The staple¹ food among the lower orders in Anglo-Saxon and the immediately succeeding times was doubtless bread, butter, and cheese, the aliment which goes so far even yet to support our rural population, with vegetables and fruit, and occasional allowances of salted bacon and pancakes, beef, or fish. The meat was usually boiled in a kettle suspended on a tripod [Footnote: The tripod is still employed in many parts of the country for a similar purpose] over a wood-fire, such as is used only now, in an improved shape, for fish and soup.

The kettle which is mentioned, as we observe, in the tale of “Tom Thumb,” was the universal vessel² for boiling purposes [Footnote: An inverted³ kettle was the earliest type of the diving-bell], and the bacon-house (or larder), so called from the preponderance of that sort of store over the rest, was the warehouse⁵ for the winter stock of provisions [Footnote: What is called in some places the keeping-room also accommodated flitches on the walls, and hams ranged along the beams overhead; and it served at the same time for a best parlour]. The fondness for condiments⁶, especially garlic and pepper, among the higher orders, possibly served to render the coarser nourishment⁷ of the poor more savoury and flavorous. “It is interesting to remark,” says Mr. Wright [Footnote: “Domestic Manners and Sentiments,” 1862, p. 91], “that the articles just mentioned (bread, butter, and cheese) have preserved their Anglo-Saxon names to the present time, while all kinds of meat — beef, veal⁸, mutton, pork, even bacon — have retained only the names given to them by the Normans; which seems to imply that flesh-meat was not in general use for food among the lower classes of society.”

In Malory’s compilation⁹ on the adventures of King Arthur and his

分享到：