Trencher (tableware)

A trencher was originally a flat round of (usually stale) bread used as a plate, upon which the food could be placed to eat.

3, Aeneas recounts to Dido how after a battle between the Trojans and the Harpies, Calaeno, chief of the Furies, prophesied to him (claiming to have the knowledge from Apollo) that he would finally arrive in Italy, but Never shall you build your promised city Until the injury you did us by this slaughter Has brought you to a hunger so cruel That you gnaw your very tables.

However, he reattributes the prophecy to his deceased father, Anchises: I now can tell you, my father Anchises Revealed these secrets to me for he said: "When you have sailed, son, to an unknown shore And, short of food, are driven to eat your tables, Then, weary though you are, hope you are home[8] This episode is alluded to in Allen Tate's poem "The Mediterranean", although Tate calls them "plates".

[9] The Middle Ages, Everyday Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey L. Singman (Sterling publishers) offers the following observation: "The place setting also included a trencher, a round slice of bread from the bottom or the top of an old loaf, having a hard crust and serving as a plate.

Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, such as this excerpt from A Dance with Dragons: "The beer was brown, the bread black, the stew a creamy white.