THE EARLY ENGLISHMAN AND HIS FOOD.


William of Malmesbury particularly dwells on the broad line of
distinction still existing between the southern English and the folk
of the more northerly districts in his day, twelve hundred years after
the visit of Caesar. He says that they were then (about A.D. 1150)
as different as if they had been different races; and so in fact they
were--different in their origin, in their language, and their diet.

In his "Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life," 1883, Mr. Gomme
devotes a chapter to "Early Domestic Customs," and quotes Henry's
"History of Great Britain" for a highly curious clue to the primitive
mode of dressing food, and partaking of it, among the Britons. Among
the Anglo-Saxons the choice of poultry and game was fairly wide.
Alexander Neckani, in his "Treatise on Utensils (twelfth century)"
gives fowls, cocks, peacocks, the cock of the wood (the woodcock, not
the capercailzie), thrushes, pheasants, and several more; and pigeons
were only too plentiful. The hare and the rabbit were well enough
known, and with the leveret form part of an enumeration of wild
animals (_animalium ferarum_) in a pictorial vocabulary of the
fifteenth century. But in the very early accounts or lists, although
they must have soon been brought into requisition, they are not
specifically cited as current dishes. How far this is attributable to
the alleged repugnance of the Britons to use the hare for the table,
as Caesar apprises us that they kept it only _voluptatis causâ_, it
is hard to say; but the way in which the author of the "Commentaries"