imitate the luxuries of the patricians: we hear of gold bracelets, silk
garments, gold girdles studded with diamonds; of shoes with silver
buckles, garters embroidered with gold brocade. A chronicler relates the
immense amount of wealth squandered at the wedding of a rich baker, Veit
Gundlinger, in 1493. There were then consumed twenty oxen, thirty stags,
forty-six calves, ninety-five swine, twenty-five peacocks (turkeys?),
etc., etc.

Patricians were, however, more elegant: bridegroom and bride adorned
with rings and bracelets of gold, walked to the Cathedral surrounded by
bridesmaids, while fiddles, lutes, pipes, trumpets made music. At the
dancing hall, however spacious, not more than five couples could dance
at the same time on account of the ladies' long trains which, according
to a preacher of the time, "served the devil as a dancing place." With
torches the newly wed couple were at last led home to the bridal
chamber, where the maidens undressed the bride, the cavaliers took off
her shoes, and "when one cover covered the couple" as the technical term
ran the companions discreetly retired.

But the unfree peasants, alas! continued to live in debasement; as also
their wives and daughters. There is even documentary evidence from A. D.
1333 that women could be sold into slavery and at a very low price,
moreover, "with all their descendants." The free and rich peasants, on
the other hand, sometimes lived in an unbecoming state of luxury. We
glean the most interesting types of peasant life from the poets who
arose among the Bavarian-Austrian race. Neidhart von Reuenthal, who
lived till about 1240 at the Bavarian and Austrian courts, though a
noble himself, is a rugged, old German type who neutralizes the
sentimental minnesong. He contrasts strikingly the bizarre life of the
lower people with the unnaturalness of the "chivalric courtoisie." All
is depicted in strong relief, though it appears to our taste extremely
coarse. Yet if any poet ever understood the life and actions of the
lower classes, it was Von Reuenthal. He describes South German peasant
life as it is, their dances and carousals; he compares satirically the
breaking of lances at tournaments, as practised by knights, with the
peasants' festivals that are turned into bouts of gluttony and free
fights. His types of rustic women, however, are "courteously" dressed,
with wreaths in their prettily arranged hair, fashionable hand mirrors
in their girdles; they