The Allusion contained in the Tract before us to the Circumstance of the Children wanting Teeth, may possibly be urged as an Objection to the early Date of 1350, which it claims for itself. For if this Circumstance of the Want of Teeth be a Fable, it is not probable that it could so soon have become current; and if on the other hand it be true, it seems hardly possible that the Fact could have been ascertained in 1350, respecting all Children born since the first Pestilence, i. e. since 1348. However, it is possible that by the first Pestilence our Author may have alluded, not to that of 1348, but to that of 1340, which is thus described by Knighton[85], under that Year: “In æstate scilicet anno gratiæ M.CCC.XL., accidit quædam execrabilis et enormis infirmitas in Anglia quasi communis, et præcipue in comitatu Leicestriæ, adeo quod durante passione homines emiserunt vocem latrabilem ac si esset latratus canum; et fuit quasi intolerabilis pœna durante passione. Exinde fuit magna pestilentia hominum.”
It is no Doubt a Difficulty that the Continuator of William de Nangis and other Chroniclers, represent the Phenomenon of the Want of Teeth as the Consequence of the Pestilence of 1348, but the Story may have originated at the former Period, although later Writers recorded it in Connexion with the more recent and more formidable Pestilence.
The Editor, however, leaves this Question to be decided by future Research, and by Judges more competent than himself. It is not impossible that the whole Passage[86] in which the Date of “thrittene hundrid yere and sixe and fifty” has been given, may prove to be a Quotation from the Book referred to under the Title of “Joachim in the Book of the Seedis of Profetis,” and if so, the Tract before us must of course be the Production of a later Period.
[Page xxxiii.] line 1.
Merlyn Ambrose.
For the History of Merlyn, see Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniæ, Lib. vi. c. 17, 18. The famous Prophecy of Merlyn will be found in Lib. vii. c. 3, 4. It has also been repeatedly published in a separate Form, with the Commentaries in seven Books of Alanus de Insulis.
[Ibid.] line 3.
of þe myscheif.
In the original MS. these Words are repeated, “in the tyme of the myscheif of the myscheif of the Kok;” the Editor did not deem it necessary to retain so obvious a Mistake of the Transcriber.