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According to Sir John Maundeville, there it stood in the vicinity of Mount Sion, "the tree of eldre, that Judas henge himself upon, for despeyr," a legend which has been popularly received. Shakespeare, in his "Love's Labour's Lost," says "Judas was hanged on an elder," and the story is further alluded to in Piers Plowman's vision:
After this operation it ceased to groan, it was rooted up, but nothing appeared to account for its strange peculiarity. Stories of this kind remind us of similar wonders recorded by Sir John Maundeville, as having been seen by him in the course of his Eastern travels.
Well, Billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself Gaston Maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of Shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines. I ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech. We were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher.
Thus we read in the book of travel which has borne the name of Sir John Maundeville: "And if you wish to know the virtues of the diamond, I shall tell you, as they that are beyond the seas say and affirm, from whom all science and philosophy comes. He who carries the diamond upon him, it gives him hardiness and manhood, and it keeps the limbs of his body whole.
About the year 1356 there appeared in England an extraordinary book called the Voyage and Travail of Sir John Maundeville, written in excellent style in the Midland dialect, which was then becoming the literary language of England.
Perhaps the way these boats are tied and sewn together may have given rise to the legend alluded to by Sir John Maundeville when he saw them at the Isle of Hormuz. Many of the boats have curious-shaped stone anchors, and water casks of uniform and doubtless old-world shape.
In the prologue of the English version the author calls himself John Maundeville and gives an outline of his wide travels during thirty years; but the name is probably a "blind," the prologue more or less spurious, and the real compiler is still to be discovered. The modern reader may spend an hour or two very pleasantly in this old wonderland.
Strabo, too, believed that it might be possible to navigate on the same parallel of latitude, due west from the coast of Africa or Spain to that of India. The accounts given by Marco Polo and Sir John Maundeville of their explorations towards China confirmed the exaggerated idea of the extent of Eastern Asia.
As Maundeville observes, "Verilie I have not seen them," but I can quite understand how the story was spread. Over against the inhabited part of the island is what is now a mere sandbank. It is now covered with sand, and not a soul dwells thereon.
There was mostly men folk aboard, and we lay around the deck in our pajamas, while Billy Gaston Maundeville, dressed in striped red and white pajamas clum up in that bally pulpit, with the ship's Shakespeare in his hands, an' let us have 'The quality o' mercy isn't strained; it droppeth as the genteel dew from heavun. Laugh, I tell you I was sore with it. Lord, how we guyed him!
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