Douce quotes the following from a rare “Morality,” entitled, “Le Condemnation des Banquets:” “Pause pour pisser le fol. Il prengt un coffinet en lieu de orinal et pisse dedans et tout coule par bas.”
Hobbs, the Tanner of Tamworth, introduced by Heywood in his play of “King Edward the Fourth,” the hero of the old ballad, furnished his rooms with urinals suited to his trade. He says to his guests, the King and Sellinger: “Come, take away, and let’s to bed. Ye shall have clean sheets, Ned; but they be coarse, good strong hemp, of my daughter’s own spinning. And I tell thee your chamber-pot must be a fair horn, a badge of our occupation; for we buy no bending pewter nor breaking earth.”—(“1 King Edward the Fourth,” iii. 2, Heywood, 1600.)
Additional references of the same tenor are to be found in the “Pilgrims,” Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 1: “The Scourge of Villanie,” Marston, 1599, satire 2; and in the following, which does not accord with Dr. Fletcher’s opinion that such utensils were provided solely for the female members of the household.
“_Host._ Hostlers, you knaves and commanders, take the horses of the knights and competitors; your honorable hulks have put into harbor; they’ll take in fresh water here, and I have provided clean chamber-pots.”—(“The Merry Devil of Edmonton,” 1608.)
Such vessels were in use in Ireland, where they were called “omar-fuail,” from _omar_, a vessel, and _fuail_, urine. They must have been employed from the earliest centuries. “And they (the Sybarites) were the first people who introduced the custom of bringing chamber-pots into entertainments” (Athenaus, book xii. cap. 17).
It is not easy to detect any essential difference between the manners of the people of Iceland, as described by Bleekmans on another page, and those of the more polished Romans.
Bed-pans were used in France in the earliest days of the fifteenth century. They are noted in “The Farce of Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480).—(See “Le Moyen Age Médical,” Dupouy, Paris, 1888, p. 280 _et seq._, and the translation of the same by Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1890, p. 82.)
“Maids need no more their silver pisse-pots scour, ... Presumptuous pisse-pot, how did’st thou offend? Compelling females on their hams to bend? To kings and queens we humbly bend the knee, But queens themselves are forced to stoop to thee.”