Part 71 (1/2)

I can find no guide to the identification of the Poperin Pear, beyond Parkinson's description: ”The summer Popperin and the winter Popperin, both of them very good, firm, dry Pears, somewhat spotted and brownish on the outside. The green Popperin is a winter fruit of equal goodnesse with the former.” It was probably a Flemish Pear, and may have been introduced by the antiquary Leland, who was made Rector of Popering by Henry VIII. The place is further known to us as mentioned by Chaucer--

”A knyght was fair and gent In batail and in tornament, His name was Sir Thopas.

Alone he was in fer contre, In Flaundres, all beyonde the se, At Popering in the place.”

As a garden tree the Pear is not only to be grown for its fruit, but as a most ornamental tree. Though the individual flowers are not, perhaps, so handsome as the Apple blossoms, yet the growth of the tree is far more elegant; and an old Pear tree, with its curiously roughened bark, its upright, tall, pyramidal shape, and its sheet of snow-white blossoms, is a lovely ornament in the old gardens and lawns of many of our country houses. It is by some considered a British tree, but it is probably only a naturalized foreigner, originally introduced by the Romans.

FOOTNOTES:

[200:1] The Warden was sometimes spoken of as different from Pears. Sir Hugh Platt speaks of ”Wardens _or_ Pears.”

PEAS.

(1) _Iris._

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60).

(2) _Carrier._

Peas and Beans are as dank here as a dog.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 1 (9).

(_See_ BEANS.)

(3) _Biron._

This fellow picks up wit, as pigeons Pease.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (315).

(4) _Bottom._

I had rather have a handful or two of dried Peas.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (41).

(5) _Fool._

That a shealed Peascod?

_King Lear_, act i, sc. 4 (219).