J. E.
Oxford.
Harrisers or Arrishers.—Doubtless, by this time, some dozen Devonshire correspondents will have informed you, for the benefit of Clericus Rusticus, that arrishers is the term prevailing in that county for "stubble." The Dorset harrisers are therefore, perhaps, the second set of gleaners, who are admitted to the fields to pick up from the stubble, or arrishes, the little left behind by the reapers' families. A third set of gleaners has been admitted from time immemorial, namely, the Anser stipularis, which feeds itself into plump condition for Michaelmas by picking up, from between the stubble, the corns which fell from the ears during reaping and sheaving. The Devonshire designation for this excellent sort of poultry—known elsewhere as "stubble geese"—is "arrish geese."
The derivation of the word must be left to a better provinial philologist than
W. H. W.
Chaucer's "Fifty Wekes" (Vol. iii., p. 202.).—A. E. B.'s natural and ingeniously-argued conjecture, that Chaucer, by the "fifty wekes" of the Knightes Tale, "meant to imply the interval of a solar year,"—whether we shall rest in accepting the poet's measure of time loosely and poetically, or (which I would gladly feel myself authorised to do) find in it, with your correspondent, an astronomical and historical reason,—is fully secured by the comparison with Chaucer's original.
The Theseus of Boccaccio says, appointing the listed fight:
"E termine vi sia a ciò donato
D'un anno intero."
To which the poet subjoins: