Photos of the River Lee and Mrs Towser (the narrow boat with the orange gaz locker) by Harriet Salisbury.
I have been busy moving my narrow boat up the River Lee to Stansted Abbotts to have her bottom seen to.
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River Lee and Mrs Towser
Medlars – a Rude Fruit for Winter
Medlars were a very common and useful fruit particularly in the Medieval and Early Modern period. They come out in December but can only be eaten when they are rotten and ‘bletted’. They also store well. They, therefore, provide a source of winter sweetness when there were few other fresh sources available.
They are from the Rosaceae family which includes apples, pears, rosehips and quinces. The English called them ‘open arses’ or ‘dog’s arses’ or ‘granny’s arses’ because of the way they looked until the more polite French name the Medlar caught on.
Shakespeare uses both words and uses their sexual connotations as they were thought also to look like female genitalia. A medlar was also a name for a prostitute. So in Romeo and Juliet this speech by Mercutio to Romeo and their mates contains some very bawdy thoughts:
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.
O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse and thou a poppering pear!
RJ 2.1.33
I think you can also see how good Shakespeare was at making his allusions available to all classes. For the sophisticated he begins with the reference to the French medlar and in case the groundlings are missing out throws in the ‘open-arse’ so they know what he is alluding to.
Medlars fell out of favour in the 18th and 19th Centuries. For more on medlars have a look at British Food history https://britishfoodhistory.com/2017/11/12/forgotten-foods-7-openarses/
Or watch this video from ‘the American Viscountess’ from which I extracted the picture of the medlar above.
January Time for a Good Cider Cup
John Worlidge in 1697 has a calendar discussing the farming year. and this is part of the discussion of January.
This Moneth is the rich mans charge, and the poor mans misery; the cold like the days increase, yet qualified with the hopes and expectations of the approaching Spring: The Trees, Meadows and Fields are now naked, unless cloathed in white, whilest the Countryman sits at home, and enjoys the fruit of his past labours, and contemplates on his intended Enterprises. Now is welcom a cup of good Cider, or other excellent Liquors, such that you prepared the Autumn before; moderately taken, it proves the best Physick.
John Worlidge in Systema Agriculturae, 1697
December 10 Time for your Beetle & Wedge
Photo by Stephanie Musk (Wikipedia)
No season to hedge
Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenberg.org
get béetle and wedge
Cleaue logs now all
for kitchen and hall.
A beetle is a hammer and a wedge is used to split logs, so the first thing Tusser enjoins his readers to do for December is to stop digging and hedging and, instead, cut firewood.
He also suggests (if I read the Tudor writing correctly):
Sharpen dull working tooles
Leaue off tittle tattle and looke to thy cattle
and suggests:
Howse cow that is old, while winter doth hold.
But don’t forget:
Out once in a day, to drinke and to play.
He suggests covering strawberries with straw to protect them; Making sure your dried cod and ling don’t rot. Store the products of the Orchard in the attic. Bleed the horse and help the bees with ‘liquor and honie’.
‘Thus endeth Decembers abstract, agréeing with Decembers husbandrie.’
