Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Gaelic Maundeville (Author: John Maundeville)

paragraph 252

The emperor has a very beautiful palace in Pinntigsor, (but) in the city of Nis today he is oftenest. Once upon a time there was a very rich man named Cotolombes, and he had a castle firm and strong on the top of a hill, and a high, strong, spacious enclosure all around it, and within the enclosure a very beautiful garden containing trees bearing noble fruit, and every fruit and every herb on earth which had a delicious odour, and beautiful flowers, and many fountains exceeding fair, and halls


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and comely chambers covered with gold and azure, and forms of beasts and birds which by noble crafts were caused to speak and make music as if they were alive. And into that garden he put every bird and every beast which he thought would yield delight to men. And he had many damsels under seventeen years of age of the fairest (?) damsels he found on earth, and striplings of the same age. And they wore clothes of gold, and he said that they all were angels. And he made three beautiful wells, and around them walls of jasper and crystal bound in gold. And under earth he made conduits from each of the three wells, in which wine should run from one well, honey from another, and milk from another. And that (place), he said, was Paradise.