The Book of Husbandry. Anthony Fitzherbert
the derivation from per- and use is not obvious; nor does it commend itself to such as are unacquainted with historical method. For this reason, some etymologists, including Webster, have imagined that it arose from peruise = pervise to see thoroughly, the i being dropped, and the u (really v) being mistaken for the vowel. This is one of those wholly unscrupulous fictions to which but too many incline, as if the cause of truth could ever be helped forward by means of deliberate invention. But there is no such word as peruise, nor any French perviser. Fitzherbert is one of the earliest authorities for peruse, though it also occurs in Skelton, Philip Sparrow, l. 814. Investigation will show that, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, there was a fashion of using words compounded with per-, a number of which I have given in my Dictionary, s. v. peruse. The old sense was ‘to use up, to go through thoroughly, to attend to one by one;’ and the word was sometimes spelt with a v, because vse (use) was generally so spelt. Examples are:—
“Let hym [i.e. the husbandman who wants to reckon the tithe of his corn] goo to the ende of his lande, and begynne and tell [i.e. count] .ix. sheues, and let hym caste out the .x. shefe in the name of god, and so to pervse from lande to lande, tyll he have trewely tythed all his corne;” sect. 30, l. 4.
“And thus [let the shepherd] peruse them all tyll he haue doone;” sect. 40, l. 23.
“Than [let the surveyor who is surveying property go] to the second howse on the same east side in lyke maner, and so to peruse from house to house tyll he come to St. Magnus churche;” Book of Surveying (1767), chap. xix.
“Begyn to plowe a forowe in the middes of the side of the land, and cast it downe as yf thou shulde falowe it, and so peruse both sydes tyl the rygge be cast down,” etc.; Book of Surveying (1767); chap. xxiv.
The special application to a book may be seen in Baret’s Alvearie: “To ouerlooke and peruse a booke againe, Retractare librum.” And accordingly it need not surprise us that Levins, in 1570, translated to peruse by peruti.
There is just one more suggestion which I venture to make, though I fear, like most conjectures which are made with respect to Shakespeare, it is probably valueless. When King Lear appears, in Act iv. sc. 4—
“Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With hor-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn”—
I cannot help being reminded of Fitzherbert’s list of weeds in sect. 20 (p. 29), in which he includes haudoddes, i.e. corn blue-bottles, as is obvious from his description; see also Britten and Holland’s English Plant-names. It is certainly remarkable that the haudod is precisely one of “the idle weeds that grow in corn,” and that its bright colour would be particularly attractive to the gatherer of a wild garland. We must not, however, overlook the form hardhake, which Mr. Wright has found in a MS. herbal as a name for the knapweed; see his note upon the passage. The two results do not, however, greatly differ, and it is conceivable that the same name could be applied at different times to both these flowers, the latter being Centaurea nigra, and the former Centaurea Cyanus. We also find the term hardewes, occurring as a name for the wild succory; see Hawdod in the Glossarial Index, p. 156. In any case, the proposal of Dr. Prior to explain hordock by the burdock (Arctium lappa), merely because he thinks the burs were sometimes entangled with flax, and so formed lumps in it called hards, is a wild guess that should be rejected. Hards are simply the coarse parts of flax, without any reference to burdocks whatever.
The wood-cut on the title-page is copied from the edition of 1598. The longer handle of the plough is on the left. See the description on p. 128.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “And [I give] to euery of my seruentes that be used to Ryde with me,” etc.; Sir A. Fitzherbert’s Will, quoted below at p. xviii.
[2] “Of late by experience I contriued, compyled, and made a Treatyse, … and callyd it the booke of husbandrye;” Prol. to Book of Surveying.
[3] I.e. the Books on Husbandry and Surveying.
[4] Read thus.
[5] The date is 1539; the words here quoted appear also in Berthelet’s edition of 1546.
[6] I am quoting from an article by Mr. A. Wallis entitled “Relics of Literature,” which appeared in the Derby Mercury, Nov. 1869. It contains some useful information about the editions of Fitzherbert’s works. It should be observed that 1538 was the very year of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s death, which took place on May 27.
[7] In an edition printed by T. Petit in 1541, a copy of which is in the Cambridge University Library, the title is—“The Newe Booke of Justyces of Peas, made by Anthony Fitzherbard Judge, lately translated out of Frenche into Englyshe, The yere of our Lord God MDXLI.”
[8] Canon Simmons kindly tells me—“I find from the Ordnance Map that Grimbald Bridge is the one over the Nidd below the town, i.e. a mile or a mile and a quarter from the town. There are two crossing to the town. The upper one is on the Harrogate Road, a second ‘Low Bridge,’ and then the third, ‘Grimbald bridge’.”
[9] It is the family tradition (which should go for something), that the author of the Book of Husbandry was Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, and no other.
[10] The date is, therefore, October 12, 1537.—W.W.S.
[11] See p. 81.—W.W.S.
[12] See p. 93.—W.W.S.
[13] This early edition, clearly the second, and using Pynson’s woodcut, was kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Bradshaw. It is not noticed in the usual books upon early printing, but a copy of it exists in the Cambridge University Library. The woodcut on the title-page is (as I have just said) the same as that on the title-page of the first edition.
[14] Probably printed in 1531, as it professes to be “amended, with dyuerse other thynges added thervnto;” for observe, that after this date, editions follow in quick succession.
[15] Mr. Wallis (see p. xiii, note 2) mentions also an undated edition, printed by James Roberts for E. White.
[16] The volume also contains a translation of Xenophon’s