The breakfast hour in Old England was nine o"clock. This meal consisted probably of bread, meat, and ale, but was a lighter repast than that taken when the hurry of the day lay behind. It was eaten often in the bower. Between breakfast and noon-meat at three lay the most active period of the day. Let me picture a few scenes in Old English life, as displayed in the chief occupations of the time.
Leaving the ladies of his household to linger among the roses and lilies of their gardens, or to ply their embroidering needles in some cool recess of the orchard, festooned with broad vine leaves and scented with the smell of apples, the earl or thane went out to the porch of his dwelling, and, sitting there upon a fixed throne, gave alms to a horde of beggars, or presided over the assembly of the local court.
Autumn brought delightful days to the royal and noble sportsmen of Old England. Galloping down from his home, perched, as were all great English houses, on the crest of a commanding hill, the earl, with all care or thought of work flung aside, dashed with his couples of deep-chested Welsh hounds into the glades of a neighbouring forest, already touched with the red and gold of September.
Gaily through the shadowy avenues rang the music of the horns, startling red deer and wild boars from their coverts in the brushwood. Away after the dogs, maddened by a fresh scent, goes the gallant hunt-past swine-herds with their goads, driving vast herds of pigs into the dales, where beech-mast② and acorns lie thick upon the ground-past wood-cutters, hewing fuel for the castle fire, or munching their scanty meal of oaten bread about noon; nor is bridle drawn until the game, antlered or tusked, has rushed into the strong nets spread by attendants at some pass among the trees.
Hawking long held the place of our modem shooting. Even the grave and business-like Alfred devoted his pen to this enticing subject. And we can well understand the high spirits and merry talk of a hawking party, cantering over rustling leaves, all white and crisp with an October frost, on their way to the reedy mere, where they made sure of abundant game. On each rider"s wrist sat a hooded falcon, caught young, perhaps in a dark pine-wood of Norway, and carefully trained by the falconer, who was no unimportant official in an Old English establishment.
Arrived at the water, the party broke into sets; and as the blue heron rose on his heavy wing, or a noisy splashing flight of ducks sprang from their watery rest, the hood was removed, and the game shown to the sharp-eyed bird, which, soaring loose into the air from the up-flung wrist, cleft his way in pursuit with rapid pinion, rose above the doomed quarry, anddescending with a sudden swoop, struck fatal talons and yet more fatal beak into its back and head, and bore it dead to the ground. A sharp gallop over the broken surface had meantime brought the sportsman up in time to save the game, and restore the red-beaked victor to his hood and perch.
But hunting and hawking were the pastimes of the rich.
While fat deer fell under the hunter"s dart, and blue feathers strewed the banks of lake and river, the smith③ hammered red iron on his ringing anvil-the carpenter cut planks for the④mead-benchor the bower-wall, or shaped cart-wheels andplough-handles for the labours of the farm-the shoemaker, who also tanned leather and fashioned harness, plied his busy knife and needle-the furrier prepared skins for the lining of stately robes-and in every cloister monks, deep in the mysteries of the furnace, the graving-tool, the paint-brush, and a score of similar instruments, manufactured the best bells, crucifixes, jewelry, and stained glass then to be found in the land.
The Old English farmers were rather graziers than tillers of the soil. Sheep for their wool, swine for their flesh, kine for their beef and hides, dotted the pastures and grabbed in the forests near every steading. But there was agriculture too. A picture of an Old English farm-house would present, though of course in ruder form, many features of its modem English successor. Amid fields, often bought for four sheep an acre, and scantily manured with marl after the old British fashion, stood a timbered house, flanked by a farm-yard full of ox-stalls and stocked with geese and fowl. A few bee-hives-the islands of the sugar-cane not being yet discovered-suggested a mead- cask always well filled, and a good supply of sweetmeats for the board; while an orchard, thick with laden boughs, supplied pears and apples, nuts and almonds, and in some districts figs and grapes.
