Grim fet niefs apparailler,
Et de viande bien charger.
715-720. _Hauelok the yunge_, &c. Comp. the Fr. ll. 97-105.
Quant sa nief fut apparaillée,
Dedenz fist entrer sa meisnée,
Ses cheualers & ses serganz,
Sa femme demeine & ses enfanz:
La reyne mist el batel,
Haueloc tint souz son mantel.
Il meismes apres entra,
A Dieu del ciel se comanda,
Del hauene sont desancré,
Car il eurent bon orré.
Instead of the storm, in the French text Grim's ship is attacked by
pirates, who kill the whole of the crew, with the exception of himself
and family, whom they spare on the score of his being an old
acquaintance.
733-749. _In Humber_, &c. So in the Fr. _Ceo fut el north_, &c. Cf. ll.
122-135.
Tant out nagé & tant siglé,
Q'en vne hauene out parvenu,
Et de la nief a terre issu.
Ceo fut el North, a Grimesbi;
A icel tens qe ieo vus di,
Ni out onques home habité,
Ne cele hauene n'ert pas haunté.
Il i adresca primes maison,
De lui ad Grimesbi a non.
Quant Grim primes i ariua,
En .ii. moitez sa nief trencha,
Les chiefs en ad amont drescé,
Iloec dedenz s'est herbergé.
Pescher aloit sicome il soloit,
Siel vendoit & achatoit.
753.
_He took the sturgiun and the qual,
And the turbut, and lax withal,
He tok the sele, and the hwel_, &c.
The list of fish here enumerated may be increased from l. 896, and
presents us with a sufficiently accurate notion of the different species
eaten in the 13th century. Each of the names will be considered
separately in the Glossary, and it is only intended here to make a few
remarks on those, which in the present day appear rather strangely to
have found a place on the tables of our ancestors. The sturgeon is well
known to have been esteemed a dainty, both in England and France, and
specially appropriated to the King's service, but that the whale, the
seal, and the porpoise should have been rendered palatable, excites our
astonishment. Yet that the whale was caught for that purpose, appears
not only from the present passage, but also from the Fabliau intitled
_Bataille de Charnage et de Caresme_, written probably about the same
period, and printed by Barbazan. It is confirmed, as we learn from Le
Grand, by the French writers; and even Rabelais, near three centuries
later, enumerates the whale among the dishes eaten by the Gastrolatres.
In the list of fish also published by Le Grand from a MS. of the 13th
century, and which corresponds remarkably with the names in the Romance,
we meet with the _Baleigne_. See _Vie Privée des François_, T. II.
sect. 8.
Among the articles at Archbishop Nevil's Feast, 6 Edw. IV., we find,
_Porposes and Seales XII._ and at that of Archbishop Warham, held in
1504, is an item: _De Seales & Porposs. prec. in gross XXVI. s. VIII.
d._ Champier asserts that the Seal was eaten at the Court of Francis I.,
so that the taste of the two nations seems at this period to have been
nearly the same. For the courses of fish in England during the 14th and
15th centuries, see Pegge's _Form of Cury_, and Warner's _Antiquitates
Culinariæ_, to which we may add MS. Sloane, 1986. [_Cf._ _Babees Book,
&c._, ed. Furnivall, 1868, p. 153.]
[784. For _setes_ we should probably read _seten_ or _sette_, which
would be as good a rime as many others. The scribe has probably made the
rime more perfect than the sense. It must mean, "In the sea were they
oft set." We cannot here suppose _setes_ = _set es_ = set them.]
839. _And seyde, Hauelok, dere sone._ In the French, Grim sends Havelok
away for quite a different reason, viz. because he does not understand
fishing.