In the popular French and Anglo-Norman _fabliaux_, or tales in verse, which belong mostly to the thirteenth century, we meet with many incidents illustrating this distribution of the apartments of the house, which no doubt continued essentially the same during that and the following century. Thus in a fabliau published by M. Jubinal, an old woman of mean condition in life, dame Auberée, is described as visiting a burgher’s wife, who, with characteristic vanity, takes her into the chamber adjoining (_en une chambre ilueques près_), to show her her handsome bed. When the lady afterwards takes refuge with dame Auberée, she also shows her out of the hall into a chamber close adjoining (_en une chambre iluec de joste_). In a fabliau entitled _Du prestre crucifié_, published by Méon, a man returning home at night, sees what is going on in the hall through a _pertuis_, or hole made through the wall for a window, before he opens the door (_par un pertuis les a veuz_). In another fabliau published in the larger collection of Barbazan, a lady in her chamber sees what is passing in the hall _par un pertuis_. In the fabliau of _Le povre clerc_ (or scholar), the clerc, having asked for a night’s lodging at the house of a miller during the miller’s absence, is driven away by the wife, who expects a visit from her lover the priest, and is unwilling to have an intruder. The clerc, as he is going away, meets the miller, who, angry at the inhospitable conduct of his dame, takes him back to the house. The priest in the meantime had arrived, and is sitting in the hall with the good wife, who, hearing a knock at the door, makes her lover hide himself in the stable (_croiche_). From the stable the priest watches the company in the hall through a window (_fenestre_), which is evidently only another name for the _pertuis_. In one fabliau the gallant comes through the court or garden, and is let into the hall by the back door; in another a woman is introduced into the chamber by a back door, or, as it is called in the text, a false door (_par un fax huis_), while the hall is occupied by company.
The arrangements of an ordinary house in the country are illustrated in the fabliau _De Barat et de Haimet_, printed in the collection of Barbazan. Two thieves undertake to rob a third of “a bacon,” which he (Travers) had hung on the beam or rafter of his house, or hall:--