Also for bustard / betowre / & shovelere, [Shovelars feed most commonly upon the Sea-coast upon cockles and Shell-fish: being taken home, and dieted with new garbage and good meat, they are nothing inferior to fatted Gulls. Muffett, p. 109. Hic populus, a schevelard (the anas clypeata of naturalists). Wright's Voc., p. 253.] gamelyn [See note 6 to line 539, above.] is in sesoun;
Wodcok / lapewynk / Mertenet / larke, & venysoun,
Sparows / thrusches / alle þese .vij. with salt & synamome:
Quayles, sparowes, & snytes, whan þeire sesoun com, [Is not this line superfluous? After 135 stanzas of 4 lines each, we here come to one of 5 lines. I suspect l. 544 is simply de trop. W. W. Skeat.]
Line 544
Thus to provoke an appetide þe Sawce hathe is operacioun.
Kervyng of fische. [For the fish in the Poem mentioned by Yarrell, and for refer|ences to him, see the list at the end of this Boke of Nurture.]
Now, good son, of kervynge of fysche y wot y must þe leere:
To peson [Recipes for "Grene Pesen" are in H. Ord. p. 426-7, p. 470; and Porre of Pesen, &c. p. 444.] or frumenty take þe tayle of þe bevere, [Topsell in his Fourfooted Beasts, ed. Rowland, 1658, p. 36, says of Beavers, "There hath been taken of them whose tails have weighed four pound weight, and they are accounted a very delicate dish, for being dressed they eat like Barbles: they are used by the Lotharingians and Savoyans [says Bellonius] for meat allowed to be eaten on fish-dayes, although the body that beareth them be flesh and unclean for food. The manner of their dressing is, first roasting, and afterward seething in an open pot, that so the evill vapour may go away, and some in pottage made with Saffron; other with Ginger, and many with Brine; it is certain that the tail and forefeet taste very sweet, from whence came the Proverbe, That sweet is that fish, which is not fish at all."]
