Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XLVI - Ribe
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chap. XLVI. MIDDLE-AGE RAGGED SCHOOLS.
231
husband, among which is enumerated “a pair of
gold-laced inexpressibles,” with silk embroideries. But
“ Ribe Ret ” extended even to the “ barsel,” a ceremony
at which burgomasters had no right to interfere. A lady
might invite thirty of her female friends to assist—
maids or matrons—no more; once there, they were not
allowed to potter in and out, disturbing the sick woman,
but were compelled to stay until all was over.
The numerous pious foundations appear to have been
excellent; and if good Lord Shaftesbury imagines that,
although he has established ragged schools in England
by his philanthropy and energy, he invented them, he
is mistaken; for here in the middle ages a. similar
institution existed for “ fattige poge,” or poor homeless
vagabonds, to be picked up in the street anywhere;
then came the Reformation, and the poor poges got
swept away in the general haul of ecclesiastical
revenues. No wonder. When prelates and mitred
abbots, when abbesses and nuns, rent the heavens with
cries of sacrilege, who would listen to the wailings of
the “ fattige poge ” ? Still, there was much justice in
King Frederic’s mind, and many an aged woman now
finds shelter and repose at Ribe, in the cloister attached
to some suppressed convent. We to-day visited one
of these establishments, and found the old people in
the ancient monastic garden, seated in the summer’s
sun, and others, rheumatic perhaps, fearful of wind,
under the splendid lime-tree in the cloister yard. The
Danes may have fallen from their political grandeur,
if you will, but they have fallen on a feather-bed.
We extend our walk to the site of Ribehuus, now a
huge mound, surrounded by a sedgy moat, a mound of
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
