MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY—TREES
The seventeenth book of the "De Proprietatibus" deals with the properties of plants. The sources from which Bartholomew derives his information are Aristotle and Albertus Magnus' Gloss on the "De Vegetalibus," Albumazar, Pliny, Isaac on Foods, Hugo, and the Platearius. The text professes to deal with those trees and plants alone which are mentioned in the Gloss, but many others are incidentally mentioned, and we are thus enabled to learn the chief food-stuffs of our ancestors. The cereals of the time are wheat, barley, oats, and rye, just as at present; but the dinner-table of the day had neither turnip, cabbage, nor potato, and supplied their place with the parsnip, cole, and rape. Garlic, radishes, and lettuce were widely used, the former being valued in proportion to its power of overcoming any other odour. Flax seems to have been widely grown, and rushlights were then a luxury.
The subject of trees and plants does not so readily lend itself to fables as some other parts of natural history, but we refer the reader to the accounts of aloes, pepper, and mandragora as a specimen of the tales told, as our author says, "to make things dear, and of great price."
Aloes is a tree with good savour, and breedeth in India, and sometime a part thereof is set afire upon the altar in the stead of incense. It is found in the great river of Babylon, that joineth with a river of Paradise. Therefore many men trow that the aforesaid tree groweth among the trees of Paradise, and cometh out of Paradise by some hap or drift into [the] river of Ind. Men that dwell by that river take this tree out of the water by nets, and keep it to the use of medicine, for it is a good medicinal tree.
Of Cannel and of Cassia men told fables in old time, that it is found in birds' nests, and specially in the Phoenix' nest. And may not be found, but what falleth by its own weight, or is smitten down with lead arrows. But these men do feign, to make things dear and of great price; but as the sooth meaneth, cannel groweth among the Trogodites in the little Ethiopia, and cometh by long space of the sea in ships to the haven of Gelenites. No man hath leave to gather thereof tofore the sun-rising, nor after the sun going down. And when it is gathered, the priest by measure dealeth the branches and taketh thereof a part; and so by space of time, merchants buy that other deal.
Of this tree [Bays] speaketh the Master in History, and saith that Rebecca (Gen. xvii.) for trembling of nations she had seen in them that perished, laid a manner laurel tree that she called Tripodem under her head, and sat her upon boughs of an herb that hight Agnus Castus, for to use very revelations and sights and not fantasies.
The Emperor Tiberius Caesar in thundering and lightning used a garland of Laurel Tree on his head against dread of lightning, as it is said. Also Plinius telleth a wonder thing, that the emperor sat by Drusilla the empress in a certain garden, and an eagle threw from a right high place a wonder white hen into the empress' lap whole and sound, and the hen held in her bill a bough of laurel tree full of bays, and Diviners took heed to the hen, and sowed the bays, and kept them wisely, and of them came a wood, that was called Silva Triumphans, as it were the wood of worship for victory and mastery.
The green leaves thereof, that smell full well if they be stamped, heal stinging of bees and of wasps, and do away all swellings, and keep books and clothes there it is among from moths and other worms, and save them fro fretting and gnawing. The fruit of laurel trees are called bays, and are brown or red without, and white within and unctuous.
It is said that a hind taught first the virtue of diptannus, for she eateth this herb that she may calve easilier and sooner; and if she be hurt with an arrow, she seeketh this herb and eateth it, which putteth the iron out of the wound.
And ash hath so great virtue that serpents come not in shadow thereof in the morning nor at even. And if a serpent be set within a fire and ash leaves, he will flee into the fire sooner than into the leaves.