No. 13. A Party at the Fire.
The furniture of the hall appears to have been very simple, for it consisted chiefly of benches. These had carpets and cushions; the former are often mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills. The Anglo-Saxon poems speak of the hall as being “adorned with treasures,” from which we are perhaps justified in believing that it was customary to display there in some manner or other the richer and more ornamental of the household vessels. Perhaps one end of the hall was raised higher than the rest for the lord of the household, like the dais of later times, as Anglo-Saxon writers speak of the heah-setl, or high seat. The table can hardly be considered as furniture, in the ordinary sense of the word: it was literally, according to its Anglo-Saxon name bord, a board that was brought out for the occasion, and placed upon tressels, and taken away as soon as the meal was ended. Among the inedited Latin ænigmata, or riddles, of the Anglo-Saxon writer Tahtwin, who flourished at the beginning of the eighth century, is one on a table, which is curious enough to be given here, from the manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 12, C. xxiii.). The table, speaking in its own person, says that it is in the habit of feeding people with all sorts of viands; that while so doing it is a quadruped, and is adorned with handsome clothing; that afterwards it is robbed of all it possesses, and when it has been thus robbed it loses its legs:—
DE MENSA.
Multiferis omnes dapibus saturare solesco,
Quadrupedem hinc felix ditem me sanxerit ætas,
Esse tamen pulchris fatim dum vestibus orner,
Certatim me prædones spoliare solescunt,
Raptis nudata exuviis mox membra relinquunt.
In the illuminated manuscripts, wherever dinner scenes are represented, the table is always covered with what is evidently intended for a handsome table-cloth, the myse-hrægel or bord-clath. The grand preparation for dinner was laying the board; and it is from this original character of the table that we derive our ordinary expression of receiving any one “to board and lodging.”
The hall was peculiarly the place for eating—and for drinking. The Anglo-Saxons had three meals in the day,—the breaking of their fast (breakfast), at the third hour of the day, which answered to nine o’clock in the morning, according to our reckoning; the ge-reordung (repast), or nón-mete (noon-meat) or dinner, which is stated to have been held at the canonical hour of noon, or three o’clock in the afternoon; and the æfen-gereord (evening repast), æfen-gyfl (evening food), æfen-mete (evening meat), æfen-thenung (evening refreshment), or supper, the hour of which is uncertain. It is probable, from many circumstances, that the latter was a meal not originally in use among our Saxon forefathers: perhaps their only meal at an earlier period was the dinner, which was always their principal repast; and we may, perhaps, consider noon as midday, and not as meaning the canonical hour.
As I have observed before, the table, from the royal hall down to the most humble of those who could afford it, was not refused to strangers. When they came to the hall-door, the guests were required to leave their arms in the care of a porter or attendant, and then, whether known or not, they took their place at the tables. One of the laws of king Cnut directs, that if, in the meantime, any one took the weapon thus deposited, and did hurt with it, the owner should be compelled to clear himself of suspicion of being cognisant of the use to be made of his arms when he laid them down. History affords us several remarkable instances of the facility of approach even to the tables of kings during the Saxon period. It was this circumstance that led to the murder of king Edmund in 946. On St. Augustin’s day, the king was dining at his manor of Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire; a bandit named Leofa, whom the king had banished for his crimes, and who had returned without leave from exile, had the effrontery to place himself at the royal table, by the side of one of the principal nobles of the court; the king alone recognised him, rose from his seat to expel him from the hall, and received his death-wound in the struggle. In the eleventh century, when Hereward went in disguise as a spy to the court of a Cornish chieftain, he entered the hall while they were feasting, took his place among the guests, and was but slightly questioned as to who he was and whence he came.
No. 14. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner-Party Pledging.
In the early illuminated manuscripts, dinner scenes are by no means uncommon. The cut, [No. 14] (taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis, MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv., fol. 36, vo), represents Abraham’s feast on the birth of his child. The guests are sitting at an ordinary long hall table, ladies and gentlemen being mixed together without any apparent special arrangement. This manuscript is probably of the beginning of the eleventh century. The cut, [No. 15], represents another dinner scene, from a manuscript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, vo), and presents several peculiarities. The party here is a very small one, and they sit at a round table. The attendants seem to be serving them, in a very remarkable manner, with roast meats, which they bring to table on the spits (spitu) as they were roasted. Another festive scene is represented in the cut, [No. 16], taken from a manuscript of the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, C. viii., fol. 15, ro). The table is again a round one, at which Luxury and her companions are seated at supper (seo Galnes æt hyre æfen-ge-reordum sitt).