[gothic-l] Gothic Language Corner 8

[edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca [gothic-l]]

'Table' in Gothic
 

 1) (table for eating): biuths (masc. a-stem);
 

 'for even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs'
 jah auk hundos undaro biuda matjand af drauhsnom barne (Mk7,28)
 

 '(they) have been received at my table'
 ana biuda meinamma andnumanai wesun (Neh5,17)
 

 2) (table for working): mes (neut. a-stem);
 

 'he began to drive out those selling and buying in the temple and overturned the money-lenders' tables and the seats of those selling doves'
 dugann uswairpan thans frabugjandans jah bugjandans in alh jah mesa skattjane jah sitlans thize frabugjandane ahakim uswaltida (Mk11,15)
 

 

 What did Gothic dining-tables look like?
 

 Tacitus (22) writes of the Germani in the first century AD that "after their bath they take their meal, each having a separate seat and table of his own." Rare archaeological finds of tables from Northern Europe dating to the first millennium confirm Tacitus' statement. These tables are very small, more a short-legged tray than a table, averaging about 20 cm high, with small tops that are either round (Oberflacht grave 80), rectangular (10th-century Sala Hytta grave 4 in Vastmanland), or square (4-5th-century Wremen).
 

 It would seem that the diner assumed a semi-recumbant position in eating from these small tables, i.e., lying on one side with the upper body propped up on one elbow. To attempt to eat from so low a table while sitting upright is uncomfortable and results in food being dribbled on one's clothes (eating-forks were largely unknown in Northern Europe well into the sixteenth century), and there is no real room for one's legs if one attempts to sit crossed-legged at such a low table.
 

 The practice of dining from a small low table clearly lived on into the Middle Ages: a couple of references to dining in the Middle High German poem >Parzival< indicate that a dining-table was brought into the room and then removed after eating, and an attendant had to kneel down in order to cut up the food for the dining guest, the which clearly suggests some kind of very low table.
 

 Edmund
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