times would have us think. In the first place,
no man ever left them sober. The drinking-
horns and stemless cups which would not stand,
and which had to be emptied, therefore, as
soon as filled, were of themselves occasions
sufficient for any amount of drunkenness, not to
speak of the fashions of the time, which held
it to be a mark of disrespect and effeminacy if
a man did not drink himself into a beast, or if
he withdrew from the table while he could
stand. The worst crime charged against poor
young Edwy was, that having a slight perception
of refinement in his soul, and loving his
wife better than his wine-cup, he used to leave
his knights to brutalise themselves at their
pleasure, while he went off to his young bride in
her bower not yet quite unmanned.

From these vilely drunken orgies we have got
the cant word "supernaculum." It was the
fashion to turn up the glass after drinking, and
drain it on the thumb—supernagulum— when, if
the wine beaded into a drop of such size that it
could not rest on the thumb but must fall off, the
unhappy laggard was obliged to fill his cup again,
and drink and drink till he had drained it so
dry that he left nothing more than what could
form a little bead supernagulum. These
banquets usually ended in some outburst of
violence, more or less brutal according to the
stage of intoxication into which the guests
had passed, and the amount of muscular
force left in them, but rarely, if ever, passing
off without a broken head or two, or a
dagger sheathed in human flesh, if not some
fouler murder, more treacherous and bloody
than usual, and therefore attracting a little more
historic notice. But no one cared much about
a mischance of the kind, or, indeed, thought it
worth notice, save in the case of some favourite
of the chieftain, or the chieftain himself. Thus,
when the outlaw Fulk Fitz-Warine sent his
friend and servant, John de Raunpaygne, disguised
as a jongleur, to his great enemy Moris
Fitz-Roger, to spy how things were going, and
John de Raunpaygne struck a " wretched ribald
on the head, so that his brain flew into the
middle of the place," because, being very ill-
favoured, he and other ribalds had plucked at
the mock jongleur and scoffed at him, Moris
Fitz-Roger took the thing very much as a
matter of course, only swearing a great oath
that, but for the news John had brought—which,
by-the-by, was all false—he should have shared
the same fate. Hard words break no bones, and
John de Raunpaygne was quit with a scolding for
the crime of having committed murder in the very
presence of the lord and owner of that ribald
chattel, only because he had been made game of
for his natural as well as artificial ugliness. And
how many stories are there of princes in the olden
times being slain, either for hate or haste, at
banquets where the general drunkenness
allowed an enemy to steal in unperceived, or
strike a blow unwarded? Those gay and festive
halls were anything but gay and festive before
the last dish was cleared away; only, indeed,
the indifference to human life was such that a
murder more or less did not make much, matter,
provided no one of special consequence was
slain. Minstrels singing obscene songs,
jongleurs performing unseemly tricks, the grosser
the better liked; glee maidens turning summersaults,
heels over head, and no small thankfulness
needed, if nothing worse, do not add much
fascination to the picture, or give one a very
favourable idea of the moral delicacy of the
guests; while as for the rules of polite behaviour,
"grammercy, fair sirs," they show little
proficiency in that direction! I am almost
ashamed to transcribe them, but that I wish the
philo-chivalrists to learn what the Sir Launcelots
and the Elaines actually were, and how they lived;
leaving to them the task of measuring the
distance between them, and the modern Otaheitans
or North American Indians.

As they had no forks, but only their own knives
or whingers, which they cleaned by passing
under their thighs, one of the rules of good
breeding enjoined on the guest was the necessity
of cleaning his own knife under his own thigh,
and not sticking it—or his knee—under his
neighbour's. Also to the carver was delivered
the golden rule, " Set never on fyshe, flesche,
beeff, ne fowle, more than two fyngers and a
thombe"—even the strong stomachs of the
knights and ladies of the period not relishing the
idea of eating their meat hot from the horny palm
of the carver. They had no plates, save thick
trenchers or slices of bread; therefore they ate
what they wanted with their fingers, and threw
the remainder on the floor—a convenient army
of " ribalds," " letchers," and cats and dogs ever
at hand to pick up the pieces. It was held bad
breeding to play with the cats and dogs, and the
guests were commanded to keep their hands
clear of all contact under pain of being
considered too Gorilla-like for good society (Wright
quoting the Boke of Curtasye).

Whereso thou sitt at mete in borde (at table)
Avoide the cat at on bare worde,
For yf thou stroke cat other dogge,
Thou art lyke an ape teyghed with a clogge.

Also, the guest is advised to have clean hands
and nails, and cautioned against spitting on
the table, and against picking his teeth with a
knife, a straw, a stick, or the tablecloth. But
especially is he cautioned against using as his
pocket handkerchief that hand with which he
holds and tears his meat; and urgently advised,
when he performs that sometimes necessary
office, to wipe his hand immediately thereafter
on his skirt or his cape:

Yf thy nose thou clense, as may befalle,
Loke thy honde thou clense withalle,
Prively with skyrt do hit away,
Or ellis thurgh thi tepet that is so gay.

Will the next illustrator of the Idyls take this
point of manners as one of the special marks of
good breeding in the favourite knight, and show
how it was his graceful method of manipulation
with his skirt or his tippet that won Elaine's
tender heart, and kept captive so long that of