26. Boiled meats and fish, usually salted, were put on the table in great wooden dishes, but roast meats were brought in on the spits on which they were cooked, and handed round by the thralls, to the company, who helped themselves with knives which they carried at their girdles. 27. There was plenty of ale, and among the richest, wine also, which they drank out of horn cups; and when the meats were taken away, they used to drink and sing, and play on the harp, and often had tumblers, jugglers, and minstrels to amuse them. 28. Then the visitors used to lie down on the floor to sleep, covered with their cloaks; for very few people had bedsteads, and the only beds were a kind of large bags, or bed-ticks, filled with straw, and blocks of wood for pillows. 29. Such were the rough manners of our Saxon forefathers, who were, however, in some respects a good sort of people, and you will be sorry for them by and by, when you read how the Normans came, and took away their lands, and made slaves of them. But I must first tell you what happened in the Saxon times, after the Heptarchy was broken up, and there was only one king of England. QUESTIONS. 4. How were the Saxons converted to Christianity? 6. By what means did they learn many useful arts? 8. What was the condition of the common people? 15. Describe the cottages of the poor. 16. How did the Saxons dress? 21. What were ceorls? and what were thralls? 22. Describe the house of a Saxon chief. CHAPTER V. THE DANES AND ALFRED THE GREAT. [Illustration: ALFRED THE GREAT.] 1. It was nearly 380 years after the first Saxons came here with their two pirate chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, that England began to have only one king. 2. There were still some other princes, who bore that title, but they had so little power, that they could hardly be called kings; so that a brave prince, named Egbert, who conquered the last kingdom of the Heptarchy, is usually called the first king of England. 3. The civil wars were thus, for a time, ended; but it seemed as if the English were never to be long at peace, for they now had some terrible enemies to contend with, who kept the country in constant alarm. 4. These were the Danes who came from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and were almost the same people as the Saxons; for they spoke the same language, followed the same customs, and lived by piracy, as the Saxons did in former times. 5. I have not room to tell you of half the mischief they did in England. Sometimes they would land suddenly from their boats in the night, when the affrighted people were awakened by a cry of, “the Danes! the Danes!” and, starting up, perhaps, beheld their villages in flames; and, as they ran in terror from their cottages, were either killed or dragged away to the pirate vessels, with the cattle and any thing else that could be found, and made slaves.