74 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



articles of subsistence should any temporary scarcity 

 of food or want of employment deprive him of his 

 usual fare, an advantage not possessed by his Irish 

 fellow-subjects, to whom the failure of a rice or potato 

 crop is a matter not of discomfort merely, but of 

 absolute starvation. But the materials for such an 

 inquiry are very imperfect ; and although the assi- 

 duous devotion of an antiquary might collect many 

 valuable illustrations from neglected records, it is evi- 

 dent that in the present instance we can do little more 

 than put together a few scattered facts, which the 

 diligence of previous inquirers has already collected. 



Pierce Plowman, a writer of the time of Edward 

 III, says, that when the new corn began to be sold, 



' Woulde no beggar eat bread that in it beanes were, 

 But of coket, and clemantyne, or else clene wheate.'* 



This taste, however, was only to be indulged ' when 

 the new corn began to be sold ;' for then a short 

 season of plenty succeeded to a long period of fasting ; 

 the supply of corn was not equalized throughout the 

 year by the provident effects of commercial specula- 

 tion. The fluctuations in the price of grain, experi- 

 enced during this period, and which were partly 

 owing to insufficient agricultural skill, were sudden 

 and excessive. On the securing of an abundant 

 harvest in 1317, wheat, the price of which had been 

 so high as 80s, fell immediately to 6s, Bd, per quarter.f 

 The people of those days seem always to have looked 

 for a great abatement in the price of grain on the 

 successful gathering of every harvest ; and the in- 

 ordinate joy of our ancestors at their harvest-home 

 a joy which is faintly reflected in our own times 

 proceeded, there is little doubt, from the change 

 which the gathering of the crops produced, from 



* See the Athensum, a weekly literary paper, Feb. 3, 1832. 

 t Stow. 



