Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/53

 and Sentiments. 33 have been the confumption of the latter article. Welfli ale is efpecially fpoken of. Wine was alio in ufe, though it was an expenfive article, and was in a great meafure reftri6ted to perfons above the common rank. According to Alfric's Colloquy, the merchant brought from foreign countries wine and oil ; and when the fcholar is alked why he does not drink wine, he fays he is not rich enough to buy it, " and wine is not the drink of children or fools, but of elders and wife men." There were, however, vineyards in England in the times of the Saxons, and wine was made from them 3 but they were probably rare, and chiefly attached to the monaftic eftablifliments. William of Malmefbury fpeaks of a vine- yard attached to his monaflery, which was firft planted at the beginning of the eleventh century by a Greek monk who fettled there, and who fpent all his time in cultivating it. In their drinking, the Anglo-Saxons had various feftive ceremonies, one of which is made known to us by the popular ftory of the lady Rowena and the Britifh king. When the ale or wine was firll ferved, the drinkers pledged each other, with certain phrafes of wifliing health, not much unlike the mode in which we ftill take wine with each other at table, or as people of the lefs refined claffes continue to drink the firft glafs to the health of the company ; but among the Saxons the ceremony was accompanied with a kifs. In our cut. No, 14, the party appear to be pledging each other. The Anglo-Saxon potations were accompanied with various kinds of amufements. One of thefe was telling ftories, and recounting the exploits of themfelves or of their friends. Another was finging their national poetry, to which the Saxons were much attached. In the lefs elevated clafs, where profeffed minflrels were not retained, each gueft was minftrel in his turn. Caedmon, as his ftory is related by Bede, became a poet through the emulation thus excited. One of the eccle- fiaftical canons enafted under king Edgar enjoins " that no prieft be a minftrel at the ale {ealu-fc6p), nor in any wife aft the gleeman (gluvige), with himfelf or with other men." In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert in Herefordfliire, by the treachery of Otfa's wicked queen (a.d. 792), we are told that the royal party, after dinner, " fpent the p whole