Page:Leechdoms wortcunning and starcraft of early England volume 2.djvu/20

viii will be glad to see drawn together into one the scattered notices which occur most plentifully here, and occasionally elsewhere, upon this matter.

At his noon meat or dinner, at the hora nona, or ninth hour of the day, for the word noon has now changed its sense, the Saxon spread his table duly and suitably with a table cloth. He could place on it for the entertainment of his family and household, the flesh of neat cattle, now Normanized, as Sir Walter Scott has made familiar to all, into beef, the flesh of sheep, now called mutton, of pig, of goat, of calf, of deer, especially the noble hart, of wild boar, the peacock, swan, duck, culver or pigeon, waterfowl, barndoor fowl, geese, and a great variety of wild fowl, which the fowler caught with net, noose, birdlime, birdcalls, hawks, and traps; salmon, eels, hake, pilchards, eelpouts, trout, lampreys, herrings, sturgeon, oysters, crabs, periwinkles, plaice, lobsters, sprats, and so on.

The cookery of these viands was not wholly contemptible. It was entrusted to professors of that admired art, who could, though their accomplishments have been neglected by the annalists, put on the board oyster patties, and fowls stuffed with bread and such worts as parsley. Weaker stomachs could have light