From that storehouse of instruction and amusement, Nichols's Anecdotes, vol. viii. pp. 293-304.
I take this opportunity of forwarding to you a curious memorandum which I found in rummaging the papers of a "note-maker" of the last century. It appears to be a bill of fare for the entertainment of a party, upon the "flitch of bacon" being decreed to a happy couple. It is at Harrowgate, and not at Dunmow, which would lead us to believe that this custom was not confined to one county. The feast itself is almost as remarkable, as regards its component parts, as that produced by Mr. Thackeray, in his delightful "Lectures," as characteristic of polite feeding in Queen Anne's reign:
"June 25.—Mr. and Mrs. Liddal's Dinner at Green Dragon, Harrowgate, on taking Fflitch Bacon Oath.
Bill Fare.
Beans and bacon.
Cabbage, colliflower.
Three doz. chickens.
Two shoulders mutton, cowcumbers.
Two turbets.
Rump beef, &c. &c.
Goose and plumbpudding.
Quarter lamb, sallad.
Tarts, jellies, strawberries, cream.
Cherrys, syllabubs, and blomonge.
Leg lamb, spinnage.
Crawfish, pickled salmon.
Fryd tripe, calves' heads.
Gravy and Pease soup.
Two piggs.
Breast veal, ragoud.
Ice cream, pine apple.
Surloin beaf.
Pidgeons, green peas.
Lobsters, crabs.
Twelve red herrings, twenty-two dobils."
W. R.
Stockwell.
ON THE USE OF THE HOUR-GLASS IN PULPITS.
(Vol. vii., p. 489.)
Perhaps the following may be of service as a farther illustration of this subject.
Zacharie Boyd says, in The Last Battell of the Sovle in Death, 1629, reprinted Glasgow, 1831, at p. 469.: