supplied in abundance. The floor of the hall was of hard earth or of clay, perhaps particolored, and forming patterns of rude mosaic. It was no uncommon thing for the rough warrior to ride into the hall, and to stable there his beloved steed, as will be seen from the following extract from an English ballad of a later date, which is given us by Professor Child:
"Kyng Estmere he stabled his steede
Soe fayre att the hall-bord;
The froth that came from his brydle bitte
Light in Kyng Bremor's beard."
Rows of benches were commonly placed outside of the hall; the exterior walls and the roof were painted in striking colors. Huge antlers fringed the gables; the windows, lacking glass, were placed high up in the wall, and a hole in the roof sufficed for the escape of smoke.
Such was the early English hall, as it appears to us in the ballads and stories of the times. The magnificent lace and embroidered hangings with which were draped the interior walls of the habitations of the nobility served the double purpose of decoration and protection from the cold draughts that came in through the numerous crevices. Even the royal palace of Alfred was so draughty that the candles in the rooms had to be protected by lanterns. Benches and seats with fine coverings added comfort and elegance to the hall. In front of these were placed