GLOSSARY, CONTINUED:
sack is a generic name for fortifed wine from Spain or the Canaries: it might
be Malaga, Sherry, Canary or Palma (Majorca). The word (Robinson) may derive from
the Spanish for export (sacas), rather than from the French for dry (sec).
sage of virtue is the 'narrow hoary-leaved sage' (Mawe & Abercrombie), a variety of Salvia officinalis.
saintfoin, or more properly, sainfoin, is the forage plant Onobrychis sativa. The word meant not 'holy' hay, but 'healthy' hay.
sal volatile is an aromatic solution of ammonium carbonate, smelling salts.
salivate, to: it was a tactic of early medicine to provoke excess salivation, as you might provoke a sweat. The usual agent was mercury and the process was part of the traditional cure for the venereal pox.
salprunella is saltpetre burnt over charcoal, melted and cast into moulds.
steel, salt or powder of, is 'usually' (OED) iron chloride but may be sulphate of iron. 'Flowers of steel' were obtained by heating iron with sal-ammoniac. It may also be called copperose of Mars or vitriol of Mars.
saltpetre is potassium nitrate. It may be obtained by mixing decaying nitrogenous matter with lime (alkali), air and water, adding to the solution wood-ash or potassium, then crystallizing the result.
sassafras is the bark of the sassafras laurel, native to America. The oil was made from the roots of the tree.
scald-berry is the blackberry.
scald-head is a skin disease, usually ringworm, but it may cover a multitude of scalp conditions, from pustules to scurf.
scotch pill was, Ellis states, a physic which killed by frequent application. It was a mixture of aloes, jalap, gamboge and anise.
scurvy-grass is Cochlearia officinalis.
sear-cloth or cerecloth was a cloth impregnated with wax or sticky salve. It might be used as a winding sheet, or as a medicinal plaster.
searse or searce is sieve or strainer. The verb is the action of sieving or straining.
seaton or seton (from the medieval Latin for bristle, and also silk) is a thread or tape drawn through the skin next to a wound or sore to keep open an issue, to stop it entirely healing over.
sena or senna are the seeds of the cassia shrub, used as an emetic or laxative.
shepherd's-pouch, shepherd's-purse are two names for the Capsella bursa-pastoris, a common weed also called 'Naughty Man's Plaything' (Grigson).
shield is the thick skin on the flanks of a boar that makes up the outside of the joint called brawn.
shock is a group of sheaves of wheat or corn stood up in the feld before gathering and storing in the barn or rick. The word itself derives from medieval German and was a collective noun meaning sixty.
sluts-pennies are hard pieces in dough caused by imperfect kneading. The definition in OED is derived solely from this reference in Ellis.
smallage is Apium graveolens, wild or primitive celery.
snake-root is the root or rhizome of one of several American plants deemed fine antidotes to snake's venom.
soucing or sousing is pickling. Souce-drink is pickle or brine.
spanish fly is cantharides, from the beetle also called blister beetle. It is dried to a powder and its active agent is cantharidin. Applied externally, it blisters; internally, it is an emetic, as well as promoting tumescence. A little goes far.
spire, to, describes the shooting upwards of corn or grain in a feld in wet or adverse conditions.
steen or stean is an earthenware jar.
stœchas or Lavendula stœchas is the French lavender. The Iles d'Hyères were called the Stœchades due to the quantities of the plant found there. It was an expectorant (among other things).
stone is a measure, usually weighing 14 pounds. However, Ellis also refers to the eight-pound stone -- which was the measure for sugar and spice (OED).
stroakings or strokings are well defined by Ellis. They are the afterings, the last milk taken from the cow, and the richest. Smollett's Roderick Random was treated to choice bits from the cook and stroakings from the milkmaid.
sublimate mercury is mercury that has been heated, vapourized, then resolidifed into a white powder.
succory is chicory (Cichorium intybus).
tarnrise plough is the turnwrest or the Kentish plough where the mould-board is shifted from one side to the other at the end of a furrow (OED).
tarrass is a waterproof mortar made of a sort of pumice imported from Germany.
tea, bohea, is black tea, fermented before drying; and green teas are made with leaves dried immediately after picking and not fermented (Davidson).
tent: probe of soft material for cleaning or searching wounds.
thetches are vetches.
thrum-thread describes short odds and ends of thread, specifically strong yarn as might be used for a warp: the thrums were the ends of the warp not actually woven, trimmed off after taking from the loom.
tills are lentils. Worlidge (1640) says that Hampshire people thought the word lentils indicated the season of Lent, so they left out the frst syllable as 'not agreeing with the matter' (OED).
underline or underling, meaning weak (of animals, people or plants).
unlucky: Ellis' usage means not so much full of misfortune as mischievous and bad-tempered. OED cites the agricultural author John Mortimer (d.1707) who so describes a stallion.
vellicate, to, means to irritate. Usually, as here, deployed to describe the action of an astringent medication.
venice treacle was an electuary on a honey (later, molasses) base, especially good against venom but with many other properties. First developed in Italy, then exported throughout Europe from Venice, hence its name.
venice turpentine: common turpentine consisted of oleo-resins that exude from many types of conifers (the French cluster-pine in the Landes district the most important). Venice turpentine was the particular product of larch trees in the Tirol.
verjuice is the fermented juice (in England) of crabs or sour apples; elsewhere it was made of acid green or unripe grapes.
vitriol is a sulphate of metal, i.e. metal acted upon by acid. Unqualifed, it usually refers to sulphate of iron (copperas) -- green vitriol. Spirit of vitriol is a distilled essence of sulphuric acid.
wallops describe the bubbling of water when coming to the boil, i.e. 'boiled a few wallops'. Ellis' use seems archaic, most of the citations by OED are early.
wash is, generally, liquid food for animals, but usually it denotes refuse, kitchen or brewery swill, given especially to pigs (hogwash).
water-dock-root is debatable. It may refer to the butterbur (Petasites hybridus), called the water-docken in Cumbria, and known as a plant whose leaves were good for wrapping butter (as was dock). The root was a febrifuge (Grigson).
white-ash herb is probably ground elder.
wig is a small cake of lightly spiced and sweetened bread dough, or more simply (for a harvest-man's beaver) just a small cake of dough.
yelm is a bundle of straw laid straight for thatching.
yelt is a young sow or gilt.
yetted: Ellis speaks of 'yetted barley', he may mean barley infused or soaked in water or milk. There is no parallel for his employment of the word.