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Updated: May 16, 2025
I suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when Julius Caesar was good enough to deal with Britain as we have dealt with New Zealand, the primaeval Briton, blue with cold and woad, may have known that the strange black stone, of which he found lumps here and there in his wanderings, would burn, and so help to warm his body and cook his food. Saxon, Dane, and Norman swarmed into the land.
But if we may enioy any large territorie of apt soyle, we might so vse the matter, as we should not depend vpon Spaine for oyles, sacks, resignes, orenges, lemonds, Spanish skins, &c. Nor vpon France for woad, baysalt, and Gascoyne wines, nor on Eastland for flaxe, pitch, tarre, mastes, &c.
The Genoese employed large vessels in their trade; their principal exports were cloth of gold and silver, spiceries, woad, wool, oil, wood-ashes, alum, and good: the chief staple of their trade was in Flanders, to which they carried wool from England. The Venetians and Florentines exported nearly the same articles as the Genoese; and their imports were nearly similar.
A friend informs me that he has found a quantity of woad growing on the Chilterns above the Thame, enough to stain blue a whole tribe of ancient Britons, and also that on a wall by the roadside between Reading and Pangbourne he discovered several plants of the deadly nightshade, or "dwale." This word is said to be derived from Old French deuil, mourning; but its present form looks very English.
After we had towed her clear of the castle, our boats went in again and brought out five other small ships; one laden with hides, another with elephants teeth, grains , cocoa-nuts, and goats skins, come from Guinea; another with woad, and two with dog-fish, which two last were set adrift as of no value, but all the other four were sent for England on the 30th of August.
The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies. The German excited astonishment by his huge body and muscular limbs. Both were fair, with fierce blue eyes, but the Celt had yellow hair floating over his shoulders, and the German long locks of fiery red, which he even dyed with woad to heighten the favorite color, and wore twisted into a war-knot upon the top of his head.
Its people reached a high stage of culture, and all records indicate that in the days when the early Briton painted himself with woad and when Rome was at her prime, Korea was a powerful, orderly and civilized kingdom. Unhappily it was placed as a buffer between two states, China, ready to absorb it, and Japan, keen to conquer its people as a preliminary to triumph over China.
The constables on their side began to demand outrageous dues on the sale of herrings, and what was more, whereas of old heavy goods, such as wood, hides, iron, woad, were sold outside the fair and escaped dues, now the constable of the castle insisted on tolls for every sale even without the bounds a pound of pepper, or even more, had to go into his hand.
About seven or eight months before, there came an English ship to Tercera, pretending to be a Frenchman come for traffic, and began to load woad, but being discovered was confiscated to the king, both ship and cargo, and the men all made prisoners, yet were allowed to roam up and down to get their livings, by labouring like slaves, being considered in as safe custody in the island at large as if in a prison.
Pliny records that both matrons and unmarried girls among the Britons in the first century of the Christian era were in the habit of staining themselves all over with the juice of the woad; and he adds that, thus rivalling the swarthy hue of the Æthiopians, they go on these occasions in a state of nature.
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