the doors of our houses we sat with our spinning-wheels, and we looked out
across the fields that were once ours to labour in--and were contented.
Lord's wife, peasant's, or burgher's, we all still had our work to do!

A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her why
she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall to
dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have
answered: "Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a
hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my
own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the
great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by the
labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, that my
children's children may see recorded the great deeds of their forefathers.
In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my own hands have
prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in the country round?
Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home from war and the chase
of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all the womenfolk gone out a-
hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress their wounds, or prepare
their meat, or guide and rule the household! Better far might my lord and
his followers come and help us with our work, than that we should go to
help them! You are surely bereft of all wit. What becomes of the country
if the women forsake their toil?"

And the burgher's wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her husband's
workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to foreign
countries, would certainly have answered: "I am too busy to speak with
such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it a-burning), the
winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen hose and my husband
needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all a-brewing, and I have
daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and the babies are clinging