262 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nds. N»40., Oct. 4. '56. 



have been the fruit boiled to the consistency of 

 jelly. 



" Jumbols" was new to me ; and I beg to say, 

 that, after much study of the following descrip- 

 tive jumble, its meaning still remains undisco- 

 vered. Your readers may be more successful. 



" To make Jumbols, 



" Of almonds being beaten to paste take half a pound, 

 with a short cake being grated, and two eggs, two 

 ounces of carraway seeds being beaten, and the juice of a 

 lemmon ; and being brought into a paste, roul it into 

 round strings, then cast it into knots, and so bake it in 

 an oven ; and when they are baked, ice them with rose- 

 water and sugar, and the white of an egg, being beaten 

 together; then take a feather and gild them, then put 

 them again into the oven, and let them stand in a little 

 while, and they will be iced clean over with a white ice ; 

 and so box them up, and you may keep them all the 

 year." 



A "March-pane" I had heard of; but a 

 " Paste Royal," whether white or red, or of spices, 

 was quite new to me. I now understand it to mean 

 a jelly ; but if Mrs. Rundell or Dr. Kitchener 

 has asserted the contrary, I yield the point with- 

 out a murmur. For truth to tell, to my appre- 

 hension, M. B. is not the most lucid of writers. 

 I find some difficulty in forming a clear concep- 

 tion of the " Dia Citonicum (as it is called), but 

 rightly Dia Cidonium" " What the comfit-makers 

 use, and call sucket-candy" I have a notion of; 

 but what on earth is meant by " Canidoniaus ? " 

 Caledonians and Thessalonians are the nearest 

 approach I can make to them ; but I do not sup- 

 pose that either of those people would allow you 

 to " gild them, and put them into your store," and 

 not draw them out " till they be dry." 



An infinity of other words are sore puzzles to 

 me ; but not to expose my ignorance too much, 

 let us proceed from the words to the things, and 

 give a glance at that part of the book which is 

 attributed to " Lord Ruthven." 



The exact limits of his lordship's labours are 

 not very well defined, and perhaps I may give to 

 him some things to which he is not entitled. But 

 that will not be of much moment. That he really 

 did practise physic is well known ; and since I 

 formerly wrote upon the subject, I have found an 

 additional evidence of the fact in the Diary of Sir 

 Henry Slingsby. lie speaks of Patrick Ruthven, 

 under the date of 1639, as 



"Mr. Ruthen, a Scottish gentleman of the family of the 

 Lord Gowers [Gowries], who had made it [sic] his study 

 in the art of physic to administer help to others, but not 

 for any gain to himself." — Slingsby's ih'ary, edit. Par- 

 sons, 8vo. Oxford, 1S3G, p. 48. 



"Doctor Stevens his water" is a recipe of so 

 great value that Lord Ruthven might well place 

 it proudly in the fore-front of his collection. All 

 the herbs in the kitchen-garden, and all the con- 

 diments in the cook's spice-box, went to its con- 

 coction, but its great foundatioft was " a gallon 



of Gascon wine." Distilled altogether, its powers 

 were marvellous. "It preserveth youth," and, 

 " using but two spoonfuls in seven days, it pre- 

 served Dr. Stevens ten years bed-rid, that he 

 lived to 98 years." Whether the Doctor ought 

 to have been grateful, who shall say ? Ladies, 

 whom it preserved in everlasting beauty, evidently 

 ought to have been so. 



Our ancestors, like ourselves, practised the manu- 

 facture of mineral waters : instead of Brighton 

 Seltzer and London Vichy, Lord Ruthven gives 

 recipes for making Tunbridge water and Epsom 

 water — "so that the smell or operation will scarcely 

 be discerned from the original." We are told also 

 how to make a " Malago wine," and a home-made 

 Claret, no doubt quite as good as some of our 

 modern Sherry and Bordeaux. 



A sad tale is told in the multitude of the noble 

 lord's prescriptions against consumption. The 

 painful subject is rendered almost ludicrous by 

 the extraordinary character of his suggested re- 

 medies. 



Glimpses occur of practices which must have 

 belonged to a period even then past : for example, 

 a peculiar oil of cream is recommended by his 

 lordship as a cure for "the gout in a hawk's leg." 



But the greatest oddity in this book, and in all 

 these books, is the way in which all nature was 

 subjected to the art of the chemist and the phy- 

 sician. The notion seems to have been that every- 

 thing in the world was endued with some curative 

 power, and strange were the means taken to get at 

 it. Herbs, of course, were universally used ; and 

 they were cut, dried, bruised, pounded, ground, 

 stamped, beaten, burned, chopped, and mangled 

 in varieties of ways. Ladies whose ferneries are 

 the delight of their eyes, and not unjustly so, may 

 here learn some of the many healing virtues which 

 their great-great-grandmothers are said to have 

 found in Polypody of the Oak, in Hart's Tongue, 

 and Maiden-hair. But, in truth, when in want 

 of a remedy nothing seems to have come amiss, 

 whether it was vegetable or animal. " Take," says 

 Lord Ruthven, " two dozen or twenty swallows 

 out of the nest," add rosemary leaves, lavender, 

 cotton and strawberry leaves, stamp them all to- 

 gether, and fry them all in May butter, or salad 

 oil, and you have a sovereign remedy " for all 

 aches." "Worms of the earth" were "good for 

 bruises;" deer's suet, hen's and duck's grease, 

 the pith of an ox's back, a white flint stone made 

 red-hot, and then immersed in ordinary beer, 

 boar's grease, the sole of an old hose, goose dung, 

 the marrow of an ox's leg, the lungs of a fox, a 

 rotten apple, an ox's paunch, frogs, eyes of crabs, 

 droppings from a candle, snail-shells, and mice- 

 dung, are among the articles in Lord Ruthven's 

 pharmacopoeia. But snakes, adders, and vipers 

 seem to have been the ultimate resorts of his me- 



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