We have no allusion in Anglo-Saxon writers to chimneys, or fireplaces, in our modern acceptation of the term. When necessary, the fire seems to have been made on the floor, in the place most convenient. We find instances in the early saints’ legends where the hall was burnt by incautiously lighting the fire too near the wall. Hence it seems to have been usually placed in the middle, and there can be little doubt that there was an opening, or, as it was called in later times, a louver, in the roof above, for the escape of the smoke. The historian Bede describes a Northumbrian king, in the middle of the seventh century, as having, on his return from hunting, entered the hall with his attendants, and all standing round the fire to warm themselves. A somewhat similar scene, but in more humble life, is represented in the accompanying cut, taken from a manuscript calendar of the beginning of the eleventh century (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. iv.). The material for feeding the fire is wood, which the man to the left is bringing from a heap, while his companion is administering to the fire with a pair of Saxon tongs (_tangan_). The vocabularies give _tange_, tongs, and _bylig_, bellows; and they speak of _col_, coal (explained by the Latin _carbo_), and _synder_, a cinder (_scorium_). As all these are Saxon words, and not derived from the Latin, we may suppose that they represent things known to the Anglo-Saxon race from an early period; and as charcoal does not produce _scorium_, or cinder, it is perhaps not going too far to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons were acquainted with the use of mineral coal. We know nothing of any other fire utensils, except that the Anglo-Saxons used a _fyr-scofl_, or fire-shovel. The place in which the fire was made was the _heorth_, or hearth. [Illustration: _No. 13. A Party at the Fire._]