Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/166

 146 Hlftory of Domejiic Manners conventional manner in which the animal feems to be drawn, renders it difficult to decide what that animal is. The mediaeval artlfts fliow a tafte for playful delineations of this kind, which occur not unfrequently in No. 1 01. j4 Kltclien Scene. illuminated manufcripts, and in carvings and fculptures. One of the ftalls in Hereford cathedral, copied in the accompanying cut (No. loi), reprefents a fcene of this defcrip- tion. A man is attempting to take liberties with the cook, who has in return thrown a platter at his head. In our next cut (No. 102), taken from another MS. in the Britifti Mufeum, alfo of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 16, E. viii,), the objeft cooked in the caldron is a boar's head, which the cook, an ill-favoured and hump-backed man, is placing on a dilli to be carried to nftance, appears to be intended to The Boar's Head. the table. The caldron, in this have been of more ornamental chara6ler than the others It