And In That Field Be Seven Wells, That Our Lord Jesu
Christ Made With One Of His Feet, When He Went To Play With Other
Children.
That field is not so well closed, but that men may enter
at their own list; but in that season that the balm is growing, men
put thereto good keeping, that no man dare be hardy to enter.
This balm groweth in no place, but only there. And though that men
bring of the plants, for to plant in other countries, they grow
well and fair; but they bring forth no fructuous thing, and the
leaves of balm fall not. And men cut the branches with a sharp
flintstone, or with a sharp bone, when men will go to cut them; for
whoso cut them with iron, it would destroy his virtue and his
nature.
And the Saracens crepe the wood ENONCH-BALSE, and the fruit, the
which is as cubebs, they clepe ABEBISSAM, and the liquor that
droppeth from the branches they clepe GUYBALSE. And men make
always that balm to be tilled of the Christian men, or else it
would not fructify; as the Saracens say themselves, for it hath
been often-time proved. Men say also, that the balm groweth in Ind
the more, in that desert where Alexander spake to the trees of the
sun and of the moon, but I have not seen it; for I have not been so
far above upward, because that there be too many perilous passages.
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