e time and in the same place. On the subject of food we have ample
details scattered incidentally through our annals. Boiling was probably
the principal method of preparing meat, and for this purpose the Irish
were amply provided with vessels. A brazen cauldron is lithographed in
the _Ulster Archaeological Journal_, which is a most interesting specimen
of its kind. It was found in a turf bog in the county Down, at a depth
of five feet from the surface; and as this bog has been used from time
immemorial for supplying the neighbourhood with fuel, and is remembered
to have been forty feet above its present level by a generation now
living, the antiquity of the vessel is unquestionable. As a specimen of
superior workmanship, the cauldron has been greatly admired. It is made
of sheets of gold-coloured bronze, evidently formed by hammering: the
rim is of much thicker metal than the rest, and is rendered stiffer by
corrugation--a process which has been patented in England within the
last dozen years, as a new and valuable discovery.[250]

Cauldrons are constantly mentioned in the Book of Rights, in a manner
which shows that these vessels were in constant use. It was one of the
tributes to be presented in due form by the King of Cashel to the King
of Tara; and in the will of Cahir Mor, Monarch of Ireland in the second
century, fifty copper cauldrons are amongst the items bequeathed to his
family. Probably the poorer classes, who could not afford such costly
vessels, may have contented themselves with roasting their food
exclusively, unless, indeed, they employed the primitive method of
casting red hot stones into water when they wished it boiled.

The exact precision which characterizes every legal enactment in ancient
Erinn, and which could not have existed in a state of barbarism, is
manifested even in the regulations about food. Each member of the
chieftain's family had his appointed portion, and there is certainly a
quaintness in the parts selected for each. The _saoi_ of literature and
the king were to share alike, as we observed when briefly alluding to
this subject in the chapter on ancient Tara; their portion was a prime
steak. Cooks and trumpeters were specially to be supplied with "cheering
mead," it is to be supposed because their occupations required more than
ordinary libations; the historian was to have a crooked bone; the
hunter, a pig's shoulder: in fact, each person and each office had its
special portion assig