Note 151 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 3)

(p. 188). Dog Star (Canicolla).—Here we have an original MS. note.—[This star, as saith the interpreter of Ovid, giveth its name to the Dog Days, which are those days which begin on July 5th and finish on September 5th. And this name came from a bitch which guarded the body of Icarus, when he was slain by the reapers, as Master John of England relateth. And he relateth that because that bitch guarded faithfully the body of its lord, it was numbered among the signs; and because it was a little bitch, the Dog Days took this name of theirs in this form, "Canicullus" for "Cam," or "Canicolla" for "Cadella." And because that bitch of Icarus was poisoned with the stench of its master, who lay dead and already stank, therefore did that star become also a poisonous one; and therefore does the sun still poison when it passeth through that sign, and so do the rays of the sun then poison the meats on earth. Wherefore those thirty-two days which the sun taketh in passing through that sign, are held by physicians to be days hurtful to the health of the body.] [John of England is John Duns Scotus, Franciscan friar, called Doctor Subtilis, one of the chief philosophers of the Middle Ages, and Professor in Oxford (see Wadding, Vita J. Duns Scoti, doctoris subtilis, published in 1644).]—S.