Dear Jim,

Certainly we are talking of an adventure that began on 2nd August 1100, but we are not to imagine a field of  Algonquian askutasquash . The name 'pumpkin', ws taken by British settlers to the new world and used for the squashes they found there, which are so clearly rough Yankee attempts at melons.

So, as you suggest, the questions are: 

Would there have been a field of melons in Sussex?

Would Sir Richard have used the word 'pumpkin' to describe them?

For the first, there seems little problem, as long as we are not imaginimng a field of sweet melons, which would involve time travel over five hundred years.  As you have found, the pepon (also as peponia, pepones and peponas) seems to have been a member of the Cucumis melo grouping, grown as a vegetable (like a ripe cucumber or courgette), and is certainly mentioned in such works as Simeon Seth's  Syntagma de alimentorum facultatibus  ,  which dates to the late 11th century.

A Kipling reader will recognise the suspicion that Kipling would have enjoyed finding reference to such crops in Norman England, and would then certainly have included a passing reference (in a way which has annoyed some critics of his 'knowingness'). Hence, I suspect that, perhaps somewhere in the annals of the Sussex Archaeological Society (he was a member) there may be reference to pumpkins.  This does not, of course, prevent that 'jarring' feeling. 

We do have some of the bound volumes of material from the S.A.S, but a quick scan of the indices around the right time brought no joy!

So, whether to put the use of the word pumpkin alongside 'thirty thousand horses' as a simple error, or to set out to prove that this was a clever reference to a little-known fact, is up to you. I do agree that there should be some reference in the Reader's Guide, but I defer to John Radcliffe..

All good wishes, and thank you for such an interesting pointer.

John

John Walker

Honorary Librarian

The Kipling Society

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