In a book called “Strange Foot-Post, with a Packet full of Strange Petitions,” by Nixon (London, 1613), the author says in reference to a poor scholar:—
Now, as for his fare, it is lightly at the cheapest table, but he must sit under the salt, that is an axiome in such places; then having drawne his knife leisurably, unfolded his napkin mannerly after twice or thrice wiping his beard, if he have it, he may reach the bread on his knife’s point.
The “Babees Book” (1475) says: “The salt also touch not in his salere with nokyns mete, but lay it honestly on the Trenchoure, for that is curtesy;” and the “Young Children’s Book” (1500) contains this passage: “It was not graceful to take the salt except with the clene knyfe; far less to dip your meat into the salt-cellar.”
Joseph Hall, in his “Satires” (1597), speaking of the conditions imposed by a gentle squire upon his son’s tutor, says that the latter was required to sleep in a trundle-bed at the foot of his young master’s couch, and that his seat at table was invariably “below the salt.”
Again, in a volume of “Essayes,” by Sir William Cornwallis (1632), occurs the following:—
There is another sort worse than these, that never utter anything of their owne, but get jests by heart, and rob bookes and men of prettie tales, and yet hope for this to have a roome above the salt.
Quite apropos to our subject are the words of an old English ballad:—
Thou art a carle of mean degree,
Ye salt doth stand twain me and thee.
The following passage from Smyth’s “Lives of the Berkeleys” refers to Lord Henry Berkeley, who dwelt in Caludon Castle, near Coventry, in Warwickshire, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and may serve to illustrate the importance of the central salt-cellar as a boundary:—