Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/42

 22 Hijlory of Domejiic Manners The table, fpeaking in its own perfon, lays that it is in the habit of feeding people with all forts of viands 5 that while fo doing it is a quad- ruped, and is adorned with handfome clothing; that afterwards it is robbed of all it poirelfes, and when it has been thus robbed it lofes its legs :— DE MENSA. Muluferh omnes dapihus faturare folefco, Quadrupedem hinc felix d'ltem me Janxerit atai, EJfe tamcn pulchrh fat'im dum ■vejtibus orner, Certatim me pradones fpoUare fohjcunt, Raptis nudata exwuih mox membra relinquunl. In the illuminated manufcripts, wherever dinner fcenes are repre- fented, the table is always covered with what is evidently intended for a handfome table-cloth, the myfe-hrcegel or lord-clath. The grand pre- paration for dinner was laying the hoard; and it is from this original character of the table that we derive our ordinary expreflion of receiving any one "to hoard and lodging." The hall was peculiarly the place for eating — and for drinking. The Anglo-Saxons had three meals in the day, — the breaking of their faft (breakfaft), at the third hour of the day, which anfwered to nine o'clock in the morning, according to our reckoning; the ge-reordung (repaft), or non-mete (noon-meat) or dinner, which is ftated to have been held at the canonical hour of noon, or three o'clock in the afternoon ; and the cefen-gereord (evening repaft), cefen-gyji (evening food), cefen-mete (even- ing meat), cefen-thenung (evening refrelhment), or fupper, the hour of which is uncertain. It is probable, from many circumftances, that the latter was a meal not originally in ufe among our Saxon forefathers : perhaps their only meal at an earlier period was the dinner, which was always their principal repaft; and we may, perhaps, conlider noon as midday, and not as meaning the canonical hour. As I have obferved before, the table, from the royal hall down to the moft humble of thofe who could afibrd it, was not refuted to ftrangers. "When they came to the hall-door, the guefts were required to leave their arms in the care of a porter or attendant, and then, whether known or not.