[24] In the description of a splendid hall, in the English metrical romance of kyng Alisaunder (Weber, i. 312), the windows are made “of riche glas.”
[25] The old literary antiquaries, through mistaking the u of the manuscripts for an n, and not attending to the derivation, have created a meaningless word—jongleur—which never existed, and ought now to be entirely abandoned.
[26] The Latin original of this story is so quaint that it deserves to be given ipsissimis verbis. “De rustico et simia. Quidam aulam cujusdam nobilis intrans, vidensque simiam de secta filiorum vestitum, quia dorsum ad eum habebat, filium credidit esse domini, cui cum reverentia qua debuit loqueretur. Invenit esse simiam super eum cachinnantem, cui ille, ‘Maledicaris!’ inquit, ‘credidi quod fuisses Jankyn filius domini mei.’”—Latin Stories, p. 122.
[27] Item, que par la dicte dame Agnes vous faciez principalment et diligemment penser de vos bestes de chambre, comme petis chiennés, oiselets de chambre; et aussi la beguine et vous pensez des autres oiseauls domeschés, car ils ne pevent parler, et pour ce vous devez parler et penser pour eulx, se vous en avez.—(Ménagier de Paris, ii. 62.)
[28] Et ayez fait adviser par avant, qu’ils aient chascun loing de son lit chandelier à platine pour mettre sa chandelle, et les aiez fait introduire sagement de l’estaindre à la bouche ou à la main avant qu’ils entrent en leur lit, et non mie à la chemise.—(Ménagier de Paris, ii. 71.)
[29] To show the extreme ignorance which has prevailed on the history of English gardening in the middle ages, it need only be mentioned that Loudon, “Encyclopædia of Gardening” (edition of 1850), was not aware that the leek had been cultivated in England before the time of Tusser, the latter half of the sixteenth century (p. 854); and states that garlic “has been cultivated in this country since 1548” (p. 855); and that the radish is “an annual, a native of China, and was mentioned by Gerard in 1584” (p. 846).
[30] Loudon (p. 887) was not aware that the cultivation of sage dated farther back than the time of Gerard, who wrote in 1597, and he could trace back to no older date the cultivation of rue.
[31] Our word chestnut is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyste-hnutu, the nut of the cyste-tree. I may remark, on these names of fruits, that Loudon imagined that the peach was “introduced into England about the middle of the sixteenth century” (“Encyclopædia of Gardening,” p. 912); and that of the fig, the “first trees were brought over from Italy by Cardinal Pole, in 1525.” He seems to think that quinces and mulberries came into this country also in the course of the sixteenth century.
[32] There is, however, an Anglo-Saxon name of a tree which I suspect has been misinterpreted. The glossaries give “ramnus, þefe-þorn,” and our lexicographers, taking the old sense of the word rhamnus, interpret it, the dog-rose. But in a very curious glossary of names of plants of the middle of the thirteenth century, printed in my “Volume of Glossaries,” in which the meaning of the Latin word is given in Anglo-Norman and in English, we have “Ramni, grosiler, þefe-þorn” (p. 141). I have no doubt that the thefe-thorn was the gooseberry. In the dialect of Norfolk, gooseberries are still called theabes.
[33] It may be well to remark, once for all, that it is almost impossible to identify some of these mediæval names of plants.