_Cante, biau frere, pour nos cors esjoir._--Huon de Bordeaux, p. 18.
But Gerard declines, because a disagreeable dream of the preceding night has made his heart sorrowful. When we turn from romance to sober history, we learn from Giraldus Cambrensis how Gilbert de Clare, journeying from England to his great possessions in Cardiganshire, was preceded by a minstrel and a singing-man, who played and sang alternately, and how the noise they made gave notice of his approach to the Welshmen who lay in ambush to kill him.
[Illustration: _No. 77. Norman Travellers._]
A group of Norman travellers is here given from the Cottonian MS. Nero, C. iv. It is intended to represent Joseph and the Virgin Mary travelling into Egypt. The Virgin on the ass, or mule, is another example of the continued practice among ladies of riding sideways. Mules appear to have been the animals on which ladies usually rode at this period. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 60), when Huon, immediately after his marriage, proceeds on his journey homeward, he mounts his young duchess on a mule; so also, in the romance of Gaufrey (p. 62), the princess Flordespine is mounted on “a rich mule,” the trappings of which are rather minutely described. “The saddle was of ivory, inset with gold; on the bridle there was a gem of such power that it gave light in the darkness of night, and whoever bore it was preserved from all disease; the saddle-cloth (_sambue_) was wonderfully made; she had thirty little bells behind the _cuirie_, which, when the mule ambled, made so great a melody that harp or viol were worth nothing in comparison.” The Anglo-Norman historian, Ordericus Vitalis, has preserved a legend of a vision of purgatory, in which the priest who is supposed to have seen it describes, among other suffering persons, “a crowd of women who seemed to him to be innumerable. They were mounted on horseback, riding in female fashion, with women’s saddles.... In this company the priest recognised several noble ladies, and beheld the palfreys and mules, with the women’s litters, of others who were still alive.” The Trinity College Psalter furnishes us with the two figures of cars given in our cut No. 78; but they are so fanciful in shape, that we can hardly help concluding they must have been mere rude and grotesque attempts at imitating classical forms.