1408. Alluding to the proverb—'Burnt bairns fear fire.' This occurs among the Proverbs of Hendyng, in the form—'Brend child fur dredeth.' So in the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1820—'Brent child of fyr hath muche drede.' The German is—'Ein gebranntes Kind fürchtet das Feuer'; see Ida v. Düringsfeld's Sprichwörter, i. 531.
1410. Alluding to the proverb—'Better late than never'; in French 'Il vaut mieux tard que jamais.' The German is—'Besser spät als nie'; see Ida v. Düringsfeld's Sprichwörter, i. 204.
1411. In Hazlitt's Proverbs—'Never is a long term.'
1413. Bayard was a colloquial name for a horse; see Piers Plowman, B. iv. 53, 124; vi. 196; and 'As bold as blind Bayard' was a common proverb. See also Troil. i. 218; Gower, Conf. Amant. iii. 44; Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 139, 186. 'Bot al blustyrne forth unblest as Bayard the blynd'; Awdelay's Poems, p. 48.
1416. 'As to turn aside from an obstacle in the road.'
1419. Compare this with the Man of Lawes Tale, B. 552.
1422. rape and renne, seize and clutch. The phrase, as it stands, is meaningless; rapen is to hurry, and rennen is to run, both verbs being intransitive. But it took the place of the older phrase repen and rinen (Ancren Riwle, p. 128), from A. S. hrepian and hrīnan, to handle and touch. The Ancren Riwle gives the form arepen and arechen, with the various readings repen and rinen, ropen and rimen. Ihre quotes the
English 'rap and ran, per fas et nefas ad se pertrahere.' Mr. Wedgwood notices rap and ran, to get by hook or crook, to seize whatever one can lay hands on, but misses the etymology. Palsgrave has—'I rap or rende, je rapine.' Coles (Eng. Dict. ed. 1684) has 'rap an[d] ren, snatch and catch.' 'All they could rap and rend and pilfer'; Butler, Hudibras, pt. ii. c. 2. 789. (First ed., rap and run.) The phrase is still in use in the (corrupted) form to rape and rend, or (in Cleveland) to rap and ree.
Briefly, rape, properly to hurry (Icel. hrapa), is a false substitute for A. S. hrepian, allied to G. raffen; whilst renne, to run, is a false substitute for A. S. hrīnan, to touch, lay hold of.
1428. Arnoldus de Villa Nova was a French physician, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist; born about A. D. 1235, died A. D. 1314. Tyrwhitt refers us to Fabricius, Bibl. Med. Æt., in v. Arnaldus Villanovanus. In a tract printed in Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 285, we have a reference to the same saying—'Et hoc est illud quod magni philosophi scripserunt, quod lapis noster fit ex Mercurio et sulphure praeparatis et separatis, et de hoc opere et substantia dicit Magister Arnoldus in tractatu suo parabolice, nisi granum frumenti in terra cadens mortuum fuerit, &c. Intelligens pro grano mortuo in terra, Mercurium mortuum cum sale petrae et vitriolo Romano, et cum sulphure; et ibi mortificatur, et ibi sublimatur cum igne, et sic multum fructus adfert, et hic est lapis major omnibus, quem philosophi quaesiverunt, et inventum absconderunt.' The whole process is described, but it is quite unintelligible to me. It is clear that two circumstances stand very much in the way of our being able to follow out such processes; these are (1) that the same substance was frequently denoted by six or seven different names; and (2) that one name (such as sulphur) denoted five or six different things (such as sulphuric acid, orpiment, sulphuret of arsenic, &c.).