Some excerpts from this marvelous book, published in 1926 by E.R.Eddison...[at a banquet]
Now were borne round dishes of carp, pilchards, and lobsters, and thereafter store enow of meats: a fat kid roasted whole and garnished with peas on a spacious silver charger, kid pasties, plates of neats' tongues and sweetbreads, sucking rabbits in jellies, hedgehogs baked in their skins, hogs' haslets, carbonadoes, chitterlings, and dormouse pies. These and other luscious meats were borne round continually by thralls who moved silent on bare feet; and merry weaved the talk as the edge of hunger become blunted a little, and cockles of men's hearts were warmed with wine.
...
"Without controversy, there be seventeen several sorts of divels [devils, assumedly] on the Moruna," said Corsus, very loud and sudden, so that all turned to look on him; "fiery divels, divels of the air, terrestrial divels, as you may say, and water divels, and subterranean divels. Without controversy there by seven seen sorts, seventeen several sorts of hob-thrushes, and several sorts of divels, and if the humour took me I could name them all by rote."
Wondrous solemn was the heavy face of Corsus, his eyes baggy underneath and somewhat bloodshed, his pendulous cheeks, thick blubber upper-lip, and bristle gray moustachios and whiskers. He had eaten, mainly to provoke thirst, pickled olives, capers, salted almonds, anchovies, fumadoes, and pilchards fried with mustard, and now awaited the salt chine of beef to be a pillow and a resting place for new potations
You may read the full text here, if you enjoy reading books on monitors. Really quite beautiful writing.
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