(Tom Clare)

Whether one is a king or a pig-keeper, an abbot or an ale-wife, one must eat. Exactly what one eats is the main point of difference in society, and a wandering adventurer, travelling from hall to hostel to hovel, never knowing where – or what – his next bed will be, could find himself running a culinary gamut. At midday he may dine on a rich lord’s roast venison, with pheasant and goose stew, herb-stuffed pike, and a selection of candied fruits from the south, all washed down with wine from the Continent; and come nightfall sup on bread and broth in a woodsman’s hovel.

This article touches on the dining habits of the people of Albion*, what they eat, when, and what behaviour they are expected to exhibit while eating. The rules and descriptions are certainly not intended to be used every time the PCs stop for a meal; that would very quickly become tedious. But they are meant to help referees add colour to a gaming session. The feudal society of Ellesland* is a foreign one to players of the Twenty-first Century, and presenting such an ordinary activity as eating through a medieval lens can imbue the ordinary prologue to an adventure with a touch of the alien and the intriguing, reminding players that their characters really are from a different world.

Meals

Humble Meals

Travelling

Feasts

Table Manners

Bibliography

- Bishop, Morris. The Penguin Book of the Middle Ages. Penguin, 1971.
- C. M. Woolgar. The great household in late medieval England. Yale University Press, 1999.
- Hammond, P. W. Food and Feast in Medieval England. Alan Sutton, 1993.
- Hartley, Dorothy. Lost Country Life. Pantheon Books, 1979.
- Gies, Joseph. Life in a Medieval Castle. Harper & Row, 1974. Life in a Medieval Village. Harper & Row, 1990.
- Jusserand, Jean Adrien Antoine Jules. English wayfaring life in the Middle Ages. Benn, 1950
- Lacey, Robert. The Year 1000. Little, Brown and Company, 2000.
- Life in the Age of Chivalry. Reader’s Digest, 1993.
- Medieval Folklore. Oxford University Press, 2002. (Lindahl, Carl, ed.).
- Mitchell, R. J. The Medieval Feast. Longmans, Green, & Company, 1958.
- Rowling, Marjorie. Everyday life of medieval travellers. B. T. Batsford; G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971