Probably such a bill of fare may dispel some notions about the sordid living of our ancestors, and the privations especially of those who dedicated themselves to a scholastic life. The existence of meagre days—or fish days, as they are called—in the year 1608, suggests explanations which we have not to offer. It would almost appear, however, that, at least in the dietary of the superior class, a fish day was one in which fish was added to a comfortable allotment of meat, instead of being substituted for it. Another contract occurs in the year 1649, varying little from “the said Andrew’s,” except in the addition of a few luxuries. The mess to be laid in the hall for dinner is to be “broth, skink, sodden beef, and mutton, the best in the market, with roasted mutton, lamb, veal, or hudderin, as the season of the year shall serve, with wheat bread and good stale ale; and at supper suchlike, with a capon or hen, or the equivalent.” The fish days continue to be distinguished less by the diminution of flesh—since there is to be two roasts in the day—than by the addition of fish. At supper there are to be sweetmeats and “stoved plumdamas,” which may be interpreted stewed prunes. Another article there introduced is called “stamped kaile.” The application of the participle is new to us, though, as every one ought to know, kail means broth, or what the French call _potage_; and a critic in such matters suggests that the word stamped may refer to the mashing of the materials. In the earlier of the contracts which we have referred to, the board-money was—for the master’s table, £30 per quarter, (Scots money, of course); and for the bursars’, £16. 13s. 4d. The value of money had so far risen that in the next period the sums were respectively £46 and £24. The master’s table was frequented by the young aristocracy of Scotland, apparently in as ample a proportion as those of England are now to be found at Oxford and Cambridge. Thus, in an inventory of occupied rooms, apparently in one floor, the aristocratic element has a decided preponderance in the nomenclature: “Lord James’s chamber, Francis Montgomerie’s chamber, Kilmarnock’s chamber, Richard Elphinstone’s chamber, George Smyth’s chamber, James Fleming’s chamber, Joseph Gill’s chamber, James Simson’s chamber.”[140]