Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/192

 172 Hijiory of T)omeJlic Manners Wo iva% his cock^ but if hh fauce iverc Poynant and fcharp^ and redy al his gere ,■ His table dormant in his halle altvay Stood redy co'vered al the longe day. — Chaucer's Cant. Tales, I. 341. A ftory in the celebrated coUeftion of the Cent. Nouvelles Nouvelles (Nouv. 83), compofed loon after the middle of the fifteenth century, gives us fome notion of the ftore of provifions in the houfe of an ordinary burgher. A worthy and pious demoifelle — that is, a woman of the refpeft- able clafs of hourgeoifie, who was, in this cafe, a widow — invited a monk to dine with her, out of charity. They dined without other company, and were ferved by a cliambrierc or maid-fervant, and a man-fervant or valet. The courfe of meat, which was firft placed on the table, confifted of poree, or foup, bacon, pork tripes, and a roafted ox's tongue. But the demoifelle had mifcalculated the voracity of her gueft, for, before Ihe had made much progrefs in her poree, he had devoured everything on the table, and left nothing but empty diflies. On feeing this, his hoftefs ordered her fervants to put on the table a piece of good fait beef, and a large piece of choice mutton ; but he ate thefe alfo, to her no little aftonifliment, and flie was obliged to fend for a fine ham, which had been cooked the day before, and which appears to have been all the meat left in the houfe. The monk devoured this, and left nothing but the bone. The courfe which would have followed the firll: fervice was then laid on the table, confifling of a "very fine fat cheefe," and a difh well furnilhed with tarts, apples, and cheefe, which alfo quickly followed the meat. It appears from this ftory that the ordinary dinner of a refpedable burgher confifted of a foup, and two or three plain diflies of meat, followed by cheefe, pafl:r)^, and fruit. An illumination, illuftrative of another tale in this coUeftion, in the unique manufcript preferved in the Hunterian Library, at Glafgow, and copied in the annexed cut (No. 123), reprefents a dinner-table of an ordinary perfon of this clafs of fociety, which is not over largely furnilhed. We fee only bread in the middle, what appears to be intended for a ham at one end, and at the other a difli, perhaps of cakes or tarts. The lower claflTes lived, of courfe, much more meanly than the others ; but we have fewer allufions to them in the