290 Notes and Illustrations. 
56. 20. Mow-burn is occasioned by the Hay being stack’d too 
soon, before its own juice is thoroughly dried, and by Norfolk 
people is called the Red Raw ; not such as is occasioned by stacking 
it when wet with Rain, which is a nasty musty and stinks.—T-.R. 
56. 26. Hentzner, p. 79 (quoted in Harrison’s Description of 
England, ed. F. J. Furnivall, p. Ixxxiv), says: ‘‘ As we were re- 
turning to our inn (at Windsor, Sept. 14), we happened to meet 
some country people celebrating their Harvest-home ; their last 
_load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image 
richly dressed, by which, perhaps, they would signify Ceres ; this 
they keep moving about, while men and women, men and maid 
servants, riding through the streets in the cart, shout as loud as 
they can till they arrive at the barn.” 
**'Tis merie in hall, 
When beards wag all.” 
This proverb is of great antiquity. It occurs in the Life of Alexander 
(formerly, but erroneously, attributed to Adam Davie), written in 
1312, where the words are: 
“‘Swithe mury hit is in halle, 
When burdes wawen alle.’”—Weber’s Met. Rom. 
It occurs also in Shakspere, 2 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 3, and is quoted 
in the Werte Tales of Skelton, 1567. See also Ray’s Proverbs. 
57. 3. In Harrison’s Descript. of England, Part II. p. 50 ef seq., 
there is a long chapter on the cultivation and uses of Saffron in 
England, from which I extract the following: ‘As the Saffron of 
England, which Platina reckneth among spices, is the most excel- 
lent of all other; for it giueth place neither to that of Cilicia, 
whereof Solinus speaketh, neither to anie that commeth from 
Cilicia, where it groweth upon the mount Zaurus, Tmolus, Italie, 
Htolia, Sicilia or Licia, in sweetnesse, tincture and continuance ; so 
of that which is to be had amongst us, the same that grows about 
Saffron Walden, somtime called Waldenburg, in the edge of Essex, 
first of all planted there in the time of Edward the Third, and that 
of Glocestershire and those westerlie parts, which some thinke to 
be better than those of Walden, surmounteth all the rest, and 
therefore beareth worthilie the higher price, by sixpence or twelue 
pence most commonlie in the pound..... The heads of saffron 
are raised in Julie, either with plough, raising or tined hooke; and 
being scowred from their rosse or filth, and seuered from such 
heads as are ingendred of them since the last setting, they are 
interred againe in Julie and August by ranks or rowes, and being 
couered with moulds, they rest in the earth, where they cast forth 
little fillets and small roots like vnto a scallion, until September, in 
the beginning of which moneth the ground is pared and all weeds 
and grasse that groweth vpon the same remooved, to the intent 
that nothing may annoie the floure when as his time dooth come 
to rise. ‘These things being thus ordered in the latter end of the 
