The English, although they take their word from the French, at first restored the k, and afterwards adopted the French termination, apricot.—See a paper on the word in N.& Q. for November 23, 1850. "I account the White peare-plum stocks the best to Inoculate Aprecock buds upon, although they may be done upon other Plum-stocks with good successe, if they be good juycie stocks, able to give a good nourishment, for Aprecock trees require much nourishment."—Austen's Treatise on Fruit Trees, 1657, p. 57. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) gives, "Abricot: m. The Abricot, or Apricocke plum." Minsheu (Span. Dict. 1599) has, "Albarcoque, or Alvarcoque, m. an apricocke." Compare Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 1. 169: "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries"; and Rich. II. Act iii. sc. 4, 29: "Go bind you up yon dangling apricocks."
[E147] "Boollesse." In the Grete Herball bolays, in Prompt. Parv. bolas. Prunus communis, Huds.; var. insititia, L. In Bacon's Essays xlvi. the name is spelt "bullises."
[E148] "Cheries." Austen, in his Treatise on Fruit Trees, Oxford, 1657, p. 56, enumerates the following kinds of cherries: "The Flanders Cherry, most generally planted, is a great bearing fruit. The May Cherries are tender, and the trees must be set in a warm place. The Black-hart Cherry, a very speciall fruit, and a great bearing fruit, and doubtlesse exceeding proper to presse for wine either to drink of itselfe, or to mix the juyce with Cider to give it a colour as Clarret-wine, it being of a deepe red, and a small quantity of it will colour a gallon of Cider or White wine. There is a Cherry we call the great bearing Cherry of M. Milleu. It may very well be called the great bearer, for the trees seldome fayle of great store of fruits, although in a cold and sharp spring."
[E149] "Chestnuts." Often spelt, but improperly, chesnut, as though the cheese-like nut. From the O. Fr. Chastaigne, and the Ital. Castagna, we learn its true derivation, namely from Castanæa in Thessaly, its native place.
[E150] "Cornet plums" = cornel plums; called also cornel cherry. O. Fr. cornille, now cornouille, L. Lat. cornolium, from Lat. cornus = a cornel cherry tree.
[E151] "The Damasco-plum is a good fruit and the trees beare well."—Austen's Treatise on Fruit Trees, 1657.
[E152] Andrew Boorde, in his Introduction of Knowledge, ed. Furnivall, p. 283, says: "Fylberdes be better than hasell nuttes; yf they be newe, and taken from the tree, and the skyn or the pyth pulled of, they be nutrytyue, and doth increase fatnes."
[E153] "Goose beries." Dr. R. A. Prior says: "From the Flemish kroes or kruys berie, Swed. krusbär, a word that bears the two meanings of 'cross-' and 'frizzle-berry,' but was given to this fruit with the first meaning, in reference to its triple spine, which not unfrequently presents the form of a cross. This equivocal word was misunderstood and taken in its other sense of 'frizzle-berry,' and translated into German and herbalist Latin as 'kraüsel-beere,' and 'uva crispa.' The Fr. groseille and Span. grosella are corruptions of Ger. kraüsel."
[E154] "Some Authors affirme that there have been Vine-yards in England in former times, though they be all destroyed long since. Divers places retaine the name of Vine yards still, at Bromwell Abby in Norfolke and at Elie in Cambridgshiere which afforded Wine; what else is the meaning of these old Rimes?
'Quatuor sunt Elie, Lanterna, Capella Marias
Et molendinum, nec non dans Vinea vinum.'