[Illustration: _No. 34. Anglo-Saxon Mother and Child._]
The word _bin_, used in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem just quoted, which means a hutch or a manger, has reference, of course, to the circumstances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to signify a cradle. This last word is itself Anglo-Saxon, and has stood its ground in our language successfully against the influence of the Anglo-Norman, in which it was called a _bers_ or _bersel_, from the latter of which is derived the modern French _berçeau_. Another name for a cradle was _crib_; a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 87) speaks of _cild geong on crybbe_ (a young child in a cradle). Our cut No. 35, also taken from the manuscript of Cædmon, represents an Anglo-Saxon cradle of rather rude construction. The illuminators of a later period often represent the cradle of elegant form and richly ornamented. The Anglo-Saxon child appears here also to be swaddled, but it is still drawn too inaccurately to be decisive on this point. The latter illuminators were more particular and correct in their delineations, and leave no doubt of the universal practice of swaddling infants. A good example is given in our cut No. 36, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, of which a copy is given in the large work of the late M. du Sommerard.
[Illustration: _No. 35. Anglo-Saxon Child in its Cradle._]
There is a very curious paragraph relating to infants in the Pœnitentiale of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, which furnishes us with a singular picture of early Anglo-Saxon domestic life, for Theodore flourished in the latter half of the seventh century. It may be perhaps right to explain that a Pœnitentiale was a code of ecclesiastical laws directing the proportional degrees of penance for each particular class and degree of crimes and offences against public and private morals, and that these laws penetrate to the innermost recesses of domestic life. The Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore directs that “if a woman place her infant by the hearth, and the man put water in the cauldron, and it boil over, and the child be scalded to death, the woman must do penance for her negligence, but the man is acquitted of blame.”[10] As this accident must have been of very frequent occurrence to require a particular direction in a code of laws, it implies great negligence in the Anglo-Saxon mothers, and seems to show that, commonly, at least at this early period, they had no cradles for their children, but laid them, swaddled as they were, on the ground close by the fire, no doubt to keep them warm, and that they left them in this situation.