248
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
earlier still in Syria. But the Greek translator of the Gospel
was doubtless deliberate in his use of the more general term : we
must not forget that the original text of St. Matthew's Evangel
was not written in Greek, but in Pshitta or ancient Syriac, and
Sir E. Denison Ross has kindly informed me that "the seed is
"not specified" there: ''no word is found to denote the kind
"of corn or wheat that was sown."
This, however, is a trivial difficulty as compared with the
word which our authorised version gives as 'tares' ; it appeared
for the first time in the amended edition of Wyclif's version,
issued in 1388 A.D., and has been treasured by us ever since.
We can understand why it has found such favour : no English
name proposed for an exotic plant can hope to become popular
unless it embodies an obvious error : it stands a still better
chance if it embodies two, like our Jerusalem Artichoke, which is
not an artichoke and is a native of North America, or our Cape
Gooseberry, which is not a gooseberry and is a native of Peru.
The Anglo-Saxon Gospel of A.D. 1000 ventured to suggest
that the plant 'over-sown' was the 'Cockle,' perhaps because
it was a weed readers of the work would recognise. But by
A.D.1325 scholars in England thought it must be the ' darnel,'
and in the version of the Gospel issued by Wyclif himself in
A.D. 1382 these two plants 'Cockle' and 'Darnel' are given
as alternatives. The parable, however, tells us that both the
cereal itself and the plant 'oversown' were so much alike
that neither the servants nor their master noticed the whimsical
trick which had been played them till the two plants came into
'ear.' The 'cockl ' could have been detected in the 'briard,'
so could 'tares.' We have, however, another reason for differing
from the scholar who presumed to set Wyclif right. By using
the word 'tares' he made the decision of the owner of the field
as unworkable as the suggestion of his labourers. The French
translator, like the English scholar of A.D. 1325, saw that the
'oversown' plant must have been a grass, and also thought
it might have been the 'ivraye' or 'darnel.' But this grass
could as easily have been detected as an interloper before it
came into 'ear,' as the Locular, which, though still a local
'crop,' at times proves a troublesome weed in wheat ; one
understands why the German scholar, more cautious than his
English and French collaborators, was content to use the non-