lthier farmers and persons of the trading classes and
the nobility had begun to use imported carpets and hangings. Table
linen and napkins were also coming into service. The use of forks was
confined to royalty.

When the fine ladies went abroad in their vehicles or were carried
in their chairs, they had to plow through streets deep with mire and
filth; so much so, that it was not unusual for coaches to stick fast
and depend upon the aid of some friendly teamster to extricate them.
The sanitation of the dwellings was little better than that of the
streets. The stench of the houses of the poor was so great that the
priests made it an excuse for failure to pay parochial visits to them.
The better class of houses were, of course, kept much cleaner.

The impression that food in the Middle Ages was coarse and not
elaborate is not borne out, as we have seen, by the facts; for, from
Anglo-Saxon times down, the people were very fond of the table, and in
the higher circles elaborate banquets stood as one of the most usual
resources of a hospitality which had to make up for its barrenness in
other ways by the bounties of elaborate feasts, so that we are quite
prepared for Alexander Neckam's list of kitchen requisites. This
ecclesiastic of the latter half of the twelfth century has left us a
list of the things to be found in a well-ordered kitchen. Besides
his list, we have the testimony of cookbooks of the time, which give
directions for making dishes that are both complicated and toothsome.
Indeed, the position of cook was one of importance, and upon him often
rested, in great houses, the honor of the establishment.

In this connection may be given some of the curious injunctions of the
Anglo-Saxon penitentials, which continued to be quoted throughout the
Middle Ages, becoming superstitious beliefs after they had lost their
ecclesiastical character and undergone the changes which, with the
lapse of time, develop folklore. One of the oddest prescribed that in
case a "mouse fall into liquor, let it be taken out, and sprinkle the
liquor with holy-water, and if it be alive, the liquor may be used,
but if it be dead, throw the liquor out and cleanse the vessel."
Another said: "He who uses anything a dog or mouse has eaten of, or a
weasel polluted, if he do it knowingly, let him sing a hundred psalms;
and if he knew it not, let him sing fifty psalms." These are but
samples of many superstitions with which the thought of the Middle