Our Little Lady Six Hundred Years Ago   By: Emily Sarah Holt (1836-1893)

This is one of the approximately thirty books by Emily Holt about life in the Middle Ages. The language of the book is basically English as we would understand it, strongly flavoured with words and phrases from the Middle Ages. The other thing that comes across strongly is how different the attitudes to life were in those days.

Avice, one of the elder women in the book, tells the story of how she had become a nursery maid in the Royal Palace, first at Windsor, and then later at Westminster. One of the princesses she had to look after was a most beautiful child, but had been born deaf and dumb. She had various gestures with which she communicated, but the sadness was, that they never could teach her to pray. Yet they were sure she spoke to Christ in her own way. The poor child died young. This all took place at the end of the thirteenth century, hence the six hundred years of the title.

OUR LITTLE LADY, SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.

CHAPTER ONE.

SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO WHAT THINGS WERE LIKE.

The afternoon service was over in Lincoln Cathedral, and the congregation were slowly filing out of the great west door. But that afternoon service was six hundred years ago, and both the Cathedral and the congregation would look very strange to us if we saw them now. Those days were well called the Dark Ages, and how dark they were we can scarcely realise in the present day. Let us fancy ourselves coming out of that west door, and try to picture what we should have seen there, six hundred years ago.

The Cathedral itself is hardly to be known. It is crowded with painted images and embroidered banners, and filled with the smoke and scent of burning incense. The clergy are habited, not in white surplices or in black gowns, but in large stiff cloaks copes they are called of scarlet silk, heavy with gold embroidery. The Bishop, who is in the pulpit, wears a cope of white, thick with masses of gold, and on his head is a white and gold mitre. How unlike that upper chamber, where the disciples gathered together after the crucifixion of their Master! Is it better or worse, do you ask? Well, I think if the Master were to come in, it would be easier to see Him in the quiet upper chamber, where there was nothing else to see, than in the perfumed and decorated Cathedral where there was so much else!

But now let us look at the congregation as they pass out. Are they all women? for all alike seem to wear long skirts and thick hoods: there are neither trousers, nor hats, nor bonnets. No, there is a fair sprinkling of men; but men and women dressed more alike then than they do now. You will see, if you look, that some of these long skirts are open in front, and you may catch a glimpse of a beard here and there under the hood. This is a poor woman who comes now: she wears a serge dress which has cost her about three halfpence a yard, and a threadbare hood for which she may have given sixpence.

Are things so cheap, then? No, just the other way about; money is so dear. The wages of a mason or a bricklayer are about sixpence a week; haymakers have the same; reapers get from a shilling to half a crown, and mowers one and ninepence. The gentlemen who wait on the King himself only receive a shilling a day.