From Fraser's Magazine.

THE ORIGINAL MERRY ANDREW.*

might be suffragan to the Bishop of Chichester- -a man of mark in the country he must have been—and afterwards three times over by his Carthusian superior, that he might go abroad and study medicine. After this he reckons himself (as well he might) clearly discharged from religion, and able to settle quietly at Montpelier, then the chief transalpine school of physic.

THE great grandfather of all Murrays is surely the author of the Introduction of Knowledye, "the whych dothe teache a man to speake all maner of languages, and to know the usage and fashion of all maner of countreys. And for to know the most parte of all maner of coynes of money the whych is currant in every region. Made by Andrew Borde, of PhysThere was nothing of the martyr about ycke Doctor." Here in thirty-nine chap- Andreas Parforatus, as he calls himself. If ters are the Doctor's notes on "Barbari he writes a book of Sermons in 1532. he and the black Mores and their speche; "takes the oaths to Henry VIII. in 1534. "Jeene (Genoa) and the Jeneneys;" "of the kingdom of Poll, and of the disposicion of the people; "of Gulik and Lewke" (Juliers and Liege), and base and high Almayne, and so forth. The said notes were from personal observation, for Boorde "had trauayled thorow and round about all the regions of Christynte; and were put together at Montpelier

on

in 1542.

The Prior Houghton and several of his monks were put into the Tower, and afterwards hanged, for refusing to take these same oaths. But Boorde was already something of a courtier; when he was “a young doctor" (of full forty years old) he, just home from his travels, was sent for by the "Duke of Norfolk. He did not like to prescribe without consulting the Duke's old physician, Dr. Butte. But Butte did not come; so Boorde prescribed, made a cure, and was "allowed to wait on" the King. He was, too, not at all the man to make a good Carthusian. He, the original "Merry Andrew," must have been horrified by their silence, their solitariness, their nomeat, no fun, all stay at home life. It made him ill; and his distaste for it doubtless strengthened his inclination for travel.

Who was Boorde? Mr. Furnivall has published his book of travels, his Dyetary of Helth, and Barnes's answer to his lost Treatyse upon Berdes, along with his own learned "Forewords" and " Hindwords," in the last extra volume of the Early English Text Society. Boorde was born at Borde's (now Board's) hill in Holmdale, not far from the Hayward's Heath station, in Sussex. The family makes a figure in Lower's Worthies of Sussex: by the time When he got free from the Charterthe Armada came it had split into two house, Cromwell took him up, had him to branches, the heads of which, occupying stay with him at Bishop's Waltham, and Board's Hill and Paxhill, gave 30l. apiece got him appointed to an office which Tutowards the defence of the country. In dor statecraft taught necessary - of ob1570 one of them, an Andrew, was a nati- serving, viz. and reporting on the state of vus or "villein regardant," of Lord Aber- feeling abroad about Henry VIII.'s doings. gavenny's manor of Ditchling, near Cuck- He travelled far, starting suddenly from field; and him, "Georgius Nevile Dnus. Orleans to Catalonia, in order to show nine de Bergevenny," manumits, so that he no Scotch and English pilgrims the way to longer has to "regard," i.e. to be on the St. James's shrine at Compostella. He watch, what service may be required of warned the poor fellows that it was a very him. But this cannot be our Doctor; for hard journey, saying he would rather go he had been got hold of by the Charter- six times from England to Rome than house monks while he was under age, ac- once from Orleans to Catalonia. Howcording to their practice of "drawing boys ever they went; and Spain being then as into religion with hooks of apples, whom, now a country where the traveller's conhaving professed, they do not instruct instant difficulty is how to avoid being doctrines, but maintain them to go upon beggarly excursions." So Boorde became a monk; but he was "dispensyd with relygyon," first by the Pope's bull that he

The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowl. edge, made by Andrew Borde, of Physycke Doctor, &c. Edited, with Life of Andrew Boorde, and large extracts from his "Breuyary," by F. J. Furnivall. M. A., Trin. Hall. Camb. Early English Text Society, 1870.

starved, they all suffered a good deal: and in coming back "thorow Spayn, for all the crafte of Physycke that I coulde do, they dyed, all by eatynge of frutes and drynkynge of water, the whych I did ever refrayne myselfe." How he rejoiced when he got into Aquitaine, the land of plenty, where "a peny worth of whyte bread may serue an honest man a hoole weke." He "dyd kis the ground for ioy," he says,

"burdious and byon (Bordeaux and for I never knew alyon goode to ynglonde Bayonne) being so much better than the exceppt thei knew profytt and lucre shold baryn countrey of Byskay... for Aquitany hath no falow for good wyne and bred. Whan I was ther I had ix kakys for a peny; and a kake serued me a daye, and so it wyll any man, excepte he be a rauenner."

com to them." It is likely, however, that he is, in writing thus, rather falling in with Cromwell's views than giving his own; for the man who liked Aquitaine so much, and who enjoyed life so thoroughly, in such dissimilar places as Holland and But, much as he disliked Spain, we find Montpelier, can hardly have been so narhim again in Catalonia at the time when row and insular as he there makes himself Charles V. is embarking for his expedition out. But the Scotch he certainly was not against the pirate Barbarossa. Having fond of: "Shortly to conclude (he says), found that "the vnyuersytes off orlyance, trust yow no Skott, for they wyll yowse pyctauensis (Poitiers), Tolosa, mountpyller, flattering_wordes and all ys falsholde." and the reuerend father off the hed char- That the English in those days were not terhouse, a famuse clark and partt (presi- very popular abroad we may gather from dent off the vnyuersyte off parys doth the Doctor's experience that "in all the hold with our soveryne lord the kyng in partes off crystendom that I haue trauyllyd his actes," he was glad to be able to add in, I know nott v Englysh men inhabyto this the more important news that "the tours, exceppt only skolers for lernyng.” emprow (Emperor), with all other kynges Nevertheless an exception is always made in the courtes of whom I haue byn, be our in favour of the place where bread and redoubtyd kynges frendes and louers." wine are so cheap and abundant. After Curiously mixed up with this account how finding fault with nearly all Europe, "the emprowe tok sheppyng in to bar-"from Calais to Calais back again," Boorde bary," is a notice that "I have sentt to says, "I can not geue to greate a prayse your mestershepp the seedes off reuberbe, to Aquitany and Langwadock, to Tolose the which come owtt of barbary. in thes and Mountpilior... in Tolose regneth partes ytt ys had for a grett treasure." treue justice and equite off al the places Then follow directions for sowing, which that euer I dyd com in." Cromwell could not have attended to, for it was not till 1742 that Collinson first raised "true Rhubarb from seed sent me out of Tartary by Professor Segisbeck of Petersburgh." This letter, important enough to be endorsed "Andrewe bord, prest. how king h. 8 is well esteemed in ffraunce and other natyons," is followed by one to the prior of the London Char- After some stay in Yorkshire he is in terhouse, explaining how he has been London (1537) worrying Cromwell about dispensed from religion at the Grand two horses stolen, he knows very well by Chartreuse; his fear lest he might be whom, as he was travelling southward. claimed as a runaway monk urging to Then he goes abroad again. It is such a take this precaution. He then comes pity that his "Itinerary" is lost, except home and goes to practice and study the English part of it (printed by medicine in Scotand, probably that he Hearne); but Mr. Halliwell is sure, from may pick up information: for we can internal evidence, that he really visited all scarcely suppose that Edinburgh had as the countries mentioned in his First Book yet attained any eminence as a school of of the Introduction of Knowledge. He vismedicine. He got on as well as was to ited his old friends at Montpelier on this be expected: "It is naturally geuen (he fourth journey, and there got drunk, aз says), or els it is of a deuellyshe dysposi- his opponent Barnes, in his Defence of cion of a Scottysh man not to loue nor Beards against Boorde's attack upon them, fauour an englishe man. And I, beyng takes care to tell us: "Your frend Marttyn there, and dwellyng among them, was the surgyen brought you to dyner upon a hated; but my sciences and other polices daye to one Hans Smormowthes howse, a did kepe in favour that I did know theyr Duche man, in which howse you were secretes." Boorde repays their hatred cupshote, or therwyse called dronken, at with dislike -a dislike which he extends which tyme your berde was longe." And beyond Scotland: "Wold to Iesu (he Barnes goes on, with the minute personalwrites to Cromwell) that you hade neuer ity of the time, to explain why "ye abore an alyon in your realme, specyally skottes, 'berdes." Men in those days lived in glass

In Scotland he condescended to hide his name and nationality: "I resortt (he tells Cromwell) to the skotysh kynges howse, and to many lordes and lardes, and truly I know their myndes, for thei takyth me for a skotysh manes sone, for I name my selff Karre, and so the Karres kallyth me cosyn, thorow the which I am in the more fauer."

houses, and yet were not at all afraid of throwing stones, aye and dirt too of the most offensive kind.

fied that, "in Rome I dyd neuer se no vertue nor goodness but in Byshop Adrian's days," who was soon poisoned for his attempts at reformation.

66

Besides what are known to be his, a good many have been fathered upon him, chiefly jest books, in which he is entitled Merry Andrew,' as he was always recommending people to "laugh and grow fat." Among things attributed to him is a Latin poem on the Friars, beginning Nos vagabunduli, Læti jucunduli,

And so on.

Tara tantara teino.
Edimus libere,
Canimus lepide,

Tara tantara teino.

Of the "Introduction of Knowledge," Dibdin says, "it is the most curious and generally interesting volume ever put forth from the press of the Coplands."

Boorde was a staunch Romanist, though he had struggled against the "rugorosyte of the Carthusian rules; he is therefore the object of attack of men like foulmouthed Bishop Bale, one of those creatures whom an evil fate mixed up with the beginnings of the Irish Protestant Church, and who calumniates Boorde at Winchester, where he settled on property left him in that city by his brother, in a way that makes old Anthony a Wood protest. Ponet, Bishop of Winchester, in his Answer to Gardiner Pighius and other Papists (1555), makes the same charge. Of the truth or falsehood of the charge Mr. Halliwell expects some proof when the Winchester records come to be published. Anyhow, it seems certain that Boorde at Winchester came to grief. Whether the women spoken of were really what Ponet and Bale call them, or were, as Wood Of course he begins with the Englishsays, "only patients that occasionally re-sented naked, holding a huge pair of man, who is in the rude woodcut reprecurred to his hous," it is certain that our shears, and having over his right arm Doctor, who had displayed his sanctity by drinking only water (a great piece of self- piece of cloth. This is a hit at the nadenial for him) three days a week, and wearing a hair shirt, and every night hang- I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, ing his shroud at his bed's foot, died in the Musyng in my mynde what rayment I shall Fleet Prison in 1548-9. It is very probable that his being there was a case of religious persecution; for he was very bitter against monks and priests who had brok- And now I wyll were I cannot tel what. en their vows by marriage, so that a English freedom is insisted on: strong party must have been eager to pun- No man shall let me, but I wyl have my mynde. ish him. Here is Bale's account of his end (Scriptorum Illustrium Catalogus): "quum And English swearing impressed Boorde sanctus hic pater, Vuintoniæ in sua domo, as something sui generis; he often remarks pro suis concœlibibus Papæ sacrificalis on it: "In all the worlde ther is no regyon prostibulum nutriret, in eo charitatis nor countree that doth vse more swearofficio deprehensus, uenenato pharmaco sibijpsi mortem accelerauit, ne in publicum spectandus ueniret."

So much for Boorde's life. Of his books all are worth reading, his Breuyary of Helth, no less than his "Itinerary." He is the first father of all "domestic medicine" books, just as we said he is of all Murray's Handbooks: "I do nat wryte," he says, "for lerned men, but for symple and unlerned men."

tional love of new fashions:

were;

a

For now I wyll were thys, and now I wyll were that,

ynge than is used in England, for a chylde that scarse can speake, a boy, a gyrle, a wenche, now a dayes wyl swere as great othes as an old knave and an old drabbe." Which shows that we do owe something to the Puritans; for our "girls and wenches," at any rate, have given up the custom, and contrast strikingly in their careful shunning of strong expressions with the German lasses, for instance, whose "Ach du lieber Gott!" drawn out His Itinerary of Europe is lost: he says, so sweetly from a rosebud mouth, is much "the_whiche_boke at Byshops-Waltam, more startling than the "Mon Dieu!" of one Thomas Cromwell had it of me. And a Frenchwoman. The Italian verdict on bycause he had many matters of state to England, Boorde tells us, was "bona dyspache for al England my boke was terra, mala gente." This he combats: the loste." So is his book of Sermons, much English are as good as any people; "yea, regretted by Mr. Halliwell, who says we much more better in many thynges, should have in it a perfect picture of his specially in maners and manhod." The times. Romanist though he was, he testi-superior fertility of England (so well

66

Of Irish characteristics the Doctor hits off not a few. Under a cut representing a girl "hunting over" the hair of a rough fellow whose head is in her lap we read

I loue to weare a saffron shert, although it be to torne.

sore;

brought out in Laing's Notes of a Trav- and when their Welsh holinesses have all eller) struck the Doctor; he also thinks rushed out to get some, slips in and locks London the finest city in the world, the door upon them. Wales is, he says, "wherein is suche a brydge of pulchritud- like Castile or Biscay in the poverty of nes that in all the worlde there is none living and lodging; yet the people are lyke." Stonehenge he notices; and Bath, "hardy, stronge, and goodly.... and where "in wynter the poore people doth many of them be louynge and kynd hartgo into the water to kepe themself warme, ed, faythful and vertuous." Their wakes, and to get them a heate." England too after the Irish fashion, amused him; and has "more nobler portes and hauens than their cry, "O swetynge, why dost thou any other regyon." But the strangest dye? thou shalt not goe from us; we wyl thing is that he puts Cornwall by itself in die with the; venit! (benedictus)" rean appendix," in order to give samples minded him again of Castile. of that old Cornish which Mr. Max Müller has found more than a match for him in the third volume of his Chips, and also to declaim against the bad cooking which is said to be still a fault of the Cornish folks. 66 Cornish cream the Doctor evidently never tasted, though its well-known Phoenician origin" precludes the idea of My anger and my hastynes doth hurte me full its having been since invented; however, clotted cream he mentions several times in I cannot leaue it, it creaseth more and more. his "Dietary," but he must have eaten a Cornish pasty (such as they give you Frieze, hobby-hawks (such as Strafford in generally cold into the bargain-at that later days sent over to his friends), "aquaworst of all refreshment rooms at the vite," dice, are Irish exports. There are no Plymouth station); for he says, "there magpies (now they are almost as plentiful meate and theyr breade is marde and as in France) nor snakes, &c.; and Engspylt for lacke of good ordring and dress-lish merchants carry away Irish earth" to ynge." But his chief complaint is that caste in their gardens, to kepe out and to nothing fit to drink can be got in the kyll venimous wormes." The Irish are county: "there ale is starke nought, lok- slothful, not caring for riches but for meat inge whyte and thycke, as pygges had and drink; "flesh sufficient they haue, wrasteled in it." Of men who drink but little bread or wine, and none ale." stuff like that we do not wonder to hear It is their "melancoly complexion" (Mr. that Disraeli says it is the nearness of the melancholy sea) which causes them to be testy without a cause. Nevertheless Boorde adds: "I did neuer find more amyte and loue than I haue found of Iryshe men the whyche was borne within the English pale; yea, even among the wylde Iryshe there be vertuous creatures whom grace worketh aboue nature." So Stan hurst (1577): "These Irishe beyng vertuously bred up or reformed are such myrors of holynes and austeritie, that other nations retaine but a shadow of deuotion in comparison of them."

For wagginge of a straw,
They wyl go to law

a characteristic of their descendants, un-
less report maligns them. Nor do the
Welshmen proper fare better at our

thor's hands.

au

I am a Welshman, and do dwel in Wales,
I haue loued to serche boudgets and looke in
males;

I loue not to labour nor to delue nor to dyg,
My fyngers be lymed lyke a lyme twig;

sounds very like an expression of "Taffy
was a thief." Welsh singing and harping
both seemed to the Doctor

Scotland is on the whole fairly treated, considering.

I am a Scotyshe man, and trew I am to
Fraunce;

I wyll boost myselfe, I will crake and face,
In euery countrey myselfe I do aduance;

I loue to be exalted here and in euery place.

Muche lyke the hussyng of a homble be; while the Welsh love of "cawse boby," (toasted cheese) is of course noted. Our author was writing some score of years after "the hundred merry tales" were India was not yet a field for enterprising printed, in one of which St. Peter, ordered young Britons; but as soon as our factoto clear heaven of the ruck of Welsh saints ries out there began to be worth going goes outside and shouts "cawse boby," to, "the Scotch party" grew, and grow

fell.

"Drunk as a rat" is the proverb of the "buttermouth Flemings; " but the Dutch are worse, drinking till it runs out of them. Brabant is rich and pleasant, and Handwarp" has a curious spire and a “Bourse" for the merchants. Cleves and Gueldres liers the geese are plucked naked every are poor, because so fond of war. In Juyear. So much for the "base Doche men." In "hyghe Doch lond" we are astonished to find the "Junker" already known by name, wearing a feather in his cap :

till men from this side of the border were | But I am as I am, but not as I was, almost looked on as interlopers. And not And where as my metre is ryme dogrell, only in India, but (much to their credit) The effect of the whyche no wyse man wyll dein almost every part of the known world, Scotch merchants and Scotch in every capacity have gone ahead, just as Boorde describes them doing in his time, as James's English courtiers and subjects cried out against them for doing some seventy years later. Is this "pushing" a proof of their being pure-blood Teutons? It certainly is not Celtic: the French have it not, nor the Welsh and Irish; but the Prussians, so their London and Liverpool fellow-clerks say, possess it in a most unpleasant degree. This would settle the question about Lowlanders; but how is it that the Highlanders have, on the whole, done as well-in some walks of life better — than their Lowland rivals? Anyhow, though the Scots are in this as Boorde found them, let us rejoice that no longer are his next verses true in any

sense:

An Englyshe man I cannot naturally loue. Boorde notices the great poverty and wretchedness of the Borderland; he remarks on the good cookery of the Scotch, and of their skill in music, and doubts not that the Northern Scotch are of the same race with the Irish.

Be it of goose or capon, it is right good gere.

One High Dutch custom which disgusted Boorde has made its way over here, possibly along with the Georges: "they will They haue a way to brede them in chese.” eate magotts as fast as we wyll eat comfits. The snowy Alps impressed our author much: "a man may see them fyftene myle of, at a cyte called Ulmes."

Denmark, next on the Doctor's list is a very poor country, so poor that Boorde marvels how they dyd ones gette Englande." So again he marvels how a little country like Saxony could have conquered England; "for I think if all the world be conquered, they beyng treue within were set against England it might neuer themselfe." Next Boorde speaks of those other heretics the Bohemians, whose spokesman says:

For the Pope's curse I do lytle care,
Ever sens Wyclif dyd dwel with me

Why he treats of Shetland and Friesland together, except that both, he says, abound in fish, I cannot tell. The Frisians he praises as being good, simple folk. About Iceland he is sadly at fault: the men, I dyd never set by the Pope's auctorite. who certainly were for centuries above Bohemia is the land of wonderful beasts the European average in intelligence, he "bughs and bovies," much like those stigmatises as "beastly creatures vnman- which Cæsar describes as inhabitating the ered and vntaughte, lyuing in caues altogreat Hyrcanian forest. What Boorde gether, like swyne. they will gyue says of them may be all true; but he is away ther children. . . . They wyll eate certainly wrong when he says of the Bocandells endes and olde grece.... They hemians, "their speche is Doch." Not even be lyke the people of the newe founde the Thirty Years' War and the Germanizland named Calyco. In Iceland there being of their nobles ever for a moment many wylde bestes." But in Iceland there

are no wild beasts at all.

Boorde's conscientiousness comes out in his declining to give any samples of Icelandic; for, says he, "I can not speke it, but here and there a worde or two." Poor old man! he could fairly assert:

After my conscyence I do wryte truly. Nor does he claim a high rank for poetry:

his

drove the Czech speech from its position as the language of the country. And now when the German traveller crosses the old frontier, he feels much as an Englishman does in a third class carriage on a South Wales railway- among aliens.

Mr. Freeman is quite right; we are Teutons; the "at home" like feeling which most of us have all the way from the Rhine to the Oder proves it to my mind. Even if we don't understand the speech, we feel