“It is necessarye, profitable, and also a pleasure, to a housbande, to have peares, wardens, and apples of dyverse sortes. And also cheryes, filberdes, bulleys, dampsons, plummes, walnuttes, and suche other. And therfore it is convenyent to lerne howe thou shalte graffe. Than it is to be knowen what thynges thou must have to graffe withall. Thou muste have a graffynge-sawe, the whiche wolde be very thynne, and thycke-tothed ; and bycause it is thynne, it wyll cut the narower kyrfe, and the cleaner, for brusynge of the barke. And therfore it is sette in a compasse pece of yren, syxe inches of, to make it styffe and bygge. Thou muste haue also a graffynge-knyfe, an inche brode, with a thycke backe, to cleve the stocke with-all. And also a mallet, to dryve the knyfe and thy wedge in-to the tree : and a sharpe knife, to pare the stockes heed, and an other sharpe knyfe, to cutte the graffe cleane. And also thou muste have two wedges of harde wood, or elles of yren, a longe small one for a small stocke, and broder for a bygger stocke, to open the stocke, whan it is cloven and pared : and also good tough claye and mosse, and also bastes or pyllynge of wethy or elme, to bynde them with, &c.“
Master Fitzberbert, The Boke of Husbandry (1523)
A quick glossary (I’ve Googled so you don’t have to):
housbande = farmer, land-worker
warden = a type of hard cooking pear
filberdes = filberts (hazelnut)
dampsons = damsons
bulleys = bullace (a type of plum)
kyrfe = no definition available, maybe ‘curve’?
elles = else
yren = iron
wethy = withy (willow)
bastes or pyllynge = no definition available, but perhaps in this context it means ‘strips’?