ABSTRACT
In 1508, Wynkyn de Worde printed a short book ‘of kervynge and sewing’; that is, a guide to carving and serving meat, fish and other foods. The collective nouns are of particular interest in this context because in printed editions of The Boke of Hawking and Hunting they immediately precede, anticipate and cast their own particoloured light over the terms of carving: ‘an unbrewyng of kerveris’, ‘a Goryng of Bochouris’. The carver in de Worde’s Boke of Kervynge is a sewer who knows as much about general service as about the cutting of meat. That the verbs of carving were used in contemporary texts to describe the Passion of Christ suggests that in some circumstances they could turn into a register of ethical difficulties that have to be overcome before any kind of meat is served at table. In the past five centuries, few other than Breton’s fictional countryman have contemplated the terms of carving with Woolley’s courageous common sense.
