Lord Larehip

These woodcuts (from the Heidelberger Totentanz of 1488) and paintings depict the close association of dance, music and death. The Black Death must have profoundly affected the European arts. But the effects were not all bad. In the wake of pestilence, the depopulation killed feudalism, raised wages as employers vied in securing an adequate workforce and gave women opportunities to procure occupations and posts previously denied to them simply because there were not enough men to fill them. While the large cities still remained cesspools of humanity, many smaller and isolated kingdoms and villages sprang up where the streets were kept clean and people bathed and did laundry regularly. They thought cleanliness kept the diseases away and they were right but for the wrong reason. The plague was not in the filth but rather the filth attracted rats which brought the fleas which brought the disease. No filth, no rats, no fleas, no plague.