Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/359

AGRICULTURAL LIFE 34T It was not without reason that in 1497 ordinances were passed in Landau and other places forbidding ' the common peasant to wear cloth costing more than half a florin the yard, silk, velvet, pearls, gold, or slashed garments.' 1 Costly clothing bespoke costly living. We read in the ' Book of Fruits, Trees,' &c. : ' If the peasant work hard he has a good table, and eats flesh, fish and fruits, and drinks good wine — sometimes too much. This last I do not praise, but in other things the peasant's table is of the healthiest.' In 1500 the plain-spoken Suabian, Henry Miiller, wrote : ' In my father's time, who was himself a peasant, the peasants' fare was very different from what it is to-day. They had an abundance of meat every day ; on festival and Kermesse (fair) days the table was loaded with all that was good. Wine was drunk like water ; everyone ate and took away as much as he wished, so great was the prosperity that prevailed. It is other- wise now, for the times have long been bad ; everything is dear, and the fare of the most comfortable peasant is far inferior to that which the day-labourer and servant used to have.' Day-labourers and servants were better off at the close of the Middle Ages than the peasants. According 313, 316. The Austrian poet Helbling speaks of the wealth of the pea- sants, saying, ' In Austria the only free men are the peasants ' (p. 421). For a description of the condition of the peasants in the Tyrol and Bohemia at the close of the fifteenth century, see Gcsch. des bbhmischen Aufstandes von 1618, i. 145-150. 1 Neue Sammlung der Reichsabschiede, ii. p. 47-49. Mascher, on page 279 of his Urkunde aus dem fiinfzehnten Jahrhundert, says : ' One seldom saw a labourer who did not wear a hat which cost more than half the rest of his clothing. There is no longer much difference in the dress of the noble, the citizen, and the peasant.' The excesses of the time in eating and drinking are often the subjects of song. Uhland, p. 1646.