Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/313

 Theh^ Bearing on Folklore. 285

We are told also of the ant : Much she toileth In summer and in soft weather.

Of the fox we read :

The cock and the capon She fetcheth oft in the farm And the gander and the goose By the neck and by the nose Dragged is to her hole.

Of the elephant :

They together go on the wold

As sheep that come out of the fold.

Of the panther :

He is black as hue of Whale With white spots shapen all White and rounded as a wheel And it becometh him right well.

The same thoughts arise on reading this book as we had about the Natural Science Lecture from the Legendary. Truth and fiction are mingled, and the scientific opinion of that day is a jumble of the two. This confusion survived till a much later period. Three centuries and more later than the time of this MS. we find Pepys in his Diary writing as follows :

" Serpent and Bird in Lancashire.

" Speaking of the nature of serpents, he told us some in the waste places of Lancashire do grow a great bigness and do feed upon larkes, which they take thus. They observe, when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they place themselves with their mouth upper- most, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson upon the bird ; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent, which is very strange."