serving man. The
consciousness of a higher civilisation and more refined manners caused
the citizen also to despise the countryman,--his love of eating, his
rough simplicity, and his crafty shrewdness were treated with endless
derision.

And yet the countryman in the fifteenth century still retained much of
his good old habits and somewhat of his old energy. He still continued
to extol his own calling in his songs, and was inclined to view with
ridicule the unstable life of others. In a well-known popular song,
three sisters married--one a nobleman, another a musician, and the
third a peasant. Both brothers-in-law came with their wives to pay a
visit at the peasant's farm. "There the gay musician played, the hungry
nobleman danced, and the peasant sat and laughed." At the end of the
fifteenth century a dancing scene in a Hessian village is described in
a city poem, the same customs as in the time of Neidhart, only wilder
and coarser. The proud labourers come from different villages, armed
with halberds and pikes, to dance under the Linden tree; the parties
are divided by distinctive marks, willow and birch twigs and hop
leaves on the shoulder and on the cap. From one village the whole
four-and-twenty labourers are clothed in red plush, with yellow
waistcoat and breeches. A gaily-attired maiden, a favourite dancer,
will only dance with one party, sharp words follow, and weapons are
drawn, the citizen, being a clerk, is persecuted with such forcible,
pungent words, that he is obliged to withdraw himself by ignominious
flight from the wild company.[13]

The life of the countryman within the village gates was still rich in
festivals and poetical usages, his privileges--so far as they were not
interfered with by deeds of violence--were valuable, and interwoven
with his life; and all his occupations were established by customs and
etiquette, by ceremonies and dramatic co-operation with his village
association.

But the oppression under which he lived became insupportable. After the
end of the fifteenth century he began to make a powerful resistance to
his masters.

It is probable that the great agitation in the European money-market
contributed to the excitement of the countryman. The sinking of the
value of metal since the discovery of America, was considered by
producers at first as a lasting rise in the price of corn. To the
peasant every sheffel of corn, and his labour also, became of higher
value; and, in the same