three wars against hosts of heathen invaders. In the first of
these Charles Martel and his faithful vassal Hervis of Metz fight
by an extraordinary anachronism against the Vandals, who have
destroyed Reims and besieged other cities. They are defeated in
a great battle near Troyes. In the second Hervis is besieged in
Metz by the “Hongres.” He sends first for help to Pippin, who
defers his assistance by the advice of the traitor Hardré. Hervis
then transfers his allegiance to Anséis of Cologne, by whose help
the invaders are repulsed, though Hervis himself is slain. In the
third Thierry, king of Moriane[1] sends to Pippin for help against
four Saracen kings. He is delivered by a Frankish host, but
falls in the battle. Hervis of Metz was the son of a citizen to
whom the duke of Lorraine had married his daughter Aelis, and
his sons Garin and Begue are the heroes of the chanson which
gives its name to the cycle. The dying king Thierry had desired
that his daughter Blanchefleur should marry Garin, but when
Garin prefers his suit at the court of Pippin, Fromont of Bordeaux
puts himself forward as his rival and Hardré, Fromont’s father, is
slain by Garin. The rest of the poem is taken up with the war
that ensues between the Lorrainers and the men of Bordeaux.
They finally submit their differences to the king, only to begin
their disputes once more. Blanchefleur becomes the wife of
Pippin, while Garin remains her faithful servant. One of the
most famous passages of the poem is the assassination of Begue
by a nephew of Fromont, and Garin, after laying waste his
enemy’s territory, is himself slain. The remaining songs continue
the feud between the two families. According to Paulin
Paris, the family of Bordeaux represents the early dukes of
Aquitaine, the last of whom, Waifar (745–768) was dispossessed
and slain by Pippin the Short, king of the Franks; but the
trouvères had in mind no doubt the wars which marked the end of
the Carolingian dynasty.
See Li Romans de Garin le Loherain, ed. P. Paris (Paris, 1833); Hist. litt. de la France, vol. xxii. (1852); J. M. Ludlow, Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (London and Cambridge, 1865); F. Lot, Études d’histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1896); F. Settegast, Quellenstudien zur gallo-romanischen Epik (Leipzig, 1904). A complete edition of the cycle was undertaken by E. Stengel, the first volume of which, Hervis de Mes (Gesellschaft für roman. Lit., Dresden), appeared in 1903.
GARLAND, JOHN (fl. 1202–1252), Latin grammarian, known
as Johannes Garlandius, or, more commonly, Johannes de
Garlandia, was born in England, though most of his life was
spent in France. John Bale in his Catalogus, and John Pits,
following Bale, placed him among the writers of the 11th century.
The main facts of his life, however, are stated in a long poem De
triumphis ecclesiae contained in Cotton MS. Claudius A x in the
British Museum, and edited by Thomas Wright for the Roxburghe
Club in 1856. Garland narrates the history of his time from the
point of view of the victories gained by the church over heretics
at home and infidels abroad. He studied at Oxford under a
certain John of London, whom it is difficult to distinguish from
others of the same name; but he must have been in Paris in or
before 1202, for he mentions as one of his teachers Alain de Lisle,
who died in that year or the next. Garland was one of the professors
chosen in 1229 for the new university of Toulouse, and
remained in the south during the Albigensian crusade, of which
he gives a detailed account in books iv.-vi. In 1232 or 1233 the
hatred of the people made further residence in Toulouse unsafe
for the professors of the university, who had been installed by the
Catholic party. Garland was one of the first to fly, and the rest
of his life was spent in Paris, where he finished his poem in 1252.
Garland’s grammatical works were much used in England, and
were often printed by Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde.
He was also a voluminous Latin poet. Works on mathematics
and music have also been assigned to him, but the ascription may
have arisen from confusion of his works with those of Gerlandus,
a canon of Besançon in the 12th century. The treatise on
alchemy, Compendium alchimiae, often printed under his name,
was by a 14th-century writer named Martin Ortolan, or Lortholain.
The best known of his poems beside the “De Triumphis Ecclesiae” is “Epithalamium beatae Mariae Virginis,” contained in the same MS. Among his other works are his “Dictionarius,” a Latin vocabulary, printed by T. Wright in the Library of National Antiquities (vol. i., 1857); Compendium totius grammatices ..., printed at Deventer, 1489; two metrical treatises, entitled Synonyma and Equivoca, frequently printed at the close of the 15th century.
For further bibliographical information see the British Museum catalogue; J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis ..., vol. iii. (1754); G. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, &c. See also Histoire litt. de la France, vols. viii., xxi., xxiii. and xxx.; the prefaces to the editions by T. Wright mentioned above; P. Meyer, La Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, vol. ii. pp. xxi-xxiii. (Paris, 1875); Dr A. Scheler, Lexicographie latine du XII e et du XIII e siècles (Leipzig, 1867); the article by C. L. Kingsford in the Dict. Nat. Biog., giving a list also of the works on alchemy, mathematics and music, rightly or wrongly ascribed to him; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. i. (1906) 549. (E. G.)
GARLIC (O. Eng. gárleác, i.e. “spear-leek”; Gr. σκόροδον;
Lat. allium; Ital. aglio; Fr. ail; Ger. Knoblauch), Allium
sativum, a bulbous perennial plant of the natural order Liliaceae,
indigenous apparently to south-west Siberia. It has long,
narrow, flat, obscurely keeled leaves, a deciduous spathe, and a
globose umbel of whitish flowers, among which are small bulbils.
The bulb, which is the only part eaten, has membranous scales,
in the axils of which are 10 or 12 cloves, or smaller bulbs. From
these new bulbs can be procured by planting out in February or
March. The bulbs are best preserved hung in a dry place. If of
fair size, twenty of them weigh about 1 ℔. To prevent the plant
from running to leaf, Pliny (Nat. Hist. xix. 34) advises to bend
the stalk downward and cover with earth; seeding, he observes,
may be prevented by twisting the stalk.
Garlic is cultivated in the same manner as the shallot (q.v.). It is stated to have been grown in England before the year 1548. The percentage composition of the bulbs is given by E. Solly (Trans. Hort. Soc. Lond., new ser., iii. p. 60) as water 84.09, organic matter 13.38, and inorganic matter 1.53—that of the leaves being water 87.14, organic matter 11.27 and inorganic matter 1.59. The bulb has a strong and characteristic odour and an acrid taste, and yields an offensively smelling oil, essence of garlic, identical with allyl sulphide (C3H5)2S (see Hofmann and Cahours, Journ. Chem. Soc. x. p. 320). This, when garlic has been eaten, is evolved by the excretory organs, the activity of which it promotes. From the earliest times garlic has been used as an article of diet. It formed part of the food of the Israelites in Egypt (Numb. xi. 5) and of the labourers employed by Cheops in the construction of his pyramid, and is still grown in Egypt, where, however, the Syrian is the kind most esteemed (see Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. 125). It was largely consumed by the ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, sailors and rural classes (cf. Virg. Ecl. ii. 11), and, as Pliny tells us (N.H. xix. 32), by the African peasantry. Galen eulogizes it as the rustic’s theriac (see F. Adams’s Paulus Aegineta, p. 99), and Alexander Neckam, a writer of the 12th century (see Wright’s edition of his works, p. 473, 1863), recommends it as a palliative of the heat of the sun in field labour. “The people in places where the simoon is frequent,” says Mountstuart Elphinstone (An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 140, 1815), “eat garlic, and rub their lips and noses with it, when they go out in the heat of the summer, to prevent their suffering by the simoon.” “O dura messorum ilia,” exclaims Horace (Epod. iii.), as he records his detestation of the popular esculent, to smell of which was accounted a sign of vulgarity (cf. Shakespeare, Coriol. iv. 6, and Meas. for Meas. iii. 2). In England garlic is seldom used except as a seasoning, but in the southern countries of Europe it is a common ingredient in dishes, and is largely consumed by the agricultural population. Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, Δεισιδαιμονίας); and according to Pliny garlic and onions were invocated as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium in lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food. Garlic possesses stimulant and stomachic properties, and was of old, as still sometimes now, employed as a medicinal remedy.
- ↑ i.e. Maurienne, now a district and diocese (St Jean de Maurienne) of Savoy.
