[Illustration: _No. 14. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner-Party Pledging._]
In the early illuminated manuscripts, dinner scenes are by no means uncommon. The cut, No. 14 (taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis, MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv., fol. 36, v^o), represents Abraham’s feast on the birth of his child. The guests are sitting at an ordinary long hall table, ladies and gentlemen being mixed together without any apparent special arrangement. This manuscript is probably of the beginning of the eleventh century. The cut, No. 15, represents another dinner scene, from a manuscript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, v^o), and presents several peculiarities. The party here is a very small one, and they sit at a round table. The attendants seem to be serving them, in a very remarkable manner, with roast meats, which they bring to table on the spits (_spitu_) as they were roasted. Another festive scene is represented in the cut, No. 16, taken from a manuscript of the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, C. viii., fol. 15, r^o). The table is again a round one, at which Luxury and her companions are seated at supper (_seo Galnes æt hyre æfen-ge-reordum sitt_).
[Illustration: _No. 15. Anglo-Saxons at Dinner._]
It will be observed that in these pictures, the tables are tolerably well covered with vessels of different kinds, with the exception of plates. There are one or two dishes of different sizes in fig. 14, intended, no doubt, for holding bread and other articles; it was probably an utensil borrowed from the Romans, as the Saxon name _disc_ was evidently taken from the Latin _discus_. It is not easy to identify the forms of vessels given in these pictures with the words which are found in the Anglo-Saxon language, in which the general term for a vessel is _fæt_, a vat; _crocca_, a pot or pitcher, no doubt of earthenware, is preserved in the modern English word crockery; and _bolla_, a bowl, _orc_, a basin, _bledu_ and _mele_, each answering to the Latin _patera_, _læfel_ and _ceac_, a pitcher or urn, _hnæp_, a cup (identical in name with the _hanap_ of a later period), _flaxe_, a flask, are all pure Anglo-Saxon words. Many of the forms represented in the manuscripts are recognised at once as identical with those which are found in the earlier Anglo-Saxon graves. In the vocabularies, the Latin word _amphora_ is translated by _crocca_, a crock; and _lagena_ by _æscen_, which means a vessel made of ash wood, and was, in all probability, identical with the small wooden buckets so often found in the early Saxon graves. In a document preserved in Heming’s chartulary of Canterbury, mention is made of “an _æscen_, which is otherwise called a back-bucket” (_æscen the is othre namon hrygilebuc gecleopad_, Heming, p. 393), which strongly confirms the opinion I have adopted as to the purpose of the bucket found in the graves.