At meal-times the company sat down in the hall, the master, mistress, and honoured guests taking their places at a “high” table placed on a dais at the upper end of the apartment. Dinner was generally served either at noon or at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
The walls were decorated with coloured and embroidered curtains, for English ladies and their maidens were famed for their skill with the needle in embroidery and decorative needlework. The tables consisted of boards laid upon trestles, which could be easily removed when, the meal being over, the ladies retired to the bower and the men settled down to drinking.
Sometimes the tables were bare, at other times covered with a table-cloth. Some MSS. show a circular table arranged for the meal. On the table appear the round cakes which served the Saxons as bread, also dishes containing meat, fish, and other food. A few spoons and razor-shaped knives, and drinking vessels of varying sizes and shapes, were also placed upon the table.
While the meal was in progress, wandering minstrels played on their instruments and sang; jugglers and conjurers delighted their patrons with feats of balancing and sleight-of-hand; while others danced and postured, or exhibited the feats of dancing bears and other animals that they led about.
PLATE 13.
(Fig. 1): A dinner party standing at a long table. (After Strutt.) MS., Claud. B. v. (Fig. 2): A dinner party seated around a circular table with embroidered curtains behind them, and serving men waiting upon them. (After Strutt.) Cott. MS. Tiberius Cvi. (Fig. 3): A Saxon bed. (After Strutt.) MS., Claud. B. iv. An apartment called the bower or bur was used chiefly by the women and children for sleeping and dwelling in. Sometimes there were recesses in the wall, covered by curtains, and in these the beds were placed. The bed furniture consisted of bolster, pillows, coverlets, and sheets, and, as far as can be gathered from the MSS., the sheets were wrapped about the naked body. (Fig. 4): A dancing girl with musicians. (After Strutt.) Cott. MS., Cleopatra C. viii. In MSS., women are represented almost invariably with the head covered by a hood or head-veil even when they have retired to rest (Fig. 3), and we may assume that it was considered disgraceful for a woman to appear in public with the head bare. When women are represented with the head uncovered they are people whose calling was considered more more or less of a questionable character, as dancers, strolling players, etc. (Fig. 5): A labourer threshing corn with a flail. (From a MS. after Strutt.)
