Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/44

 24 Hijiory of Domejlic Manners MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv., fol. ^6, v°), reprefents Abraham's feafl on the birth of his child. The guefts are fitting at an ordinary long hall table, ladies and gentlemen being mixed together without any apparent fpecial arrangement. This manufcript is probably of the beginning of the eleventh century. The cut. No. i j, reprefents another dinner fcene, from a manufcript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, v°), and prefents feveral peculiarities. The party here is a very fmall 5. Anglo-Saxom at Dinner. one, and they fit at a round table. The attendants feem to be ferving them, in a vety remarkable manner, with roaft meats, which they bring to table on the fpits {fpitu) as they were roafl:ed. Another feftive fcene is reprefented in the cut. No. 16, taken from a manufcript of the Pfycho- machia of the poet Prudentius (MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, C.viii.,fol. i^, r°). The table is again a round one, at which Luxury and her companions are feated at fupper {fco Gaines cet hyre cefen-ge-reordumjitt). It will be obferved that in thefe piftures, the tables are tolerably well covered with vefi"els of different kinds, with the exception of plates. There are one or two difiies of different fizes in fig. 14, intended, no doubt, for holding bread and other articles 5 it was probably an utenfil borrowed from the Romans, as the Saxon name difc was evidently taken from the Latin