⁴³Sayers, William. "A cut above. Ration and station in an Irish king’s hall." Food and Foodways, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, p. 92.

The author describes the origin of one of the other names of the Banquet Hall: the "House of Mead Circling:"
"The 'mead-circling' to which the hall's name refers would have begun from the central vat at the western end and proceeded sun- or clockwise, the direction of good luck, to the king and others of comparable rank. Similarly, the meat was first served to, and perhaps even carved before, the most eminent of the diners."

Clodagh Downey provides another perspective on such accounts of the Banquet Hall rituals:
"The magnificent feasts so colourfully depicted by the authors that described Tara's banqueting hall, while hardly reflecting much of the reality of the lives of the high-kings who play the leading role in these literary depictions, were probably delineated using at least some practical details gleaned from those authors' own experiences." (Downey, Clodagh. "Dindsenchas and the Tech Midchúarta." Ériu, vol. 60, 2010, pp. 31-2.)