‘He is not entitled to butter’: the diet of peasants and commoners in early medieval Ireland

Abstract:AbstractHospitality was an important part of early medieval Irish culture and one of the ways this was expressed was through the preparation of meals for guests. Old and Middle Irish law tracts, written mainly in the seventh and eighth centuries, described the types of foods to which each level of free society in early medieval Ireland was entitled during these social visits and, as can be seen from the quotation in the title of this paper, certain restrictions based on grade and status applied. The legal entitlements of commoners to vegetables, dairy products, breads and, on the rare occasion, meats while in another person's home was neither the full range of foods available in early medieval Ireland nor the totality of the foods an individual might consume in their own home or during feasts. An investigation into these law tracts as well as Old and Middle Irish sagas, poetry, other literary compositions and ecclesiastical descriptions of a penitential or hermetic diet suggest a wider range of available foods, including fruits, fish and wild game that both peasants and commoners were likely to have consumed on a seasonal basis.