22 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE APPLE AND PEAR. 
2nd Drawer. “ Mass thou sayest true : the prince once 
set a dish of Apple-Johns before him and told him, 
there were five more Sir Johns 3 and putting off his 
hat said, “ I will now take my leave of these six dry, 
round, old, wither’d Knights.” 
2nd Henry IV, 2, are. 
12. 
Apples for dessert: 
“ I will make an end of my dinner3 
Pippins and cheese to come.” 
there’s 
Merry Wives, I. 2. 
So Horace (Sat. 1, 3, 6). 
“ Ab ovo usque ad mala,” 
from eggs to fruit, or from the first course to the dessert. 
Gloucestershire. 
13 - 
The garden of Shallows house. 
Shallow. “ Nay, you shall see mine orchard, 
where in an arbour we will eat a last year’s 
pippin of my own grafting, with a dish of 
carraways and so forth.” 
Davy. “ There’s a dish of leathercoats for you. 
2nd Henry IV, V. 3. 
14. 
“ I warrant they would whip me with their 
fine wits till I were as crest-fallen as a dried 
pear.” 
Merry Wives, IV. 5. 
Shakespeare calls one of his characters “ Costard,” and uses the word frequently in its old 
English meaning of “ head,” but it is not quite clear that he refers, except by double meaning, to 
the costard apple. A coffin was certainly an old term for pie crust. 
“ And of the paste a coffin I will rear, 
And make two pasties of your shameful heads.” 
Titus Andron. V. 2. 
But whether the “ custard-coffin ” may mean an apple pie, is rather doubtful. 
The “AppleJoint is the “ Winter Greening ’ of the “Fruit Manualf which will keep for 
two years but gets very shrivelled—and the Leathercoat is an excellent culinary apple, the “ Royal 
Russet which still grows in Gloucestershire. 
There is little doubt that apples and pears were cultivated and orchards planted in 
England long before cider and perry were made. The national beverage of the ancient Britons was 
mead ; that of our English forefathers was undoubtedly ale ; as there is abundant evidence to shew. 
Mead and ale filled the flowing cups of gods and heroes in Valhalla, and of kings and warriors on 
earth. The Romans introduced wine and it has ever since been known in England. In succeeding 
