Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village: Isobel–Pask

I saw the boys, but I didn’t know which—I was walking eyes down, as a modest maid should.

With my own soft hands I have given out bread on Lammas Day, from my own purse I give to the poor, and in times of war those selfsame boys would scurry like rats to hide themselves in my father’s walls.

Yet it is true: I am better clad better shod and better fed than those—churls.

I wanted to scold, but my stepmother sank down in the rushes and wailed like a babe herself.

So I took up my basket and snatched up the twins.

It landed by the water trough, and I had to wade through the mud to get it back.

The twin on my hip seemed quiet enough—till he started to bellow.

I couldn’t staunch him—my hands were full.

By the time I got to him, pried open his jaws, fished it out, and bellowed, “No!” she’d plucked up her skirts to go.

Isobel, the lord’s daughter, will have to be married, and squat in the straw, and scream with the pain and pray for her life same as me.

I come to the stream to fetch water.

I wouldn’t flinch.

One half-hour I forgot, standing there in the water’s shoal, who she was and my duty to God

Most legal transactions were based on an exchange of oaths sworn in the name of Jesus Christ.

Pope Innocent IV went on record saying that the Jews were not guilty of these crimes, but the accusations persisted.

One reason they persisted was that the lord of the manor could accuse the Jewish community of a crime, find the entire community guilty, and impose a heavy fine.

In spite of these hardships, most Jews remained faithful to their religion and resisted the pressure to convert to Christianity.

During the Crusades, the prejudice against Jews grew more severe.

In his Constitution for the Jews (1199), Pope Innocent III forbade these injustices and added: “We decree, blocking the wickedness and avarice of evil men, that no one ought to dare to mutilate or diminish a Jewish cemetery, nor, in order to get money, to exhume bodies once they have been buried.”

I’ve used bird-lime and turpentine, enough to make you sneeze, alder leaves and lavender—we’ve still got fleas.

Town work, the kind where you get money, instead of old cabbage leaves and the dregs of the beer.

She let me stay till the weather thawed.

not a vagabond

They lived in what we would consider desperate poverty, and they were dependent on the whims of the weather and the good will of their lord.

If a villein inherited enough strips of land to support his family, or if he was lucky enough to serve an honest and generous lord, he might live in
relative comfort.

A villein’s fate depended on the land he worked and the temperament of the lord he served.

If a shoemaker’s shoes were not bringing in enough money, he could make better ones—or cheaper ones—or bellow out the virtues of his shoes in a louder voice.

A baker, cooper, or rope maker usually started his career as an apprentice, which meant that the master who taught him had to be paid.