The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind that used to afford holidays and banquetings to the people of the East, that is, according to the poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the natives somewhat unmusically call it, “lanka dwipa,” was, in the olden time of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the banquet it afforded was not of annual occurrence; for the tree never flowers till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy used to bestow the rich gift of some of its blossoms on the favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of the Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to his painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, not such a present as Demetrius Poliorcetes made to Lamia, after that accomplished courtezan had erected at Sicyon a portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a book to describe it; and poem and portico became the table-talk of all Greece. The gift of Demetrius was a magnificent purse, containing two hundred and fifty talents, which, by the way, he had compelled the reluctant Athenians to contribute; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was merely “for soap.” The extravagant lady spent it all in one single, but consuming, feast! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that other courtezan, Leæna, whose wit made guests forget that the feast was frugal; and to whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out her own, that torture might not make her betray the accomplices of her protector Harmodius, in the murder of her tyrant Hipparchus!——
We have not found much of the refinement we looked for in these remote periods and banquets. Let us see what may be discovered in the Table Traits of England in Early Times.
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES.
When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he described the island as being thickly inhabited, ruled by many Kings and Princes, and all living peaceably together,—though with war-chariots and strong arms, to settle quarrels when they occurred. But if our ancestors lived peaceably among themselves, they can hardly be said to have lived comfortably. Their habitations were of reed, or of wood; and they gathered in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These ears they garnered in subterranean repositories, wherefrom they daily culled the ripest grain; and, rudely dressing the same, had thence their sustenance. Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far removed from the cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world; and other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, who are said to have fed on human flesh, to have had enormous appetites for such food, and to have been given to the nasty habit of devouring their deceased fathers; but it is not uncommon for others, as well as for Irish sons, to devour, at least, their parents’ substance, even at the present day. The food of an Irish child was certainly illustrative of character,—we should rather say that the solemnity of offering the first food to a child was characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a writer of the first century, says, that “when a Hibernian mother gives birth to a male child, she puts its first food on the point of her husband’s sword, and lightly inserts this foretaste of meat into the mouth of the infant, on its very tip; and, by family vows, desires that it may never die but under arms.” In other words, the relations wished that the little stranger might never be in want of a row, when disposed to distinguish the family name!
In the days of Julius Cæsar, our stalwart sires supported their thews and sinews on milk and flesh,—the diet of a pugilist. We see how much progress was made by the time of Constantine,—the Constantine that was crowned in Britain,—“when,” says a contemporary writer, “the harvests sufficed alike for the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures were covered with innumerable multitudes of tame flocks, distended with milk, or laden with fleeces.”
I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather poetical accounts of certain early writers, that our aboriginal ancestry were very little superior to the New Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more uncivilized, and quite as ignorant; and their abstinence from the flesh of hares and poultry, and, in the northern parts of the island, from fish, bespeaks a race who lacked, at once, industry and knowledge. Indeed, it is by no means certain, that we do not wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their possible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the most revolting cannibalism.
They were clever enough to brew mead and ale; but wine and civilization were brought to them by their enemies, the Romans,—invaders whom, for some reasons, they might have welcomed with a sentiment akin to the line in Béranger:—
“Vivent nos amis! nos amis, les ennemis!”
They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more important one. Their seats were skins, or bundles of hay, flung on the ground. The table was a low stool, around which British Chiefs sat, and, even in the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore their food with teeth and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched knife, as bad as any thing of the sort now in common use in Gaul. In short, they committed a thousand solecisms, the very idea of which is sufficient to make the Sybarites of Belgravia very much ashamed of their descent from the savages of Britain.
It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that they introduced the rather vulgar custom of taking four meals a day. The custom was, however, one solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility of the Saxons. They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, boiled, baked, or broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks were not of such an illustrious guild as that which they subsequently formed. A cook among the Anglo-Saxons was little more accounted of than the calf he cut up into collops. The cook, in fact, was a slave; and was as unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter’s last will and testament, as though the culinary artist had been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes sat together,—a custom refined in itself, refining in its effects, and of such importance, that half-a-dozen nations claim the honour of being the inventors of that excellent custom. In Europe, Turkey alone has obstinately refused to follow this civilizing example; and Turkey is falling to pieces. It may, therefore, be logically proved, that where table rights are not conceded to the ladies, nations slowly perish; and—“serve them right.”