Going back to the krycket & �e greshope (can’t you just tell I’ve been fascinated for days by this bilingual, macaronic children’s poem”?): how did the �krycket & �e greshope� became �salamandraque cicada� in the Latin?‘Cicada’ I first assumed, refers to the ‘krycket’, but what is the Latin for ‘grasshopper’? My Cassell’s gives ‘gryllus, grylli’, attributing it to Pliny the Elder (it is silent on the subject of crickets) but when I reverse-searched for ‘gryllus’ on Lewis and Short they give, in addition to ‘grasshopper’, the meaning ‘cricket’. (I tried Whitaker Words also — he does give also ‘cicada, cicadae’ for ‘tree-cricket’, ‘cicada’. As for the field cricket, no one seems to know. Perhaps that is also a ‘gryllus’.) I would have been happy for the text to read ’gryllusque cicadaque…� but a salamander obviously still doesn’t come into the picture. It did not occur to me until much later that I should double-check ‘krycket’ in the Middle English Dictionary. And there, in fact, the answer was: under criket (n.) Also creket.
(a) A cricket; esp., the European house cricket (Gryllus domesticus); also, the mythical salamander.
Well obviously in the context of the English poem they must have been talking about two little insects (Hence the epic nature of the battle. Would you watch a fire lizard annihilate a grasshopper?!) And clearly the illustrator knew this too — he depicted them as such. (that is, I couldn’t say for sure without actually consulting the manuscript, but it would seem there was no drawing of a fire lizard or even a small wet newt.) But the source of the translation seems to be that.
also see below from the MED:
c1350 Cmb.Ee.4.20.Nominale (Cmb Ee.4.20) 814: Salamandre et grisiloun, Criket and gressehopper.
(a1398) * Trev. Barth.(Add 27944) 267b/a: The criket hatte Salamandra.
a1425 Roy.17.C.17 Nominale (Roy 17.C.17) 642/30-1: Hec salamandra, Anglice cryket. Hic grillius, idem.
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