The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Little Lady, by Emily Sarah Holt

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Title: Our Little Lady
Six Hundred Years Ago

Author: Emily Sarah Holt

Illustrator: M. Irwin

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23121]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LITTLE LADY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Our Little Lady--Six Hundred Years Ago, by Emily Sarah Holt.

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This is one of the approximately thirty books by Emily Holt about life
in the Middle Ages. The language of the book is basically English as
we would understand it, strongly flavoured with words and phrases from
the Middle Ages. The other thing that comes across strongly is how
different the attitudes to life were in those days.

Avice, one of the elder women in the book, tells the story of how she
had become a nursery-maid in the Royal Palace, first at Windsor, and
then later at Westminster. One of the princesses she had to look after
was a most beautiful child, but had been born deaf and dumb. She had
various gestures with which she communicated, but the sadness was, that
they never could teach her to pray. Yet they were sure she spoke to
Christ in her own way. The poor child died young. This all took place
at the end of the thirteenth century, hence the six hundred years of the
title.

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OUR LITTLE LADY, SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.

CHAPTER ONE.

SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO--WHAT THINGS WERE LIKE.

The afternoon service was over in Lincoln Cathedral, and the
congregation were slowly filing out of the great west door. But that
afternoon service was six hundred years ago, and both the Cathedral and
the congregation would look very strange to us if we saw them now.
Those days were well called the Dark Ages, and how dark they were we can
scarcely realise in the present day. Let us fancy ourselves coming out
of that west door, and try to picture what we should have seen there,
six hundred years ago.

The Cathedral itself is hardly to be known. I