=Page 195.=--_The cost of the sheep-shearing feast._ Mr. Knight makes a little slip here. The Clown, on his way to buy materials for the feast, tries to reckon up mentally what the _wool_ from the shearing will bring. "Let me see," he says; "every 'leven wether tods [that is, yields a _tod_, or 28 pounds of wool]; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn,--what comes the wool to?" Then, after vainly attempting to make out what the amount will be, he adds: "I cannot do 't without counters" (round pieces of metal used in reckoning), and, giving up the problem, turns to considering what he is to buy for his sister: "Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,--what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers,--three-man songmen all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace, dates--none; that's out of my note: nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger,--but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun." _Three-man songmen_ are singers of catches in three parts. _Means_ are tenors. _Warden pies_ are pies made of _wardens_, a kind of large pears, which were usually baked or roasted. A _race_ of ginger is a root of it; and _raisins o' the sun_ are raisins dried in the sun. =Page 196.=--_Paul Hentzner._ He was a native of Silesia (1558-1623) who wrote a _Journey through Germany, France, Italy, etc._ _Matthew Stevenson_ wrote several other books in prose and verse, published between 1654 and 1673. _The furmenty-pot._ The word _furmenty_ is a corruption of _frumenty_ (see page 197), which is derived from the Latin _frumentum_, meaning wheat. The hulled wheat, boiled in milk and seasoned, was a popular dish in England, as it still is in the rural districts. _Robert Herrick_ (1591-1674) was an English lyric poet. The _Hesperides_ was his most important work. A complete edition of his poems, edited by Mr. Grosart, was published in 1876. =Page 197.=--_A mawkin._ A kitchen-wench, or other menial servant. The word is only a phonetic spelling of _malkin_, which Shakespeare has in _Coriolanus_, ii. 1. 224: "the kitchen malkin." Compare Tennyson, _The Princess_, v. 25:-- "If this be he,--or a draggled mawkin, thou, That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge;" that is, a female swineherd. _Prank them up._ Adorn themselves. _The fill-horse._ The word _fill_, for the _thills_ or shafts of a vehicle, used by Shakespeare and other writers of that day, is now obsolete in England, though still current in New England. _Cross_ means to make the sign of the cross upon or over the animal.