pine of Charlemagne's time, showing that here at least the poet is
making use of tradition.

[Illustration: _Photo. Brueckmann._

FLEMISH MASTER.

Fifteenth Century. Stephenson Clarke Collection.

_To face page 181._]

But to make our way into a mediaeval garden, and see all that grows
therein, we must needs get within the precincts of the castle, for
inside its fortified enclosure the castle, like a small village, was
self-contained. And this was no easy matter, if we may judge from
the vivid description to be found in _Huon de Bordeaux_, a poem
concerning a Bordelais lord of the ninth century. After sundry
adventures, Huon sets out on a journey to Babylon, and seeks an
audience with the Emir. He tells of his arrival at what he describes
as the castle, and how, after long parley with the porter, the
drawbridge is let down and the great gate opened, and he finds himself
in an arched way, with a series of portcullises showing their teeth
overhead. After further parley, and further opening of gates, he
enters a large courtyard, and goes thence into the garden, which is
planted with every kind of tree, aromatic herb, and sweet-scented
flower. In the garden is a fountain with its little channelled way,
supplied with water from the Earthly Paradise. This description may
seem a little fantastic, but it is only the poet's way of telling us
what we might ourselves experience if we would go in imagination to
some thirteenth- or fourteenth-century castle, and seek to gain
admittance.

Sometimes the garden was within the castle fortifications. It was then
necessarily circumscribed, and would, more or less, be laid out with
formal pathways and stone-curbed borders, also with trees cut in
various devices (a reminder of Rome's once far-reaching influence),
and a tunnel or pergola of vines or sweet-scented creepers running the
length of the wall to form a covered walk for shelter against sunshine
or shower. But where the garden was without the fortifications, but
yet within the castle enclosure, as was always the arrangement if
possible, opportunity was afforded for wooded dell and flowery slope,
as well as for the orchard with its special patch for herb-growing.

The herb-plot was one of the most important items in a mediaeval
garden; for here were grown not only herbs and roots for healing, but
also sweet-scented mint and thyme for mingling with the rushes strewn
on the floors. Sometimes the rushes themselves were fragrant