The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat.
- Walter William Skeat
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![“ dog’s tootli ”) pattern, found on bowls and other drinking-vessels of the Anglo-Saxons, as on those of many other races from prehistoric times onwards in most parts of the world. But the oddest story of all is perhaps the history of our word hamper, which derives its Norman name hanaper ” from a basket meant to hold an Anglo- Saxon stemmed drinking-cup of a particular kind called “ hnap.” The older form of this word hanap-ei^ actually survived till 1832 in the title of one of the officers in the English Exchequer who was called Clerk or Warden of the Hanaper, the hamper or hanaper in this case being a large basket in which writs were deposited. In Ireland election writs still go to the “ Clerk of the Hanaper.” In the most ancient days, the table-cloth was the skin of a wild beast spread upon the ground, but from a very early period in Britain a cloth was used, as in the peaceful picture of a family meal in England, described in one of the ancient Icelandic books called Eddas, “ Mother took a broidered cloth of bleached flax and covered the table. Then she took thin loaves of white wheat and covered the cloth. She set forth silver-mounted dishes of . . . old [well-cured] ham, and roasted birds. There was wine in a can, and mounted beakers. They drank and talked while the day passed by.” In some ancient records of Glastonbury, about](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24885848_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
