186 AMENTACE^ 



corne, or fruit of an eike " — corn and kernel being common names for seeds. 

 In the Anglo-Latin Dictionary, the "Promptorium," we find ocorn, and also 

 accorne, or archarde, " f ruite of the oke, glans." Mr. Albert Way, quoting 

 from a MS. in the possession of Sir Thomas Phillips, says, " In the curious 

 inventory of the eftects of Sir Simon Burley, who was beheaded in 1388, are 

 enumerated 'deux paires des paternostres de aumbre blanc, I'un contrefait 

 des atchernes, I'autre rouiide.'" Chaucer, also, tells of some who were 

 " wonte lightlie to slaken hir hunger at even, with akehornes of okes." 



Whether the ancient Britons ever fed upon acorns may be doubted ; nor 

 would it be easy to prove that their swine ate them ; but when the Saxons 

 swayed this kingdom, they, who had come from the vast Oak forests of 

 Germany, knew well the worth of this " fruite of the oke." Swine's flesh 

 has been generally the principal animal food of nations in the earlier stages 

 of civilization ; and the Saxon swineherd was a very useful member of the 

 community. In times when swine were fattened in the forest by the acorns 

 which strewed the ground, these forests became so important, that King 

 Ina, in the close of the seventh century, enacted, for their preservation, the 

 Pannage Laws, which regulated the right of feeding swine in the woods. 

 The fruit of the Oak was then deemed a fitting gift for a king to receive, 

 and the right of pannage formed part of the dowry of the daughters of 

 Saxon kings : while a failure of these fruits would have proved a grand cause 

 of famine. The anger felt by the people Avhen the Norman Conqueror turned 

 the forest into the hunting-ground, was greatly caused by the loss of the 

 food for swine afforded by the Oak-trees; and so bitter was the feeling 

 engendered by the grievance, that the old historians seem to have great 

 satisfaction in recording the retributive justice to the king, by which the 

 New Forest proved fatal to more than one of his family. This destruction 

 of the food for swine was one of the wrongs for which, in the latter days of 

 King John, the voice of the nation loudly demanded redress. Even till 

 within the last few years, the New Forest furnished food for large numbers 

 of swine; and the swineherd might be seen plying his ancient vocation 

 beneath the Hampshire Oaks — those Oaks of which the people of that county 

 are said to be so proud. Long after wheat, oats, and rye were waving their 

 green blades or ripened grain over the fields of Britain, and in some measure 

 rendered the acorns of less importance, considerable value was still attached 

 to these fruits by the nation. Li the Saxon Chronicle, the year 1116 is 

 described as a very " heavy -timed, vexatious, and destructive year"; and 

 the failure of the acorns in that season is particularly mentioned. "This 

 year also was so deficient in mast (acorns), that there never was heard such 

 in all this land or in AVales." The acorns to which the classic authors refer, 

 as causing the fatness of the primitive people of Greece, were the edible 

 fruits of other trees, as the Q. hallota, the Q. ilex, and particularly the Q. cesadus 

 — the fruits of the latter being still as much eaten in Syria as chestnuts are 

 in other countries. 



From Britain's early days the timber of the Oak was used for various 

 purposes, and Alfred's navy, which fought with the sea-kings, went forth in 

 ships built, doubtless, of their native Oak ; while the conjecture is probable 

 that the boats which composed the fleet of Edgar were framed of this wood. 



