Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/243

POPULAR LIFE AS REFLECTED BY ART 231 ' The peasants wear silken dresses, and golden chains hang about round them.' Mit aller farb, wild uber wild, Und auf dem Arniel eines narren bild, Das Stadtvolk jetzt vom batiern lehrt, Wie es in bosbeit werd' gemehrt. Coarse ticking no longer contented them : they must have clothes from London or Malines cut in modern fashion. ' Of all colours, of all furs, they wear them in their armlets, pictures of fools. The city folk can now learn wickedness and foolishness from the peasants.' Follies of this sort account for the constant carica- turing of the peasants. It was the fashion to make fun of their absurdities, so that there was a good sale for such representations. Thus, for instance, on the last page of marginal illuminations which Durer designed for Maximilian's prayer-book he chose a peasant's dance. A man and woman are hastening to join the dance, the woman with her hair floating down her back and wearing a long town-made dress, and the man with wide-open mouth and hands awkwardly thrown up in the air. Another couple are dancing a minuet : the man steadies himself by carrying a glass of water on his head. A still more comical scene is drawn in pen and ink by Schongauer, in which foppish villagers and their sweethearts are represented at a dance trying to ape the manners of the city, but betraying their boorish- ness by their grotesque movements. These rustic attempts at city ways recall Don Quixote's attempts at chivalry. They have tried in vain to hide their country origin by borrowing all the outward