3.  With the Menagier’s cookery book there may profitably be compared Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, ed. by Thomas Austin (E.E.T.S., 1888).

B.  Notes to the Text

1.  Pp. 1-2.

2.  These long moral treatises on the seven deadly sins and the even deadlier virtues were very popular in the Middle Ages.  The best known to English readers occurs in the Parson’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and is taken from the Somme de Vices et de Vertus of Frere Lorens, a thirteenth-century author.  The sections on the deadly sins are usually, however, well worth reading, because of the vivid illustrative details which they often give about daily life.  The Menagier’s sections are full of vigour and colour, as one would expect.  Here, for instance, is his description of the female glutton:  ’God commands fasting and the glutton says:  “I will eat”.  God commands us to get up early and go to church and the glutton says:  “I must sleep.  I was drunk yesterday.  The church is not a hare; it will wait for me.”  When she has with some difficulty risen, do you know what her hours are?  Her matins are:  “Ha! what shall we have to drink? is there nothing left over from last night?” Afterwards she says her lauds thus:  “Ha! we drank good wine yesterday.”  Afterwards she says thus her orisons:  “My head aches, I shan’t be comfortable until I have had a drink.”  Certes, such gluttony putteth a woman to shame, for from it she becomes a ribald, a disreputable person and a thief.  The tavern is the Devil’s church, where his disciples go to do him service and where he works his miracles.  For when folk go there they go upright and well spoken, wise and sensible and well advised, and when they return they cannot hold themselves upright nor speak; they are all foolish and all mad, and they return swearing, beating and giving the lie to each other.’—­Op. cit., I, pp. 47-8.  The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and gamblers.—­See ibid., I, pp. 44-5.

3. Prudence and Melibeus is worth reading once, either in Chaucer’s or in Renault de Louens’ version, because of its great popularity in the Middle Ages, and because of occasional vivid passages.  Here, for instance, is the episode in Chaucer’s version, in which Melibeus, the sages, and the young men discuss going to war, and the sages advise against it:  ’Up stirten thanne the yonge folk at ones, and the mooste partie of that compaignye scorned the wise olde men, and bigonnen to make noyse, and seyden that “Right so as, whil that iren is hoot, men sholden smyte, right so men sholde wreken hir wronges while that they been fresshe and newe”; and with loud voys they criden, “Werre! werre!” Up roos tho oon of thise olde wise, and with his hand made contenaunce that men sholde holden hem stille, and yeven hym audience.  “Lordynges,”