INTRODUCTION. 19 
granted this boon; though not until Usan had 
fought and conquered fifty-two of the offending 
giants. 
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tourna- 
ments lost much of the sanguinary character which 
had previously distinguished them. They became 
merely entertainments for the celebration of court 
festivals ; and the combatants gained the prize of 
victory, not by wounds and bloodshed, but by bro- 
ken lances, the fragments of which were presented 
to them as trophies of success. It was the etiquette 
of early times for a knight, on entering the lists at 
a tournament, to beg permission to wear the colours 
of the lady to whose service he was devoted ; but 
this practice was gradually succeeded by that of 
wearing about the person any pledge of love which 
the knight solicited from his mistress, or which the 
latter spontaneously presented to him. This cus- 
tom of giving and wearing favours was kept up 
until the middle of the seventeenth century. Vari- 
ous changes of fashion took place with respect to 
the objects which were thus presented as pledges of 
regard ; and if Bayard, the " knight without fear 
and without reproach," obtained from the lady of his 
heart a pair of elegant bracelets and a silken purse — 
