(12th
century) of the Floridus of Lambertus; and they are indicated more or
less precisely in several maps of the succeeding centuries. (Ouseley's
Travels, I. 387; Dabistan, I. 307-308; Santarem, H. de la Cosmog. II.
189, III. 506-513, etc.)
Nothing could show better how this legend had possessed men in the Middle
Ages than the fact that Vincent of Beauvais discerns an allusion to these
Trees of the Sun and Moon in the blessing of Moses on Joseph (as it runs
in the Vulgate), "de pomis fructuum Solis ac Lunae." (Deut. xxxiii. 14.)
Marco has mixt up this legend of the Alexandrian Romance, on the
authority, as we shall see reason to believe, of some of the recompilers
of that Romance, with a famous subject of Christian Legend in that age,
the ARBRE SEC or Dry Tree, one form of which is related by Maundevile and
by Johan Schiltberger. "A lytille fro Ebron," says the former, "is the
Mount of Mambre, of the whyche the Valeye taketh his name. And there is a
Tree of Oke that the Saracens clepen Dirpe, that is of Abraham's Tyme,
the which men clepen THE DRYE TREE." [Schiltberger adds that the heathen
call it Kurru Thereck, i.e. (Turkish) Kuru Dirakht = Dry Tree.] "And
theye seye that it hathe ben there sithe the beginnynge of the World; and
was sumtyme grene and bare Leves, unto the Tyme that Oure Lord dyede on
the Cros; and thanne it dryede; and so dyden alle the Trees that weren
thanne in the World.
