“Host. Hostlers, you knaves and commanders, take the horses of the knights and competitors; your honorable hulks have put into harbor; they’ll take in fresh water here, and I have provided clean chamber-pots.”—(“The Merry Devil of Edmonton,” 1608.)
Such vessels were in use in Ireland, where they were called “omar-fuail,” from omar, a vessel, and fuail, urine. They must have been employed from the earliest centuries. “And they (the Sybarites) were the first people who introduced the custom of bringing chamber-pots into entertainments” (Athenaus, book xii. cap. 17).
It is not easy to detect any essential difference between the manners of the people of Iceland, as described by Bleekmans on another page, and those of the more polished Romans.
Bed-pans were used in France in the earliest days of the fifteenth century. They are noted in “The Farce of Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480).—(See “Le Moyen Age Médical,” Dupouy, Paris, 1888, p. 280 et seq., and the translation of the same by Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1890, p. 82.)
“Maids need no more their silver pisse-pots scour,
...
Presumptuous pisse-pot, how did’st thou offend?
Compelling females on their hams to bend?
To kings and queens we humbly bend the knee,
But queens themselves are forced to stoop to thee.”