Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 6

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The currant is one of the very oldest raisins known. As early as 75 A. D. Pliny speaks of the fine grapes grown in Greece, the berry being thin-skinned, juicy and sweet, and the bunch being exceedingly small. This, then, must be the currant of later times. After this first mention of this grape, the same drops out of history for ten centuries, and the name currant is first to be identified with raisins de Corauntz, or rather, “reysyns de Corauntzs” as late as 1334. As early as the eleventh century, a lively traffic in this kind of raisins had taken place between the Greek producers, the Venetians and other of the Mediterranean merchant nations. In 1334 we find them called “corauntz;” in 1435, “corent;” and old MS. of the Grocers’ Company in London, speaks of “x butts and vi roundelletts of resins of Corent.” Thus spelled, the name was used for years. In 1463 “reysonys of Corawnce” were three pence per pound, and in 1512 the Duke of Northumberland paid two pence per pound for rasyns of Corens. In 1554 the name had changed to currans, and the Stationers’ Company provided for a banquet “5 punde of currans at one shilling and eight pence.” In 1558 the same company provided for “6 punde of currance for 2 shillings.” In 1578 we find in Lytes’ translation of Dodoens’s “Herbal,” in the description of different varieties of vines, that “Small raysens, commonly called Corantes, but more rightly raysens of Corinthe. The fruit is called in the shoppes of the countrie,[1] passulae de Corinthe; in French, raisins de Corinthe; in base Almaigne (Dutch) Corinthea; in English, Currantes, and small raysens of Corynthe.” Here, then, is indicated for the first time that the true and correct name should be “raisins of Corinth.” But we need not follow this evolution any longer; there can be no possible doubt that the name currant, the one now accepted for this class of raisins, is derived from the town of Corinth, on the mainland of Greece,—the Morea of our days, the Peloponnesus of the ancients. Until the time when the Turks conquered Greece, the port of Corinth was the principal point of export for this class of raisins, and while, after the subjection of Greece this commerce entirely ceased, still this fruit always continued to bear the name by which it first became known to commerce.

[1] Holland, Dodoens was a learned Dutch botanist.