Domestic Life of the Saxons
Were it possible for an archæologist to report the gossip of the Saxon hinds over their ale or mead, we should have learnt more of their daily life from such a specimen of their conversation than from all the cautious inferences from manuscripts and records. Let us conceive the presence of a modern reporter in the mead-hall of Hrothgar, and we may be certain that his literal transcript of a single hour’s talk there would be worth all that we can now learn from the Romance of Beowulf. “Then,” says the poem, “there was for the sons of the Geats (Beowulf and his followers altogether), a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold spirit, free from quarrel, went to sit; the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor; meanwhile the poet sang serene in Heorot (the name of Hrothgar’s palace); there was joy of heroes.” Although our conceptions of the scene are faint and vague, the antiquary is enabled to represent certain items as “the twisted ale-cup,” a favourite fashion of our forefathers, many of whose ale-cups, as discovered in their barrows or graves, are incapable of standing upright, implying that their proprietors were thirsty souls, and that it was not, as we supposed, the Prince Regent who first invented tumblers. From the mead-hall and the other Saxon houses of the period, we also get the type of the modern English mansion, with its enceinte and its lodge-gate, as distinguished from its hall-door. The early Saxon house was the whole enclosure, at the gate of which—the ostium domus—beggars assembled for alms, and the porter received the arms of strangers. The whole mass enclosed within this wall constituted the burgh, or tun, and the hall, with its duru, or door par excellence, was the chief of its edifices. Around it were grouped the sleeping chambers, or bowers, as they were designated till a late age, with the subordinate offices. Mr. Wright (in his able work on the Domestic Life of the Middle Ages) draws many of his inferences from the description of the mead-hall of Hrothgar, and adds that he believes Bulwer’s description of the Saxonized Roman house inhabited by Hilda is substantially correct. Still, though we can identify to this day the Saxon derivatives of many of our houses and much of our crockery-ware, this helps us little as regards the sentiments of the originators of these familiar types. They have left us some memorials of their manners; but, substantially speaking, their sentiments on a great variety of subjects are lost to us, and there is little trace of them, even in their barrows and sepulchral surroundings.—Times review.