[E165] "Wallnuts are usually eaten after meales to close up the stomach, and help digestion. And according to Avicen (Can. lib. 2, cap. 501), recentes sunt meliores stomacho (the newer the better for the stomach). Bread or Bisket may be made of the meale being dried. The young nuts peeled are preserved, and candied for Banquetting stuffe: and being ripe the Kernells may be crusted over with sugar, and kept long. Avicen says (Can. lib. 2, cap. 501): 'Iuglans ficubus et Rutâ medicina omnibus venenis': Wallnuts with Figs and Rue is a preservative against all poison. Schol. Salern. reckons Wallnuts for one of the six things that resist poyson:
'Allia, Nux, Ruta, Pyra, Raphanus cum Theriaca:
Hæc sunt Antidotum contra mortale venenum.'
Garlicke, Rue, Peares, Treacle and Nuts:
Take these and then no deadly poyson hurts.
Mithridates the great: his preservative was (as is recorded by Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 23, c. 18), 'Two Wallnuts, two Figs, 20 leaves of Rue and a grain of salt stamped together,' which taken no poyson that day could hurt him. Greene Wallnuts about Midsommer distilled and drunk with vineger, are accounted a certain preservative against the Pestilence."—Austen's Treatise of Fruit Trees, 1657. "Walnuts be hurtful to the memory, and so are Onyons, because they annoy the eyes with dazeling dimnesse through a hoate vapour."—T. Newton, Touchstone, ed. 1581, f. 125b. The original prescription of the antidote of Mithridates, discovered by Pompey among the archives of the king, was very simple. Q. Serenus tells us that
"Magnus scrinia regis
Cum raperet victor, vilem deprehendit in illis
Synthesin, et vulgata satis medicamina risit:
Bis denum rutæ folium, salis et breve granum,
Juglandesque duas, terno cum corpore ficus."
Cf. Piers Plowman, C. Text, Pass. xiii. 143:
"As in a walnote withoute ys a byter barke,
And after þat biter barke be þe shele aweye,
Ys a curnel of comfort kynde to restorie."
On which see Mr. Skeat's note.
[E166] "Warden appulles rosted, stued, or baken, be nutrytyue, and doth comfort the stomache, specyally yf they be eaten with comfettes."—Andrew Boorde's Dyetary, ed. Furnivall, E.E.T. Soc. p. 284. And again, ibid. p. 291, as a remedy for the Pestilence: "Let hym vse to eate stued or baken wardens, yf they can be goten; yf not, eate stued or baken peers, with comfettes: vse no grosse meates, but those the which be lyght of dygestyon."
[E167] "Froth" refers here to veal and pig and lamb, all three. Halliwell suggests tender as the meaning. It seems to mean pulpy or light.
[E168] "Be greedie in spending," that is, he who is eager to spend and careless in saving, will soon become a beggar, and he who is ready to kill, and unskilful in storing, need look for no plenty.