Cobill Nuts, Christmastide, and The Cloisters | The Metropolitan Museum of Art - http://www.metmuseum.org/visit...
Dec 5, 2014
from
"The hazelnut (or "cobill nut" as they were called in the fifteenth century) also appears in one of the mid-fourteenth-century mystery plays performed for the feast of Corpus Christi in York, designed to inspire the audience's direct involvement with salvation history. In the play The Offering of the Shepherds, the shepherds arrive at the site of the Nativity and lament the fact that they have only humble gifts for the baby Jesus. The second shepherd presents the infant with two hazelnuts, strung together as a bracelet:"
- Maitani
"Thou Sonne, that shall save bothe see and sande,
Se to me sen I have thee soght,
I am ovir poure to make presande
Als myn harte wolde, and I had ought.
Two cobill notis uppon a bande,
Loo, litill babe, what I have broght,
And whan ye sall be Lorde in lande,
Dose goode agayne, forgete me noght,
For I have herde declared
Of connyng clerkis and clene
That bountith askis rewarde,
Nowe watte ye what I mene."
- Maitani