[44] Eyebright.
[45] Better known as Solomon’s seal.
[46] Dropwort.
[47] Eringoes.
[48] Gooseberries? See before, p. 296.
[49] Quidam juvenis de domo domini Lundoniensis episcopi, spiritum habens in avibus cœli ludere, nisum suum docuit cercellas affectare propensius. Itaque juxta sonitum illius instrumenti quod a ripatoribus vocatur tabur, subito cercella quædam alarum remigio pernicitur evolavit. Nisus autem illusus lupum quendam nantem in locis sub undis crispantibus intercepit, invasit, et cepit, et super spatium sicut visum est xl. pedum se cum nova præda recepit.—Rad. de Diceto, ap. Decem Striptores, col. 666.
[50] A Bury will, of the date 1522, mentioned a little further on, enumerates among the household furniture “the steynyd clothes hangyng abowte the parlour behynde the halle chemny.”
[51] This receipt is curious enough to be given here; it is as follows:—“Fyrst, take and geve hym yelow antes, otherwyse called pysmerys, as nere as ye may, and the white ante or pysmers egges be best bothe wynter and somer, ij. tymes of the day an handful of bothe. Also, geve hym of these sowes that crepe with many fete, and falle oute of howce rovys. Also, geve hym whyte wormes that breede betwene the barke and the tre.”—Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 203.
[52] Dagswain was a sort of rough material of which the commoner sort of coverlets were made. A hap-harlot or hop-harlot, was also a very coarse kind of coverlet. Harlot was the term applied to a low class of vagabonds, the ribalds, who wandered from place to place in search of a living; and the name appears to have been given to this rug as being only fit to be the lot or hap of such people.
[53] At a rather later period, sir Thomas Elyot, in his “Castell of Helth” (printed in 1541), recommends that breakfast should be taken about four hours before dinner, considering it therefore as a light meal, and he advises, in a sanitary view, that not less than six hours should be allowed to elapse between dinner and supper.