#Dialect#: South-East Midland.
#Vocabulary#: A number of French words are taken over
from the original, e.g. _plee_ 81, _ryot_ 83, _violastres_ 97, _saphire
loupe_ 116, _gowrdes_ 139, _clowe gylofres_ 157, _canell_ 158, _avaled_
195, _trayne_ (for _taynere_?) 222, _bugles_ 256, _gowtes artetykes_
314, _distreynen_ 315.
#Inflexions#: Almost modern.
VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. _schadeweth_ 19, _turneth_ 23.
3 pl. _ben_ 4, _han_ 14, _wexen_ 22, _loue_ 100.
pres. p. _fle(e)ynge_ 148, 252; _recordynge_ 317.
strong pp. _ȝouen_ 90, _begonne_ 171.
PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. _þei_ 5; _here_ 71; _hem_ 20.
#Sounds#: OE. _ā_ becomes _ǭ_: _hoot_ 11, _cold_ 31.
OE. _y_ appears as _y_ (= _i_): _byggynge_ 90, _kyȝn_ 'kine' 256;
except regular _left_ (hand) 69, 71, 72, where Modern English has also
adopted the South-Eastern form of OE. _lyft_.
* * * * *
21-3. The French original says that the children have white _hair_ when
they are young, which becomes black as they grow up.
24-5. The belief that one of the Three Kings came from Ethiopia is based
on Ps. lxviii. 31: 'Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon
stretch out her hands unto God.' In mediaeval representations one of the
three is usually a negro.
27. _Emlak_: miswritten for _Euilak_, a name for India taken from
_Havilah_ of Genesis ii. 11.
28. _þat is: þe more_: _Ynde_ has probably fallen out of the text after
_is_.
34-5. _Ȝalow cristall draweth <to> colour lyke oylle_: the insertion
of _to_ is necessary to give sense, and is supported by the French:
_cristal iaunastre trehant a colour doile_. (MS. Harley 4383, f. 34 b.)
36-7. The translation is not accurate. The French has: _et appelle homme
les dyamantz en ceo pais 'Hamese'_.
64 ff. It was supposed that the pearl-bearing shell-fish opened at low
tide to receive the dew-drops from which the pearls grew.
74. _ȝif ȝou lyke_, 'if it please you', impersonal = French _si
vous plest_.
75. _þe Lapidarye_, Latin _Lapidarium_, was a manual of precious stones,
which contained a good deal of pseudo-scientific information about their
natures and virtues, just as the _Bestiary_ summed up popular knowledge
of animals. A Latin poem by Marbod bishop of Rennes (d. 1123) is the
chief source of the mediaeval lapidaries, and, curiously enough, there
is a French prose text attributed by so intimate an authority as Jean
d'Outremeuse to Mandeville himself. Several Old French texts have been
edited by L. Pannier, _Les Lapidaires Français du Moyen Âge_, Paris
1882. Their high repute may be judged from the inclusion of no less than
seven copies in the library of Charles V of France (d. 1380); and it is
surprising that no complete ME. version is known. But much of the matter
was absorbed into encyclopaedic works like the _De Proprietatibus
Rerum_ of Bartholomaeus, which Trevisa translated.
97. Mistranslated. The French has: _qi sont violastre, ou pluis broun qe
violettes_.
100-1. _But in soth to me_: French: _Mes endroit de moy_, 'but for my
part'; the English translator has rendered _en droit_ separately.
108. _þerfore_: the context requires the sense 'because', but the
translator would hardly have used _þerfore_ had he realized that ll.
108-9 correspond to a subordinate clause in the French, and do not form
a complete independent sentence. He was misled by the bad punctuation of
some French MSS., e.g. Royal 20 B. X and (with consequent corruption)
Harley 4383.
136. _Cathaye_: China. See the classic work of Colonel Yule, _Cathay and
the Way Thither_, 2 vols., London 1866. The modernization of the Catalan
map of 1375 in vol. i gives a good idea of Mandeville's geography.
142. _withouten wolle_: the story of the vegetable lamb is taken from
the Voyage of Friar Odoric, which is accessible in Hakluyt's _Voyages_.
Hakluyt's translation is reprinted, with the Eastern voyages of John de
Plano Carpini (1246) and of William de Rubruquis (1253), in _The Travels
of Sir John Mandeville_, ed. A. W. Pollard, London 1900. The legend
probably arose from vague descriptions of the cotton plant; and
Mandeville makes it still more marvellous by describing as without wool
the lamb which had been invented to explain the wool's existence.
143-4. _Of þat frute I haue eten_: This assertion seems to be due to the
English translator. The normal French text has simply: _et cest bien
grant meruaille de ceo fruit, et si est grant oure [= oeuvre] de nature_
(MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 70 b).
147. _the Bernakes_: The barnacle goose—introduced here on a hint from
Odoric—is a species of wild goose that visits the Northern coasts in
winter. It was popularly supposed to grow from the shell-fish called
'barnacle', which attaches itself to floating timber by a stalk
something like the neck and beak of a bird, and has feathery filaments
not unlike plumage. As the breeding place of the barnacle goose was
unknown, and logs with the shell-fish attached were often found on the
coasts, it was supposed that the shell-fish was the fruit of a tree,
which developed in the water into a bird. Giraldus Cambrensis,
_Topographia Hibernica_, I. xv, reproves certain casuistical members of
the Church who ate the barnacle goose on fast-days on the plea that it
was not flesh; but himself vouches for the marvel. The earliest
reference in English is No. 11 of the Anglo-Saxon _Riddles_, of which
the best solution is 'barnacle goose'. For a full account see Max
Müller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii, pp. 583-604.