Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/109

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

and Sentiments. Saxons. Sometimes, indeed, the fhape of the knives is almofl grotefque. The one reprefented below, in our cut No. 60, is taken from a group in the fame manufcript which furniihed the preceding cut 5 it is very fmgularly notched at the point. We fee in thcfe dinner fcenes that the Anglo-Normans ufed horns and cups for drinking, as the Anglo-Saxons did 5 but the ufe of the horn r No. 59. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner Party. is becoming rare, and the bowl-lliaped vefTels appear to have been now the ufual drinking cup. Among the wealthy thefe cups feem to have been made of glafs. Reginald of Durham defcribes one of the monks as bringing water for a fick man to drink in a glafs cup {vafe vitreo), which was accidentally broken. In a fplendidly illuminated manufcript of the Pfalms, of the earlier half of the twelfth century, written by Eadwine, one of the monks of Canterbury, and which will afford much illuflration for this period,* we find a figure of a fervant

  • This valuable MS. is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

It is a very remarkable circumstance, which has not hitherto been noticed, that the illuminations are in general copies from those of the Harleian MS. No. 603, except that the costume and other circumstances are altered, so that we may take them as correct representatives of the manners of the Anglo-Normans. N giving No. 60. A Knife.