to support our rural
population, with vegetables and fruit, and occasional allowances of
salted bacon and pancakes, beef, or fish. The meat was usually boiled
in a kettle suspended on a tripod [Footnote: The tripod is still
employed in many parts of the country for a similar purpose] over a
wood-fire, such as is used only now, in an improved shape, for fish
and soup.

The kettle which is mentioned, as we observe, in the tale of "Tom
Thumb," was the universal vessel for boiling purposes [Footnote: An
inverted kettle was the earliest type of the diving-bell], and the
bacon-house (or larder), so called from the preponderance of that
sort of store over the rest, was the warehouse for the winter stock of
provisions [Footnote: What is called in some places the keeping-room
also accommodated flitches on the walls, and hams ranged along the
beams overhead; and it served at the same time for a best parlour].
The fondness for condiments, especially garlic and pepper, among the
higher orders, possibly served to render the coarser nourishment of
the poor more savoury and flavorous. "It is interesting to remark,"
says Mr. Wright [Footnote: "Domestic Manners and Sentiments," 1862,
p. 91], "that the articles just mentioned (bread, butter, and cheese)
have preserved their Anglo-Saxon names to the present time, while all
kinds of meat--beef, veal, mutton, pork, even bacon--have retained
only the names given to them by the Normans; which seems to imply that
flesh-meat was not in general use for food among the lower classes of
society."

In Malory's compilation on the adventures of King Arthur and his
knights, contemporary with the "Book of St. Alban's," we are expressly
informed in the sixth chapter, how the King made a great feast at
Caerleon in Wales; but we are left in ignorance of its character. The
chief importance of details in this case would have been the excessive
probability that Malory would have described an entertainment
consonant with the usage of his own day, although at no period of
early history was there ever so large an assemblage of guests at one
time as met, according to the fable, to do honour to Arthur.

In the tenth century Colloquy of Archbishop Alfric, the boy is made to
say that he is too young to eat meat, but subsists on cabbages,
eggs, fish, cheese, butter, beans, and other things, according to
circumstances; so that a vegetable diet was perhaps commoner in those
days even among the middle classes tha