Now Sir John, who had a great feeling for our first father Adam, came frequently on stories of him and of places where he lived. And he went from Bathsheba, the town founded, as he says—“by Bersabe, the wife of Sir Uriah the Knight,”—and journeyed to the city of Hebron. “And it was clept sometime the Vale of Mamre, and sometimes it was clept the Vale of Tears, because that Adam wept there an hundred year for the death of Abel his son, that Cain slew.”

There, in this Vale of Hebron, where Sir John says Abraham had his house, and is buried, as are Adam and Eve, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah, and Rebecca, is also the first dwelling-place of Adam after the Fall.

“And right fast by that place is a cave in the rock, where Adam and Eve dwelled when they were put out of Paradise; and there got they their children. And in the same place was Adam formed and made, after that some men say (for men were wont for to clept that place the field of Damascus, because that it was in the lordship of Damascus), and from thence he was translated into Paradise of delights, as they say; and after that he was driven out of Paradise he was there left. And the same day that he was put in Paradise, the same day he was put out, for anon he sinned. There beginneth the Vale of Hebron, that dureth nigh to Jerusalem. There the Angel commanded Adam that he should dwell with his wife Eve, of the which he gat Seth; of which tribe, that is to say kindred, Jesu Christ was born.”

Here then is the legend of the first Garden in which Adam delved, and lived by the sweat of his brow. Again Sir John tells us of a place where he noticed the trees, especially the Dry tree, and it can be seen how much a lover of Gardens and of growing things he was, and how he looked for and noticed these things and set them down.

This Dry Tree was an Oak of Abraham’s time.

Of the Dry Tree

“And there is a tree of Oak, that the Saracens clepe Dirpe, that is of Abraham’s time; the which men clepe the Dry tree. And they say that it hath been there since the beginning of the world, and was some-time green and bare leaves, until the time that our Lord died on the Cross, and then it dried; and so did all the trees that were then in the world. And some say, by their prophecies, that a lord, a prince of the west side of the world, shall win the Land of Promission, that is the Holy Land, with the help of Christian men, and he shall do sing a mass under that Dry tree; and then the tree shall wax green, and bear both fruit and leaves, and through that miracle many Saracens and Jews shall be turned to Christian faith; and, therefore, they do great worship thereto, and keep it full busily. And, albeit so, that it dry, natheles yet he beareth great virtue, for certainly he hath a little thereof upon him, it healeth him of the falling evil, and his horse shall not be afoundered: and many other virtues it hath; wherefore men hold it full precious.”