Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. Being a ...

PREFACE.
XI
brine.^ Salt fm* salted meats,- which also were quite
familiar to them, might be got from the saltpans on
the sea shore.
The dishes, on which their meats were served, were
sometimes of silver,^ nor was this esteemed a high
distinction.'^ The vessels from which they drank were
sometimes of glass f and those they had also transparent
in quality.'^' The supply upon the tables of a chieftain,
who had many retainers, was abundant, and not
over studious of luxury and refinement.' When not
engaged in war or hunting, the princes thought a good
deal of their gormandize.^ Festive assemblies were more
frequent than among other races of men ; they were
duly ordered, and attended by gleemen, from whose
lips the honeysweets of song flowed readily and freely,
and whose reward came from the munificence of the
prince. The feasts not rarely lasted through the
night.*'
In the monastic colloquy, an exercise for students,
who were to be "bilingues," capable of conversing in
their own language and in that of Rome, which is,
therefore, quite destitute of artifice or ambition, a boy
is asked what he has to eat. His reply i^^, worts (that
is, kitchen herbs), fish, cheese, butter, beans, and flesh
meats. He drinks ale, and, if he cannot get that, water,
for he cannot afford wine. This is the daily diet of
a boy under education in
a monastery.
Altogether, if the comfortable prejudices of modernism
do not shut out trustworthy and contemporary testi-
'
CD. 451.
- Lb. p. 234, etc.
^ Discus argenteus regalibus
epulis refertus, Becla, III. vi.
* Est videre apud illos argentese
vasa, legatis et pi'incipibus eorum
muneri datse, non in alia vilitate
quam qua; bumo finguntur. Tacitus,
Germ. 5.
'
Calicem is translated slsej-yaer,
Beda, p. 618, line 12.
« C.E. 78, ult.
Epiilffi et, quanquam incompti,
largi tamen adparatus, Tacit. Germ.
14.
* Dediti somno ciboque. Tacit.
Germ. 15.
''
Tacit. Germ. 22.