Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Alfred the Great of Blessed Memory: Memorials Concerning England Long Anterior to the Reign of King Alfred to His Epoch Dug Out of Long Forgotten Lore
At the banquets their diet was rude, consisting of venison, dry sausages, onions, wild apples, curds, cream, and salt butter. At the royal banquets, besides their common drink, they had rich wine, or liquors made of honey and mulberry-juice mixed with spices. These meetings generally terminated in riotous, excessive drinking, not except ing even their religious festivals, at which they swallowed large draught-s in honour of their gods.
Hospitality may be justly reckoned among the national virtues of the anglo-saxons, for in social entertainment and hospitality no nation was ever more liberal; they received all comers, without excep tion, into their houses, and feasted them in the best manner that their circumstances could afford. When all their provisions were consumed, they conducted their guests to the next house, where they were received with the same frankness and entertained with the same generosity.
These people were described by all the ancient writers as being remarkably tall, strong, and hardy in their persons, delighting much in war and military exercises, and accounting it more honourable to take the necessaries of life by force from others than to provide them by their own industry. They were free and bountiful in their manners, of a cheerful temper, and, though fierce and savage to their enemies, kind and liberal towards each other. Long after their settlement in this island of ours they were remarkable among the European nations for the symmetry of their persons, the fairness of their complexions, and the fineness of their hair. Their dress was very simple, that of the serf, or peasant, being a loose tunic made of linen or woollen cloth, ornamented with patches of the skins of difierent animals they also had large stockings of clumsy manufacture, which reached to the knee, but not unfrequently they went barefoot. On the head they wore a rude cap made of skins with the fur inwards they wore round their throats a metal collar bearing their own name, and the name of the noble, or freeman, who owned them.
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