Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/319

 and Sentiments. 299 nuts, figs, and grapes. Walter de Bibblefworth, writing in England towards the clofe of the thirteenth century, enumerates as the principal fruit-trees in a common garden, apples, pears, and cherries — Pomcrc, perere, e ccrccer ; and adds the plum-tree (pruner), and the quince-tree (coingrier). The cherry, indeed, appears to have been one of the moft popular of fruits in England, during the mediaeval period. The records of the time contain purchafes of cherry-trees for the king's garden in Weftminfter in 1238 and 1277, and cherries and cherry-trees are enumerated in all the gloffaries from the times of the Anglo-Saxons to the fixteenth century. The earl of Lincoln had cherry-trees in his garden in Holborn towards the clofe of the thirteenth century, and during the fame century we have allufions to the cultivation of the cherry in other parts of the kingdom. The allufions to cherries in the early poetry are not at all unfrequent, and they were clofely mixed up with popular manners and feelings. It appears to have been the cuftom, from a rather early period, to have fairs or feafts, probably in the cherry orchards, during the period that the fruit was ripe, which were called cherry-fairs, and fometimes cherry-feafts ; and thefe are remembered, if they do not ftill exift, in our great cherry diftrifts, fuch as Worcefi;eriliire and Kent. They were brief moments of great gaiety and enjoyment, and the poets loved to quote them as emblems of the tranfitory charafter of all worldly things. In the latter part of the fourteenth centur}^, the poet Gower, fpeaking of the teachers of religion and morality, lays : — T/.'ey prechen us in audience That no man jchalle his joule empeyre (impair), For alle is but a cherye-fuyre. And the fame writer again : — Sumtyme I draive into monoyrc, Hoiv foroiv may not ever lajie. And jo Cometh hope in at lajie, Whan I non other foode knoiue ; And that endureth hut a throwe, Ryght as it nvere a chery-fejle. So again, under the reign of Henry IV., about the year 1411, Occleve, in his