[E140] "Then lightly," an old form of expression. Tusser means that poor people are then probably or generally most sorely oppressed. Cf. "Short summer lightly has a forward spring."—Shakspere, Richard III. Act iii. sc. 1.
[E141] "Few Capons are cut now except about Dorking in Surrey; they have been excluded by the turkey, a more magnificent, but perhaps not a better fowl."—Pegge's Forme of Cury, ed. 1780, p. 19.
[E142] "Vpon the tune of King Salomon." Mar. 4, 1559, there is a receipt from Ralph Newberry for his licence for printing a ballad called "Kynge Saloman," Registr. Station. Comp. Lond. notat. A fol. 48a. Again in 1562, a licence to print "iij balletts, the one entituled 'Newes oute of Kent;' the other, a 'Newe ballat after the tune of Kynge Solomon;' and the third, 'Newes oute of Heaven and Hell.'"—Ibid. fol. 75a. Again, ibid. "Crestenmas Carowles auctorisshed by my lord of London." A ballad of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is entered in 1567, ibid. fol. 166a.—Warton's Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, vol. iii. p. 428.
[E143] There is some confusion here, although the sense is clear; probably we should read, "and flies from sinne," etc.
[E144] "Michel cries," i.e. to delay the operation of cutting, and therefore the cries of the animals, till Michaelmas, will have the effect of getting them into such condition as better to please the butchers' eyes.
[E145] "Bulchin," a double diminutive = bull-ock-in, cf. man-ik-in.
"For ten mark men sold a little bulchin;
Litille less men tolde a bouke of a motoun;
Men gaf fiveten schillynges for a goos or a hen."
—R. de Brunne's Chronicle, ed. Hearne, i. 174.
See also Langtoft, p. 174, and Middleton, iii. 524.
[E146] "Apricot;" in Shakspere, and in other writers of that century, apricock; in older writers abricot and abrecocke; from L. præcoqua or præcocia = early, from the fruit having been considered to be an early peach. A passage in Pliny (Hist. Nat. xv. 12) explains its name: "Post autumnum maturescunt Persica, æstate præcocia, intra xxx annos reperta." Martial also refers to it in the following words:
"Vilia materius fueramus praecoqua ramis,
Nunc in adoptivis persica cara sumus."
—Liber xiii. Ep. 46.