“Teach me, sir, the duties of a butler, a panter or a chamberlain, and especially, the cunning of a carver. If you will make me to know all these, I will pray for your soul that it come never in pain!”
“Son, I will teach you with right good will, so as you will love and fear God as is right and proper, be true to your master, and not waste his goods, but love and fear him, and duly fulfil his commandments.”
The Duties of a Panter or Butler
“The first year, my son, you shall be panter or butler. In the pantry, you must always keep three sharp knives, one to chop the loaves, another to pare them, and a third, sharp and keen, to smooth and square the trenchers with.[[123]]
“Always cut your lord’s bread, and see that it be new; and all other bread at the table one day old ere you cut it, all household bread three days old, and trencher-bread four days old.
“Look that your salt be fine, white, fair, and dry; and have your salt-plane of ivory, two inches wide and three long; and see to it that the lid of the salt-cellar touch not the salt.
“Good son, look that your napery be sweet and clean, and that your table-cloth, towel, and napkin be folded neatly, your table-knives brightly polished and your spoons fair washed—ye wot well what I mean.
“Look ye have two wine-augers, a greater and a less, some gutters of boxwood that fit them, also a gimlet to pierce with, a tap and a bung, ready to stop the flow when it is time. So when you broach a pipe, good son, do after my teaching: pierce or bore with an auger or gimlet, slanting upward, four fingers’ breadth from the lower rim, so as not to cause the lees to rise—I warn you especially.”
[Here follows a list of fruits and preserves, which presently becomes a mere dietary, ll. 73-108.]
“Take good heed to the wines, red, white, and sweet; look to them every night with a candle, to see that they neither ferment nor leak. Never forget to wash the heads of the pipes with cold water every night; and always carry a gimlet, adze and linen clouts,[[124]] large and small. If the wine ferment, ye shall know by its singing, so keep at hand a pipe of couleur de rose,[[125]] that has been spent in drinking and add to the fermentation the dregs of this, and it shall be amended. If sweet wine be sick or pallid, put in a Romney to improve it.”