FOOTNOTES:
[237:1] "Catholicon Anglicum."
RAISINS.
| Clown. | Four pounds of Prunes and as many of Raisins o' the sun. | |
| Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 3 (51). | ||
Raisins are alluded to, if not actually named, in "1st Henry IV.," act ii, sc. 4, when Falstaff says: "If reasons were as plentiful as Blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I——" "It seems that a pun underlies this, the association of reasons with Blackberries springing out of the fact that reasons sounded like raisins."—Earle, Philology, &c.
Bearing in mind that Raisin is a corruption of racemus, a bunch of Grapes, we can understand that the word was not always applied, as it is now, to the dried fruit, but was sometimes applied to the bunch of Grapes as it hung ripe on the tree—
"For no man at the firste stroke
He may not felle down an Oke;
Nor of the Reisins have the wyne
Till Grapes be ripe and welle afyne."
Romaunt of the Rose.