bed.  The name probably originated in the custom of sleeping in those halls, on the benches which surrounded them, or on the floor near the fire-place.  In the ground plan of the banqueting hall at Tara, the house is shown as divided into five parts, which are again divided into others.  Each of the two divisions extending along the side wall, is shown as subdivided into twelve imdas, which here mean seats; the central division is represented as containing three fires at equal distances, a vat, and a chandelier.

Benches were the seats used, even by persons of rank, until a late period.  In the French Carlovingian romances, even princes and great barons sat on them.  Chairs were comparatively rare, and only used on state occasions, as late as the twelfth century.  Wright gives some curious woodcuts of persons conversing together, who are seated on settles, or on seats formed in the walls round the room; such as may still be seen in monastic cloisters and the chapter houses of our old cathedrals.  Food which had been roasted was probably handed round to the guests on the spit on which it had been cooked.[255] Such at least was the Anglo-Saxon fashion; and as the Irish had spits, and as forks were an unknown luxury for centuries later, we may presume they were served in a similar manner.  The food was varied and abundant, probably none the less wholesome for being free from the Anglo-Norman refinements of cookery, introduced at a later period.  For animal diet there were fat beeves, dainty venison, pork, fresh and salted, evidently as favourite a dish with the ancients as with the moderns—­except, alas! that in the good old times it was more procurable.  Sheep and goats also varied the fare, with “smaller game,” easily procured by chase, or shot down with arrows or sling stones.  The land abounded in “milk and honey.”  Wheat was planted at an early period; and after the introduction of Christianity, every monastic establishment had its mill.  There were “good old times” in Ireland unquestionably.  Even an English prince mentions “the honey and wheat, the gold and silver,” which he found in “fair Innis-fail.”  It is probable that land was cultivated then which now lies arid and unreclaimed, for a writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions having found traces of tillage, when laying out drains in remote unproductive districts, several feet beneath the peaty soil.  Dr. O’Donovan also writes in the same journal:  “I believe the Irish have had wheat in the more fertile valleys and plains from a most remote period.  It is mentioned constantly in the Brehon laws and in our most ancient poems."[256] Nor should we omit to mention fish in the list of edibles.  During the summer months, fishing was a favourite and lucrative occupation; and if we are to believe a legend quoted in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, the Fenians enjoyed a monopoly in the trade, for no man dare take a salmon, “dead or alive,” excepting a man in the Fenian ranks; and piscatory squabbles seem to have extended themselves into downright battles between the Northmen and the natives, when there was question of the possession of a weir.[257]