Days spent in this medley of feast and deliberation gave place to nights of revelry, at which masques and mummings formed some of the features of the entertainments. A continual round of revelry was thus maintained during the whole of the twelve days forming the feast of Yule, and seldom until the expiration of the closing night’s debauch did they return to a more sober course. A capital insight into the manners of the times of the first Richard is supplied by Sir Walter Scott in his historical romance _Ivanhoe_. From it we gather the forms of _pledging_ then adopted: thus Cedric is represented as addressing Sir Templar:--‘Pledge me in a cup of wine, and fill another to the Abbot, while I look back some thirty years to tell you another tale.’ ‘To the memory of the brave who fought’ at Northallerton! ‘Pledge me, my guests.’ After ‘deep drinking’ a further toast is proposed:--‘Knave, fill the goblets--To the strong in arms, be their race or language what it will.’ On another occasion we find the hermit bringing forth ‘two large drinking-cups, made out of the horn of the urus, and hooped with silver. Having made this goodly provision for washing down the supper, he seemed to think no farther ceremonious scruple necessary on his part; but filling both cups, and saying in the Saxon fashion, ‘_Waes Hael_, Sir sluggish knight!’ he emptied his own at a draught. ‘_Drink Hael_, Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst!’ answered the warrior. Another story is given in which Cedric welcomes King Richard with the same salutation. The heads of religious houses are probably caricatured with truth. There is exquisite satire in the letter which Conrad is made to read from Prior Aymer:--‘Aymer, by divine grace, Prior of the Cistercian house of St. Mary’s of Jorvaulx, to Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a knight of the holy order of the Temple, wisheth health, with the bounties of King Bacchus and my Lady of Venus.... I trust to have my part when we make merry together, as true brothers, not forgetting the wine cup. For, what saith the text? _Vinum lætificat cor hominis._’ The capacity of Friar Tuck is gauged by the king (chap. xli.) at ‘a but of sack, a runlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale, of the first strike. If,’ says the king, ‘that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and be acquainted with my butler.’