|
A tale of women in tournaments
In those days a rumor arose and great excitement amongst the people because, when tournaments were held, at almost every place a troop of ladies would appear, as thought they were a company of players, dressed in men's clothes of striking richness and variety, to the number of forty or sometimes fifty such damsels, all very eye-catching and beautiful, though hardly of the kingdom's better sort. They were dressed in parti-colored tunics, of one color on one side and a different one on the other, with short hoods, and liripipes cound about their heads like strings, with belts of gold and silver clasped about them, and even with the kind of knives commonly called daggers slung low across their bellies, in pouches. And thus they paraded themselves at tournaments on fine chargers and other well-arrayed horses, and consumed and spent their substance, and wantonly and with disgraceful lubricity displayed their bodies, as rumor ran.
And thus, neither fearing God nor abashed by the voice of popular outrage, they slipped the traces of matrimonial restraint. Nor did those whom they accompanied consider what grace and outstanding blessings God, the fount of all good things, had bestowed upon English Knighthood in all its successful encounters with its enemies, and what exceptional triumphs of victory He had allowed them everywhere. But God in this as in all things mad a marvelous remedy to dispel their wantonness, for at the times and places appointed for those vanitites He visited cloudbursts, and thunder and flashing lightening, and tempests of astonishing violence against them.
Генри Найтон
Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396
Chronicles of Henry Knighton, c. 1347-8
Translated by G.H. Martin
Source: An Account of Women at Tournaments
|
