Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/163

 ws.v.FKB.17,1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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embassy arrived at Tours from the King of Hungary and Bohemia. A herald put on the banqueting table a live peacock, in order that all who wished to make any vows might do so; upon which "two knights of the embassy did make vows to perform a deed of arms, and another to hold a tourney ; but there was no peacock pie, and " when the dinner was ended, the dancings began."

JAMES \VATSON. Folkestone.

To L. P. G.'s queries I would suggest the following answer. The peacock is in no sense symbolic of Christmas ; but Christmas among Teutonic nations became the chief banqueting-day in the year, and the peacock was from Roman times associated with the most elaborate of banquets. Compare Juvenal, i. 143, "Et crudum pavonem in balnea portas," with Cicero, 'Ad. Fam.' ix. 18, 20.

The author of * Domestic Life in England ' (1835) at p. 34, says of the fifteenth cen- tury :

"Among the famous dishes at the more splendid entertainments was the ' peacock enkakyll ' [as to the meaning of this latter word L cannot hazard a guess], the receipt for dressing which directed that, 'for the feast royal, peacocks shall be dight in this manner. Take, and flay off the skin with the feathers, tail, and the neck and head thereon, then take the skin, and all the feathers, and lay it on the table abroad, and strew thereon ground cummin (a warm seed), then take the peacock, and roast him and baste him with raw yolks of eggs, and when he is roasted, take him off and let him cool awhile, and take and sew him in his skin, and gild his comb, and so serve him forth with the last course.' "

The author cited does not give the source from which he derives the above quotation. Presumably it is of fifteenth- century origin, with the spelling modernized.

The place of the peacock at Christmas banquets is, I think, at present occupied by the cygnet. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

Probably there is no ground for associat- ing the peacock with Christmas further than that it was an expensive dish, and therefore desirable in the celebration of the great Christian festival. Beyond this, the peacock can only have been commemorative of Christmas because of the supposed incor- ruptibility of its flesh, and, perhaps, from a little more enlightened point of view, of its renewal of life in changing annually its plumage. In folk-lore the superstitions re- lating to the peacock the association of its cry with wet and cold weather, for instance are not necessarily, perhaps, relics of the pagan reverence in which the bird was held,

. as it appertained especially to Juno, who was borne through the air in a chariot

! by this means. Identified with Juno, the peacock, however, was well calculated to be a terror to ** serpents " : "By his voice he frightens serpents, and drives away all venomous animals, so that they dare not stay where his voice is often heard " (' Hortus Sanitatis,' Bk. III. 93). Fairholt thinks that it was adopted as an emblem of the resurrection by the early Christians, because it is represented on Roman coins as bearing the empresses up to heaven, as the eagle does the emperors. But while the bird does not occur anywhere, apparently, in ancient art in connexion with Christmas, neither does there appear to be any indisputable evidence of its association in that respect with the resurrection. As an emblem of immortality, because of the presumed incorruptibility of its flesh, the peacock is figured on the cata- combs, though not so frequently, I believe, in that emblematic sense as the dove. The peacock appears in more than one instance in association with the palm-tree (? the tree of life). A sarcophagus in the Ravenna Museum is said to bear a peacock, a palm- tree, and the Christ monogram in juxta- position, and in the British Museum collec- tion of Christian rings purchased of Mr. Hamilton is one of the seventh or eighth century, said to be among the finest known. It is an oval bloodstone, with a palm-tree in the centre ; on each side is a peacock, and it bears the inscription ANA2TA2I2 TOY

AHMOY. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

G, Elgin Court, W.

"ToPiNAMBOu" (10 th S. v. 66). The topin- ambour of the French is the root of a South American sunflower, Helianthus tuberosus, formerly cultivated by the native tribes of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. Its sup- posed Brazilian origin led to its receiving the name of a native tribe of that country, who were allies of the French.

J. D. HOOKER.

The Camp, Sunningdale.

In the * Diccionario Enciclopedico His- pano- Americano ' (Barcelona, 1897) one finds :

" Tnpinam l>aes: m. pi. Etnog. Tribus indigenas

de la America meridional Dondequiera que se

establecen, si no hallan tierra de labor, derriban gran inimero de arboles. Los dejan secar, los quemau, remueven el suelo para mezclarlo con las cenizas, y con esto lo tienen preparado para el cultivo. Plantan al insta?ite la mandioca, que llega a sazon a los seis meses, y con la que hacen delgadas tortas. Carecen de sal, pero la suplen por la pimienta, con que sazonan todas sus viandas. Da lo que cuecen vierten en calabazas el caldo.