Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/204

180 following very necessary precepts are addressed to this household officer. "Set never on fyshe, flesche, beest ne fowle more than two fyngers and a thombe." Again; "your knyfe muste be fayre and your handes muste be clene, and passe not two fyngers and a thombe upon your knyfe." In a drawing of an Anglo-Saxon entertainment one of the guests holds a small fish in his hand, being evidently about to cut it up, but his attention is diverted by an attendant who has brought some roasted meat on a spit, which he presents to him kneeling. At the other extremity of the table one of the company is cutting a slice from a spit held by a servant in a similar posture.

This illustration shews the antiquity of a custom which still prevailed in the thirteenth century, viz. that of placing an entire fish before a guest of distinction. The Chronicler of Lanercost narrates that Robert Grostête, bishop of Lincoln, reproved his seneschal who had given him a large sea-wolf and placed a small one before his visitor, the earl of Gloucester. The "boke of Keruynge" furnishes directions for helping fish, from which we may infer that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was no longer fashionable to take one in the hand for the purpose of carving; not that it is at all clear that our ancestors generally indulged in the mode of handling fish at dinner exhibited by the Saxon bon-vivant: at tables supplied with spoons as well as knives, there could have been little difficulty in getting through the fish-course without recourse to their fingers.