Part 23

_a_ 84. 'I trust to have a release from and remission of my debts which are recorded in that book.' _Rental_, a book in which the sums due from a tenant were noted, here means 'record of sins'.

_a_ 86. _he_: the parson, as representing the Church.

_a_ 91. _douȝtres._ In l. 73 only one daughter is named. In the B-text, Passus xviii. 426, she is called _Kalote_ (see note to _b_ 2 below).

_a_ 94. _bi þe rode of Lukes_: at Lucca (French _Lucques_) is a Crucifix and a famous representation of the face of Christ, reputed to be the work of the disciple Nicodemus. From Eadmer and William of Malmesbury we learn that William the Conqueror's favourite oath was 'By the Face of Lucca!', and it is worth noting that the frequent and varied adjurations in Middle English are copied from the French.

_a_ 114. 'May the Devil take him who cares!'

_a_ 115 ff. _faitoures_ (cp. ll. 185 ff.), who feigned some injury or disease to avoid work and win the pity of the charitable, multiplied in the disturbed years following the Black Death. Statutes were passed against them, and even against those who gave them alms (Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, pp. 261 ff.). But the type was long lived. In the extract from _Handlyng Synne_ (No. I), we have already a monument of their activities.

_a_ 141. 'And those that have cloisters and churches (i.e. monks and priests) shall have some of my goods to provide themselves with copes.'

_a_ 142. _Robert Renne-aboute._ The type of a wandering preacher; _posteles_ are clearly preachers with no fixed sphere of authority, like the mendicant friars and Wiclif's 'poor priests'. Against both the regular clergy constantly complained that they preached without the authority of the bishop.

_a_ 186. _Þat seten_: the MS. by confusion has _þat seten to seten to begge_, &c.

_a_ 187. _þat was bake for Bayarde_: i.e. 'horse-bread' (l. 208), which used to be made from beans and peas only. _Bayard_, properly a 'bay horse', was, according to romance, the name of the horse given by Charlemagne to Rinaldo. Hence it became the conventional name for a horse, just as _Reynard_ was appropriated to the fox. Chaucer speaks of _proude Bayard_ (_Troilus_, Bk. i. 218) and, referring to an unknown story, _Bayard the blynde_ (_Canon's Yeoman's Tale_, 860).

_a_ 221. _Michi vindictam_: Romans xii. 19.

_a_ 224. Luke xvi. 9.

_a_ 229. Genesis iii. 19.

_a_ 231. _Sapience_: the Book of Wisdom, but the quotation is actually from Proverbs xx. 4.

_a_ 234. _Mathew with mannes face._ Each of the evangelists had his symbol: Matthew, a man; Mark, a lion; Luke, a bull; John, an eagle; and in early Gospel books their portraits are usually accompanied by the appropriate symbols.

_a_ 235 ff. Matthew xxv. 14 ff.; Luke xix. 12 ff.

_a_ 245. _Contemplatyf lyf or actyf lyf._ The merits of these two ways of life were endlessly disputed in the Middle Ages. In XI _b_ Wiclif attacks the position of the monks and of Rolle's followers; and the author of _Pearl_ (VI 61 ff.) takes up the related question of salvation by works or by grace.

_a_ 246. Psalm cxxviii. 1.

_a_ 264. Jusserand gives a brief account of the old-time physicians in _English Wayfaring Life_, pp. 177 ff. The best were somewhat haphazard in their methods, and the mountebanks brought discredit on the profession. Here are a few fourteenth-century prescriptions:

_For hym that haves the squynansy ['quinsy']_:—

Tak a fatte katte, and fla hit wele and clene, and draw oute the guttes; and tak the grees of an urcheon ['hedgehog'], and the fatte of a bare, and resynes, and feinygreke ['fenugreek'], and sauge ['sage'], and gumme of wodebynde, and virgyn wax: al this mye ['grate'] smal, and farse ['stuff'] the catte within als thu farses a gos: rost hit hale, and geder the grees, and enoynt hym tharwith. (_Reliquiae Antiquae_, ed. Wright and Halliwell (1841), vol. i, p. 51.)

_Ȝyf a woud hund hat ybite a man_:—

Take tou karsyn ['towncress'], and pulyole ['penny-royal'], and seþ hit in water, and ȝef hym to drynke, and hit schal caste out þe venym: and ȝif þou miste ['might'] haue of þe hundys here, ley hit þerto, and hit schal hele hit. (_Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century_, ed. G. Henslow, London 1899, p. 19.)

_A goud oynement for þe goute_:—

Take þe grece of a bor, and þe grece of a ratoun, and cattys grece, and voxis grece, and hors grece, and þe grece of a brok ['badger']; and take feþeruoye ['feverfew'] and eysyl ['vinegar'], and stampe h_e_m togedre; and take a litel lynnesed, and stampe hit wel, and do hit þerto; and meng al togedre, and het hit in a scherd, and þerwith anoynte þe goute by the fuyre. Do so ofte and hit schal be hol. (Ibid., p. 20.)

_a_ 284. _Lammasse tyme_: August 1, when the new corn (l. 294) would be in. On this day a loaf was offered as firstfruits: whence the name, OE. _hlāf-mæsse_.

_a_ 307 ff. Owing to repeated famines, the wages of manual labour rose throughout the first half of the fourteenth century. A crisis was reached when the Black Death (1349) so reduced the number of workers that the survivors were able to demand wages on a scale which seemed unconscionable to their employers. By the Statute of Labourers (1350 and 1351) an attempt was made to force wages and prices back to the level of 1346. For a day's haymaking 1_d._ was to be the maximum wage; for reaping 2_d._ or 3_d._ Throughout the second half of the fourteenth century vain attempts were made to enforce these maxima, and the penalties did much to fan the unrest that broke out in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

_a_ 309-10. From Bk. i of the _Disticha_ of Dionysius Cato, a collection of proverbs famous throughout the Middle Ages.

_a_ 321. Saturn was a malevolent planet, as we see from his speech in Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_, 1595 ff.

_a_ 324. _Deth_: the Plague.

_b_ 1. _Cornehulle._ Cornhill was one of the liveliest quarters of fourteenth-century London, and a haunt of idlers, beggars, and doubtful characters. Its pillory and stocks were famous. Its market where, if _The London Lickpenny_ is to be credited, dealing in stolen clothes was a speciality, was privileged above all others in the city. See the documents in Riley's _Memorials of London_.

_b_ 2. _Kytte_: In the B-text, Passus xviii. 425-6, _Kytte_ is mentioned again:

_and riȝt with þat I waked And called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my douȝter._

_b_ 4. _lollares of London_: The followers of Wiclif were called 'Lollards' by their opponents; but the word here seems to mean 'idlers' as in l. 31. _lewede heremytes_: 'lay hermits': hermits were not necessarily in holy orders, and so far from seeking complete solitude, they often lived in the cities or near the great highways, where many passers would have opportunity to recognize their merit by giving alms. See Cutts, _Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages_, pp. 93 ff.

_b_ 5. 'For I judged those men as Reason taught me.' Skeat's interpretation—that _made of_ means 'made verses about'—is forced. The sense is that the idlers and hermits thought little of the dreamer, and he was equally critical of them.

_b_ 6. _as ich cam by Conscience_: 'as I passed by Conscience', referring to a vision described in the previous Passus, in which Conscience is the principal figure.

_b_ 10 f. _In hele and in vnité_, 'in health and in my full senses', and _Romynge in remembraunce_ qualify _me_.

_b_ 14. _Mowe oþer mowen_, 'mow or stack'. For these unrelated words see the Glossary.

_b_ 16. _haywarde_: by derivation 'hedge-ward'. He watched over enclosures and prevented animals from straying among the crops. Observe that ME. nouns denoting occupation usually survive in surnames:—Baxter 'baker', Bow(y)er, Chapman, Dyer, Falconer, Fletcher 'arrow-maker', Fo(re)ster, Franklin, Hayward, Lister (= litster, 'dyer'), Palmer, Reeve(s), Spicer, Sumner, Tyler 'maker or layer of tiles', Warner 'keeper of warrens', Webb, Webster, Wright, Yeoman, &c.

_b_ 20-1. 'Or craft of any kind that is necessary to the community, to provide food for them that are bedridden.'

_b_ 24. _to long_, 'too tall': cp. B-text, Passus xv. 148 _my name is Longe Wille_. Consistency in such details in a poem full of inconsistencies makes it probable that the poet is describing himself, not an imagined dreamer.

_b_ 33. Psalm lxii. 12.

_b_ 45. 1 Corinthians vii. 20.

_b_ 46 ff. Cp. the note to XI _b_ 131 f. The dreamer appears to have made his living by saying prayers for the souls of the dead, a service which, from small beginnings in the early Middle Ages, had by this time withdrawn much of the energy of the clergy from their regular duties. See note to XI _b_ 140 f.

_b_ 49. _my Seuene Psalmes_: the Penitential Psalms, normally vi, xxxii, xxxviii, li, cii, cxxx, cxliii, in the numbering of the Authorised Version. The _Prymer_, which contained the devotions supplementary to the regular Church service, included the Placebo, Dirige, and the Seven Psalms: see the edition by Littlehales for the Early English Text Society.

_b_ 50. _for hure soules of suche as me helpen_: combines the constructions _for þe soules of suche as me helpen_, and _for hure soules þat me helpen_.

_b_ 51. _vochen saf_: supply _me_ as object, 'warrant me that I shall be welcome'.

_b_ 61. 1 Thessalonians v. 15; Leviticus xix. 18.

_b_ 63. _churches_: here and in l. 110 read the Norse form _kirkes_ for the alliteration, as in _a_ 28, 85. But the English form also belongs to the original, for it alliterates with _ch_ at _a_ 12, 50.

_b_ 64. _Dominus_, &c.: Psalm xvi. 5.

_b_ 83. _Symondes sone_: a son of Simon Magus—one guilty of simony, or one who receives preferment merely because of his wealth.

_b_ 90. Matthew iv. 4.

_b_ 103-4. _Simile est_, &c.: Matthew xiii. 44. _Mulier que_, &c.: Luke xv. 8 ff.

IX

#Dialect#: South-East Midland.

#Vocabulary#: A number of French words are taken over from the original, e.g. _plee_ 81, _ryot_ 83, _violastres_ 97, _saphire loupe_ 116, _gowrdes_ 139, _clowe gylofres_ 157, _canell_ 158, _avaled_ 195, _trayne_ (for _taynere_?) 222, _bugles_ 256, _gowtes artetykes_ 314, _distreynen_ 315.

#Inflexions#: Almost modern.

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. _schadeweth_ 19, _turneth_ 23. 3 pl. _ben_ 4, _han_ 14, _wexen_ 22, _loue_ 100. pres. p. _fle(e)ynge_ 148, 252; _recordynge_ 317. strong pp. _ȝouen_ 90, _begonne_ 171. PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. _þei_ 5; _here_ 71; _hem_ 20.

#Sounds#: OE. _ā_ becomes _ǭ_: _hoot_ 11, _cold_ 31.

OE. _y_ appears as _y_ (= _i_): _byggynge_ 90, _kyȝn_ 'kine' 256; except regular _left_ (hand) 69, 71, 72, where Modern English has also adopted the South-Eastern form of OE. _lyft_.

* * * * *

21-3. The French original says that the children have white _hair_ when they are young, which becomes black as they grow up.

24-5. The belief that one of the Three Kings came from Ethiopia is based on Ps. lxviii. 31: 'Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.' In mediaeval representations one of the three is usually a negro.

27. _Emlak_: miswritten for _Euilak_, a name for India taken from _Havilah_ of Genesis ii. 11.

28. _þat is: þe more_: _Ynde_ has probably fallen out of the text after _is_.

34-5. _Ȝalow cristall draweth colour lyke oylle_: the insertion of _to_ is necessary to give sense, and is supported by the French: _cristal iaunastre trehant a colour doile_. (MS. Harley 4383, f. 34 b.)

36-7. The translation is not accurate. The French has: _et appelle homme les dyamantz en ceo pais 'Hamese'_.

64 ff. It was supposed that the pearl-bearing shell-fish opened at low tide to receive the dew-drops from which the pearls grew.

74. _ȝif ȝou lyke_, 'if it please you', impersonal = French _si vous plest_.

75. _þe Lapidarye_, Latin _Lapidarium_, was a manual of precious stones, which contained a good deal of pseudo-scientific information about their natures and virtues, just as the _Bestiary_ summed up popular knowledge of animals. A Latin poem by Marbod bishop of Rennes (d. 1123) is the chief source of the mediaeval lapidaries, and, curiously enough, there is a French prose text attributed by so intimate an authority as Jean d'Outremeuse to Mandeville himself. Several Old French texts have been edited by L. Pannier, _Les Lapidaires Français du Moyen Âge_, Paris 1882. Their high repute may be judged from the inclusion of no less than seven copies in the library of Charles V of France (d. 1380); and it is surprising that no complete ME. version is known. But much of the matter was absorbed into encyclopaedic works like the _De Proprietatibus Rerum_ of Bartholomaeus, which Trevisa translated.

97. Mistranslated. The French has: _qi sont violastre, ou pluis broun qe violettes_.

100-1. _But in soth to me_: French: _Mes endroit de moy_, 'but for my part'; the English translator has rendered _en droit_ separately.

108. _þerfore_: the context requires the sense 'because', but the translator would hardly have used _þerfore_ had he realized that ll. 108-9 correspond to a subordinate clause in the French, and do not form a complete independent sentence. He was misled by the bad punctuation of some French MSS., e.g. Royal 20 B. X and (with consequent corruption) Harley 4383.

136. _Cathaye_: China. See the classic work of Colonel Yule, _Cathay and the Way Thither_, 2 vols., London 1866. The modernization of the Catalan map of 1375 in vol. i gives a good idea of Mandeville's geography.

142. _withouten wolle_: the story of the vegetable lamb is taken from the Voyage of Friar Odoric, which is accessible in Hakluyt's _Voyages_. Hakluyt's translation is reprinted, with the Eastern voyages of John de Plano Carpini (1246) and of William de Rubruquis (1253), in _The Travels of Sir John Mandeville_, ed. A. W. Pollard, London 1900. The legend probably arose from vague descriptions of the cotton plant; and Mandeville makes it still more marvellous by describing as without wool the lamb which had been invented to explain the wool's existence.

143-4. _Of þat frute I haue eten_: This assertion seems to be due to the English translator. The normal French text has simply: _et cest bien grant meruaille de ceo fruit, et si est grant oure [= oeuvre] de nature_ (MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 70 b).

147. _the Bernakes_: The barnacle goose—introduced here on a hint from Odoric—is a species of wild goose that visits the Northern coasts in winter. It was popularly supposed to grow from the shell-fish called 'barnacle', which attaches itself to floating timber by a stalk something like the neck and beak of a bird, and has feathery filaments not unlike plumage. As the breeding place of the barnacle goose was unknown, and logs with the shell-fish attached were often found on the coasts, it was supposed that the shell-fish was the fruit of a tree, which developed in the water into a bird. Giraldus Cambrensis, _Topographia Hibernica_, I. xv, reproves certain casuistical members of the Church who ate the barnacle goose on fast-days on the plea that it was not flesh; but himself vouches for the marvel. The earliest reference in English is No. 11 of the Anglo-Saxon _Riddles_, of which the best solution is 'barnacle goose'. For a full account see Max Müller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii, pp. 583-604.

157. _grete notes of Ynde_, 'coco-nuts'.

163-4. _Goth and Magoth_: see Ezekiel xxxviii and xxxix. The forms of the names are French.

170. _God of Nature_: Near the end of the _Travels_ it is explained that all the Eastern peoples are Deists, though they have not the light of Christianity: _þei beleeven in God þat formede all thing and made the world, and clepen him 'God of Nature'_.

191-2. _þat þei schull not gon out on no syde, but be the cost of hire lond_: the general sense requires the omission of _but_, which has no equivalent in the original French text: _qils ne issent fors deuers la coste de sa terre_ (MS. Sloane 1464, f. 139 b). But some MSS. like Royal 20 B. X have _fors qe deuers_, a faulty reading that must have stood in the copy used by the Cotton translator. Cp. note to l. 108.

199-200. _a four grete myle_: renders the French _iiii grantz lieus_. There is no 'great mile' among English measures.

209 ff. In the Middle Ages references to the Jews are nearly always hostile. They were hated as enemies of the Church, and prejudice was hardened by stories, like that in the text, of their vengeance to come, or of ritual murder, like Chaucer's _Prioress's Tale_. England had its supposed boy martyrs, William of Norwich (d. 1144), and Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255) whom the Prioress invokes:

_O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also With cursed Jewes, as it is notable, For it is but a litel while ago, Preye eek for us_, &c.

Religion was not the only cause of bitterness. The Jews, standing outside the Church and its laws against usury, at a time when financial needs had outgrown feudal revenues, became the money-lenders and bankers of Europe; and with a standard rate of interest fixed at over 40 per cent., debtors and creditors could hardly be friends. In England the Jews reached the height of their prosperity in the twelfth century, so that in 1188 nearly half the national contribution for a Crusade came from them. In the thirteenth century their privileges and operations were cut down, and they were finally expelled from the country in 1290 (see J. Jacobs, _The Jews of Angevin England_, 1893). The Lombards, whose consciences were not nice, took their place as financiers in fourteenth-century England.

222. _trayne_: read _taynere_, OFr. _taignere_ 'a burrow'.

237-8. The cotton plant has already given us the vegetable lamb (l. 142). This more prosaic account is taken from the _Eþistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem_: '_in Bactriacen... penitus ad abditos Seres, quod genus hominum foliis arborum decerpendo lanuginem ex silvestri vellere vestes detexunt_' (Julius Valerius, ed. B. Kübler, p. 194). From the same text come the hippopotami, the bitter waters (Kübler, p. 195), and the griffins (Kübler, p. 217). The _Letter of Alexander_ was translated into Anglo-Saxon in the tenth century.

254 ff. _talouns_ etc.: In the 1725 edition there is a reference to 'one 4 Foot long in the Cotton Library' with the inscription, _Griphi Unguis Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi sacer_, 'griffin's talon, sacred to St. Cuthbert of Durham'. This specimen is now in the Mediaeval Department of the British Museum, and is really the slim, curved horn of an ibex. The inscription is late (sixteenth century), but the talon was catalogued among the treasures of Durham in the fourteenth century.

260. _Prestre Iohn_: Old French _Prestre Jean_, or 'John the Priest', was reputed to be the Christian ruler of a great kingdom in the East. A rather minatory letter professing to come from him reached most of the princes of Europe, and was replied to in all seriousness by Pope Alexander III. Its claims include the lordship over the tribes of Gog and Magog whom Alexander the Great walled within the mountains. Official missions were sent to establish relations with him; but neither in the Far East nor in Northern Africa, where the best opinion in later times located his empire, could the great king ever be found. The history of the legend is set out by Yule in the article _Prester John_ in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

261. _Yle of Pentexoire_: to Mandeville most Eastern countries are 'isles'. _Pentexoire_ in the French text of Odoric is a territory about the Yellow River (Yule, _Cathay_, vol. i, p. 146).

262 ff.: For comparison the French text of the Epilogue is given from MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 83 a, the words in < > being supplied from MS. Sloane 1464:

'Il y a plusours autres diuers pais, et moutz dautres meruailles par de la, qe ieo nay mie tout veu, si nen saueroye proprement parler. Et meismement el pais en quel iay este, y a plusours diuersetes dont ieo ne fais point el mencioun, qar trop serroit long chose a tout deuiser. Et pur ceo qe ieo vous ay deuisez dascuns pais, vous doit suffire quant a present. Qar, si ieo deuisoie tout quantqez y est par de la, vn autre qi se peneroit et trauailleroit le corps pur aler en celles marches, et pur sercher la pais, serroit empeschez par mes ditz a recompter nuls choses estranges, qar il ne purroit rien dire de nouelle, en quoy ly oyantz y puissent prendre solaces. Et lem dit toutdis qe choses nouelles pleisent. Si men taceray a tant, saunz plus recompter nuls diuersetez qi soyent par de la, a la fin qe cis qi vourra aler en celles parties y troeue assez a dire.

'Et ieo, Iohan Maundeuille dessudit, qi men party de nos pais et passay le mer lan de grace mil cccxxiide; qi moint terre et moint passage et moint pays ay puis cerchez; et qy ay este en moint bone compaignie et en molt beal fait, come bien qe ieo ne feisse vncqes ne beal fait ne beal emprise; et qi meintenant suy venuz a repos maugre mien, pur goutes artetikes qi moy destreignont; en preignan solacz en mon cheitif repos, en recordant le temps passe, ay cestes choses compilez et mises en escript, si come il me poet souuenir, lan de grace mil ccc.lvime, a xxxiiiite an qe ieo men party de noz pais.

'Si pri a toutz les lisauntz, si lour plest, qils voillent Dieu prier pur moy, et ieo priera pur eux. Et toutz cils qi pur moy dirrount vne _Paternoster_ qe Dieu me face remissioun de mes pecches, ieo les face parteners et lour ottroie part dez toutz les bons pelrinages et dez toutz les bienfaitz qe ieo feisse vnqes, et qe ieo ferray, si Dieu plest, vncqore iusqes a ma fyn. Et pry a Dieu, de qy toute bien et toute grace descent, qil toutz les lisantz et oyantz Cristiens voille de sa grace reemplir, et lour corps et les almes sauuer, a la glorie et loenge de ly qi est trinz et vns, et saunz comencement et saunz fin, saunz qualite bons, saunz quantite grantz, en toutz lieus present et toutz choses contenant, et qy nul bien ne poet amender ne nul mal enpirer, qy en Trinite parfite vit et regne par toutz siecles et par toutz temps. Amen.'

274. _blamed_: The Old French verb _empescher_ means both 'to hinder, prevent', and 'to accuse, impeach'. But here _empeschez_ should have been translated by 'prevented', not 'blamed'.

284-306. This passage, which in one form or another appears in nearly all the MSS. in English, has no equivalent in the MSS. in French so far examined: and, as it conflicts with ll. 313 ff., which—apart from the peculiarities of the Cotton rendering—indicate that the _Travels_ were written after Mandeville's return, it must be set down as an interpolation.

The art of forging credentials was well understood in the Middle Ages, and the purpose of this addition was to silence doubters by the _imprimatur_ of the highest authority, just as the marvel of the Dancers of Colbek is confirmed by the sponsorship of Pope Leo IX (I 246-9). The different interpretation of the latest editor, Hamelius, who thinks it was intended as a sly hit at the Papacy (_Quarterly Review_ for April 1917, pp. 349 f.) seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that the passage belonged to the French text as originally written.

The anachronism by which the author is made to seek the Pope _in Rome_ gives a clue to the date of the interpolation. From the beginning of the fourteenth century until 1377 Avignon, and not Rome, was the seat of the Pope; and for another thirty years there was doubt as to the issue of the conflict between the popes, who had their head-quarters at Rome and were recognized by England, and the antipopes, who remained at Avignon and had the support of the French. The facts were notorious, so that the anachronism would hardly be possible to one who wrote much before the end of the century, even though he were a partisan of the Roman court.