Page:The child's pictorial history of England; (IA childspictorialh00corn).pdf/43

 strewed with rushes, and furnished with long oak tables and benches.

24. The windows were square holes crossed with thin laths, called lattices, and the fire-place was a stone hearth in the middle of the earthen floor, on which they used to burn great logs of wood, and let the smoke go out at a hole in the door.

25. But the great people often had merry doings in these halls, for they were fond of feasting, and used to sit at the long wooden tables, without table cloths, and eat out of wooden platters or trenchers with their fingers.

26. Boiled meats and fish, usually salted, were put on the table in great wooden dishes, but roast meats were brought in on the spits on which they were cooked, and handed round by the thralls, to the company, who helped themselves with knives which they carried at their girdles.

27. There was plenty of ale, and among the richest, wine also, which they drank out of horn cups; and when the meats were taken away, they used to drink and sing, and play on the harp, and often had tumblers, jugglers, and minstrels to amuse them.

28. Then the visitors used to lie down on the floor to sleep, covered with their cloaks; for