Norman ladies seem to have preferred the mule to the horse, and to have indulged in the most elaborate and gorgeous trap pings. But a saddle of ivory inlaid with gold, could hardly have been a comfortable seat, however splendid the saddle cloth with which it is covered, and some people would prefer the absence of " thirty little bells behind the cuirie, which, when the mule ambled, made so great a melody that harp or viol were nothing in comparison." In short, Norman ladies who took eques trian exercise must have been proverbially uncomfortable, for an historian of the period, Oi'dericua Vitalis, relates a vision of purga tory, in whioh, among other suff-rers, '• a orowd of women . . , mounted on horseback, riding in female fashion with women's saddles . . . " were seen by a priest. In rn.edia.val times Englishwomen seem te have been universally fond of sport. They went hawking, shot rabbits with bows and arrows, and hunted the stag on horse*< back. When hunting and hawking there appears to be no doubt that women rode ia man's fashion, as being safer, while the side saddle was considered "good form " for State occasions. Chaucer speaks of his " Wife of Bath " having "on her feete a pair of epurris sharpe. " Early io the four teenth century ladies not only hunted with their husbands and brothers, but indulged in sport entirely by themselves. A ourious il luminated manusoript in the Eoyal Library depiots a lady on horseback, riding straddle-, wise and blowing a horn, while a female companion on foot is shooting at a stag with a bow and arrow. Women were not only experts at falconry — which was practised on horseback — but they even excelled the men in their knowledge and skill of the great sport of the time. A contemporary writer argues from this that the practice of hawking was frivolous and effeminate. — From the Woman's World for March.
