The most generall and commonest experienst liuing that the toyle-imbracing Husbandman liueth by, is either by plowing and sowing of his Corne, or by rearing and breeding of Cattell, and not the one without the other, because they be adjuncts, and may not be disceuered. Then sithens that the Plough is the first good instrument, by which the Husband-men rips from the Earths wombe a well-pleasing liuing, I thinke it is most conuenient first to speake of the forme, fashion, and making therof.”
The words italicised (except in the title) are all his own.
The Glossarial Index, a very full one, was almost entirely prepared, in the first instance, by my eldest daughter, though I have since added a few explanations in some cases, and have revised the whole, at the same time verifying the references. As to the meaning of a few terms, I am still uncertain.
Fitzherbert’s general style is plain, simple, and direct, and he evidently has the welfare of his reader at heart, to whom he offers kindly advice in a manner least calculated to give offence. He is in general grave and practical, but there are a few touches of quiet humour in his remarks upon horse-dealing. “Howe be it I saye to my customers, and those that bye any horses of me, and [if] euer they wil trust any hors-master or corser whyle they lyue, truste me.” I would have trusted him implicitly.
The difficulties of his language arise almost entirely from the presence of numerous technical terms; and it is, indeed, this fact that renders his book one of considerable philological interest, and adapts it for publication by the English Dialect Society. By way of a small contribution to English etymology, I beg leave to take a single instance, and to consider what he has to tell us about the word peruse.
The whole difficulty as to the etymology of this word arises from the change of sense; it is now used in such a way that the derivation from per- and use is not obvious; nor does it commend itself to such as are unacquainted with historical method. For this reason, some etymologists, including Webster, have imagined that it arose from peruise = pervise to see thoroughly, the i being dropped, and the u (really v) being mistaken for the vowel. This is one of those wholly unscrupulous fictions to which but too many incline, as if the cause of truth could ever be helped forward by means of deliberate invention. But there is no such word as peruise, nor any French perviser. Fitzherbert is one of the earliest authorities for peruse, though it also occurs in Skelton, Philip Sparrow, l. 814. Investigation will show that, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, there was a fashion of using words compounded with per-, a number of which I have given in my Dictionary, s. v. peruse. The old sense was ‘to use up, to go through thoroughly, to attend to one by one;’ and the word was sometimes spelt with a v, because vse (use) was generally so spelt. Examples are:—
“Let hym [i.e. the husbandman who wants to reckon the tithe of his corn] goo to the ende of his lande, and begynne and tell [i.e. count] .ix. sheues, and let hym caste out the .x. shefe in the name of god, and so to pervse from lande to lande, tyll he have trewely tythed all his corne;” sect. 30, l. 4.
“And thus [let the shepherd] peruse them all tyll he haue doone;” sect. 40, l. 23.
“Than [let the surveyor who is surveying property go] to the second howse on the same east side in lyke maner, and so to peruse from house to house tyll he come to St. Magnus churche;” Book of Surveying (1767), chap. xix.
“Begyn to plowe a forowe in the middes of the side of the land, and cast it downe as yf thou shulde falowe it, and so peruse both sydes tyl the rygge be cast down,” etc.; Book of Surveying (1767); chap. xxiv.