January 2018

A gem of a book. I can soak for hours in descriptions of historical daily life such as these. Some notes and quotes from Chapter 3:

• The cathedral, as the seat of a bishop, had the right to ring bells before the count's chapel and Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains
• The housewife's first chore in the day is shopping for food. In the streets surrounding St-Jean, signs furnish a colorful punctuation: a grape bush for the vintner; gilded pills for the apothecary; a red-striped hand and forearm for the barber-surgeon; a horse for the harness-maker; a unicorn for the goldsmith
• In the butchers' quarter, slaughtering is performed on the spot [...] blood dries in the sun amid piles of offal, swarms of flies.

He Yu, byname Yanju, a native of Shanyin in Guiji, once fell ill and unconscious. Only a place beneath his heart remained warm. After three days he revived. He said that a functionary had to taken him up into the heavens to appear before a magistrate. The Magistrate's official quarters were very imposing. He ordered Yu to be taken into a secret chamber with several shelves. On the shelves were a seal and a sword. Yu was directed to take whichever of the items he liked. He was short and could not reach the top shelf, so he took the short sword [from a lower shelf] and went out. He was asked, "Which did you choose?" Yu said, "I chose the sword." The functionary replied, "What a pity you didn't choose the seal. With it you may have commanded the hundred spirits. With the sword you command only local earth gods."

After he had recovered from his illness, whenever Yu traveled about, he saw earth gods along the roadside bowing to him as if to a superior.

Originally from 录异传. pg 22