Before the meal, each guest was served with water to wash. It was the business of the ewer to serve the guests with water for this purpose, which he did with a jug and basin, while another attendant stood by with a towel. Our cut [No. 109], represents this process; it is taken from a fine manuscript of the “Livre de la Vie Humaine,” preserved in the National Library in Paris, No. 6988. In the originals of this group, the jug and basin are represented as of gold. In the copy of the Seven Sages, printed by Weber (p. 148), the preparations for a dinner are thus described:— Thai set trestes, and bordes on layd;
Thai spred clathes and salt on set,
And made redy unto the mete;
Thai set forth water and towelle.
The company, however, sometimes washed before going to the table, and for this purpose there were lavours, or lavatories, in the hall itself, or sometimes outside. The signal for washing was then given by the blowing of trumpets, or by the music of the minstrels. Thus, in the English metrical romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, At noon à laver the waytes blewe,
meaning, of course, the canonical hour of none. Grace was also said at the commencement, or at the end, of the meal, but this part of the ceremony is but slightly alluded to in the old writers.
Having washed, the guests seated themselves at table. Then the attendants spread the cloths over the tables; they then placed on them the salt-cellars and the knives; and next the bread, and the wine in drinking cups. All this is duly described in the following lines of an old romance:— Quant lavé orent, si s’asistrent,
Et li serjant les napes mistrent,
Desus les dobliers blans et biax,
Les saliers et les coutiax,
Après lou pain, puis lo vin
Et copes d’argent et d’or fin.
Spoons were also usually placed on the table, but there were no forks, the guests using their fingers instead, which was the reason they were so particular in washing before and after meat. The tables being thus arranged, it remained for the cooks to serve up the various prepared dishes.
At table the guests were not only placed in couples, but they also eat in couples, two being served with the same food and in the same plate. This practice is frequently alluded to in the early romances and fabliaux. In general the arrangement of the couples was not left to mere chance, but individuals who were known to be attached to each other, or who were near relatives, were placed together. In the poem of La Mule sanz Frain, the lady of the castle makes Sir Gawain sit by her side, and eat out of the same plate with her, as an act of friendly courtesy. In the fabliau of Trubert, a woman, taken into the household of a duke, is seated at table beside the duke’s daughter, and eats out of the same plate with her, because the young lady had conceived an affectionate feeling for the visitor. So, again, in the story of the provost of Aquilée, the provost’s lady, receiving a visitor sent by her husband (who was absent), placed him at table beside her, to eat with her, and the rest of the party were similarly seated, “two and two:”— La dame première s’assist,
Son hoste lez lui seoir fist,
Car mengier voloit avec lui;
Li autre furent dui et dui.
—Méon Fabliaux, ii. 192.
In one of the stories in the early English Gesta Romanorum, an earl and his son, who dine at the emperor’s table, are seated together, and are served with one plate, a fish, between them. The practice was, indeed, so general, that the phrase “to eat in the same dish” (manger dans la même écuelle), became proverbial for intimate friendship between two persons.
There was another practice relating to the table which must not be overlooked. It must have been remarked that, in the illuminations of contemporary manuscripts which represent dinner scenes, the guests are rarely represented as eating on plates. In fact, only certain articles were served in plates. Loaves were made of a secondary quality of flour, and these were first pared, and then cut into thick slices, which were called, in French, tranchoirs, and, in English, trenchers, because they were to be carved upon. The portions of meat were served to the guests on these tranchoirs, and they cut it upon them as they eat it. The gravy, of course, went into the bread, which the guest sometimes, perhaps always at an earlier period, eat after the meat, but in later times, and at the tables of the great, it appears to have been more frequently sent away to the alms-basket, from which the leavings of the table were distributed to the poor at the gate. All the bread used at table seems to have been pared, before it was cut, and the parings were thrown into the alms-dish. Walter de Bibblesworth, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, among other directions for the laying out of the table, says, “Cut the bread which is pared, and let the parings be given to the alms”— Tayllet le payn ke est parée,
Les biseaus à l’amoyne soyt doné.
The practice is alluded to in the romance of Sir Tristrem (fytte i. ft. 1.)— The kyng no seyd no more,
But wesche and yede (went) to mete;
Bred thai pard and schare (cut),
Ynough thai hadde at ete.
It was the duty of the almoner to say grace. The following directions are given in the Boke of Curtasye (p. 30):— The aumenere by this hathe sayde grace,
And the almes-dysshe hase sett in place;
Therin the karver a lofe schalle sette,
To serve God fyrst withouten lette;
These othere lofes be parys aboute,
Lays hit myd (with) dysshe withouten doute.
The use of the tranchoir, which Froissart calls a tailloir, is not unfrequently alluded to in the older French writers. That writer tells the story of a prince who, having received poison in a powder, and suspecting it, put it on a tailloir of bread, and thus gave it to a dog to eat. One of the French poets of the fifteenth century, Martial de Paris, speaking against the extravagant tables kept by the bishops at that time, exclaims, “Alas! what have the poor? They have only the tranchoirs of bread which remain on the table.” An ordinance of the dauphin Humbert II., of the date of 1336, orders that there should be served to him at table every day “loaves of white bread for the mouth, and four small loaves to serve for tranchoirs” (pro incisorio faciendo). For great people, a silver platter was often put under the tranchoir, and it was probable from the extension of that practice that the tranchoirs became ultimately abandoned, and the platters took their place.
No. 110. A Dinner Scene.
No. 111. A King at Dinner.
We give three examples of dinner-scenes, from manuscripts of the fourteenth century. The first, cut [No. 110] (on the last page), is taken from a manuscript belonging to the National Library in Paris, No. 7210, containing the “Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine.” The party are eating fish, or rather have been eating them, for the bones and remnants are strewed over the table. We have, in addition to these, the bread, knives, salt-cellars, and cups; and on the ground a remarkable collection of jugs for holding the liquors. Our second example, cut [No. 111], is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the romance of Meliadus, preserved in the British Museum (Additional MS., No. 12,228). We have here the curtain or tapestry hung behind the single table. The man to the left is probably the steward, or the superior of the hall; next to him is the cup-bearer serving the liquor; further to the right we have the carver cutting the meat; and last of all the cook bringing in another dish. The table is laid much in the same manner in our third example, cut [No. 112]. We have again the cups and the bread, the latter in round cakes; in our second example they are marked with crosses, as in the Anglo-Saxon illuminations; but there are no forks, or even spoons, which, of course, were used for pottage and soups, and were perhaps brought on and taken off with them. All the guests seem to be ready to use their fingers.
