Volume 2

Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England : being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest / collected and edited by Oswald Cockayne.

Date:
1864-1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England : being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest / collected and edited by Oswald Cockayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    brine.1 Salt for salted meats,2 which also were quite familiar to them, might be got from the saltpans on the sea shore. The dishes, on which their meats were served, were sometimes of silver,3 nor was this esteemed a high distinction.4 The vessels from which they drank were sometimes of glass ;5 and those they had also transpa- rent in quality.6 The supply upon the tables of a chief- tain, who had many retainers, was abundant, and not over studious of luxury and refinement.7 When not engaged in war or hunting, the princes thought a good deal of their gormandize.8 Festive assemblies were more frequent than among other races of men ; they were duly ordered, and attended by gleemen, from whose lips the honeysweets of song flowed readily and freely, and whose reward came from the munificence of the prince. The feasts not rarely lasted through the night.9 In the monastic colloquy, an exercise for students, who were to be “ bilingues,” capable of conversing in their own language and in that of Rome, which is, therefore, quite destitute of artifice or ambition, a boy is asked what he has to eat. His reply is, worts (that is, kitchen herbs), fish, cheese, butter, beans, and flesh meats. He drinks ale, and, if he cannot get that, water, for he cannot afford wine. Tins is the daily7- diet of a boy under education in a monastery. Altogether, if the comfortable prejudices of modernism do not shut out trustworthy and contemporary testi- 1 C.D. 451. 2 Lb. p. 234, etc. 3 Discus argenteus regalibus epulis refertus, Beda, III. vi. * Est videre apud illos argentesc vasa, legatis et principibus eorum muneri data:, non in alia vililate quam qusc humo finguntur. Tacitus, Germ. 5. 5 Calicem is translated sleej-pet, Beda, p. G18, line 12. 0 C.E. 78, ult. 7 Epulaa et, quanquam incompti, largi tamen adparatus, Tacit. Germ. 14. 8 Dediti somno ciboque. Tacit. Germ. 15. ,J Tacit. Genu. 22.