82 History of Animal Plagues. 



mentioned in our notice of the Laws of Howel, revised more 

 than two hundred years before this period ; and the scab and 

 tetter (rceb, rerefi) were well-known diseases among the Saxon 

 shepherds.^ 



The term rot appears subsequently to have been applied to 

 small-pox, or some other malady which was contagious, and to 

 have continued in use for some time.^ For instance, Dryden, four 

 centuries after this invasion, says : — 



' Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try, 

 Nor fear a rot from tainted company.' 



In the fourteenth century, the century following these de- 

 scriptions, we have direct testimony that the small-pox of sheep 

 was known to poets, and that in England. Delightful old 

 Chaucer is the very first non-scientific writer who, in this way, 

 gives us the plainest proof of its existence when he wrote his 

 famous Canterbury Tales, about the middle of that century. In 

 the Pardoner^s Story, when that knavish ecclesiastic is describ- 

 ing his mummeries and conceits, he is made to say : — 



' Then show I forth my longe crystal stones, 

 Ycrammed full of cloutes and of bones, 

 Relics they be, as weenen they each one,^ 

 Then have I in laton'* a shoulder-bone. 

 Which that was of a holy Jew^s sheep. 

 Good men, say I, take of my wordes keep, 

 If that this bone be wash'd in any well, 

 If cow, or calf, or sheep, or oxe swell, 

 That any worm hath eat, or worm ystung,^ 

 Take water of that well, and wash his tongue. 

 And it is whole anon ; and, furthermore, 

 Of pockes^ and of scab^ a7id every sore, 



^ /vVr'. Onvald Cockayne. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early 

 England. London, 1865. Vol. i. p. 24. 



'■^ ln'Lo\\Aon\ Encyclopcedia of Agriculture, published so late as 1839, it is noted 

 that the rot is a popular term among shepherds, and includes within its range dis- 

 eases widely different. This writer speaks of blood rot, glanderous rot, the great 

 rot, hydropic rot, pelt ivt, and hunger rot. 



^ As each one weens or believes. ' 



^ A cross made of a mixture of metals resembling brass. * Stung. 



" The Saxon /or/fv, okl Anglo-Saxon ' pocca.' The Germans still usually term 

 this disease ' Schafpocke,' and pock is not an unfrequent word among ourselves 

 to designate the variolous eruption. 



