The _currant_ is one of the very oldest raisins known. As early as 75 A.
D. Pliny speaks of the fine grapes grown in Greece, the berry being
thin-skinned, juicy and sweet, and the bunch being exceedingly small.
This, then, must be the currant of later times. After this first mention
of this grape, the same drops out of history for ten centuries, and the
name currant is first to be identified with raisins de Corauntz, or
rather, “reysyns de _Corauntzs_” as late as 1334. As early as the
eleventh century, a lively traffic in this kind of raisins had taken
place between the Greek producers, the _Venetians_ and other of the
Mediterranean merchant nations. In 1334 we find them called “corauntz;”
in 1435, “corent;” and old MS. of the Grocers’ Company in London, speaks
of “x butts and vi roundelletts of resins of Corent.” Thus spelled, the
name was used for years. In 1463 “reysonys of Corawnce” were three pence
per pound, and in 1512 the Duke of Northumberland paid two pence per
pound for rasyns of Corens. In 1554 the name had changed to currans, and
the Stationers’ Company provided for a banquet “5 punde of currans at
one shilling and eight pence.” In 1558 the same company provided for “6
punde of currance for 2 shillings.” In 1578 we find in Lytes’
translation of Dodoens’s “Herbal,” in the description of different
varieties of vines, that “Small raysens, commonly called Corantes, but
more rightly raysens of Corinthe. The fruit is called in the shoppes of
the countrie,[1] passulae de Corinthe; in French, raisins de Corinthe;
in base Almaigne (Dutch) Corinthea; in English, Currantes, and small
raysens of Corynthe.” Here, then, is indicated for the first time that
the true and correct name should be “raisins of Corinth.” But we need
not follow this evolution any longer; there can be no possible doubt
that the name _currant_, the one now accepted for this class of raisins,
is derived from the town of Corinth, on the mainland of Greece,--the
Morea of our days, the Peloponnesus of the ancients. Until the time when
the Turks conquered Greece, the port of Corinth was the principal point
of export for this class of raisins, and while, after the subjection of
Greece this commerce entirely ceased, still this fruit always continued
to bear the name by which it first became known to commerce.
[1] Holland, Dodoens was a learned Dutch botanist.