OUR ANCESTORS' TABLE MANNERS.
It is always interesting to review the manners and customs of our forefathers, whether or not our time suffers by comparison. How the table was set a thousand years ago, and what was put upon it, and how food was eaten, form the topic of a short article in one of our exchanges. Among the most interesting features noted is that, in the houses of people of fairly comfortable circumstances, the table was set up in the dining hall every day, and consisted of boards placed on trestles. Upon this was laid the tablecloth, which in some of the old pictures is represented as having a handsome embroidered border. There is an old Latin riddle of the eighth century in which the table says: "I feed people with many kinds of food. First I am a quadruped, and adorned with handsome clothing; then I am robbed of my apparel and lose my legs also." The food of the Anglo-Saxon was largely bread. This is hinted in the fact that a domestic was called a "loaf eater," and the lady of the house was called a "loaf giver." The bread was baked in round, flat cakes, which the superstition of the cook marked with a cross, to preserve them from the perils of the fire. Milk, butter, and cheese were also eaten. The principal meat was bacon, as the acorns of the oak forests, which then covered a large part of England, supported numerous droves of swine. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were not only heavy eaters, but, unfortunately, deep drinkers. The drinking horns were at first literally horns, and so must be immediately emptied when filled; later, when the primitive horn had been replaced by a glass cup, it retained a tradition of its rude predecessor in its shape, for it had a flaring top, while tapering toward the base, so that it, too, had to be emptied at a draught. Each guest was furnished with a spoon, while his knife was always carried in his belt; as for forks, who dreamed of them, when nature had given man ten fingers? But you will see why a servant with a basin of water and a towel always presented himself to each guest before dinner was served and after it was ended. Roasted meat was served on the spit or rod on which it was cooked, and the guest cut or tore off a piece to suit himself. Boiled meat was laid on the cakes of bread, or, later, on thick slices of bread, called "trenchers," from a Norman word meaning "to cut," as these were to carve the meat on, thus preserving the tablecloth from the knife. At first the trencher was eaten or thrown upon the stone floor for the dogs which crouched at their master's feet. At a later date it was put in a basket and given to the poor, who gathered at the manor gate. During the latter part of the middle ages the most conspicuous object of the table was the saltcellar. This was generally of silver, in the form of a ship. It was placed in the center of a long table, at which the household gathered, my lord and lady, their family and guests, being at one end, and their retainers and servants at the other. So one's position in regard to the salt was a test of rank—the gentlefolks sitting "above the salt," and yeomanry below it. In the houses of the great nobles dinner was served with much ceremony. Not a few of the articles that are eaten today, despite our common hygienic teaching, are a heritage of the ages. Macaroons have served as dessert since the days of Chaucer. The summer Yankee breakfast griddle cakes have come down to us from the far-away Britons of Wales, while the boys have lunched on gingerbread, and girls on pickles and jellies, since the time of Edward II., more than five hundred years ago.—Phrenological Journal and Science of Health.