_Mener karole_ _Desouz chapeau de blaverole._--Vocabularies, p. 161.
Garlands of flowers were also the common rewards for success in the popular games.
[Illustration: _No. 195. Ladies making Garlands._]
All these enjoyments naturally rendered the garden a favourite and important part of every man’s domestic establishment; during the warmer months of the year it was a chosen place of resort, especially after dinner. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” Begues is represented as descending from his palace, after dinner, to walk with his fair wife Beatrice in his garden--
_En son palais fu Begues de Belin;_ _Après mangier entra en un jardin,_ _Aveuc lui fu la belle Biatris._ --Roman de Garin, vol. ii. p. 97.
In another part of the same romance, Begues de Belin and his barons, on rising from the table, went to seek recreation in the fields--
_Quant mangié ont et beu à loisir,_ _Les napes ostent, et en prés sunt sailli._ --Ibid., vol. i. p. 203.
The manuscript in the British Museum, from which we took our last illustration, furnishes the accompanying representation of a group of ladies walking in the garden, and gathering flowers (No. 196).
[Illustration: _No. 196. Ladies walking in the Garden._]
In the “Ménagier de Paris,” compiled about the year 1393, its author, addressing his young wife, treats briefly of the behaviour of a woman when she is walking out, and especially when passing along the streets of a town, or going to church. “As you go,” he says, “look straight before you, with your eye-lids low and fixed, looking forward to the ground, at five toises (thirty feet) before you, and not looking at, or turning your eyes, to man or woman who may be to your right or left, nor looking upwards, nor changing your look from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to speak to anybody in the street” (vol. i. p. 15). It must be confessed that this is, in some points, rather hard counsel for a lady to follow; but it is consistent with the general system of formalities of behaviour in the middle ages, upon which the ladies gladly took their revenge when removed from constraint. When two or more persons walked together, it was the custom to hold each other by the hands, not to walk arm-in-arm, which appears to be a very modern practice. In the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the emperor and Ogier, when reconciled, are thus represented, walking in a friendly manner hand in hand. The ladies in our last engraving are walking in this manner; and in our next (No. 197),--taken from a copy, given in M. du Sommerard’s “Album,” from a manuscript in the library of the arsenal at Paris, written and illuminated for a prince of the house of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century,--the lords and ladies of a noble or princely household are represented as walking out in the same manner. It is well known that the court of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century, offered the model of strict etiquette. This illustration gives us also a very good picture of a street scene of the period to which it belongs. The height of gentility, however, at least, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seems to have been to hold the lady by the finger only. It is in this manner that, in the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the hero holds the princess Gloriande--