the fullness of
his joy kissed his decorated foal upon the neck, a lurking monk who
happened to see it, cited him before the ecclesiastical court, and
inflicted a heavy fine upon him, because it was unseemly. On this
account Karsthans clenched his fists at the priests.[5] In the eleventh
century, the countryman still sang by his hearth the stirring heroic
songs, the subject-matter of which is in part older than the great
exodus,--those of Siegfried and the Virgin of Battle Brunhild, of the
treachery of the Burgundian King, Gunthar; of the struggle of the
strong Walthar with Hagen, and of the downfall of the Nibelungen.
Though his language was clumsy in writing, it flowed from his lips
solemn and sonorous, with full terminations and rich in alternations of
the vowels. Still had the solemnly spoken word in prayer, in forms of
law, and in invocations, a mysterious power of magic effect: not only
is the meaning of the speech, but also its sound full of significance.
A wise saw was the source of great good fortune to him who possessed
it; it could be bought and sold, and the buyer could return it again if
it was useless to him.

About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a change in the
life and position of the peasant. The disquiets and passions of the
Crusades reached him also by degrees. To the serf, who lived in an
insecure possession of his hut, from which the landed proprietor could
eject him and his children, it was very attractive to obtain, by a sign
affixed to his shoulder by the hand of a priest, freedom for himself,
exemption from rent and other burdens, and the protection of the Church
for his family left at home. From this the Lord of the Manor was
himself in danger of losing his husbandmen, and becoming a beggar by
the departure of his serfs; in order therefore to avert this danger
bondmen had often the inheritance of their possessions given to them,
and greater personal freedom, thus the position of serfs became more
favourable. Besides this, the distinction between the old freemen and
bondmen, both in the agricultural districts and the cities, was
obliterated by the new societies of citizens and officials. In the
cities bond and free-men were under the same law; in the palaces of
princes, freemen claimed the same privileges which were originally for
the advantage of the vassal retinue of territorial lords, and both bond
and free-men bore, as serving men, the knightly shield.

We can obtain an ins