Urbem Lissimor pertransit flumen Avennor, Ardmor cernit ubi concitus aequor adit. Surius insignem gaudet ditare Waterfort, Dessia te ditat divisor Momoniamque, Ditat in Escorti fluvium quod Slane vocatur, Nunc cernit Wesefort se sociare sibi. Visere Castelenoc non dedignantur Avendeth, Kildare, Lechlinum quoque ditat Barva, Waterfort Ecce Boing qui Traum celer influit, istius undas Tyrconiel et Kaneliim Kilewiskia ditat, Quas tanquam limes dividit unda fluens." The "Sined," flowing between Connaught (Connacia) and Munster (Momonia) is obviously the Shannon. "Avennor" is a variant of "Avenmor" ("Avonmor," "Avenmore," "Avenemor"), a common name in the middle ages for the Munster Blackwater or Broadwater." The "Surius" is clearly the Suir; the "Slane " is now called the Slaney. The "Avendeth," flowing into the sea at Dublin, is the Liffey: "Avenliff," and "Avenelyf," the commoner forms, are found in official documents of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The "Banna " is the Bann; the "Barva the Barrow; and the "Boing" the Boyne. The "Kilewiskia " remains a mystery." 8 66 Rolls Series, No. 34, ed. Thomas Wright, 1863, pp. 416-17. 'See Calendar of Documents, Ireland, 1171-1251, 251, Avenmore ibid., 1285-1292, 282, "Avenemor." * See Calendar of Documents, Ireland, 1302-07, 81, “Avenelyf." دو The source for Neckam's statements about these Irish rivers it is not easy to determine. The preeminent authority on Ireland in Neckam's time was Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald de Barri), whose Topographia Hibernica contains a brief and not entirely accurate account of Irish geography and topography. In "Distinctio" I, chapter vii of this work he lists and describes sixteen of the rivers of Ireland, including all those mentioned by Neckam except the “Kilewiskia" : i. e., the Liffey, the Bann, the Moy, the Sligo (Gitly), the Erne, the Mourne, the Finn, the Bandon, the Lee, the Barrow, the Nore, the Suir, the Slaney, the Boyne, the Munster Blackwater and the Shannon (Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, Vol. v, Rolls Series, 1867, 30-31). But not only are the names different in form from those All these rivers, except the "Kilewiskia," are found in Spenser's catalogue, which contains eighteen names: i. e., the Liffey, the Slaney, the "Oure" (Avonbeg), the Shannon, the Boyne, the Bann, the "Awniduff" (Ulster Blackwater), the Foyle, the Drowes, the "Allo" (Munster Blackwater), the Awbeg, the Suir, the Nore, the Barrow, the Kenmare, the Bandon, the Lee, and the "Aubrian" (not positively identified). Is it likely, however, that Spenser ever saw a copy of Neckam's poem? Certainly it is by no means impossible. Neckam's writings were extant in Spenser's life-time, it is true, only in manuscript, and a single manuscript was known to Wright, Neckam's editor. 10 Yet it is practically certain that other manuscripts were in circulation, for Neckam was rather well known to the learned.11 He is cited more than once by Camden, who calls him affectionately "noster Nechamus." 12 Spenser, then, may have come across a copy of the De Laudibus when he was in London in 1590, if not earlier. That he did make use of manuscript material has been shown to be highly probable by Professor J. L. Lowes, in his article on Spenser and the Mirour de l'Omme.13 It is surely not extravagant to suppose that Spenser occasionally consulted unprinted works bearing on history and geography. As Professor Lowes says, "That Spenser, with his antiquarian and archaizing tastes, must have been familiar with manuscripts, both at Cambridge and later, there is every reason, a priori, to believe.” 14 Whether or not Spenser ever saw a copy of the De Laudibus, however, he could hardly have failed to read excerpts from it in the work of his admired Camden. In the edition of 1590 of the Britannia in the section devoted to Ireland, occur five quotations, totalling twelve lines, from the passage given above.15 These lines, in the De Laudibus, but other geographical regions are associated with them. The Topographia, then, was probably not Neckam's source. 10 Op. cit., Introduction, p. lxxvii: "I have printed the poem De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae from the only Ms. with which I am acquainted, preserved in the Royal Library in the British Museum, Ms. 8 E ix." 12 Britannia, ed. 1590, 692; ed. 1594, 656; ed. 1600, 769. ... 13 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. XXIX (1914), 388-452. 14 Op. cit., 451, note. 15 Lines 5-6, 7-8, 13-14, 17-18, 1-4. These are found also in later editions. relating to a subject in which he was much interested, must have impressed him. To be sure, since Spenser's list is more than twice as long as Neckam's, and his description different, it is not to be supposed that the medieval writer was his "source." There is no reason to doubt that Spenser was in this passage describing, for the most part, from personal observation. And yet it is possible that these verses of Neckam gave to the author of the Faerie Queene, deferential as he was to literary authority and precedent, and prone to draw no little of his inspiration from "bookish" sources, a suggestion to include in his pageant the streams of the "salvage island." University of Texas. See (1590) pp. 692, 693, 700, 701, 703. There are some minor differences in the lines as printed in the Britannia, which suggests that the manuscript used by Camden was not the same as that from which Wright printed his edition. Says Humphrey to Luce, in the first act of The Knight of the Burning Pestle: I am full Of pitty, though I say it, and can pull Out of my pocket, thus, a paire of gloves. Looke, Lucy, looke! the dog's tooth, nor the dove's Are not so white as these; and sweete they bee, And whipt about with silke, as you may see. If you desire the price, sute from your eie A beame to this place, and you shall espie F. S., which is to say, my sweetest hony, They cost me three and two pence, cr no money. play, but four have made any Professor Raymond M. Alden Of the various editors of this observation on the last couplet. (Belles-Lettres Edition, 1910), dismisses F. S. with the brief phrase, "evidently a symbolic price mark." Dr. H. S. Murch (Yale Studies in English, vol. XXXIII, 1908) notes: "This is probably some glove-dealer's trademark, by which the price of Humphrey's gift is indicated." Mr. F. W. Moorman (Temple Dramatists, 1898) is even more cautious; he queries: "Is this the tradesman's secret mark to denote the price?" and Mr. Henry Weber, whose fourteen-volume edition of Beaumont and Fletcher appeared at Edinburgh in 1812, fails to comment on F. S., but notes that "these gloves are very cheap when compared with some worn at the time." The early quartos do not, of course, contain explanatory notes, and this passage is left without comment by 1 He gives a cross-reference to his own vol. x, p. 84, where is a note on the perfuming of gloves. Cf. the chapter on this subject in S. W. Beck's Gloves, Their Annals and Associations (London, 1883). We may also refer to William Hull, Jr., The History of the Glove Trade (London, 1834), and W. B. Redfern's illustrated volume, Royal and Historic Gloves and Shoes (London, 1904), for further information on this subject in general. On perfumed gloves, see Beck, pp. 82 ff., and Hull, p. 24; on embroidered gloves, and those knit with silk, see Beck, pp. 112 ff., and Hull, p. 25; on wedding gloves, and gloves as gifts, see Beck, pp. 227 ff. (especially p. 237), and Hull, pp. 38 ff. The various entries from old records cited by Sympson (1750), Coleman (1778), Darley (1840), Dyce (1843), Keltie (The Works of the British Dramatists. Carefully selected from the Best Editions, with Copious Notes. . . Edinburgh, 1870); Fitzgibbon (Famous Elizabethan Plays. London, 1890); Neilson (Chief Elizabethan Dramatists. Boston and New York, 1911), and Wheeler (Six Plays by Contemporaries of Shakespeare. Oxford University Press. The World's Classics [1915]). The play is reprinted in Burlesque Plays and Poems by various authors (Morley's Universal Library, XXVII, 1885), where the last line of the above passage reads (erroneously) "They cost me three-andtwopence, and no money "; but there is no note.2 The matter first engaged the attention of correspondents to Notes and Queries in 1885,3 and Mr. Nicholson replied to J. P. A.'s inquiry early in 1886: "Letters are commonly affixed as private marks of the price; but as an outsider is not supposed to know these, even if they were used at that day, it is more likely, as the gloves were delicate, and whipt about with silk,' that F stood for fine, or for some other word, and S for silk, and that 3s. 2d. was known to the girl of the period and to many of the audience to be the selling price of such." This reply seems to be largely guesswork-and have the editors given anything better?-but it notes one point which the editors seem to have overlooked: namely, that the audience understood the letters-and if this were so, it would rule the "symbolic pricemark" out of court. It would be easy to guess some meaning for the mysterious letters such as Mr. Nicholson's "fine silk," or "for sale," or "French skin," or "foreign shape," (or even, in view of Weber's note, "fery sheep "!). One might imagine that the price was "four shillings "-or five-and that Humphrey had driven a bargain; in which case, the lines would not be without an additional touch of humor, supposing that the public knew the meaning of Beck (pp. 246 ff.) are interesting. There is a considerable range in prices -from a penny to forty shillings, the price of gloves given to Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1578. Cf. Redfern, p. 4. "I have not seen the play in Bullen's Variorum Edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is not included in the first four volumes (London, 19041912). In J. Monck Mason's Comment on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (London, 1798), there is no note on this passage. * Series VI, vol. XII, p. 468; the reply to the question there phrased is to be found in series VII, vol. 1, p. 11 (1886). |