Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/314

 294 Hijtory of Domejiic Manners be out of place, efpecially as what has hitherto been written on the hiftory of gardening in England during this early period, has been very imperfeft and incorreft. We have no direft information relating to the gardens of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers — in fa6t, our knowledge is limited to a few words gathered from the old vocabularies. The ordinary names for a garden, wyrt-tun and wyrt-geard, a plant-inclofure and a plant-yard, are entirely indefinite, for the word ivyrt was applied to all plants whatever, and perhaps they indicate what we lliould call the kitchen-garden. The latter word, which was fometimes fpelt ort-geard, orc-geard, and orcyrd, was the origin of ov;r modern orchard, which is now limited to an inclofnre of fruit-trees. Flowers were probably cultivated in the inclofed fpace round the houfes. It would appear that the Saxons, before they became acquainted with the Romans, cultivated very few plants, if we may judge from the circumflance that throughout the Anglo-Saxon period the names by which thefe were known were nearly all derived from the Latin. The leek appears to have been the principal table vegetable among the Anglo-Saxons, as it was among the Wellli 3 its name, leac, or leak, is pure Anglo-Saxon, and its importance was confidered fo much above that of any other vegetable, that leac-tun, the leek-garden, became the common name for the kitchen-garden, and leac-weard, a leek-keeper, was ufed to defignate the gardener. The other alliaceous plants were confidered as fo many varieties of the leek, and were known by fuch names as enne-lcac, or ynne-leac, fuppofed to be the onion, and gar-leac, or garlic. Bean is alfo an Anglo-Saxon word ; but, fingularly enough, the Anglo-Saxons feem not to have been originally acquainted with peas, for the only name they had for them was the Latin pifa, and pyfe. Even for the cabbage tribe, the only Anglo-Saxon name we know is fimply the Latin hrajjica ; and the colewort, which was named cawl, and cawl-ivyrt, was derived from the Latin caidis. So the turnip was called ncepe, from the Latin napus ; and rc^dic, or radifli, is perhaps from raphanus.'^ Garden crelTes, parfley, mint, fage, rue. gardening in the middle ages, it need only be mentioned that Loudon, " Encyclo- and
 * To show the extreme ignorance which has prevailed on the history of English