[E109] "There grows in several parts of Africa, Asia, and America, a kind of corn called Mays, and such as we commonly name Turkey wheat. They make bread of it, which is hard of digestion, heavy in the stomach, and does not agree with any but such as are of a robust and hail constitution."—A Treatise on Foods, by Mons. L. Lemery, London, 1704, p. 71.
[E110] Breadcorne and drinkcorn mean wheat and barley, the first being used for the making of bread, the second for malting purposes. Mr. Peacock, in his Glossary of Manley, etc., has: "Breadcorn, corn to be ground into breadmeal (i.e. flour with only a portion of the bran taken out, from which brown bread is made); not to be used for finer purposes. It is a common custom of farmers, when they engage a bailiff, to give him a certain sum of money per annum, and to allow him also his breadcorn at 40s. per quarter." Cf. Piers Plowman, C. Text, Passus ix. 61: "A boussel of bredcorne."
[E111] Hazlitt gives as a proverb: "To play the devil in the bulmong." An acre of bullimong land was worth 33s. 4d.; see note [E370].
[E112] According to Norden (Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 239) the best mode of making a quickset hedge is as follows: "The plants of whitethorne, mixed here and there with oke and ash"; if the plants are not easily procured, then "the berries of the white or hawthorne, acornes, ash keyes mixed together, and these wrought or wound up in a rope of straw, wil serve, but they will be somewhat longer in growing. Make a trench at the top or in the edge of the ditch, and lay into it some fat soyle, and then lay the rope all along the ditch, and cover it with good soile also, then cover it with the earth, and ever as any weedes or grasse begins to grow, pull it off and keepe it as cleane as may be from all hindrances, and when the seeds begin to come, keepe cattle from bruising them, and after some two or three yeares, cut the yong spring by the earth, and so will they branch and grow thick, and if occasion serve, cut them so again alwayes, preserving the oake and ashe to become trees." The best time to lay the berries in this manner is "in September or October, if the berries be fully ripe."
[E113] A "porkling" was worth 28d. at the time. See note [E370].
[E114] With reference to the "daintiness" of the Flemings, many of whom were settled on the East coast, compare the following:
"Now bere and bacon bene fro Pruse ibrought
Into Flaundres, as loved and fere isoughte;
Osmonde Peltre-ware [hides], and grey, pych, terre, borde, and flex,
And Coleyne threde, fustiane, and canvase,
Corde, bokeram; of olde tyme thus it wase.
But the Flemmyngis, amonge these thinges dere,
In comen lowen [love] beste bacon and bere.
Thus arre they hogges; and drynkyn wele ataunt [so much];
Farewel, Flemynge! hay, harys, hay, avaunt!"
—Wright's Political Songs, ii. 171.
[E115] Light fire, as it is termed, is still used in Norfolk.—M.
[E116] "Bowd eaten malt." "The more it be dried (yet must it be doone with soft fire) the sweeter and better the malt is, and the longer it will continue, whereas if it be not dried downe (as they call it), but slackelie handled, it will breed a kind of worme, called a wiuell, which groweth in the floure of the corne, and in processe of time will so eat out it selfe, that nothing shall remaine of the graine but euen the verie rind or huske."—Harrison, Description of England, part i. pp. 156-7. R. Holme says that "the Wievell eateth and devoureth corn in the garners; they are of some people called bowds."—Acad. of Arm. Bk. ii. p. 467. "Bruk is a maner of flye, short and brodissh, and in a sad husc, blak hed, in shap mykel toward a golde bowde, and mykhede[size] of twyis and þryis atte moste of a gold bowde, a chouere, oþer vulgal can y non þerfore."—Arundel MS. 42, f. 64. The name gold bowde probably denotes a species of Chrysomela, Linn. Way, in Prompt. Parv.
[E117] See note [E5] on "A Medicine for the Cowlaske." Sloes gently baked in an oven are best preserved. They are an excellent and cheap remedy for laxity of the bowels, in men or cattle, if judiciously used.—M.