Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/347

 10"- s. i. APRIL 9, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

283

fec. ; p. 93, 15 ; 50, 19, "fovere causas," &c. ; p. 93, 15; 50, 20, " patrocinantur," &c. ; p. 93, n. 7 ; 50, n. f, " Xam quocunque modo," <fec. ; p. 93, 1. 16; 50, 21, " ut loculos," &c. For these eight quotations see John of Salisbury's ' Policraticus,' Lib. V. cap. 10, the same chapter to which Burton's two preceding quotations belong. See 9 th S. xi. 323, col. 1. EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia. (To be continued.)

DAMAGE TO CORN.

IN the Month for February last there is a very interesting paper by the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott on Antoinette de Bourbon, Duchesse de Guise, grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, who owed, we are told, a great part of her early education to the Duchess's care. A striking passage occurs in this article (p. 182), which I proceed to quote :

" Her [the Duchess's] children were not allowed to forget their duties to others. One day the young princes, in the course of some hunting-party, no doubt, rode over a field of corn. This came to their mother's knowledge, and the next day at table there was no bread. To the exclamations and questions of her sons, she simply replied, ' My children, we must economize the corn, as you destroy the future harvest ! ' "

This is an interesting illustration of the religious reverence in which corn was held in times when famines were frequent and the dread of them ever haunted the imagination of the poor. The occurrence of famines even entered into the dream- world of romance, as the Athenceum pointed out some time ago (10 October, 1903, p. 486), for in the 'Lay of Havelok the Dane ' we hear of a great dearth at Grimsby when food was plentiful at Lincoln. The minds of men were deeply impressed in old times by the well-known fact that people might be suffering from hunger in one part of the island while the necessities of life might be plentiful in another. Xow such horrors are wellnigh forgotten by all but historical students, but they might have occurred at any time before the modern means of transit had been evolved. Accidental injury to corn-crops is, I need not say, not unfrequent now, but we hear little of wanton damage. Occasionally the young wheat near a fox cover may be trampled out of life, but this is a rare occur- rence, and when it does happen ample com- pensation is commonly made to the owner ; but in manor court rolls of the seventeenth, sixteenth, and earlier centuries, I have often met with regulations and fines relating to

such matters. For example, in the Scotter (Lincolnshire) Roll for 1578 there is a bylaw "that no man shall make no bye wayea throughe anie parte of the Corne feildes, in payne of euery one found in the same defalt xii d "; and in the following year Richard Paycocke was fined a like sum because he- permitted a mare and her foal "ire ad largum in campo seminato." Sometimes offences of this kind found a place in the literature of the people. In 'The Jolly Finder of Wake- field ' among the ' Robin Hood Ballads,' for example, the fight takes place because Robin and his men had

Forsaken the king's highway, And made a path over the corn.

The Church in the Middle Ages undoubtedly regarded acts of this nature as sins. In Myrc's 'Instructions for Parish Priests,' a fifteenth-century poem, issued by the Early English Text Society, we read (p. 46) :

Hast fow ay cast vp lyde 3ate

)>ere bestus haue go in ate ?

Hast )>ow 1-struyed corn or gras

Or oj>er ]>ynge }>at sowen was ?

Hast )>ou I-come in any sty

And cropped 3erus of corne J>eby ?

Art J>ou I-wont ouer corn to ryde

When ]>ou mystest haue go by syde ?

Taylor, the Water Poet, who frequently

reflects the thoughts of the common people,.

tells us :

I saw a fellow take a white loaf's pith,

And rub his master's white shoes clean therewith ;

Aud I did know that fellow (for his pride)

To want both bread and meat before he died.

'Superbiae Flagellum,' p. 34. As quoted in Southey's 'Common-Place Book/ i. 517.

In Sweden injuring corn is regarded as a moral as well as a legal offence. There is a pretty legend illustrative of this wholesome feeling :

"Halting at Munketorp, we visit a chapel of English St. David, apostle of Wastmanlancf. He came from Britain shortly before Sigfrid died, and stands high in the annals of the Church for the purity of his life. Tradition tells how, when his eyesight began to fail, as he entered his humble chamber, a sunbeam was peeping through the narrow window. Mistaking it for a peg, he sus- pended his gloves thereon, and the sunbeam bore them up. When St. David sent his pupil to fetch his gloves, lo ! to his surprise, the boy beheld them still hanging to the sunbeam ; he ran and told his master, who thanked Heaven, for he felt this to be a token that his sins were forgiven. From that day a sunbeam was always at his service. Once the gloves fell to the floor ; then the holy man felt he had committed some sin, and, in anguish of mind, recollected how that day he had trodden down some ears of corn, and though but few grains were spilt, yet even this little was the Lord's gift, and should have been food for the poor." Horace Marryat, ' One Year in Sweden, '1862, vol. ii. p. 104.