Chapter 7

Flax groweth in even stalks, and bears yellow flowers or blue, and after cometh hops, and therein is the seed, and when the hop beginneth to wax, then the flax is drawn up and gathered all whole, and is then lined, and afterward made to knots and little bundles, and so laid in water, and lieth there long time. And then it is taken out of the water, and laid abroad till it be dried, and twined and wend in the sun, and then bound in pretty niches and bundles. And afterward knocked, beaten, and brayed, and carfled, rodded and gnodded, ribbed and heckled, and at the last spun. Then the thread is sod and bleached, and bucked, and oft laid to drying, wetted and washed, and sprinkled with water until that it be white, after divers working and travail.

Flax is needful to divers uses. For thereof is made clothing to wear, and sails to sail, and nets to fish and to hunt, and thread to sew, ropes to bind, and strings to shoot, bonds to bind, lines to mete and to measure, and sheets to rest in, and sacks, bags, and purses, to put and to keep things in. And so none herb is so needful, to so many divers uses to mankind, as is the flax.

Ryndes thereof [_i.e._ of Mandragora] sodden in wine cause sleep, and abate all manner of soreness, and so that time a man feeleth unneth though he be cut, but yet Mandragora must be warily used: for it slayeth if men take much thereof.... They that dig Mandragora be busy to beware of contrary winds while they dig, and make three circles about with a sword, and abide with the digging unto the sun going down, and trow so to have the herb with the chief virtues.

Papyrus is a manner rush, that is dried to kindle fire and lanterns, and hight the feeding of fire. And this herb is put to burn in prickets and in tapers. The rind is stripped off unto the pith, and is so dried, and a little is left of the rind on the one side, to sustain the tender pith; and the less is left of the rind, the more clear the pith burneth in a lamp, and is the sooner kindled. And about Memphis and in Ind be such great rushes, that they make boats thereof, as the Gloss saith. And Alexander's Story saith the same.

And of rushes are charters made, in the which were epistles written, and sent by messengers. Also of rushes be made paniers, boxes, and cases, and baskets to keep letters and other things in. And also they make thereof paper to write with.

Pepper is the seed or the fruit of a tree that groweth in the south side of the hill Caucasus, in the strong heat of the sun. And serpents keep the woods that pepper groweth in. And when the woods of pepper are ripe, men of that country set them on fire, and chase away the serpents by violence of fire. And by such burning the grain of pepper that was white by kind, is made black and rively.

Woods be wild places, waste and desolate, that many trees grow in without fruit, and also few having fruit. In these woods be oft wild beasts and fowls, therein grow herbs, grass leas, and pasture, and namely medicinal herbs in woods be found. In summer woods are beautied with boughs and branches, with herbs and grass. In woods is place of deceit and hunting. For therein wild beasts are hunted, and watches and deceits are ordained and set of hounds and of hunters. There is place of hiding and of lurking, for oft in woods thieves are hid, and oft in their awaits and deceits passing men come, and are spoiled and robbed, and oft slain. And so for many and divers ways and uncertain, strange men oft err and go out of the way, and take uncertain ways, and the way that is unknown tofore the way that is known, and come oft to the place there thieves lie in await, and not without peril. Therefore be oft knots made on trees and in bushes, in boughs and in branches of trees, in token and mark of the highway, to show the certain and sure way to wayfaring men; but oft the thieves in turning and meeting of ways, change such knots and signs, and beguile many men, and bring them out of the right way by false tokens and signs.

It hath many hard twigs and branches with knots, and therewith often children are chastised and beaten on the bare buttocks and loins. And of the boughs and branches thereof are besoms made to sweep and to clean houses of dust and of other uncleanness. Wild men of woods and forests use that seed in stead of bread. And this tree hath much sour juice, and somewhat biting. And men use therefore in springing time and in harvest to slit the rinds, and to gather the humour that cometh out thereof, and drink it in stead of wine.

Hards is the cleansing of hemp or of flax. For with much breaking, heckling, and rubbing, hards are departed fro the substance of hemp and of flax, and is great when it is departed, and more knotty, short, and rough. And is therefore not full able to be spun for thread thereof to be made, nathless thereof is thread spun that is full great, uneven, and full of knobs, and thereof are made bonds and bindings, and matches or candles; for it is full dry and taketh soon fire and burneth.

A board hight table, and is areared and set upon feet, and compassed with a list about. And, in another manner, table is a playing board, that men play on at the dice and other games; and this manner of table is double, and arrayed with divers colours. In the third manner it is a thin plank and plane, and therein are letters writ with colours, and sometimes small shingles are planed and made somedeal hollow in either side, and filled full of wax, black, green, or red, to write therein.

Boards and tables garnish houses, nathless when they be set in solar floors, they serve all men and beasts that are therein. Then they be dressed, hewed, and planed, and made convenable to use of ships, of bridges, of hulks, and coffers, and many other needful things of building. Also in shipbreach men flee to a board, and are oft saved in peril.

Roofs are trees areared and stretched fro the walls up to the top of the house, and bear up the covering thereof. And stand wide beneath, and come together upwards, and so they nigh nearer and nearer, and are joined either to other in the top of the house. It holdeth up heling, slates, shingle, and laths. The lath is long and somewhat broad, and plain and thin, and is nailed thwart over to the rafters, and thereon hang slates, tiles, and shingles. The rafters are strong and square, and hewn plain And are made fair within with fair joists and boards.

A vineyard is busily tilthed and kept, and purged and cleaned of superfluities, and oft visited and overseen of the earth tilthers and keepers of vines, that it be not apaired neither destroyed with beasts, and is closed about with walls and with hedges, and a wait is there set in a high place to keep the vineyard that the fruit be not destroyed. And is left in winter without keeper or waiter, but in harvest time many come and haunt the vineyard. In winter the vineyard is full pale, and waxeth green and bloometh in springing time and in summer, and smelleth full sweet, and is pleasant with fruit in harvest time. The smell of the vineyard that bloometh is contrary to all venomous things, and therefore when the vineyard bloometh, adders and serpents flee, and toads also, and may not sustain and suffer the noble savour thereof.

Foxes lurk and hide themselves under vine leaves, and gnaw covetously and fret the grapes of the vineyard, and namely when the keepers and wards be negligent and reckless, and it profiteth not that some unwise men do, that close within the vineyard hounds, that are adversaries to foxes. For few hounds, so closed, waste and destroy more grapes than many foxes should destroy that come and eat thereof thievishly. Therefore wise wardens of vineyards be full busy to keep, that no swine nor tame hounds nor foxes come in to the vineyard. From fretting and gnawing of flies and of other worms, a vineyard may not be kept nor saved, but by His succour and help that all thing hath and pursueth in His power and might, and keepeth and saveth all lordly and mighty.

The worthiness and praising of wine might not Bacchus himself describe at the full, though he were alive. For among all liquors and juice of trees, wine beareth the prize, for passing all liquors, wine moderately drunk most comforteth the body, and gladdeth the heart, and saveth wounds and evils. Wine strengtheneth all the members of the body, and giveth to each might and strength, and deed and working of the soul showeth and declareth the goodness of wine. And wine breedeth in the soul forgetting of anguish, of sorrow, and of woe, and suffereth not the soul to feel anguish and woe. Wine sharpeth the wit and maketh it cunning to enquire things that are hard and subtle, and maketh the soul bold and hardy, and so the passing nobility of wine is known. And use of wine accordeth to all men's ages and times and countries, if it be taken in due manner, and as his disposition asketh that drinketh it.

Red wine that is temperate in its qualities, and is drunk temperately and in due manner, helpeth kind and gendreth good blood, and maketh savour in meat and in drink, and exciteth desire and appetite, and comforteth the virtue of life and of kind, and helpeth the stomach to have appetite, and to have and to make good digestion. And quencheth thirst, and changeth the passions of the soul and thoughts out of evil into good. For it turneth the soul out of cruelness into mildness, out of covetousness into largeness, out of pride into meekness, and out of dread into boldness. And shortly to speak, wine drunk measurably is health of body and of soul.

And nothing is worse passing out of measure. And so Andronides, a clear man of wit and of wisdom, wrote to the great Alexander, to restrain wine kind in drinking, and said in this manner:--"King, have mind that thou drinkest blood of the earth, for wine drinking untemperately is to mankind heavy and venomous." And if Alexander had done by his counsel, truly he had not slain his own friend in drunkenness. If wine be often taken, anon by drunkenness it quencheth the sight of reason, and comforteth beastly madness, and so the body abideth as it were a ship in the sea without stern and without lodesman, and as chivalry without prince or duke.

VI

MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY--BIRDS AND FISHES

In following out his plan of describing the productions of each element before considering the next in order, Bartholomew was led to consider air and its products early in his scheme. Accordingly his twelfth book is devoted to birds, and his thirteenth to the inhabitants of the waters. There is hardly any reason in these books for omitting any part more than another except space, but the editor hopes that those chosen will put the reader in possession of a key to the more common allusions in pre-Restoration literature.

When the editor spoke of the wholesale way in which our author is conveyed by Elizabethan poets, he had in mind this and the following chapters. A single example will show this. Let the reader compare the account of the peacock with the following stanza from Chester's "Love's Martyr":

"The proud sun-braving peacocke with his feathers, Walkes all along, thinking himself a king, And with his voice prognosticates all weathers, Although, God knows, but badly he doth sing; But when he looks downe to his base blacke feete, He droopes and is asham'd of things unmeet."

Our author's knowledge of birds is largely derived--the authentic from Aristotle; the legendary from the Fathers, Ambrose, Austin, Basil, and Gregory,--the Gloss,--and from Pliny. Some of these legends seem to be pointed at in the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus Ps. ciii. 5, "Thy youth is renewed like the eagle's," either gave rise to, or refers to, the tradition quoted in our account of the eagle: and likewise Job xxxviii. 41, and Ps. cxlvii. 9, seem to be responsible for the tradition in the account of the raven. It would be interesting to learn whether any independent traditions of this nature exist.

It is worth pointing out that our author has contributed to the "Gesta Romanorum" several stories. The "wild tale," as Warton calls it, of the elephant and the maidens, as well as the story of "the storke wreker of avouterie" mentioned by Chaucer in the "Assemblie of Foules," and derived from Neckham, and the similar tale of the lioness, obtained their wide circulation through the popularity of Bartholomew's book. It would be an interesting task to trace these tales to their origin, but this is neither the place nor the time to do so; and the editor similarly leaves to lovers of Shakespeare the pleasure of proving to themselves his intimate acquaintance with the book.

In the part of the chapter quoted from the thirteenth book, the editor has tried to get together some of those stories which impressed people's minds most. Such a one is the tale of the remora. We remember Jonson's use of it in the "Poetaster":

"Death, I am seized here By a land remora; I cannot stir Nor move, but as he pleases."

Other tales remind us of Olaus Magnus, and some of them are plainly Eastern.

Now it pertaineth to speak of birds and fowls, and in particular and first of the eagle, which hath principality among fowls. Among all manner kinds of divers fowls, the eagle is the more liberal and free of heart. For the prey that she taketh, but it be for great hunger, she eateth not alone, but putteth it forth in common to fowls that follow her. But first she taketh her own portion and part. And therefore oft other fowls follow the eagle for hope and trust to have some part of her prey. But when the prey that is taken is not sufficient to herself, then as a king that taketh heed to a community, she taketh the bird that is next to her, and giveth it among the others, and serveth them therewith.

Austin saith, and Plinius also, that in age the eagle hath darkness and dimness in eyen, and heaviness in wings. And against this disadvantage she is taught by kind to seek a well of springing water, and then she flieth up into the air as far as she may, till she be full hot by heat of the air, and by travail of flight, and so then by heat the pores are opened and the feathers chafed, and she falleth suddenly in to the well, and there the feathers are changed, and the dimness of her eyes is wiped away and purged, and she taketh again her might and strength.

The eagle's feathers done and set among feathers of wings of other birds corrupteth and fretteth them. As strings made of wolf-gut done and put into a lute or in an harp among strings made of sheep-gut do destroy, and fret, and corrupt the strings made of sheep-gut, if it so be that they be set among them, as in a lute or in an harp, as Pliny saith.

Among all fowls, in the eagle the virtue of sight is most mighty and strong. For in the eagle the spirit of sight is most temperate and most sharp in act and deed of seeing and beholding the sun in the roundness of its circle without blemishing of eyen. And the sharpness of her sight is not rebounded again with clearness of light of the sun, nother disperpled. There is one manner eagle that is full sharp of sight, and she taketh her own birds in her claws, and maketh them to look even on the sun, and that ere their wings be full grown, and except they look stiffly and steadfastly against the sun, she beateth them, and setteth them even tofore the sun. And if any eye of any of her birds watereth in looking on the sun she slayeth him, as though he went out of kind, or else driveth him out of the nest and despiseth him, and setteth not by him.

The goshawk is a royal fowl, and is armed more with boldness than with claws, and as much as kind taketh from her in quantity of body, it rewardeth her with boldness of heart. And two kinds there be of such fowls, for some are tame and some are wild. And she that is tame taketh wild fowls and taketh them to her own lord, and she that is wild taketh tame fowls. And this hawk is of a disdainful kind. For if she fail by any hap of the prey that she reseth to, that day unneth she cometh unto her lord's hand. And she must have ordinate diet, nother too scarce, ne too full. For by too much meat she waxeth ramaious or slow, and disdaineth to come to reclaim. And if the meat be too scarce then she faileth, and is feeble and unmighty to take her prey. Also the eyen of such birds should oft be seled and closed, or hid, that she bate not too oft from his hand that beareth her, when she seeth a bird that she desireth to take; and also her legs must be fastened with gesses, that she shall not fly freely to every bird. And they be borne on the left hand, that they may somewhat take of the right hand, and be fed therewith.

And so such tame hawks be kept in mews, that they may be discharged of old feathers and hard, and be so renewed in fairness of youth. Also men give them meat of some manner of flesh, which is some-deal venomous, that they may the sooner change their feathers. And smoke grieveth such hawks and doth them harm. And therefore their mews must be far from smoky places, that their bodies be not grieved with bitterness of smoke, nor their feathers infect with blackness of smoke. They should be fed with fresh flesh and bloody, and men should use to give them to eat the hearts of fowls that they take. All the while they are alive and are strong and mighty to take their prey, they are beloved of their lords, and borne on hands, and set on perches, and stroked on the breast and on the tail, and made plain and smooth, and are nourished with great business and diligence. But when they are dead, all men hold them unprofitable and nothing worth, and be not eaten, but rather thrown out on dunghills.

The properties of bees are wonderful noble and worthy. For bees have one common kind as children, and dwell in one habitation, and are closed within one gate: one travail is common to them all, one meat is common to them all, one common working, one common use, one fruit and flight is common to them all, and one generation is common to them all.

Also maidenhood of body without wem is common to them all, and so is birth also. For they are not medlied with service of Venus, nother resolved with lechery, nother bruised with sorrow of birth of children. And yet they bring forth most swarms of children.

Bees make among them a king, and ordain among them common people. And though they be put and set under a king, yet they are free and love their king that they make, by kind love, and defend him with full great defence, and hold [it] honour and worship to perish and be spilt for their king, and do their king so great worship that none of them dare go out of their house, nor to get meat, but if the king pass out and take the principality of flight. And bees chose to their king him that is most worthy and noble in highness and fairness, and most clear in mildness, for that is chief virtue in a king. For though their king have a sting yet he useth it not in wreck. And also bees that are unobedient to the king, they deem themselves by their own doom for to die by the wound of their own sting. And of a swarm of bees is none idle. Some fight, as it were in battle, in the field against other bees, some are busy about meat, and some watch the coming of showers. And some behold concourse and meting of dues, and some make wax of flowers, and some make cells now round, now square with wonder binding and joining, and evenness. And yet nevertheless, among so diverse works none of them doth espy nor wait to take out of other's travail, neither taketh wrongfully, neither stealeth meat, but each seeketh and gathereth by his own flight and travail among herbs and flowers that are good and convenable.

Bees sit not on fruit but on flowers, not withered but fresh and new, and gather matter of the which they make both honey and wax. And when the flowers that are nigh unto them be spent, then they send spies for to espy meat in further places. And if the night falleth upon them in their journey, then they lie upright to defend their wings from rain, and from dew, that they may in the morrow tide fly the more swifter to their work with their wings dry and able to fly. And they ordain watches after the manner of castles, and rest all night until it be day, till one bee wake them all with twice buzzing or thrice, or with some manner trumping; then they fly all, if the day be fair on the morrow. And the bees that bring and bear what is needful, dread blasts of wind, and fly therefore low by the ground when they be charged, lest they be letted with some manner of blasts, and charge themselves sometimes with gravel or with small stones, that they may be the more stedfast against blasts of wind by heaviness of the stones.

The obedience of bees is wonderful about the king, for when he passeth forth, all the swarm in one cluster passeth with him. And he is beclipped about with the swarm, as it were with an host of knights. And is then unneth seen that time for the multitude that followeth and serveth him, and when the people of bees are in travail, he is within, and as it were governor, and goeth about to comfort others for to work. And only he is not bound to travail. And all about him are certain bees with stings, as it were champions, and continual wardens of the king's body. And he passeth selde out, but when all the swarm shall go out. His outgoing is known certain days tofore by voice of the host, as it were arraying itself to pass out with the king.

The culvour is messager of peace, ensample of simpleness, clean of kind, plenteous in children, follower of meekness, friend of company, forgetter of wrongs. The culvour is forgetful. And therefore when the birds are borne away, she forgetteth her harm and damage, and leaveth not therefore to build and breed in the same place. Also she is nicely curious. For sitting on a tree, she beholdeth and looketh all about toward what part she will fly, and bendeth her neck all about as it were taking avisement. But oft while she taketh avisement of flight, ere she taketh her flight, an arrow flieth through her body, and therefore she faileth of her purpose, as Gregory saith.

Also as Ambrose saith, in Egypt and in Syria a culvour is taught to bear letters, and to be messager out of one province into another. For it loveth kindly the place and the dwelling where it was first fed and nourished. And be it never so far borne into far countries, always it will return home again, if it be restored to freedom. And oft to such a culvour a letter is craftily bound under the one wing, and then it is let go. Then it flieth up into the air, and ceaseth never till it come to the first place in which it was bred. And sometimes in the way enemies know thereof, and let it with an arrow, and so for the letters that it beareth, it is wounded and slain, and so it beareth no letter without peril. For oft the letter that is so borne is cause and occasion of the death of it.