Notes to the Canterbury Tales (Works vol. 5)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Published by Liberty Fund, Inc.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. 5 (Notes to the Canterbury Tales) [1899]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited from numerous manuscripts by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat (2nd ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899). 7 vols. Vol. 5.

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer

Editor: Walter W. Skeat

Skeat’s copious scholarly notes to his edition of The Canterbury Tales make up all of vol. 5 of The Works of Chaucer.

Copyright:

The text is in the public domain.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION TO THE NOTES.

§ 1.

§ 2.: Canon of Chaucer’s Works.

§ 3.

§ 4.

§ 5.

§ 6.

§ 7.

§ 8.

§ 9.

§ 10.

§ 11.

§ 12.

§ 13.: The text of the Canterbury Tales.

§ 14.

§ 15.

§ 16.

§ 17.

§ 18.

§ 19.

§ 20.

§ 21.

§ 22.

§ 23.

§ 24.

ERRATA IN VOL IV.

VOL. V. ADDENDA, ETC.

NOTES TO THE CANTERBURY TALES.

The Knight.

The Squyer.

The Yeman.

The Prioresse.

The Nonne and Three Preestes.

The Monk.

The Frere.

The Marchant.

The Clerk.

The Man of Lawe.

The Frankeleyn.

The Haberdassher and others.

The Cook.

The Shipman.

The Doctour.

The Wyf of Bathe.

The Persoun.

The Plowman.

The Miller.

The Maunciple.

The Reve.

The Somnour.

The Pardoner.

Chaucer’s Apology.

The Host.

The Knightes Tale.

The Miller’s Prologue.

The Milleres Tale.

The Reve’s Prologue.

The Reves Tale.

The Cook’s Prologue.

The Cokes Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP B.

Introduction to the Man of Lawes Tale.

Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale.

The Tale of the Man of Lawe.

The Shipman’s Prologue.

The Shipmannes Tale.

The Prioress’s Prologue.

The Prioresses Tale.

Prologue to Sir Thopas.

The Tale of Sir Thopas.

Prologue to Melibeus.

The Tale of Melibeus.

The Monk’s Prologue.

The Monkes Tale.

Lucifer.

Adam.

Sampson.

Hercules.

Nabugodonosor.

Balthasar.

Zenobia.

Peter, King of Spain.

Peter, King of Cyprus.

Barnabo of Lombardy.

Ugolino of Pisa.

Nero.

Holofernes.

Antiochus.

Alexander.

Julius Caesar.

Croesus.

The Nonne Prestes Prologue.

The Nonne Preestes Tale.

Epilogue to the Nonne Preestes Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP C.

The Phisiciens Tale.

Words of the Host.

The Pardoneres Prologue.

The Pardoneres Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP D.

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.

The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.

The Friar’s Prologue.

The Freres Tale.

The Sompnour’s Prologue.

The Somnours Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP E.

The Clerkes Prologue.

The Clerkes Tale.

The Marchauntes Prologue.

The Marchantes Tale.

Epilogue to the Merchant’s Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP F.

The Squieres Tale.

The Words of the Franklin.

The Prologue of the Franklin’s Tale.

The Frankeleyns Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP G.

The Second Nonnes Tale.

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue.

The Chanouns Yemannes Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP H.

The Manciple’s Prologue.

The Maunciples Tale.

NOTES TO GROUP I.

The Parson’s Prologue.

The Persones Tale.

De Superbia.

De Inuidia.

De Ira.

De Accidia.

De Auaricia.

De Gula.

De Luxuria.

De Satisfaccione.

NOTES TO THE TALE OF GAMELYN.

ADDENDA.

Canterbury Tales.

Edition: current; Page: [i]

THE COMPLETE WORKS of GEOFFREY CHAUCER

SKEAT

NOTES TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

Edition: current; Page: [ii] Edition: current; Page: [iii]

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER

EDITED, FROM NUMEROUS MANUSCRIPTS BY THE Rev. WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A. Litt.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Ph.D. elrington and bosworth professor of anglo-saxon and fellow of christ’s college, cambridge

NOTES TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

‘hit oghte thee to lyke;

For hard langage and hard matere

Is encombrous for to here

At ones; wost thou not wel this?’

Hous of Fame; 860

SECOND EDITION

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Edition: current; Page: [iv]

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4

glasgow new york toronto melbourne wellington

bombay calcutta madras karachi lahore dacca

cape town salisbury nairobi ibadan accra

kuala lumpur hong kong

first edition 1894

second edition 1900

reprinted 1924, 1934, 1961, 1963

printed in great britain

Edition: current; Page: [v]

CONTENTS.

Introduction.—§ 1. Some points for discussion. § 2. Canon of Chaucer’s Works. Thynne’s edition of 1532. § 3. Later reprints. § 4. Tyrwhitt’s edition; and his endeavours to establish a canon. § 5. The same; continued. § 6. Chalmers’ edition. § 7. The anonymous edition of 1845; published by Moxon. § 8. This edition due to Tyrwhitt’s suggestions. § 9. Later work; results arrived at by Prof. Lounsbury. § 10. Some of the Minor Poems in the present edition. § 11. The Poem no. XXIV. § 12. Poems numbered XXIII, XXV, and XXVI. § 13. The text of the Canterbury Tales; lines ‘clipped’ at the beginning. § 14. The Harleian MS. § 15. The Ellesmere MS. § 16. The old blackletter editions. § 17. Stowe’s edition in 1561. § 18. Dryden’s remarks on Chaucer’s verse. § 19. Brief rules for scansion. § 20. Accentuation. § 21. Examples. § 22. Old pronunciation. § 23. Modernising of spelling. § 24. Sources of the Notes; acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . page ix

Notes to Group A . . . . . . . . . . 1

The General Prologue . . . . . . . . 1

The Knightes Tale . . . . . . . . . 60

The Miller’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 95

The Milleres Tale . . . . . . . . . 96

The Reve’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 112

The Reves Tale . . . . . . . . . 116

The Cook’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 128

The Cokes Tale . . . . . . . . . . 129

Notes to Group B . . . . . . . . . . 132

Introduction to the Man of Lawes Tale . . . . 132

Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale . . . . . 141

The Tale of the Man of Lawe . . . . . . 145 Edition: current; Page: [vi]

The Shipman’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 165

The Shipmannes Tale . . . . . . . . 168

The Prioress’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 173

The Prioresses Tale . . . . . . . . . 174

Prologue to Sir Thopas . . . . . . . . 182

The Tale of Sir Thopas . . . . . . . . 183

Prologue to Melibeus . . . . . . . . 201

The Tale of Melibeus . . . . . . . . 201

The Monk’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 224

The Monkes Tale . . . . . . . . . 227

The Nonne Prestes Prologue . . . . . . 247

The Nonne Preestes Tale . . . . . . . 248

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Notes to Group C . . . . . . . . . . 260

The Phisiciens Tale . . . . . . . . 260

Words of the Host . . . . . . . . . 264

The Pardoneres Prologue . . . . . . . 269

The Pardoneres Tale . . . . . . . . 275

Notes to Group D . . . . . . . . . . 291

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue . . . . . . 291

The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe . . . . . . 313

The Friar’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 322

The Freres Tale . . . . . . . . . 323

The Sompnour’s Prologue . . . . . . . 330

The Somnours Tale . . . . . . . . . 331

Notes to Group E . . . . . . . . . . 342

The Clerkes Prologue . . . . . . . . 342

The Clerkes Tale . . . . . . . . . 343

The Marchauntes Prologue . . . . . . . 353

The Marchantes Tale . . . . . . . . 353

Notes to Group F . . . . . . . . . . 370

The Squieres Tale . . . . . . . . . 370

The Words of the Franklin . . . . . . . 387

The Prologue of the Franklin’s Tale . . . . . 387

The Frankeleyns Tale . . . . . . . . 388

Edition: current; Page: [vii]

Notes to Group G . . . . . . . . . . 401

The Second Nonnes Tale . . . . . . . 401

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue . . . . . . 414

The Chanouns Yemannes Tale . . . . . . 421

Notes to Group H . . . . . . . . . . 435

The Manciple’s Prologue . . . . . . . 435

The Maunciples Tale . . . . . . . . 439

Notes to Group I . . . . . . . . . . 444

The Parson’s Prologue . . . . . . . . 444

The Persones Tale . . . . . . . . . 447

Notes to the Tale of Gamelyn . . . . . . . 477

Addenda . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

Index to the Subjects, etc., explained in the Notes . . 495

Edition: current; Page: [viii] Edition: current; Page: [ix]

INTRODUCTION TO THE NOTES.

§ 1.

In the brief Introduction to vol. iv. I have given a list of the MSS. of the Canterbury Tales; some account of the early printed editions; and some explanation of the methods employed in preparing the present edition. I propose here to discuss further certain important points of general interest. And first, I would say a few words as to the Canon of Chaucer’s Works, whereby the genuine works are separated from others that have been attributed to him, at various times, by mistake or inadvertence.

§ 2.: Canon of Chaucer’s Works.

This has already been considered, at considerable length, in vol. i. pp. 20–90. But it is necessary to say a few words on the whole subject, owing to the extremely erroneous opinions that are so widely prevalent.

Sometimes a poem is claimed for Chaucer because it occurs ‘in a Chaucer MS.’ There is a certain force in this plea in a few cases, as I have already pointed out. But it commonly happens that such MSS. (as, for example, MS. Fairfax 16, MS. Bodley 638, and others) are mere collections of poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from which nothing can safely be inferred as to the authorship of the poems which they contain, unless the scribe distinctly gives the author’s name1. As a rule, however, the scribes not only omit to mention names, but they frequently omit the very title of the poem, and thus Edition: current; Page: [x] withhold such help as, in many cases, they might easily have afforded.

The celebrated first edition of ‘Chaucer’s Works,’ edited by William Thynne in 1532, made no attempt to establish any canon. Thynne simply put together such a book as he believed would be generally acceptable; and deliberately inserted poems which he knew to be by other authors. Some of these poems bear the name of Lydgate; one has the name of Gower; and another, by Hoccleve, is dated 1402, or two years after Chaucer’s death. They were tossed together without much attempt at order; so that even the eleventh poem in the volume is ‘The Floure of Curtesie, made by Ihon lidgate.’ The edition, in fact, is a mere collection of poems by Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Hoccleve, Robert Henrysoun, Sir Richard Ros, and various anonymous authors; and the number of poems by other authors almost equals the number of Chaucer’s. The mere accident of the inclusion of a given piece in this volume practically tells us nothing, unless it happens to be distinctly marked; though we can, of course, often tell the authorship from some remark made by Chaucer himself, or by others. And the net result is this; that Thynne neither attempted to draw up a list of Chaucer’s genuine works, nor to exclude such works as were not his. He merely printed such things as came to hand, without any attempt at selection or observance of order, or regard to authorship. All that we can say is, that he did not knowingly exclude any of the genuine pieces. Nevertheless, he omitted Chaucer’s A.B.C., of which there must have been many copies in existence, for we have twelve still extant.

§ 3.

The mere repetition of this collection, in various reprints, did not confer on it any fresh authority. Stowe indeed, in 1561, added more pieces to the collection, but he suppressed nothing. Neither did he himself exercise much principle of selection; see vol. i. p. 56. He even added The Storie of Thebes, which he must have known to be Lydgate’s. Later reprints were all edited after the same bewildering fashion.

§ 4.

The first person to exercise any discrimination in this matter was Thomas Tyrwhitt, who published a new edition of the Canterbury Tales in five volumes, 8vo., in 1775–8; being the first edition in which some critical care was exercised. After Tyrwhitt had printed the Canterbury Tales, accompanied by Edition: current; Page: [xi] a most valuable commentary in the shape of Notes, it occurred to him to make a Glossary. He had not proceeded far before he decided that such a Glossary ought to be founded upon the whole of Chaucer’s Works, instead of referring to the Tales only; since this would alone suffice to shew clearly the nature of Chaucer’s vocabulary. He at once began to draw up something in the nature of a canon. He rejected the works that were marked with the names of other poets, and remorselessly swept away a large number of Stowe’s very casual additions. And, considering that he was unable, at that date, to apply any linguistic tests of any value—that he had no means of distinguishing Chaucer’s rimes from those of other poets—that he had, in fact, nothing to guide him but his literary instinct and a few notes found in the MSS.—his attempt was a fairly good one. He decisively rejected the following poems found in Thynne’s edition, viz. no. 4 (Testament of Criseyde, by Henrysoun); 11 (The Floure of Curtesie, by Lydgate); 13 (La Belle Dame, by Sir R. Ros); 15 (The Assemblee of Ladies); 18 (A Praise of Women); 21 (The Lamentacion of Marie Magdaleine); 22 (The Remedie of Love); 25 (The Letter of Cupide, by Hoccleve); 26 (A Ballade in commendacion of our Ladie, by Lydgate); 27 (Jhon Gower to Henry IV); 28 and 29 (Sayings of Dan John, by Lydgate); 30 (Balade de Bon Conseil, by Lydgate); 32 (Balade with Envoy—O leude booke); 33 (Scogan’s poem, except the stanzas on Gentilesse); 40 (A balade . . ., by Dan John lidgat); and in no single instance was he wrong in his rejection. He also implied that the following had no claim to be Chaucer’s, as he did not insert them in his final list; viz. no. 6 (A goodlie balade of Chaucer); and 38 (Two stanzas—Go foorthe, kyng); and here he was again quite right. It is also obvious that no. 41 (A balade in the Praise of Master Geffray Chauser) was written by another hand; and indeed, the first line says that Chaucer ‘now lith in grave.’ It will at once be seen that Tyrwhitt did excellent service; for, in fact, he eliminated from Thynne’s edition no less than nineteen pieces out of forty-one; leaving only twenty-two1 remaining. Of this remainder, if we include The Romaunt of the Rose, all but three are unhesitatingly accepted by scholars. The three exceptions are nos. 17, 20, and Edition: current; Page: [xii] 31; i. e. The Complaint of the Black Knight1; The Testament of Love2; and The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.

§ 5.

When Tyrwhitt came to examine the later editions, the only other pieces that seemed to him sufficiently good for the purpose of being quoted in his Glossary were the six following, viz. Chaucer’s A.B.C. (in ed. 1602); The Court of Love (in ed. 1561); Chaucer’s Dreme (in ed. 1598); The Flower and the Leaf (in ed. 1598); Proverbes by Chaucer (in ed. 1561); and Chaucer’s Words to his Scrivener Adam (in ed. 1561). Of these, we may accept the first and the two last; but there is no external evidence in favour of the other three. He also added that the Virelai (no. 50, in ed. 1561) may ‘perhaps’ be Chaucer’s.

§ 6.

In 1810 we find an edition of Chaucer’s Works, by A. Chalmers, F.S.A., in the first volume of the ‘English Poets,’ collected in twenty-one volumes. In this edition, some sort of attempt was made, for the first time, to separate the spurious from the genuine poems. But this separation was made with such reckless carelessness that we actually find no less than six poems (nos. 36, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, in vol. i. 32, 33, above) printed twice over, once as being genuine, and once as being spurious3. It is obvious that we cannot accept a canon of Chaucer’s Works of such a character as this.

§ 7.

In 1845 appeared the edition in which modern critics, till quite recently, put all their trust; and no student will ever understand what is really meant by ‘the canon of Chaucer’s Works’ until he examines this edition with something like common care. It bears this remarkable title:—‘The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. With an Essay on his Language and Versification, and an Edition: current; Page: [xiii] Introductory Discourse; together with Notes and a Glossary. By Thomas Tyrwhitt. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 18551.’

In this title, which must be most carefully scanned, there is one very slight unintentional misprint, which alters its whole character. The stop after the word ‘Glossary’ should have been a comma only. The difference in sense is something startling. The title-page was meant to convey that the volume contains, (1) The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (comprising Tyrwhitt’s text of the Canterbury Tales, the remaining poems being anonymously re-edited); and that it also contains, (2) an Essay, a Discourse, Notes, and a Glossary, all by Thomas Tyrwhitt. Such are the facts; and such would have been the (possible) sense of the title-page, if the comma after ‘Glossary’ had not been misprinted as a full stop. But as the title actually appears, even serious students have fallen into the error of supposing that Tyrwhitt edited these Poetical Works; an error of the first magnitude, which has produced disastrous results. A moment’s reflection will shew that, as Tyrwhitt edited the Canterbury Tales only, and died in 1786, he could not have edited the Poetical Works in 1845, fifty-nine years after his death. It would have been better if a short explanation, to this effect, had been inserted in the volume; but there is nothing of the kind.

It must therefore be carefully borne in mind, that this edition of 1845, on the title-page of which the name of Tyrwhitt is so conspicuous, was really edited anonymously, or may even be said not to have been edited at all. The Canterbury Tales are reprinted from Tyrwhitt; and so also are the Essay, the Discourse, the Notes, and the Glossary; and it is most important to observe that ‘the Glossary’ is preceded by Tyrwhitt’s ‘Advertisement,’ and by his ‘Account of the Works of Chaucer to which this Glossary is adapted; and of those other pieces2 which have been improperly intermixed with his in the Editions.’ The volume is, in fact, made up in this way. Pages i-lxx and 1-209 are all due to Tyrwhitt; and contain a Preface, an Appendix to the Preface, an Abstract of Passages of the Life of Chaucer, an Essay, an Introductory Discourse to the Tales, and the Tales themselves. Edition: current; Page: [xiv] Again, pp. 441–502 are all due to Tyrwhitt, and contain an Advertisement to the Glossary, an Account of Chaucer’s Works (as above), and a Glossary. Moreover, this Glossary contains a large number of words from most of Chaucer’s Works, including even his prose treatises; besides a handful of words from spurious works such as ‘Chaucer’s Dream.’

In this way, all the former part and all the latter part of the volume are due to Tyrwhitt; it is the middle part that is wholly independent of him. It is here that we find no less than twenty-five poems, which he never edited, reprinted (inexactly) from the old black-letter editions or from Chalmers. It thus becomes plain that the words ‘By Thomas Tyrwhitt’ on the title-page refer only to the second clause of it, but have no reference to the former clause, consisting of the words, ‘The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.’ It remains to be said that the twenty-five poems which are here appended to the Canterbury Tales are well selected; and that the anonymous editor or superintendent was guided in his choice by Tyrwhitt’s ‘Account of the Works.’

§ 8.

This somewhat tedious account is absolutely necessary, every word of it, in order to enable the reader to understand what has always been meant (since 1845) by critics who talk about some works as being ‘attributed to Chaucer.’ They really mean (in the case, for example, of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale) that it happens to be included in a certain volume by an anonymous editor, published in 1845, in which the suggestions made by Tyrwhitt in 1778 were practically adopted without any important deviation. In the case of any other author, such a basis for a canon would be considered rather a sandy one; it derives its whole value from the fact that Tyrwhitt was an excellent literary critic, who may well be excused for a few mistakes, considering how much service he did in thus reducing the number of poems in ‘Chaucer’s Works’ from 64 to little more than 261. Really, this was a grand achievement, especially as it clearly emphasised the absurdity of trusting to the old editions. But it is an abuse of language to say that ‘The Cuckoo and Nightingale’ has ‘always been attributed to Chaucer,’ merely Edition: current; Page: [xv] because it happens to have been printed by Thynne in 1532, and had the good luck to be accepted by Tyrwhitt in 1778. On the contrary, such a piece remains on its trial; and it must be rejected absolutely, both on the external and on the internal evidence. Externally, because no scribe or early writer connects it with him in any way. Internally, for reasons given in vol. i. p. 391; and for other reasons given in Lounsbury’s Studies in Chaucer.

§ 9.

The chief value of the anonymous edition in 1845 is, that it gave practical expression to Tyrwhitt’s views. The later editions by Bell and Morris were, in some respects, retrogressive. Both, for example, include The Lamentation of Mary Magdalene, which Tyrwhitt rightly denounced in no dubious terms; (see vol. i. above, pp. 37, 38). But, of late years, the question of constructing a canon of Chaucer’s genuine works has received proper attention, and has been considered by such scholars as Henry Bradshaw, Bernhard ten Brink, Dr. Koch, Dr. Furnivall, Professor Lounsbury, and others; with a fairly unanimous result. The whole question is well summed up in Lounsbury’s Studies in Chaucer, Chapter IV, on ‘The Writings of Chaucer.’ His conclusion is, that his ‘examination leaves as works about which there is no dispute twenty-six titles.’ By these titles he means The Canterbury Tales, Boethius, Troilus, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, The Astrolabe, and the nineteen Minor Poems which I denote by the numbers I-XI, XIII-XX (no. XX being counted as two). His examination did not at first include no. XII (To Rosemounde); but, in his Appendix (vol. iii. pp. 449, 450), he calls attention to it, and accepts it without hesitation. He also says of no. XXII, that ‘it may be Chaucer’s own work.’

§ 10.

I may add a few words about the other Minor Poems which I now print, numbered XXI, XXIII, and XXIV-XXVI; the last three of which appear in vol. iv. pp. xxv-xxxi.

As regards no. XXI, or ‘Against Women Unconstaunt,’ Edition: current; Page: [xvi] I observe that Mr. Pollard, in his ‘Chaucer Primer,’ has these words. The authenticity of this poem ‘has lately been reasserted by Prof. Skeat, on the triple ground that it is (1) a good poem; (2) perfect in its rhymes1; (3) found in conjunction with poems undoubtedly by Chaucer in two MSS.’ This account, however, leaves out my chief argument, viz. its obvious dependence upon a Ballade by Machault, whom Chaucer is known to have imitated, and who is not known to have been imitated by any other Englishman. I also lay stress on the very peculiar manner in which the poem occurs in MS. Ct. See above, vol. i. p. 88. It should also be compared with the Balade to Rosemounde, which it resembles in tone. It seems to me that the printing of this poem in an Appendix is quite justifiable. We may some day learn more about it.

§ 11.

As regards no. XXIV (vol. iv. p. xxv), the external evidence is explicit. It occurs in the same MS. as that which authenticates no. VI (A Compleint to his Lady); and the MS. itself is one of Shirley’s. Internally, we observe the great peculiarity of the rhythm. Not only is the poem arranged in nine-line stanzas, but the whole is a tour de force. In the course of 33 lines, there are but 3 rime-endings; and we may particularly notice the repetition of the first two lines at the end of the poem, just as in the Complaint of Anelida, which likewise begins and ends with a line in which remembraunce is the last word. We have here a specimen of the kind of nine-line stanza (examples of which are very scarce) which Hoccleve endeavoured to imitate in his Balade to my Lord of York2; but Hoccleve had to employ three rimes in the stanza instead of two. The poem is chiefly of importance as an example of Chaucer’s metrical experiments, and as being an excellent specimen of a Complaint. There is a particular reason for taking an interest in all poems of this character, because few Complaints are extant, although Chaucer assures us that he wrote many of them.

§ 12.

As to the poems numbered XXIII (A Balade of Compleynt), XXV (Complaint to my Mortal Foe, vol. iv. p. xxvii), and XXVI (Complaint to my Lodesterre, vol. iv. p. xxix), there are two points of interest: (1) that they are Complaints, and Edition: current; Page: [xvii] (2) that they have never been printed before. That they are genuine, I have no clear proof to offer; but they certainly illustrate this peculiar kind of poem, and are of some interest; and it is clearly a convenience to be able to compare them with such Complaints as we know to be genuine, particularly with no. VI (A Complaint to his Lady). They may be considered as relegated to an Appendix, for the purposes of comparison and illustration. I do not think I shall be much blamed for thus rendering them accessible. It may seem to some that it must be an easy task to discover unprinted poems that are reasonably like Chaucer’s in vocabulary, tone, and rhythm. Those who think so had better take the task in hand; they will probably, in any case, learn a good deal that they did not know before. The student of original MSS. sees many points in a new light; and, if he is capable of it, will learn humility.

§ 13.: The text of the Canterbury Tales.

On this subject I have already said something above (vol. iv. pp. xvii-xx); and have offered a few remarks on the texts in former editions (vol. iv. pp. xvi, xvii; cf. p. viii). But I now take the opportunity of discussing the matter somewhat further.

It is unfortunate that readers have hitherto been so accustomed to inaccurate texts, that they have necessarily imbibed several erroneous notions. I do not hereby intend any reflection upon the editors, as the best MSS. were inaccessible to them; and it is only during the last few years that many important points regarding the grammar, the pronunciation, and the scansion of Middle-English have been sufficiently determined1. Still, the fact remains, and is too important to be passed over.

In particular, I may call attention to the unfortunate prejudice against a certain habit of Chaucer’s, which it taxed all the ingenuity of some of the editors to suppress. Chaucer frequently allows the first foot of his verse to consist of a single accented syllable, as has been abundantly illustrated above with respect to his Legend of Good Women (vol. iii. pp. xliv-xlvii). It was a natural mistake on Tyrwhitt’s part to attribute the apparent fault to the scribes, and to amend the lines which seemed to Edition: current; Page: [xviii] be so strangely defective. It will be sufficient to enumerate the lines of this character that occur in the Prologue, viz. ll. 76, 131, 170, 247, 294, 371, and 391.

Al | bismotered with his habergeoun.

That | no drope ne fille upon hir breste

Ging | len in a whistling wind as clere.

For | to delen with no swich poraille.

Twen | ty bokes, clad in blak or reed.

Ev’ | rich, for the wisdom that he can.

In | a gowne of falding to the knee.

Tyrwhitt alters Al to Alle, meaning no doubt Al-le (dissyllabic), which would be ungrammatical. For That, he has Thatte, as if for That-te; whereas That is invariably a monosyllable. For Gingling, he has Gingeling, evidently meant to be lengthened out to a trisyllable. For For, he prints As for. For Twenty, he has A twenty. The next line is untouched; he clearly took Everich to be thoroughly trisyllabic; which may be doubted. For In, he has All in. And the same system is applied, throughout all the Tales. The point is, of course, that the MSS. do not countenance such corrections, but are almost unanimously obstinate in asserting the ‘imperfection’ of the lines1.

The natural result of altering twenty to A twenty (not only here, but again in D. 1695), was to induce the belief in students that A twenty bookes is a Chaucerian idiom. I can speak feelingly, for I believed it for some years; and I have met with many who have done the same2. And the unfortunate part of the business is, that the restoration of the true reading shocks the reader’s sense of propriety. This is to be regretted, certainly; but the truth must be told; especially as the true readings of the MSS. are now, thanks to the Chaucer Society, accessible to many. The student, in fact, has something to unlearn; and he who is most familiar with the old texts has to unlearn the most. The restoration of the text to the form of it given in the seven best MSS. is, consequently, in a few instances, of an almost revolutionary character; and it is best that this should be said plainly3.

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The editions by Wright and Morris do not repeat the above amendments by Tyrwhitt; but strictly conform to the Harleian MS. Even so, they are not wholly correct; for this MS. blunders over two lines out of the seven. It gives l. 247 in this extraordinary form:—‘For to delen with such poraile’; where the omission of no renders all scansion hopeless. And again, it gives l. 371 in the form:—‘Euery man for the wisdom that he can’; which is hardly pleasing. And in a great many places, the faithful following of this treacherous MS. has led the editors into sad trouble.

§ 14.

The Harleian MS. The printing of this MS. for the Chaucer Society enables us to see that Mr. Wright did not adhere so closely to the text of the MS. as he would have us believe. As many readers may not have the opportunity of testing this statement for themselves, I here subjoin a few specimens of lines from this MS., to shew the nature of its errors.

Bet than a lazer or a beggere; A. 242.

So in Wright; for beggere read beggestére.

But al that he might gete and his frendes sende; A. 299.

Corrected by Wright.

For eche of hem made othur to wynne; A. 427.

Wright has ‘othur for to wynne.’ This is correct; but the word for is silently supplied, without comment; and so in other cases.

Of his visage children weren aferd; A. 628.

For weren, read were; or pronounce it wer’n. I cite this line because it is, practically, correct, and agrees with other MSS., it being remembered that ‘viság-e’ is trisyllabic. But readers have not, as yet, been permitted to see this line in its correct form. The black-letter editions insert sore before aferd. Tyrwhitt follows them; Wright follows Tyrwhitt; and Morris follows Wright, but prints sore in italics, to shew that there is here a deviation from the MS. of some sort or other.

A few more quotations are here subjoined, without comment.

I not which was the fyner of hem two; A. 1039.

To make a certeyn gerland for hire heede; A. 1054.

And hereth him comyng in the greues; A. 1641.

They foyneden ech at other longe; A. 1654.

And as wilde boores gonne they smyte

That frothen white as fome frothe wood; A. 1658–9.

Be it of pees, other hate or loue; A. 1671.

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That sche for whom they haue this Ielousye; A. 18071.

As he that hath often ben caught in his lace; A. 1817.

Charmes and sorcery, lesynges and flatery; A. 1927.

And abouen hire heed dowues fleyng; A. 1962.

A bowe he bar, and arwes fair and greene; A. 1966.

I saugh woundes laughyng in here rage,

The hunt strangled with wilde bores corage; A. 2011–82.

The riche aray of Thebes his paleys; A. 2199.

Now ryngede the tromp and clarioun; A. 2600.

In goth the speres into the rest; A. 2602.

But as a Iustes or as a turmentyng; A. 2720.

And rent forth by arme foot and too; A. 2726.

Of olde folk that ben of tendre yeeres; A. 2828.

And eek more ryalte and holynesse; A. 3180.

He syngeth crowyng as a nightyngale; A. 3377.

What wikked way is he gan, gan he crye; A. 4078.

His wyf burdoun a ful strong; A. 4165.

These examples shew that the Harleian MS. requires very careful watching. There is no doubt as to its early age and its frequent helpfulness in difficult passages; but it is not the kind of MS. that should be greatly trusted.

§ 15.

The Ellesmere MS. The excellence of this MS. renders the task of editing the Tales much easier than that of editing The House of Fame or the Minor Poems. The text here given only varies from it in places where variation seemed highly desirable, as explained in the footnotes. As to my general treatment of it, I have spoken above (vol. iv. pp. xviii-xx).

One great advantage of this MS., quite apart from the excellence of its readings, is the highly phonetic character of the spelling. The future editor will probably some day desire to normalise the spelling of Chaucer throughout his works. If so, he must very carefully study the spelling of the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., which resemble each other very closely. By their help, it becomes possible to regulate the use of the final e to a very great extent, which is extremely helpful for the scansion of the lines.

§ 16.

This matter is best illustrated by referring, for a while, to the old black-letter editions; moreover, the whole matter will appear in a clearer light if we consider, at the same time, the remarkable argument put forward by Prof. Morley (Eng. Writers, v. 126) in favour of the genuineness of The Court of Love.

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‘Chaucer (he says) could not have written verse that would scan without sounding in due place the final -e. But when the final e came to be dropped, a skilful copyist of later time would have no difficulty whatever in making the lines run without it . . . If Chaucer wrote—“But that I liké, may I not come by”1—it was an easy change to—“But that I like, that may I not come by.” With so or and, or well, or gat, or that, and many a convenient monosyllable, lines that seemed short to the later ear were readily eked out.’ He then proceeds to give a specimen from the beginning of the Canterbury Tales, suggesting, by way of example, that l. 9 can easily be made to scan in modern fashion by writing—‘And when the small fowls maken melodye.’

Such a theory would be perfectly true, if it had any basis in facts. The plain answer is, that later scribes easily might have eked out lines which seemed deficient; only, as a matter of fact, they did not do so. The notion that Chaucer’s lines run smoothly, and can be scanned, is quite a modern notion, largely due to Tyrwhitt’s common sense. The editors of the sixteenth century did not know that Chaucer’s lines ran smoothly, and did not often attempt to mend them, but generally gave them up as hopeless; and we ought to be much obliged to them for doing so. Whenever they actually make amendments here and there, the patching is usually plain enough. The fact is, however, that they commonly let the texts alone; so that if they followed a good MS., the lines will frequently scan, not by their help, but as it were in spite of them.

§ 17.

Let us look for a moment, at the very edition by Stowe (in 1561), which contains the earliest copy of The Court of Love. The 9th line of the tales runs thus:—‘And smale fowles maken melodie,’ which is sufficiently correct. We can scan it now in the present century, but it is strongly to be suspected that Stowe could not, and did not care to try. For this is how he presents some of the lines.

Redie to go in my pilgrimage; A. 21.

For him, wenden or wende was a monosyllable; and go would do just as well.

The chambres and stables weren wyde; A. 28.

He omits the before stables; it did not matter to him. So that, Edition: current; Page: [xxii] instead of filling up an imperfect line, as Prof. Morley says he would be sure to do, he leaves a gap.

To tel you al the condicion; A. 38.

Tel should be tel-le. As it is, the line halts. But where is the filling up by the help of some convenient monosyllable?

I add a few more examples, from Stowe, without comment.

For to tell you of his aray; A. 73.

In hope to stande in his ladyes grace; A. 88.

And Frenche she spake ful fetously; A. 124.

Her mouth smale, and therto softe and reed; A. 153.

It was almost a span brode, I trowe; A. 155.

Another None with her had she; A. 163.

And in harping, whan he had song; A. 266.

Of hem that helpen him to scholay; A. 302.

Not a worde spake more than nede; A. 304.

Was very felicite perfite; A. 338.

His barge was called the Maudclain; A. 410.

It is needless to proceed; it is obvious that Stowe was not the man who would care to eke out a line by filling it up with convenient monosyllables. And it is just because these old editors usually let the text alone, that the old black-letter editions still retain a certain value, and represent some lost manuscript.

§ 18.

One editor, apparently Speght, actually had an inkling of the truth; but he was promptly put down by Dryden (Pref. to the Fables). ‘The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us; . . . there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine; but this error is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error1, that common sense (which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader, that equality of numbers in every verse which we call Heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer’s age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise.’ We cannot doubt that such was the prevalent opinion at that time.

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§ 19.

For such readers as do not wish to study the language or the grammar of Chaucer, but merely wish to read the text with some degree of comfort, and to come by the stories and their general literary expression with the least possible trouble, the Ellesmere MS. furnishes quite an ideal text. Such a reader has only to observe the following empirical rules1.

1. Pronounce every final e like the final a in China, except in a few very common words like wolde, sholde, were, and the like, which may be read as wold’, shold’, wer’, unless the metre seems to demand that they should be fully pronounced. The commonest clipped words of this character are have, hadde (when a mere auxiliary), were, nere (were not), wolde, nolde (would not), thise (like mod. E. these), othere, and a few others, that are easily picked up by observation.

2. Always pronounce final -ed, -es, -en, as distinct syllables, unless it is particularly convenient to clip them. Such extra syllables, like the final -e, are especially to be preserved at the end of the line; a large number of the rimes being double (or feminine).

3. But the final -e is almost invariably elided, and other light syllables, especially -en, -er, -el, are frequently treated as being redundant, whenever the next word following begins with a vowel or is one of the words (beginning with h) in the following list, viz. he, his, him, her, hir (their), hem (them), hath, hadde, have, how, heer.

These three simple rules will go a long way. An attentive reader will thus catch the swing of the metre, and will be carried along almost mechanically. The chief obstacle to a succession of smooth lines is the jerk caused by the occasional occurrence of a line defective in the first foot, as explained above. Perhaps it may be further noted that an e sometimes occurs, as a distinct syllable, in the middle of a word as well as at the end of it. Exx.: Eng-e-lond (A. 16); wod-e-craft (A. 110); sem-e-ly (A. 136).

§ 20.

We must also remember that the accentuation of many words, especially of such as are of French origin, was quite different then from what it is now. A word like ‘reason’ was then properly pronounced resóun (rezuun), i. e. somewhat like a modern ray-zóon; but even in Chaucer’s day the habit of throwing back the accent was beginning to prevail, and there was a tendency to Edition: current; Page: [xxiv] say réson (reezun), somewhat like a modern ráy-zun. Chaucer avails himself of this variable accent, and adopts the sound which comes in more conveniently at the moment1. Thus while we find resóun (rezuun) in l. 37, in l. 274 we find résons (reezunz).

§ 21.

I give a few examples of the three rules stated above.

The following words are properly dissyllabic, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:—(l. 1) shou-res, so-te; (2) drogh-te, Mar-che, per-ced, ro-te; (3) ba-thed, vey-ne; (5) swe-te; (7) crop-pes, yon-ge, son-ne; (8) half-e; (9) sma-le, fow-les, ma-ken; (10) sle-pen, o-pen, y-ë; (13) straun-ge, strond-es; (14) fer-ne, hal-wes, lon-des; (15) shi-res, end-e; and so on.

In the same way, there are three syllables in (1) A-pril-le; (4) en-gend-red; (5) Zéph-i-rús; (6) In-spi-red; (8) y-ron-ne; &c. And there are four syllables in (9) mél-o-dý-ë; (12) pil-grim-á-ges.

Elision takes place of the e in drogh-te and of the e in couth-e in l. 14; of the e in nyn-e in l. 24; &c. In such cases, the words may be read as if spelt droght, couth, nyn, for convenience. There are some cases in which the scribe actually fails to write a final e, owing to such elision; but they are not common. I have noted a few in the Glossarial Index.

The final e is ignored, before a consonant, in were (59, 68, 74, 81); and even, which is not common, in hope (88) and nose (152).

As examples of accents to which we are no longer accustomed, we may notice A-príl-le (1); ver-tú (4); cor-á-ges (11); á-ven-túre (25); tó-ward (27); re-sóun (37); hon-óur (46); hon-óur-ed (50); a-rý-ve (60); sta-tú-re (83); Cur-téys (99).

The lines were recited deliberately, with a distinct pause near the middle of each, at which no elision could take place. At this medial pause there is often a redundant syllable (as is more fully explained in vol. vi). Thus, in l. 3, the -e in veyn-e should be preserved, though modern readers are sure to ignore it. Cf. carie in l. 130; studie in l. 184; &c.

§ 22.

By help of the above hints, some notion of the melody of Chaucer may be gained, even by such as adopt the modern English pronunciation. It is right, however, to bear in mind that most of the vowels had, at that time, much the same powers as in modern French and Italian; and it sometimes makes a considerable Edition: current; Page: [xxv] difference. Thus the word charitable in l. 143 was really pronounced more like the modern French charitable; only that the initial sound was that of the O. F. and E. ch, as in church, not that of the modern French ch in cher. For further remarks on the pronunciation, see vol. vi.

§ 23.

The feeble suggestion is sometimes made that Chaucer’s spelling ought to be modernised, like that of Shakespeare. This betrays a total ignorance of the history of English spelling. It is not strictly the case, that Shakespeare’s spelling has been modernised; for the fact is the other way, viz. that in all that is most essential, it is the spelling of Shakespeare’s time that has been adopted in modern English. The so-called ‘modern’ spelling is really a survival, and is sadly unfit, as we all know to our cost, for representing modern English sounds. By ‘modernising,’ such critics usually mean the cutting off of final e in places where it was just as little required in Elizabethan English as it is now; the freër use of ‘v’ and of ‘j’; and so forth; nearly all of the alterations referring to unessential details. Such alterations would have been useful even in Shakespeare’s time, and would not have touched the character of the spelling. But the spelling of Chaucer’s time refers to quite a different age, when a large number of inflections were still in use that have since been discarded; so that it involves changes in essential and vital points. As it happens, the spelling of the Ellesmere MS. is phonetic in a very high degree. Pronounce the words as they are spelt, but with the Italian vowel-sounds and the German final e, and you come very near the truth. If this is too much trouble, pronounce the words as they are spelt, with modern English vowels (usually adding a final e, pronounced like a in China, when it is visibly present); and, even so, it is easy to follow. The alteration of a word like quene to queene does not make it any easier; and the further alteration to queen destroys its dissyllabic nature. Besides, those who want the spelling modernised can get it in Gilfillan’s edition.

Surely, it is better to stick to the true old phonetic spelling. Boys at school, who have learnt Attic Greek, are supposed to be able to face the spelling of Homer without wincing, though it is not their native language; and the number of Englishwomen who are fairly familiar with Middle-English is becoming considerable.

§ 24.

As regards the Notes in the present volume, it will be Edition: current; Page: [xxvi] readily understood that I have copied them or collected them from many sources. Many of those on the Prologue and Knightes Tale were really written by Dr. Morris; but, owing to the great kindness he shewed me in allowing me to work in conjunction with him on terms of equality, I should often be hard put to it to say which they are. A large number are taken from the editions by Tyrwhitt, Wright, and Bell; but these are usually acknowledged. Others I have adopted from the various works published by the Chaucer Society; from the excellent notes by Dr. Köppell, Dr. Kölbing, and Dr. Koch that have appeared in Anglia, and in similar publications; and from Professor Lounsbury’s excellent work entitled Studies in Chaucer. I have usually endeavoured to point out the sources of my information; and, if I have in several cases failed to do this, I hope it will be understood that, as Chaucer’s fox said, ‘I dide it in no wikke entente.’ Perhaps this may seem an unlucky reference, for the fox was not speaking the strict truth, as we all know that he ought to have done. If I may take any credit for any part of the Notes, I think it may be for my endeavour to hunt up, as far as I could, a large number of the very frequent allusions to Le Roman de la Rose1, and to such authors as Ovid and Statius; besides undertaking the more difficult task involved in tracing out some of the mysterious references which occur in the margins of the manuscripts. For the Tale of Melibeus, I naturally derived much help and comfort from the admirable edition of Albertano’s Liber Consolationis by Thor Sundby, and the careful notes made by Mätzner. As for the references in the Persones Tale, I should never have found out so many of them, but for the kind assistance of the Rev. E. Marshall. To all my predecessors in the task of annotation, and to all helpers, I beg leave to express my hearty thanks. For further remarks on this and some other subjects, see vol. vi.

As it frequently happens that it is highly desirable to be able to recover speedily the whereabouts of a note on some particular word or subject, an Index to the Notes is appended to this volume.

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ERRATA IN VOL IV.

At p. xxiv of vol. iv, a list of Errata is given, many of which are of slight importance. Much use of this volume, for the purpose of illustration, has brought to my notice a few more Errata, six of which, here marked with an asterisk, are worth special notice.

P. 19. A 636. For Thanne read Than

P. 37. A 1248. The end-stop should be only a colon.

P. 41. A 1419. The end-stop should be only a semicolon.

P. 138. B 295. For moevyng read moeving

Pp. 151, 155. B 724, 858. For Constable read constable

* P. 165. B 1178. For be read he

P. 187. B 1843. The end-stop should (perhaps) be a semicolon.

P. 232. B 2865. For haue read have

P. 259. B 3670. The end-stop should be a comma.

* P. 275. B 4167. For Than read That

* P. 348. D 955. For which read whiche

P. 349. D 1009. For Plighte read Plight

P. 384. D 2152. Dele ‘at beginning.

* P. 398. E 290. MS. E has set (=setteth, pr. s.); which scans better than sette, as in other MSS.

P. 409. E 656. For Left read Lefte [though the e is elided].

* P. 462. F 56. For Him read Hem

P. 546. G 1224. Dele the final comma.

* P. 608; end of l. 14. For power or (as in E.) read power of (as in the resi).

P. 620: ll. 16, 17. Dele the commas after receyven and folk

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VOL. V. ADDENDA, ETC.

P. 73; l. 10 from bottom. Dele comma after Thornton.

P. 262; note to C 60. Cf. Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 205:—‘Ac the greate metes and thet stronge wyn alighteth and norisseth lecherie, ase oyle other grese alighteth and strengtheth thet uer’ [i. e. the fire]. This passage occurs quite close to that quoted in the note to A 4406. Probably Chaucer took both of these from the French original of the Ayenbite. Cf. p. 447.

P. 450. The note to G 1171 has been accidentally omitted, but is important. The reading should here be terved, not torned; and again, in G 1274, read terve, not torne. The Ellesmere MS. is really right in both places, though terued appears as terned in the Six-text edition. These readings are duly noted in the Errata to vol. iv, at p. xxvi. The verb terve means ‘to strip,’ or ‘to roll back’ the edge of a cuff or the like. The Bremen Wörterbuch has: ‘um tarven, up tarven, den Rand von einem Kleidungstücke umschlagen, das innerste auswärts kehren.’ Hence read tirueden in Havelok, 603; teruen of in the Wars of Alexander, 4114; tyrue in Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, B. 630; and tyruen in Gawain and the Grene Knight, 1921.

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NOTES TO THE CANTERBURY TALES.

N.B. The spellings between marks of parenthesis indicate the pronunciation, according to the scheme given in the Introduction.

References to other lines in the Canterbury Tales are denoted by the Group and line. Thus ‘B. 134’ means Group B, l. 134, i. e. the first line in the Man of Lawes Tale.

Notes taken from editions by Tyrwhitt, Wright, Bell, and Morris, are usually marked accordingly; sometimes T. denotes Tyrwhitt, and M., Morris.

1. In the Man of Law’s Prologue, B. 1-6, there is definite mention of the 18th day of April. The reference is, in that passage, to the second day of the pilgrimage. Consequently, the allusion in ll. 19–23 below is to April 16, and in l. 822 to April 17. The year may be supposed to be 1387 (vol. iii. p. 373).

‘When that April, with his sweet showers.’ Aprille is here masculine, like Lat. Aprilis; cf. l. 5.

shoures (shuu·rez), showers; pl. of shour, A. S. scūr (skuur). The etymology of all words of this character, which are still in use, can be found by looking out the modern form of the word in my Etymological Dictionary. I need not repeat such information here.

sote, sweet, is another form of swete, which occurs just below in l. 5. The e is not, in this case, the mark of the plural, as the forms sote, swete are dissyllabic, and take a final e in the singular also. Sote is a less correct form of swote; and the variation between the long o in swote and the long e in swete is due to confusion between the adverbial and adjectival uses. Swote corresponds to A. S. swōt, adv., sweetly, and swete to A. S. swēte, adj., sweet. The latter exhibits mutation of ō to ē; cf. mod. E. goose, pl. geese (A. S. gōs, pl. gēs).

In this Introduction, Chaucer seems to have had in his mind the Edition: current; Page: [2] passage which begins Book IV. of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Troiae, which is as follows:—‘Tempus erat quo sol maturans sub obliquo zodiaci circulo cursum suum sub signo iam intrauerat Arietis . . . celebratur equinoxium primi veris, tunc cum incipit tempus blandiri mortalibus in aeris serenitate intentis, tunc cum dissolutis ymbribus Zephiri flantes molliciter (sic) crispant aquas . . . tunc cum ad summitates arborum et ramorum humiditates ex terre gremio examplantes extollunt in eis; quare insultant semina, crescunt segetes, virent prata, variorum colorum floribus illustrata . . . tunc cum ornatur terra graminibus, cantant volucres, et in dulcis armonie modulamine citharizant. Tunc quasi medium mensis Aprilis effluxerat’; &c.

We may also note the passage in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 66, entitled De Vere:—‘Sol vero ad radices herbarum et arborum penetrans, humorem quem ibi coadunatum hyeme reperit, attrahit; herba vero, vel arbor suam inanitionem sentiens a terra attrahit humorem, quem ibi sui similitudine adiuuante calore Solis transmutat, sicque reuiuiscit; inde est quod quidam mensis huius temporis Aprilis dicitur, quia tunc terra praedicto modo aperitur.’

2. droght-e, dryness; A. S. drūgathe; essentially dissyllabic, but the final e is elided. Pron. (druuht’). perced, pierced. rot-e, dat. of root, a root; Icel. rōt; written for roote. The double o is not required to shew vowel-length, when a single consonant and an e follow.

4. vertu, efficacy, productive agency, vital energy. ‘And bathed every vein (of the tree or herb) in such moisture, by means of which quickening power the flower is generated.’ Pron. (vertü·).

5. Zephirus, the zephyr, or west wind. Cf. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, l. 402, and the note. There are two more references to Zephirus in the translation of Boethius, bk. i. met. 5; bk. ii. met. 3.

6. holt, wood, grove; A. S. holt; cf. G. Holz.

7. croppes, shoots, extremities of branches, especially towards the top of a tree; hence simply tree-tops, tops of plants, &c. Hence to crop is ‘to cut the tops off.’ Cf. A. 1532; tr. of Boethius, bk. iii. met. 2. 24; Rom. Rose, 1396; and note to P. Plowman, B. xvi. 69.

yonge sonne (yunggǝ sunnǝ); see the next note. The -e in yong-e denotes the definite form of the article. Sonn-e, A. S. sunna, is essentially dissyllabic.

8. the Ram. The difficulty here really resides in the expression ‘his halfe cours,’ which means what it says, viz. ‘his half-course,’ and not, as Tyrwhitt unfortunately supposed, ‘half his course.’ The results of the two explanations are quite different. Taking Chaucer’s own expression as it stands, he tells us that, a little past the middle of April, ‘the young sun has run his half-course in the Ram.’ Turning to Fig. 1 in The Astrolabe (see vol. iii.), we see that, against the month ‘Aprilis,’ there appears in the circle of zodiacal signs, the latter half (roughly speaking) of Aries, and the former half of Taurus. Thus the sun in April runs a half-course in the Ram and a half-course in the Bull. ‘The former of these was completed,’ says the poet; which is as much Edition: current; Page: [3] as to say, that it was past the eleventh of April; for, in Chaucer’s time, the sun entered Aries on March 12, and left that sign on April 11. See note to l. 1.

March. | Aries.
April. | Taurus.
May. | Gemini.

The sun had, in fact, only just completed his course through the first of the twelve signs, as the said course was supposed to begin at the vernal equinox. This is why it is called ‘the yonge sonne,’ an expression which Chaucer repeats under similar circumstances in the Squyeres Tale, F. 385. Y-ronne, for A. S. gerunnen, pp. of rinnan, to run (M. E. rinnen, rinne). The M. E. y-, A. S. ge-, is a mere prefix, mostly used with past participles.

9. Pron. (ǝnd smaa·lǝ fuu·lez maa·ken melodii·ǝ); ‘and little birds make melody.’ Cf. fowel (fuul), a bird, in l. 190.

10. open ye, open eye. Cf. the modern expression ‘with one eye open.’ This line is copied in the Sowdone of Babylon, ll. 41–46.

11. ‘So nature excites them, in their feelings (instincts).’ hir, their; A. S. hira, lit. ‘of them,’ gen. pl. of hē, he. corage (kuraa·jǝ); mod. E. courage; see l. 22.

12, 13. According to ordinary English construction, the verb longen must be supplied after palmers. In fact, l. 13 is parenthetical. Note that Than, in l. 12, answers to Whan in l. 1.

13. palmer, originally, one who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and brought home a palm-branch as a token. Chaucer, says Tyrwhitt, seems to consider all pilgrims to foreign parts as palmers. The essential difference between the two classes of persons here mentioned, the palmer and the pilgrim, was, that the latter had ‘some dwelling-place, a palmer had none; the pilgrim travelled to some certain place, the palmer to all, and not to any one in particular; the pilgrim might go at his own charge, the palmer must profess wilful poverty; the pilgrim might give over his profession, the palmer must be constant’; Blount’s Glossographia (taken from Speght). See note to P. Plowman, B. v. 523.

The fact is, that palmers did not always reach the Holy Land. They commonly went to Rome first, where not unfrequently the Pope ‘allowed them to wear the palm as if they had visited Palestine’; Rock, Church of our Fathers, vol. iii. pt. 1. p. 439.

to seken, to seek; the A. S. gerund, tō sēcanne; expressive of purpose. strondes, strands, shores.

14. ferne halwes, distant saints, i.e. shrines. Here ferne = ferrene = distant, foreign. ‘To ferne poeples’; Chaucer’s Boethius, bk. ii. met. 7. See Mätzner’s M. E. Dict. Ferne also means ‘ancient,’ but not here.

halwes, saints; cf. Scotch Hallow-e’en, the eve of All Hallows, or All Saints; the word is here applied to their shrines.

Chaucer has, ‘to go seken halwes,’ to go (on a pilgrimage) to seek Edition: current; Page: [4] saints’ shrines; D. 657. couthe (kuudh’), well known; A. S. cūð, known, pp. of cunnan, to know. sondry (sun·dri), various.

16. wende, go; pret. wente, Eng. went. The use of the present tense in modern English is usually restricted to the phrase ‘he wends his way.’

17. The holy blisful martir, Thomas à Becket. On pilgrimages, see Saunders, Chaucer, p. 10; and Erasmus, Peregrinatio religionis ergo. There were numerous places in England sought by pilgrims, as Durham, St. Alban’s, Bury, St. David’s, Glastonbury, Lincoln, York, Peterborough, Winchester, Holywell, &c.; but the chief were Canterbury and Walsingham.

18. holpen, pp. of helpen. The older preterites of this verb are heolp, help, halp. seke, sick, rimes to seke, seek; this apparent repetition is only allowed when the repeated word is used in two different senses.

seke, pl. of seek, A. S. sēoc, sick, ill. For hem, see n. to l. 175.

19. Bifel, it befell. seson (saesun), time. on a day, one day.

20. Tabard. Of this word Speght gives the following account in his Glossary to Chaucer:—‘Tabard—a jaquet or sleveless coate, worne in times past by noblemen in the warres, but now only by heraults (heralds), and is called theyre “coate of armes in servise.” It is the signe of an inne in Southwarke by London, within the which was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde by Winchester. This is the hostelry where Chaucer and the other pilgrims mett together, and, with Henry Baily their hoste, accorded about the manner of their journey to Canterbury. And whereas through time it hath bin much decayed, it is now by Master J. Preston, with the Abbot’s house thereto adgoyned, newly repaired, and with convenient rooms much encreased, for the receipt of many guests.’ The inn is well described in Saunders (on Chaucer), p. 13. See also Stow, Survey of London (ed. Thoms, p. 154); Nares’ Glossary, s. v. Tabard; Dyce’s Skelton, ii. 283; Furnivall’s Temporary Preface to Chaucer, p. 18.

The tabard, however, was not sleeveless, though the sleeves, at first, were very short. See the plate in Boutell’s Heraldry, ed. Aveling, p. 69; cf. note to P. Plowman, C. vii. 203.

lay; used like the modern ‘lodged,’ or ‘was stopping.’

23. come (kum’), short for comen, pp. of comen. hostelrye, a lodging, inn, house, residence. Hostler properly signifies the keeper of an inn, and not, as now, the servant of an inn who looks after the horses.

24. wel is here used like our word full or quite.

25. by aventure y-falle, by adventure (chance) fallen (into company). Pron. (av·entü·r’).

26. felawshipe, company; from M. E. felawe, companion, fellow.

27. wolden ryde, wished to ride. The latter verb is in the infinitive mood, as usual after will, would, shall, may, &c.

29. esed atte beste, accommodated or entertained in the best manner. Easement is still used as a law term, signifying accommodation. Cf.F. bien aise. Pron. (aezed).

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atte, i. e. at the, was shortened from atten, masc. and neut., from A. S. æt thām. We also find M. E. atter, fem., from A. S. æt thǣre.

30. to reste, i. e. gone to rest, set.

31. everichon, for ever-ich oon, every one, lit. ever each one.

32. of hir felawshipe, (one) of their company.

33. forward, agreement. ‘Fals was here foreward so forst is in May,’ i. e. their agreement was as false as a frost in May; Ritson’s Ancient Songs, i. 30. A. S. fore-weard, lit. ‘fore ward,’ a precaution, agreement.

34. ther as I yow devyse, to that place that I tell you of (sc. Canterbury); ther in M. E. frequently signifies ‘where,’ and ther as signifies ‘where that.’ devyse, speak of, describe; lit. ‘devise.’

35. natheles, nevertheless; lit. ‘no the less’; cf. A. S. nā, no. whyl, whilst. The form in -es (whiles, the reading of some MSS.) is a comparatively modern adverbial form, and may be compared with M. E. hennes, thennes, hence, thence; ones, twyes, thryes, once, twice, thrice; of which older forms are found in -enne and -e respectively.

37. ‘It seemeth to me it is reasonable.’

Me thinketh=me thinks, where me is the dative before the impersonal vb. thinken, to appear, seem; cp. me liketh, me list, it pleases me. So the phrase if you please=if it please you, you being the dative and not the nominative case. semed me=it seemed to me, occurs in l. 39. The personal verb is properly thenken, as in the Clerkes Tale, E. 116, 641; or thenchen, as in A. 3253.

accordaunt, accordant, suitable, agreeable (to).

40. whiche, what sort of men; Lat. qualis.

41. inne. In M. E., in is the preposition, and inne the adverb.

The Knight.

43. Knight. It was a common thing in this age for knights to seek employment in foreign countries which were at war. Cf. Book of the Duchesse, 1024, and my note. Tyrwhitt cites from Leland’s Itinerary, v. iii. p. cxi., the epitaph of a knight of this period, Matthew de Gourney, who had been at the battle of Benamaryn, at the siege of Algezir, and at the Battles of Crecy, Poitiers, &c. See note to l. 51.

worthy, worthy, is here used in its literal signification of distinguished, honourable. See ll. 47, 50. Pron. (wur·dhi).

For notes on the dresses, &c. of the pilgrims, see Todd’s Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 227; Fairholt’s Costume in England, 1885, i. 129; and Saunders, on the Canterbury Tales, where some of the MS. drawings are reproduced. Also Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, sect. 17.

45. chivalrye (chiv·alrii·ǝ), knighthood; also the manners, exercises, and exploits of a knight.

47. in his lordes werre, i.e. in the king’s service. ‘The knight, by his tenure, was obliged to serve the king on horseback in his wars, and maintain a soldier at his own proper charge,’ &c.; Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii. 15. werre, war.

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48. therto, moreover, besides that; see l. 153 below. ferre, the comp. of fer, far. Cf. M. E. derre, dearer (A. 1448); sarre, sorer, &c.

49. hethenesse, heathen lands, as distinguished from Cristendom, Christian countries. The same distinction occurs in English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 36, l. 1.

50. Pron. (ǝnd ae·vr onuu·red for iz wur·dhines·sǝ).

51. Alisaundre, in Egypt, ‘was won, and immediately after abandoned in 1365, by Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus’; Tyrwhitt. Froissart (Chron. bk. iii. c. 22) gives the epitaph of Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, who ‘conquered in battle . . the cities of Alexandria in Egypt, Tripoli in Syria, Layas in Armenia, Satalia in Turkey, with several other cities and towns, from the enemies of the faith of Jesus Christ’; tr. by Johnes, vol. ii. p. 138. ‘To this I may add, from “Les Tombeaux des Chevaliers du noble Ordre de la Toison d’Or,” the exploits recorded on a monument also of a French knight, who lived in Chaucer’s age, and died in 1449, Jean, Seigneur de Roubais, &c. “qui en son temps visita les Saints lieux de Ierusalem, . . . S. Iacques en Galice, . . . et passa les perils mortels de plusieurs batailles arrestées contre les Infidels, c’est a sçavoir en Hongrie et Barbarie, . . . en Prusse contre les Letaux, . . . avec plusieurs autres faicts exercice d’armes tant par mer que par terre,” ’ &c.—Todd, Illust. of Ch., p. 227. wonne (wunnǝ), won.

52. he hadde the bord bigonne. Here bord = board, table, so that the phrase signifies ‘he had been placed at the head of the dais, or table of state.’ Warton, in his Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ed. 1840, ii. 209 (ed. 1871, ii. 373), aptly cites a passage from Gower which is quite explicit as to the sense of the phrase. See Gower, Conf. Amantis, bk. viii. ed. Pauli, iii. 299. We there read that a knight was honoured by a king, by being set at the head of the middle table in the hall.

‘And he, which had his prise deserved,

After the kinges owne word,

Was maad beginne a middel bord.’

The context shews that this was at supper-time, and that the knight was placed in this honourable position by the marshal of the hall.

Further illustrations are also given by Warton, ed. 1840, i. 174, footnote, shewing that the phrases began the dese (daīs) and began the table were also in use, with the same sense. I can add another clear instance from Sir Beves of Hamptoun, ed. Kölbing, E. E. T. S., p. 104, where we find in one text (l. 2122)—

‘Thow schelt this dai be priour,

And beginne oure deis’ [dais];

where another text has (l. 1957) the reading—

‘Palmer, thou semest best to me,

Therfore men shal worshyp the;

Begyn the borde, I the pray.’

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See also the New Eng. Dictionary, s. v. Board; Hartshorne’s Metrical Tales, pp. 72, 73, 215, 219; Early Popular Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, i. 104; Todd’s Illustrations, p. 322. Even in Stow’s Survey of London, ed. Thomas, p. 144, col. 2, we read how—‘On the north side of the hall certain aldermen began the board, and then followed merchants of the city.’

Another explanation is sometimes given, but it is wholly wrong.

53, 54. Pruce. When our English knights wanted employment, ‘it was usual for them to go and serve in Pruce, or Prussia, with the knights of the Teutonic order, who were in a state of constant warfare with their heathen neighbours in Lettow (Lithuania), Ruce (Russia), and elsewhere.’—Tyrwhitt. Cf. Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 56.

The larger part of Lithuania now belongs to Russia, and the remainder to Prussia; but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the natives long maintained their independence against the Russians and Poles (Haydn, Dict. of Dates).

reysed, made a military expedition. The O. F. reise, sb., a military expedition, was in common use on the continent at that time. Numerous examples of its use are given in Godefroy’s O. F. Dict. It was borrowed from O. H. G. reisa (G. Reise), an expedition. Pron. (reized).

Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. 1840, ii. 210, remarks—‘Thomas duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Edw. III, and Henry earl of Derby, afterwards Henry IV, travelled into Prussia; and, in conjunction with the grand Masters and Knights of Prussia and Livonia, fought the infidels of Lithuania. Lord Derby was greatly instrumental in taking Vilna, the capital of that country, in the year 1390. Here is a seeming compliment to some of these expeditions.’ Cf. Walsingham, Hist., ed. Riley, ii. 197. Hackluyt, in his Voyages, ed. 1598, i. 122, cites and translates the passage from Walsingham referred to above. However, the present passage was written before 1390; see n. to l. 277.

In an explanation of the drawings in MS. Jul. E. 4, relating to the life of Rd. Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (born 1381, died 1439), I find—‘Here shewes how erle Richard from Venise took his wey to Russy, Lettow, and Velyn, and Cypruse, Westvale, and other coostes of Almayn toward Englond.’—Strutt, Manners and Customs.

56–8. Gernade, Granda. ‘The city of Algezir was taken from the Moorish King of Granada in 1344.’—T. The earls of Derby and Salisbury assisted at the siege; Weber, Met. Rom. iii. 306. It is the modern Algeciras on the S. coast of Spain, near Cape Trafalgar.

Belmarye and Tramissene (Tremezen), l. 62, were Moorish kingdoms in Africa, as appears from a passage in Froissart (bk. iv. c. 24) cited by Tyrwhitt. Johnes’ translation has—‘Tunis, Bugia, Morocco, Benmarin, Tremeçen.’ Cf. Kn. Tale, l. 1772 (A. 2630). Benmarin is called Balmeryne in Barbour’s Bruce, xx. 393, and Belmore in the Sowdone of Babylon, 3122. The Gulf of Tremezen is on the coast of Algiers, to the west.

Lyeys, in Armenia, was taken from the Turks by Pierre de Lusignan Edition: current; Page: [8] about 1367. It is the Layas mentioned by Froissart (see note to l. 51) and the modern Ayas; see the description of it in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 15. Cf. ‘Laiazzo’s gulf,’ Hoole’s tr. of Ariosto’s Orlando; bk. xix. l. 389.

Satalye (Attalia, now Adalia, on the S. coast of Asia Minor) was taken by the same prince soon after 1352.—T. See Acts xiv. 25.

Palatye (Palathia, see l. 65), in Anatolia, was one of the lordships held by Christian knights after the Turkish conquest.—T. Cf. Froissart, bk. iii. c. 23.

59. the Grete See. The Great Sea denotes the Mediterranean, as distinguished from the two so-called inland seas, the Sea of Tiberias and the Dead Sea. So in Numb. xxxiv. 6, 7; Josh. i. 4; also in Mandevile’s Travels, c. 7.

60. aryve, arrival or disembarkation of troops, as in the Harleian and Cambridge MSS. Many MSS. have armee, army, which gives no good sense, and probably arose from misreading the spelling ariue as arme. Perhaps the following use of rive for ‘shore’ may serve to illustrate this passage:—

‘The wind was good, they saileth blive,

Till he took lond upon the rive

Of Tire,’ &c.

Gower, Conf. Amant. ed. Pauli, iii. 292.

be = ben, been. Cf. ydo = ydon, done, &c.

62. foghten (fǫuhten), pp. fought; from the strong verb fighten.

63. ‘He had fought thrice in the lists in defence of our faith’; i. e. when challenged by an infidel to do so. Such combats were not uncommon. slayn, slain. hadde must be supplied from l. 61.

64. ilke, same; A. S. ylca.

65. Somtyme, once on a time; not our ‘sometimes.’ See l. 85.

66. another hethen, a heathen army different from that which he had encountered at Tremezen.

67. sovereyn prys (suv·rein priis), exceeding great renown.

69. ‘As courteys as any mayde’; Arthur, ed. Furnivall (E. E. T. S.), l. 41. Cf. B. 1636.

70. vileinye, any utterance unbecoming a gentleman. Cf. Trench, English Past and Present, ch. 7, on the word villain.

71. no maner wight, no kind of person whatever. In M. E. the word maner is used without of, in phrases of this character.

72. verray, very, true. parfit, perfect; F. parfait. gentil, gentle; see D. 1109–1176.

74. ‘His horses were good, but he himself was not gaudily dressed.’ Hors is plural as well as singular. In fact, the knight had three horses; one for himself, one for his son, and one for the yeoman. Perhaps we should read—‘but hé ne was not gay,’ supplying ne from Hl. and Hn. This makes he emphatic; and we may then treat the e in god-e as a light extra syllable, at the caesural pause; for doing which there is ample authority.

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75. fustian; see Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 224. gipoun (jipuu·n), a diminutive of gipe, a tight-fitting vest, a doublet; also called a gipell, as in Libeaus Disconus, 224. See Fairholt, s. v. fustian, and s. v. gipon. The O. F. gipe (whence F. jupe) meant a kind of frock or jacket. wered is the A. S. werede, pt. t. of the weak verb werian, to wear. It is now strong; pt. t. wore. See l. 564.

76. This verse is defective in the first foot, which consists solely of the word Al. Such verses are by no means uncommon in the Cant. Tales and in the Leg. of Good Women. Pron. (al· bismut·erd widh·iz ha·berjuu·n). ‘His doublet of fustian was all soiled with marks made by the habergeon which he had so lately worn over it.’ Bismotered has the same sense as mod. E. besmutted.

habergeoun, though etymologically a diminutive of hauberk, is often used as synonymous with it. ‘It was a defence of an inferior description to the hauberk; but when the introduction of plate-armour, in the reign of Edward III, had supplied more convenient and effectual defences for the legs and thighs, the long skirt of the hauberk became superfluous; from that period the habergeon alone appears to have been worn.’—Way, note to Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 220.

‘And Tideus, above his Habergeoun,

A gipoun hadde, hidous, sharpe, and hoor,

Wrought of the bristles of a wilde Boor.’

Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, pt. ii.

See the Glossary to Fairholt’s Costume in England, s. v. Habergeon; and, for the explanation of gipoun, see the same, under gipon and gambeson. For a picture of a gipoun, see Boutell’s Heraldry, ed. Aveling, p. 67.

77, 78. ‘For he had just returned from his journey, and went to perform his pilgrimage’ (which he had vowed for a safe return) in his knightly array, only without his habergeon.

The Squyer.

79. squyer=esquire, one who attended on a knight, and bore his lance and shield. See Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, Introd. § 8. ‘Esquires held land by the service of the shield, and were bound by their fee to attend the king, or their lords, in the war, or pay escuage.’—Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii. 15. And see Ritson, Met. Romances, iii. 345.

As to the education and accomplishments of a squire, see note to Sir Topas, B. 1927.

80. lovyere, lover. The y in this word is not euphonic as in some modern words; lovyere (luv·yer) is formed from the verb lovi-en, A. S. lufian, to love.

bacheler, a young aspirant to knighthood. There were bachelors in arms as well as in arts. Cf. The Sowdone of Babylone, 1211.

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81. lokkes, locks (of hair). crulle (krull’), curly, curled; cf. Mid. Du. krul, a curl. In mod. E., the r has shifted its place. In King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, 4164, we find—‘And his lokkes buth noght so crolle.’ as they, &c., as if they had been laid in an instrument for curling them by pressure. Curling-tongs seem to be meant; or. possibly, curling-papers. For presse, cf. l. 263.

82. yeer. In the older stages of the language, year, goat, swine, &c., being neuter nouns, underwent no change in the nom. case of the plural number. We have already had hors, pl., in l. 74.

I gesse, I should think. In M. E., gesse signifies to judge, believe, suppose, imagine. See Kn. Tale, l. 192 (A. 1050).

83. of evene lengthe, of ordinary or moderate height.

84. deliver, active. Cotgrave gives: ‘delivre de sa personne, an active, nimble wight.’

85. chivachye. Fr. chevauchée. ‘It most properly means an expedition with a small party of cavalry; but is often used generally for any military expedition.’—T. We should call it a ‘raid.’ Cf. H. 50.

87. born him wel, conducted himself well (behaved bravely), considering the short time he had served.

88. lady grace, lady’s grace. Here lady represents A. S. hlæfdigan, gen. case of hlæfdige, lady; there is therefore no final s. See l. 695, and G. 1348. Cf. the modern phrase ‘Lady-day,’ as compared with ‘Lord’s day.’

89. ‘That was with floures swote enbrouded al’; Prol. to Legend of Good Women, l. 119; and cf. Rom. Rose, 896–8. Embrouded (embruu·ded or embrǫu·ded), embroidered; from O. F. brouder, variant of broder, to embroider; confused with A. S. brogden, pp. of bregdan, to braid. mede, mead, meadow.

91. floytinge, playing the flute. Cf. floute (ed. 1532, floyte), a flute; Ho, of Fame, 1223. Hexham gives Du. ‘Fluyte, a Flute.’

96. ‘Joust (in a tournament) and dance, and draw well and write.’

97. hote, adv. hotly; from hoot, adj. hot. nightertale, night-time, time (or reckoning) of night. So also wit nighter-tale, lit. with night-time, Cursor Mundi, l. 2783; on nightertale, id. 2991; be [by] nychtyrtale, Barbour’s Bruce, xix. 495. The word is used by Holinshed in his account of Joan of Arc (under the date 1429), but altered in the later edition to ‘the dead of the night’; it also occurs in Palladius on Husbandry, ed. Lodge, bk. i. l. 910; and in The Court of Love, l. 1355. Cf. Icel. náttar-tal, a tale, or number, of nights; and the phrase á náttar-þeli, at dead of night.

98. sleep, also written slep, slepte. Cf. weep, wepte; leep, lepte, &c.; such verbs, once strong, became weak. See l. 148; and Kn. Ta. 1829 (A. 2687).

100. carf, the past tense of kerven, to carve (pp. corven). The allusion is to what was then a common custom; cf. E. 1773; Barbour’s Bruce, i. 356. biforn, before; A. S. biforan.

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The Yeman.

101. Yeman, yeoman. ‘As a title of service, it denoted a servant of the next degree above a garson or groom . . . . The title of yeoman was given in a secondary sense to people of middling rank not in service. The appropriation of the word to signify a small landholder is more modern.’—Tyrwhitt. In ed. 1532, this paragraph is headed—‘The Squyers yoman,’ so that he (in this line) means the Squire, as we should naturally suppose from the context. Tyrwhitt, indeed, objects that ‘Chaucer would never have given the son an attendant, when the father had none’; but he overlooks the fact that both the squire and the squire’s man were necessarily servants to the knight, who, in this way, really had two servants; just as, in the note to l. 74, I have shewn that he had three horses. Warton, Strutt, and Todd all take this view of the matter, as might be expected. For further information as to the status of a yeoman, see Blackstone; Spelman’s Glossary, s. v. Socman; Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii. 16; the Glossary to the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall; Waterhous, Comment. on Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, ed. 1663, p. 391; &c.

na-mo, no more (in number). In M. E., mo relates to number, but more to size; usually, but not always; see l. 808.

102. him liste, it pleased him. liste is the past tense; list, it pleaseth, is the present. See note on l. 37.

103. Archers were usually clad in ‘Lincoln green’; cf. D. 1382.

104. a sheef of pecok-arwes, a sheaf of arrows with peacocks’ feathers. Ascham, in his Toxophilus, ed. Arber, p. 129, does not say much in favour of ‘pecock fethers’; for ‘there is no fether but onely of a goose that hath all commodities in it. And trewelye at a short but, which some man doth vse, the pecock fether doth seldome kepe vp the shaft eyther ryght or level, it is so roughe and heuy, so that many men which haue taken them vp for gaynesse, hathe layde them downe agayne for profyte; thus for our purpose, the goose is best fether for the best shoter.’ In the Geste of Robyn Hode, pr. by W. Copland, we read—

‘And every arrowe an ell longe

With peacocke well ydight,

And nocked they were with white silk,

It was a semely syght.’

‘In the Liber Compotis Garderobæ, sub an. 4 Edw. II., p. 53, is this entry—Pro duodecim flechiis cum pennis de pauone emptis pro rege de 12 den., that is, For twelve arrows plumed with peacock’s feathers, bought for the king, 12 d. . . . MS. Cotton, Nero c. viii.’—Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, bk. ii. ch. i. § 12. In the Testamenta Eboracensia, i, 419, 420 (anno 1429), I find—‘Item lego . . . j. shaffe of pakokfedird arrows: also I wyte them a dagger harnest with sylver.’ The latter phrase illustrates l. 114 below. See further in Warton’s note on this passage; Hist. E. Poet. 1840, ii. 211.

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106. takel, lit. ‘implement’ or ‘implements’; here the set of arrows. For takel in the sense of ‘arrow,’ see Rom. Rose, 1729, 1863. ‘He knew well how to arrange his shooting-gear in a yeomanlike manner.’ Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, bk. ii. c. 1. § 16, quotes a ballad in which Robin Hood proposes that each man who misses the mark shall lose ‘his takell’; and one of the losers says—‘Syr abbot, I deliver thee myne arrowe.’ Fairholt (s. v. Tackle) quotes from A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hood—

‘When they had theyr bowes ibent,

Their tacles fedred fre.’

In the Cursor Mundi, l. 3600, Isaac sends Esau to hunt, saying:—‘Ga lok thi tacle be puruaid.’ Cotgrave gives—‘Tacle, m. any (headed) shaft, or boult whose feathers be not waxed, but glued on.’ Roquefort says the same.

107. The sense is—‘His arrows did not present a draggled appearance owing to the feathers being crushed’; i.e. the feathers stood out erect and regularly, as necessary to secure for them a good flight.

109. not-heed, a head closely cut or cropped. Cf. ‘To Notte his haire, comas recidere’; Baret’s Alvearie, 1580. Shakespeare has not-pated, i.e. crop-headed, 1 Henry IV, ii. 4. 78. Cooper’s Thesaurus, 1565, has:—‘Tondere, to cause his heare to be notted or polled of a barbour’; also, ‘to notte his heare shorte’; also, ‘Tonsus homo, a man rounded, polled, or notted. Cotgrave explains the F. tonsure as ‘a sheering, clipping, powling, notting, cutting, or paring round.’ Florio, ed. 1598, explains Ital. zucconare as ‘to poule, to nott, to shave, or cut off one’s haire,’ and zuccone as ‘a shauen pate, a notted poule.’ And more illustrations might be adduced, as e.g. the explanation of Nott-pated in Nares’ Glossary. In later days the name of Roundhead came into use for a like reason. Cf. ‘your nott-headed country gentleman’; Chapman, The Widow’s Tears, Act i. sc. 4.

110. ‘He understood well all the usage of woodcraft.’

111. bracer, a guard for the arm used by archers to prevent the friction of the bow-string on the coat. It was made like a glove with a long leathern top, covering the fore-arm (Fairholt). See it described in Ascham’s Toxophilus, ed. Arber, pp. 107, 108. Cf. E. brace.

112. For a description of ‘sword and buckler play,’ see Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. iii. c. 6. § 22; Brand, Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 400.

114. Harneised, equipped. ‘A certain girdle, harnessed with silver’ is spoken of in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 399, with reference to the year 1376; cf. Riley’s tr. of Liber Albus, p. 521. ‘De j daggar harnisiat’ xd.’; (1439) York Wills, iii. 96. ‘De vj paribus cultellorum harnesiat’ cum auricalco. xvjd.’; ibid. ‘A dagger harnest with sylver’; id. i. 419. And see note to l. 104.

115. Christofre. ‘A figure of St. Christopher, used as a brooch. . . . The figure of St. Christopher was looked upon with particular reverence Edition: current; Page: [13] among the middle and lower classes; and was supposed to possess the power of shielding the person who looked on it from hidden dangers’; note in Wright’s Chaucer. This belief is clearly shewn by a passage in Wright’s History of Caricature. It is of so early an origin that we already meet with it in Anglo-Saxon in Cockayne’s Shrine, p. 77, where we are told that St. Christopher ‘prayed God that every one who has any relic of him should never be condemned in his sins, and that God’s anger should never come upon him’; and that his prayer was granted. There is a well-known early woodcut exhibiting one of the earliest specimens of block-printing, engraved at p. 123 of Chambers’ Book of Days, vol. ii, and frequently elsewhere. The inscription beneath the figure of the saint runs as follows:—

‘Christofori faciem die quacunque tueris

Illa nempe die morte mala non morieris.’

Hence the Yeoman wore his brooch for good luck. St. Christopher’s day is July 25. For his legend, see Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, ii. 48; &c. shene; see n. to l. 160.

116. Riley, in his Memorials of London, p. 115, explains baldric as ‘a belt passing mostly round one side of the neck, and under the opposite arm.’ In 1314, a baldric cost 12d. (same reference). See Spenser, F. Q. i. 7. 29.

117. forster, forester. Hence the names Forester, Forster, and Foster.

The Prioresse.

118. ‘A nunne, y wene a pryores’; Rob. of Brunne, Hand. Synne, 7809.

120. In this line, as in ll. 509 and 697, the word se-ynt seems to be dissyllabic. Six MSS. agree here; and the seventh (Harleian) has nas for was, which keeps the same rhythm. Edd. 1532, 1550, and 1561 have the same words, omitting but.

seynt Loy. Loy is from Eloy, i.e. St. Eligius, whose day is Dec. 1; see the long account of him in Butler’s Lives of the Saints. He was a goldsmith, and master of the mint to Clotaire II., Dagobert I., and Clovis II. of France; and was also bishop of Noyon. He became the patron saint of goldsmiths, farriers, smiths, and carters. The Lat. Eligius necessarily became Eloy in O. French, and is Eloy or Loy in English, the latter form being the commoner. The Catholicon Anglicum (ad 1483) gives: ‘Loye, elegius (sic), nomen proprium.’ Sir T. More, Works, ed. 1577, p. 194, says: ‘St. Loy we make an horseleche.’ Barnaby Googe, as cited in Brand, Pop. Antiq. i. 364 (ed. Ellis), says:—

‘And Loye the smith doth looke to horse, and smithes of all degree,

If they with iron meddle here, or if they goldesmithes bee.’

There is a district called St. Loye’s in Bedford; a Saint Loyes chapel Edition: current; Page: [14] near Exeter; &c. Churchyard mentions ‘sweete Saynct Loy’; Siege of Leith, st. 50. In Lyndesay’s Monarchè, bk. ii. lines 2299 and 2367, he is called ‘sanct Eloy.’ In D. 1564, the carter prays to God and Saint Loy, joining the names according to a common formula; but the Prioress dropped the divine name. Perhaps she invoked St. Loy as being the patron saint of goldsmiths; for she seems to have been a little given to a love of gold and corals; see ll. 158–162. Warton’s notion, that Loy was a form of Louis, only shews how utterly unknown, in his time, were the phonetic laws of Old French.

Many more illustrations might be added; such as—‘By St. Loy, that draws deep’; Nash’s Lenten Stuff, ed. Hindley, p. xiv. ‘God save her and Saint Loye’; Jack Juggler, ed. Roxburgh Club, p. 9; and see Eligius in the Index to the Parker Society’s publications.

We already find, in Guillaume de Machault’s Confort d’Ami, near the end, the expression:—‘Car je te jur, par saint Eloy’; Works, ed. 1849, p. 120.

The life of St. Eligius, as given in Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, contains a curious passage, which seems worth citing:—‘St. Owen relates many miracles which followed his death, and informs us that the holy abbess, St. Aurea, who was swept off by a pestilence, . . was advertised of her last hour some time before it, by a comfortable vision of St. Eligius.’ See also Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed., p. 728.

There is, perhaps, a special propriety in selecting St. Loy for mention in the present instance. In an interesting letter in The Athenæum for Jan. 10, 1891, p. 54, Prof. Hales drew attention to the story about St. Eligius cited in Maitland’s Dark Ages, pp. 83–4, ed. 1853. When Dagobert asked Eligius to swear upon the relics of the saints, the bishop refused. On being further pressed to do so, he burst into tears; whereupon Dagobert exclaimed that he would believe him without an oath. Hence, to swear by St. Loy was to swear by one who refused to swear; and the oath became (at second-hand) no oath at all. See Hales, Folia Literaria, p. 102. At any rate, it was a very mild one for those times. Cf. Amis and Amiloun, 877:—‘Than answered that maiden bright, And swore “by Jesu, ful of might.” ’

121. cleped, called, named; A. S. cleopian, clypian, to call. Cf. Sir David Lyndesay’s Monarchè, bk. iii. l. 4663:—

‘The seilye Nun wyll thynk gret schame

Without scho callit be Madame.’

122. ‘She sang the divine service.’ Here sér-vic-è is trisyllabic, with a secondary accent on the last syllable.

123. Entuned, intoned. nose is the reading of the best MSS. The old black-letter editions read voice (wrongly).

semely, in a seemly manner, is in some MSS. written semily. The e is here to be distinctly sounded; hertily is sometimes written for hertely. See ll. 136, 151.

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124. faire, adv. fairly, well. fetisly, excellently; see l. 157.

125. scole, school; here used for style or pronunciation.

126. Frensh. Mr. Cutts (Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 58) says very justly:—‘She spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savoured of the Benedictine convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had been educated, rather than of Paris.’ There is nothing to shew that Chaucer here speaks slightingly of the French spoken by the Prioress, though this view is commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest. Even Tyrwhitt and Wright have thoughtlessly given currency to this idea; and it is worth remarking that Tyrwhitt’s conclusion as to Chaucer thinking but meanly of Anglo-French, was derived (as he tells us) from a remark in the Prologue to the Testament of Love, which Chaucer did not write! But Chaucer merely states a fact, viz. that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the English court, of the English law-courts, and of the English ecclesiastics of the higher rank. The poet, however, had been himself in France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects; but he had no special reason for thinking more highly of the Parisian than of the Anglo-French. He merely states that the French which she spoke so ‘fetisly’ was, naturally, such as was spoken in England. She had never travelled, and was therefore quite satisfied with the French which she had learnt at home. The language of the King of England was quite as good, in the esteem of Chaucer’s hearers, as that of the King of France; in fact, king Edward called himself king of France as well as of England, and king John was, at one time, merely his prisoner. Warton’s note on the line is quite sane. He shews that queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless Anglo-French) with ‘great propriety.’ What Mr. Wright means by saying that ‘it was similar to that used at a later period in the courts of law’ is somewhat puzzling. It was, of course, not similar to, but the very same language as was used at the very same period in the courts of law. In fact, he and Tyrwhitt have unconsciously given us the view entertained, not by Chaucer, but by unthinking readers of the present age; a view which is not expressed, and was probably not intended. At the modern Stratford we may find Parisian French inefficiently taught; but at the ancient Stratford, the very important Anglo-French was taught efficiently enough. There is no parallel between the cases, nor any such jest as the modern journalist is never weary of, being encouraged by critics who ought to be more careful. The ‘French of Norfolk’ as spoken of in P. Plowman (B. v. 239) was no French at all, but English; and the alleged parallel is misleading, as the reader who cares to refer to that passage will easily see.

‘Stratford-at-Bow, a Benedictine nunnery, was famous even then for its antiquity.’—Todd, Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 233. It is said by Tanner to have been founded by William, bp. of London, before 1087; but Dugdale says it was founded by one Christiana de Sumery, and Edition: current; Page: [16] that her foundation was confirmed by King Stephen. It was dedicated to St. Leonard.

unknowe, short for unknowen, unknown.

127. At mete. Tyrwhitt has acutely pointed out how Chaucer, throughout this passage, merely reproduces a passage in his favourite book, viz. Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Méon, l. 13612, &c., which may be thus translated:—‘and takes good care not to wet her fingers up to the joints in broth, nor to have her lips anointed with soups, or garlic, or fat flesh, nor to heap up too many or too large morsels and put them in her mouth. She touches with the tips of her fingers the morsel which she has to moisten with the sauce (be it green, or brown, or yellow), and lifts her mouthful warily, so that no drop of the soup, or relish or pepper may fall on her breast. And so daintily she contrives to drink, as not to sprinkle a drop upon herself . . . she ought to wipe her lip so well, as not to permit any grease to stay there, at least upon her upper lip.’ Such were the manners of the age. Cf. also Ovid, Ars Amatoria, iii. 755, 756.

129. wette, wet; pt. t. of wetten. depe, deeply, adv.

131. Scan—‘Thát | no dróp | e ne fill | e,’ &c. The e in drópe is very slight; and the caesura follows. Fille is the pt. t. subjunctive, as distinct from fil, the pt. t. indicative. It means ‘should fall.’

132. ful, very. lest = list, pleasure, delight; A. S. lyst.

133. over, upper, adj. ‘The over lippe and the nethere’; Wright’s Vocab. 1857, p. 146. clene (klae·nǝ), cleanly, adv.

134. ferthing signifies literally a fourth part, and hence a small portion, or a spot. In Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, st. 27, such a spot of grease is called a ‘fatte ferthyng.’

sen-e, visible, is an adjective, A. S. gesēne, and takes a final -e. This distinguishes it from the pp. seen, which is monosyllabic, and cannot rime with clen-e. The fuller form y-sen-e occurs in l. 592, where it rimes with len-e.

136. ‘Full seemlily she reached towards her meat (i. e. what she had to eat), and certainly she was of great merriment (or geniality).’

Mete is often used of eatables in general. raughte (rauhtǝ), pt. t. of rechen, to reach.

137. sikerly, certainly. siker is an early adaptation of Lat. securus, secure, sure. disport; mod. E. sport.

139–41. ‘And took pains (endeavoured) to imitate courtly behaviour, and to be stately in her deportment, and to be esteemed worthy of reverence.’

144. sawe, should see, happened to see (subjunctive).

146. Of, i. e. some. houndes (huundez), dogs. ‘Smale whelpes leeve to ladyse and clerkys’; Political, Relig. and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 32; Bernardus de Cura Rei Familiaris, ed. Lumby, p. 13.

147. wastel-breed. Horses and dogs were not usually fed on wastel-breed or cake-bread (bread made of the best flour), but on coarse lentil bread baked for that purpose. See Our English Home, pp. 79, 80. Edition: current; Page: [17] The O. F. wastel subsequently became gastel, gasteau, mod. F. gâteau, cake. Cf. P. Plowman, B. vi. 217, and the note; Riley, Memorials of London, p. 108.

148. The syllable she is here very light; she if oon constitutes the third foot in the line. After she comes the caesural pause. weep, wept; A. S. wēop.

149. men smoot, one smote. If men were the ordinary plural of man, smoot ought to be smiten (pl. past); but men is here used like the Ger. man, French on, with the singular verb. It is, in fact, merely the unaccented form of man. yerde, stick, rod; mod. E. yard. smerte, sharply; adv.

151. wimpel. The wimple or gorger is stated first to have appeared in Edward the First’s reign. It was a covering for the neck, and was used by nuns and elderly ladies. See Fairholt’s Costume, 1885, ii. 413; Ancren Riwle, ed. Morton, p. 420.

pinched, gathered in small pleats, closely pleated.

‘But though I olde and hore be, sone myne,

And poore by my clothing and aray,

And not so wyde a gown have as is thyne,

So small ypynched and so gay,

My rede in happe yit the profit may.’

Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, p. 15.

152. tretys, long and well-shaped. From O. F. traitis, Low Lat. tractitius, i. e. drawn out; from L. trahere. Chaucer found the O. F. traitis in the Romaunt of the Rose, and translated it by tretys; see l. 1216 of the E. version. Cf. fetis from factitius; l. 157. eyen greye. This seems to have been the favourite colour of ladies’ eyes in Chaucer’s time, and even later. Cf. A. 3974; Rom. Rose, 546, 862; &c. ‘Her eyen gray and stepe’; Skelton’s Philip Sparowe, 1014 (see Dyce’s note).

‘Her eyes are grey as glass.’—Two Gent. of Verona, iv. 4. 197.

‘Hyr forheed lely-whyht,

Hyr bent browys blake, and hyr grey eyne,

Hyr chyry chekes, hyr nose streyt and ryht,

Hyr lyppys rody.’—Lives of Saints, Roxburgh Club, p. 14.

‘Wyth eyene graye, and browes bent,

And yealwe traces [tresses], and fayre y-trent,

Ech her semede of gold;

Hure vysage was fair and tretys,

Hure body iantil and pure fetys,

And semblych of stature.’—Sir Ferumbras, l. 5881.

‘Dame Gaynour, with hur gray een.’

Three Met. Romances, ed. Robson, p. 22.

‘Hys eyen grey as crystalle stone’;—Sir Eglamour, l. 861.

‘Put out my eyen gray’;—Sir Launfal, l. 810.

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156. hardily is here used for sikerly, certainly; so also in E. 25. undergrowe, undergrown; i. e. of short, stinted growth.

157. fetis literally signifies ‘made artistically,’ and hence wellmade, feat, neat, handsome; cf. n. to l. 152. M. E. fetis answers to O. F. faitis, feitis, fetis, neatly made, elegant; from Lat. factitius, artificial.

war, aware; ‘I was war’=I percelved.

159. bedes. The word bede signifies, (1) a prayer; (2) a string of grains upon which the prayers were counted, or the grains themselves. The beads were made of coral, jet, cornelian, pearls, or gold. A pair here means ‘a set.’ ‘A peire of bedis eke she bere’; Rom. Rose, 7372.

‘Sumtyme with a portas, sumtyme with a payre of bedes.’

Bale’s King John, p. 27; Camden Soc.

gauded al with grene, ‘having the gawdies green. Some were of silver gilt.’—T. The gawdies or gaudees were the larger beads in the set. ‘One payre of beads of silver with riche gaudeys’; Monast. Anglicanum, viii. 1206; qu. by Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. i. 403. ‘Unum par de Iett [jet] gaudyett with sylver’; Nottingham Records, iii. 188. ‘A peyre bedys of jeete [get], gaudied with corall’; Bury Wills, p. 82, l. 16: the note says that every eleventh bead, or gaudee, stood for a Paternoster: the smaller beads, each for an Ave Maria. The common number was 55, for 50 Aves and 5 Paternosters. The full number was 165, for 150 Aves and 15 Paternosters, also called a Rosary or Our Lady’s Psalter; see the poem on Our Lady’s Psalter in Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, 1881, pp. 220–4. ‘Gaudye of beedes, signeau de paternoster.’—Palsgrave. Gower (Conf. Amant., ed. Pauli, iii. 372) mentions ‘A paire of bedes blacke as sable,’ with ‘gaudees.’ See Gaudia and Precula in Ducange. Gaudee originally meant a prayer beginning with Gaudete, whence the name; see Gaudez in Cotgrave.

160. broche=brooch, signified, (1) a pin; (2) a breast-pin; (3) a buckle or clasp; (4) a jewel or ornament. It was an ornament common to both sexes. The brooch seems to have been made in the shape of a capital A, surmounted by a crown. See the figure of a silver-gilt brooch in the shape of an A in the Glossary to Fairholt’s, Costume in England. The ‘crowned A’ is supposed to represent Amor or Charity, the greatest of all the Christian graces. ‘Omnia uincit amor’; Vergil, Eclog. x. 69. Cf. the use of AMOR as a motto in the Squyer of Lowe Degree, l. 215.

heng, also spelt heeng, hung, is the pt. t. of M. E. hangen, to hang. Cf. A. S. hēng, pt. t. of hōn, to hang.

shene (shee·nǝ), showy, bright. Really allied, not to shine, but to shew. Cf. mod. E. sheen, and G. schön.

161. write is short for writen (writ·en), pp. of wryten (wrii·ten), to write.

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The Nonne and Three Preestes.

163. Another Nonne. It was not common for Prioresses to have female chaplains; but Littré gives chapelaine, fem., as an old title of dignity in a nunnery. Moreover, it is an office still held in most Benedictine convents, as is fully explained in a letter written by a modern Nun-Chaplain, and printed in Anglia, iv. 238. See also N. and Q. 7 S. vi. 485; The Academy, Aug. 23, 1890, p. 152.

164. The mention of three priests presents some difficulty. To make up the twenty-nine mentioned in l. 24, we only want one priest, and it is afterwards assumed that there was but one priest, viz. the Nonnes Preest, who tells the tale of the Cock and Fox. Chaucer also, in all other cases, supposes that there was but one representative of each class.

The most likely solution is that Chaucer wrote a character of the Second Nun, beginning—

‘Another Nonne with hir hadde she

That was hir chapeleyne’—

and that, for some reason, he afterwards suppressed the description. The line left imperfect, as above, may have been filled up, to stop a gap, either by himself (temporarily), or indeed by some one else.

If we are to keep the text (which stands alike in all MSS.), we must take ‘wel nyne and twenty’ to mean ‘at least nine and twenty.’

The letter from the Nun-Chaplain mentioned in the last note shews that an Abbess might have as many as five priests, as well as a chaplain. See Essays on Chaucer (Ch. Soc.), p. 183. The difficulty is, merely, how to reconcile this line with l. 24.

The Monk.

165. a fair, i. e. a fair one. Cf. ‘a merye’ in l. 208; and l. 339.

for the maistrye is equivalent to the French phrase pour la maistrie, which in old medical books is ‘applied to such medicines as we usually call sovereign, excellent above all others’; Tyrwhitt. We may explain it by ‘as regards superiority,’ or, ‘to shew his excellence.’ Cf. ‘An stede he gan aprikie · wel vor the maistrie’; Rob. of Glouc. l. 11554 (or ed. Hearne, p. 553).

In the Romance of Sir Launfal, ed. Ritson, l. 957, is a description of a saddle, adorned with ‘twey stones of Ynde Gay for the maystrye’; i. e. preëminently gay.

Several characteristics of various orders of monks are satirically noted in Wright’s Political Songs, pp. 137–148.

166. out-rydere, outrider; formerly the name of an officer of a monastery or abbey, whose duty was to look after the manors belonging to it; or, as Chaucer himself explains it, in B. 1255—

‘an officere out for to ryde

To seen hir graunges and hir bernes wyde.

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In the Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, 1492–1532, ed. Jessop (Camden Soc.), pp. 214, 279, the word occurs twice, as the name of an officer of the Abbey of St. Benet’s, Hulme; e.g. ‘Dompnus Willelmus Hornyng, oute-rider, dicit quod multa edificia et orrea maneriorum sunt prostrata et collapsa praesertim violentia venti hoc anno.’

The Lat. name for this officer was exequitator, as appears from Wyclif, Sermones, iii. 326 (Wyclif Soc.). I am indebted for these references and for the explanation of out-rydere to Mr. Tancock; see his note in N. and Q. 7 S. vi. 425. The same vol. of Visitations also shews that, in the same abbey, another monk, ‘Thomas Stonham tertius prior’ was devoted to hunting; ‘communis venator . . . solet exire solus ad venatum mane in aurora.’ There is also a complaint of the great number of dogs kept there—‘superfluus numerus canum est in domo.’ In the Rolls of Parliament (1406), vol. iii. p. 598, the sheriffs collect payments for the repair of roads and bridges ‘par lour Ministres appellez Outryders’; N. and Q. 8 S. ii. 39. Note that this fully explains the use of outryders in P. Plowman, C. v. 116.

venerye, hunting; cf. A. 2308. ‘The monks of the middle ages were extremely attached to hunting and field-sports; and this was a frequent subject of complaint with the more austere ecclesiastics, and of satire with the laity.’—Wright. See Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. i. c. 1. §§ 9, 10; Our Eng. Home, p. 23. From Lat. uenari, to hunt.

168. deyntee, dainty, i.e. precious, valuable, rare; orig. a sb., viz. O. F. deintee, dignity, from Lat. acc. dignitatem. Cf. l. 346.

170. Ginglen, jingle. (The line is deficient in the first foot.) Fashionable riders were in the habit of hanging small bells on the bridles and harness of their horses. Wyclif speaks of ‘a worldly preest . . in pompe and pride, coveitise and envye . . with fatte hors, and jolye and gaye sadeles, and bridelis ryngynge be the weye, and himself in costy clothes and pelure’ [fur]; Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 519, 520.

In Richard Cuer de Lion, l. 1517, we read of a mounted messenger, with silk trappings—

‘With fyve hundred belles ryngande.’

And again, at l. 5712—

‘His crouper heeng al full off belles.’

‘Vincent of Beauvais, speaking of the Knights Templars, and their gorgeous horse-caparisons, says they have—in pectoralibus campanulas infixas magnum emittentes sonitum’; Hist. lib. xxx. c. 85 (cited by Warton, Hist. E. P. i. 167). See B. 3984; and Spenser, F. Q. i. 2. 13; also Englische Studien, iii. 105.

172. Ther as=where that. keper, principal, head, i.e. prior. celle, cell; a ‘cell’ was a small monastery or nunnery, dependent on a larger one. ‘Celle, a religious house, subordinate to some great Edition: current; Page: [21] abby. Of these cells some were altogether subject to their respective abbies, who appointed their officers, and received their revenues; while others consisted of a stated number of monks, who had a prior sent them from the abby, and who paid an annual pension as an acknowledgment of their subjection; but, in other matters, acted as an independent body, and received the rest of their revenues for their own use. These priories or cells were of the same order with the abbies on whom they depended. See Tanner, Pref. Not. Monast. p. xxvii.’—Todd, Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 326. Cf. note to l. 670, and especially the note to D. 2259.

173. The reule (rule) of seint Maure (St. Maur) and that of seint Beneit (St. Benet or Benedict) were the oldest forms of monastic discipline in the Romish Church. St. Maur (Jan. 15) was a disciple of St. Benet (Dec. 4), who founded the Benedictine order, and died about ad 542.

174. Note that streit, mod. E. strait, A. F. estreit, from Lat. strictus, is quite distinct from mod. E. straight, of A. S. origin.

175. The Harl. MS. reads, ‘This ilke monk leet forby hem pace’ (error for leet hem forby him pace?), ‘This same monk let them pass by him unobserved.’ hem refers to the rules of St. Maur and St. Benet, which were too streit (strict) for this ‘lord’ or superior of the house, who preferred a milder sort of discipline. Forby is still used in Scotland for by or past. pace, pass by, remain in abeyance; cf. pace, pass on, proceed, in l. 36. hem, them; originally dat. pl. of he.

176. space, course (Lat. spatium); ‘and held his course in conformity with the new order of things.’

177. yaf not of, gave not for, valued not. yaf is the pt. t. of yeven or yiven, to give.

a pulled hen, lit. a plucked hen; hence, the value of a hen without its feathers; see l. 652. In D. 1112, the phrase is ‘not worth a hen.’ Tyrwhitt says, ‘I do not see much force in the epithet pulled’; but adds, in his Glossary—‘I have been told since, that a hen whose feathers are pulled, or plucked off, will not lay any eggs.’ Becon speaks of a ‘polled hen,’ i. e. pulled hen, as one unable to fly; Works, p. 533; Parker Soc. It is only one of the numerous old phrases for expressing that a thing is of small value. See l. 182. I may add that pulled, in the sense of ‘plucked off the feathers,’ occurs in the Manciple’s Tale; H. 304. And see Troil. v. 1546.

text, remark in writing; the word was used of any written statement that was frequently quoted. The allusion is to the legend of Nimrod, ‘the mighty hunter’ (Gen. x. 9), which described him as a very bad man. ‘Mikel he cuth [much he knew] o sin and scham’; Cursor Mundi, l. 2202. It was he (it was said) who built the tower of Babel, and introduced idolatry and fire-worship. All this has ceased to be familiar, and the allusion has lost its point. ‘We enjoin that a priest be not a hunter, nor a hawker, nor a dicer’; Canons of King Edgar, translated; no. 64. See my note to P. Plowman, C. vi. 157.

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179. recchelees (in MS. E.) means careless, regardless of rule; but ‘a careless monk’ is not necessarily ‘a monk out of his cloister.’ But the reading cloisterless (in MS. Harl.) solves the difficulty; being a coined word, Chaucer goes on to explain it in l. 181. See the quotation from Jehan de Meung in the next note.

179–81. This passage, says Tyrwhitt, ‘is attributed by Gratian (Decretal. P. ii. Cau. xvi. q. l. c. viii.) to a pope Eugenius: Sicut piscis sine aqua caret vita, ita sine monasterio monachus.’ Joinville says, ‘The Scriptures do say that a monk cannot live out of his cloister without falling into deadly sins, any more than a fish can live out of water without dying.’ Cf. Piers Plowman, B. x. 292; and my note.

Wyclif (Works, ed. Matthew), p. 449, has a similar remark:—‘For, as they seyn that groundiden [founded] these cloystris, thes men myghten no more dwelle out ther-of than fizs myghte dwelle out of water, for vertu that they han ther-ynne.’ The simile is very old; in The Academy, Nov. 29, 1890, Prof. Albert Cook traced it back to Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. bk. i. c. 13 (Migne, Patr. Graec. 67. 898):—τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἰχθύας ἔλεγε τὴν ὑγρὰν οὐσίαν τρέϕειν, μοναχοι̑ς δὲ κόσμον ϕέρειν τὴν ἔρημον. ἐπίσης τε τοὺς μὲν ξηρα̑ς ἀπτομένους τὸ ζῃ̑ν ἀπολιμπάνειν, τοὺς δὲ τὴν μοναστικὴν σεμνότητα ἀπολλύειν τοι̑ς ἄστεσι προσιόντας. And in The Academy, Dec. 6, 1890, Mr. H. Ellershaw, of Durham, shewed that it occurs still earlier, in the Life of St. Anthony (c. 85) attributed to St. Athanasius, not later than ad 373:—ὥσπερ οἱ ἰχθύες ἐγχρονίζοντες τῃ̑ ξηρᾳ̑ γῃ̑ τελευτω̑σιν· οὕτως οἱ μοναχοὶ βραδύνοντες μεθ’ ὑμω̑ν καὶ παρ’ ὑμι̑ν ἐνδιατρίβοντες ἐκλύονται.

Moreover, the poet was thinking of a passage in Le Testament de Jehan de Meung, ed. Méon, l. 1166:—

‘Qui les voldra trover, si les quiere en leur cloistre . . .

Car ne prisent le munde la montance d’une oistre.’

i. e. ‘whoever would find them, let him seek them in their cloister; for they do not prize the world at the value of an oyster.’ Chaucer turns this passage just the other way about.

182. text, remark, saying (as above, in l. 177). held, esteemed.

183. ‘And I said.’ This is a very realistic touch; as if Chaucer had been talking to the monk, obtaining his opinions, and professing to agree with them.

184. What has here its earliest sense of wherefore, or why.

wood, mad, foolish, is frequently employed by Spenser; A. S. wōd.

186. swinken, to toil; whence ‘swinked hedger,’ used by Milton (Comus, l. 293). But swinken is, properly, a strong verb; A. S. swincan, pt. t. swanc, pp. swuncen. Hence swink, s., toil; l. 188.

187. bit, the 3rd pers. sing. pres. of bidden, to command. So also rit, rideth, A. 974, 981; fynt, findeth, A. 4071; rist, riseth, A. 4193; stant, standeth, B. 618; sit, sitteth, D. 1657; smit, smiteth, E. 122; hit, hideth, F. 512.

187, 188. Austin, St. Augustine. The reference is to St. Augustine Edition: current; Page: [23] of Hippo, after whom the Augustinian Canons were named. Their rule was compiled from his writings. Thus we read that ‘bothe monks and chanouns forsaken the reules of Benet and Austyn’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 511. And again—‘Seynt Austyn techith munkis to labore with here hondis, and so doth seint Benet and seynt Bernard’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 51. See Cutts, Scenes and Characters, &c.; ch. ii. and ch. iii.

189. a pricasour, a hard rider. priking, hard riding (l. 191).

190. Cf. ‘Also fast so the fowl in flyght’; Ywaine and Gawin, 630.

192. for no cost, for no expense. Dr. Morris explains for no cost by ‘for no reason,’ and certainly M. E. cost sometimes has such a force; but see ll. 213, 799, where it clearly means ‘expense.’

193. seigh, saw; A. S. sēah, pt. t. of sēon, to see.

purfiled, edged with fur. The M. E. purfil signifies the embroidered or furred hem of a garment, so that purfile is to work upon the edge. Purfiled has also a more extended meaning, and is applied to garments overlaid with gems or other ornaments. ‘Pourfiler d’or, to purfle, tinsell, or overcast with gold thread,’ &c.: Cotgrave. Spenser uses purfled in the Fairy Queene, i. 2. 13; ii. 3. 26. Cf. note to P. Plowman, C. iii. 10.

194. grys, a sort of costly grey fur, formerly very much esteemed; O. F. gris, Rom. de la Rose, 9121, 9307; Sir Tristrem, l. 1381. ‘The grey is the back-fur of the northern squirrel’; L. Gautier, Chivalry (Eng. tr.), p. 323. Such a dress as is here described must have been very expensive. In 1231 (Close Roll, 16 Hen. III.), king Henry III. had a skirt (iupa) of scarlet, furred with red gris. See Gloss. to Liber Custumarum, ed. Riley, s. v. griseum, p. 806.

In Lydgate’s Dance of Macabre, the Cardinal is made to regret—

‘That I shal never hereafter clothed be

In grise nor ermine, like unto my degree.’

The Council of London (1342) reproaches the religious orders with wearing clothing ‘fit rather for knights than for clerks, that is to say, short, very tight, with excessively wide sleeves, not reaching the elbows, but hanging down very low, lined with fur or with silk’; see J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life (1889). Cf. Wyclif, Works, ed. Matthew, p. 121.

‘This worshipful man, this dene, came rydynge into a good paryssh with a x. or xii. horses lyke a prelate’; Caxton, Fables of Æsop, &c.; last fable; cf. l. 204 below.

196. ‘He had an elaborate brooch, made of gold, with a love-knot in the larger end.’ love-knotte, a complicated twist, with loops.

198. balled, bald. See Specimens of Early English, ii. 15. 408.

199. anoint, anointed; O. F. enoint, Lat. inunctus.

200. in good point, in good case, imitated from the O. F. en bon point. Cotgrave has: ‘En bon poinct, ou, bien en poinct, handsome: faire, fat, well liking, in good taking.’

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201. stepe, E. E. steap, does not here mean sunken, but bright, burning, fiery. Mr. Cockayne has illustrated the use of this word in his Seinte Marherete, pp. 9, 108: ‘His twa ehnen [semden] steappre þene steorren,’ his two eyes seemed brighter than stars. So also: ‘schininde and schenre, of ȝimstanes steapre then is eni steorre,’ shining and clearer, brighter with gems than is any star; St. Katherine, l. 1647. The expression ‘eyen gray and stepe,’ i. e. bright, has already been quoted in the note to l. 152. So also ‘Eyyen stepe and graye’; King of Tars, l. 15 (in Ritson, Met. Rom. ii. 157); and again, ‘thair een steep’; Palladius on Husbandry, bk. iv. l. 800. Cf. stemed in the next line; and see l. 753.

202. stemed as a forneys of a leed, shone like the fire under a cauldron. Here stemed is related to the M. E. stēm, a bright light, used in Havelok, 591. Cf. ‘two stemyng eyes,’ two bright eyes; Sir T. Wiat, Sat. i. 53. That refers to eyen, not to heed.

A kitchen-copper is still sometimes called a lead. As to the word leed, which is the same as the modern E. lead (the metal), Mr. Stevenson, in his edition of the Nottingham Records, iii. 493, observes—‘That these vessels were really made of lead we have ample evidence’; and refers us to the Laws of Æthelstán, iv. 7 (Schmid, Anhang, xvi. § 1); &c. He adds—‘The lead was frequently fixed, like a modern domestic copper, over a grate. The grate and flue were known as a furnace. Hence the frequent expression—a lead in furnace.’ See also led in Havelok, l. 924; and lead in Tusser’s Husbandrie, E. D. S.

203. botes souple, boots pliable, soft, and close-fitting.

‘This is part of the description of a smart abbot, by an anonymous writer of the thirteenth century: “Ocreas habebat in cruribus quasi innatae essent, sine plica porrectas.”—MS. Bodley, James, no. 6. p. 121.’—T. See Rom. of the Rose, 2265–70 (vol. i. p. 173).

205. for-pyned, ‘tormented,’ and hence ‘wasted away’; from pine. The for- is intensive, as in Eng. forswear.

The Frere.

208. Frere, friar. The four orders of mendicant friars mentioned in l. 210 were:—(1) The Dominicans, or friars-preachers, who took up their abode in Oxford in 1221, known as the Black Friars. (2) The Franciscans, founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209, and known by the name of Grey Friars. They made their first appearance in England in 1224. (3) The Carmelites, or White Friars. (4) The Augustin (or Austin) Friars. The friar was popular with the mercantile classes on account of his varied attainments and experience. ‘Who else so welcome at the houses of men to whom scientific skill and information, scanty as they might be, were yet of no inconsiderable service and attraction. He alone of learned and unlearned possessed some knowledge of foreign countries and their productions; he alone was acquainted with the composition and decomposition of bodies, with the art of distillation, Edition: current; Page: [25] with the construction of machinery, and with the use of the laboratory.’ See Professor Brewer’s Preface to Monumenta Franciscana, p. xlv; and, in particular, the poem called ‘Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede,’ and the satirical piece against the Friars entitled Jack Upland, formerly printed with Chaucer’s Works. Several pieces against them will also be found in Political Poems, ed. Wright (Record Series); and there are numerous outspoken attacks upon them in Wyclif’s various works, as, e.g. in the Select Eng. Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 366, and in his Works, ed. Matthew, p. 47. See also the chapter on Friars in the E. translation of Jusserand, Eng. Wayfaring Life; p. 293.

Many of the remarks concerning the Frere are ultimately due to Le Roman de la Rose. See The Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 6161–7698; in vol. i. pp. 234–259.

wantown, sometimes written wantowen, literally signifies untrained, and hence wild, brisk, lively. wan- is a common M. E. prefix, equivalent to our un- or dis-, as in wanhope, despair; towen or town occurs in M. E. writers for well-behaved, well-taught; from A. S. togen, pp. of tēon, to educate.

merye, pleasant; cf. M. E. mery wether, pleasant weather.

209. limitour was a begging friar to whom was assigned a certain district or limit, within which he was permitted to solicit alms; it was also his business to solicit persons to purchase a partnership, or brotherhood, in the merits of their conventual services. See Tyndale’s Works, i. 212 (Parker Soc.); and note to P. Plowman, B. v. 138. Hence in later times the verb limit signifies to beg.

‘Ther walketh now the limitour himself,

In undermeles and in morweninges;

And seyth his matins and his holy thinges

As he goth in his limitacioun.’

Wife of Bath’s Tale; D. 874.

210. ordres foure, four orders (note to l. 208). can, i. e. ‘knows.’

211. daliaunce and fair langage, gossip and flattery. daliaunce in M. E. signifies ‘tittle-tattle’ or ‘gossip.’ The verb dally signifies not only to loiter or idle, but to play, sport. Godefroy gives O. F. ‘dallier, v. a., railler.’

212. ‘He had, at his own expense, well married many young women.’ This is less generous than might appear; for it almost certainly refers to young women who had been his concubines. As Dr. Furnivall remarks in his Temporary Preface, p. 118—‘the true explanation lies in the following extract from a letter of Dr. Layton to Cromwell, in 1535 ad, in Mr. Thos. Wright’s edition of Letters on the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc.), p. 58: [At Maiden Bradley, near Bristol] “is an holy father prior, and hath but vj. children, and but one dowghter mariede yet of the goodes of the monasterie, trystyng shortly to mary the reste. His sones be tall men, waittyng upon him; and he thankes Gode a never medelet with marytt women, Edition: current; Page: [26] but all with madens, the faireste cowlde be gottyn, and always marede them ryght well.” ’

214. post, pillar or support, as in Troil. i. 1000. See Gal. ii. 9.

216. frankeleyns, wealthy farmers; see l. 331. over-al, everywhere.

217. worthy, probably ‘wealthy’; or else, ‘respectable.’ Cf. l. 68.

219. The word mór-e occupies the fourth foot in the line; cf. n. to l. 320. It is an adj., with the sense of ‘greater.’

220. licentiat. He had a licence from the Pope ‘to hear confessions, &c., in all places, independently of the local ordinaries.’—T. The curate, or parish priest, could not grant absolution in all cases, some of which were reserved for the bishop’s decision. See Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 394.

224. wiste to han, knew (he was sure) to have.

pitaunce here signifies a mess of victuals. It originally signified an extraordinary allowance of victuals given to monastics, in addition to their usual commons, and was afterwards applied to the whole allowance of food for a single person, or to a small portion of anything.

225. ‘For the giving (of gifts) to a poor order.’ povre, O. F. povre, poor; cf. pover-ty. See pov-re in l. 232.

226. y-shrive = y-shriven, confessed, shriven. The final n is dropped; cf. unknowe for unknowen in l. 126.

227. he dorste, he durst make (it his) boast, i. e. confidently assert.

avaunt, a boast, is from the O. F. vb. avanter, to boast, an intensive form of vanter, whence E. vaunt.

230. he may not, he is not able to. him sore smerte, it may pain him, or grieve him, sorely.

232. Men moot, one ought to. Here moot is singular; cf. l. 149.

233. tipet, a loose hood, which seems to have been used as a pocket. ‘When the Order [of Franciscans] degenerated, the friar combined with the spiritual functions the occupation of pedlar, huxter, mountebank, and quack doctor.’ (Brewer.) ‘Thei [the friars] becomen pedderis [pedlars], berynge knyues, pursis, pynnys, and girdlis, and spices, and sylk, and precious pellure and forrouris [sorts of fur] for wymmen, and therto smale gentil hondis [dogs], to gete love of hem, and to haue many grete yiftis for litil good or nought.’—Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 12. As to the tipet, cf. notes to ll. 682, 3953.

In an old poem printed in Brewer’s Monumenta Franciscana, we have the following allusion to the dealings of the friar:—

‘For thai have noght to lyve by, they wandren here and there,

And dele with dyvers marche, right as thai pedlers were;

Thei dele with pynnes and knyves,

With gyrdles, gloves for wenches and wyves,

Ther thai are haunted till.’

In a poem in MS. Camb., Ff. 1. 6, fol. 156, it is explained that the limitour craftily gives ‘pynnys, gerdyllis, and knyeffs’ to wommen, in order to receive better things in return. He could get knives for Edition: current; Page: [27] less than a penny a-piece. Cf. ‘De j. doss. cultellorum dict. penyware. xd.’; York Wills, iii. 96.

Women used to wear knives sheathed and suspended from their girdles; such knives were often given to a bride. See the chapter on Bride-knives in Brand’s Popular Antiquities.

farsed, stuffed; from F. farcir. Cf. E. farce.

236. rote is a kind of fiddle or ‘crowd,’ not a hurdy-gurdy, as it is explained by Ritson, and in the glossary to Sir Tristrem. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. ii. 10. 3; iv. 9. 6; Sir Degrevant, l. 37 (see Halliwell’s note, at p. 289 of the Thornton Romances). See my Etym. Dictionary.

237. yeddinges, songs embodying some popular tales or romances. In Sir Degrevant, l. 1421, we are told that a lady ‘song yeddyngus,’ i.e. sang songs. For singing such songs, he was in the highest estimation. From A. S. geddian, to sing. Cf. P. Plowman, A. i. 138:—‘Ther thou art murie at thy mete, whon me biddeth the yedde.’

prys answers both to E. prize and price; cf. l. 67.

239. champioun, champion; i.e. a professional fighter in judicial lists. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xxi. 104; and see Britton, liv. i. ch. 23. § 15.

241. tappestere, a female tapster. In olden times the retailers of beer, and for the most part the brewers also, appear to have been females. The -stere or -ster as a feminine affix (though in the fourteenth century it is not always or regularly used as such) occurs in M. E. brewstere, webbestere, Eng. spinster. In huckster, maltster, songster, this affix has acquired the meaning of an agent; and in youngster, gamester, punster, &c., it implies contempt. See Skeat, Principles of Etymology, pt. i. § 238. Cf. beggestere, female beggar, 242.

242. Bet, better, adv.; as distinguished from bettre, adj. (l. 524).

lazar, a leper; from Lazarus, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus; hence lazaretto, a hospital for lepers, a lazar-house.

244. ‘It was unsuitable, considering his ability.’

246. ‘It is not becoming, it may not advance (profit) to deal with (associate with) any such poor people.’ Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 6455, 6462; and note to P. Plowman, C. xiii. 21.

247. The line is imperfect in the first foot.

poraille, rabble of poor people; from O. F. povre, poor.

248. riche, i. e. rich people.

249, 250. ‘And everywhere, wherever profit was likely to accrue, courteous he was, and humble in offering his services.’

251. vertuous, (probably) energetic, efficient; cf. vertu in l. 4.

252, 253. Between these two lines the Hengwrt MS. inserts the two lines marked 252 b and 252 c, which are omitted in the other MSS., though they certainly appear to be genuine, and are found in all the black-letter editions, which follow Thynne. In the Six-text edition, which is here followed, they are not counted in. Tyrwhitt both inserts and numbers them; hence a slight difference in the methods of numbering the lines after this line. Tyrwhitt’s numbering is given, Edition: current; Page: [28] at every tenth line, within marks of parenthesis, for convenience of reference. The sense is—‘And gave a certain annual payment for the grant (to be licensed to beg; in consequence of which) none of his brethren came with his limit.’

ferme is the mod. E. farm; cf. ‘to farm revenues.’

253. sho, shoe; not sou (as has been suggested), which would (in fact) give a false rime. So also ‘worth his olde sho’; D. 708.

The friars were not above receiving even the smallest articles; and ferthing, in l. 255, may be explained by ‘small article,’ of a farthing’s value. See l. 134.

‘For had a man slayn al his kynne,

Go shryve him at a frere;

And for lasse then a payre of shone

He wyl assoil him clene and sone!’

Polit. Poems, ed. Wright; i. 266.

‘Ever be giving of somewhat, though it be but a cheese, or a piece of bacon, to the holy order of sweet St. Francis, or to any other of my [i. e. Antichrist’s] friars, monks, canons, &c. Holy Church refuseth nothing, but gladly taketh whatsoever cometh.’—Becon’s Acts of Christ and of Antichrist, vol. iii. p. 531 (Parker Society). And see the Somp. Tale, D. 1746–1751.

254. In principio. The reference is to the text in John i. 1, as proved by a passage from Tyndale (Works, ed. 1572, p. 271, col. 2; or iii. 61, Parker Soc.):—‘Such is the limiter’s saying of In principio erat verbum, from house to house.’ Sir Walter Scott copies this phrase in The Fair Maid of Perth, ch. iii. The friars constantly quoted this text.

256. purchas=proceeds of his begging. What he acquired in this way was greater than his rent or income. ‘Purchase, . . any method of acquiring an estate otherwise than by descent’; Blackstone, Comment. I. iii. For rente, see l. 373.

We find also: ‘My purchas is theffect of al my rente’; D. 1451.

‘To winne is alway myn entent,

My purchas is better than my rent.’

Romaunt of the Rose, l. 6837;

where the F. original has (l. 11760)—‘Miex vaut mes porchas que ma rente.’

257. as it were right (E. Hn. &c.); and pleye as (Hl.). The sense is—‘and he could romp about, exactly as if he were a puppy-dog.’

258. love-dayes. ‘Love-days (dies amoris) were days fixed for settling differences by umpire, without having recourse to law or violence. The ecclesiastics seem generally to have had the principal share in the management of these transactions, which, throughout the Vision of Piers Ploughman, appear to be censured as the means of hindering justice and of enriching the clergy.’—Wright’s Vision of Piers Ploughman, vol. ii. p. 535.

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‘Ac now is Religion a rydere, and a rennere aboute,

A ledere of love-dayes,’ &c.

Piers Ploughman, A. xi. 208, ed. Skeat; see also note to P. Pl. ed. Skeat, B. iii. 157. The sense is—‘he could give much help on lovedays (by acting as umpire).’ See ll. 259–261.

As to loveday, see Wyclif, Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 172, 234, 512; and the same, Works, ed. Arnold, ii. 77; iii. 322; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, i. 496; Titus Andronicus, i. 1. 491. In the Testament of Love, bk. i. (ed. 1561, fol. 287, col. 2) we find—‘What (quod she) . . . maked I not a louedaie betwene God and mankind, and chese a maide to be nompere [umpire], to put the quarell at ende?’

260. cope, a priest’s vestment; a cloak forming a semicircle when laid flat; the semi-cope (l. 262) was a short cloak or cape. Cf. Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, ll. 227, 228:—

‘His cope that biclypped him, wel clene was it folden,

Of double-worstede y-dyght, doun to the hele.’

This line is a little awkward to scan. With a thred- constitutes the first foot; and povre is povr’ (cp. mod. F. pauvre).

261. ‘The kyng or the emperour myghtte with worschipe were a garnement of a frere for goodnesse of the cloth’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 50.

263. rounded, assumed a round form; used intransitively. presse, the mould in which a bell is cast; cf. l. 81.

264. lipsed, lisped; by metathesis of s and p. See footnote to l. 273.

for his wantownesse, by way of mannerism.

The Marchant.

270. a forked berd. In the time of Edward III. forked beards were the fashion among the franklins and bourgeoisie, according to the English custom before the Conquest. See Fairholt’s Costume in England, fig. 30.

271. In mottelee, in a motley dress; cf. l. 328.

273. clasped; fastened with a clasp fairly and neatly. See l. 124.

274. resons, opinions. ful solempnely, with much importance.

275. ‘Always conducing to the increase of his profit.’ souninge, sounding like, conducing to; cf. l. 307. Compare—‘thei chargen more [care more for] a litil thing that sowneth to wynnyng of hem, than a myche more [greater] thing that sowneth to worchip of God’; Wyclif, Works, ed. Arnold, ii. 383. ‘These indulgencis . . . done mykel harme to Cristen soulis, and sownen erroure ageynes the gospel’; id., iii. 459. Cf. Chaucer’s Doctour’s Tale, C. 54; also P. Plowman, C. vii. 59, x. 216, xii. 79, xxii. 455. The M. E. sb. soun is from F. son, Lat. acc. sonum.

276. were kept, should be guarded; so that he should not suffer from Edition: current; Page: [30] pirates or privateers. ‘The old subsidy of tonnage and poundage was given to the king for the safeguard and custody of the sea 12. Edw. IV. c. 3.’—T.

‘The see wel kept, it must be don for drede.’

A Libell of English Policie, l. 1083.

In 1360, a commission was granted to John Gibone to proceed, with certain ships of the Cinque Ports, to free the sea from pirates and others, the enemies of the king; Appendix E. to Rymer’s Fœdera, p. 50.

for any thing, i. e. for any sake, at any cost. The A. S. thing is often used in the sense of ‘sake,’ ‘cause,’ or ‘reason.’ For in Chaucer also means ‘against,’ or ‘to prevent,’ but not (I think) here.

277. Middelburgh and Orewelle. ‘Middelburgh is still a well-known port of the island of Walcheren, in the Netherlands, almost immediately opposite Harwich, beside which are the estuaries of the rivers Stoure and Orwell. This spot was formerly known as the port of Orwell or Orewelle.’—Saunders, p. 229.

This mention of Middelburgh ‘proves that the Prologue must have been written not before 1384, and not later than 1388. In the year 1384 the wool-staple was removed from Calais and established at Middelburgh; in 1388 it was fixed once more at Calais; see Craik’s Hist. of Brit. Commerce, i. 123.’—Hales, Folia Literaria, p. 100. This note has a special importance.

278. ‘He well knew how to make a profit by the exchange of his crowns’ in the different money-markets of Europe. Sheeldes are crowns (O. F. escuz, F. écus), named from their having on one side the figure of a shield. They were valued at half a noble, or 3s. 4d.; Appendix E. to Rymer’s Fœdera, p. 55. See B. 1521.

279. his wit bisette, employed his knowledge to the best advantage. bisette = used, employed. Cf. Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B. v. 297:—

‘And if thow wite (know) nevere to whiche, ne whom to restitue

[the goods gotten wrongfully]

Bere it to the bisschop, and bidde hym, of his grace,

Bisette it hymselue, as best is for thi soule.’

281, 282. ‘So ceremoniously (or, with such lofty bearing) did he order his bargains and agreements for borrowing money.’ A chevisaunce was an agreement for borrowing money on credit; cf. B. 1519; also P. Plowman, B. v. 249, and the note. From F. chevir, to accomplish; cf. E. achieve.

284. noot = ne + woot, know not; so niste = ne + wiste, knew not.

The Clerk.

285. Clerk, a university student, a scholar preparing for the priesthood. It also signifies a man of learning, a man in holy orders. See Edition: current; Page: [31] Anstey’s Munimenta Academica for much interesting information on early Oxford life and studies.

Oxenford, Oxford, as if ‘the ford of the oxen’ (A. S. Oxnaford); and it has not been proved that this etymology is wrong.

y-go, gone, betaken himself.

287. Hence ‘Leane as a rake’ in Skelton, Philip Sparowe, l. 913; ‘A villaine, leane as any rake, appeares’; W. Browne, Brit. Past. bk. ii. song 1.

290. ‘His uppermost short cloak (of coarse cloth).’ The syllable -py answers to Du. pije, a coarse cloth; cf. Goth. paida, a coat. Cf. E. pea-jacket. See D. 1382; P. Plowman, B. vi. 191; Rom. Rose, 220.

292. ‘Nor was he so worldly as to take a (secular) office.’ Many clerks undertook legal employments; P. Plowman, B. prol. 95.

293. ‘For it was dearer to him to have,’ i. e. he would rather have.

lever is the comparative of M. E. leef, A. S. lēof, lief, dear.

294. The first foot is defective: Twen|ty bo|kes, &c.

296. In the Milleres Tale, Chaucer describes a clerk of a very opposite character, who loved dissipation and played upon a ‘sautrye’ or psaltery. See A. 3200–20.

fithel is the mod. E. fiddle. sautrye is an O. F. spelling of our psaltery.

297. philosophre is used in a double sense; it sometimes meant an alchemist, as in G. 1427. The clerk knew philosophy, but he was no alchemist, and so had but little gold.

298. Hadde, possessed; as hadde is here emphatic, the final e is not elided. So also in l. 386.

301. Chaucer often imitates his own lines. He here imitates Troil. iv. 1174—‘And pitously gan for the soule preye.’ gan, did.

302. yaf him, ‘gave him (money) wherewith to attend school.’ An allusion to the common practice, at this period, of poor scholars in the Universities, who wandered about the country begging, to raise money to support them in their studies. Luther underwent a similar experience. Cf. P. Plowman, B. vii. 31; also Ploughman’s Crede, ed. Skeat, p. 71.

305. ‘With propriety (due form) and modesty.’

307. Souninge in, conducing to; cf. note to l. 275 above.

The Man of Lawe.

309. war, wary, cautions; A. S. wær, aware. Cf. l. 157.

310. at the parvys, at the church-porch, or portico of St. Paul’s, where the lawyers were wont to meet for consulation. See Ducange, s. v. paradisus, which is the Latin form whence the O. F. parvis is derived. Also the note in Warton, Hist. E. Poet., ed. 1840, ii. 212; cf. Anglia, viii. 453. And see Rom. of the Rose. 7108, and the note.

315. pleyn, full; F. plein, Lat. acc. plenum. Cf. pleyn, fully, in l. 327.

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320. purchasing, conveyancing; infect, invalid. ‘The learned Sergeant was clever enough to untie any entail, and pass the property as estate in fee simple.’—W. H. H. Kelke, in N. and Q. 5 S. vi. 487.

The word might-e occupies the fourth foot in the line.

323, 324. ‘He was well acquainted with all the legal cases and decisions (or decrees) which had been ruled in the courts of law (lit. had befallen) since the time of William the Conqueror.’ In termes hadde he, he had in terms, knew how to express in proper terms, was well acquainted with.

325. Therto, moreover. make, compose, draw up, draught.

326. pinche at, find fault with; lit. nip, twitch at.

327. coude he, he knew; coude is the pt. t. of konnen, to know, A. S. cunnan.

328. medlee cote, a coat of mixed stuff or colour. In 1303, we find mention of ‘one woman’s surcoat of medley’; see Memorials of London, ed. Riley, p. 48.

329. ceint of silk, &c., a girdle of silk, with small ornaments. The barres were called cloux in French (Lat. clavus), and were the usual ornaments of a girdle. They were perforated to allow the tongue of the buckle to pass through them. ‘Originally they were attached transversely to the wide tissue of which the girdle was formed, but subsequently were round or square, or fashioned like the heads of lions, and similar devices, the name of barre being still retained, though improperly.’—Way, in Promptorium Parvulorum; s. v. barre. And see Bar in the New English Dictionary. Gower also has: ‘a ceinte of silk’; C. A. ed. Pauli, ii. 30. Cf. A. 3235, and Rom. of the Rose, 1085, 1103.

ceint, O. F. ceint, a girdle; from Lat. cinctus, pp. of cingere, to gird.

The Frankeleyn.

331. Fortescue (De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 29) describes a franklin to be a pater familias—magnis ditatus possessionibus; i. e. he was a substantial householder and a man of some importance. See Warton, Hist. E. Poet., ed. 1840, ii. 202; and Gloss. to P. Plowman.

332. dayes-ye, daisy; A. S. dæges ēage, lit. eye of day (the sun).

333. ‘He was sanguine of complexion.’ The old school of medicine, following Galen, supposed that there were four ‘humours,’ viz. hot, cold, moist, and dry (see l. 420), and four complexions or temperaments of men, viz. the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholy. The man of sanguine complexion abounded in hot and moist humours, as shown in the following description, given in the Oriel MS. 79 (as quoted in my Preface to P. Plowman, B-text, p. xix):—

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‘Sanguineus.

Largus, amans, hilaris, ridens, rubeique coloris,

Cantans, carnosus, satis audax, atque benignus:

multum appetit, quia calidus; multum potest, quia humidus.’

334. by the morwe, in the morning.

a sop in wyn, wine with pieces of cake or bread in it; see E. 1843. See Brand, Antiq. (ed. Ellis), ii. 137. Later, sop-in-wine was a jocose name for a kind of pink or carnation; id. ii. 91.

In the Anturs of Arthur at the Tarnewathelan, st. 37, we read that

‘Thre soppus of demayn [i. e. paindemayn]

Wos broght to Sir Gaua[y]n

For to comford his brayne.’

And in MS. Harl. 279, fol. 10, we have the necessary instruction for the making of these sops. ‘Take mylke and boyle it, and thanne tak yolkys of eyroun [eggs], ytryid [separated] fro the whyte, and hete it, but let it nowt boyle, and stere it wyl tyl it be somwhat thikke; thenne cast therto salt and sugre, and kytte [cut] fayre paynemaynnys in round soppys, and caste the soppys theron, and serve it forth for a potage.’—Way, in Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 378. The F. name is soupe au vin. See also Ducange, s. v. Merus.

335. wone, wont, custom; A. S. wuna, ge-wuna.

delyt, delight; the mod. E. word is misspelt; delite would be better.

336. ‘A very son of Epicurus.’ Alluding to the famous Greek philosopher [died bc 270], the author of the Epicurean philosophy, which assumed pleasure to be the highest good. Chaucer here follows Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 2. 54: ‘The whiche delyt only considerede Epicurus, and iuged and establisshed that delyt is the sovereyn good.’ Cf. Troil. iii. 1691, v. 763; also E. 2021.

340. ‘St. Julian was eminent for providing his votaries with good lodgings and accommodation of all sorts. [See Chambers’ Book of Days, ii. 388.] In the title of his legend, Bodl. MS. 1596, fol. 4, he is called “St. Julian the gode herberjour” (St. Julian the good harbourer).’—Tyrwhitt. His day is Jan. 9. See the Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann (E. E. T. S.); also Gesta Romanorum, ed. Swan, tale 18; Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Leg. Art, ii. 393.

341. after oon, according to one invariable standard; ‘up to the mark’; cf. A. 1781, and the note. A description of a Franklin’s feast is given in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 170.

342. envyned, stored with wine. ‘Cotgrave has preserved the French word enviné in the same sense.’—Tyrwhitt.

343. bake mete = baked meat; the old past participle of bake was baken or bake, as it was a strong verb. Baked meats = meats baked in coffins (pies). Cf. Hamlet, i. 2. 180.

344. plentevous, plenteous, plentiful; O. F. plentivous, formed by adding -ous to O. F. pleintif, adj. abundant; see Godefroy’s O. F. Dict.

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345. The verb snewed may be explained as a metaphor from snowing; in fact, the M. E. snewe, like the Prov. Eng. snie or snive, also signifies to abound, swarm. Camb. MS. reads ‘It snowede in his mouth of mete and drynk.’ Cf. ‘He was with yiftes [presents] all bisnewed’; Gower, C. A. iii. 51. From A. S. snīwan.

347. After, according to; it depended on what was in season.

348. soper (supee·r), supper; from O. F. infin. soper; cf. F. 1189.

349. mewe. The mewe was the place where the hawks were kept while moulting; it was afterwards applied to the coop wherein fowl were fattened, and lastly to a place of confinement or secrecy.

350. stewe, fish-pond. ‘To insure a supply of fish, stew-ponds were attached to the manors, and few monasteries were without them; the moat around the castle was often converted into a fish-pond, and well stored with luce, carp, or tench.’—Our English Home, p. 65.

breem, bream; luce, pike, from O. F. luce, Low Lat. lucius.

351. Wo was his cook, woeful or sad was his cook. We now only use wo or woe as a substantive. Cf. B. 757, E. 753; and ‘I am woe for ’t’; Tempest, v. 1. 139.

‘Who was woo but Olyvere then?’—Sowdone of Babyloyne, l. 1271. Rob. of Brunne, in his Handlyng Synne, l. 7250, says that a rich man’s cook ‘may no day Greythe hym hys mete to pay.’

but-if, unless.

351, 352. sauce—Poynaunt is like the modern phrase sauce piquante. Cf. B. 4024. ‘Our forefathers were great lovers of “piquant sauce.” They made it of expensive condiments and rare spices.’—Our English Home, p. 62.

353. table dormant, irremoveable table. ‘Previous to the fourteenth century a pair of common wooden trestles and a rough plank was deemed a table sufficient for the great hall. . . . Tables, with a board attached to a frame, were introduced about the time of Chaucer, and, from remaining in the hall, were regarded as indications of a ready hospitality.’—Our English Home, p. 29. Most tables were removeable; such a table was called a bord (board).

355. sessiouns. At the Sessions of the Peace, at the meeting of the Justices of the Peace. Cf. ‘At Sessions and at Sises we bare the stroke and swaye.’—Higgins’ Mirrour for Magistrates, ed. 1571, p. 2.

356. knight of the shire, the designation given to the representative in parliament of an English county at large, as distinguished from the representatives of such counties and towns as are counties of themselves (Ogilvie). Chaucer was knight of the shire of Kent in 1386.

tym-e here represents the A. S. tīman, pl. of tīma, a time.

357. anlas or anelace. Speght defines this word as a falchion, or wood-knife. It was, however, a short two-edged knife or dagger usually worn at the girdle, broad at the hilt and tapering to a point. See the New Eng. Dictionary; Liber Albus, p. 75; Knight, Pict. Hist. of England, i. 872; Gloss. to Matthew Paris, s. v. anelacius; Riley’s Edition: current; Page: [35] Memorials of London, p. 15. The etymology is unknown; I guess it to be from M. E. an, on, and las, a lace, i.e. ‘on a lace,’ a dagger that hung from a lace attached to the girdle. Cf. A. S. bigyrdel (just below); and ‘hanging on a laas’ in l. 392.

gipser was properly a pouch or budget used in hawking, &c., but commonly worn by the merchant, or with any secular attire.—(Way.) It answers to F. gibecière, a pouch; from O. F. gibe, a bunch (Scheler). In Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 398, under the date 1376, there is a mention of ‘purses called gibesers.’ In the Bury Wills, p. 37, l. 16, under the date 1463, we find—‘My best gypcer with iij. bagges.’ The A. S. name was bigyrdel, from its hanging by the girdle, as said in l. 358; it occurs in the A. S. version of Matt. x. 9; and in P. Plowman, B. viii. 87.

358. Heng (or Heeng), the past tense of hongen or hangen, to hang. morne milk=morning-milk; as in A. 3236. ‘As white as milke’; Ritson’s Met. Romances, iii. 292.

359. shirreve, the reve of a shire, governor of a county; our modern word sheriff.

countour, O. Fr. comptour, an accountant, a person who audited accounts or received money in charge, &c.; ranked with pleaders in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 58. It occurs in Rob. of Gloucester, l. 11153. In the Book of the Duch. 435, it simply means ‘accountant.’ Perhaps it here means ‘auditor.’ ‘Or stewards, countours, or pleadours’; Plowman’s Tale, pt. iii. st. 13.

360. vavasour, or vavaser, originally a sub-vassal or tenant of a vassal or tenant of the king’s, one who held his lands in fealty. ‘Vavasor, one that in dignities is next to a Baron’; Cowel. Strutt (Manners and Customs, iii. 14) explains that a vavasour was ‘a tenant by knight’s service, who did not hold immediately of the king in capite, but of some mesne lord, which excluded him from the dignity of baron by tenure.’ Tyrwhitt says ‘it should be understood to mean the whole class of middling landholders.’ See Lacroix, Military Life of Middle Ages, p. 9. Spelt favasour in King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 3827. A. F. uauassur; Laws of Will. I. c. 20. Lit. ‘vassal of vassals’; Low Lat. vassus vassorum.

The Haberdassher and others.

361. Haberdassher. Haberdashers were of two kinds: haberdashers of small wares—sellers of needles, tapes, buttons, &c.; and haberdashers of hats. The stuff called hapertas is mentioned in the Liber Albus, p. 225.

362. Webbe, properly a male weaver; webstere was the female weaver, but there appears to have been some confusion in the use of the suffixes -e and -stere; see Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B. v. 215: ‘mi wyf was a webbe.’ Hence the names Webb and Webster. Cf. Edition: current; Page: [36] A. S. webba, m., a weaver; webbestere, fem. tapicer, upholsterer; F. tapis, carpet.

363. liveree, livery. ‘Under the term “livery” was included whatever was dispensed (delivered) by the lord to his officials or domestics annually or at certain seasons, whether money, victuals, or garments. The term chiefly denoted external marks of distinction, such as the roba estivalis and hiemalis, given to the officers and retainers of the court. . . . The Stat. 7 Hen. IV expressly permits the adoption of such distinctive dress by fraternities and “les gentz de mestere,” the trades of the cities of the realm, being ordained with good intent; and to this prevalent usage Chaucer alludes when he describes five artificers of various callings, who joined the pilgrimage, clothed all in o lyveré of a solempne and greet fraternité.’—Way, note to Prompt. Parv., p. 308. We still speak of the Livery Companies.

And they were clothed alle (Elles., &c.); Weren with vss eeke clothed (Harl.) The former reading leaves the former clause of the sentence without a verb.

364. fraternitee, guild: see English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. xxx, xxxix, cxxii. Each guild had its own livery; Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 412.

365. gere, gear, apparel. apyked, signifies cleaned, trimmed, like Shakespeare’s picked. Cotgrave gives as senses of F. piquer, ‘to quilt,’ and ‘to stiffen a coller.’

366. y-chaped, having chapes (i.e. plates or caps of metal at the point of the sheath or scabbard). Tradesmen and mechanics were prohibited from using knives adorned with silver, gold, or precious stones. So that Chaucer’s pilgrims were of a superior estate, as is indicated in l. 369. Cf. chapeless, Taming of the Shrew, iii. 2. 48.

370. deys, dese, or dais (Fr. deis, from Lat. discum, acc.), is used to denote the raised platform which was always found at the upper end of a hall, on which the high table was placed; originally, it meant the high table itself. In modern French and English, it is used of a canopy or ‘tester’ over a seat of state. Tyrwhitt’s account of the word is confused, as he starts with a false etymology.

yeld-halle, guild-hall. See Gildhall in the Index to E. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith.

371. that he can, that he knows; so also as he couthe, as he knew how, in l. 390. This line is deficient in the first foot.

372. shaply, adapted, fit; sometimes comely, of good shape. The mention of alderman should be noted. It was the invariable title given to one who was chosen as the head or principal of a guild (see English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. ciii, 36, 148, 276, 446). All these men belonged to a fraternity or guild, and each of them was a fit man to be chosen as head of it.

373. ‘For they had sufficient property and income’ (to entitle them to undertake such an office).

376. y-clept, called; pp. of clepen; see l. 121.

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377. And goon to vigilyes al bifore. ‘It was the manner in times past, upon festival evens, called vigiliæ, for parishioners to meet in their church-houses or church-yards, and there to have a drinking-fit for the time. Here they used to end many quarrels betwixt neighbour and neighbour. Hither came the wives in comely manner, and they which were of the better sort had their mantles carried with them, as well for show as to keep them from cold at table.’—Speght, Gl. to Chaucer.

The Cook.

379. for the nones=for the nonce; this expression, if grammatically written, would be for then once, M. E. for þan anes, for the once, i. e. for the occasion; where the adv. anes (orig. a gen. form) is used as if it were a sb. in the dat. case. Cf. M.E. atte=atten, A. S. æt þām.

381. poudre-marchaunt tart is a sharp (tart) kind of flavouring powder, twice mentioned in Household Ordinances and Receipts (Soc. Antiq. 1790) at pp. 425, 434: ‘Do therto pouder marchant,’ and ‘do thi flessh therto, and gode herbes and poudre marchaunt, and let hit well stew.’—Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, iii. 180. See Powder in the Glossary to the Babees Book.

‘Galingale, which Chaucer, pre-eminentest, economioniseth above all junquetries or confectionaries whatsoever.’—Nash’s Lenten Stuff, p. 36, ed. Hindley. Galingale is the root of sweet cyperus. Harman (ed. Strother) notices three varieties: Cyperus rotundus, Galanga major, Galanga minor; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, pp. 152, 216. See also Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 181; Prompt. Parv., p. 185, note 4; Rogers, Hist. of Agriculture and Prices, i. 629; &c. And see Dr. H. Fletcher Hance’s and Mr. Daniel Hanbury’s Papers on this spice in the Linnæan Society’s Journal, 1871.

382. London ale. London ale was famous as early as the time of Henry III., and much higher priced than any other ale; cf. A. 3140.

Wel coude he knowe, he well knew how to distinguish. In fact, we find, in the Manciple’s Prologue (H. 57), that the Cook loved good ale only too well.

384. mortreux or mortrewes. There were two kinds of ‘mortrews,’ ‘mortrewes de chare’ and ‘mortrewes of fysshe.’ The first was a kind of soup in which chickens, fresh pork, crumbs of bread, yolks of eggs, and saffron formed the chief ingredients; the second kind was a soup containing the roe (or milt) and liver of fish, bread, pepper, ale. The ingredients were first stamped or brayed in a mortar, whence it probably derived its name. Lord Bacon (Nat. Hist. i. 48) speaks of ‘a mortresse made with the brawne of capons stamped and strained.’ See Babees Bock, pp. 151, 170, 172; Liber Cure Cocorum, ed. Morris, pp. 9, 19; and the note to P. Plowman, C. xvi. 47. This line, like ll. 371 and 391, is deficient in the first foot.

386. mormal, a cancer or gangrene. Ben Jonson, in imitation of Edition: current; Page: [38] this passage, has described a cook with an ‘old mortmal on his shin’; Sad Shepherd, act ii. sc. 2 Lydgate speaks of ‘Goutes, mormalles, horrible to the sight’; Falls of Princes, bk. vii. c. 10. In Polit. Religious and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 218, we are told that the sin of Luxury ‘ys a lyther mormale.’ In Skelton’s Magnificence, l. 1932, Adversity is made to say—‘Some with the marmoll to halte I them make’; and it is remarkable that Palsgrave gives both—‘Mormall, a sore,’ and ‘Marmoll, a sore’; the latter being plainly a corrupt form. See also Prompt. Parvulorum, p. 343, note 5. In MS. Oo. i. 20, last leaf, in the Camb. Univ. Library, are notices of remedies ‘Por la maladie que est apele malum mortuum.’ The MS. says that it comes from melancholy, and shows a broad hard scurf or crust.

387. blank-manger, a compound made of capon minced, with rice, milk, sugar, and almonds; see Liber Cure Cocorum, ed. Morris, p. 9. Named from its white colour.

The Shipman.

See the essay on Chaucer’s Shipman in Essays on Chaucer, p. 455.

388. woning, dwelling; from A. S. wunian, to dwell.

by weste=westward. A good old expression, which was once very common as late as the sixteenth century.

389. Dartmouth was once a very considerable port; see Essays on Chaucer, p. 456. Compare the account of the Shipman’s Gild at Lynn; E. Gilds, p. 54.

390. rouncy, a common hackney horse, a nag. Cf. Rozinante. ‘Rocinante—significativo de lo que habia sido cuando fué rocin, antes de lo que ahora era.’ Don Quijote, cap. 1. ‘From Rozin, a drudge-horse, and ante, before.’ Jarvis’s note. The O.F. form is roncin; Low Lat. runcinus. The rouncy was chiefly used for agricultural work; see Essays on Chaucer, p. 494.

as he couthe, as he knew how; but, as a sailor, his knowledge this way was deficient.

391. a goune of jalding, a gown (robe) of coarse cloth. The term falding signifies ‘a kind of frieze or rough-napped cloth,’ which was probably ‘supplied from the North of Europe, and identical with the woollen wrappers of which Hermoldus speaks, “quos nos appellamus Faldones.” ’—Way. ‘Falding was a coarse serge cloth, very rough and durable,’ &c.; Essays on Chaucer, p. 438. In MS. O. 5. 4, in Trinity College, Cambridge, occurs the entry—‘Amphibulus, vestis equi villosa, anglice a sclauayn or faldyng’; cited in Furnivall’s Temporary Preface, p. 99. In 1392, I find a mention of ‘unam tunicam de nigro faldyng lineatam’; Testamenta Eboracensia, i. 173. Hence its colour was sometimes black, and the Shipman’s gown is so coloured in the drawing in the Ellesmere MS.; but see A. 3212. See the whole of Way’s long note in the Prompt. Parvulorum.

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392. laas, lace, cord. Seamen still carry their knives slung.

394. the hote somer. ‘Perhaps this is a reference to the summer of the year 1351, which was long remembered as the dry and hot summer.’—Wright. There was another such summer in 1370, much nearer the date of this Prologue. But it may be a mere general expression.

395. a good felawe, a merry companion; as in l. 648.

396–8. ‘Very many a draught of wine had he drawn (stolen away or carried off) from Bordeaux, cask and all, while the chapman (merchant or supercargo to whom the wine belonged) was asleep; for he paid no regard to any conscientious scruples.’

took keep; cf. F. prendre garde.

399. hyer hond, upper hand.

400. ‘He sent them home to wherever they came from by water,’ i.e. he made them ‘walk the plank,’ as it used to be called; or, in plain English, threw them overboard, to sink or swim. However cruel this may seem now, it was probably a common practice. ‘This battle (the sea-fight off Sluys) was very murderous and horrible. Combats at sea are more destructive and obstinate than upon land’; Froissart’s Chron. bk. i. c. 50. See Minot’s Poems, ed. Hall, p. 16. In Wright’s History of Caricature, p. 204, is an anecdote of the way in which the defeat of the French at Sluys was at last revealed to the king of France, Philippe VI., by the court-jester, who alone dared to communicate the news. ‘Entering the King’s chamber, he continued muttering to himself, but loud enough to be heard—“Those cowardly English! the chicken-hearted English!” “How so, cousin?” the king inquired. “Why,” replied the fool, “because they have not courage enough to jump into the sea, like your French soldiers, who went over headlong from their ships, leaving them to the enemy, who had no inclination to follow them.” Philippe thus became aware of the full extent of his calamity.’ And see Essays on Chaucer, p. 460.

402. stremes, currents. him bisydes, ever near at hand.

403. herberwe, harbour; see note to l. 765. mone, moon, time of the lunation.

lodemenage, pilotage. A pilot was called a lodesman; see Way’s note in Prompt. Parv. p. 310; Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 655; Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, 1488. Furnivall’s Temporary Preface, p. 98, gives the Lat. form as lodmannus, whence lodmannagium, pilotage, examples of which are given. Sometimes, lodesman meant any guide or conductor, as in Rob. of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, 9027; Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber, p. 106. M. E. lode is the A. S. lād, a way, a course, the sb. whence the verb to lead is derived. It is itself derived from A. S. līðan, to travel.

404. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 5394—‘Qui cercheroit jusqu’en Cartage.’

408. Gootland, Gottland, an island in the Baltic Sea.

409. cryke, creek, harbour, port.

410. We find actual mention of a vessel called the Maudelayne Edition: current; Page: [40] belonging to the port of Dartmouth, in the years 1379 and 1386; see Essays on Chaucer, p. 484. See also N. & Q. 6 S. xii. 47.

The Doctour.

415. astronomye, (really) astrology. See Saunders on Chaucer, p. 111; Warton, Hist. E. Poet. (1840), ii. 202.

415, 416. kepte, watched. The houres are the astrological hours. He carefully watched for a favourable star in the ascendant. ‘A great portion of the medical science of the middle ages depended upon astrological and other superstitious observances.’—Wright. ‘A Phisition must take heede and aduise him of a certaine thing, that fayleth not, nor deceiueth, the which thing Astronomers of Ægypt taught, that by coniunction of the bodye of the Moone with sterres fortunate, commeth dreadful sicknesse to good end: and with contrary Planets falleth the contrary, that is, to euill ende’; &c.—Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 29. Precisely the same sort of thing was in vogue much later, viz. in 1578; see Bullein’s Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence (E. E. T. S.), p. 32.

416. magik naturel. Chaucer alludes to the same practices in the House of Fame, 1259–70 (vol. iii. p. 38):—

‘Ther saugh I pleyen Iogelours

. . . . . .

And clerkes eek, which conne wel

Al this magyke naturel,

That craftely don hir ententes

To make, in certeyn ascendentes,

Images, lo! through which magyk

To make a man ben hool or syk.’

417. The ascendent is the point of the zodiacal circle which happens to be ascending above the horizon at a given moment, such as the moment of birth. Upon it depended the drawing out of a man’s horoscope, which represented the aspect of the heavens at some given critical moment. The moment, in the present case, is that for making images. It was believed that images of men and animals could be made of certain substances and at certain times, and could be so treated as to cause good or evil to a patient, by means of magical and planetary influences. See Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, lib. ii. capp. 35–47. The sense is—‘He knew well how to choose a fortunate ascendant for treating images, to be used as charms to help the patient.’

‘With Astrologie joyne elements also,

To fortune their Workings as theie go.’

Norton’s Ordinall, in Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum, p. 60.

420. These are the four elementary qualities, hot, cold, dry, moist; Edition: current; Page: [41] Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 898. Diseases were supposed to be caused by an undue excess of some one quality; and the mixture of prevalent qualities in a man’s body determined his complexion or temperament. Thus the sanguine man was thought to be hot and moist; the phlegmatic, cold and moist; the choleric, hot and dry; the melancholy, cold and dry. The whole system rested on the teaching of Galen, and was fundamentally wrong, as it assumed that the ‘elements,’ or ‘simple bodies,’ were four, viz. earth, air, fire, and water. Of these, earth was said to be cold and dry; water, cold and moist; air, hot and moist; and fire, hot and dry. They thus correspond to the four complexions, viz. melancholy, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric. Each principal part of the body, as the brain, heart, liver, stomach, &c., could be ‘distempered,’ and such distemperance could be either ‘simple’ or ‘compound.’ Thus a simple distemperature of the brain might be ‘an excess of heat’; a compound one, ‘an excess of heat and moisture.’ See the whole system explained in Sir Thos. Elyot’s Castel of Helthe; at the beginning.

422. parfit practisour, perfect practitioner.

424. his bote, his remedy; A. S. bōt, a remedy; E. boot.

426. drogges. MS. Harl. dragges; the rest drogges, drugges, drugs. As to dragges (which is quite a different word), the Promptorium Parvulorum has ‘dragge, dragetum’; and Cotgrave defines dragée (the French form of the word dragge) as ‘a kind of digestive powder prescribed unto weak stomachs after meat, and hence any jonkets, comfits, or sweetmeats served in the last course for stomach-closers.’

letuaries, electuaries. ‘Letuaire, laituarie, s. m., électuaire, sorte de médicament, sirop’; Godefroy.

429–34. Read th’oldë. ‘The authors mentioned here wrote the chief medical text-books of the middle ages. Rufus was a Greek physician of Ephesus, of the age of Trajan; Haly, Serapion, and Avicen (Ebn Sina) were Arabian physicians and astronomers of the eleventh century; Rhasis was a Spanish Arab of the tenth century; and Averroes (Ebn Roschd) was a Moorish scholar who flourished in Morocco in the twelfth century. Johannes Damascenus was also an Arabian physician, but of a much earlier date (probably of the ninth century). Constanti[n]us After, a native of Carthage, and afterwards a monk of Monte Cassino, was one of the founders of the school of Salerno—he lived at the end of the eleventh century. Bernardus Gordonius, professor of medicine at Montpellier, appears to have been Chaucer’s contemporary. John Gatisden was a distinguished physician of Oxford in the earlier half of the fourteenth century. Gilbertyn is supposed by Warton to be the celebrated Gilbertus Anglicus. The names of Hippocrates and Galen were, in the middle ages, always (or nearly always) spelt Ypocras and Galienus.’—Wright. Cf. C. 306. Æsculapius, god of medicine, was fabled to be the son of Apollo. Dioscorides was a Greek physician of the second century. See the long note in Warton, 1871, ii. 368; and the account in Saunders’ Edition: current; Page: [42] Chaucer (1889), p. 115. I may note here, that Haly wrote a commentary on Galen, and is mentioned in Skelton’s Philip Sparowe, l. 505. There were three Serapions; the one here meant was probably John Serapion, in the eleventh century. Averroes wrote a commentary on the works of Aristotle, and died about 1198. Constantinus is the same as ‘the cursed monk Dan Constantyn,’ mentioned in the Marchaunt’s Tale, E. 1810. John Gatisden was a fellow of Merton College, and ‘was court-doctor under Edw. II. He wrote a treatise on medicine called Rosa Anglica’; J. Jusserand, Eng. Wayfaring Life, (1889), p. 180. Cf. Book of the Duchess, 572. Dante, Inf. iv. 143, mentions ‘Ippocrate, Avicenna, e Gallieno, Averrois,’ &c.

‘Par Hipocras, ne Galien, . . .

Rasis, Constantin, Avicenne’;

Rom. de la Rose, 16161.

See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 393.

439. ‘In cloth of a blood-red colour and of a blueish-grey.’ Cf. ‘robes de pers,’ Rom. de la Rose, 9116. In the Testament of Creseide, ed. 1550, st. 36, we find:—

‘Docter in phisike cledde in a scarlet gown,

And furred wel as suche one oughte to be.’

Cf. P. Plowman, B. vi. 271; Hoccleve, de Reg. Princ. p. 26.

440. taffata (or taffety), a sort of thin silk; E. taffeta.

sendal (or cendal), a kind of rich thin silk used for lining, very highly esteemed. Thynne says—‘a thynne stuffe lyke sarcenett.’ Palsgrave however has ‘cendell, thynne lynnen, sendal.’ See Piers Plowman. B. vi. 11; Marco Polo, ed. Yule (see the index).

441. esy of dispence, moderate in his expenditure.

442. wan in pestilence, acquired during the pestilence. This is an allusion to the great pestilence of the years 1348, 1349; or to the later pestilences in 1362, 1369, and 1376.

443. For=because, seeing that. It was supposed that aurum potabile was a sovereign remedy in some cases. The actual reference is, probably, to Les Remonstrances de Nature, by Jean de Meun, ll. 979, 980, &c.; ‘C’est le fin et bon or potable, L’humide radical notable; C’est souveraine medecine’; and the author goes on to refer us to Ecclus. xxxviii. 4—‘The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them.’ Hence the Doctor would not abhor gold. And further—‘C’est medecine cordiale’; ib. 1029. To return to aurum potabile: I may observe that it is mentioned in the play called Humour out of Breath, Act i. sc. 1; and there is a footnote to the effect that this was the ‘Universal Medicine of the alchemists, prepared from gold, mercury, &c. The full receipt will be found in the Fifth and last Part of the Last Testament of Friar Basilius Valentinus, London, 1670, pp. 371–7.’ See also Thomson’s Hist. of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 164; Burton’s Anat. of Melancholy, pt. 2. sec. 4. mem. 1. subsec. 4.

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The Wyf of Bathe.

445. of bisyde, &c., from (a place) near Bath, i.e. from a place in its suburbs; for elsewhere she is simply called the Wyf of Bathe.

446. ‘But she was somewhat deaf, and that was her misfortune.’ We should now say—‘and it was a pity.’

447. clooth-making. ‘The West of England, and especially the neighbourhood of Bath, from which the “good wif” came, was celebrated, till a comparatively recent period, as the district of cloth-making. Ypres and Ghent were the great clothing-marts on the Continent.’—Wright. ‘Edward the third brought clothing first into this Island, transporting some families of artificers from Gaunt hither.’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. p. 51. ‘Cloth of Gaunt’ is mentioned in the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 574 (vol. i. p. 117).

haunt, use, practice; i.e. she was so well skilled (in it).

448. passed, i.e. surpassed.

450. to the offring. In the description of the missal-rites, Rock shews how the bishop (or officiating priest) ‘took from the people’s selves their offerings of bread and wine. . . The men first and then the women, came with their cake and cruse of wine.’ So that, instead of money being collected, as now, the people went up in order with their offerings; and questions of precedence of course arose. The Wife insisted on going up first among the women. See Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 2. 33, 149.

453. coverchief (keverchef, or kerchere, kerché). The kerchief, or covering for the head, was, until the fourteenth century, almost an indispensable portion of female attire. See B. 837; Leg. of Good Women, l. 2202.

ful fyne of ground, of a very fine texture. See Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, l. 230, which means ‘it was of fine enough texture to take dye in grain.’

454. ten pound. Of course this is a playful exaggeration; but Tyrwhitt was not justified in altering ten pound into a pound; for a pound-weight, in a head-dress of that period, was a mere nothing, as will be readily understood by observing the huge structures represented in Fairholt’s Costume, figs. 125, 129, 130, 151, which were often further weighted with ornaments of gold. Skelton goes so far as to describe Elinour Rummyng (l. 72)—

‘With clothes upon her hed

That wey a sowe of led.’

Cf. Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, l. 84, and the note; Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 1585, pp. 63, 70, 72; or ed. Furnivall, pp. 69, 74, 76.

457. streite y-teyd, tightly fastened. See note to l. 174.

moiste, soft—not ‘as hard as old boots.’ So, in H. 60, moysty ale is new ale.

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460. chirche-dore. The priest married the couple at the church-porch, and immediately afterwards proceeded to the altar to celebrate mass, at which the newly-married persons communicated. As Todd remarks—‘The custom was, that the parties did not enter the church till that part of the office, where the minister now goes up to the altar [or rather, is directed to go up], and repeats the psalm.’ See Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. 1871, ii. 366, note 1; Anglia, vi. 106; Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. pt. 2. 172; Brand’s Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 134. And see D. 6.

461. Withouten = besides. other companye, other lovers. This expression (copied from Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 12985—‘autre companie’) makes it quite certain that the character of the Wife of Bath is copied, in some respects, from that of La Vieille in the Roman de la Rose, as further appears in the Wife’s Prologue.

462. as nouthe, as now, i.e. at present. The form nouthe is not uncommon; it occurs in P. Plowman, Allit. Poems, Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight, &c. A. S. nū ðā, now then.

465. Boloigne. Cf. ‘I will have you swear by our dear Lady of Boulogne’; Gammer Gurton’s Needle, Act 2, sc. 2. An image of the virgin, at Boulogne, was sought by pilgrims. See Heylin’s Survey of France, p. 163, ed. 1656 (quoted in the above, ed. Hazlitt).

466. In Galice (Galicia), at the shrine of St. James of Compostella, a famous resort of pilgrims in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As the legend goes, the body of St. James the Apostle was supposed to have been carried in a ship without a rudder to Galicia, and preserved at Compostella. See Piers Plowman, A. iv. 106, 110, and note to B. Prol. 47; also Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. 172, 177.

Coloigne. At Cologne, where the bones of the Three Kings or Wise Men of the East, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, are said to be preserved. See Coryat’s Crudities; Chambers, Book of Days, ii. 751.

467. ‘She knew much about travelling.’

468. Gat-tothed = gat-toothed, meaning gap-toothed, having teeth wide apart or separated from one another. A gat is an opening, and is allied to E. gate. The Friesic gat, Dan., Du., and Icel. gat, and Norweg. gat, all mean a hole, or a gap. Very similar is the use of the Shropshire glat, a gap in a hedge, also a gap in the mouth caused by loss of teeth. Example: ‘Dick, yo’ bin a flirt; I thought yo’ wun (were) gwein to marry the cook at the paas’n’s. Aye, but ’er’d gotten too many glats i’ the mouth for me’; Miss Jackson’s Shropshire Wordbook. ‘Famine—the gap-toothed elf’; Golding’s Ovid, b. 8; leaf 105. It occurs again, D. 603. [Gat-toothed has also been explained as goat-toothed, lascivious, but the word goat appears as goot in Chaucer.] Perhaps the following piece of ‘folk-lore’ will help us out. ‘A young lady the other day, in reply to an observation of mine—“What a lucky girl you are!”—replied; “So they used to say I should be when at school.” “Why?” “Because my teeth were set so far apart; it was a sure sign I should be lucky and travel.” ’—Notes & Queries 1 Ser. Edition: current; Page: [45] vi. 601; cf. the same, 7 Ser. vii. 306. The last quotation shews that the stop after weye at the end of l. 467 should be a mere semicolon; since ll. 467 and 468 are closely connected.

469. amblere, an ambling horse.

470. Y-wimpled, covered with a wimple; see l. 151.

471. targe, target, shield.

472. foot-mantel. Tyrwhitt supposes this to be a sort of riding-petticoat, such as is now used by market-women. It is clearly shewn, as a blue outer skirt, in the drawing in the Ellesmere MS. At a later time it was called a safe-guard (see Nares), and its use was to keep the gown clean. It may be added that, in the Ellesmere MS., the Wife is represented as riding astride. Hence she wanted ‘a pair of spurs.’

474. carpe, prate, discourse; Icel. karpa, to brag. The present sense of carp seems to be due to Lat. carpere.

475. remedyes. An allusion to the title and subject of Ovid’s book, Remedia Amoris.

476. the olde daunce, the old game, or custom. The phrase is borrowed from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 3946—‘Qu’el scet toute la vielle dance’; E. version, l. 4300—‘For she knew al the olde daunce.’ It occurs again; Troil. iii. 695. And in Troil. ii. 1106, we have the phrase loves daunce. Cf. the amorouse daunce, Troil. iv. 1431.

The Persoun.

478. Persoun of a toun, the parson or parish priest. Chaucer, in his description of the parson, contrasts the piety and industry of the secular clergy with the wickedness and laziness of the religious orders or monks. See Dryden’s ‘Character of a Good Parson,’ and Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’; also Wyclif, ed. Matthew, p. 179.

482. parisshens, parishioners; in which -er is a later suffix.

485. y-preved, proved (to be). ofte sythes, often-times; from A. S. sīð, a time.

486. ‘He was very loath to excommunicate those who failed to pay the tithes that were due to him.’ ‘Refusal to pay tithes was punishable with the lesser excommunication’; Bell. Wyclif complains of ‘weiward curatis’ that ‘sclaundren here parischenys many weies by ensaumple of pride, enuye, coueitise and vnresonable vengaunce, so cruely cursynge for tithes’; Works, ed. Matthew, p. 144 (cf. p. 132).

487. yeven, give; A. S. gifan. out of doute, without doubt.

489. offring, the voluntary contributions of his parishioners.

substaunce, income derived from his benefice.

490. suffisaunce, a sufficiency; enough to live on.

492. lafte not, left not, ceased not; from M. E. leven.

493. meschief, mishap, misfortune.

494. ferreste, farthest; superl. of fer, far. muche, great. lyte, small; A. S. lyt, small, little.

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497. wroghte, wrought, worked; pt. t. of werchen, to work.

498. The allusion is to Matt. v. 19, as shewn by a parallel passage in P. Plowman, C. xvi. 127.

502. lewed, unlearned, ignorant. Lewed or lewd originally signified the people, laity, as opposed to the clergy; the modern sense of the word is not common in Middle English. Cf. mod. E. lewd, in Acts xvii. 5. See Lewd in Trench, Select Glossary.

503–4. if a preest tak-e keep, if a priest may (i. e. will) but pay heed to it. St. John Chrysostom also saith, ‘It is a great shame for priests, when laymen be found faithfuller and more righteous than they.’—Becon’s Invective against Swearing, p. 336.

507. to hyre. The parson did not leave his parish duties to be performed by a stranger, that he might have leisure to seek a chantry in St. Paul’s. See Piers Plowman, B-text, Prol. l. 83; Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, pp. 51, 52; Spenser, Shep. Kalendar (May).

508. And leet, and left (not). We should now say—‘Nor left.’ So also, in l. 509, And ran = Nor ran. Leet is the pt. t. of leten, to let alone, let go.

509. Here again, së-ynt is used as if it were dissyllabic; see ll. 120, 697.

510. chaunterie, chantry; an endowment for the payment of a priest to sing mass, agreeably to the appointment of the founder. ‘There were thirty-five of these chantries established at St. Paul’s, which were served by fifty-four priests; Dugd. Hist. pref. p. 41.’—Tyrwhitt’s Glossary. On the difference between a gild and a chantry, see the instructive remarks in Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. 205–207, 259.

511. ‘Or to be kept (i. e. remain) in retirement along with some fraternity.’ I do not see how with-holde can mean ‘maintained,’ as it is usually explained. Cf. dwelte in l. 512, and with-holde in G. 345.

514. no mercenarie, no hireling; see John x. 12, where the Vulgate version has mercenarius.

516. despitous, full of despite, or contempt; cf. E. spite.

517. daungerous, not affable, difficult to approach. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, l. 591:—‘Ne of hir answer daungerous’; where the original has desdaigneuse. digne, full of dignity; hence, repellent. ‘She was as digne as water in a dich,’ A. 3964; because stagnant water keeps people at a distance.

519. fairnesse, i. e. by leading a fair or good life. The Harleian MS. has clennesse, that is, a life of purity.

523. snibben, reprimand; cf. Dan. snibbe, to rebuke, scold; mod. E. snub. In Wyclif’s translation of Matt. xviii. 15, the earlier version has snybbe as a synonym for reprove.

nones; see l. 379, and the note.

525. wayted after, looked for. See line 571.

526. spyced conscience; so also in D. 435. Spiced here seems to signify, says Tyrwhitt, nice, scrupulous; for a reason which is given Edition: current; Page: [47] below. It occurs in the Mad Lover, act iii. sc. 1, by Beaumont and Fletcher. When Cleanthe offers a purse, the priestess says—

‘Fy! no corruption . . . .

Cle. Take it, it is yours;

Be not so spiced; ’tis good gold;

And goodness is no gall to th’ conscience.’

‘Under pretence of spiced holinesse.’—Tract dated 1594, ap. Todd’s Illustrations of Gower, p. 380.

‘Fool that I was, to offer such a bargain

To a spiced-conscience chapman! but I care not,

What he disdains to taste, others will swallow.’

Massinger, Emperor of the East, i. 1.

‘Will you please to put off

Your holy habit, and spiced conscience? one,

I think, infects the other.’

Massinger, Bashful Lover, iv. 2.

The origin of the phrase is French. The name of espices (spices) was given to the fees or dues which were payable (in advance) to judges. A ‘spiced’ judge, who would have a ‘spiced’ conscience, was scrupulous and exact, because he had been prepaid, and was inaccessible to any but large bribes. See Cotgrave, s. v. espices; Littré, s. v. épice; and, in particular, Les Œuvres de Guillaume Coquillart, ed. P. Tarbé, t. i. p. 31, and t. ii. p. 114. (First explained by me in a letter to The Athenaeum, Nov. 26, 1892, p. 741.)

527. ‘But the teaching of Christ and his twelve apostles, that taught he.’

528. Cf. Acts, i. 1; Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 188.

The Plowman.

529. Plowman; not a hind or farm-labourer, but a poor farmer, who himself held the plough; cf. note to P. Plowman, C. viii. 182. was, who was.

530. y-lad, carried, lit. led. Cf. prov. E. lead, to cart (corn).

531. swinker, toiler, workman; see l. 186. Cf. swink, toil, in l. 540.

534. though him gamed or smerte, though it was pleasant or unpleasant to him.

536. dyke, make ditches. delve, dig; A. S. delfan. Chaucer may be referring to P. Plowman, B. v. 552, 553.

541. mere. People of quality would not ride upon a mare.

The Miller.

545. carl, fellow; Icel. karl, cognate with A. S. ceorl, a churl. See A. 3469; also A. 1423–4. This description of the Miller should be compared with that in A. 3925–3940.

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547. ‘That well proved (to be true); for everywhere, where he came.’

548. the ram. This was the usual prize at wrestling-matches. Tyrwhitt says—‘Matthew Paris mentions a wrestling match at Westminster, ad 1222, at which a ram was the prize.’ Cf. Sir Topas, B. 1931; Tale of Gamelyn, 172, 280.

549. a thikke knarre, a thickly knotted (fellow), i. e. a muscular fellow. Cf. M. E. knor, Mid. Du. knorre, a knot in wood; and E. gnarled. It is worth notice that, in ll. 549–557, there is no word of French origin, except tuft.

550. of harre, off its hinges, lit. hinge. ‘I horle at the notes, and heve hem al of herre’; Poem on Singing, in Reliq. Antiquae, ii. 292. Gower has out of herre, off its hinges, out of use, out of joint; Conf. Amant. bk. ii. ed. Pauli, i. 259; bk. iii. i. 318. Skelton has:—‘All is out of harre,’ Magnificence, l. 921. From A.S. heorr, a hinge.

553. Todd cites from Lilly’s Midas—‘How, sir, will you be trimmed? Will you have a bread like a spade or a bodkin?’—Illust. of Gower, p. 258.

554. cop, top; A. S. copp, a top; cf. G. Kopj.

557. nose-thirles, lit. nose-holes; mod. E. nostrils.

559. forneys. ‘Why, asks Mr. Earle, should Chaucer so readily fall on the simile of a furnace? What, in the uses of the time, made it come so ready to hand? The weald of Kent was then, like our “black country” now, a great smelting district, its wood answering to our coal; and Chaucer was Knight of the Shire, or M.P. for Kent.’—Temporary Preface to the Six-text edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, p. 99.

560. Ianglere, loud talker.

goliardeys, a ribald jester, one who gained his living by following rich men’s tables, and telling tales and making sport for the guests. Tyrwhitt says, ‘This jovial sect seems to have been so called from Golias, the real or assumed name of a man of wit, towards the end of the twelfth century, who wrote the Apocalypsis Goliæ, and other pieces in burlesque Latin rhymes, some which have been falsely [?] attributed to Walter Map.’ But it would appear that Golias is the sole invention of Walter Map, the probable author of the ‘Golias’ poems. See Morley’s Eng. Writers, 1888, iii. 167, where we read that the Apocalypse of Golias and the confession of Golias ‘have by constant tradition been ascribed to him [Walter Map]; never to any other writer.’ Golias is a medieval spelling of the Goliath of scripture, and occurs in Chaucer, Man of Lawes Tale, B. 934. In several authors of the thirteenth century, quoted by Du Cange, the goliardi are classed with the joculatores et buffones, and it is very likely that the word goliardus was, originally, quite independent of Golias, which was only connected with it by way of jest. The word goliardus seems rather to have meant, originally, ‘glutton,’ and to be connected with gula, the throat; but it was quite a common term, in the thirteenth century, for certain men of some education but of bad repute, who composed or recited satirical Edition: current; Page: [49] parodies and coarse verses and epigrams for the amusement of the rich. See T. Wright’s Introduction to the poems of Walter Map (Camden Soc.); P. Plowman, ed. Skeat, note to B. prol. 139; Wright’s History of Caricature, ch. x; and the account in Godefroy’s O. French Dict., s. v. Goliard.

561. that, i. e. his ‘Iangling,’ his noisy talk.

harlotrye means scurrility; Wyclif (Eph. v. 4) so translates Lat. scurrilitas.

562. ‘Besides the usual payment in money for grinding corn, millers are always allowed what is called “toll,” amounting to 4 lbs. out of every sack of flour.’—Bell. But it can hardly be doubted that, in old times, the toll was wholly in corn, not in money at all. It amounted, in fact, to the twentieth or twenty-fourth part of the corn ground, according to the strength of the water-course; see Strutt, Manners and Customs, ii. 82, and Nares, s. v. Toll-dish. At Berwick, the miller’s share was reckoned as ‘the thirteenth part for grain, and the twenty-fourth part for malt.’ Eng. Gilds, p. 342. When the miller ‘tolled thrice,’ he took thrice the legal allowance. Cf. A. 3939, 3940.

563. a thombe of gold. An explanation of this proverb is given on the authority of Mr. Constable, the Royal Academician, by Mr. Yarrell in his History of British Fishes, who, when speaking of the Bullhead or Miller’s Thumb, explains that a miller’s thumb acquires a peculiar shape by continually feeling samples of corn whilst it is being ground; and that such a thumb is called golden, with reference to the profit that is the reward of the experienced miller’s skill.

‘When millers toll not with a golden thumbe.’

Gascoigne’s Steel Glass, l. 1080.

Ray’s Proverbs give us—‘An honest miller has a golden thumb’; ed. 1768, p. 136; taken satirically, this means that there are no honest millers. Brand, in his Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, iii. 387, quotes from an old play—‘Oh the mooter dish, the miller’s Thumbe!’

The simplest explanation is to take the words just as they stand, i.e. ‘he used to steal corn, and take his toll thrice; yet he had a golden thumb such as all honest millers are said to have.’

565. W. Thorpe, when examined by Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1407, complains of the pilgrims, saying—‘they will ordain to have with them both men and women that can well sing wanton songs; and some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes; so that every town that they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking out of dogs after them, they make more noise than if the king came there away, with all his clarions and many other minstrels.’—Arber’s Eng. Garner, vi. 84; Wordsworth, Eccl. Biography, 4th ed. i. 312; Cutts, Scenes and Characters, p. 179.

566. ‘And with its music he conducted us out of London.’

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The Maunciple.

567. Maunciple or manciple, an officer who had the care of purchasing provisions for a college, an inn of court, &c. (Still in use.) See A. 3993. A temple is here ‘an inn of court’; besides the Inner and Middle Temple (in London), there was also an Outer Temple; see Timbs, Curiosities of London, p. 461; and the account of the Temple in Stow’s Survey of London.

568. which, whom.

achatours, purchasers; cf. F. acheter, to buy.

570. took by taille, took by tally, took on credit. Cf. Piers Plowman, ed. Wright, vol. i. p. 68, and ed. Skeat (Clarendon Press Series), B. iv. 58:—

‘And (he) bereth awey my whete,

And taketh me but a taille for ten quarters of otes.’

The buyer who took by tally had the price scored on a pair of sticks; the seller gave him one of them, and retained the other himself. ‘Lordis . . . taken pore mennus goodis and paien not therfore but white stickis . . . and sumtyme beten hem whanne thei axen here peye’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 233 (see note at p. 519).

571. Algate, in every way, always; cf. prov. E. gate, a street.

achat, buying; see l. 568.

572. ay biforn, ever before (others).

574. swich, such; A. S. swylce. lewed, unlearned; as in l. 502. pace, pass, i.e. surpass.

575. heep, heap, i. e. crowd; like G. Haufe.

581. ‘To make him live upon his own income.’

582. ‘Unless he were mad.’ See l. 184.

583. ‘Or live as economically as it pleases him to wish to do.’

584. al a, a whole. Cf. ‘all a summer’s day’; Milton, P. L. i. 449.

586. hir aller cappe, the caps of them all. Hir aller=eorum omnium. ‘To sette’ a man’s ‘cappe’ is to overreach him, to cheat him, or to befool him. Cf. A. 3143.

The Reve.

587. Reve. See Prof. Thorold Rogers’ capital sketch of Robert Oldman, the Cuxham bailiff, a serf of the manor (as reeves always were), in his Agriculture and Prices in England, i. 506–510.

592. Y-lyk, like. y-sen-e, visible; see note to l. 134.

593. ‘He knew well how to keep a garner and a bin.’

597. neet, neat, cattle. dayerye, dairy.

598. hors, horses; pl. See note to l. 74. pultrye, poultry.

599. hoolly, wholly; from A.S. hāl, whole.

601. Sin, short for sithen; and sithen, with an added suffix, became sithen-s or sithen-ce, mod. E. since.

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602. ‘No one could prove him to be in arrears.’

603. herde, herd, i. e. cow-herd or shep-herd. hyne, hind, farm-labourer.

604. That . . . his, whose; as in A. 2710.

covyne, deceit; lit. a deceitful agreement between two parties to prejudice a third. O. F. covine, a project; from O. F. covenir, Lat. conuenire, to come together, agree.

605. adrad, afraid; from the pp. of A. S. ofdrǣdan, to terrify greatly.

the deeth, the pestilence; see note to l. 442.

606. woning, dwelling-place; see l. 388.

609. astored (Elles. &c.); istored (Harl.); furnished with stores.

611. lene, lend; whence E. len-d. of, some of.

613. mister, trade, craft; O. F. mestier (F. métier), business; Lat. ministerium. ‘Men of all mysteris’; Barbour’s Bruce, xvii. 542.

614. wel, very. wrighte, wright, workman.

615. stot, probably what we should now call a cob. Prof. J. E. T. Rogers, in his Hist. of Agriculture, i. 36, supposes that a stot was a low-bred undersized stallion. It frequently occurs with the sense of ‘bullock’; see note to P. Plowman, C. xxii. 267.

616. Sir Topas’s horse was ‘dappel-gray,’ which has the same sense as pomely gray, viz. gray dappled with round apple-like spots. ‘Apon a cowrsowre poumle-gray’; Wyntown, Chron. iv. 217; ‘pomly-gray’; Palladius on Husbandry, bk. iv. l. 809; ‘Upon a pomely palfray’; Lybeaus Disconus, 844 (in Ritson’s Metrical Romances). Florio gives Ital. pomellato, ‘pide, daple-graie.’ The word occurs in the French Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, ed. Joly, 10722:—‘Quant Troylus orent monté Sor un cheval sor pommelé.’ Cf. G. 559.

Scot. ‘The name given to the horse of the reeve (who lived at Bawdeswell, in Norfolk) is a curious instance of Chaucer’s accuracy; for to this day there is scarcely a farm in Norfolk or Suffolk, in which one of the horses is not called Scot’; Bell’s Chaucer. Cf. G. 1543.

617. pers. Some MSS. read blew. See note on l. 439.

621. Tukked aboute, with his long coat tucked up round him by help of a girdle. In the pictures in the Ellesmere MS., both the reeve and the friar have girdles, and rather long coats; cf. D. 1737. ‘He (i.e. a friar) wore a graie cote well tucked vnder his corded girdle, with a paire of trime white hose’; W. Bullein, A Dialogue against the Feuer (E. E. T. S.), p. 68. See Tuck in Skeat, Etym. Dict.

622. hind-r-este, hindermost; a curious form, combining both the comparative and superlative suffixes. Cf. ov-er-est, l. 290.

The Somnour.

623. Somnour, summoner; an officer employed to summon delinquents to appear in ecclesiastical courts; now called an apparitor. ‘The ecclesiastical courts . . . determined all causes matrimonial and testamentary. . . . They had besides to enforce the payment of tithes Edition: current; Page: [52] and church dues, and were charged with disciplinary power for punishment of adultery, fornication, perjury, and other vices which did not come under the common law. The reputation of the summoner is enough to show how abuses pervaded the action of these courts. Prof. Stubbs has summed up the case concerning them in his Constitutional History, iii. 373.’—Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, note at p. 514. For further information as to the summoner’s character, see the Frere’s Tale, D. 1299–1374.

624. cherubinnes face. H. Stephens, Apologie for Herodotus, i. c. 30, quotes the same thought from a French epigram—‘Nos grands docteurs au cherubin visage.’—T. Observe that cherubin (put for cherubim) is a plural form. ‘As the pl. was popularly much better known than the singular (e.g. in the Te Deum), the Romanic forms were all fashioned on cherubin, viz. Ital. cherubino, Span. querubin, Port. querubin, cherubin, F. cherubin’; New English Dictionary. Cherubs were generally painted red, a fact which became proverbial, as here. Cotgrave has: ‘Rouge comme un cherubin, red-faced, cherubin-faced, having a fierie facies like a Cherubin.’ Mrs. Jameson, in her Sacred and Legendary Art, has unluckily made the cherubim blue, and the seraphim red; the contrary was the accepted rule.

625. sawcefleem or sawsfleem, having a red pimpled face; lit. afflicted with pimples, &c., supposed to be caused by too much salt phlegm (salsum phlegma) in the constitution. The four humours of the blood, and the four consequent temperaments, are constantly referred to in various ways by early writers—by Chaucer as much as by any. Tyrwhitt quotes from an O. French book on physic (in MS. Bodley 761)—‘Oignement magistrel pur sausefleme et pur chescune manere de roigne,’ where roigne signifies any scorbutic eruption. ‘So (he adds) in the Thousand Notable Things, B. i. 70—“A sawsfleame or red pimpled face is helped with this medicine following:”—two of the ingredients are quicksilver and brimstone. In another place, B. ii. 20, oyle of tartar is said “to take away cleane all spots, freckles, and filthy wheales.” ’ He also quotes, in his Glossary, from MS. Bodley 2463—‘unguentum contra salsum flegma, scabiem, &c.’ Flewme in the Prompt. Parv. answers to Lat. phlegma. See the long note by J. Addis in N. and Q. 4 S. iv. 64; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 169, l. 777. ‘The Greke word that he vsed was ἐξανθήματα, that is, little pimples or pushes, soche as, of cholere and salse flegme, budden out in the noses and faces of many persones, and are called the Saphires and Rubies of the Tauerne.’—Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Diogenes, § 6: [printed false flegme in ed. 1877.] See l. 420.

627. scalled, having the scall or scab, scabby, scurfy. blake, black.

piled, deprived of hair, thin, slight. Cf. E. peel, vb. Palsgrave has—‘Pylled, as one that wanteth heare’; and ‘Pylled, scal[l]ed.’

629. litarge, litharge, a name given to white lead.

630. Boras, borax.

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ceruce, ceruse, a cosmetic made from white lead; see New E. Dict. oille of tartre, cream of tartar; potassium bitartrate.

632. Cf. ‘Such whelkes [on the head] haue small hoales, out of the which matter commeth. . . . And this euill commeth of vicious and gleymie [viscous] humour, which commeth to the skin of their head, and breedeth therein pimples and whelks.’—Batman on Bartholomè, lib. 7. c. 3. In the same, lib. 7. c. 67, we read that ‘A sauce flume face is a priuye signe of leprosie.’ Cf. Shak. Hen. V. iii. 6. 108.

635. See Prov. xxxiii. 31. The drinking of strong wine accounts for the Somnour’s appearance. ‘Wyne . . . makith the uisage salce fleumed [misprinted falce flemed], rede, and fulle of white whelkes’; Knight de la Tour, p. 116 (perhaps copied from Chaucer).

643. Can clepen Watte, i.e. can call Walter (Wat) by his name; just as parrots are taught to say ‘Poll.’ In Political Songs, ed. Wright, p. 328, an ignorant priest is likened to a jay in a cage, to which is added: ‘Go[o]d Engelish he speketh, ac [but] he wot nevere what’; referring to the time when Anglo-French was the mother-tongue of many who became priests.

644. ‘But if any one could test him in any other point.’

646. Questio quid iuris. ‘This kind of question occurs frequently in Ralph de Hengham. After having stated a case, he adds, quid juris, and then proceeds to give an answer to it.’—T. It means—‘the question is, what law (is there)?’ i.e. what is the law on this point?

647. harlot, fellow, usually one of low conduct; but originally merely a young person, without implication of reproach. See D. 1754.

649. ‘For a bribe of a quart of wine, he would allow a boon companion of his to lead a vicious life for a whole year, and entirely excuse him; moreover (on the other hand) he knew very well how to pluck a finch,’ i.e. how to get all the feathers off any inexperienced person whom it was worth his while to cheat. Cf. ‘a pulled hen’ in l. 177. With reference to the treatment of the poor by usurers, &c., we read in the Rom. of the Rose, l. 6820, that ‘Withoute scalding they hem pulle,’ i.e. pluck them. And see Troil. i. 210.

654–7. ‘He would teach his friend in such a case (i.e. if his friend led an evil life) to stand in no awe of the archdeacon’s curse (excommunication), unless he supposed that his soul resided in his purse; for in his purse [not in his soul] he should be punished’ (i.e. by paying a good round sum he could release himself from the archdeacon’s curse). ‘Your purse (said he) is the hell to which the archdeacon really refers when he threatens you.’ See, particularly, Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 35, 62, 496.

661. assoilling, absolution; from the vb. assoil.

662. war him of, i.e. let him beware of; war is the pres. subj.

significavit, i.e. of a writ de excommunicato capiendo [or excommunication] which usually began, ‘Significavit nobis venerabilis frater,’ &c.—T. See Significavit in Cowel or Blount.

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663. In daunger, within his jurisdiction, within the reach or control of his office; the true sense of M. E. daunger is ‘control’ or ‘dominion.’ Thus, in the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1470, we find:—

‘Narcisus was a bachelere,

That Love had caught in his daungere.’

i.e. whom Love had got into his power. So also in l. 1049 of the same.

664. yonge girles, young people, of either sex. In the Coventry Mysteries, p. 181, there is mention of ‘knave gerlys,’ i.e. male children. And see gerles in the Gloss. to P. Plowman, and the note to the same, C. ii. 29.

665. and was al hir reed, and was wholly their adviser.

666, 667. gerland. A garland for an ale-stake was distinct from a bush. The latter was made of ivy-leaves; and every tavern had an ivy-bush hanging in front as its sign; hence the phrase, ‘Good wine needs no bush,’ &c. But the garland, often used in addition to the bush, was made of three equal hoops, at right angles to each other, and decorated with ribands. It was also called a hoop. The sompnour wore only a single hoop or circlet, adorned with large flowers (apparently roses), according to his picture in the Ellesmere MS. Emelye, in the Knightes Tale, is described as gathering white and red flowers to make ‘a sotil gerland’ for her head; A. 1054. ‘Garlands of flowers were often worn on festivals, especially in ecclesiastical processions’; Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 72. Some garlands, worn on the head, were made of metal; see Riley, Memorials of London, p. 133.

667. ale-stake, a support for a garland in front of an ale-house. For a picture of an ale-stake with a garland, see Hotten’s Book of Signboards. The position of it was such that it did not stand upright, but projected horizontally from the side of a tavern at some height from the ground, as shewn in Larwood and Hotten’s Book of Signboards. Hence the enactments made, that it should never extend above the roadway for more than seven feet; see Liber Albus, ed. H. T. Riley, 1861, pp. 292, 389. Speght wrongly explained ale-stake as ‘a Maypole,’ and has misled many others, including Chatterton, who thus was led to write the absurd line—‘Around the ale-stake minstrels sing the song’; Ælla, st. 30. ‘At the ale-stake’ is correct; see C. 321.

The Pardoner.

669. As to the character of the Pardoner, see further in the Pardoner’s Prologue, C. 329–462; P. Plowman, B. prol. 68–82; Heywood’s Interlude of the Four Ps, which includes a shameless plagiarism from Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue; and Sir David Lyndesay’s Satire of the Three Estaits, l. 2037. Cf. note to C. 349. See also the Essay on Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Pope’s Pardoners, by Dr. J. Jusserand, in the Essays on Chaucer (Chaucer Society), p. 423; and the Chapter on Edition: current; Page: [55] Pardoners in Jusserand’s English Wayfaring Life. Jusserand shews that Chaucer has not in the least exaggerated; for exaggeration was not possible.

670. Of Rouncival. Of course the Pardoner was an Englishman, so that he could hardly belong to Roncevaux, in Navarre. The reference is clearly to the hospital of the Blessed Mary of Rouncyvalle, in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, at Charing (London), mentioned in Dugdale’s Monasticon, ii. 443. Stow gives its date of foundation as the 15th year of Edward IV., but this was only a revival of it, after it had been suppressed by Henry V. It was a ‘cell’ to the Priory of Roncevaux in Navarre. See Todd’s Illustrations of Gower, p. 263: and Rouncival in Nares. Cf. note to l. 172.

672. Com hider, love, to me. ‘This, I suppose, was the beginning or the burthen of some known song.’—Tyrwhitt. It is quoted again in l. 763 of the poem called ‘The Pearl,’ in the form—‘Come hyder to me, my lemman swete.’ hider, hither.

The rime of tó me with Róme should be particularly noted, as it enables even the reader who is least skilled in English phonology to perceive that Ro-me was really dissyllabic, and that the final e in such words was really pronounced. Similarly, in Octouian Imperator, ed. Weber, l. 1887, we find seint Ja-mè, riming with frá me (from me). Perhaps the most amusing example of editorial incompetence is seen in the frequent occurrence of the mysterious word byme in Pauli’s edition of Gower; as, e.g. in bk. iii. vol. i. p. 370:—

‘So woll I nought, that any time

Be lost, of that thou hast do byme.’

Of course, by me should have been printed as two words, riming with ti-mè. This is what happens when grammatical facts are ignored. Time is dissyllabic, because it represents the A.S. tīma, which is never reduced to a monosyllable in A.S.

673. bar . . . a stif burdoun, sang the bass. See A. 4165, and N. and Q. 4 S. vi. 117, 255. Cf. Fr. bourdon, the name of a deep organ-stop.

675, 676. wex, wax. heng, hung. stryke of flex, hank of flax.

677. By ounces, in small portions or thin clusters.

679. colpons, portions; the same word as mod. E. coupon.

680. for Iolitee, for greater comfort. He thought it pleasanter to wear only a cap (l. 683). wered, wore; see l. 75. Cf. G. 571, and the note.

682. the newe Iet, the new fashion, which is described in ll. 680–683.

‘Also, there is another newe gette,

A foule waste of clothe and excessyfe,

There goth no lesse in a mannes typette

Than of brode cloth a yerde, by my lyfe.’

Hoccleve, De Regim. Principum, p. 17.

‘Newe Iette, guise nouelle’; Palsgrave.

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683. Dischevele, with his hair hanging loose.

685. vernicle, a small copy of the ‘vernicle’ at Rome. Vernicle is ‘a diminutive of Veronike (Veronica), a copy in miniature of the picture of Christ, which is supposed to have been miraculously imprinted upon a handkerchief preserved in the church of St. Peter at Rome. . . It was usual for persons returning from pilgrimages to bring with them certain tokens of the several places which they had visited; and therefore the Pardoner, who is just arrived from Rome, is represented with a vernicle sowed on his cappe.’—Tyrwhitt. See the description of a pilgrim in Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B. v. 530, and the note. The legend was invented to explain the name. First the name of Bernice, taken from the Acts, was assigned to the woman who was cured by Christ of an issue of blood. Next, Bernice, otherwise Veronica, was (wrongly) explained as meaning vera icon (i. e. true likeness), which was assigned as the name of a handkerchief on which the features of Christ were miraculously impressed. Copies of this portrait were called Veronicae or Veroniculae, in English vernicles, and were obtainable by pilgrims to Rome. There was also a later St. Veronica, who died in 1497, after Chaucer’s time, and whose day is Jan. 13.

See Legends of the Holy Rood, ed. Morris, pp. 170, 171; Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, ii. 269; Lady Eastlake’s History of our Lord, i. 41; Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. pt. i. p. 438; and the picture of the vernicle in Chambers, Book of Days, i. 101.

687. Bret-ful of pardon, brim-full (top-full, full to the top) of indulgences. Cf. Swed. bräddfull, brimful; from brädd, a brim. See A. 2164; Ho. of Fame, 2123.

692. fro Berwik, from Berwick to Ware (in Hertfordshire), from North to South of England. See the similar phrase—‘From Barwick to Dover, three hundred miles over’—in Pegge’s Kenticisms (E.D.S.), p. 70.

694. male, bag; cf. E. mail-bag.

pilwebeer, pillow-case. Cf. Low. G. büren, a case (for a pillow), Icel. ver, Dan. vaar, a cover for a pillow. The form pillow-bear occurs as a Cheshire word as late as 1782; N. and Q. 6 S. xii. 217.

696. gobet, a small portion; O. F. gobet, a morsel; gober, to devour.

698. hente, caught hold of; from A. S. hentan, to seize.

699. ‘A cross made of latoun, set full of (probably counterfeit) precious stones.’ Latoun was a mixed metal, of the same colour as, and closely resembling, the modern metal called pinchbeck, from the name of the inventor. It was chiefly composed of copper and zinc. See further in the note to C. 350; and cf. F. 1245.

701. Cf. Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 154; and the note to C. 349.

702. up-on lond, in the country. Country people used to be called uplondish men. Jack Upland is the name of a satire against the friars.

705, 706. Iapes, deceits, tricks. his apes, his dupes; cf. A. 3389.

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710. alder-best, best of all; alder is a later form of aller, from A.S. ealra, of all, gen. pl. of eal, all. See ll. 586, 823.

712. affyle, file down, make smooth. Cf. ‘affile His tunge’; Gower, C. A. i. 296; ‘gan newe his tunge affyle,’ Troil. ii. 1681; ‘his tongue [is] filed’; Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. i. 12. So also Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 35; iii. 2. 12; Skelton, Colin Clout, 852.

Chaucer’s Apology.

716. Thestat, tharray = the estate, the array: the coalescence of the article with the noun is very common in Middle English.

719. highte, was named; cf. A. S. hātan, (1) to call, (2) to be called, to be named (with a passive sense).

721. ‘How we conducted ourselves that same night.’

726. ‘That ye ascribe it not to my ill-breeding.’ narette, for ne arette. From O.F. aretter, to ascribe, impute; from Lat. ad and reputare; see Aret in the New E. Dict. Also spelt arate, with the sense ‘to chide’; whence mod. E. to rate. So here the poet implies—‘do not rate me for my ill-breeding.’ The argument here used is derived from Le Roman de la Rose, 15361–96.

727. pleynly speke (Elles. &c.); speke al pleyn (Harl.).

731. shal telle, has to tell. after, according to, just like.

734. Al speke he, although he speak. See al have I, l. 744.

738. ‘He is bound to say one word as much as another.’

741, 742. This saying of Plato is taken from Boethius, De Consolatione, bk. iii. pr. 12, which Chaucer translates: ‘Thou hast lerned by the sentence of Plato, that nedes the wordes moten be cosines to the thinges of which they speken’; see vol. ii. p. 90, l. 151. In Le Roman de la Rose, 7131, Jean de Meun says that Plato tells us, speech was given us to express our wishes and thoughts, and proceeds to argue that men ought to use coarse language. Chaucer was thinking of this singular argument. We also find in Le Roman (l. 15392) an exactly parallel passage, which means in English, ‘the saying ought to resemble the deed; for the words, being neighbours to the things, ought to be cousins to their deeds.’ In the original French, these passages stand thus:—

‘Car Platon disoit en s’escole

Que donnee nous fu parole

Por faire nos voloirs entendre,

Por enseignier et por aprendre’; &c.

‘Li dis doit le fait resembler;

Car les vois as choses voisines

Doivent estre a lor faiz cousines.’

So also in the Manciple’s Tale, H. 208.

744. ‘Although I have not,’ &c. Cf. l. 734.

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The Host.

747. Our hoste. It has been remarked that from this character Shakespeare’s ‘mine host of the Garter’ in the Merry Wives of Windsor is obviously derived.

752. The duty of the ‘marshal of the hall’ was to place every one according to his rank at public festivals, and to preserve order. See Babees Book, p. 310. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 9. 23; Gower, Conf. Amant. iii. 299. Even Milton speaks of a ‘marshall’d feast’; P. L. ix. 37.

753. stepe, bright; see note to l. 201.

754. Chepe, i. e. Cheapside, in London.

760. maad our rekeninges, i. e. paid our scores.

764. I saught nat (Elles. &c.); I ne saugh (Harl.). To scan the line, read I n’ saugh, dropping the e in ne. The insertion of ne is essential to the sense, viz. ‘I have not seen.’

765. herberwe, inn, lit. harbour. The F. auberge is from the O.H.G. form of the same word.

770. ‘May the blessed martyr duly reward you!’

772. shapen yow, intend; cf. l. 809. talen, to tell tales.

777. yow lyketh alle, it pleases you all; yow is in the dat. case, as in the mod. E. ‘if you please.’ See note to l. 37.

783. ‘Hold up your hands’; to signify assent.

785. to make it wys, to make it a matter of wisdom or deliberation; so also made it strange, made it a matter of difficulty, A. 3980.

791. ‘To shorten your way with.’ In M. E., the prep. with always comes next the verb in phrases of this character. Most MSS. read our for your here, but this is rather premature. The host introduces his proposal to accompany the pilgrims by the use of our in l. 799, and we in l. 801; the proposal itself comes in l. 803.

792. As to the number of the tales, see vol. iii. pp. 374, 384.

798. ‘Tales best suited to instruct and amuse.’

799. our aller cost, the expense of us all; here our = A. S. ūre, of us; see ll. 710, 823.

808. mo, more; A. S. mā. In M. E., mo generally means ‘more in number,’ whilst more means ‘larger,’ from A. S. māra. Cf. l. 849.

810. and our othes swore, and we swore our oaths; see next line.

817. In heigh and lowe. ‘Lat. In, or de alto et basso, Fr. de haut en bas, were expressions of entire submission on one side, and sovereignty on the other.’—Tyrwhitt. Cotgrave (s. v. Bas) has:—‘Taillables haut et bas, taxable at the will and pleasure of their lord.’ It here means—‘under all circumstances.’

819. fet, fetched; from A. S. fetian, to fetch, pp. fetod.

822. day. It is the morning of the 17th of April. See note to l. 1.

823. our aller cok, cock of us all, i. e. cock to awake us all. our aller = A. S. ūre ealra, both in gen. pl.

825. riden, rode; pt. t. pl., as in l. 856. The i is short.

pas, a foot-pace. Cf. A. 2897; C. 866; G. 575; Troil. ii. 627.

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826. St. Thomas a Waterings was a place for watering horses, at a brook beside the second mile-stone on the road to St. Thomas’s shrine, i.e. to Canterbury. It was a place anciently used for executions in the county of Surrey, as Tyburn was in that of Middlesex. See Nares, s. v. Waterings.

828. if yow leste, if it may please you. The verb listen made liste in the past tense; but Chaucer changes the verb to the form lesten, pt. t. leste, probably for the sake of the rime. See ll. 750 and 102. In the Knightes Tale, A. 1052, as hir liste rimes with upriste.

The true explanation is, that the A. S. y had the sound of mod. G. ü. In Mid. Eng., this was variably treated, usually becoming either i or u; so that, e.g., the A. S. pyt (a pit) became M. E. pit or put, the former of which has survived. But, in Kentish, the form was pet; and it is remarkable that Chaucer sometimes deliberately adopts Kentish forms, as here, for the sake of the rime. A striking example is seen in fulfelle for fulfille, in Troil. iii. 510, to rime with telle. He usually has fulfille, as below, in A. 1318, 2478.

829. Ye woot, ye know. Really false grammar, as the pl. of woot (originally a past tense) is properly witen, just as the pl. of rood is riden in l. 825. As woot was used as a present tense, its original form was forgotten. ‘Ye know your agreement, and I recall it to your memory.’ See l. 33.

830. ‘If even-song and matins agree’; i.e. if you still say now what you said last night.

832. ‘As ever may I be able to drink’; i.e. As surely as I ever hope to be able, &c. Cf. B. 4490, &c.

833. be, may be (subjunctive mood).

835. draweth cut, draw lots; see C. 793–804. The Gloss. to Allan Ramsay’s poems, ed. 1721, has—‘cutts, lots. These cuts are usually made of straws unequally cut, which one hides between his finger and thumb, whilst another draws his fate’; but the verb to cut is unallied. See Brand, Pop. Antiq., iii. 337. The one who drew the shortest (or else the longest) straw was the one who drew the lot. Cf. ‘Sors, a kut, or a lotte’; Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 7. ‘After supper, we drew cuttes for a score of apricoks, the longest cut stil to draw an apricoke’; Marston, Induction to The Malcontent.

ferrer twinne, depart further. Here ferrer is the comp. of fer, far. Twinnen is to separate, part in twain; hence, to depart.

844. sort, lot, destiny; O. F. sort; cf. E. sort.

847. as was resoun, as was reasonable or right.

848. forward, agreement, as in l. 33. compositioun has almost exactly the same sense, but is of French origin.

853. shal biginne, have to begin.

854. What; used interjectionally, like the modern E. ‘why!’

a, in. Here a is for an, a form of on; the A. S. on is constantly used with the sense of ‘in.’

856. riden, rode; pt. pl. See l. 825.

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The Knightes Tale.

For general remarks on this tale, see vol. iii. p. 389.

It is only possible to give here a mere general idea of the way in which the Knightes Tale is related to the Teseide of Boccaccio. The following table gives a sketch of it, but includes many lines wherein Chaucer is quite original. The references to the Knightes Tale are to the lines of group A (as in the text); those to the Teseide are to the books and stanzas.

Kn. Tale. | Teseide.
865–883 | I. and II.
893–1027 | II. 2-5, 25–95.
1030–1274 | III. 1-11, 14–20, 47, 51–54, 75.
1361–1448 | IV. 26–29, 59.
1451–1479 | V. 1-3, 24–27, 33.
1545–1565 | IV. 13, 14, 31, 85, 84, 17, 82.
1638–1641 | VII. 106, 119.
1668–1739 | V. 77–91.
1812–1860 | V. 92–98.
1887–2022 | VII. 108–110, 50–64, 29–37.
2102–2206 | VI. 71, 14–22, 65–70, 8.
2222–2593 | VII. 43–49, 68–93, 23–41, 67, 95–99, 7-13, 131, 132, 14, 100–102, 113–118, 19.
2600–2683 | VIII. 2-131.
2684–2734 | IX. 4-61.
2735–2739 | XII. 80, 83.
2743–2808 | X. 12–112.
2809–2962 | XI. 1-67.
2967–3102 | XII. 3-19, 69–83.

The MSS. quote a line and a half from Statius, Thebaid, xii. 519, 520, because Chaucer is referring to that passage in his introductory lines to this tale; see particularly ll. 866, 869, 870.

There is yet another reason for quoting this scrap of Latin, viz. that it is also quoted in the Poem of Anelida and Arcite, at l. 22, where the ‘Story’ of that poem begins; and ll. 22–25 of Anelida give a fairly close translation of it. From this and other indications, it appears that Chaucer first of all imitated Boccaccio’s Teseide (more or less closely) in the poem which he himself calls ‘Palamon and Arcite,’ of which but scanty traces exist in the original form; and this poem was in 7-line stanzas. He afterwards recast the whole, at the same time changing the metre; and the result was the Knightes Tale, as we here have it. Thus the Knightes Tale is not derived immediately from Boccaccio or from Statius, but through the medium of an older poem Edition: current; Page: [61] of Chaucer’s own composition. Fragments of the same poem were used by the author in other compositions; and the result is, that the Teseide of Boccaccio is the source of (1) sixteen stanzas in the Parliament of Foules; (2) of part of the first ten stanzas in Anelida; (3) of three stanzas near the end of Troilus (Tes. xi. 1-3); as well as of the original Palamon and Arcite and of the Knightes Tale.

Hence it is that ll. 859–874 and ll. 964–981 should be compared with Chaucer’s Anelida, ll. 22–46, as printed in vol. i. p. 366. Lines 882 and 972 are borrowed from that poem with but slight alteration.

859. The lines from Statius, Theb. xii. 519–22, to which reference is made in the heading, relate to the return of Theseus to Athens after his conquest of Hippolyta, and are as follows:—

Iamque domos patrias, Scythicae post aspera gentis

Proelia, laurigero subeuntem Thesea curru

Laetifici plausus, missusque ad sidera uulgi

Clamor, et emeritis hilaris tuba nuntiat armis.’

860. Theseus, the great legendary hero of Attica, is the subject of Boccaccio’s poem named after him the Teseide. He is also the hero of the Legend of Ariadne, as told in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. After deserting Ariadne, he succeeded his father Aegeus as king of Athens, and conducted an expedition against the Amazons, from which he returned in triumph, having carried off their queen Antiope, here named Hippolyta.

861. governour. It should be observed that Chaucer continually accents words of Anglo-French origin in the original manner, viz. on the last or on the penultimate syllable. Thus we have here governóur and conqueróur; in l. 865, chivalrý-e; in l. 869, contrée; in l. 876, manére, &c. The most remarkable examples are when the words end in -oun (ll. 893, 935).

864. cóntree is here accented on the first syllable; in l. 869, on the last. This is a good example of the unsettled state of the accents of such words in Chaucer’s time, which afforded him an opportunity of licence, which he freely uses. In fact, cóntree shows the English, and contrée, the French accent.

865. chivalrye, knightly exploits. In i. 878, chivalrye means ‘knights’; mod. E. chivalry. So also in l. 982.

866. regne of Femenye, the kingdom (Lat. regnum) of the Amazons. Femenye is from Lat. femina, a woman. Cf. Statius, Theb. xii. 578. ‘Amazonia, womens land, is a Country, parte in Asia and parte in Europa, and is nigh Albania; and hath that name of Amazonia of women that were the wives of the men that were called Goths, the which men went out of the nether Scithia, as Isidore seith, li. 9.’—Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. xv. c. 12. Cf. Higden’s Polychronicon, lib. i. cap. xviii; and Gower, Conf. Amant., ii. 73:—

‘Pentasilee,

Which was the quene of Feminee.’

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867. Scithea, Scythia. Cf. Scythicae in the quotation from Statius in note to l. 859.

868. Ipolita, Shakespeare’s Hippolyta, in Mids. Night’s Dream. The name is in Statius, Theb. xii. 534, spelt Hippolyte.

880. In this line, Athenes seems to mean ‘Athenians,’ though elsewhere it means ‘Athens.’ Athénès is trisyllabic.

884. tempest. As there is no mention of a tempest in Boccaccio, Tyrwhitt proposed to alter the reading to temple, as there is some mention of Theseus offering in the temple of Pallas. But it is very unlikely that this would be alluded to by the mere word temple; and we must accept the reading tempest, as in all the seven MSS. and in the old editions.

I think the solution is to be found by referring to Statius. Chaucer seems to have remembered that a tempest is there described (Theb. xii. 650–5), but to have forgotten that it is merely introduced by way of simile. In fact, when Theseus determines to attack Creon (see l. 960), the advance of his host is likened by Statius to the effect of a tempest. The lines are:—

‘Qualis Hyperboreos ubi nubilus institit axes

Iupiter, et prima tremefecit sidera bruma,

Rumpitur Aeolia, et longam indignata quietem

Tollit hiems animos, uentosaque sibilat Arctos;

Tunc montes undaeque fremunt, tunc proelia caesis

Nubibus, et tonitrus insanaque fulmina gaudent.’

885. as now, at present, at this time. Cf. the M.E. adverbs as-swithe, as-sone, immediately. From the Rom. de la Rose, 21479:—

‘Ne vous voil or ci plus tenir,

A mon propos m’estuet venir,

Qu’ autre champ me convient arer.’

889. I wol nat letten eek noon of this route, I desire not to hinder eke (also) none of all this company. Wol = desire; cf. ‘I will have mercy,’ &c.

890. aboute, i. e. in his turn, one after the other; corresponding to the sense ‘in rotation, in succession,’ given in the New English Dictionary. This sense of the word in this passage was pointed out by Dr. Kölbing in Engl. Studien, ii. 531. He instanced a similar use of the word in the Ormulum, l. 550, where the sense is—‘and ay, whensoever that flock of priests, being twenty-four in number, had all served once about in the temple.’

901. crëature is here a word of three syllables. In l. 1106 it has four syllables.

903. nolde, would not: the A. S. nolde is the pt. t. of nyllan, equivalent to ne willan, not to wish; cf. Lat. noluit, from nolle.

stenten, stop. ‘It stinted, and said aye.’—Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 48.

908. that thus, i. e. ye that thus.

911. clothed thus (Elles.); clad thus al (Harl.).

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912. alle is to be pronounced al-lè. Tyrwhitt inserts than, then, after alle, against the authority of the best MSS. and of the old editions.

Statius (Theb. xii. 545) calls this lady Capaneia coniux; see l. 932, below. He says all the ladies were from Argos, and their husbands were kings.

913. a deedly chere, a deathly countenance or look.

918. we biseken, we beseech, ask for. For such double forms as beseken and besechen, cf. mod. Eng. dike and ditch, kirk and chirch, sack and satchel, stick and stitch. In the Early Eng. period the harder forms with k were very frequently employed by Northern writers, who preferred them to the palatalised Southern forms (perhaps influenced by Anglo-French) with ch. Cf. M. E. brig and rigg with bridge and ridge.

926. This line means ‘that ensureth no estate to be (always) good.’ Suggested by Boethius; see bk. ii. pr. 2. ll. 37–41 (vol. ii. p. 27).

928. Clemence, Clemency, Pity. Suggested by ‘il tempio . . . di Clemenza,’ Tes. ii. 17; which again is from ‘mitis posuit Clementia sedem,’ Theb. xii. 482.

932. Capaneus, one of the seven heroes who besieged Thebes: struck dead by lightning as he was scaling the walls of the city, because he had defied Zeus; Theb. x. 927. See note to l. 912, above.

937. The celebrated siege of ‘The Seven against Thebes’; Capaneus being one of the seven kings.

941. for despyt, out of vexation; mod. E. ‘for spite.’

942. To do the dede bodyes vileinye, to treat the dead bodies shamefully.

948. withouten more respyt, without longer delay.

949. They fillen gruf, they fell flat with the face to the ground. In M. E. we find the phrase to fall grovelinges or to fall groveling. See Gruflynge and Ogrufe in the Catholicon Anglicum, and the editor’s notes, pp. 166, 259.

954. Himthoughte, it seemed to him; cf. methinks, it seems to me. In M. E. the verbs like, list, seem, rue (pity), are used impersonally, and take the dative case of the pronoun. Cf. the modern expression ‘if you please’=if it be pleasing to you.

955. mat, dejected. ‘Ententyfly, not feynt, wery ne mate.’—Hardyng, p. 129.—M.

960. ferforthly, i. e. far-forth-like, to such an extent.

965. abood, delay, awaiting, abiding.

966. His baner he desplayeth, i. e. he summons his troops to assemble for military service.

968. No neer, no nearer. Accent Athén-es on the second syllable; but in l. 973 it is accented on the first.

970. lay, lodged for the night.

975. státue, the image, as depicted on the banner.

977. feeldes, field, is an heraldic term for the ground upon which the various charges, as they are called, are emblazoned. Some of this Edition: current; Page: [64] description was suggested by the Thebais, lib. xii. 665, &c.; but the resemblance is very slight.

978. penoun, pennon. y-bete, beaten; the gold being hammered out into a thin foil in the shape of the Minotaur; see Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 344. But, in the Thebais, the Minotaur is upon Theseus’ shield.

988. In pleyn bataille, in open or fair fight.

993. obséquies (Elles., &c.); exéquies (Harl.); accented on the second syllable.

1004. as him leste, as it pleased him.

1005. tas, heap, collection. Some MSS. read cas (caas), which might=downfall, ruin, Lat. casus; but, as c and t are constantly confused, this reading is really due to a mere blunder. Gower speaks of gathering ‘a tasse’ of sticks; Conf. Amant. bk. v. ed. Pauli, ii. 293. Palsgrave has—‘On a heape, en vng tas’; p. 840. Hexham’s Dutch Dict. (1658) has—‘een Tas, a Shock, a Pile, or a Heape.’ Chaucer found the word in Le Roman de la Rose, 14870: ‘ung tas de paille,’ a heap of straw.

1006. harneys. ‘And arma be not taken onely for the instruments of al maner of crafts, but also for harneys and weapon; also standards and banners, and sometimes battels.’—Bossewell’s Armorie, p. 1, ed. 1597. Cf. l. 1613.

1010. Thurgh-girt, pierced through. This line is taken from Troilus, iv. 627: ‘Thourgh-girt with many a wyd and blody wounde.’

1011. liggyng by and by, lying near together, as in A. 4143; the usual old sense being ‘in succession,’ or ‘in order’; see examples in the New Eng. Dict., p. 1233, col. 3. In later English, by and by signifies presently, immediately, as ‘the end is not by and by.’

1012. in oon armes, in one (kind of) arms or armour, shewing that they belonged to the same house. Chaucer adapts ancient history to medieval time throughout his works.

1015. Nat fully quike, not wholly alive.

1016. by hir cote-armures, by their coat-armour, by the devices on the vest worn above the armour covering the breast. The cote-armure, as explained in my note to Barbour’s Bruce, xiii. 183, was ‘of no use as a defence, being made of a flimsy material; but was worn over the true armour of defence, and charged with armorial bearings’; see Ho. Fame, 1326. Cf. l. 1012. by hir gere, by their gear, i. e. equipments.

1018. they. Tyrwhitt (who relied too much on the black-letter editions) reads tho, those; but the seven best MSS. have they.

1023. Tathenes, to Athens (Harl. MS., which reads for to for to). Cf. tallegge, l. 3000 (foot-note).

1024. he nolde no raunsoun, he would accept of no ransom.

1029. Terme of his lyf, the remainder of his life. Cf. ‘The end and term of natural philosophy.’—Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, Bk. ii. p. 129, ed. Aldis Wright.

1035. Cf. Leg. of Good Women, 2425, 2426.

1038. stroof hir hewe, strove her hue; i.e. her complexion contested the superiority with the rose’s colour.

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1039. I noot, I know not; noot=ne woot.

1047. May. ‘Against Maie, every parishe, towne, and village, assembled themselves together, bothe men, women, and children, olde and yonge, even all indifferently, and either going all together or devidyng themselves into companies, they goe, some to the woodes and groves, some to the hills and mountaines, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pastimes; in the morninge they return, bringing with them birche, bowes and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withalle.’—Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, ed. 1585, leaf 94 (ed. Furnivall, p. 149). See also Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii. 177. Cf. Midsummer Night’s Dream, i. 1. 167:—

‘To do observance to a morn of May.’

See also l. 1500, and the note.

1049. Hir yelow heer was broyded, her yellow hair was braided. Yellow hair was esteemed a beauty; see Seven Sages, 477, ed. Weber; King Alisaunder, 207; and the instances in Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, pt. 3. sec. 2. mem. 2. subsec. 2. Boccaccio has here—‘Co’ biondi crini avvolti alla sua testa’; Tes. iii. 10.

1051. the sonne upriste, the sun’s uprising; the -e in sonne represents the old genitive inflexion. Upriste is here the dat. of the sb. uprist. It occurs also in Gower, Conf. Amantis, bk. i. ed. Pauli, i. 116.

1052. as hir liste, as it pleased her.

1053. party, partly; Fr. en partie.

1054. sotil gerland, a subtle garland; subtle has here the exact force of the Lat. subtilis, finely woven.

1055. Cf. ‘Con angelica voce’; Tes. iii. 10: and Troil. ii. 826.

1060. evene-Ioynant, joining, or adjoining.

1061. Ther as this Emelye hadde hir pleyinge, i. e. where she was amusing herself.

1063. In the Teseide (iii. 11) it is Arcite who first sees Emily.

1074. by aventure or cas, by adventure or hap.

1076. sparre, a square wooden bolt; the bars, which were of iron, were as thick as they must have been if wooden. See l. 990.

1078. bleynte, the past tense of blenche or blenke (to blench), to start, draw back suddenly. Cf. dreynte, pt. t. of drenchen. ‘Tutto stordito, Gridò, Omè!’ Tes. iii. 17.

1087. Som wikke aspect. Cf. ‘wykked planete, as Saturne or Mars,’ Astrolabe, ii. 4. 22; notes in Wright’s edition, ll. 2453, 2457; and Piers the Plowman, B. vi. 327; and see Leg. of Good Women, 2590–7. Add to these the description of Saturn: ‘Significat in quartanis, lepra, scabie, in mania, carcere, submersione, &c. Est infortuna.’—Johannis Hispalensis, Isagoge in Astrologiam, cap. xv. See A. 1328, 2469.

1089. al-though, &c., although we had sworn to the contrary. Cf. ‘And can nought flee, if I had it sworn’; Lydgate, Dance of Machabre (The Sergeaunt). Also—‘he may himselfe not sustene Upon his feet, though he had it sworne’; Lydgate, Siege of Thebes (The Sphinx), pt. i.

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‘Thofe the rede knyghte had sworne,

Out of his sadille is he borne.’

Sir Percevalle, l. 61.

1091. the short and pleyn, the brief and manifest statement of the case. Pronounce this is as this; as frequently elsewhere; see l. 1743, E. 56, F. 889.

1100. Cf. ‘That cause is of my torment and my sorwe’: Troil. v. 654.

1101. Cf. ‘But whether goddesse or womman, y-wis, She be, I noot’; Troil. i. 425.

wher, a very common form for whether.

1105. Yow (used reflexively), yourself.

1106. wrecche, wretched, is a word of two syllables, like wikke, wicked, where the d is a later and unnecessary addition.

1108. shapen, shaped, determined. ‘Shapes our ends.’—Shakespeare, Hamlet, v. 2. 10. Cf. l. 1225.

1120. ‘And except I have her pity and her favour.’

1121. atte leeste weye, at the least. Cf. leastwise=at the leastwise: ‘at leastwise’; Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, ed. Wright, p. 146, l. 23. See English Bible (Preface of ‘The Translators to the Reader’).

1122. ‘I am not but (no better than) dead, there is no more to say.’ Chaucer uses ne—but much in the same way as the Fr. ne—que. Cf. North English ‘I’m nobbut clemmed’=I am almost dead of hunger.

1126. by my fey, by my faith, in good faith.

1127. me list ful yvele pleye, it pleaseth me very badly to play.

1128. This debate is an imitation of the longer debate (in the Teseide), where Palamon and Arcite meet in the grove; cf. l. 1580 below.

1129. It nere=it were not, it would not be.

1132. ‘It was a common practice in the middle ages for persons to take formal oaths of fraternity and friendship; and a breach of the oath was considered something worse than perjury. This incident enters into the plots of some of the medieval romances. A curious example will be found in the Romance of Athelston; Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ii. 85.’—Wright. A note in Bell’s Chaucer reminds us that instances occur also in the old heroic times; as in the cases of Theseus and Peirithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Pylades and Orestes, Nysus and Euryalus. See Sworn Brothers in Nares’ Glossary; Rom. of the Rose, 2884.

1133. ‘That never, even though it cost us a miserable death, a death by torture.’ So in Troilus, i. 674: ‘That certayn, for to deyen in the peyne.’ Also in the E. version of The Romaunt of the Rose, 3326.

1134. ‘Till that death shall part us two.’ Cf. the ingenious alteration in the Marriage Service, where the phrase ‘till death us depart’ was altered into ‘do part’ in 1661.

1136. cas, case. It properly means event, hap. See l. 1074.

my leve brother, my dear brother.

1141. out of doute, without doubt, doubtless.

1147. to my counseil, to my adviser. See l. 1161.

1151. I dar wel seyn, I dare maintain.

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1153. Thou shalt be. Chaucer occasionally uses shall in the sense of owe, so that the true sense of I shall is I owe (Lat. debeo); it expresses a strong obligation. So here it is not so much the sign of a future tense as a separate verb, and the sense is ‘Thou art sure to be false sooner than I am.’

1155. par amour, with love, in the way of love. To love par amour is an old phrase for to love excessively. Cf. Bruce, xiii. 485; and see A. 2112, below; Troil. v. 158, 332.

1158. affeccioun of holinesse, a sacred affection, or aspiration after.

1162. I pose, I put the case, I will suppose.

1163. ‘Knowest thou not well the old writer’s saying?’ The olde clerk is Boethius, from whose book, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Chaucer has borrowed largely in many places. The passage alluded to is in lib. iii. met. 12:—

‘Quis legem det amantibus?

Maior lex amor est sibi.’

Chaucer’s translation (vol. ii. p. 92, l. 37) has—‘But what is he that may yive a lawe to loveres? Love is a gretter lawe . . . than any lawe that men may yeven.’ And see Troil. iv. 618.

1167. and swich decree, and (all) such ordinances.

1168. in ech degree, in every rank of life.

1172. And eek it is, &c., ‘and moreover it is not likely that ever in all thy life thou wilt stand in her favour.’

1177. This fable, in this particular form, is not in any of the usual collections; but it is, practically, the same as that called ‘The Lion, the Tiger, and the Fox’ in Croxall’s Æsop. Sometimes it is ‘the Lion, the Bear, and the Fox’; the Fox subtracts the prey for which the others fight. It is no. 247 in Halm’s edition of the ‘Fabulae Æsopicae,’ Lips., Teubner, 1852, with the moral:—ὁ μυ̑θος δηλοι̑, ὅτι ἄλλων κοπιώντων ἄλλοι κερδαίνουσιν. In La Fontaine’s Fables, it appears as Les Voleurs et l’Âne. Thynne coolly altered kyte to cur, and then had to insert so after were to fill up the line.

1186. everich of us, each of us, every one of us.

1189. to theffect, to the result, or end.

1196. From the Legend of Good Women, 2282.

1200. in helle. An allusion to Theseus accompanying Pirithous in his expedition to carry off Proserpina, daughter of Aidoneus, king of the Molossians, when both were taken prisoner, and Pirithous torn in pieces by the dog Cerberus. At least, such is the story in Plutarch; see Shakespeare’s Plutarch, ed. Skeat, p. 289. Chaucer found the mention of Pirithous’ visit to Athens in Boccaccio’s Teseide, iii. 47–51. The rest he found in Le Roman de la Rose, 8186—

‘Si cum vesquist, ce dist l’istoire,

Pyrithous apres sa mort,

Que Theseus tant ama mort.

Tant le queroit, tant le sivoit . . .

Que vis en enfer l’ala querre.’

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1201. Observe the expression to wryte, which shews that this story was not originally meant to be told. (Anglia, viii. 453.)

1212. Most MSS. read or stounde, i. e. or at any hour. MS. Dd. has o stound, one moment, any short interval of time.

‘The storme sesed within a stounde.’

Ywaine and Gawin, l. 384.

On this slight authority, Tyrwhitt altered the reading, and is followed by Wright and Bell, though MS. Hl. really has or like the rest, and the black-letter editions have the same.

1218. his nekke lyth to wedde, his neck is in jeopardy; lit. lies in pledge or in pawn.

1222. To sleen himself he wayteth prively, he watches for an opportunity to slay himself unperceived.

1223. This line, slightly altered, occurs also in the Legend of Good Women, 658.

1225. Now is me shape, now I am destined; literally, now is it shapen (or appointed) for me.

1247. It was supposed that all things were made of the four elements mentioned in l. 1246. ‘Does not our life consist of the four elements?’—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 10.

1255. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xiii. 236.

1257. ‘And another man would fain (get) out of his prison.’

1259. matere; in the matter of thinking to excel God’s providence.

1260. ‘We never know what thing it is that we pray for here below.’ See Romans viii. 26.

1261. dronke is as a mous. This phrase seems to have given way to ‘drunk as a rat.’ ‘Thus satte they swilling and carousyng, one to another, till they were both as dronke as rattes.’—Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses; ed. Furnivall, p. 113.

‘I am a Flemying, what for all that,

Although I wyll be dronken otherwhyles as a rat.’

Andrew Boorde, ed. Furnivall, p. 147.

Cf. ‘When that he is dronke as a dreynt mous’; Ritson, Ancient Songs, i. 70 (Man in the Moon, l. 31). ‘And I will pledge Tom Tosspot, till I be drunk as a mouse-a’; Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, iii. 339. See also Skelton, Colin Clout, 803; and D. 246.

1262. This is from Boethius, De Consolatione, lib. iii. pr. 2: ‘But I retorne ayein to the studies of men, of whiche men the corage alwey reherseth and seketh the sovereyn good, al be it so that it be with a derked memorie; but he not by whiche path, right as a dronken man not nat by whiche path he may retorne him to his hous.’—Chaucer’s Translation of Boethius; vol. ii. p. 54, l. 57.

1264. slider, slippery; as in the Legend of Good Women, l. 648. Cf. the gloss—‘Lubricum, slidere’; Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 7.

1279. pure fettres, the very fetters. ‘So in the Duchesse, l. 583, the pure deeth. The Greeks used καθαρός in the same sense.’—Tyrwhitt.

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1283. at thy large, at large. Cf. l. 2288.

1302. ‘White like box-wood, or ashen-gray’; cf. l. 1364. Cf. ‘And pale as box she wex’; Legend of Good Women, l. 866. Also ‘asshen pale and dede’; Troil. ii. 539.

1308. Copied in Lydgate’s Horse, Sheep, and Goose, 124:—‘But here this schepe, rukkyng in his folde.’ ‘Rukkun, or cowre down’; Prompt. Parv. In B. 4416, MSS. Cp. Pt. Ln. have rouking in place of lurking.

1317. to letten of his wille, to refrain from his will (or lusts).

1333. Cf. the phrase ‘paurosa gelosia’; Tes. v. 2.

1344. upon his heed, on pain of losing his head. ‘Froissart has sur sa teste, sur la teste, and sur peine de la teste.’—T.

1347. this question. ‘An implied allusion to the medieval courts of love, in which questions of this kind were seriously discussed.’—Wright.

1366. making his mone, making his complaint or moan.

1372. ‘In his changing mood, for all the world, he conducted himself not merely like one suffering from the lover’s disease of Eros, but rather (his disease was) like mania engendered of melancholy humour.’ This is one of the numerous allusions to the four humours, viz. the choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, and melancholic. An excess of the latter was supposed to produce ‘melancholy madness.’ gere, flighty manner, changeableness; ‘Siche wilde gerys hade he mo’; Thornton Romances, Sir Percival, l. 1353. See note to l. 1536.

1376. in his celle fantastyk. Tyrwhitt reads Beforne his hed in his celle fantastike. Elles. has Biforn his owene celle fantastik. ‘The division of the brain into cells, according to the different sensitive faculties, is very ancient, and is found depicted in medieval manuscripts. The fantastic cell (fantasia) was in front of the head.’—Wright. Hence Biforen means ‘in the front part of his head.’

‘Madnesse is infection of the formost cel of the head, with priuation of imagination, lyke as melancholye is the infection of the middle cell of the head, with priuation of reason, as Constant. saith in libro de Melancolia. Melancolia (saith he) is an infection that hath mastry of the soule, the which commeth of dread and of sorrow. And these passions be diuerse after the diuersity of the hurt of their workings; for by madnesse that is called Mania, principally the imagination is hurt; and in the other reson is hurted.’—Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 6. Vincent of Beauvais, bk. xxviii. c. 41, cites a similar statement from the Liber de Anatomia, which begins:—‘Cerebrum itaque tribus cellulis est distinctum. Duae namque meringes cerebri faciunt tres plicaturas inter se denexas, in quibus tres sunt cellulae: phantastica scilicet ab anteriori parte capitis, in qua sedem habet imaginatio.’ So in Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. v. c. 3:—‘The Braine . . . is diuided in three celles or dens . . . In the formost cell . . . imagination is conformed and made; in the middle, reason; in the hindermost, recordation and minde’ [memory]. Cf. also Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, pt. 2. sec. 3. mem. 1. subsec. 2.

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1385–8. Probably from Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, i. 77:—

‘Cyllenius astitit ales,

Somniferam quatiens uirgam, tectusque galero.’

See Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 382.

1390. Argus, Argus of the hundred eyes, whom Mercury charmed to sleep before slaying him. Ovid, Met. i. 714.

1401. Cf. ‘Hir face . . . Was al ychaunged in another kinde’; Troil. iv. 864.

1405. bar him lowe, conducted himself as one of low estate. Cf. E. 2013.

1409. Cf. ‘in maniera di pover valletto’; Tes. iv. 22.

1428. In the Teseide, iv. 3, he takes the name of Penteo. Philostrato is the name of another work by Boccaccio, answering to Chaucer’s Troilus. The Greek ϕιλόστρατος means, literally, ‘army-lover’; but it is to be noted that Boccaccio did not so understand it. He actually connected it with the Lat. stratus, and explained it to mean ‘vanquished or prostrated with love’; and this is how the name is here used.

1444. slyly, prudently, wisely. The M. E. sleigh, sly=wise, knowing: and sleight=wisdom, knowledge. (For change of meaning compare cunning, originally knowledge; craft, originally power; art, &c.)

‘Ne swa sleygh payntur never nan was,

Thogh his sleght mught alle other pas,

That couthe ymagyn of þair [devils’] gryslynes.’

Hampole’s Pricke of Consc., ll. 2308, 2309.—M.

1463. The third night is followed by the fourth day; so Palamon and Arcite meet on the 4th of May (l. 1574), which was a Friday (l. 1534); the first hour of which was dedicated to Venus (l. 1536) and to lovers’ vows (l. 1501). The 4th of May was a Friday in 1386.

1471. clarree. ‘The French term claré seems simply to have denoted a clear transparent wine, but in its most usual sense a compounded drink of wine with honey and spices, so delicious as to be comparable to the nectar of the gods. In Sloane MS. 2584, f. 173, the following directions are found for making clarré:—“Take a galoun of honi, and skome (skim) it wel, and loke whanne it is isoden (boiled), that ther be a galoun; thanne take viii galouns of red wyn, than take a pound of pouder canel (cinnamon), and half a pounde of pouder gynger, and a quarter of a pounde of pouder peper, and medle (mix) alle these thynges togeder and (with) the wyn; and do hym in a clene barelle, and stoppe it fast, and rolle it wel ofte sithes, as men don verious, iii dayes.” ’—Way; note to Prompt. Parv., p. 79. ‘The Craft to make Clarre’ is also given in Arnold’s Chronicle of London; and see the Gloss. to the Babees Book. See Rom. of the Rose, 5971.

1472. Burton mentions ‘opium Thebaicum,’ which produced stupefaction; Anat. Met. pt. 3. sec. 2. mem. 6. subsec. 2. The words ‘Opium Thebaicum’ are written in the margin in MSS. E. and Hn.

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1477. nedes-cost, for needes coste, by the force of necessity. It seems to be equivalent to M.E. needes-wyse, of necessity. Alre-coste (Icelandic alls-kostar, in all respects) signifies ‘in every wise.’ It occurs in Old English Homilies (ed. Morris), part i. p. 21: ‘We ne maȝen alre-coste halden Crist(es) bibode,’ we are not able in every wise to keep Christ’s behests. The right reading in Leg. Good Women, 2697, is:—

‘And nedes cost this thing mot have an ende.’

1494. A beautiful line; but copied from Dante, Purg. i. 20—‘Faceva tutto rider l’oriente.’

1500. See note to l. 1047, where the parallel line from Shakespeare is quoted. And cf. Troil. ii. 112—‘And lat us don to May som observaunce.’ See the interesting article on May-day Customs in Brand’s Popular Antiquities (where the quotation from Stubbes will be found); also Chambers, Book of Days, i. 577, where numerous passages relating to May are cited from old poems. An early passage relative to the 1st of May occurs in the Orologium Sapientiae, printed in Anglia, x. 387:—‘And thanne is the custome of dyuerse contrees that yonge folke gone on the nyghte or erely on the morow to Medowes and woddes, and there they kutten downe bowes that haue fayre grene leves, and arayen hem with flowres; and after they setten hem byfore the dores where they trowe to haue amykes [friends?] in her lovers, in token of frendschip and trewe loue.’ And see May-day in Nares.

1502. From the Legend of Good Women, 1204.

1508. Were it = if it were only.

1509. So in Troilus, ii. 920:—

‘Ful loude sang ayein the mone shene.’

1522. ‘Veld haueð hege, and wude haueð heare,’ i.e. ‘Field hath eye, and wood hath ear.’

‘Campus habet lumen, et habet nemus auris acumen.’

This old proverb, with Latin version, occurs in MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. O. 2. 45, and is quoted by Mr. T. Wright in his Essays on England in the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 168. Cf. Cotgrave’s F. Dict. s. v. Oeillet.

‘Das Feld hat Augen, der Wald hat Ohren’; Ida von Düringsfeld, Sprichwörter, vol. i. no. 453.

1524. at unset stevene, at a meeting not previously fixed upon, an unexpected meeting or appointment. This was a proverbial saying, as is evident from the way in which it is quoted in Sir Eglamour, 1282 (Thornton Romances, p. 174):—

‘Hyt ys sothe seyde, be God of heven,

Mony metyn at on-sett stevyn.’

Cf. ‘Wee may chance to meet with Robin Hood

Here att some unsett steven.’

Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne; in Percy’s

Reliques of Eng. Poetry.

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‘Thei setten steuen,’ they made an appointment; Knight de la Tour-Landry, ch. iii. And see below, The Cokes Tale:

‘And ther they setten steven for to mete’; A. 4383.

1531. hir queynte geres, their strange behaviours.

1532. Now in the top (i. e. elevated, in high spirits), now down in the briars (i. e. depressed, in low spirits).

‘Allas! where is this worldes stabilnesse?

Here up, here doune; here honour, here repreef;

Now hale, now sike; now bounté, now myscheef.’

Occleve, De Reg. Princip. p. 2.

1533. boket in a welle. Cf. Shakespeare’s Richard II., iv. 1. 184. ‘Like so many buckets in a well; as one riseth another falleth, one’s empty, another’s full.’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. p. 33.

1536. gery, changeable; so also gerful in l. 1538. Observe also the sb. gere, a changeable mood, in ll. 1372, 1531, and Book of the Duchesse, 1257. This very scarce word deserves illustration. Mätzner’s Dictionary gives us some examples.

‘By revolucion and turning of the yere

A gery March his stondis doth disclose,

Nowe reyne, nowe storme, nowe Phebus bright and clere.’

Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 24.

‘Her gery Iaces,’ their changeful ribands; Richard Redeless, iii. 130.

‘Now gerysshe, glad and anoon aftir wrothe.’

Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 245.

‘In gerysshe Marche’; id. 243. ‘Gerysshe, wylde or lyght-headed’; Palsgrave’s Dict., p. 313. In Skelton’s poem of Ware the Hauke (ed. Dyce, i. 157) we find:—

‘His seconde hawke wexid gery,

And was with flying wery.’

Dyce, in his note upon the word, quotes two passages from Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, B. iii. c. 10. leaf 77, and B. vi. c. 1. leaf 134.

‘Howe gery fortune, furyous and wode.’

‘And, as a swalowe geryshe of her flyghte,

Twene slowe and swyfte, now croked, now upright.’

Two more occur in the same, B. iii. c. 8, and B. iv. c. 8.

‘The gery Romayns, stormy and unstable.’

‘The geryshe quene, of chere and face double.’

See also in his Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. B 6, back, col. 2; &c.

1539. A writer in Notes and Queries quotes the following Devonshire proverb: ‘Fridays in the week are never aleek,’ i. e. Fridays are unlike other days.

‘Vendredy de la semaine est

Le plus beau ou le plus laid’;

Recueil des Contes, par A. Jubinal, p. 375.

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1566. Compare Legend of Good Women, 2629:—

‘Sin first that day that shapen was my sherte,

Or by the fatal sustren had my dom.’

So also in Troil. iii. 733.

1593. I drede noght, I have no fear, I doubt not.

1594. outher . . . or = either . . . or.

1609. To darreyne hir, to decide the right to her. Spenser is very fond of this word; see F. Q. i. 4. 40; i. 7. 11; ii. 2. 26; iii. i. 20; iv. 4. 26, 5. 24; v. 2. 15; vi. 7. 41. See deraisnier in Godefroy’s O. Fr. Dict.

1622. to borwe. This expression has the same force as to wedde, in pledge. See l. 1218.

1625. The expression ‘sooth is seyd’ shews that Chaucer is here introducing a quotation. The original passage is the following, from the Roman de la Rose, 8487:—

‘Bien savoient cele parole,

Qui n’est mençongiere ne fole:

Qu’onques Amor et Seignorie

Ne s’entrefirent companie,

Ne ne demorerent ensemble.’

Again, the expression ‘cele parole’ shews that Jean de Meun is also here quoting from another, viz. from Ovid, Met. ii. 846:—

‘Non bene conueniunt, nec in una sede morantur

Maiestas et Amor.’

1626. his thankes, willingly, with good-will; cf. l. 2107. Cf. M. E. myn unthonkes = ingratis. ‘He faught with them in batayle their unthankes’; Hardyng’s Chronicle, p. 112.—M.

1638. Cf. Teseide, vii. 106, 119; Statius, Theb. iv. 494–9.

1654. Foynen, thrust, push. It is a mistake to explain this, as usual, by ‘fence,’ as fence (= defence) suggests parrying; whereas foinen means to thrust or push, as in attack, not as in defence. It occurs again in l. 2550. Hence it is commonly used of the pushing with spears.

‘With speres ferisly [fiercely] they foynede.’

Sir Degrevant, 274 (Thornton, Rom. p. 188).

Strutt (Sports and Pastimes, bk. iii. c. 1. § 32) explains that a thrust is more dangerous than a cut, and quotes the old advice, that ‘to foyne is better than to smyte.’ ‘And there kyng Arthur smote syr Mordred vnder the shelde wyth a foyne of his spere thorughoute the body more than a fadom’; Sir T. Malory, Morte Darthur, bk. xxi. c. 4. This was a foine indeed!

1656. Deficient in the foot. Scan:—In | his fight | ing, &c. The usual insertion of as before a is wholly unauthorised.

1665. hath seyn biforn, hath foreseen. Cf. Teseide, vi. 1.

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1668. From the Teseide, v. 77. Compare the medieval proverb:—‘Hoc facit una dies quod totus denegat annus.’ Quoted in Die älteste deutsche Litteratur; by Paul Piper (1884); p. 283.

1676. ther daweth him no day, no day dawns upon him.

1678. hunte, hunter, huntsman; whence Hunt as a surname. I find this form as late as in Gascoigne’s Art of Venerie: ‘I am the Hunte’; Works, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 306.

1698. Similarly, Adrastus stopped the fight between Tydeus and Polynices; Statius, Theb. i. Lydgate describes this in his Siege of Thebes, pt. ii, and takes occasion to borrow several expressions from this part of the Knightes Tale.

1706. Ho, an exclamation made by heralds, to stop the fight. It was also used to enjoin silence. See ll. 2533, 2656; Troil. iv. 1242.

1707. Up peyne is the old phrase; as in ‘up peyne of emprisonement of 40 days’; Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 580.

1736. it am I. ‘This is the regular construction in early English. In modern English the pronoun it is regarded as the direct nominative, and I as forming part of the predicate.’—M.

1739. ‘Therefore I ask my death and my doom.’

1747. Mars the rede. Boccaccio uses the same epithet in the opening of his Teseide, i. 3: ‘O Marte rubicondo.’ Rede refers to the colour of the planet; cf. Anelida, 1.

1761. This line occurs again three times; March. Tale E. 1986; Squieres Tale, F. 479; Legend of Good Women, 503.

1780. can no divisoun, knows no distinction.

1781. after oon = after one mode, according to the same rule.

1783. eyen lighte, cheerful looks.

1785. See the Romaunt of the Rose, 878–884; vol. i. p. 130.

1799. ‘Amare et Sapere vix Deo conceditur.’—Publius Syrus, Sent. 15. Cf. Adv. of Learning, ii. proem. § 15—‘It is not granted to man to love and to be wise’; ed. Wright, p. 84. So also in Bacon’s 10th Essay. The reading here given is correct. Fool is used with great emphasis; the sense is:—‘Who can be a (complete) fool, unless he is in love?’ The old printed editions have the same reading. The Harl. MS. alone has if that for but-if, giving the sense: ‘Who can be fool, if he is in love?’ As this is absurd, Mr. Wright silently inserted not after may, and is followed by Bell and Morris; but the latter prints not in italics. Observe that the line is deficient in the first foot. Read:—Whó | may bé | a fóol, &c.

1807. jolitee, joyfulness—said of course ironically.

1808. Can . . . thank, acknowledges an obligation, owes thanks.

1814. a servant, i. e. a lover. This sense of servant, as a term of gallantry, is common in our dramatists.

1815, 1818. Cf. the Teseide, v. 92.

1837. looth or leef, displeasing or pleasing.

1838. pypen in an ivy leef is an expression like ‘blow the buck’s-horn’ in A. 3387, meaning to console oneself with any frivolous employment; Edition: current; Page: [75] it occurs again in Troilus, v. 1433. Cf. the expression ‘to go and whistle.’ Cf. ‘farwel the gardiner; he may pipe with an yue-leafe; his fruite is failed’; Test. of Love, bk. iii; ed. 1561, fol. 316. Boys still blow against a leaf, and produce a squeak. Lydgate uses similar expressions:—

‘But let his brother blowe in an horn,

Where that him list, or pipe in a reede.’

Destruction of Thebes, part ii.

Again, in Hazlitt’s Proverbs, we find ‘To go blow one’s flute,’ which is taken from an old proverb. In Vox Populi Vox Dei (circa 1547), pr. in Hazlitt’s Popular Poetry, iii. 284, are the lines:—

‘When thei have any sute,

Thei maye goo blowe theire flute,

This goithe the comon brute.’

The custom is old. Cf. Zenobius, i. 19 (Paroem. Graec. I. p. 6):—

ᾄδειν πρὸς μυρρίνην· ἔθος ἠ̑ν τὸν μὴ δυνάμενον ἐν τοι̑ς συμποσίοις ᾀ̑σαι, δύϕνης κλω̑να ἠ̑ μυρρίνης λαβόντα πρὸς του̑τον ᾄδειν.

1850. fer ne ner, farther nor nearer, neither more nor less. ‘After some little trouble, I have arrived at the conclusion that Chaucer has given us sufficient data for ascertaining both the days of the month and of the week of many of the principal events of the “Knightes Tale.” The following scheme will explain many things hitherto unnoticed.

‘On Friday, May 4, before 1 a. m., Palamon breaks out of prison. For (l. 1463) it was during the “third night of May, but (l. 1467) a little after midnight.” That it was Friday is evident also, from observing that Palamon hides himself at day’s approach, whilst Arcite rises “for to doon his observance to May, remembring on the poynt of his desyr.” To do this best, he would go into the fields at sunrise (l. 1491), during the hour dedicated to Venus, i. e. during the hour after sunrise on a Friday. If however this seem for a moment doubtful, all doubt is removed by the following lines:—

“Right as the Friday, soothly for to telle,

Now it shyneth, now it reyneth faste,

Right so gan gery Venus overcaste

The hertes of hir folk; right as hir day

Is gerful, right so chaungeth she array.

Selde is the Friday al the wyke ylyke.”

‘All this is very little to the point unless we suppose Friday to be the day. Or, if the reader have still any doubt about this, let him observe the curious accumulation of evidence which is to follow.

‘Palamon and Arcite meet, and a duel is arranged for an early hour on the day following. That is, they meet on Saturday, May 5. But, as Saturday is presided over by the inauspicious planet Saturn, it is no wonder that they are both unfortunate enough to have their duel Edition: current; Page: [76] interrupted by Theseus, and to find themselves threatened with death. Still, at the intercession of the queen and Emily, a day of assembly for a tournament is fixed for “this day fifty wykes” (l. 1850). Now we must understand “fifty wykes” to be a poetical expression for a year. This is not mere supposition, however, but a certainty; because the appointed day was in the month of May, whereas fifty weeks and no more would land us in April. Then “this day fyfty wekes” means “this day year,” viz. on May 5. [In fact, Boccaccio has ‘un anno intero’; Tes. v. 98.]

‘Now, in the year following (supposed not a leap-year), the 5th of May would be Sunday. But this we are expressly told in l. 2188. It must be noted, however, that this is not the day of the tournament1, but of the muster for it, as may be gleaned from ll. 1850–1854 and 2096. The eleventh hour “inequal” of Sunday night, or the second hour before sunrise of Monday, is dedicated to Venus, as explained by Tyrwhitt (l. 2217); and therefore Palamon then goes to the temple of Venus. The next hour is dedicated to Mercury. The third hour, the first after sunrise on Monday, is dedicated to Luna or Diana, and during this Emily goes to Diana’s temple. The fourth after sunrise is dedicated to Mars, and therefore Arcite then goes to the temple of Mars. But the rest of the day is spent merely in jousting and preparations—

“Al that Monday justen they and daunce.” (l. 2486.)

The tournament therefore takes place on Tuesday, May 7, on the day of the week presided over by Mars, as was very fitting; and this perhaps helps to explain Saturn’s exclamation in l. 2669, “Mars hath his wille.” ’—Walter W. Skeat, in Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, ii. 2, 3; Sept. 12, 1868 (since slightly corrected).

To this was added the observation, that May 5 was on a Saturday in 1386, and on a Sunday in 1387. Ten Brink (Studien, p. 189) thinks it is of no value; but the coincidence is curious.

1866. ‘Except that one of you shall be either slain or taken prisoner’; i. e. one of you must be fairly conquered.

1884. listes, lists. ‘The lists for the tilts and tournaments resembled those, I doubt not, appointed for the ordeal combats, which, according to the rules established by Thomas, duke of Gloucester, uncle to Richard II., were as follows. The king shall find the field to fight in, and the lists shall be made and devised by the constable; and it is to be observed, that the list must be 60 paces long and 40 paces broad, set up in good order, and the ground within hard, stable, and level, without any great stones or other impediments; also, that the lists must be made with one door to the east, and another to the west [see Edition: current; Page: [77] ll. 1893, 4]; and strongly barred about with good bars 7 feet high or more, so that a horse may not be able to leap over them.’—Strutt, Sports and Pastimes; bk. iii. c. 1. § 23.

1889. The various parts of this round theatre are subsequently described. On the North was the turret of Diana, with an oratory; on the East the gate of Venus, with altar and oratory above; on the West the gate of Mars, similarly provided.

1890. Ful of degrees, full of steps (placed one above another, as in an amphitheatre). ‘But now they have gone a nearer way to the wood, for with wooden galleries in the church that they have, and stairy degrees of seats in them, they make as much room to sit and hear, as a new west end would have done.’—Nash’s Red Herring, p. 21. See Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, ii. 126, and also 2 Kings xx. 9. Cf. ‘While she stey up from gre to gre.’—Lives of Saints, Roxb. Club, p. 59. Lines 1187–1894 are more or less imitated from the Teseide, vii. 108–110.

1910. Coral is a curious material to use for such a purpose; but we find posts of coral and a palace chiefly formed of coral and metal in Guy of Warwick, ed. Zupitza, 11399–11401.

1913. don wroght, caused (to be) made; observe this idiom. Cf. don yow kept, E. 1098; han doon fraught, B. 171; haf gert saltit, Bruce, xviii. 168.

1918–32. See the analysis of this passage in vol. iii. p. 390.

1919. on the wal, viz. on the walls within the oratory. The description is loosely imitated from Boccaccio’s Teseide, vii. 55–59. It is remarkable that there is a much closer imitation of the same passage in Chaucer’s Parl. of Foules, ll. 183–294. Thus at l. 246 of that poem we find:—

‘Within the temple, of syghes hote as fyr,

I herde a swogh, that gan aboute renne;

Which syghes were engendred with desyr,

That maden every auter for to brenne

Of newe flaume; and wel aspyed I thenne

That al the cause of sorwes that they drye

Com of the bitter goddesse Ialousye.’

There is yet another description of the temple of Venus in the House of Fame, 119–139, where we have the very line ‘Naked fletinge in a see’ (cf. l. 1956 below), and a mention of the ‘rose garlond’ (cf. l. 1961), and of ‘Hir dowves and daun Cupido’ (cf. ll. 1962–3).

1929. golde, a marigold; Calendula. ‘Goolde, herbe: Solsequium, quia sequitur solem, elitropium, calendula’; Prompt. Parv. The cornmarigold in the North is called goulans, guilde, or goles, and in the South, golds (Way). Gower says that Leucothea was changed

‘Into a floure was named golde,

Which stant governed of the sonne.’

Conf. Am., ed. Pauli, ii. 356.

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Yellow is the colour of jealousy; see Yellowness in Nares. In the Rom. de la Rose, 22037, Jealousy is described as wearing a ‘chapel de soussie,’ i. e. a chaplet of marigolds.

1936. Citheroun=Cithaeron, sacred to Venus; as said in the Rom. de la Rose, 15865, q. v.

1940. In the Romaunt of the Rose, Idleness is the porter of the garden in which the rose (Beauty) is kept. In the Parl. of Foules, 261, the porter’s name is Richesse. Cf. ll. 2, 3 of the Second Nonnes Tale (G. 2, 3).

1941. of yore agon, of years gone by. Cf. Ovid, Met. iii. 407.

1953–4. Imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 16891–2.

1955. The description of Venus here given has some resemblance to that given in cap. v (De Venere) of Albrici Philosophi De Deorum Imaginibus Libellus, in an edition of the Mythographi Latini, Amsterdam, 1681, vol. ii. p. 304. I transcribe as much as is material. ‘Pingebatur Venus pulcherrima puella, nuda, et in mari natans; et in manu sua dextra concham marinam tenens atque gestans; rosisque candidis et rubris sertum gerebat in capite ornatum, et columbis circa se volando, comitabatur. . . . Hinc et Cupido filius suus alatus et caecus assistebat, qui sagitta et arcu, quos tenebat, Apollinem sagittabat.’ It is clear that Chaucer had consulted some such description as this; see further in the note to l. 2041.

1958. Cf. ‘wawes . . clere as glas’; Boeth. bk. i. met. 7. 4.

1971. estres, the inner parts of a building; as also in A. 4295 and Leg. of Good Women, 1715. ‘To spere the estyrs of Rome’; Le Bone Florence, 293; in Ritson, Met. Rom. iii. 13. See also Cursor Mundi, 2252.

‘For thow knowest better then I

Al the estris of this house.’

Pardoner and Tapster, 556; pr. with Tale of Beryn (below).

‘His sportis [portes?] and his estris’; Tale of Beryn, ed. Furnivall, 837. Cf. ‘Qu’il set bien de l’ostel les estres’; Rom. de la Rose, 12720; and see Rom. of the Rose, 1448 (vol. i. p. 153).

By mistaking the long s (ſ) for f, this word has been misprinted as eftures in the following: ‘Pleaseth it yow to see the eftures of this castel?’—Sir Thomas Malory, Mort Arthure, b. xix. c. 7.

1979. a rumbel and a swough, a rumbling and a sound of wind.

1982. Mars armipotente.

‘O thou rede Marz armypotente,

That in the trende baye hase made thy throne;

That God arte of bataile and regent,

And rulist all that alone;

To whom I profre precious present,

To the makande my moone

With herte, body and alle myn entente,

. . . . . .

In worshipe of thy reverence

On thyn owen Tewesdaye.’

Sowdone of Babyloyne, ll. 939–953.

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The word armipotent is borrowed from Boccaccio’s armipotente, in the Teseide, vii. 32. Other similar borrowings occur hereabouts, too numerous for mention. Note that this description of the temple of Mars once belonged to the end of the poem of Anelida, which see.

Let the reader take particular notice that the temple here described (ll. 1982–1994) is merely a painted temple, depicted on one of the walls inside the oratory of Mars. The walls of the other temples had paintings similar to those inside the temple of which the outside is here depicted. Chaucer describes the painted temple as if it were real, which is somewhat confusing. Inconsistent additions were made in revision.

1984. streit, narrow; ‘la stretta entrata’; Tes. vii. 32.

1985. vese is glossed impetus in the Ellesmere MS., and means ‘rush’ or ‘hurrying blast.’ It is allied to M.E. fesen, to drive, which is Shakespeare’s pheeze. Copied from ‘salit Impetus amens E foribus’; Theb. vii. 47, 48.

1986. rese=to shake, quake. ‘Þe eorðe gon to-rusien,’ ‘the earth gan to shake.’—Laȝamon, l. 15946. To resye, to shake, occurs in Ayenbite of Inwyt, pp. 23, 116. Cf. also—‘The tre aresede as hit wold falle’; Seven Sages, ed. Weber, l. 915. A. S. hrysian.

1987. ‘I suppose the northern light is the aurora borealis, but this phenomenon is so rarely mentioned by mediaeval writers, that it may be questioned whether Chaucer meant anything more than the faint and cold illumination received by reflexion through the door of an apartment fronting the north.’ (Marsh.) The fact is, however, that Chaucer here copies Statius, Theb. vii. 40–58; see the translation in the note to l. 2017 below. The ‘northern light’ seems to be an incorrect rendering of ‘aduersum Phoebi iubar’; l. 45.

1990. ‘E le porte eran d’eterno diamante’; Teseide, vii. 32. Such is the reading given by Warton. However, the ultimate source is the phrase in Statius—‘adamante perenni . . . fores’; Theb. vii. 68.

1991. overthwart, &c., across and along (i.e. from top to bottom). The same phrase occurs in Rich. Coer de Lion, 2649, in Weber, Met. Romances, ii. 104.

1997, 8. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 33:—

‘Videvi l’ Ire rosse, come fuoco,

E le Paure pallide in quel loco.’

But Chaucer follows Statius still more closely. Ll. 1195–2012 answer to Theb. vii. 48–53:—

—‘caecumque Nefas, Iraeque rubentes,

Exsanguesque Metus, occultisque ensibus astant

Insidiae, geminumque tenens Discordia ferrum.

Innumeris strepit aula minis; tristissima Virtus

Stat medio, laetusque Furor, uultuque cruento

Mars armata sedet.’

1999. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 7419–20.

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2001. See Chaucer’s Legend of Hypermnestra.

2003. ‘Discordia, contake’; Glossary in Reliquiae Antiquac, i. 7.

2004. chirking is used of grating and creaking sounds; and sometimes, of the cry of birds. The Lansd. MS. has schrikeinge (shrieking). See House of Fame, iii. 853 (or 1943). In Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 29, the music of the spheres is attributed to the ‘cherkyng of the mouing of the circles, and of the roundnes of heauen.’ In Chaucer’s tr. of Boethius, bk. i. met. 6, it is an adj., and translates stridens. Cf. D. 1804, I. 605.

2007. This line contains an allusion to the death of Sisera, Judges iv. But Dr. Koch has pointed out (Essays on Chaucer, Chaucer Soc. iv. 371) that we have here some proof that Chaucer may have altered his first draft of the poem without taking sufficient heed to what he was about. The original line may have stood—

‘The sleer of her husband saw I there’—

or something of that kind; for the reason that no suicide has ever yet been known to drive a nail into his own head. That a wife might do so to her husband is Chaucer’s own statement; for, in the Cant. Tales, D. 765–770, we find—

‘Of latter date, of wives hath he red,

That somme han slayn hir housbondes in hir bed . . .

And somme han drive nayles in hir brayn,

Whyl that they slepte, and thus they han hem slayn.’

Of course it may be said that l. 2006 is entirely independent of l. 2007, and I have punctuated the text so as to suit this arrangement; but the suggestion is worth notice.

2011. From Tes. vii. 35:—‘Videvi ancora l’allegro Furore,’—Kölbing.

2017. hoppesteres. Speght explains this word by pilots (gubernaculum tenentes); Tyrwhitt, female dancers (Ital. ballatrice). Others explain it hopposteres=opposteres=opposing, hostile, so that schippes hoppesteres=bellatrices carinae (Statius). As, however, it is impossible to suppose that even opposteres without the h can ever have been formed from the verb to oppose, the most likely solution is that Chaucer mistook the word bellatrices in Statius (vii. 57) or the corresponding Ital. word bellatrici in the Teseide, vii. 37, for ballatrices or ballatrici, which might be supposed to mean ‘female dancers’; an expression which would exactly correspond to an M.E. form hoppesteres, from the A. S. hoppestre, a female dancer. Herodias’ daughter is mentioned (in the dative case) as þære lyðran hoppystran (better spelt hoppestran) in Ælfric’s A. S. Homilies, ed. Thorpe, i. 484. Hence shippes hoppesteres simply means ‘dancing ships.’ Shakespeare likens the English fleet to ‘A city on the inconstant billows dancing’; Hen. V. iii. prol. 15. Cf. O. F. baleresse, a female dancer, in Godefroy’s Dict., s. v. baleor. In § 55 of Cl. Ptolomaci Centum Dicta, printed at Ulm in 1641, we are told that Mars is hostile to ships when in the zenith or the Edition: current; Page: [81] eleventh house. ‘Incendetur autem nauis, si ascendens ab aliqua stella fixa quae ex Martis mixtura sit, affligetur.’ So that, if a fixed star co-operated with Mars, the ships were burnt.

The following extract from Lewis’ translation of Statius’ Thebaid, bk. vii., is of some interest:—

‘Beneath the fronting height of Æmus stood

The fane of Mars, encompass’d by a wood.

The mansion, rear’d by more than mortal hands,

On columns fram’d of polish’d iron stands;

The well-compacted walls are plated o’er

With the same metal; just without the door

A thousand Furies frown. The dreadful gleam,

That issues from the sides, reflects the beam

Of adverse Phœbus, and with cheerless light

Saddens the day, and starry host of night.

Well his attendants suit the dreary place;

First frantic Passion, Wrath with redd’ning face,

And Mischief blind from forth the threshold start;

Within lurks pallid Fear with quiv’ring heart,

Discord, a two-edged falchion in her hand,

And Treach’ry, striving to conceal the brand.’

2020. for al, notwithstanding. Cf. Piers the Plowman, B. xix. 274.

2021. infortune of Marte. ‘Tyrwhitt thinks that Chaucer might intend to be satirical in these lines; but the introduction of such apparently undignified incidents arose from the confusion already mentioned of the god of war with the planet to which his name was given, and the influence of which was supposed to produce all the disasters here mentioned. The following extract from the Compost of Ptolemeus gives some of the supposed effects of Mars:—“Under Mars is borne theves and robbers that kepe hye wayes, and do hurte to true men, and nyght-walkers, and quarell-pykers, bosters, mockers, and skoffers, and these men of Mars causeth warre and murther, and batayle; they wyll be gladly smythes or workers of yron, lyght-fyngred, and lyers, gret swerers of othes in vengeable wyse, and a great surmyler and crafty. He is red and angry, with blacke heer, and lytell iyen; he shall be a great walker, and a maker of swordes and knyves, and a sheder of mannes blode, and a fornycatour, and a speker of rybawdry . . . and good to be a barboure and a blode-letter, and to drawe tethe, and is peryllous of his handes.” The following extract is from an old astrological book of the sixteenth century:—“Mars denoteth men with red faces and the skinne redde, the face round, the eyes yellow, horrible to behold, furious men, cruell, desperate, proude, sedicious, souldiers, captaines, smythes, colliers, bakers, alcumistes, armourers, furnishers, butchers, chirurgions, barbers, sargiants, and hangmen, according as they shal be well or evill disposed.” ’—Wright. So also in Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, lib. i. c. 22. Edition: current; Page: [82] Chaucer has ‘cruel Mars’ in The Man of Lawes Tale, B. 301; and cf. note to A. 1087.

2022. From Statius, Theb. vii. 58:—

‘Et uacui currus, protritaque curribus ora.’

2029. For the story of Damocles, see Cicero, Tuscul. 5. 61; cf. Horace, Od. iii. 1. 17. And see Chaucer’s tr. of Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 5. 17. Most likely Chaucer got it from Boethius or from the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 143, since the name of Damocles is omitted.

2037. sterres (Harl.) Elles. &c. have certres (sertres); but this strange reading can hardly be other than a mistake for sterres, which is proved to be the right word by the parallel passage in The Man of Lawes Tale, B. 194–6.

2041. In the note to l. 1955, I have quoted part of cap. v. of a work by Albricus. In cap. iii. (De Marte) of the same, we have a description of Mars, which should be compared. I quote all that is material. ‘Erat enim eius figura tanquam unius hominis furibundi, in curru sedens, armatus lorica, et caeteris armis offensiuis et defensiuis. . . Ante illum uero lupus ouem portans pingebatur, quia illud scilicet animal ab antiquis gentibus ipsi Marti specialiter consecratum est. Iste enim Mauors est, id est mares uorans, eo quod bellorum deus a gentibus dictus est.’ Chaucer seems to have taken the notion of the wolf devouring a man from this singular etymology of Mauors.

In cap. vii. (De Diana) of the same, there is a description of ‘Diana, quae et Luna, Proserpina, Hecate nuncupatur.’ Cf. l. 2313 below.

2045. ‘The names of two figures in geomancy, representing two constellations in heaven. Puella signifieth Mars retrogade, and Rubeus Mars direct.’—Note in Speght’s Chaucer. It is obvious that this explanation is wrong as regards ‘Mars retrograde’ and ‘Mars direct,’ because a constellation cannot represent a single planet. It happens to be also wrong as regards ‘constellations in heaven.’ But Speght is correct in the main point, viz., that Puella and Rubeus are ‘the names of two figures in geomancy.’ Geomancy was described, under the title of ‘Divination by Spotting,’ in The Saturday Review, Feb. 16, 1889. To form geomantic figures, proceed thus. Take a pencil, and hurriedly jot down on a paper a number of dots in a line, without counting them. Do the same three times more. Now count the dots, to see whether they are odd or even. If the dots in a line are odd, put down one dot on another small paper, half-way across it. If they are even, put down two dots, one towards each side; arranging the results in four rows, one beneath the other.

Three of the figures thus formed require our attention; the whole number being sixteen. Fig. 1 results from the dots being odd, even, odd, odd. Fig. 2, from even, odd, even, even. Fig. 3, from odd, odd, even, odd. These (as well as the rest of the sixteen figures) are given in Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, lib. ii. cap. 48: De Figuris Geomanticis. Each ‘Figure’ had a ‘Name,’ belonged to an Edition: current; Page: [83] ‘Element,’ and possessed a ‘Planet’ and a Zodiacal ‘Sign.’ Cornelius Agrippa gives our three ‘figures’ as below.

Fig. 1 (Puella). Fig. 2 (Rubeus). Fig. 3 (Puer). That is, Fig. 1 is ‘Puella,’ or ‘Mundus facie’; element, water; planet, Venus; sign, Libra.

Fig. 2 is ‘Rubeus’ or ‘Rufus’; element, fire; planet, Mars; sign, Gemini.

Fig. 3 is ‘Puer,’ or ‘Flavus,’ or ‘Imberbis’; element, fire; planet, Mars; sign, Aries.

Chaucer (or some one else) seems to have confused figures 1 and 3, or Puer with Puella; for Puella was dedicated to Venus. Rubeus is clearly right, as Mars was the red planet (l. 1747). I first explained this, somewhat more fully, in The Academy, March 2, 1889.

2049. From Tes. vii. 38:—‘E tal ricetto edificato avea Mulcibero sottil colla sua arte.’—Kölbing, in Engl. Studien, ii. 528.

2056. Calistopee=Callisto, a daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, and companion of Diana. See Ovid’s Fasti, ii. 153; Gower, Conf. Amantis, ed. Pauli, ii. 336.

2059, 2061. ‘Cf. Ovid’s Fasti, ii. 153–192; especially 189, 190,

“Signa propinqua micant. Prior est, quam dicimus Arcton,

Arctophylax formam terga sequentis habet.”

The nymph Callisto was changed into Arctos or the Great Bear; hence “Vrsa Maior” is written in the margin of E. Hn. Cp. Ln. This was sometimes confused with the other Arctos or Lesser Bear, in which was situate the lodestar or Polestar. Chaucer has followed this error. Callisto’s son, Arcas, was changed into Arctophylax or Boötes: here again Chaucer says a sterre, when he means a whole constellation; as, perhaps, he does in other passages.’—Chaucer’s Astrolabe, ed. Skeat (E. E. T. S.), pp. xlviii, xlix.

2062, 2064. Dane=Daphne, a girl beloved by Apollo, and changed into a laurel. See Ovid’s Metamorph. i. 450; Gower, Conf. Amantis, ed. Pauli, i. 336; Troilus, iii. 726.

2065. Attheon=Actaeon. See Ovid’s Metamorph. iii. 138.

2070. Atthalante=Atalanta. See Ovid’s Metamorph. x. 560; and Troilus, v. 1471.

2074. nat drawen to memoric=not draw to memory, not call to mind.

2079. Cf. ‘gawdy greene. subviridis’; Prompt. Parv. This gaudè has nothing whatever to do with the E. sb. gaud, but answers to F. gaudé, the pp. of the verb gauder, to dye with weld; from the F. sb. gaude, weld. As to weld, see my note to The Former Age, 17; in Edition: current; Page: [84] vol. i. p. 540. Littré has an excellent example of the word: ‘Les bleus teints en indigo doivent être gaudés, et ils deviennent verts.’

2086. thou mayst best, art best able to help, thou hast most power. Lucina was a title both of Juno and Diana; see Vergil, Ecl. iv. 10.

2112. Here paramours is used adverbially, like paramour in l. 1155. From Le Roman de la Rose, 20984:—‘Jamès par amors n’ ameroit.’

2115. benedicite is here pronounced as a trisyllable, viz. ben’cite. It usually is so, though five syllables in l. 1785. Cf. benste in Towneley Myst. p. 85. Cf. ‘What, liveth nat thy lady, benedicite!’ Troil. i. 780. Benedicite is equivalent to ‘thank God,’ and was used in saying graces. See Babees Book, pp. 382, 386; and Appendix, p. 9.

2125. This line seems to mean that there is nothing new under the sun.

2129. This is the ‘re Licurgo’ of the Teseide, vi. 14; and the Lycurgus of the Thebaid, iv. 386, and of Homer, Il. vi. 130. But the description of him is partly taken from that of another warrior, Tes. vi. 21, 22. It is worth notice that, in Lydgate’s Story of Thebes, pt. iii., king Ligurgus or Licurgus (the name is spelt both ways) is introduced, and Lydgate has the following remark concerning him:—

‘And the kingdom, but-if bokes lye,

Of Ligurgus, called was Trace;

And, as I rede in another place,

He was the same mighty champion

To Athenes that cam with Palamon

Ayenst his brother (!) that called was Arcite,

Y-led in his chare with foure boles whyte,

Upon his hed a wreth of gold ful fyn.’

The term brother must refer to l. 1147 above. See further, as to Lycurgus, in the note to Leg. Good Women, 2423, in vol. iii. p. 344.

2134. ‘kempe heres, shaggy, rough hairs. Tyrwhitt and subsequent editors have taken for granted that kempe = kemped, combed (an impossible equation); but kempe is rather the reverse of this, and instead of smoothly combed, means bristly, rough, or shaggy. In an Early English poem it is said of Nebuchadnezzar that

“Holghe (hollow) were his yghen anunder (under) campe hores.”

Early Eng. Alliterative Poems, p. 85, l. 1695.

Campe hores = shaggy hairs (about the eyebrows), and corresponds exactly in form and meaning to kempe heres.’—M. See Glossary.

2141. I. e. the nails of the bear were yellow. In Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 345, the bad guess is hazarded that these ‘nails’ were metal studs. But Chaucer was doubtless thinking of the tiger’s skin described in the Thebaid, vi. 722:—

‘Tunc genitus Talao uictori tigrin inanem

Ire iubet, fuluo quae circumfusa nitebat

Margine, et extremos auro mansueuerat ungues.’

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Lewis translates the last line by:—‘The sharpness of the claws was dulled with gold.’

2142. for-old, very old. See next note.

2144. for-blak is generally explained as for blackness; it means very black. Cf. fordrye, very dry, in F. 409.

2148. alaunts, mastiffs or wolf-hounds. Florio has: ‘Alano, a mastiue dog.’ Cotgrave: ‘Allan, a kind of big, strong, thickheaded, and short-snowted dog; the brood where-of came first out of Albania (old Epirus).’ Pineda’s Span. Dict. gives: ‘Alano, a mastiff dog, particularly a bull dog; also, an Alan, one of that nation.’ This refers to the tribe of Alani, a nation of warlike horsemen, first found in Albania. They afterwards became allies, first of the Huns, and afterwards of the Visi-Goths. It is thus highly probable that Alaunt (in which the t is obviously a later addition) signifies ‘an Alanian dog,’ which agrees with Cotgrave’s explanation. Smith’s Classical Dict. derives Alanus, said to mean ‘mountaineer,’ from a Sarmatian word ala.

The alaunt is described in the Maister of the Game, c. 16. We there learn they were of all colours, and frequently white with a black spot about the ears.

2152. Colers of, having collars of. Some MSS. read Colerd of, which I now believe to be right. Collared was an heraldic term, used of greyhounds, &c.; see the New Eng. Dict. This leaves an awkward construction, as torets seems to be governed by with. See Launfal, 965, in Ritson, Met. Rom. i. 212. Cf. ‘as they (the Jews) were tied up with girdles . . . . so were they collared about the neck.’—Fuller’s Pisgah Sight of Palestine, p. 524, ed. 1869.

torets, probably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than the thickness of the ring. This appears from Chaucer’s Astrolabe, i. 2. 1—‘This ring renneth in a maner turet,’ i. e. in a kind of eye (vol. iii. p. 178). Warton, in his Hist. E. Poet. ed. 1871, ii. 314, gives several instances. It also meant a small loose ring. Cotgrave gives: ‘Touret, the annulet, or little ring whereby a hawk’s lune is fastened unto the jesses.’ ‘My lityll bagge of blakke ledyr with a cheyne and toret of siluyr’; Bury Wills, ed. Tymms, p. 16. Cf. E. swivel-ring.

2156. Emetrius is not mentioned either by Statius or by Boccaccio; cf. Tes. vi. 29, 17, 16, 41.

2158. diapred, variegated with flowery or arabesque patterns. See diaspre and diaspré in Godefroy’s O.F. Dict.; diasprus and diasperatus in Ducange. In Le Rom. de la Rose, 21205, we find mention of samis diaprés, diapered samites.

2160. cloth of Tars, ‘a kind of silk, said to be the same as in other places is called Tartarine (tartarinum), the exact derivation of which appears to be somewhat uncertain.’—Wright. Cf. Piers the Plowman, B. xv. 224, and my note to the same, C. xvii. 299; also Tartarium in Fairholt.

2187. alle and some, ‘all and singular,’ ‘one and all.’

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2205. See the Teseide, vi. 8; also Our Eng. Home, 22.

2217. And in hir houre. ‘I cannot better illustrate Chaucer’s astrology than by a quotation from the old Kalendrier de Bergiers, edit. 1500, Sign. K. ii. b:—“Qui veult savoir comme bergiers scevent quel planete regne chascune heure du jour et de la nuit, doit savoir la planete du jour qui veult s’enquerir; et la premiere heure temporelle du soleil levant ce jour est pour celluy planete, la seconde heure est pour la planete ensuivant, et la tierce pour l’autre,” &c., in the following order: viz. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna. To apply this doctrine to the present case, the first hour of the Sunday, reckoning from sunrise, belonged to the Sun, the planet of the day; the second to Venus, the third to Mercury, &c.; and continuing this method of allotment, we shall find that the twenty-second hour also belonged to the Sun, and the twenty-third to Venus; so that the hour of Venus really was, as Chaucer says, two hours before the sunrise of the following day. Accordingly, we are told in l. 2271, that the third hour after Palamon set out for the temple of Venus, the Sun rose, and Emily began to go to the temple of Diane. It is not said that this was the hour of Diane, or the Moon, but it really was; for, as we have just seen, the twenty-third hour of Sunday belonging to Venus, the twenty-fourth must be given to Mercury, and the first hour of Monday falls in course to the Moon, the presiding planet of that day. After this, Arcite is described as walking to the temple of Mars, l. 2367, in the nexte houre of Mars, that is, the fourth hour of the day. It is necessary to take these words together, for the nexte houre, singly, would signify the second hour of the day; but that, according to the rule of rotation mentioned above, belonged to Saturn, as the third did to Jupiter. The fourth was the nexte houre of Mars that occurred after the hour last named.’—Tyrwhitt. Thus Emily is two hours later than Palamon, and Arcite is three hours later than Emily.

2221–64. To be compared with the Teseide, vii. 43–49, and vii. 68.

2224. Adoun, Adonis. See Ovid, Met. x. 503.

2233–6. Imitated from Le Rom. de la Rose, 21355–65, q. v.

2238. ‘I care not to boast of arms (success in arms).’

2239. Ne I ne axe, &c., are to be pronounced as ni naxe, &c. So in l. 2630 of this tale, Ne in must be pronounced as nin.

2252. wher I ryde or go, whether I ride or walk.

2253. fyres bete, kindle or light fires. Bete also signifies to mend or make up the fire; see l. 2292.

2271. The thridde hour inequal. ‘In the astrological system, the day, from sunrise to sunset, and the night, from sunset to sunrise, being each divided into twelve hours, it is plain that the hours of the day and night were never equal except just at the equinoxes. The hours attributed to the planets were of this unequal sort. See Kalendrier de Berg. loc. cit., and our author’s treatise on the Astrolabe.’—Tyrwhitt.

2275–360. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 71–92.

2286. a game, a pleasure.

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2288. at his large, at liberty (to speak or to be silent).

2290. ‘E coronò di quercia cereale’; Tes. vii. 74. Cerial should be cerrial, as spelt by Dryden, who speaks of ‘chaplets green of cerrial oak’; Flower and Leaf, 230. It is from cerreus, adj. of cerrus, also ill-spelt cerris, as in the botanical name Quercus cerris, the Turkey oak. The cup of the acorn is prickly; see Pliny, bk. xvi. c. 6.

2294. In Stace of Thebes, in the Thebaid of Statius, where the reader will not find it. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 72.

2303. aboughte, atoned for. Attheon, Actaeon; Ovid, Met. iii. 230.

2313. thre formes. Diana is called Diva Triformis;—in heaven, Luna; on earth, Diana and Lucina, and in hell, Prosperpina. See note to l. 2041.

2336. Cf. Statius, Theb. viii. 632:—‘Omina cernebam, subitusque intercidit ignis.’

2365. the nexte waye, the nearest way. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 93.

2368. walked is, has walked. See note to l. 2217.

2371–434. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 23–28, 39–41.

2388. For the story, see Ovid, Met. iv. 171—189; and, in particular, cf. Rom. de la Rose, 14064, where Venus is said to be ‘prise et lacie.’

2395. lyves creature, creature alive, living creature.

2397. See Compl. of Anelida, 182; cf. Compl. to his Lady, 52.

2405. do, bring it about, cause it to come to pass.

2422–34. From Tes. vii. 39, 40; there are several verbal resemblances here.—Kölbing.

2437. ‘As joyful as the bird is of the bright sun.’ So in Piers Pl., B. x. 153. It was a common proverb.

2438–41. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 67.

2443. Cf. ‘the olde colde Saturnus’; tr. of Boethius, bk. iv. met. 1.

2447–8. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 13022, q. v.

2449. ‘Men may outrun old age, but not outwit (surpass its counsel).’ Cf. ‘Men may the wyse at-renne, but not at-rede.’—Troilus, iv. 1456.

‘For of him (the old man) þu migt leren

Listes and fele þewes,

Þe baldure þu migt ben:

Ne for-lere þu his redes,

For þe elder mon me mai of-riden

Betere þenne of-reden.’

‘For of him thou mayest learn

Arts and many good habits,

The bolder thou mayest be.

Despise not thou his counsels,

For one may out-ride the old man

Better than out-wit.’

The Proverbs of Alfred, ed. Morris, in an Old Eng. Miscellany, p. 136. And see Solomon and Saturn, ed. Kemble, p. 253.

2451. agayn his kynde. According to the Compost of Ptolemeus, Edition: current; Page: [88] Saturn was influential in producing strife: ‘And the children of the sayd Saturne shall be great jangeleres and chyders . . . and they will never forgyve tyll they be revenged of theyr quarell.’—Wright.

2454. My cours. The course of the planet Saturn. This refers to the orbit of Saturn, supposed to be the largest of all, until Uranus and Neptune were discovered.

2455. more power. The Compost of Ptolemeus says of Saturn, ‘He is mighty of hymself. . . . It is more than xxx yere or he may ronne his course. . . . Whan he doth reygne, there is moche debate.’—Wright.

2460. groyning, murmuring, discontent; from F. grogner. See Rom. Rose, 7049; Troil. i. 349.

2462. ‘Terribilia mala operatur Leo cum malis; auget enim eorum malitiam.’—Hermetis Aphorismorum Liber, § 66.

2469.

‘Er fyue ȝer ben folfult, such famyn schal aryse,

þorw flodes and foul weder, fruites schul fayle,

And so seiþ Saturne, and sent vs to warne.’

P. Plowman, A. vii. 309 (B. vi. 325; C. ix. 347).

2491–525. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 95–99.

2504. Gigginge, fitting or providing (the shield) with straps. Godefroy gives O. F. guige, guigue, a strap for hanging a buckler over the shoulder, a handle of a shield. Cotgrave gives the fem. pl. guiges, ‘the handles of a target or shield.’ In Mrs. Palliser’s Historic Devices, p. 277, she describes a monument in St. Edmund’s chapel, in Westminster Abbey, on which are three shields, each with ‘the guige or belt of Bourchier knots formed of straps.’ In the M. E. word gigginge, both the g’s are hard, as in gig (in the sense of a two-wheeled vehicle).

Layneres lacinge, lacing of thongs; see Prompt. Parv., s. v. Lanere.

In Sir Bevis, ed. Kölbing, p. 134, we find—

‘Sir Beues was ful glad, iwis,

Hese laynerys [printed layuerys] he took anon,

And fastenyd hys hawberk hym upon.’

2507. Shakespeare seems to have observed this passage; cf. Hen. V. Act 4. prol. 12.

2511. Cf. House of Fame, 1239, 1240:—

‘Of hem that maken blody soun

In trumpe, beme, and clarioun.’

Also Tes. viii. 5:—‘D’armi, di corni, nacchere e trombette.’

‘The Nakkárah or Naqárah was a great kettle-drum, formed like a brazen cauldron, tapering to the bottom, and covered with buffalo-hide, often 3½ or 4 feet in diameter. . . . The crusades naturalised the word in some form or other in most European languages, but in our own apparently with a transfer of meaning. Wright defines naker as “a cornet or horn of brass,” and Chaucer’s use seems to countenance this.’—Marco Edition: current; Page: [89] Polo, ed. Yule, i. 303–4; where more is added. But Wright’s explanation is a mere guess, and should be rejected. There is no reason for assigning to the word naker any other sense than ‘kettle-drum.’ Minot (Songs, iv. 80) is explicit:—

‘The princes, that war riche on raw,

Gert nakers strike, and trumpes blaw.’

Hence a naker had to be struck, not blown. See also Naker in Halliwell’s Dictionary. Boccaccio has the pl. nacchere; see above.

2520. Sparth, battle-axe; Icel. sparða. See Rom. Rose, 5978; Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, 1403, 2458; Gawain and Grene Knight, 209; Prompt. Parv. In Trevisa’s tr. of Higden, bk. i. ch. 33, we are told that the Norwegians first brought sparths into Ireland. Higden has ‘usum securium, qui Anglicè sparth dicitur.’

2537. As to the regulations for tournaments, see Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. iii. c. 1. §§ 16–24; the passages are far too long for quotation. We may, however, compare the following extract, given by Strutt, from MS. Harl. 326. ‘All these things donne, thei were embatailed eche ageynste the othir, and the corde drawen before eche partie; and whan the tyme was, the cordes were cutt, and the trumpettes blew up for every man to do his devoir [duty]. And for to assertayne the more of the tourney, there was on eche side a stake; and at eche stake two kyngs of armes, with penne, and inke, and paper, to write the names of all them that were yolden, for they shold no more tournay.’ And, from MS. Harl. 69, he quotes that—‘no one shall bear a sword, pointed knife, mace, or other weapon, except the sword for the tournament.’

2543–93. Cf. the Teseide, vii. 12, 131–2, 12, 14, 100–2, 113–4, 118, 19. In 2544, shot means arrow or crossbow-bolt.

2546. ‘Nor short sword having a biting (sharp) point to stab with.’

2565. Cf. Legend of Good Women, 635:—‘Up goth the trompe.’

2568. Cf. King Alisaunder, 189, where we are told that a town was similarly decked to receive queen Olimpias with honour. See Weber’s note.

2600–24. Cf. the Teseide, viii. 5, 7, 14, 12, &c.

2602. ‘In go the spears full firmly into the rest,’—i.e. the spears were couched ready for the attack.

‘Thai layden here speres in areeste,

Togeder thai ronnen as fire of thondere,

That both here launces to-braste;

That they seten, it was grete wonder,

So harde it was that they gan threste;

Tho drowen thai oute here swordes kene,

And smyten togeder by one assente.’

The Sowdone of Babyloyne, l. 1166.

‘With spere in thyne arest’; Rom. of the Rose, 7561.

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2614. he . . . he=one . . . another. See Historical Outlines of English Accidence, p. 282. Cf. the parallel passage in the Legend of Good Women, 642–8.

2615. feet. Some MSS. read foot. Tyrwhitt proposed to read foo, foe, enemy; but see l. 2550.

2624. wroght . . . wo, done harm to his opponent.

2626. Galgopheye. ‘This word is variously written Colaphey, Galgaphey, Galapey. There was a town called Galapha in Mauritania Tingitana, upon the river Malva (Cellar. Geog. Ant. v. ii. p. 935), which perhaps may have given name to the vale here meant.’—Tyrwhitt. But doubtless Chaucer was thinking of the Vale of Gargaphie, where Actæon was turned into a stag:—

‘Vallis erat, piceis et acutâ densa cupressu,

Nomine Gargaphie, succinctae sacra Dianae.’

Ovid, Met. iii. 155, 156.

2627. Cf. the Teseide, viii. 26.

2634. Byte, cleave, cut; cf. the cognate Lat. verb findere. See ll. 2546, 2640.

2646. swerdes lengthe. Cf.

‘And then he bar me sone bi strenkith

Out of my sadel my speres lenkith.’

Ywaine and Gawin, ll. 421, 2.

2675. Which a, what a, how great a.

2676–80. Cf. the Teseide, viii. 131, 124–6.

2683. al his chere may mean ‘all his delight, as regarded his heart.’ The Harl. MS. does not insert in before his chere, as Wright would have us believe.

2684. Elles. reads furie, as noted; so in the Teseide, ix. 4. This incident is borrowed from Statius, Theb. vi. 495, where Phœbus sends a hellish monster to frighten some horses in a chariot-race. And see Vergil, Æn. xii. 845.

2686–706. Cf. the Teseide, ix. 7, 8, 47, 13, 48, 38, 26.

2689. The following is a very remarkable account of a contemporary occurrence, which took place at the time when a parliament was held at Cambridge, ad 1388, as told by Walsingham, ed. Riley, ii. 177:—

‘Tempore Parliamenti, cum Dominus Thomas Tryvet cum Rege sublimis equitaret ad Regis hospitium, quod fuit apud Bernewelle [Barnwell], dum nimis urget equum calcaribus, equus cadit, et omnia pene interiora sessoris dirumpit [cf. l. 2691]; protelavit tamen vitam in crastinum.’ The saddle-bow or arsoun was the ‘name given to two curved pieces of wood or metal, one of which was fixed to the front of the saddle, and another behind, to give the rider greater security in his seat’; New Eng. Dict. s. v. Arson. Violent collision against the front saddle-bow produced very serious results. Cf. the Teseide, ix. 8—‘E ’l forte arcione gli premette il petto.’

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2696. ‘Then was he cut out of his armour.’ I. e. the laces were cut, to spare the patient trouble. Cf. Statius, Theb. viii. 637–641.

2698. in memorie, conscious.

2710. That . . his, i.e. whose. So which . . his, in Troil. ii. 318.

2711. ‘As a remedy for other wounds,’ &c.

2712, 3. charmes . . . save. ‘It may be observed that the salves, charms, and pharmacies of herbs were the principal remedies of the physician in the age of Chaucer. Save (salvia, the herb sage) was considered one of the most universally efficiently medieval remedies.’—Wright. Hence the proverb of the school of Salerno, ‘Cur moriatur homo, dum salvia crescit in horto?’

2722. nis nat but=is only. aventure, accident.

2725. O persone, one person.

2733. Gree, preëminence, superiority; lit. rank, or a step; answering to Lat. gradus (not gratus). The phrases to win the gree, i. e. to get the first place, and to bear the gree, i. e. to keep the first place, are still in common use in Scotland. See note to the Allit. Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and Donaldson, l. 1353, and Jamieson’s Dictionary.

2736. dayes three. Wright says the period of three days was the usual duration of a feast among our early forefathers. As far back as the seventh century, when Wilfred consecrated his church at Ripon, he held ‘magnum convivium trium dierum et noctium, reges cum omni populo laetificantes.’—Eddius, Vit. S. Wilf. c. 17.

2743. This fine passage is certainly imitated from the account of the death of Atys in Statius, Theb. viii. 637–651. I quote ll. 642–651, in which Atys fixes his last gaze upon his bride Ismene; as to ll. 637–641, see note to l. 2696 above.

‘Prima uidet, caramque tremens Iocasta uocabat

Ismenen: namque hoc solum moribunda precatur

Uox generi, solum hoc gelidis iam nomen inerrat

Faucibus: exclamant famulae: tollebat in ora

Uirgo manus; tenuit saeuus pudor; attamen ire

Cogitur (indulget summum hoc Iocasta iacenti),

Ostenditque offertque: quater iam morte sub ipsa

Ad nomen uisus, deiectaque fortiter ora

Sustulit: illam unam neglecto lumine coeli

Adspicit, et uultu non exsatiatur amato.’

2745. ‘Also when bloude rotteth in anye member, but it be taken out by skill or kinde, it tourneth into venime’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 7. bouk, paunch; A. S. būc.

2749. ‘The vertue Expulsiue is, which expelleth and putteth away that that is vnconuenient and hurtfull to kinde’ [nature]; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iii. c. 8.

‘This vertue [given by the soul to the body] hath three parts; one is called naturall, and is in the lyuer: the other is called vitall, or Edition: current; Page: [92] spiritall, and hath place in the heart; the third is called Animal, and hath place in the brayn’; id. c. 14.

‘The vertue that is called Naturalis moueth the humours in the body of a beast by the vaines, and hath a principal place in the liuer’; id. c. 12.

2761. This al and som, i. e. this (is) the al and som, this is the short and long of it. A common expression; cf. F. 1606; Troil. iv. 1193, 1274. With ll. 2761–2808 compare the Teseide, x. 12, 37, 51, 54, 55, 64, 102–3, 60–3, 111–2.

2800. overcome. Tyrwhitt reads overnome, overtaken, the pp. of overnimen; but none of the seven best MSS. have this reading.

2810. The real reason why Chaucer could not here describe the passage of Arcite’s soul to heaven is because he had already copied Boccaccio’s description, and had used it with respect to the death of Troilus; see Troil. v. 1807–27 (stanzas 7, 8, 9 from the end).

2815. ther Mars, &c., where I hope that Mars will, &c.; may Mars, &c.

2822. swich sorwe, so great sorrow. The line is defective in the third foot, which consists of a single (accented) syllable.

2827–46. Cf. the Teseide, xi. 8, 7, 9-11, xii. 6.

2853–962. Cf. the Teseide, xi. 13–16, 30, 31, 35, 38, 40, 37, 18, 26–7, 22–5, 21, 27–9, 30, 40–67.

2863–962. The whole of this description should be compared with the funeral rites at the burial of Archemorus, as described in Statius, Thebaid, bk. vi; which Chaucer probably consulted, as well as the imitation of the same in Boccaccio’s Teseide. For example, the ‘tree-list’ in ll. 2921–3 is not a little remarkable. The first list is in Ovid, Met. x. 90–105; with which cf. Vergil, Æn. vi. 180; Lucan, Pharsalia, iii. 440–445. Then we find it in Statius, vi. 98–106. After which, it reappears in Boccaccio, Teseide, xi. 22; in Chaucer, Parl. of Foules, 176; in the present passage; in Tasso, Gier. Lib. iii. 75; and in Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 8. There is also a list in Le Roman de la Rose, 1338–1368. Again, we may just compare ll. 2951–2955 with the following lines in Lewis’s translation of Statius:—

‘Around the pile an hundred horsemen ride,

With arms reversed, and compass every side;

They faced the left (for so the rites require);

Bent with the dust, the flames no more aspire.

Thrice, thus disposed, they wheel in circles round

The hallow’d corse: their clashing weapons sound.

Four times their arms a crash tremendous yield,

And female shrieks re-echo through the field.’

Moreover, Statius imitates the whole from Vergil, Æn. xi. 185–196. And Lydgate copies it all from Chaucer in his Sege of Thebes, part 3 (near the end).

2864. Funeral he myghte al accomplice (Elles.); Funeral he mighte hem all complise (Corp., Pet.). The line is defective in the first foot. Edition: current; Page: [93] Funeral is an adjective. Tyrwhitt and Wright insert Of before it, without authority of any kind; see l. 2942.

2874. White gloves were used as mourning at the funeral of an unmarried person; see Brand, Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, ii. 283.

2885. ‘And surpassing others in weeping came Emily.’

2891. See the description of old English funerals in Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 488: ‘If the deceased was a knight, his helmet, shield, sword, and coat-armour were each carried by some near kinsman, or by a herald clad in his blazoned tabard’; &c.

2895. Cf. ‘deux ars Turquois,’ i. e. two Turkish bows; Rom. de la Rose, 913; see vol. i. p. 132.

2903. Compare the mention of ‘blake clothes’ in l. 2884. When ‘master Machyll, altherman, was bered, all the chyrche [was] hangyd with blake and armes [coats-of-arms], and the strett [street] with blake and armes, and the place’; &c.—Machyn’s Diary (Camden Soc.) p. 171.

2923. whippeltree (better wippeltree) is the cornel-tree or dogwood (Cornus sanguinea); the same as the Mid. Low G. wipel-bom, the cornel. Cf. ‘wepe, or weype, the dog-tree’; Hexham. See N. and Q. 7 S. vi. 434.

2928. Amadrides; i. e. Hamadryades; see Ovid, Met. i. 192, 193, 690. The idea is taken from Statius, Theb. vi. 110–113.

2943. men made the fyr (Hn., Cm.); maad was the fire (Corp., Pet.).

2953. loud (Elles.); heih (Harl.); bowe (Corp.).

2958. ‘Chaucer seems to have confounded the wake-plays of his own time with the funeral games of the antients.’—Tyrwhitt. Cf. Troil. v. 304; and see ‘Funeral Entertainments’ in Brand’s Popular Antiquities.

2962. in no disioynt, with no disadvantage. Cf. Verg. Æn. iii. 281.

2967–86. Cf. the Teseide, xii. 3-5.

2968. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 345) proposes to put a full stop at the end of this line, after teres; and to put no stop at the end of l. 2969.

2991–3. that faire cheyne of love. This sentiment is taken from Boethius, lib. ii. met. 8: ‘þat þe world with stable feith / varieth acordable chaungynges // þat the contraryos qualite of elementz holden amonge hem self aliaunce perdurable / þat phebus the sonne with his goldene chariet / bryngeth forth the rosene day / þat the mone hath commaundement ouer the nyhtes // whiche nyhtes hesperus the euesterre hat[h] browt // þat þe se gredy to flowen constreyneth with a certeyn ende hise floodes / so þat it is nat l[e]ueful to strechche hise brode termes or bowndes vpon the erthes // þat is to seyn to couere alle the erthe // Al this a-cordaunce of thinges is bownden with looue / þat gouerneth erthe and see and hath also commaundementz to the heuenes / and yif this looue slakede the brydelis / alle thinges þat now louen hem togederes / wolden maken a batayle contynuely and stryuen to fordoon the fasoun of this worlde / the which they now leden in acordable feith by fayre moeuynges // this looue halt to-gideres peoples ioygned with an hooly bond / and knytteth sacrement of Edition: current; Page: [94] maryages of chaste looues // And love enditeth lawes to trewe felawes // O weleful weere mankynde / yif thilke loue þat gouerneth heuene gouerned[e] yowre corages.’—Chaucer’s Boethius, ed. Morris, p. 62; cf. also pp. 87, 143. (See the same passage in vol. ii. p. 50; cf. pp. 73, 122.) And cf. the Teseide, ix. 51; Homer, Il. viii. 19. Also Rom. de la Rose, 16988:—

‘La bele chaéne dorée

Qui les quatre elemens enlace.’

2994. What follows is taken from Boethius, lib. iv. pr. 6: ‘þe engendrynge of alle þinges, quod she, and alle þe progressiouns of muuable nature, and alle þat moeueþ in any manere, takiþ hys causes, hys ordre, and hys formes, of þe stablenesse of þe deuyne þouȝt; [and thilke deuyne thowht] þat is yset and put in þe toure, þat is to seyne in þe heyȝt of þe simplicite of god, stablisiþ many manere gyses to þinges þat ben to don.’—Chaucer’s Boethius, ed. Morris, p. 134. (See the same passage in vol. ii. p. 115).

3005. Chaucer again is indebted to Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 10, for what follows: ‘For al þing þat is cleped inperfit, is proued inperfit by þe amenusynge of perfeccioun, or of þing þat is perfit; and her-of comeþ it, þat in euery þing general, yif þat þat men seen any þing þat is inperfit, certys in þilke general þer mot ben somme þing þat is perfit. For yif so be þat perfeccioun is don awey, men may nat þinke nor seye fro whennes þilke þing is þat is cleped inperfit. For þe nature of þinges ne token nat her bygynnyng of þinges amenused and inperfit; but it procediþ of þingus þat ben al hool and absolut, and descendeþ so doune into outerest þinges and into þingus empty and wiþoute fruyt; but, as I haue shewed a litel her-byforne, þat yif þer be a blisfulnesse þat be frele and vein and inperfit, þer may no man doute þat þer nys som blisfulnesse þat is sad, stedfast, and perfit.’—Chaucer (as above), p. 89. (See the same passage in vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.)

3013. ‘And thilke same ordre neweth ayein alle thinges growyng and fallyng adoune by semblables progressiouns of seedes and of sexes.’—Chaucer’s Boethius, ed. Morris, p. 137. (See the same passage in vol. ii. p. 117; i. e in bk. iv. pr. 6. l. 103).

3016. seen at ye, see at a glance. Gower, ed. Pauli, i. 33, has:—‘The thing so open is at theye,’ i. e. is so open at the eye, is so obvious. ‘Now is the tyme sen at eye,’ i. e. clearly seen; Coventry Myst. p. 122.

3017–68. Cf. the Teseide, xii. 7-10, 6, 11, 13, 9, 12–17, 19.

3042. So in Troilus, iv. 1586: ‘Thus maketh vertu of necessite’; and in Squire’s Tale, pt. ii. l. 247 (Group F, l. 593): ‘That I made vertu of necessite.’ It is from Le Roman de la Rose, 14217:—

‘S’il ne fait de necessité

Vertu.’

So in Matt. Paris, ed. Luard, i. 20. Cf. Horace, Carm. i. 24:—

‘Durum! sed leuius fit patientia

Quidquid corrigere est nefas.’

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3068. Cf.

‘The time renneth toward right fast,

Joy cometh after whan the sorrow is past.’

Hawes’ Pastime of Pleasure, ed. Wright, p. 148.

3089. oghte to passen right, should surpass mere equity or justice.

3094–102. Cf. the Teseide, xii. 69, 72, 83.

3105. Cf. Book of the Duchesse, 1287–97.

The Miller’s Prologue.

The Miller’s name is Robin (l. 3129).

3110. The reading companye (as in old editions and Tyrwhitt) in place of route makes the line too long.

3115. I.e. the bag is unbuckled, the budget is opened; as when a packman displays his wares. See Group I, l. 26.

3119. To quyte with, to requite the Knight with, for his excellent Tale. This position of with, next its verb, is the almost invariable M. E. idiom. Cf. F. 471, 641, C. 345; Notes to P. Pl., C. i. 133, &c.

3120. ‘Very drunk, and all pale’; cf. A. 4150, H. 30.

3124. I. e. in a loud, commanding voice, such as that of Pilate in the Mystery Plays. In the Chester Plays, Pilate is of rather a meek disposition; but in the York Plays, pp. 270, 307, 320, he is represented as boastful and tyrannical, as is evidently here intended. The expression seems to have been proverbial. Palsgrave has: ‘In a pylates voyce, a haulte voyx’; p. 837. Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegms (repr. 1877), last page, has—‘speaking out of measure loude and high, and altogether in Pilates voice.’

3125. by armes, i.e. by the arms of Christ; see note to C. 651.

3129. ‘My dear brother’; a common form; cf. 3848, below, and 1136, above.

3131. thriftily, i. e. profitably, to a useful purpose; cf. B. 1165.

3134. a devel wey, in the devil’s name; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 287; originally, in the way to the devil, with all ill luck. Compare—

‘Hundred, chapitle, court, and shire,

Al hit goth a devel way’ [to the bad].

Polit. Songs, ed. Wright, Camd. Soc. p. 254.

See note to l. 3713 below.

3140. Wyte it, lay the blame for it upon. of Southwerk, i.e. of the Tabard inn.

3143. ‘Made a fool of the wright,’ i.e. of the carpenter; cf. A. 586, 614; also A. 3911, and the note.

3145. The Reeve interferes, because he was a carpenter himself (A. 614). ‘Let alone your ignorant drunken ribaldry.’

3152. A reference to a proverbial expression which is given in Rob. of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, 1892:—

‘Men sey, ther a man ys gelous,

That “ther ys a kokewolde at hous.” ’

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Compare also Le Roman de la Rose, 9167–9171, which expresses a similar opinion.

3155–6. Tyrwhitt omits these two lines in his text, but admits, in his Notes, that they should have been inserted. The former of the two lines is repeated from l. 277 of the original (but rejected) Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. but-if thou madde, unless thou art going mad.

3161. oon, one, i. e. a cuckold; or, possibly, an ox (l. 3159). As an ox was a ‘horned’ animal, it comes to the same thing, according to the miserable jest so common in our dramatists.

3165. goddes foyson, sufficient abundance, i. e. all he wants, all the affection he expects. there, in his wife.

3166. A defective line; read—Of | the rém’ | nant, &c.

The Milleres Tale.

On the Miller’s Tale, see Anglia, i. 38, ii. 135, vii (appendix), 81; and see the remarks in vol. iii. p. 395.

3188. gnof, churl, lit. a thief; a slang word, of Hebrew origin; Heb. ganāv, a thief, Exod. xxii. 1. The same as the mod. E. gonoph, the epithet applied to Jo in Dickens, Bleak House, ch. xix. Halliwell’s Dict. quotes from The Norfolke Furies, 1623—‘The country gnoffes, Hob, Dick, and Hick, With clubbes and clouted shoon,’ &c. Drant, in his tr. of Horace, Satires, fol. A i, back (1566), has:—‘The chubbyshe gnof that toyles and moyles.’ Todd, in his Illustration of Chaucer, p. 260, says—‘See A Comment upon the Miller’s Tale and the Wife of Bath, 12mo. Lond. 1665, p. 8, [where we find] “A rich gnofe; a rich grub, or miserable caitiff, as I render it; which interpretation, to be proper and significant, I gather by the sence of that antient metre:

The caitiff gnof sed to his crue,

My meney is many, my incomes but few.

This, as I conceive, explains the author’s meaning; which seems no less seconded by that antient English bard:

That gnof, that grub, of pesants blude,

Had store of goud, yet did no gude.” ’

The note in Bell’s Chaucer, connecting it with oaf, is wrong. The carpenter’s name was John (l. 3501).

3190. This shews that students used often to live in lodgings, as is so common at Cambridge, where the number of students far exceeds the number of college-rooms.

3192, 3. Chaucer himself knew something of astrology, as shewn by his numerous references to it. The word conclusions in l. 3193 is the technical name for ‘propositions’ or problems. In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, prologue (l. 9), he says to his son Lowis—‘I purpose to teche thee a certein nombre of conclusions apertening to the same Edition: current; Page: [97] instrument.’ We here learn that one object of astrology was to answer questions relating to coming weather, as well as with reference to almost every other future event.

3195. in certein houres. In astrology, much depended on times; certain times were supposed to be more favourable than others for obtaining solutions of problems. The great book for prognostications of weather was the Calendrier des Bergiers, an English version of which was frequently reprinted as The Shepheards Kalendar. The old almanacks also predicted the weather; see Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, A. i. sc. 1—‘Enter Sordido, with an almanack in his hand.’

3199. hende, gracious, mild; hence, gentle, courteous; orig. near at hand, hence, useful, serviceable; A. S. gehende. Ill spelt hendy in Tyrwhitt. Several passages from this Tale are quoted and illustrated by Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, sect. xvi; which see.

3203. hostelrye, lodging. Nicholas had his room to himself; whereas it was usual for two or more students to have a room in common, even in college.

3207. cetewale, zedoary; but commonly, though improperly, applied to valerian (Valeriana pyrenaica); also spelt setwall. Gerarde, in his Herball (ed. 1597, p. 919), says that ‘it hath beene had (and is to this day among the poore people of our northerne parts) in such veneration amongst them, that no brothes, pottages, or phisicall meates are woorthe anything, if setwall were not at one end’; &c. See Britten’s Plant-Names (E. D. S.). See note to B. 1950.

3208. Almageste; Arab. almajistī; from al, the, and majistī, for Gk. μεγίστη, short for μεγίστη σύνταξις, ‘greatest composition,’ a name given to the great astronomical treatise of Ptolemy; hence extended to signify, as here, a text-book on astrology. See Hallam, Middle Ages, c. i. 77. Ptolemy’s work ‘was in thirteen books. He also wrote four books of judicial astrology. He was an Egyptian astrologist, and flourished under Marcus Antoninus.’—Warton. See D. 182, 325, 2289. And see my note to Chaucer’s Astrolabe, i. 17; vol. iii. p. 354.

3209. See Chaucer’s own treatise on The Astrolabe, which he describes. It was an instrument consisting of several flat circular brass plates, with two revolving pointers, used for taking altitudes, and other astronomical purposes.

longinge for, suitable for, belonging to.

3210. augrim-stones, counters for calculation. Augrim is algorism (see New Eng. Dict.), or the Arabic system of arithmetic, performed with the Arabic numerals, which became known in Europe from translations of a work on algebra by the Arab mathematician Abu Ja’far Mohammed Ben Musa, surnamed al-Khowārazmī, or the native of Khwārazm (Khiva). Chaucer speaks of ‘nombres in augrim’; Astrolabe, i. 9. 3.

3212. falding, a kind of coarse cloth; see note on A. 391.

3216. Angelus ad virginem. This hymn occurs in MS. Arundel Edition: current; Page: [98] 248, leaf 154, written about 1260, both in Latin and English, and with musical notes. It is printed, with a facsimile of part of the MS., at p. 695 of the print of MS. Harl. 7334, issued by the Chaucer Society. The first verse of the Latin version runs thus:—

‘Angelus ad uirginem subintrans in conclaue,

Virginis formidinem demulcens, inquit “Aue!

Aue! regina uirginum celi terreque dominum

concipies et paries intacta,

salutem hominum tu, porta celi facta,

medela criminum.” ’

Hence the subject of the anthem is the Annunciation.

3217. the kinges note, the name of some tune or song. There is nothing to identify it with a chant royal, described by Warton, Hist. E. Poet. ii. 221, note b. Warton says that ‘Chaucer calls the chant royal . . . a kingis note.’ But Chaucer says ‘the kinges note,’ which makes all the difference; it is merely a bad guess. A song entitled ‘Kyng villyamis note,’ or ‘King William’s note,’ is mentioned in the Complaint of Scotland (1549), ed. Murray, p. 64.

3220. ‘According to the money provided by his friends and his own income.’

3223. eight-e-ten-e has four syllables; cf. B. 5. Tyrwhitt read it as of two syllables, and inserted I gesse after she was. He duly notes that the words I gesse are ‘not in the MSS.’

3226. ‘And considered himself to be like.’ Tyrwhitt has belike, which he probably took to be an adverb; but this is a gross anachronism. The adv. belike is unknown earlier than the year 1533.

3227. Catoun, Dionysius Cato; see note to G. 688. But Tyrwhitt notes, that ‘the maxim here alluded to is not properly one of Cato’s; but I find it (he says) in a kind of Supplement to the Moral Distichs entitled Facetus, int. Auctores octo morales, Lugd. 1538, cap. iii.

“Duc tibi prole parem sponsam moresque venustam,

Si cum pace velis vitam deducere justam.” ’

He refers to the catalogue of MSS. in Trin. Coll. Dublin, No. 275 (under Urbanus, another name for Facetus); and to Bale, Cent. iii. 17, and Fabricius, Bib. Med. Aetatis.

3230. Note is, in the singular. ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’;—Passionate Pilgrim.

3235. ceynt, girdle; barred, adorned with cross stripes. Warton could not understand the word; but a bar is a transverse stripe on a girdle or belt, as in A. 329, which see.

3236–7. barm-clooth, lap-cloth, i. e. an apron ‘over her loins.’ gore, a triangular slip, used as an insertion to widen a garment in any particular place. The apron spread out towards the bottom, owing rather, it appears, to inserted ‘gores’ below than to pleats above. Or the pleats may be called gores here, from their triangular shape. Edition: current; Page: [99] Cf. A. S. gāra, an angular projection of land, as in Kensington Gore. ‘Gheroni, the gores or gussets of a smocke or shirt’; Florio’s Ital. Dict. See note to B. 1979, and the note to l. 3321 below.

3238. brouded, embroidered; cf. B. 3659, Leg. Good Women, 227. Of in l. 3240 means ‘with.’

3241. voluper, lit. ‘enveloper’ or ‘wrapper’; hence, kerchief, or cap. In l. 4303, it means a night-cap. In Wright’s Vocabularies, it translates Lat. calamandrum (568, 28), inuolutarium (590, 28), and mafora (594, 19). In the Prompt. Parv. we find: ‘volypere, kerche, teristrum’; and in the Catholicon, ‘volyper, caliend[r]um.’ In Baret’s Alvearie, h. 596, we find: ‘A woman’s cap, hood, or bonet, Calyptra, Caliendrum.’ The tapes of this cap were ‘of the same suit’ as the embroidery of her collar, i. e. were of black silk.

3245. smale y-pulled, i. e. partly plucked out, to make them narrow, even, and well-marked.

3247. Tyrwhitt at first had ‘for to see,’ but corrected it to ‘on to see,’ i. e. to look upon. Cf. Leg. Good Women, 2425.

3248. pere-ionette, early-ripe pear. Tyrwhitt refers us to a F. poire jeunette, or an Ital. pero giovanetto, i. e. very young pear-tree; but I believe the explanation is as imaginary as are these terms, which I seek for in vain. I take it that he has been misled by a false etymology from F. jeune, Ital. giovane, young, whereas the reference is to the early-ripe pear called in O.F. poire de hastivel (F. hâtiveau); see hastivel in Godefroy. The corresponding E. term is gennitings, applied to apples, but applicable to pears also; and I take the etymology to be from F. Jean, John, because such apples and pears ripen about St. John’s day (June 24), which is very early. Cotgrave has: ‘Hastivel, a soon-ripe apple, called the St. John’s apple.’ Littré, s. v. poire, has: ‘La poire appellée à Paris de messire Jean est celle qu’en Dauphiné et Languedoc l’on nomme de coulis.’ Lacroix (Manners, &c. during the Middle Ages, p. 116) says that, in the thirteenth century, one of the best esteemed pears was the hastiveau, which was ‘an early sort, and no doubt the golden pear now called St. Jean.’ Finally, we learn from Piers Plowman, C. xiii. 221, that ‘pere-Ionettes’ were very sweet and very early ripe, and therefore very soon rotten; see my note to that line. The text, accordingly, compares this young and forward beauty to the newe (i.e. fresh-leaved) early-ripe pear-tree; and there is much propriety in the simile. Of course, this explanation is somewhat of a guess; and perhaps I may add another possible etymology, viz. from jaune, yellow, with reference to the golden colour of the pear. Cf. jaulnette, in Cotgrave, as a name for St. John’s wort, and the form floure-jonettis in the King’s Quair, st. 47.

3251. ‘With silk tassels, and pearls (or pearl-shaped knobs or buttons) made of the metal called latoun.’ Such is Tyrwhitt’s simple explanation. In Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 398, we find that a man was accused of having ‘silvered 240 buttons of latone . . . for Edition: current; Page: [100] purses.’ The notes in Warton are doubly misleading, first confusing latoun with cheklatoun (which are unconnected words), and then quoting the expression ‘perled cloth of gold,’ which is another thing again. As to latoun, see note to C. 350, and cf. A. 699, B. 2067, &c.

3254. popelote, darling, poppet. Not connected with papillon, but with F. poupée and E. puppet. Halliwell gives: ‘Poplet, a term of endearment, generally applied to a young girl: poppet is still in common use.’ Cotgrave has: ‘Popelin, masc. a little finicall darling.’ Godefroy gives: ‘poupelet, m. petit poupon.’

3256. Wright says: ‘The gold noble of this period was a very beautiful coin; specimens are engraved in Ruding’s Annals of the Coinage. It was coined in the Tower of London [as here said], the place of the principal London mint.’ It was worth 6s. 8d., and first coined about 1339. See C. 907, and note.

3258. ‘Sitting on a barn.’ Repeated in C. 397.

3261. bragot, a sweet drink, made of ale and honey fermented together; afterwards, the honey was replaced by sugar and spice. See Bragget in New E. Dict. The full receipt for ‘Braket’ is given in Strutt, Manners and Customs, iii. 74; it contained 4 gallons of ale to a pint of honey. In 1783, it was made of ale, sugar, and spices, and drunk at Easter; Brand, Pop. Antiq. i. 112. Spelt bragot, Palladius on Husbandry, p. 90, l. 812; &c. Of British origin; Welsh bragawd; cf. O. Irish brac, later braich, malt. See also the note on Bragott in the Catholicon, ed. Herrtage.

3262. Cf. ‘An appyll-hurde, pomarium’; Catholicon Anglicum.

3263–4. These two lines are cited by Dryden with approval, in the Preface to his Fables, as being ‘not much behind our present English.’ We are amazed to find that Dryden condemns Chaucer’s lines as unequal; and coolly remarks that ‘equality of numbers . . . was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer’s age.’ The black-letter editions which Dryden read were, in fact, full of misspelt words; but even in them, he might have found plenty of good lines, if he had not been so prejudiced and (to say the truth) conceited.

3268. prymerole, primrose; as in Gower, C. A. iii. 130. pigges-nye, pig’s eye, a term of endearment; pig’s eyes being (as Tyrwhitt notes) remarkably small. Cf. ‘Waked with a wench, pretty peat, pretty love, and my sweet pretty pigsnie’; Peele, Old Wives’ Tale, ed. Dyce (1883), p. 455, col. 1. And see Skelton, ed. Dyce, i. 28, ii. 97, 104. In fact, it is common. Brand, quoting Douce (Illust. of Shak. ii. 151), says that ‘Shadwell not only uses the word pigsney in this sense, but also birdsney [bird’s eye]; see his Plays, i. 357, iii. 385.’ See also pigsney in Todd’s Johnson, where one quotation has the form pigs eie. An ye became a nye; hence the pl. nyes, and even nynon (=eyne), as in Halliwell. See note to P. Plowman, C. xx. 306, where bler-eyed, i.e. blear-eyed, appears as bler-nyed in the B-text.

3269. leggen, to lay. Tyrwhitt has liggen, to lie, which is but poor grammar.

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3274. Oseneye, Oseney, in the suburbs of Oxford, where there was an Abbey of St. Austin’s Canons; cf. l. 3666.

3286. harrow (Pt. harowe), a cry for help, a cry of distress; O. F. haro, harou, the same; see Godefroy. Cf. ll. 3825, 4307.

‘Primus Demon. Oute, haro, out, out! harkyn to this horne’—&c. Towneley Mysteries, Surtees Society, p. 307 (in the Mystery of “Judicium.”) So in the Coventry Mysteries, we have:—

‘Omnes demones clamant. Harrow and out! what xal we say?

harrow! we crye, owt! And Alas!

Alas, harrow! is þis þat day? . . .

Alas, harrow! and owt! we crye.’

(Play of Judgment.)

‘My mother was afrayde there had ben theves in her house, and she kryed out haroll alarome (F. elle sescria harol alarme)’; Palsgrave, s. v. crye, p. 501. See Haro in Littré, hara in Schade. Cf. l. 3825; and the note in Dyce’s Skelton, ii. 274.

3291. I. e. St. Thomas of Canterbury.

3299. ‘A clerk would have employed his time ill.’

3308. Defective in the first foot; scan: Crist | es, &c. Tyrwhitt inserts Of before Cristes, and coolly observes, in his Notes, that it is ‘added from conjecture only.’ He might have said, that it makes bad grammar. And it is from such manipulated lines as this that the public forms its judgement of Chaucer’s verse! Is it nothing that all the authorities begin the line alike?

3316. shode, not ‘hair,’ as in Tyrwhitt, but ‘parting of the hair.’

3318. ‘It was the fashion to wear shoes with the upper leather cut into a variety of beautiful designs, resembling the tracery of window-heads, through which the bright colour of the green, blue, or scarlet stocking beneath was shewn to great advantage’;—Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 239, with illustrations at p. 240. Poules windowes, windows like those in St. Paul’s Cathedral; hence, designs resembling them. Wright conjectures that there may even be a reference to the rose-window of old St. Paul’s; and he says that examples of such shoes still exist, in the museum of Mr. C. Roach Smith. Good illustrations of these beautifully cut shoes are given in Fairholt’s Costume, pp. 64, 65, who also notes that ‘in Dugdale’s view of old St. Paul’s . . . the rose-window in the transept is strictly analogous in design.’ The Latin name for such shoes was calcei fenestrati, which see in Ducange. Rock also quotes the phrase corium fenestratum from Pope Innocent III. Observe the mention of his scarlet hose in the next line. Cf. note to Rom. of the Rose, 843, in vol. i. p. 423.

3321. wachet, a shade of blue. Tyrwhitt wrongly connects it with the town of Watchet, in Somersetshire. But it is French. Littré, s. v. vaciet, gives: ‘Couleur d’hyacinthe ou vaciet,’ colour of the hyacinth, or bilberry (Lat. uaccinium). Roquefort defines vaciet as a shrub which bears a dark fruit fit for dyeing violet; it is applied, he Edition: current; Page: [102] says, both to the fruit and the dye; and he calls it Vaccinium hysginum. Phillips says watchet is ‘a kind of blew colour.’ Todd’s Johnson cites from Milton’s Hist. of Muscovia, c. 5, ‘watchet or sky-coloured cloth’; and the line, ‘Who stares, in Germany, at watchet eyes,’ tr. of Juvenal, Sat. xiii, wrongly attributed to Dryden. See examples in Nares from Browne, Lyly, Drayton, and Taylor: and, in Richardson, from Beaumont and Fletcher, Hackluyt, Spenser, and Ben Jonson. Cotgrave explains F. pers as ‘watchet, blunket, skie-coloured,’ and couleur perse as ‘skie-colour, azure-colour, a blunket, or light blue.’ See Blunket in the New E. Dict., and my article in Philolog. Soc. Trans. Nov. 6, 1885, p. 329. Webster has ‘watchet stockings,’ The Malcontent, A. iii. sc. 1. Lydgate has ‘watchet blewe’; see Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. (1840), ii. 280.

3322. poyntes, tagged laces, as in Shakespeare. MS. Hl. has here a totally different line, involving the word gores (cf. l. 3237 above), viz. ‘Schapen with goores in the newe get,’ i. e. in the new fashion.

3329. Tyrwhitt says:—‘The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing, as that of Stratford for its French’; see l. 125. He probably meant this satirically; but it may mean the very opposite, or something nearly so. The Stratford-at-Bow French was excellent of its kind, but unlike that of France (see note to l. 125); and probably the Oxford dancing was, likewise, of no mean quality after its kind, having twenty ‘maneres.’

3331. rubible; also ribible (4396). Cf. ‘where was his fedylle [fiddle] or hys ribible’; Knight de la Tour, cap. 117. See Ribibe, Ribible in Halliwell; The Squire of Low Degree (in Ritson), l. 1071; Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 194. Also called a rebeck, as in Milton. A two-stringed musical instrument, played with a bow, of Moorish origin; Arab. rabāb. ‘Hec vitula, a rybybe’; Wright’s Gloss. 738. 19.

3332. quinible. Not a musical instrument, as Tyrwhitt supposed, but a kind of voice. It is not singing consecutive fifths upon a plain song, as Mr. Chappell once thought (Pop. Music of the Olden Time, i. 34); but, as afterwards explained by him in Notes and Queries, 4 S. vi. 117, it refers to a very high voice. The quinible was an octave higher than the treble; the quatreble was an octave higher than the mean. The mean was intermediate between the plain-song or tenor (so called from its holding on the notes) and the treble. It means ‘at the extreme pitch of the voice.’ Skelton miswrites it quibyble.

3333. giterne, a kind of guitar. ‘The gittern and the kit the wand’ring fiddlers like’; Drayton, Polyolbion, song 4. See note to P. Pl. C. xvi. 208; Prompt. Parv. p. 196.

3337. squaymous, squeamish, particular. Tyrwhitt says—‘I know not how to make this sense agree with what follows’ (l. 3807). But it is easy to understand that he was, ordinarily, squeamish, retentive; exceptionally, far otherwise. In the Knight de la Tour, cap. cxiv, p. 155, there is a story of a lady who waited on her old husband, and nursed him under most trying conditions; ‘and unnethe there might Edition: current; Page: [103] haue be founde a woman but atte sum tyme she wolde haue lothed her, or ellys to haue be right scoymous ta haue do the seruice as thes good lady serued her husbonde contynuelly.’ In a version of the Te Deum, composed about 1400, we read—‘Thou were not skoymus of the maidens wombe’; Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, ii. 141. Cf. ‘squaymose, verecundus,’ Catholicon; ‘skeymowse, or sweymows or queymows, abhominativus’; Prompt. Parv. Spelt squmous (badly), Court of Love, l. 332; and sqymouse in Morris’s reprint of it. See Desdaigneux in Cotgrave. ‘To be squamish, or nice, delicias facere’; Baret’s Alvearie. ‘They that be subiect to Saturne . . . be not skoymous of foule and stinking clothing’; Batman on Bartholomè, lib. 8. c. 23. In Weber’s Metrical Romances, i. 359, we find:

‘Than was the leuedi of the hous

A proude dame and an envieous,

Hokerfulliche missegging,

Squeymous and eke scorning.’

Lay le Freine, ll. 59–62.

These examples quite establish the sense. The derivation is from the rare A.F. escoymous, which occurs in P. Meyer’s ed. of Nicole Bozon (Soc. des Anc. Textes Français), p. 158:—‘si il poy mange e beyt poy, lors est gageous ou escoymous,’ if he eats and drinks little, then is he delicate or nice. Robert of Brunne has the spelling esquaymous; Handlyng Synne, l. 7249.

3338. dangerous, sparing; see the Glossary.

3340. Cutts (Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 219) seems to think that the clerk went about the parish with his censer, as he sometimes certainly went about with holy water. Warton, on the other hand, says that ‘on holidays it was his business to carry the censer about the church, and he takes this opportunity of casting unlawful glances on the handsomest ladies of the parish.’ Warton is clearly right here, for there is an allusion to the ladies coming forward with the usual offering (l. 3350); cf. note to A. 450. And see Persones Tale, I. 407.

3354. for paramours, for love’s sake: a redundant expression, since par means ‘for.’ Cf. n. to l. 1155, at p. 67.

3358. shot-windowe. Brockett’s Northern Glossary gives: ‘Shot-window, a projecting window, common in old houses’; but this may have been copied from Horne Tooke, who seems to have guessed at, and misunderstood, the passage, below, in Gawain Douglas. In the new edition of Jamieson, Mr. Donaldson defines Schot as ‘a window set on hinges and opening like a shutter,’ and explains that, ‘in the West of Scotland, a projecting window is called an out-shot window, whereas a shot-window or shot is one that can be opened or shut like Edition: current; Page: [104] a door or shutter by turning on its hinges.’ It is material to the story that the window here mentioned should be readily opened and shut. The passage in G. Douglas’s tr. of Virgil, prol. to bk. vii, evidently refers to a window of this character, as the poet first says:—

‘Ane schot-wyndo vnschet a lytill on char,’

i. e. I unshut the shot-window, and left it a little ajar; and he goes on to say that the weather was so cold that he soon shut it again—

‘The schot I clossit, and drew inwart in hy.’

See also ll. 3695, 6 below. In the next line, upon merely means ‘in’ or ‘formed in.’

It is curious that, in Bell’s Chaucer, a quotation is given from the Ballad of Clerk Saunders (Border Minstrelsy, vol. ii.) to shew that shot-window cannot mean ‘shut window.’ But it does not prove that it cannot mean ‘hinge-shutting window,’ as I have shewn the right sense to be.

‘Then she has ta’en a crystal wand,

And she has stroken her troth thereon;

She has given it him out at the shot-window,

With mony a sad sigh and heavy groan.’

3361. Tyrwhitt absurdly says that ll. 3361, 3362 should be broken into four short verses, and that ladý (sic) rimes with be! In Bell’s edition, they are printed in small type! They are just ordinary lines; and be (pronounced nearly as modern bay) certainly never rimed with lády—nor yet with la-dý—in Chaucer’s time, when the final y was sounded like the modern ee in meet, and would rather have rimed with a word like my. It is a mere whim.

3375. menes, intermediate people, go-betweens; see Mene, sb., in Gloss. to P. Plowman, with numerous references. Brocage is the employment of a ‘broker’ or agent, and so means much the same. See Brokage in New E. Dict., and Brocage in Gloss. to P. Plowman.

3377. brokkinge, with quick regular interruptions, quavering, in a ‘broken’ manner. See Brock in New E. Dict.

3379. wafres, wafers. ‘They (F. gaufres) are usually sold at fairs, and are made of a kind of batter poured into an iron instrument, which shuts up like a pair of snuffers. It is then thrust into the fire, and when it is with-drawn and opened, the gaufre, or wafer, is taken out and eaten “piping hote out of the glede,” as here described.’—Note in Bell’s Chaucer.

3380. mede, reward, money; distinct from meeth, mead, in l. 3378. The sense of mede is very amply illustrated in P. Plowman. L. 3380 intimates that, as she lived in a town, she could spend money at any time.

3382. A side-note, in several MSS., says: ‘Unde Ouidius: Ictibus agrestis.’ But the quotation is not from Ovid.

3384. The parish-clerks often took part in the Mystery Plays. The part of Herod was an important one; cf. Hamlet, iii. 2. 15.

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3387. ‘I presume this was a service that generally went unrewarded.’—Wright. It was like ‘piping in an ivy-leaf’; see A. 1838.

3389. ape, dupe; as in A. 706.

3392. Gower has the like, ed. Pauli, i. 343:—

‘An olde sawe is: who that is sligh,

In place w[h]ere he may be nigh,

He maketh the ferre leve loth

Of love; and thus ful ofte it goth.’

Hending, among his Proverbs, has—‘Fer from eye, fer from herte,’ answering to the mod. E. ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Kemble cites: ‘Quod raro cernit oculi lux, cor cito spernit,’ from MS. Trin. Coll., fol. 365. Also ‘Qui procul est oculis, procul est a lumine cordis,’ from Gartner, Dict. 8 b.

3427. deyde, should die; subjunctive mood.

3430. that . . him is equivalent to whom. Cf. A. 2710.

3445. kyked, stared, gazed; see l. 3841. Cf. Scotch keek, to peep, pry; Burns has it in his Twa Dogs, l. 58.

3449. The carpenter naturally invokes St. Frideswide, as there was a priory of St. Frideswide at Oxford, the church of which has become the present cathedral. The shrine of St. Frideswide is still to be seen, though in a fragmentary state, at the east end of the cathedral, on its former site near the original chancel-arches and wall of her early stone church. In this line, seint-e has the fem. suffix.

3451. astromye is obviously intentional, as it fills up the line, and is repeated six lines below. The carpenter was not strong in technical terms. In like manner, he talks of ‘Nowelis flood’; see note to l. 3818. The reading astronomy just spoils both lines, and loses the jest.

3456. ‘That knows nothing at all except his Creed.’

3457. This story is told of Thales by Plato, in his Theaetetus; it also occurs, says Tyrwhitt, in the Cento Novelle Antiche, no. 36. It has often been repeated, and may now be found in James’s edition of Æsop, 1852, Fable 170.

3469. Nearly repeated from A. 545.

3479. ‘I defend thee with the sign of the cross from elves and living creatures.’ At the same time, the carpenter would make the sign over him. Wightes does not mean ‘witches,’ as Tyrwhitt thought, but ‘creatures.’ Cf. l. 3484.

3480. night-spel, night-spell, a charm said at night to keep off evil spirits. The carpenter says it five times, viz. towards the four corners of the house and on the threshold. The charm is contained in lines 3483–6, and is partly intentional nonsense, as such charms often were. See several unintelligible examples in Cockayne’s Leechdoms, iii. 286. The object of saying it four times towards the four corners of the house was to invoke the four evangelists, just as in the child’s hymn still current, which is, in fact, a charm:—

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‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on;

Four angels round my bed,’ &c.

Lines 3483–4 are clear, viz. ‘May Jesus Christ and St. Benedict bless this house from every wicked creature.’ As this is a reproduction of a popular saying, it is not necessary that the lines should scan; still, they run correctly, if we pronounce seynt as se-ynt, as elsewhere (note to A. 509), and if we take both to be defective at the beginning. The last two lines are mere scraps of older charms. It is just possible that for nightes verye1 represents an A. S. for nihte werigum, ‘against the evil spirits of night’; against whom ‘the white Paternoster’ is to be said. The reading white is perfectly correct. There really was a prayer so called. See Notes and Queries, 1 Ser. xi. 206, 313; whence we learn that the charm above quoted, beginning ‘Matthew, Mark,’ &c., resembles one in the Patenôtre Blanche, to be found in the (apocryphal) Enchiridion Leonis Papae (Romae, mdclx), where occurs:—‘Petite Patenôtre Blanche, que Dieu fit, que Dieu dit, que Dieu mit en Paradis. Au soir m’allant coucher, je trouvis trois anges à mon lit, couchès, un aux pieds, deux au chevet’; &c. Here is a charm that mentions it, quoted in Notes and Queries, 1 Ser. viii. 613:—

‘White Paternoster, Saint Peter’s brother,

What hast thou i’ th’ t’one hand? White Booke leaves.

What hast i’ th’ t’other hand? Heven-Yate Keyes.

Open Heaven-Yates, and steike [shut] Hell-Yates.

And let every crysome-child creepe to its owne mother.

White Paternoster! Amen.’

The mention of St. Peter’s brother is remarkable. It is a substitution for the older ‘Saint Peter’s sister’ here mentioned. Again, St. Peter’s sister is a substitution for St. Peter’s daughter, who is a well-known saint, usually called St. Petronilla, or, in English, Saint Parnell, once a very common female name, and subsequently a surname. Her day is May 31, and she was said to cure the quartan ague; see Brand, Pop. Antiq., ed. Ellis, i. 363. A curious passage in the Ancren Riwle, p. 47, gives directions for crossing oneself at night, and particularly mentions the use of four crosses on ‘four halves,’ or in the original, ‘vour creoices a uour halue’; with the remark ‘Crux fugat omne malum,’ &c. For ‘Rural Charms,’ see the chapter in Brand’s Popular Antiquities, vol. iii.; and see the charm against rats in Political and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 23. I may add that, in Kemble’s Solomon and Saturn, p. 136, is an A. S. poem, in which the Paternoster is personified, and destroys evil spirits. In Longfellow’s Golden Legend, § II., Lucifer is made to say a Black Paternoster.

3507. ‘That, if you betray me, you shall go mad (as a punishment).’

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3509. labbe, chatterbox, talkative person. In P. Plowm. C. xiii. 39, we find the phrase ‘ne labbe it out,’ i. e. do not chatter about it, do not utter it foolishly. In the Romans of Partenay, ed. Skeat, 3751, we find: ‘a labbyng tonge’; and Chaucer has elsewhere: ‘a labbing shrewe,’ E. 2428. Sewel’s Du. Dict. (1754) gives: ‘labben, or labbekakken, to blab, chat’; also ‘labbekak, a tattling gossip, a common blab’; and ‘labbery, chat, idle talk.’

3512. him, i. e. Christ. The story of the Harrowing (or despoiling) of Hell by Christ is derived from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and is a favourite and common subject in our older authors. It describes the descent of Christ into hell, after His crucifixion, in order to release the souls of the patriarchs, whom He takes with Him to paradise. It is given at length in P. Plowman, Text C. Pass. xxi; and was usually introduced into the mystery plays; see the Coventry Mysteries, the York Plays, &c. See also Cursor Mundi, 17,863; Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 12; &c.

3516. ‘On Monday next, at the end of the first quarter of the night,’ i. e. about 9 p.m. Cf. ll. 3554, 3645.

3530. See Ecclesiasticus, xxxii. 24 [Eng. version, 19]; this was not said by ‘Solomon,’ but by Jesus, son of Sirach. It is quoted again in the Tale of Melibeus; B. 2193.

3539. ‘The trouble endured by Noah and his company.’ Noë is the form in the Latin Vulgate version. The allusion is to the intentionally comic scene introduced into the mystery plays, as, e. g. in the Chester Plays, the Towneley Plays, and the York Plays, in which Noah and his sons (felawshipe) have much ado to induce Noah’s wife to enter the ark; and, in the course of the scene, she gives Noah a sound box on the ear.

3548. kimelin, a large shallow tub; especially one used for brewing; see Prompt. Parv. p. 274; and Kimnell in Miss Jackson’s Shropshire Glossary.

3554. pryme, i. e. about 9 a.m. See note to F. 73.

3565. This shows that the hall was open to the roof, with cross-beams, and that the stable was attached to it, between it and the garden.

3590. sinne, i. e. venial sin; see I. 859, 904, 920.

3598. Evidently a common proverb.

3616. It is obvious that the first foot is defective.

3624. His owne hand, with his own hand. Tyrwhitt points out the same idiom in Gower, ed. Pauli, ii. 83:—

‘The craft Minerve of wolle fond

And made cloth her owne hond.’

And again, id. ii. 310:—

‘Thing which he said his owne mouth.’

3625. ronges, rungs, rounds, steps; stalkes, upright pieces. To Edition: current; Page: [108] climb by the rungs and the stalks means to employ the hands as well as the feet. A rung was also called a stayre (stair); and stalke is the diminutive of stele, a handle, which was another name for the upright part of a ladder. In Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, C. 513, the author complains that some people cannot tell the difference between a stele and a stayre; and, in fact, the Glossary does not point it out. In the Ancren Riwle, p. 354, we find mention of the two ladder-stales that are upright to the heaven, between which stales the tinds (or rungs) are fastened. This makes the sense perfectly clear.

3637. a furlong-way, a few minutes; exactly, two minutes and a half, at the rate of three miles an hour.

3638. ‘Now say a Paternoster, and keep silence.’ Accordingly, the carpenter ‘says his devotion.’ ‘Clom!’ is a word imposing silence, like ‘mum!’ So in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 266, we find: ‘Yef ye me wylleth y-here, habbeth amang you clom and reste’; i. e. if you wish to hear me, keep among you silence and rest.

3645. corfew-tyme, probably 8 p.m. The original time for ringing the curfew-bell, as a signal for putting out fires and lights, was eight o’clock. The custom has been kept up in some places till the present day; the hour for it is sometimes 8 p.m., and sometimes 9 p.m. In olden times, mention is usually made of the former of these hours; see Brand, Pop. Antiq. ii. 220; Prompt. Parv. p. 110. People invariably went to bed very early; see l. 3633.

3655. The service of lauds followed that of nocturns; the latter originally began at midnight, but usually somewhat later. The time indicated seems to have been just before daybreak. ‘These nocturns should begin at such a time as to be ended just as morning’s twilight broke, so that the next of her services, the lauds, or matutinae laudes, might come on immediately after.’—Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 2. 6. From l. 3731, we learn, however, that the night was still ‘as dark as pitch.’ Perhaps the time was between two and three o’clock, as Wright suggests.

3668. the grange, lit. granary; but the term was applied to a farmhouse and granary on an estate belonging to a feudal manor or (as here) to a religious house. As the estate often lay at some distance from the abbey, it might be necessary for the carpenter, who went to cut down trees, to stay at the grange for the night. Cf. note to P. Pl. C. xx. 71; and Prompt. Parv. (s. v. grawnge).

3675. at cockkes crowe; cf. l. 3687. The expression in l. 3674 must refer to Monday: the ‘cock-crow’ refers to Tuesday morning, when it was still pitch-dark (l. 3731). The time denoted by the ‘first cock-crow’ is very vague; see the Chapter on Cock-crowing in Brand’s Pop. Antiquities. The ‘second cock-crow’ seems to be about 3 a.m., as in Romeo and Juliet, iv. 4. 4; and the ‘first cock-crow,’ shortly after midnight, as in K. Lear, iii. 4. 121, 1 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 20. An early mention of the first cock occurs in Ypomedon, 783, in Weber’s Met. Romances, ii. 309:—‘And at the fryst cokke roos he.’ The clearest Edition: current; Page: [109] statement is in Tusser’s Husbandrie, sect. 74 (E. D. S. p. 165), where he says that cocks crow ‘At midnight, at three, and an hower ere day,’ which he afterwards explains by ‘past five.’

3682. On ‘itching omens,’ see Miss Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 269. ‘If your right hand itches, you will receive money; . . . if your nose itches, you will be kissed, cursed, or vexed.’

3684. Cf. ‘If [in a dream] you see many loaves, it portends joy’; A. S. Leechdoms, iii. 215.

3689. at point-devys, with all exactness, precisely, very neatly; cf. As You Like It, iii. 2. 401. O. F. devis, ‘ordre, beauté; a devis, par devis, en bel ordre, d’une manière bien ordonnée, à gré, à souhait’; Godefroy. See F. 560; Rom. of the Rose, 1215.

3690. greyn, evidently some sweet or aromatic seed or spice; apparently cardamoms, otherwise called grains of Paradise (New E. Dict.) ‘Greynys, spyce, Granum Paradisi’; Prompt. Parv.; see Way’s note. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 1369, and the note (vol. i. p. 428).

3692. trewe-love, (probably) a leaf of herb-paris; in the efficacy of which he had some superstitious belief. True-love is sometimes used as an abbreviation of true-love knot, as in the last stanza of the Court of Love; and such is the case here. True-love knots were of various shapes; see pictures of four such in Ogilvie’s Dictionary. Some had four loops, which gave rise to the name true-love as applied to herb-paris. Gerarde’s Herball, 1597, p. 328, thus describes herb-paris (Paris quadrifolia):—At the top of the stalk ‘come foorth fower leaves directly set one against another, in manner of a Burgonnion crosse or a true love knot; for which cause among the auncients it hath beene called herbe Truelove.’ It is still called True Love’s Knot in Cumberland.

3700. Note the rime of tó me with cinam-ó-me.

3708. Iakke, Jack, here an epithet of a fool, like Iankin (B. 1172); and see note to B. 4000. Cf. E. zany.

3709. ‘It wilt not be (a case of) come-kiss-me.’ Chaucer has ba, to kiss, D. 433; and come-ba-me, i.e. come kiss me, is here used as a phrase; so that the line simply means ‘you certainly will not get a kiss!’ Observe the rime with bla-me. Bas also meant to kiss, and Skelton uses the words together (ed. Dyce, i. 22):—

‘With ba, ba, ba, and bas, bas, bas,

She cheryshed hym, both cheke and chyn’;

i.e. with repeated kisses on cheek and chin. So again (i. 127) we find: ‘bas me, buttyng, praty Cys!’ And so again (ii. 6): ‘bas me, swete Parrot, bas me, swete, swete!’ Further illustration is afforded by Burton’s Anat. of Melancholy, pt. 3. sec. 2. mem. 4. subsec. 1: ‘Yea, many times, this love will make old men and women . . . dance, come-kiss-me-now, mask, and mum.’ This complete explanation of an old crux was first given by Mr. Ellis, in 1870, in his Early Eng. Pronunciation, Edition: current; Page: [110] p. 715, who notes that the reading com ba me is fairly well supported; see his Critical Note. Several MSS. turn it into compame, which is clearly due to the influence of the familiar word companye, which repeatedly ends a line in Chaucer. Mr. Ellis well remarks—‘Com ba me! was probably the name of a song, like . . . the modern “Kiss me quick, and go, my love.” It is also probable that Absolon’s speech contained allusions to it, and that it was very well known at the time.’

The curious part of the story is that, in 1889, I adopted the same reading independently, and for precisely similar reasons. But Mr. Ellis was before me, by nineteen years. See l. 3716 below.

The following MSS. (says Mr. Ellis) read combame; viz. Harl. 7335—Camb. Univ. Library, Ii. 3. 26—Trin. Coll. Camb. R. 3. 3—Rawl. MS. Poet. 141. Bodl. 414 has cum bame; whilst Rawl. Misc. 1133 and Laud 739 have come ba me.

3713. Lit. ‘in the way to twenty devils’; hence, in the name of twenty devils. ‘In the twenty deuyll way, Au nom du grant diable’; Palsgrave (1852), p. 838. See ll. 3134, 4257.

3721–2. These two lines are in E. only; Tyrwhitt omits them. But the old black-letter editions retain them.

3723. He knelt down, because the window was so low (3696).

3725. Cf. ‘For who-so kissing may attayne’; Rom. Rose, 3677; and Ovid, Ars Amatoria, i. 669.

3726. thyn ore, thy favour, thy grace; the words ‘grant me’ being understood. It is not uncommon.

‘Syr Lybeaus durstede [thirsted] sore,

And seyde, Maugys, thyn ore,

To drynke lette me go.’

Ritson, Met. Romances, ii. 57.

‘I haue siked moni syk, lemmon, for thin ore’;

Böddeker’s Altengl. Dichtungen, p. 174.

See Specimens of E. Eng., Part I; Glossary to Havelok; &c.

3728. com of, i. e. be quick; like Have do, have done! We now say ‘come on!’ But strictly, come on means ‘begin,’ and come off means ‘make an end.’

3751. ‘If it be not so that, rather than possess all this town, I would like to be avenged.’

3770. viritoot must be accepted as the reading; the reading verytrot in MS. Hl. gives a false rime, as the oo in woot is long. The meaning is unknown; but the context requires the sense of ‘upon the move,’ or ‘astir.’ My guess is that viri- is from F. virer, to turn (cf. E. virelay), and that toot represents O. F. tot (L. totum, F. tout), all; so that viritoot may mean ‘turn-all.’ Cotgrave gives virevoulte, ‘a veere, whirle a round gamball, friske, or turne,’ like the Portuguese viravolta. The form verytrot (very trot) is clearly due to an attempt to make sense. MS. Cam. has merytot, possibly with reference to M. E. merytoter, a swing Edition: current; Page: [111] (Catholicon); which is derived from mery, merry, and toteren, to totter, oscillate. In the North of England, a swing is still called a merry-trotter (corruption of merry-totter), as noted by Haliiwell, who remarks that ‘the meritot is mentioned by Chaucer,’ which is not the fact. Both these ‘glosses’ give the notion of movement, as this is obviously the general sense implied. Whatever the reading may be, we can see the sense, viz. ‘some gay girl (euphemism for light woman) has brought you thus so early astir’; and Gervase accordingly goes on to say, ‘you know what I mean.’

Ed. 1561 has berytote, a misprint for verytote.

3771. Here as elsewhere, se-ynt is dissyllabic; several MSS. have seinte, but this can hardly be right. For Note, MSS. Pt. Hl. have Noet, meaning St. Neot, whose day is Oct. 28, and whose name remains in St. Neot’s, in Cornwall, and St. Neot’s, in Huntingdonshire. He died about 877; see Wright’s Biogr. Brit. Litt., A. S. Period, p. 381. The spelling Note is remarkable, as the mod. E. name (pronounced as Neet, riming with feet) suggests the A. S. form Nēot, and M. E. Neet.

3774. A proverbial phrase. Tyrwhitt quotes from Froissart, v. iv. p. 92, ed. 1574; ‘Il aura en bref temps autres estoupes en sa quenoille.’ To ‘have tow on one’s distaff’ is to have a task in hand. ‘Towe on my dystaf have I for to spynne’; Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, p. 45.

3777. As lene, pray lend; see note to E. 7.

3782. MS. Hl. has fo, which is silently altered to fote by Bell and Wright. Tyrwhitt also has fote, which he found in the black-letter editions. The reading foo is probably quite right, and is an intentional substitution for foot. It is notorious that oaths were constantly made unmeaning, to avoid a too open profanity. In Chaucer, we have cokkes bones, H. 9, I. 29, and Corpus bones, C. 314. Another corruption of a like oath is ’s foot, Shak. Troil. ii. 3. 6, which is docked at the other end. It is poor work altering MSS. so as to destroy evidence. Cristes foo might mean ‘the devil’; but this is unlikely.

3785. stele, handle; i. e. by the cold end, which served as a handle. See note to D. 949. stēle, i. e. steel, would give a false rime.

3811. Tyrwhitt inserted al before aboute in his text, but withdrew it in his notes. The A. S. has hand-brǣd, but the M.E. hand-e-brede had at least three syllables, if not four. This is shewn by MS. spellings and by the metre, and still more clearly by Wyclif’s Bible, which has: ‘a spanne, that is, an handibreede,’ Ezek. xl. 5 (later version). It may have been formed by analogy with M. E. handiwerk (A. S. hand-geweorc) and handewrit (A. S. hand-gewrit). But the form is handbrede in Palladius on Husbandry, p. 80, l. 536.

3818. Nowelis flood is the mistake of the illiterate carpenter for Noes flood; see it again in l. 3834, where he is laughed at for having used the expression in his previous talks with the clerk and his wife. It is on a par with his astromye (note to l. 3451). He was less familiar with the Noe of the Bible than with the Nowel of the carolsingers Edition: current; Page: [112] at Christmas; see F. 1255. The editors carefully ‘correct’ the poet. In l. 3834, Nowélis helps the scansion, whilst Noes spoils the line, which has to be ‘amended.’ The readings are: E. Hn. as in the text; Cm. Pt. Ln. the Nowels flood; Pt. the Noes flood; Hl. He was agast and feerd of Noes flood. Tyrwhitt actually reads; He was agast-e so of Noes flood; regardless of the fact that agast has no final -e. The carpenter’s mistake is the more pardonable when we notice that Noë was sometimes used, instead of Noël, to mean ‘Christmas.’ For an example, see the Poètes de Champagne, Reims, 1851, p. 146.

3821. This singular expression is from the French. Tyrwhitt cites:—

‘Ainc tant come il mist a descendre,

Ne trouva point de pain a vendre,’

i. e. he found no bread to sell in his descent. His reference is to the Fabliaux, t. ii. p. 282; Wright refers, for the same, to the fabliau of Aloul, in Barbazan, l. 591. I suppose the sense is, ‘he never stopped, as if to transact business.’

3822. E. Hn. celle; rest selle. The word celle might mean ‘chamber.’ There was an approach to the roof, which they had reached by help of a ladder; and the three tubs were hung among the balks which formed the roof of the principal sitting-room below. But it is difficult to see how the word celle could be applied to the chief room in the house. Tyrwhitt explains selle as ‘door-sill or threshold’; but we must bear in mind that the usual M. E. form of sill was either sille or sulle, from A. S. syll. The spelling with s proves nothing, since Chaucer undoubtedly means ‘cell’ in A. 1376, where Cm. Hl. have selle, and in B. 3162, where three MSS. (Cp. Pt. Ln.) all read selle again. Why the carpenter should have arrived at the door-sill, I do not know.

Nevertheless, upon further thoughts, I accept Tyrwhitt’s view, with some modification. We find that Chaucer actually uses Kentish forms (with e for A. S. y) elsewhere, for the sake of a rime. A clear case is that of fulfelle, in Troil. iii. 510. This justifies the dat. form selle (A. S. sylle). But we must take selle to mean ‘flooring’ or ‘boarding,’ and floor to mean the ground beneath it; just as we find, in Widegren’s Swedish Dictionary, that syll means ‘the timber next the ground.’ I would therefore read selle, with the sense of ‘flooring’; and I explain floor by ‘flat earth.’ In the allit. Morte Arthure, 3249, flores signifies ‘plains.’ In Gawayn and the Grene Knyght, 55, sille means ‘floor.’

3841. Observe the form cape, as a variant of gape, both here and in l. 3444 (see footnotes); and in Troil. v. 1133.

The Reve’s Prologue.

3855. For laughen, Tyrwhitt has laughed, and in l. 3858 has the extraordinary form lought, but he corrects the former of these in his Edition: current; Page: [113] Notes. The verb was originally strong; see examples in Stratmann, s. v. hlahhen.

3857. Repeated, nearly, in F. 202; see note.

3864. so theek, for so thee ik, so may I thrive, as I hope to thrive. The Reve came from Norfolk, and Chaucer makes him use the Northern ik for I in this expression, and again in l. 3867 (in the phrase ik am), and in l. 3888 (in the phrase ik have), but not elsewhere; whence it would seem that ik for I was then dying out in Norfolk; it has now died out even in the North. Both the Host and the Canon’s Yeoman use the Southern form so theech; see C. 947, G. 929. Cf. so the ik, P. Pl., B. v. 228.

3865. To blear (lit. to dim) one’s eye was to delude, hoodwink, or cheat a man. So also blered is thyn yë, H. 252.

3868. gras-time, the time when a horse feeds himself in the fields. My fodder is now forage, my food is now such as is provided for me; I am like a horse in winter, whose food is hay in a stable. Thynne animadverts upon this passage (Animadversions, p. 39), and says that forage means ‘such harde and olde prouisione as ys made for horses and cattle in winter.’ He remarks, justly, that forage is but loosely used in Sir Thopas, B. 1973.

3869. I take this to mean—‘my old years write (mark upon me) this white head,’ i. e. turn me grey.

3870. ‘My heart is as old (lit. mouldy) as my hairs are.’ Mouled is the old pp. out of which we have made the mod. E. mould-y, adding -y by confusion with the adj. formed from mould, the ground. It is fully explained in the Addenda to my Etym. Dict. 2nd ed. p. 818; and the verb moulen, to grow mouldy, occurs in B. 32.

3871. ‘Unless I grow like a medlar, which gets worse all the while, till it be quite rotten, when laid up in a heap of rubbish or straw.’

3876. hoppen, dance; alluding to Luke vii. 32, where Wyclif has: ‘we han sungun to you with pipis, and ye han not daunsid.’

3877. nayl, a hindrance; like a nail that holds a box from being opened, or that catches a man’s clothes, and holds him back.

3878. ‘E quegli che contro alla mia età parlando vanno, mostra mal che conoscano che, perchè il porro abbia il capo blanco, che la coda sia verde’; and, as for those that go speaking about my age, it shews that they ill understand how, although the leek has a white head, its tail (or blade) is green; Boccaccio, Decamerone; introduction to the Fourth Day. So also in Northward Ho, by Dekker and Webster, Act iv. sc. 1: ‘garlic has a white head and a green stalk’; where Dyce remarks that it occurs again in The Honest Lawyer, 1616, sig. G 2. Cf. P. Plowman, B. xiii. 352.

3878–82. Compare Alanus de Insulis, Parabolae, cap. I (in Leyser’s collection, p. 1067):—

‘Extincti cineres, si ponas sulphura, uiuent;

Sic uetus apposita mente calescit amor.’

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3882. For olde, T. has cold, I cannot guess why: smouldering ashes are more likely to be hot. Old ashes mean ashes left after a fire has died down, in which, if raked together, fire can be long preserved. ‘Still, in our old ashes, is fire collected.’ See the parallel passage in Troilus, ii. 538.

In Soliman and Persida (Dodsley’s Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, v. 339) we find:—

‘as the fire

That lay, with honour’s hand raked up in ashes,

Revives again to flames.’

We are reminded of line 92 in Gray’s Elegy:—‘Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires’; but Gray himself tells us that he was thinking, not of Chaucer, but of Sonnet 169 (170) of Petrarch:—

‘Ch’i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco,

Fredda una lingua e due begli occhi chiusi,

Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville’—

i. e. which (love-songs) I see in thought, O my sweet flame, when (my) one tongue is cold, and (your) two fine eyes are closed, remaining after us, full of sparkles.

y-reke, raked or heaped together, collected. Not explained by Wright or Morris; Tyrwhitt explains it by ‘smoking,’ and takes it to be a present participle, which is impossible. It is the pt. t. of the scarce strong verb reken, pt. t. rak, pp. y-reken, y-reke, of which the primary notion was to ‘gather together.’ It occurs, just once, in Gothic, in the translation of Romans, xii. 20: ‘haurja funins rikis ana haubith is,’ i. e. coals of fire shalt thou heap together on his head. It is the very verb from which the sb. rake is derived. See Rake in my Etym. Dict., and the G. Rechen in Kluge. The notion is taken from the heaping together of smouldering ashes to preserve the fire within. Lydgate copies this image in his Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. B 4:—

‘But inward brent of hate and of enuy

The hoote fyre, and yet there was no smeke [smoke],

So couertly the malyce was yreke.’

3895. chimbe. ‘The prominency of the staves beyond the head of the barrel. The imagery is very exact and beautiful’; Tyrwhitt. ‘Chime (pronounced choim), sb. a stave of a cask, barrel, &c.’; Leicestershire Glossary (E. D. S.) Urry gives ‘Chimbe, the Rim of a Cooper’s Vessel on the outside of the Head. The ends of the Staves from the Grooves outward are called the Chimes.’ Hexham’s Du. Dict. has: ‘Kimen, Kimmen, the Brimmes of a tubb or a barrill.’ Sewel’s Du. Dict. has: ‘Kim, the brim of a barrel.’ The Bremen Kimm signifies not only the rim of a barrel, but the edge of the horizon; cf. Dan. Kiming, Kimming, the horizon. See further in New E. Dict.

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3901–2. what amounteth, to what amounts. What shul, why must.

3904. Tyrwhitt refers us to Ex sutore medicus, Phædrus, lib. i. fab. 14; and to ex sutore nauclerus, alluded to by Pynson the printer, at the end of his edition of Littleton’s Tenures, 1525 (Ames, p. 488).

3906. Depeford (lit. deep ford), Deptford; just beyond which is Grenewich, Greenwich. Thus the pilgrims had not advanced very far, considering that the Knight and Miller had both told a tale. They had made an early start, and it was now ‘half-way prime.’ ‘Deptford,’ says Dr. Furnivall, ‘is 3 miles down the road [or a little more, it depends upon whence we reckon]; and, as only the Reeve’s Tale and the incomplete Cook’s Tale follow in Group A, we must suppose that Chaucer meant to insert here [at the end of Group A] the Tales of some, at least, of the Five City-Mechanics and the Ploughman . . . . in order to bring his party to their first night’s resting-place, Dartford, 15 miles from London’; Temp. Preface, p. 19. ‘The deep ford,’ I may remark, must have been the one through the Ravensbourn. Deptford and Greenwich (where, probably, Chaucer was then residing) lay off the Old Kent Road, on the left; hence the host points them out.

half-way prime. That is, half-past seven o’clock; taking prime to mean the first quarter of the day, or the period from 6 to 9 a.m. It was also used to denote the end of that period, or 9 a.m., as in B. 4387, where the meaning is certain. In my Preface to Chaucer’s Astrolabe, (E. E. T. S.), I said: ‘What prime means in all cases, I do not pretend to say. It is a most difficult word, and I think was used loosely. It might mean the beginning or end of a period, and the period might be an hour, or a quarter of a day. I think it was to obviate ambiguity that the end of the period was sometimes expressed by high prime, or passed prime, or prime large; we also find such expressions as half prime, halfway prime, or not fully prime, which indicate a somewhat long period. For further remarks, see Mr. Brae’s Essay on Chaucer’s Prime, in his edition of the Astrolabe, p. 90. I add some references for the word prime, which may be useful. We find prime in Kn. Ta. 1331 (A. 2189); Mill. Ta. 368 (A. 3554); March. Ta. 613 (E. 1857); Pard. Ta. 200 (C. 662); Ship. Ta. 206 (B. 1396); Squi. Ta. 65 (F. 73); fully prime, Sir Topas, 114 (B. 2015); halfway prime, Reve’s Prol. 52 (A. 3906); passed prime, Ship. Ta. 88 (B. 1278), Fre. Ta. 178 (D. 1476); prime large, Squi. Ta. ii. 14 (F. 360). See also prime in Troilus, ii. 992, v. 15; passed prime, ii. 1095 (in the same); an houre after the prime, ii. 1557.’ Cf. notes to F. 73, &c.

3911. somdel, in some degree. sette his howve, the same as set his cappe, i. e. make him look foolish; see notes to A. 586, 3143. To come behind a man, and alter the look of his head-gear, was no doubt a common trick; now that caps are moveable, the perennial joy of the street-boy is to run off with another boy’s cap.

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3912. ‘For it is allowable to repel (shove off) force by force.’ The Ellesmere MS. has here the sidenote—‘vim vi repellere.’

3919. stalke, (here) a bit of stick; Lat. festuca. balke, a beam; Lat. trabs. See the Vulgate version of Matt. vii. 3.

The Reves Tale.

The origin of this Tale was a French Fabliau, like one that was first pointed out by Mr. T. Wright, and printed in his Anecdota Literaria, p. 15. Another similar one is printed in Méon’s edition of Barbazan’s Fabliaux, iii. 239 (Paris, 1808). Both were reprinted for the Chaucer Society, in Originals and Analogues, &c., p. 87. See further in vol. iii. p. 397.

3921. Trumpington. The modern mill, beside the bridge over the Granta, between the villages of Trumpington and Grantchester, is familiar to all Cambridge men; but this mill and bridge are both comparatively modern, being placed upon an artificial channel. The old ‘bridge’ is that over the old river-bed, somewhat nearer Trumpington; the ‘brook’ is this old course of the Granta, which is hereabouts very narrow and circuitous; and the mill stood a quarter of a mile above the bridge, at the spot marked ‘Old Mills’ on the ordnance-map, though better known as ‘Byron’s pool,’ which is the old mill-pool. The fen mentioned in l. 4065 is probably the field between the Old Mills and the road, which must formerly have been fen-land; though Lingay Fen may be meant, which covers the space between Bourne Brook (flowing into the Granta at the Old Mills) and the Cambridge and Bedford Railway. We like to think that Chaucer saw the spot himself; but he certainly seems to have thought that Trumpington was somewhat further from Cambridge than it really is, as he actually makes the clerks to have been benighted there; and he might easily have learnt some local particulars from his wife’s friend, Lady Blaunche de Trumpington, or from Sir Roger himself. In any case, it is interesting to find him thus boldly assigning a known locality to a mill which he had found in a French fabliau.

3927. Pypen, play the bag-pipe; see A. 565. The Reeve is clearly trying to make his description suit the Miller in the company, whom it is his express object to tease. Hence he says he could wrestle well (cf. A. 548) and could play the bag-pipe.

nettes bete, mend nets; he knew how to net.

3928. turne coppes, turn cups, make wooden cups in a turning-lathe; not a very difficult operation. It is curious that Tyrwhitt gave up trying to explain this simple phrase. In Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 666, we find that, in 1418, when the English were besieging Rouen, it was enacted that ‘the turners should have 4s. for every hundred of 2,500 cups, in all 100s.’: so that a wooden cup could be turned at the cost of a halfpenny.

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3929. Printed pavade by Tyrwhitt, pauade by Thynne (ed. 1532), but panade in Wright. Levins’ Manipulus Vocabulorum (1570) has: ‘A pauade, pugio’; but this is probably copied from Thynne. The exact form is not found in O. F., but Godefroy’s O. F. Dict. gives: ‘Penart, pennart, penard, panart, pannart, coutelas, espèce de grand couteau à deux tranchants ou taillants, sorte de poignard’; with seven examples, one of which shows that it could be hung at the belt: ‘Un grant pennart qu’il avoit pendu a sa sainture.’ Ducange gives the Low Lat. form penardus, and wrongly connects it with F. poignard, from which it is clearly distinct; but he also gives the form pennatum with the sense of ‘pruning-knife,’ and Torriano gives an Ital. pennato with the same sense. Cf. Lat. bi-pennis. It was a two-edged cutlass, worn in addition to his sword; and see below. It is also printed pauade in Lydgate’s Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. N 5, back.

3931. popper, thruster, i.e. dagger; from the verb pop, to thrust in; cf. poke. Ioly probably means ‘neat’ or ‘small.’ This was the Miller’s third weapon of offence, of which he had three sizes, viz. a sword, a cutlass, and a little dagger like a misericorde, used for piercing between the joints of armour. No wonder that no one durst touch him ‘for peril.’ The poppere answers to the boydekin of l. 3960, q. v. And besides these, he carried a knife. ‘Poppe, to stryke’; Cathol. Angl. p. 286.

3933. thwitel, knife; from A. S. thwītan, to cut; now ill-spelt whittle. The portraits of Chaucer show a knife hanging from his breast; accordingly, in Greene’s Description of Chaucer, we find this line: ‘A whittle by his belt he bare’; see Greene’s Works, ed. Dyce, 1883, p. 320. Note that Sheffield was already celebrated for its cutlery; so in the Witch of Edmonton, Act ii. sc. 2, Somerton speaks of ‘the new pair of Sheffield knives.’

3934. camuse (Hl. camois), low and concave; cf. l. 3974 below. F. camus, ‘flat-nosed’; Cotgrave. Ital. camuso, ‘one with a flat nose’; Florio. See Camois in the New E. Dict., where it is thus explained: ‘Of the nose: low and concave. Of persons: pug-nosed.’ To the examples there given, add the following from Holland’s tr. of Pliny, i. 229; ‘As for the male goats, they are held for the best which are most camoise or snout-nosed.’ Hexham’s Du. Dict., s. v. Neuse, has the curious entry: ‘een Camuys ende opwaerts gaende Neuse [lit. a camus and upwards-going Nose], Camell-nosed.’

3936. market-beter, a frequenter of markets, who swaggered about, and was apt to be quarrelsome and in the way of others. See Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 511, 520; and cf. F. battre le pavé, ‘aller et venir sans but, sans occupation’; Littré. And cf. E. ‘policeman’s beat.’ Cotgrave has: ‘Bateur de pavez, a pavement-beater; . . one that walks much abroad, and riots it wheresoever he walks.’ The following passage from the Complaint of the Ploughman (in Wright’s Polit. Poems, i. 330) makes it clear—

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‘At the wrastling, and at the wake,

And chief chantours at the nale [ale];

Market-beaters, and medling make,

Hoppen and houten [hoot], with heve and hale.’

A synonymous term was market-dasher, spelt market-daschare in the Prompt. Parv.; see Way’s note.

atte fulle, completely, entirely.

3941. Simkin, diminutive of Simond, which was his real name (ll. 4022, 4127). Altered to Sim-e-kin by Tyrwhitt, for the scansion; but cf. ll. 3945, 3947, 4034, &c. He makes the same alteration in l. 3959, for a like reason, but we may scan it: ‘But if | he wold | e be | slayn,’ &c. All the MSS. have Symkyn, except Hl., which has Symekyn here and in l. 3959. We must either make the form variable, or else treat the word de-y-nous as a trisyllable. Deynous was his regular epithet.

3943. This statement, that the parson of the town was her father, has caused surprise. In Bell’s Chaucer, the theory is started that the priest had been a widower before he took orders, which no one can be expected to believe; it is too subtle. It is clear that she was an illegitimate daughter; this is why her father paid money to get her married to a miller, and why she thought ladies ought to spare her (and not avoid her), because it was an honour to have a priest for a father, and because she had learnt so much good-breeding in a nunnery. The case is only too clear; cf. note to l. 3963.

3953. tipet, not here a cape, but the long pendant from the hood at one time fashionable, which Simkin wound round his head, in order to get it out of the way. See Tippett in Fairholt’s Costume in England; Glossary. Cf. notes to A. 233, 682.

3954. So also the Wife of Bath had ‘gay scarlet gytes’; D. 559. Spelt gide in MS. Ln., and gyde in Blind Harry’s Wallace, i. 214: ‘In-till a gyde of gudly ganand greyne,’ where it is used of a gay dress worn by Wallace. It occurs also twice in Golagros and Gawain, used of the gay dress of a woman; see Jamieson. Nares shews that gite is used once by Fairfax, and thrice by Gascoigne. The sense is usually dubious; it may mean ‘robe,’ or, in some places, ‘head-dress.’ The g was certainly hard, and the word is of F. origin. Godefroy gives ‘guite, chapeau’; and Roquefort has ‘wite, voile.’ The F. Gloss. appended to Ducange gives the word witart as applied to a man, and witarde as applied to a woman. Cf. O. F. wiart, which Roquefort explains as a woman’s veil, whilst Godefroy explains guiart as a dress or vestment. The form of the word suggests a Teutonic origin; perhaps from O. H. G. wît, wide, ample, which would explain its use to denote a veil or a robe indifferently. Ducange suggests a derivation from Lat. uitta, which is also possible.

3956. dame, lady; see A. 376.

3959. wold-e, wished, seems to be dissyllabic; see note to l. 3941.

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3960. boydekin, dagger, as in B. 3892, q. v. Cf. note to l. 3931.

3962. ‘At any rate, they would that their wives should think so.’ Wenden, pt. pl. subj. of wenen.

3963. smoterlich, besmutched; cf. bismotered in A. 76. Tyrwhitt says: ‘it means, I suppose, smutty, dirty; but the whole passage is obscure.’ Rather, it is perfectly clear when the allusion is perceived. The allusion is to the smutch upon her reputation, on account of her illegitimacy. This explains also the use of somdel; ‘because she was, in some measure, of indifferent reputation, she was always on her dignity, and ready to take offence’; which is true to human nature. Thus the whole context is illuminated at once.

3964. digne, full of dignity, and therefore (as Chaucer says, with exquisite satire) like (foul) water in a ditch, which keeps every one at a proper distance. However, the satire is not Chaucer’s own, but due to a popular proverbial jest, which occurs again in The Ploughman’s Crede, l. 375, where the Dominican friars are thus described:—

‘Ther is more pryve pride in Prechours hertes

Than ther lefte [remained] in Lucyfer, er he were lowe fallen;

They ben digne as dich-water, that dogges in bayteth’ [feed in].

And, again, in the same, l. 355:—

‘For with the princes of pride the Prechours dwellen,

They bene as digne as the devel, that droppeth fro hevene.’

Hence digne is proud, repulsive.

3965. ‘And full of scorn and reproachful taunting’; like the lady in Lay de Freine, l. 60 (in Weber’s Met. Romances, i. 359):—

‘A proud dame and an enuious,

Hokerfulliche missegging,

Squeymous and eke scorning;

To ich woman sche hadde envie.’

Hoker is the A. S. hōcor, scorn. Bismare is properly of two syllables only (A. S. bismor), but is here made into three; MS. Cp. has bisemare, and Hl. has bissemare, and the spelling bisemare also appears much earlier, in the Ancren Riwle, p. 132, and bisemære in Layamon, i. 140. Owing to a change in the accentuation, the etymology had been long forgotten. See Bismer in the New E. Dict., and see the Glossary.

3966. ‘It seemed to her that ladies ought to treat her with consideration,’ and not look down upon her; see note to l. 3943.

3977. The person, the parson, i.e. her grandfather.

3980. ‘And raised difficulties about her marriage.’

3990. The Soler-halle has been guessed to be Clare Hall, merely because that college was of early foundation, and was called a ‘hall.’ But a happy find by Mr. Riley tells us better, and sets the question at rest. In the First Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 84, Mr. Riley gives several extracts from the Bursar’s Books of King’s Edition: current; Page: [120] Hall, in which the word solarium repeatedly occurs, shewing that this Hall possessed numerous solaria, or sun-chambers, used as dwelling-rooms, apparently by the fellows. They were probably fitted with bay-windows. This leaves little doubt that Soler-Hall was another name for King’s Hall, founded in 1337 by Edward III, and now merged in Trinity College. It stood on the ground now occupied by the Great Gate, the Chapel, Bowling-green, and Master’s Lodge of that celebrated college. On the testimony of Chaucer, we learn that the King’s Hall, even in his time, was ‘a greet collegge.’ Its successor is the largest in England.

In Wright’s Hist. of Domestic Manners, pp. 83, 127, 128, it is explained that the early stone-built house usually had a hall on the ground-floor, and a soler above. The latter, being more protected, was better lighted, and was considered a place of greater security. ‘In the thirteenth century a proverbial characteristic of an avaricious and inhospitable person, was to shut his hall-door and live in the soler.’ It was also ‘considered as the room of honour for rich lodgers or guests who paid well.’ Udall speaks of ‘the solares, or loftes of my hous’; tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Aug. Cæsar, § 27.

3999. made fare, made a to-do (as we now say).

4014. Strother. There is now no town of this name in England, but the reference is probably to a place which gave its name to a Northumbrian family. Mr. Gollancz tells me:—‘The Strother family, of Northumberland, famous in the fourteenth century, was a branch of the Strothers, of Castle Strother in Glendale, to the west of Wooler. The chief member of this Northumberland branch seems to have been Alan de Strother the younger, who died in 1381. (See Calendarium Inquis. post Mortem, 4 Ric. II, vol. iii. p. 32.) The records contain numerous references to him; e. g. “Aleyn de Struther, conestable de nostre chastel de Rokesburgh,” ad 1366 (Rymer’s Fœdera, iii. 784); “Alanum del Strother, vicecomitem de Rokesburgh et vicecomitem Northumbriæ” (id. iii. 919). It is a noteworthy point that this Alan de Strother had a son John.’ This definite information does away with the old guess, that Strother is a mistake for Langstrothdale Chase almost at the N.W. extremity of the W. Riding of Yorkshire, joining the far end of Wharfdale to Ribblesdale, and even now not very accessible, though it can be reached from Ribblehead station, on the Skipton and Carlisle Railway, or from Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

I suppose that Castle Strother, mentioned above, must have been near Kirknewton, some 5 miles or so to the west of Wooler. The river Glen falls into the Till, which is a tributary of the Tweed. I find mention, in 1358–9, of ‘Henry de Strother, of Kirknewton in Glendale’; Brand, Hist. of Newcastle, ii. 414, note. W. Hutchinson, in his View of Northumberland, 1778, i. 260, speaks of ‘Kirknewton, one of the manors of the Barony of Wark, the ancient residence of the Strothers, now the property of John Strother Ker, Esq.’

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We may here notice some of the characteristics of the speech which Chaucer assigns to these two students from Northumberland.

(a) They use a for A. S. ā, where Chaucer usually has ō (long and open). Ex. na (Ch. no), swa (so), ham (hoom), gas (gooth), fra (fro), banes (bones), anes (ones), waat (woot), raa (ro), bathe (bothe), ga (go), twa (two), wha (who). Similarly we find saule for Ch. soule, soul, tald for told, halde for holde, awen for owen, own.

(b) They use a for A. S. short a before ng. Ex. wanges, but Ch. also has wang-tooth, B. 3234; sang for song (4170), lange for longe, wrang for wrong.

(c) They use (perhaps) ee for oo; as in geen for goon, gone, 4078; neen for noon, none, 4185. This is remarkable, and, in fact, the readings vary, as noted. Geen, neen are in MS. E. Note also pit for put, 4088.

(d) They use the indicative sing. and pl. in -es or -s. Ex. 3 pers. sing. far-es, bo-es, ga-s, wagg-es, fall-es, fynd-es, 4130, bring-es, tyd-es, 4175, say-s, 4180. Pl. werk-es, 4030. So also is I, I is, thou is, 4089. In l. 4045, we find are ye, E.; ar ye (better), Hn.; ere ye, Cp. Hl.; is ye, Cm. Pt.; es ye, Ln. Both ar (er) and is (es) are found in the present tense plural in Northern works; we is occurs in Barbour’s Bruce, iii. 317. It is not ‘ungrammatical,’ as Tyrwhitt supposes.

(e) Other grammatical peculiarities are: sal for shal, shall, 4087; slyk for swiche, such, 4173; whilk for whiche, 4171; thair for hir, their, 4172 (which is now the standard use); hethen for hennes, hence, 4033; til for to (but Chaucer sometimes uses til himself, chiefly before a vowel); y-mel for amonges, 4171; gif for if, 4181.

(f) Besides the use of the peculiar forms mentioned in (e), we find certain words employed which do not occur elsewhere in Chaucer, viz. boes (see note to 4027), lathe, barn, fonne, fool, hething, contempt, taa, take. To these Tyrwhitt adds gar, reading Gar us have mete in l. 4132, but I can only find Get us som mete in my seven MSS. Capul, horse, occurs again in D. 1554, 2150.

I think Mr. Ellis a little underrates the ‘marked northernism’ of Chaucer’s specimens. Certainly thou is is as marked as I is; and other certain marks are the pl. indic. in -es, as in werk-es, 4030, the use of sal for ‘shall,’ of boes for ‘behoves,’ of taa for ‘take,’ of hethen for ‘hence,’ of slyk for ‘such,’ the prepositions fra and y-mel, and even some of the peculiarities of pronunciation, as ā for ō, wrang for wrong.

It is worth enquiring whether Chaucer has made any mistakes, and it is clear that he has made several. Thus as clerkes sayn (4028) should be as clerkes says; and sayth should again be says in l. 4210. In l. 4171, hem (them) should be thaim. In l. 4180, y-greved should be greved; the Northern dialect knows nothing of the prefix y-. It also ignores the final -e in definite adjectives; hence thy fair-e (4023), this short-e (4265), and this lang-e (4175) all have a superfluous -e. Of course this is what we should expect; the poet merely gives Edition: current; Page: [122] a Northern colouring to his diction to amuse us; he is not trying to teach us Northern grammar. The general effect is excellent, and that is all he was concerned with.

4020. The mill lay a little way off the road on the left (coming from Trumpington); so it was necessary to ‘know the way.’

4026. nede has na peer, necessity has no equal, or, is above all. More commonly, Nede ne hath no lawe, as in P. Plowman, B. xx. 10, or C. xxiii. 10; ‘Necessitas non habet legem’; a common proverb.

4027. boës, contracted from behoves, a form peculiar to Chaucer. In northern poems, the word is invariably a monosyllable, spelt bos, or more commonly bus; and the pt. t. is likewise a monosyllable, viz. bud or bood, short for behoved. In Cursor Mundi, l. 9870, we have: ‘Of a woman bos him be born; and in l. 10639: ‘Than bus this may be clene and bright.’ In M. E., it is always used impersonally; him boes or him bos means ‘it behoves him,’ or ‘he must.’ See Bus in the New E. Dictionary.

Chaucer here evidently alludes to some such proverb as ‘He who has no servant must serve himself,’ but I do not know the precise form of it. The expression ‘as clerkes sayn’ hints that it is a Latin one.

4029. hope, expect, fear. Cf. P. Plowman, C. x. 275, and see Hope in Nares, who cites the story of the tanner of Tamworth (from Puttenham’s Arte of Poesie, bk. iii. c. 22) who said—‘I hope I shall be hanged to-morrow.’ Cf. also Thomas of Erceldoun, ed. Murray, l. 78:—

‘But-if I speke with yone lady bryghte,

I hope myne herte will bryste in three!’

4030. ‘So ache his molar teeth.’ Wark, to ache, is common in Yorkshire: ‘My back warks while I can hardly bide,’ my back aches so that I can hardly endure; Mid. Yks. Gloss. (E. D. S.).

4032. ham, i. e. hām, haam, home.

4033. hethen, hence, is very characteristic of a Northern dialect; it occurs in Hampole, Havelok, Morris’s Allit. Poems, Gawain, Robert of Brunne, the Ormulum, &c.; see examples in Mätzner.

4037. One clerk wants to watch above, and the other below, to prevent cheating. This incident is not in the French fabliaux. On the other hand, it occurs in the Jest of the Mylner of Abyngton, which is plainly copied from Chaucer.

4049. blere hir yë, blear their eyes, cheat them, as in l. 3865.

4055. ‘The fable of the Wolf and the Mare is found in the Latin Esopean collections, and in the early French poem of Renard le Contrefait, from whence it appears to have been taken into the English Reynard the Fox’; Wright. Tyrwhitt observes that the same story is told of a mule in Cento Novelle Antiche, no. 91. See Caxton’s Reynard, ch. 27, ed. Arber, p. 62, where the wolf wants to buy a mare’s foal, who said that the price of the foal was written on her hinder foot; ‘yf ye conne rede and be a clerk, ye may come see and rede it.’ And when Edition: current; Page: [123] the wolf said, ‘late me rede it,’ the mare gave him so violent a kick that ‘a man shold wel haue ryden a myle er he aroos.’ The Fox, who had brought it all about, hypocritically condoles with the Wolf, and observes—‘Now I here wel it is true that I long syth haue redde and herde, that the beste clerkes ben not the wysest men.’

For the story in Le Roman du Renard Contrefait, see Poètes de Champagne, Reims, 1851, p. 156. For further information, see Caxton’s Fables of Æsop, ed. Jacobs, lib. v. fab. 10; vol. i. 254, 255; vol. ii. 157, 179. La Fontaine has a similar fable of the Fox, the Wolf, and the Horse. In Croxall’s Æsop, it is told of the Horse, who tells the Lion, who is acting as physician, that he has a thorn in his foot. See further references in the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, pp. 147, 197.

4061. levesel, an arbour or shelter formed of branches or foliage. Lev-e is the stem of leef, A. S. lēaf, a leaf; and -sel is the same as the A. S. sæl, sele, a hall, dwelling, Swed. sal, Icel. salr, G. Saal. The A. S. sæl occurs also in composition, as burg-sæl, folc-sæl, horn-sæl, and sele is still commoner; Grein gives twenty-three compounds with the latter, as gæst-sele, guest-hall, hrōf-sele, roofed-hall, &c. In Icel. we have lauf-hús, leaf-house, but we find the very word we require in Swed. löfsal, ‘a hut built of green boughs,’ Widegren; Dan. lövsals-fest, feast of tabernacles. The word occurs again in the Persones Tale, l. 411, where it means a leafy arbour such as may still be seen to form the porch of a public-house. The word is scarce; but see the following:—

‘Alle but Syr Gauan, graythest of alle,

Was left with Dame Graynour, vndur the greues [groves] grene.

By a lauryel ho [she] lay, vndur a lefe-sale

Of box and of barberè, byggyt ful bene.’

Anturs of Arthur, st. 6; in Three Met. Romances, ed. Robson, p. 3.

The editor prints it as lefe sale, and explains it by ‘leafy hall,’ but it is a compound word; the adjective would be lefy or leuy. In this case the arbour was ‘built’ of box and barberry.

‘All his devocioun and holynesse

At the taverne is, as for the most dele,

To Bacus syne, and to the leef-sele

His youthe hym haleth,’ &c.

Hoccleve, De Regim. Principum, p. 22.

Again, in Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, iii. 448, the arbour formed by Jonah’s gourd is called a lefsel.

4066. Lydgate has ‘through thinne and thikke’; Siege of Troy, fol. Cc. 6, back.

4078. geen, goon; so in MS. E., which again has neen, none, 4185. The usual Northern form is gan (= gaan), as in Hl.; Hn. Ln. have gane. But we also find gayn, as in Wallace, iv. 102; Bruce, ii. 80. Edition: current; Page: [124] The forms geen, neen, are so remarkable that they are likely to be the original ones.

4086. ‘I am very swift of foot, God knows, (even) as is a roe; by God’s heart, he shall not escape us both; why hadst thou not put the horse in the barn?’ ‘Light as a rae’ [roe]; Tournament of Tottenham, st. 15.

4088. capul, a horse, occurs again, in D. 2150. lathe, a barn, is still in use in some parts of Yorkshire, but chiefly in local designations, being otherwise obsolescent; see the Cleveland and Whitby Glossaries. ‘The northern man writing to his neighbour may say, “My lathe standeth neer the kirkegarth,” for My barne standeth neere the churchyard:’ Coote’s Eng. Schoolemaster, 1632 (Nares). Ray gives: ‘Lathe, a barn’ in 1691; and we again find ‘Leath, a barn’ in 1781 (E. D. S. Gloss. B, 1); and ‘Leath, Laith, a barn, in 1811 (E. D. S. Gloss. B. 7); in all cases as a Northern word.

4096. ‘Trim his beard,’ i.e. cheat him; and so again in D. 361. See Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, 689, and my note upon it.

‘Myght I thaym have spyde,

I had made thaym a berd.’

Towneley Mysteries, p. 144.

4101. Iossa, ‘down here’; a cry of direction. Composed of O. F. jos, jus, down; and ça, here. Bartsch gives an example of jos in his Chrestomathie, 1875, col. 8: ‘tuit li felun cadegren jos,’ all the felons fell down; and Cotgrave has: ‘Jus, downe, or to the ground.’ Godefroy gives: ça jus, here below, down here. It is clearly a direction given by one clerk to the other, and was probably a common cry in driving horses.

warderere, i. e. warde arere, ‘look out behind!’ Another similar cry. MS. Cm. has: ware the rere, mind the rear, which is a sort of gloss upon it.

4110. hething, contempt. See numerous examples in Mätzner, s. v. hæthing, ii. 396. Cf. ‘Bothe in hething and in scorn’; Sir Amadace, l. 17, in Robson’s Three Met. Romances, p. 27. ‘Him thoght scorn and gret hething’; Seven Sages, ed. Weber, l. 91.

4112. The first foot is ‘trochaic.’

4115. in his hond, in his possession, in his hold.

4126. ‘Or enlarge it by argument’; prove by logic that it is the size you wish it to be.

4127. Cutberd, St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, died in 686. Being a Northumberland man, John swears by a Northumberland saint.

4130. Evidently a proverb: ‘a man must take (one) of two things, either such as he finds or such as he brings’; i. e. must put up with what he can get.

4134. Another proverb. Repeated in D. 415, with lure for tulle. From the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, liv. v. c. 10: ‘Veteri celebratur Edition: current; Page: [125] proverbio: Quia vacuae manus temeraria petitio est.’ MS. Cm. has the rimes folle, tolle. For tulle, a commoner spelling is tille, to draw, hence to allure, entice. Hence E. till (for money), orig. meaning a ‘drawer’; and the tiller of a rudder, by which it is drawn aside. See tullen in Stratmann, and tollen in Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 7. 11 (in vol. ii. p. 45).

4140. chalons, blankets. The same word as mod. E. shalloon, ‘a slight woollen stuff’; Ogilvie’s Dict. ‘The blanket was sometimes made of a texture originally imported from Chalons in France, but afterwards extensively manufactured in England by the Chaloners’; Our Eng. Home, p. 108. ‘Qwyltes ne chalouns’; Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 350.

4152. quakke, asthma, or difficulty of breathing that causes a croaking noise. Halliwell gives: ‘Quack, to be noisy, West. The term is applied to any croaking noise.’ Also: ‘Quackle, to choke, or suffocate, East.’ Pose, a cold in the head; A. S. gepos.

4155. ‘To wet one’s whistle’ is still in use for to drink deeply. ‘I wete my whystell, as good drinkers do’; Palsgrave, p. 780. In Walton’s Complete Angler, Part i. ch. 5, we find: ‘Let’s drink the other cup to wet our whistles.’

4172. wilde fyr, erysipelas (to torment them); see Halliwell. Cf. E. 2252. The entry—‘Erysipela (sic), wilde fyr’ occurs in Ælfric’s Vocabulary. So in Le Rom. de la Rose:—‘que Mal-Feu l’arde’; 7438, 8319.

4174. flour, choice, best of a thing; il ending, evil death, bad end. ‘They shall have the best (i. e. here, the worst) of a bad end.’ Rather a wish than a prophecy.

4181. Sidenote in MS. Hl.—‘Qui in vno grauatur in alio debet releuari.’ A Law Maxim.

4194. upright, upon her back. ‘To slepe on the backe, vpryght, is vtterly to be abhorred’; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 245. Palsgrave, s. v. Throwe, has: ‘I throwe a man on his backe or upright, so that his face is upwarde, Ie renuerse.’ And see Nares. Cf. ‘Now dounward groffe [on your belly], and now upright’; Rom. Rose, 2561. Bolt-upright occurs in l. 4266; where bolt is ‘like a bolt,’ hence ‘straight,’ or exactly. See Boli, adv., in the New E. Dictionary. And compare B. 1506.

4208. daf, fool; from E. daf-t. cokenay, a milk-sop, poor creature. The orig. sense of coken-ay is ‘cocks’ egg,’ from a singular piece of folk-lore which credited cocks with laying such eggs as happen to be imperfect. ‘The small yolkless eggs which hens sometimes lay are called “cocks’ eggs,” generally in the firm persuasion that the name states a fact’; Shropshire Folklore, by C. S. Burne, p. 229. The idea is old, and may be found gravely stated as a fact in Bartolomæus De Proprietatibus Rerum (14th century). See Cockney in the New E. Dictionary.

4210. Unhardy is unsely, the cowardly man has no luck. ‘Audentes Edition: current; Page: [126] fortuna iuuat’; Vergil, Aen. x. 284. So also our ‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’ and ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’; which see in Hazlitt’s Proverbs. For seel, luck, see l. 4239. See Troil. iv. 602, and the note.

4220. Pronounce ben’cite in three syllables; as usual.

4233. The thridde cok; apparently, between 5 and 6 a.m.; see note to line 3675 above. It was near dawn; see l. 4249.

4236. Malin, another form of Malkin, which is a pet-name for Matilda. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 181, where my statement that Malkin occurs in the present passage refers to Tyrwhitt’s edition, which substitutes Malkin for the Malin or Malyn of the MSS. and of ed. 1532. Cf. B. 30.

‘Malyn, tersorium,’ Cath. Anglicum; i. e. Malin, like Malkin, also meant a dishclout. Malin has now become Molly.

4244. cake. In Wright’s Glossaries, ed. Wülker, col. 788, l. 36, we find, ‘Hic panis subverucius, a meleres cake’; on which Wright remarks: ‘Perhaps this name alludes to the common report that the miller always stole the flour from his customers to make his cakes, which were baked on the sly.’

4253. toty, in the seven MSS.; totty in ed. 1532. It means ‘dizzy, reeling’; and Halliwell, s. v. Totty, quotes from MS. Rawl. C. 86: ‘So toty was the brayn of his hede.’ Cf. ‘And some also so toty in theyr heade’; Lydgate, Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. L 1, back. Spenser has the word twice, as tottie or totty, and evidently copied it from this very passage, which he read in a black-letter edition; see his Shep. Kal., February, 55, and F. Q. vii. 7. 39. Cf. E. totter.

4257. a twenty devel way, with extremely ill-luck. See note to l. 3713.

4264. Compare B. 1417.

4272. linage; her grandfather was a priest; see note to l. 3943.

4278. poke, bag; cf. the proverb, ‘To buy a pig in a poke.’

‘Than on the grounde together rounde

With many a sadde stroke

They roule and rumble, they turne and tumble,

As pygges do in a poke.’

Sir T. More, A Merrie Iest, &c. (1510).

This juvenile poem by Sir T. More is printed in Hazlitt’s Popular Poetry, iii. 128, and in the Preface to Todd’s Johnson.

4286. Bromeholm. A piece of what was supposed to be the true cross was brought from the East by an English priest to Norfolk in 1223, and immediately became famous as an object of pilgrimage. It is called the ‘Rode [rood] of Bromeholme’ in P. Plowman, B. v. 231; see my note to that line.

4287. The full form is quoted in the note to Scott’s Marmion, can. ii. st. 13:—‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum; a vinculis enim mortis redemisti me, Domine veritatis, Amen.’ In Edition: current; Page: [127] Ratis Raving, &c., ed. Lumby, p. 8, l. 263, the form ends with ‘spiritum meum, domine, deus veritatis.’ In Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 235, the following translation of the Latin form is given:—

‘Loverd Godd, in hondes thine I bequethe soule mine;

Thu me boctest with thi deadd, Loverd Godd of sothfastheedd.’

It here occurs in company with the Creed, the Paternoster, and the Ave Maria; so that it was one of the very common religious formulae which were familiar, even in the Latin form, to people of no education. They frequently knew the words of these forms, without knowing more than the general sense. In manus tuas, &c., was even recited by criminals before being hung; see Skelton’s Works, ed. Dyce, i. 5, 292, ii. 268. The words are mostly taken from the Vulgate version of Luke, xxiii. 46.

4290. oon, one, some one; not common at this date.

4295. Cf. Roman de la Rose, 12720:—‘Qui set bien de l’ostel les estres,’ i. e. who knows well the inner parts of the hostel. See note to A. 1971 above.

4302. volupeer, nightcap; see note to A. 3241.

4307. harrow, a cry for help; see note to A. 3286.

4320. Him thar, lit. ‘it needs him,’ i.e. he need, he must. For thar, ed. 1532 has dare, which Tyrwhitt rightly corrects to thar, which occurs again in D. 329, 336, 1365, and H. 352. It is common enough in early authors; the full form is tharf, as in Owl and Nightingale, 803 (or 180), Moral Ode (Jesus MS.), 44; spelt tharrf, Ormulum, 12886; therf, Ancren Riwle, p. 192; darf, Floris and Blancheflur, 315; derf, O. Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, i. 187, l. 31; dar, Octovian, 1337; &c. The pt. t. is thurfte, thurte, thorte; see tharf and thurfen in Stratmann, and cf. A. S. thearf, pt. t. thurfte. For wene, the correct reading, Tyrwhitt substitutes winne, against all authority, because he could make no sense of wene. It is odd that he should have missed the sense so completely. Wene is to imagine, think, also to expect; and the line means ‘he must not expect good who does evil.’ The very word is preserved by Ray, in his Proverbs, 3rd ed., 1737, p. 288:—‘He that evil does, never good weines.’ Hazlitt quotes a proverb to a like effect: ‘He that does what he should not, shall feel what he would not.’ Cf. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’; Gal. vi. 7.

4321. A common proverb; cf. Ps. vii. 16, ix. 15.

‘For often he that will beguile

Is guiled with the same guile,

And thus the guiler is beguiled.’

Gower, Conf. Amant (bk. vi), iii. 47.

‘Begyled is the gyler thanne’; Rom. Rose, 5759.

See further in my note to P. Plowman, C. xxxi. 166, and Kemble’s Solomon and Saturn, p. 63. Le Rom. de la Rose, 7381, has:—‘Qui les deceveors deçoivent.’

Edition: current; Page: [128]

I can add another example from Caxton’s Fables of Æsop, lib. ii. fab. 12 (The Fox and the Stork):—‘And therfore he that begyleth other is oftyme begyled hymself.’

The Cook’s Prologue.

4329. herbergage, lodging; alluding to l. 4123.

4331. Not from Solomon, but from Ecclesiasticus, xi. 31: ‘Non omnem hominem inducas in domum tuum; multae enim sunt insidiae dolosi.’ In the E. version, it is verse 29.

4336. Hogge, Hodge, for Roger (l. 4353). Ware, in Hertfordshire.

4346. laten blood, let blood, i. e. removed gravy from. It refers to a meat-pie, baked with gravy in it; as it was not sold the day it was made, the gravy was removed to make it keep longer; and so the pie was eaten at last, when far from being new.

4347. The meaning of ‘a Jack of Dover’ has been much disputed, but it probably meant a pie that had been cooked more than once. Some have thought it meant a sole (probably a fried sole), as ‘Dover soles’ are still celebrated; but this is only a guess, and seems to be wrong. Sir T. More, Works, p. 675 E, speaks of a ‘Jak of Paris, an evil pye twyse baken’; which is probably the same thing. Roquefort’s French Dict. has:—

‘Jaquet, Jaket, impudent, menteur. C’est sans doute de ce mot que les pâtissiers ont pris leur mot d’argot jaques, pour signifier qu’une pièce de volaille, de viande ou de pâtisserie cuite au four, est vieille ou dure.’

See Hazlitt’s Proverbs, p. 20; and Hazlitt’s Shakespeare Jest-books, ii. 366. Hence, in a secondary sense, Jack of Dover meant an old story, or hashed up anecdote. Ray says:—‘This he [T. Fuller] makes parallel to Crambe bis cocta, and applicable to such as grate the ears of their auditors with ungrateful tautologies of what is worthless in itself; tolerable as once uttered in the notion of novelty, but abominable if repeated.’ This may explain the fact that an old jest-book was printed with the title A Jack of Dover in 1604, and again in 1615. The E. word jack has indeed numerous senses.

4350. The insinuation is that stray flies were mixed up with the parsley served up with the Cook’s geese. Tyrwhitt quotes from MS. Harl. 279—‘Take percely,’ &c. in a receipt for stuffing a goose; so that parsley was sometimes used for this purpose. It was also used for stuffing chickens; see Liber Cure Cocorum, ed. Morris, p. 22.

4357. ‘A true jest is an evil jest.’ Hazlitt, in his Collection of Proverbs, gives, ‘True jest is no jest,’ and quotes ‘Sooth bourd is no bourd’ from Heywood, and from Harington’s Brief Apologie of Poetrie, 1591. Kelly’s Scotch Proverbs includes: ‘A sooth bourd is nae bourd.’ Tyrwhitt alters the second play to spel, as being a Flemish word, but he only found it in two MSS. (Askew 1 and 2), and nothing is gained Edition: current; Page: [129] by it. The fact is, that there is nothing Flemish about the proverb except the word quad, though there may have been an equivalent proverb in that language. We must take Chaucer’s remark to mean that ‘Sooth play is what a Fleming would call quaad play’; which is then quite correct. For just as Flemish does not use the English words sooth and play, so English seldom uses the Flemish form quaad, equivalent to the Dutch kwaad, evil, bad, spelt quade in Hexham’s Du. Dict. (1658). Cf. also O. Friesic kwad, quad, East Friesic kwâd (still in common use). The Mid. Eng. form is not quad, but (properly) quēd or queed; see examples in Stratmann, s. v. cwêd. In P. Plowman, B. xiv. 189, the qued means the Evil One, the devil. Queed occurs as a sb. as late as in Skelton, ed. Dyce, i. 168. We find, however, the rare M. E. form quad in Gower, ed. Pauli, ii. 246, and in the Story of Genesis and Exodus, ed. Morris, 536; and in another passage of the Cant. Tales, viz. B. 1628. The oldest English examples seem to be those in the Blickling Glosses, viz. ‘of cweade arærende, de stercore erigens’; and ‘cwed uel meox, stercus.’ There is no difficulty about the etymology; the corresponding O. H. G. word is quāt, whence G. Koth or Kot, excrement; and the root appears in the Skt. gu or gū, to void excrement; see Kot in Kluge.

4358. This is interesting, as giving us the Host’s name. Herry is the mod. E. Harry, with the usual change from er to ar, as in M. E. derk, dark, &c. It is the same as the F. Herri (not uncommon in O. F.), made from F. Henri by assimilation of nr to rr.

The name seems to have been taken from that of a real person. In the Subsidy Rolls, 4 Rich. II. (1380–1), for Southwark, occurs the entry—‘Henri’ Bayliff, Ostyler, Xpian [Christian] ux[or] eius . . ij s.’ In the parliament held at Westminster, in 50 Edw. III. (1376–7), Henry Bailly was one of the representatives for that borough; and again, in the parliament at Gloucester, 2 Rich. II., the name occurs. See Notes and Queries, 2 S. iii. 228.

The Cokes Tale.

4368. ‘Brown as a berry.’ So in A. 207.

4377. ‘There were sometimes Justs in Cheapside; Hollingshead, vol. ii. p. 348. But perhaps any procession may be meant.’—Tyrwhitt. ‘Cheapside was the grand scene of city festivals and processions.’—Wright.

4379. T. has And til, but his note says that And was inserted by himself. Wright reads, ‘And tyl he hadde’; but And is not in the Harleian MS. Observe that Wright insists very much on the fact that he reproduces this MS. ‘with literal accuracy,’ though he allows himself, according to his own account, to make silent alterations due to collation with the Lansdowne MS. But the word And is not to be found in any of the seven MSS., and this is only one example of the numerous cases in which he has silently altered his text without any Edition: current; Page: [130] MS. authority at all. His text, in fact, is full of treacherous pitfalls; and Bell’s edition is quite as bad, though that likewise pretends to be accurate.

The easiest way of scanning the line is to ignore the elision of the final e in had-de, which is preserved, as often, by the cæsural pause.

4383. sette steven, made an appointment; see A. 1524.

4394. ‘Though he (the master) may have,’ &c.

4396. ‘Though he (the apprentice) may know how to play,’ &c. Opposed to l. 4394. The sense is—‘The master pays for the revelling of the apprentice, though he takes no part in such revel; and conversely, the apprentice may gain skill in minstrelsy, but takes no part in paying for it; for, in his case, his rioting is convertible with theft.’ The master pays, but plays not; the other pays not, but plays.

4397. ‘Revelling and honesty, in the case of one of low degree (who has no money), are continually wrath with (i. e. opposed to) each other.’

4402. ‘And sometimes carried off to Newgate, with revel (such as he might be supposed to approve of).’ The point of the allusion lies in the fact that, when disorderly persons were carried to prison, they were preceded by minstrels, in order to call public attention to their disgrace. This is clearly shewn in the Liber Albus, pp. 459, 460, (p. 396 of the E. translation). E. g. ‘Item, if any person shall be impeached of adultery, and be thereof lawfully attained, let him be taken unto Newgate, and from thence, with minstrelsy, through Chepe, to the Tun on Cornhulle [Cornhill], there to remain at the will of the mayor and alderman.’

4404. paper. The allusion is not clear; perhaps it means that he was referring to his account-book, and found it unsatisfactory.

4406. In Hazlitt’s Proverbs we find; ‘The rotten apple injures its neighbour.’ Cf. G. 964.

In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 205, we are bidden to avoid bad company, because a rotten apple rots the sound ones, if left among them.

In Ida von Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, 1872–5, no. 354, is:—‘Ein fauler Apfel steckt den andern an. Pomum compunctum cito corrumpit sibi iunctum.’

4413. his leve, his leave to go, his dismissal, his congé.

4414. or leve, or leave it, i. e. or desist from it.

4415. for, because, since. louke, an accomplice who entices the dupe into the thief’s company, a decoyer of victims. Not ‘a receiver to a thief,’ as Tyrwhitt guessed, but his assistant in thieving, one who helped him (as Chaucer says) to suck others by stealing or borrowing. It answers to an A. S. *lūca (not found), formed with the agential suffix -a from lūcan, lit. to pull, pluck, root up weeds, hence (probably) to draw, entice. The corresponding E. Friesic lūkan or lukan means not only to pull, pluck, but also to milk or suck (see Koolman). The Low G. luken means not only to pull up weeds, but Edition: current; Page: [131] also to suck down, or to take a long pull in drinking; hence O. F. louchier, loukier, to swallow. From the A. S. lūcan, to pluck up, comes the common prov. E. louk, lowk, look, to pluck up weeds; see Ray, Whitby Glossary, &c.

4417. brybe, to purloin; not to bribe in the modern sense; see the New E. Dict.

4422. Here the Tale suddenly breaks off; so it was probably never finished.

asterisks See Notes to Gamelin at the end of the Notes to the Tales.

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NOTES TO GROUP B.

Introduction to the Man of Lawes Tale.

1. If, as Mr. Furnivall supposes, the time of the telling of the Canterbury Tales be taken to be longer than one day, we may suppose the Man of Lawes Tale to begin the stories told on the second morning of the journey, April 18. Otherwise, we must suppose all the stories in Group A to precede it, which is not impossible, if we suppose the pilgrims to have started early in the morning.

Hoste. This is one of the words which are sometimes dissyllabic, and sometimes monosyllabic; it is here a dissyllable, as in l. 39. See note to line 1883 below.

sey, i.e. saw. The forms of ‘saw’ vary in the MSS. In this line we find saugh, sauh, segh, sauhe, sawh, none of which are Chaucer’s own, but due to the scribes. The true form is determined by the rime, as in the Clerkes Tale, E. 667, where most of the MSS. have say. A still better spelling is sey, which may be found in the House of Fame, 1151, where it rimes with lay. The A. S. form is sēah.

2. The ark, &c. In Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. ch. 7 (vol. iii. 194), is the proposition headed—‘to knowe the arch of the day, that some folk callen the day artificial, from the sonne arysing til hit go to reste.’ Thus, while the ‘day natural’ is twenty-four hours, the ‘day artificial’ is the time during which the sun is above the horizon. The ‘arc’ of this day merely means the extent or duration of it, as reckoned along the circular rim of an astrolabe; or, when measured along the horizon (as here), it means the arc extending from the point of sunrise to that of sunset. ronne, run, performed, completed.

3. The fourthe part. The true explanation of this passage, which Tyrwhitt failed to discover, is due to Mr. A. E. Brae, who first published it in May, 1851, and reprinted it at p. 68 of his edition of Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe. His conclusions were based upon actual calculation, and will be mentioned in due order. In re-editing the ‘Astrolabe,’ I took the opportunity of roughly checking his calculations by other methods, and am satisfied that he is quite correct, and that the day meant is not the 28th of April, as in the Ellesmere MS., nor the 13th of April, as in the Harleian MS., but the 18th, as in the Hengwrt Edition: current; Page: [133] MS. and most others. It is easily seen that xviii may be corrupted into xxviii by prefixing x, or into xiii by the omission of v; this may account for the variations.

The key to the whole matter is given by a passage in Chaucer’s ‘Astrolabe,’ pt. ii. ch. 29, where it is clear that Chaucer (who, however, merely translates from Messahala) actually confuses the hour-angle with the azimuthal arc; that is, he considered it correct to find the hour of the day by noting the point of the horizon over which the sun appears to stand, and supposing this point to advance, with a uniform, not a variable, motion. The host’s method of proceeding was this. Wanting to know the hour, he observed how far the sun had moved southward along the horizon since it rose, and saw that it had gone more than half-way from the point of sunrise to the exact southern point. Now the 18th of April in Chaucer’s time answers to the 26th of April at present. On April 26, 1874, the sun rose at 4h. 43m., and set at 7h. 12m., giving a day of about 14h. 30m., the fourth part of which is at 8h. 20m., or, with sufficient exactness, at half-past eight. This would leave a whole hour and a half to signify Chaucer’s ‘half an houre and more,’ shewing that further explanation is still necessary. The fact is, however, that the host reckoned, as has been said, in another way, viz. by observing the sun’s position with reference to the horizon. On April 18 the sun was in the 6th degree of Taurus at that date, as we again learn from Chaucer’s treatise. Set this 6th degree of Taurus on the East horizon on a globe, and it is found to be 22 degrees to the North of the East point, or 112 degrees from the South. The half of this is at 56 degrees from the South; and the sun would seem to stand above this 56th degree, as may be seen even upon a globe, at about a quarter past nine; but Mr. Brae has made the calculation, and shews that it was at twenty minutes past nine. This makes Chaucer’s ‘half an houre and more’ to stand for half an hour and ten minutes; an extremely neat result. But this we can check again by help of the host’s other observation. He also took note, that the lengths of a shadow and its object were equal, whence the sun’s altitude must have been 45 degrees. Even a globe will shew that the sun’s altitude, when in the 6th degree of Taurus, and at 10 o’clock in the morning, is somewhere about 45 or 46 degrees. But Mr. Brae has calculated it exactly, and his result is, that the sun attained its altitude of 45 degrees at two minutes to ten exactly. This is even a closer approximation than we might expect, and leaves no doubt about the right date being the eighteenth of April. For fuller particulars, see Chaucer on the Astrolabe, ed. Brae, p. 69; and ed. Skeat (E. E. T. S.), preface, p. l.

5. eightetethe, eighteenth. Mr. Wright prints eightetene, with the remark that ‘this is the reading in which the MSS. seem mostly to agree.’ This is right in substance, but not critically exact. No such word as eightetene appears here in the MSS., which denote the number by an abbreviation, as stated in the footnote. The Hengwrt MS. has xviijthe, and the Old English for eighteenth must have have been eightetethe, Edition: current; Page: [134] the ordinal, not the cardinal number. This form is easily inferred from the numerous examples in which -teenth is represented by -tethe; see feowertethe, fiftethe, &c. in Stratmann’s Old English Dictionary; we find the very form eightetethe in Rob. of Glouc., ed. Wright, 6490; and eighteteothe in St. Swithin, l. 5, as printed in Poems and Lives of Saints, ed. Furnivall, 1858, p. 43. Eighte is of two syllables, from A. S. eahta, cognate with Lat. octo. Eightetethe has four syllables; see A. 3223, and the note.

8. as in lengthe, with respect to its length.

13. The astrolabe which Chaucer gave to his little son Lewis was adapted for the latitude of Oxford. If, as is likely, the poet-astronomer checked his statements in this passage by a reference to it, he would neglect the difference in latitude between Oxford and the Canterbury road. In fact, it is less than a quarter of a degree, and not worth considering in the present case.

14. gan conclude, did conclude, concluded. Gan is often used thus as an auxiliary verb.

15. plighte, plucked; cf. shrighte, shrieked, in Kn. A. 2817.—M.

16. Lordinges, sirs. This form of address is exceedingly common in Early English poetry. Cf. the first line in the Tale of Sir Thopas.

18. seint Iohn. See the Squire’s Tale, F. 596.

19. Leseth, lose ye; note the form of the imperative plural in -eth; cf. l. 37. As ferforth as ye may, as far as lies in your power.

20. wasteth, consumeth; cf. wastour, a wasteful person, in P. Plowm. B. vi. 154.—M. Hl. has passeth, i. e. passes away; several MSS. insert it before wasteth, but it is not required by the metre, since the e in time is here fully sounded; cf. A. S. tīma. Compare—

‘The tyme, that passeth night and day,

And rest[e]lees travayleth ay,

And steleth from us so prively,

. . . . . . .

As water that doun runneth ay,

But never drope returne may,’ &c.

Romaunt of the Rose, l. 369.

See also Clerkes Tale, E. 118.

21. what. We now say—what with. It means, ‘partly owing to.’

22. wakinge; strictly, it means watching; but here, in our wakinge = whilst we are awake.

23. Cf. Ovid, Art. Amat. iii. 62–65:—

‘Ludite; eunt anni more fluentis aquae.

Nec quae praeteriit, cursu reuocabitur unda;

Nec, quae praeteriit, hora redire potest.

Utendum est aetate; cito pede labitur aetas.’

25. Seneca wrote a treatise De Breuitate Temporis, but this does not contain any passage very much resembling the text. I have no doubt that Chaucer was thinking of a passage which may easily have caught Edition: current; Page: [135] his eye, as being very near the beginning of the first of Seneca’s epistles. ‘Quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per negligentiam fit. Quem mihi dabis, qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat? qui diem aestimet? . . . In huius rei unius fugacis ac lubricae possessionem natura nos misit, ex qua expellit quicumque uult; et tanta stultitia mortalium est, ut, quae minima et uilissima sint, certe reparabilia, imputari sibi, quum impetrauere, patiantur; nemo se iudicet quidquam debere, qui tempus accepit, quum interim hoc unum est, quod ne gratus quidem potest reddere’; Epist. I.; Seneca Lucilio suo.

30. Malkin; a proverbial name for a wanton woman; see P. Plowman, C. ii. 181 (B. i. 182), and my note. ‘There are more maids than Malkin’; Heywood’s Proverbs.

32. moulen, lit. ‘become mouldy’; hence, be idle, stagnate, remain sluggish, rot. See Mouldy in the Appendix to my Etym. Dict. 2nd ed. 1884; and cf. note to A. 3870.

33. Man of Lawe. This is the ‘sergeant of the lawe’ described in the Prologue, ll. 309–330. So have ye blis, so may you obtain bliss; as you hope to reach heaven.

34. as forward is, as is the agreement. See Prologue, A. 33, 829.

35. been submitted, have agreed. This illustrates the common usage of expressing a perfect by the verb to be and the past part. of an intransitive verb. Cf. is went, in B. 1730.—M.

36. at my Iugement, at my decree; ready to do as I bid you. See Prologue, A. 818 and 833.

37. Acquiteth yow, acquit yourself, viz. by redeeming your promise. holdeth your biheste, keep your promise. Acquit means to absolve or free oneself from a debt, obligation, charge, &c.; or to free oneself from the claims of duty, by fulfilling it.

38. devoir, duty; see Knightes Tale, A. 2598.

atte leste, at the least. Atte or atten is common in Old English for at the or at then; the latter is a later form of A. S. æt þām, where then (=þām) is the dative case of the article. But for the explanation of peculiar forms and words, the Glossarial Index should be consulted.

39. For ich, Tyrwhitt reads jeo=je, though found in none of our seven MSS. This makes the whole phrase French - de par dieux jeo assente. Mr. Jephson suggests that this is a clever hit of Chaucer’s, because he makes the Man of Lawe talk in French, with which, as a lawyer, he was very familiar. However, we find elsewhere—

‘Quod Troilus, “depardieux I assente”;’—

and again—

‘ “Depardieux,” quod she, “god leve al be wel”;’

Troilus and Cres. ii. 1058 and 1212;

and in the Freres Tale, D. 1395—

‘ “Depardieux,” quod this yeman, “dere brother.” ’

Edition: current; Page: [136]

It is much more to the point to observe that the Man of Lawe talks about law in l. 43. Cotgrave, in his French Dictionary, under par, gives—‘De par Dieu soit, a [i. e. in] God’s name be it. De par moy, by my means. De par le roy, by the king’s appointment.’ De par is a corruption of O.Fr. de part, on the part or side of; so that de par le roy means literally, ‘as for the king,’ i.e. ‘in the king’s name.’ Similarly, de par Dieu is ‘in God’s name.’ See Burguy, Grammaire de la Langue D’oil, ii. 359. The form dieux is a nominative, from the Latin deus; thus exhibiting an exception to the almost universal law in French, that the modern F. substantives answer to the accusative cases of Latin substantives, as fleur to florem, &c. Other exceptions may be found in some proper names, as Charles, Jacques, from Carolus, Jacobus, and in fils, from filius.

41. In the Morality entitled Everyman, in Hazlitt’s Old Eng. Plays, i. 137, is the proverb—‘Yet promise is debt.’ Mr. Hazlitt wrongly considers that as the earliest instance of the phrase.—M. Cf. Hoccleve, De Regim. Principum, p. 64:—‘And of a trewe man beheest is dette.’

holde fayn, &c.; gladly perform all my promise.

43. man . . . another = one . . . another. The Cambridge MS. is right.—M. ‘For whatever law a man imposes on others, he should in justice consider as binding on himself.’ This is obviously a quotation, as appears from l. 45. The expression referred to was probably proverbial. An English proverb says—‘They that make the laws must not break them’; a Spanish one—‘El que ley establece, guardarla debe,’ he who makes a law ought to keep it; and a Latin one—‘Patere legem quam ipse tulisti,’ abide by the law which you made yourself. The idea is expanded in the following passage from Claudian’s Panegyric on the 4th consulship of Honorius, carm. viii., l. 296.—

‘In commune iubes si quid censesue tenendum,

Primus iussa subi; tunc obseruantior aequi

Fit populus, nec ferre negat cum uiderit ipsum

Auctorem parere sibi.’

45. text, quotation from an author, precept, saying. Thus wol our text, i. e. such is what the expression implies.

47. But. This reading is given by Tyrwhitt, from MS. Dd. 4. 24 in the Cambridge University Library and two other MSS. All our seven MSS. read That; but this would require the word Nath (hath not) instead of Hath, in l. 49. Chaucer talks about his writings in a similar strain in A. 746, 1460; and at a still earlier period. in his House of Fame, 620, where Jupiter’s eagle says to him:—

‘And nevertheles hast set thy wit,

Although that in thy hede ful lyte is,

To make bokes, songes, dytees,

In ryme, or elles in cadence,

As thou best canst, in reverence

Of Love, and of his servants eke’; &c.

Edition: current; Page: [137]

can but lewedly on metres, is but slightly skilled in metre. Can=knows here; in the line above it is the ordinary auxiliary verb.

54. Ovid is mentioned for two reasons; because he has so many love-stories, and because Chaucer himself borrowed several of his own from Ovid.

made of mencioun; we should now say—‘made mention of.’

55. Epistelles, Epistles. (T. prints Epistolis, the Lat. form, without authority. The word has here four syllables.) The book referred to is Ovid’s Heroides, which contains twenty-one love-letters. See note to l. 61.

56. What, why, on what account? cf. Prologue, A. 184.

57. ‘The story of Ceyx and Alcyone is related in the introduction to the poem which was for some time called “The Dreme of Chaucer,” but which, in the MSS. Fairfax 16 and Bodl. 638, is more properly entitled, “The Boke of the Duchesse.” ’—Tyrwhitt. Chaucer took it from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bk. xi. ‘Ceyx and Alcyone’ was once, probably, an independent poem; see vol. i. p. 63.

59. Thise is a monosyllable; the final e probably denotes that s was ‘voiced,’ and perhaps the i was long, pronounced (dhiiz).

59, 60. For eek, seek, read eke, seke. Here sek-e is in the infinitive mood. The form ek-e is not etymological, as the A. S. ēac was a monosyllable; but, as -e frequently denoted an adverbial suffix, it was easily added. Hence, in M. E., both eek and ek-e occur; and Chaucer uses either form at pleasure, ek-e being more usual. For examples of eek, see E. 1349, G. 794.

61. the seintes legende of Cupyde; better known now as The Legend of Good Women. Tyrwhitt says—‘According to Lydgate (Prologue to Boccace), the number [of good women] was to have been nineteen; and perhaps the Legend itself affords some ground for this notion; see l. 283, and Court of Love, l. 108. But this number was never completed, and the last story, of Hypermnestra, is seemingly unfinished. . . . In this passage the Man of Lawe omits two ladies, viz. Cleopatra and Philomela, whose histories are in the Legend; and he enumerates eight others, of whom there are no histories in the Legend as we have it at present. Are we to suppose, that they have been lost?’ The Legend contains the nine stories following: 1. Cleopatra; 2. Thisbe; 3. Dido; 4. Hypsipyle and Medea; 5. Lucretia; 6. Ariadne; 7. Philomela; 8. Phyllis; 9. Hypermnestra. Of these, Chaucer here mentions, as Tyrwhitt points out, all but two, Cleopatra and Philomela. Before discussing the matter further, let me note that in medieval times, proper names took strange shapes, and the reader must not suppose that the writing of Adriane for Ariadne, for example, is peculiar to Chaucer. The meaning of the other names is as follows:—Lucresse, Lucretia; Babilan Tisbee, Thisbe of Babylon; Enee, Æneas; Dianire, Deianira; Hermion, Hermione; Adriane, Ariadne; Isiphilee, Hypsipyle; Leander, Erro, Leander and Hero; Eleyne, Helena; Brixseyde, Edition: current; Page: [138] Briseis (acc. Briseïda); Ladomea, Laodamia; Ypermistra, Hypermnestra; Alceste, Alcestis.

Returning to the question of Chaucer’s plan for his Legend of Good Women, we may easily conclude what his intention was, though it was never carried out. He intended to write stories concerning nineteen women who were celebrated for being martyrs of love, and to conclude the series by an additional story concerning queen Alcestis, whom he regarded as the best of all the good women. Now, though he does not expressly say who these women were, he has left us two lists, both incomplete, in which he mentions some of them; and by combining these, and taking into consideration the stories which he actually wrote, we can make out the whole intended series very nearly. One of the lists is the one given here; the other is in a Ballad which is introduced into the Prologue to the Legend. The key to the incompleteness of the present list, certainly the later written of the two, is that the poet chiefly mentions here such names as are also to be found in Ovid’s Heroides; cf. l. 55. Putting all the information together, it is sufficiently clear that Chaucer’s intended scheme must have been very nearly as follows, the number of women (if we include Alcestis) being twenty.

1. Cleopatra. 2. Thisbe. 3. Dido. 4. and 5. Hypsipyle and Medea. 6. Lucretia. 7. Ariadne. 8. Philomela. 9. Phyllis. 10. Hypermnestra (unfinished). After which, 11. Penelope. 12. Briseis. 13. Hermione. 14. Deianira. 15. Laodamia. 16. Helen. 17. Hero. 18. Polyxena (see the Ballad). 19. either Lavinia (see the Ballad), or Oenone (mentioned in Ovid, and in the House of Fame). 20. Alcestis.

Since the list of stories in Ovid’s Heroides is the best guide to the whole passage, it is here subjoined.

In this list, the numbers refer to the letters as numbered in Ovid; the italics shew the stories which Chaucer actually wrote; the asterisk points out such of the remaining stories as he happens to mention in the present enumeration; and the dagger points out the ladies mentioned in his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women.

1. Penelope Ulixi.* †

2. Phyllis Demophoonti.* †

3. Briseis Achilli.*

4. Phaedra Hippolyto.

5. Oenone Paridi.

6. Hypsipyle Iasoni;* † 12. Medea Iasoni.*

7. Dido Aeneae.* †

8. Hermione Orestae.*

9. Deianira Herculi.*

10. Ariadne Theseo.* †

11. Canace Macareo * † (expressly rejected).

13. Laodamia Protesilao.* †

14. Hypermnestra Lynceo.* †

15. Sappho Phaoni. Edition: current; Page: [139]

16. Paris Helenae; 17. Helena Paridi.* †

18. Leander Heroni; 19. Hero Leandro.* †

20. Acontius Cydippae; 21. Cydippe Acontio.

Chaucer’s method, I fear, was to plan more than he cared to finish. He did so with his Canterbury Tales, and again with his Treatise on the Astrolabe; and he left the Squire’s Tale half-told. According to his own account (Prologue to Legend of Good Women, l. 481) he never intended to write his Legend all at once, but only ‘yeer by yere.’ Such proposals are dangerous, and commonly end in incompleteness. To Tyrwhitt’s question—‘are we to suppose that they [i.e. the legends of Penelope and others] have been lost?’ the obvious answer is, that they were never written.

Chaucer alludes to Ovid’s Epistles again in his House of Fame, bk. i., where he mentions the stories of Phyllis, Briseis, Oenone (not mentioned here), Hypsipyle, Medea, Deianira, Ariadne, and Dido; the last being told at some length. Again, in the Book of the Duchesse, he alludes to Medea, Phyllis, and Dido (ll. 726–734); to Penelope and Lucretia (l. 1081); and to Helen (l. 331). As for the stories in the Legend which are not in Ovid’s Heroides, we find that of Thisbe in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bk. iv; that of Philomela in the same, bk. vi; whilst those of Cleopatra and Lucretia are in Boccaccio’s book De Claris Mulieribus, from which he imitated the title ‘Legend of Good Women,’ and derived also the story of Zenobia, as told in the Monkes Tale. However, Chaucer also consulted other sources, such as Ovid’s Fasti (ii. 721) and Livy for Lucretia, &c. See my Introduction to the Legend in vol. iii. pp. xxv., xxxvii.

With regard to the title ‘seintes legend of Cupide,’ which in modern English would be ‘Cupid’s Saints’ Legend,’ or ‘the Legend of Cupid’s Saints,’ Mr. Jephson remarks—‘This name is one example of the way in which Chaucer entered into the spirit of the heathen pantheism, as a real form of religion. He considers these persons, who suffered for love, to have been saints and martyrs for Cupid, just as Peter and Paul and Cyprian were martyrs for Christ.’

63. Gower also tells the story of Tarquin and Lucrece, which he took, says Professor Morley (English Writers, iv. 230), from the Gesta Romanorum, which again had it from Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.

Babilan, Babylonian; elsewhere Chaucer has Babiloine=Babylon, riming with Macedoine; Book of the Duchesse, l. 1061.

64. swerd, sword; put here for death by the sword. See Virgil’s Aeneid, iv. 646; and Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, 1351.

65. tree, put here, most likely, for death by hanging; cf. last line. In Chaucer’s Legend, 2485, we find—

‘She was her owne deeth right with a corde.’

The word may also be taken literally, since Phyllis was metamorphosed after her death into a tree; Gower says she became a nut-tree, and Edition: current; Page: [140] derives filbert from Phyllis; Conf. Amant. bk. iv. Lydgate writes filbert instead of Phyllis; Complaint of Black Knight, l. 68.

66. The pleinte of Dianire, the complaint of Deianira, referring to Ovid’s letter ‘Deianira Herculi’; so also that of Hermion refers to the letter entitled ‘Hermione Orestae’; that of Adriane, to the ‘Ariadne Theseo’; and that of Isiphilee, to the ‘Hypsipyle Iasoni.’

68. bareyne yle, barren island; of which I can find no correct explanation by a previous editor. It refers to Ariadne, mentioned in the previous line. The expression is taken from Ariadne’s letter to Theseus, in Ovid’s Heroides, Ep. x. 59, where we find ‘uacat insula cultu’; and just below—

‘Omne latus terrae cingit mare; nauita nusquam,

Nulla per ambiguas puppis itura uias.’

Or, without referring to Ovid at all, the allusion might easily have been explained by observing Chaucer’s Legend of Ariadne, l. 2163, where the island is described as solitary and desolate. It is said to have been the isle of Naxos.

69. Scan—The dreynt | e Lé | andér |. Here the pp. dreynt is used adjectivally, and takes the final e in the definite form. So in the Book of the Duchesse, 195, it is best to read the dreynte; and in the House of Fame, 1783, we must read the sweynte.

75. Alceste. The story of Alcestis—‘that turned was into a dayesie’—is sketched by Chaucer in his Prologue to the Legend, l. 511, &c. No doubt he intended to include her amongst the Good Women, as the very queen of them all.

78. Canacee; not the Canace of the Squieres Tale, whom Chaucer describes as so kind and good as well as beautiful, but Ovid’s Canace. The story is told by Gower, Confess. Amantis, book iii. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Chaucer is here making a direct attack upon Gower, his former friend; probably because Gower had, in some places, imitated the earlier edition of Chaucer’s Man of Lawes Tale. This difficult question is fully discussed in vol. iii. pp. 413–7.

81. ‘Or else the story of Apollonius of Tyre.’ The form Tyro represents the Lat. ablative in ‘Apollonius de Tyro.’ This story, like that of Canacee (note to l. 78), is told by Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. viii., ed. Pauli, iii. 284; and here again Chaucer seems to reflect upon Gower. The story occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, in which it appears as Tale cliii., being the longest story in the whole collection. It is remarkable as being the only really romantic story extant in an Anglo-Saxon version; see Thorpe’s edition of it, London, 1834. It is therefore much older than 1190, the earliest date assigned by Warton. Compare the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

89. if that I may, as far as lies in my power (to do as I please); a common expletive phrase, of no great force.

90. of, as to, with regard to. doon, accomplish it.

92. Pierides; Tyrwhitt rightly says—‘He rather means, I think, the Edition: current; Page: [141] daughters of Pierus, that contended with the Muses, and were changed into pies; Ovid, Metam. bk. v.’ Yet the expression is not wrong; it signifies—‘I do not wish to be likened to those would-be Muses, the Pierides’; in other words, I do not set myself up as worthy to be considered a poet.

93. Metamorphoseos. It was common to cite books thus, by a title in the genitive case, since the word Liber was understood. There is, however, a slight error in this substitution of the singular for the plural; the true title being P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri Quindecim. See the use of Eneydos in the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4549; and of Judicum in Monk. Ta. B. 3236.

94. ‘But, nevertheless, I care not a bean.’ Cf. l. 4004 below.

95. with hawe bake, with plain fare, as Dr. Morris explains it; it obviously means something of a humble character, unsuited for a refined taste. This was left unexplained by Tyrwhitt, but we may fairly translate it literally by ‘with a baked haw,’ i. e. something that could just be eaten by a very hungry person. The expression I sette nat an hawe (=I care not a haw) occurs in the Wyf of Bathes Prologue, D. 659. Haws are mentioned as given to feed hogs in the Vision of Piers Plowman, B. x. 10; but in The Romance of William of Palerne, l. 1811, a lady actually tells her lover that they can live in the woods on haws, hips, acorns, and hazel-nuts. There is a somewhat similar passage in the Legend of Good Women, Prol. ll. 73–77. I see no difficulty in this explanation. That proposed by Mr. Jephson—‘hark back’—is out of the question; we cannot rime bak with makë, nor does it make sense.

Baken was a strong verb in M. E., with the pp. baken or bake (A. S. bacen). Dr. Stratmann, apparently by mistake, enters this phrase under hawe, adj. dark grey! But he refrains from explaining bake.

96. I speke in prose, I generally have to speak in prose in the law courts; so that if my tale is prosy as compared with Chaucer’s, it is only what you would expect. Dr. Furnivall suggests that perhaps the prose tale of Melibeus was originally meant to be assigned to the Man of Lawe. See further in vol. iii. p. 406.

98. after, afterwards, immediately hereafter. Cf. other for otherwise in Old English.—M.

Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale.

99–121. It is important to observe that more than three stanzas of this Prologue are little else than a translation from the treatise by Pope Innocent III. entitled De Contemptu Mundi, sive de Miseria Conditionis Humanae. This was first pointed out by Prof. Lounsbury, of Yale, Newhaven, U. S. A., in the Nation, July 4, 1889. He shewed that the lost work by Chaucer (viz. his translation of ‘the Wreched Engendring of Mankinde As man may in Pope Innocent y-finde,’ mentioned in the Legend of Good Women, Prologue A, l. 414) is not lost altogether, Edition: current; Page: [142] since we find traces of it in the first four stanzas of the present Prologue; in the stanzas of the Man of Lawes Tale which begin, respectively, with lines 421, 771, 925, and 1135; and in some passages in the Pardoner’s Prologue; as will be pointed out.

It will be observed that if Chaucer, as is probable, has preserved extracts from this juvenile work of his without much alteration, it must have been originally composed in seven-line stanzas, like his Second Nonnes Tale and Man of Lawes Tale.

I here transcribe the original of the present passage from Innocent’s above-named treatise, lib. i. c. 16, marking the places where the stanzas begin.

De miseria divitis et pauperis. (99) Pauperes enim premuntur inedia, cruciantur aerumna, fame, siti, frigore, nuditate; vilescunt, tabescunt, spernuntur, et confunduntur. O miserabilis mendicantis conditio; et si petit, pudore confunditur, et si non petit, egestate consumitur, sed ut mendicet, necessitate compellitur. (106) Deum causatur iniquum, quod non recte dividat; proximum criminatur malignum, quod non plene subveniat. Indignatur, murmurat, imprecatur. (113) Adverte super hoc sententiam Sapientis, ‘Melius est,’ inquit, ‘mori quam indigere’: ‘Etiam proximo suo pauper odiosus erit.’ ‘Omnes dies pauperis mali’; (120) ‘fratres hominis pauperis oderunt eum; insuper et amici procul recesserunt ab eo.’

For further references to the quotations occurring in the above passage, see the notes below, to ll. 114, 118, 120.

99. poverte=povértë, with the accent on the second syllable, as it rimes with herte; in the Wyf of Bathes Tale, it rimes with sherte. Poverty is here personified, and addressed by the Man of Lawe. The whole passage is illustrated by a similar long passage near the end of the Wyf of Bathes Tale, in which the opposite side of the question is considered, and the poet shews what can be said in Poverty’s praise. See D. 1177–1206.

101. Thee is a dative, like me in l. 91.—M. See Gen. ii. 15 (A. S. version), where him þæs ne sceamode=they were not ashamed of it; lit. it shamed them not of it.

102. artow, art thou; the words being run together: so also seistow=sayest thou, in l. 110.

104. Maugree thyn heed, in spite of all you can do; lit. despite thy head; see Knightes Tale, A. 1169, 2618, D. 887.

105. Or . . . or=either . . . or; an early example of this construction.—M.

108. neighebour is a trisyllable; observe that e in the middle of a word is frequently sounded; cf. l. 115. wytest, blamest.

110. ‘By my faith, sayest thou, he will have to account for it hereafter, when his tail shall burn in the fire (lit. glowing coal), because he helps not the needy in their necessity.’

114. ‘It is better (for thee) to die than be in need.’ Tyrwhitt says—‘This saying of Solomon is quoted in the Romaunt of the Rose, Edition: current; Page: [143] l. 8573—Mieux vault mourir que pauvres estre’; [l. 8216, ed. Méon.] The quotation is not from Solomon, but from Jesus, son of Sirach; see Ecclus. xl. 28, where the Vulgate has—‘Melius est enim mori quam indigere.’ Cf. B. 2761.

115. Thy selve neighebor, thy very neighbour, even thy next neighbour. See note to l. 108.

118. In Prov. xv. 15, the Vulgate version has—‘Omnes dies pauperis mali’; where the A. V. has ‘the afflicted.’

119. The reading to makes the line harsh, as the final e in come should be sounded, and therefore needs elision. in that prikke, into that point, into that condition; cf. l. 1028.

120. Cf. Prov. xiv. 20—‘the poor is hated even of his neighbour’; or, in the Vulgate, ‘Etiam proximo suo pauper odiosus erit.’ Also Prov. xix. 7—‘all the brethren of the poor do hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him’; or, in the Vulgate, ‘Fratres hominis pauperis oderunt eum; insuper et amici procul recesserunt ab eo.’ So too Ovid, Trist. i. 9. 5:—

‘Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos,

Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.’

Chaucer has the same thought again in his Tale of Melibeus (p. 227, B. 2749)—‘and if thy fortune change, that thou wexe povre, farewel freendshipe and felaweshipe!’ See also note to B. 3436.

123. as in this cas, as relates to this condition or lot in life. In Chaucer, cas often means chance, hap.

124. ambes as, double aces, two aces, in throwing dice. Ambes is Old French for both, from Lat. ambo. The line in the Monkes Tale—‘Thy sys fortune hath turned into as’ (B. 3851)—helps us out here in some measure, as it proves that a six was reckoned as a good throw, but an ace as a bad one. So in Shakespeare, Mids. Nt. Dream, v. 1. 314, we find less than an ace explained as equivalent to nothing. In the next line, sis cink means a six and a five, which was often a winning throw. The allusion is probably, however, not to the mere attempt as to which of two players could throw the highest, but to the particular game called hazard, in which the word chance (here used) has a special sense. There is a good description of it in the Supplemental volume to the English Cyclopaedia, div. Arts and Sciences. The whole description has to be read, but it may suffice to say here that, when the caster is going to throw, he calls a main, or names one of the numbers five, six, seven, eight, or nine; most often, he calls seven. If he then throws either seven or eleven (Chaucer’s sis cink), he wins; if he throws aces (Chaucer’s ambes as) or deuce-ace (two and one), or double sixes, he loses. If he throws some other number, that number is called the caster’s chance, and he goes on playing till either the main or the chance turns up. In the first case he loses, in the second, he wins. If he calls some other number, the winning and losing throws are somewhat varied; but in all cases, the double ace is a losing throw.

Edition: current; Page: [144]

Similarly, in The Pardoneres Tale, where hazard is mentioned by name (C. 591), we find, at l. 653—‘Seven is my chaunce, and thyn is cinq and treye,’ i.e. eight.

In Lydgate’s Order of Fools, printed in Queen Elizabeth’s Academy, ed. Furnivall, p. 81, one fool is described—

‘Whos chaunce gothe nether yn synke or syse;

With ambes ase encressithe hys dispence.’

And in a ballad printed in Chaucer’s Works, ed. 1561, folio 340, back, we have—

‘So wel fortuned is their chaunce

The dice to turne[n] vppe-so-doune,

With sise and sincke they can auaunce.’

The phrase was already used proverbially before Chaucer’s time. In the metrical Life of St. Brandan, ed. T. Wright, p. 23, we find, ‘hi caste an ambes as,’ they cast double aces, i. e. they wholly failed. See Ambsace in the New E. Dict. Dr. Morris notes that the phrase ‘aums ace’ occurs in Hazlitt’s O. E. Plays, ii. 35, with the editorial remark—‘not mentioned elsewhere’ (!).

126. At Cristemasse, even at Christmas, when the severest weather comes. In olden times, severe cold must have tried the poor even more than it does now.

‘Muche myrthe is in may · amonge wilde bestes,

And so forth whil somer lasteþ · heore solace dureþ;

And muche myrthe amonge riche men is · þat han meoble [property]

ynow and heele [health].

Ac beggers aboute myd-somere · bredlees þei soupe,

And ȝut is wynter for hem wors · for wet-shood þei gangen,

A-furst and a-fyngred [Athirst and ahungered] · and foule rebuked

Of þese worlde-riche men · þat reuthe hit is to huyre [hear of it].’

Piers Plowman, C. xvii. 10; B. xiv. 158.

127. seken, search through; much like the word compass in the phrase ‘ye compass sea and land’ in Matth. xxiii. 15.

128. thestaat, for the estaat, i. e. the estate. This coalescence of the article and substantive is common in Chaucer, when the substantive begins with a vowel; cf. thoccident, B. 3864; thorient, B. 3871.

129. fadres, fathers, originators; by bringing tidings from afar.

130. debat, strife. Merchants, being great travellers, were expected to pick up good stories.

131. were, should be. desolat, destitute. ‘The E. E. word is westi’; ‘westi of alle gode theawes,’ destitute of all good virtues; O. Eng. Homilies, i. 285.’—M.

132. Nere, for ne were, were it not. goon is, &c., many a year ago, long since.

Edition: current; Page: [145]

The Tale of the Man of Lawe.

A story, agreeing closely with The Man of Lawes Tale, is found in Book II. of Gower’s Confessio Amantis, from which Tyrwhitt supposed that Chaucer borrowed it. But Gower’s version seems to be later than Chaucer’s, whilst Chaucer and Gower were both alike indebted to the version of the story in French prose (by Nicholas Trivet) in MS. Arundel 56, printed for the Chaucer Society in 1872. In some places Chaucer agrees with this French version rather closely, but he makes variations and additions at pleasure. Cf. vol. iii. p. 409.

The first ninety-eight lines of the preceding Prologue are written in couplets, in order to link the Tale to the others of the series; but there is nothing to show which of the other tales it was intended to follow. Next follows a more special Prologue of thirty-five lines, in five stanzas of seven lines each; so that the first line in the Tale is l. 134 of Group B, the second of the fragments into which the Canterbury Tales are broken up, owing to the incomplete state in which Chaucer left them.

134. Surrie, Syria; called Sarazine (Saracen-land) by N. Trivet.

136. spycerye, grocery, &c., lit. spicery. The old name for a grocer was a spicer; and spicery was a wide term. ‘It should be noted that the Ital. spezerie included a vast deal more than ginger and other “things hot i’ the mouth.” In one of Pegoletti’s lists of spezerie we find drugs, dye-stuffs, metals, wax, cotton,’ &c.—Note by Col. Yule in his ed. of Marco Polo; on bk. i. c. 1.

143. Were it, whether it were.

144. message, messenger, not message; see l. 333, and the note.

145. The final e in Rome is pronounced, as in l. 142; but the words the ende are to be run together, forming but one syllable, thende, according to Chaucer’s usual practice; cf. note to l. 255. Indeed in ll. 423, 965, it is actually so spelt; just as, in l. 150, we have thexcellent, and in l. 151, themperoures.

151. themperoures, the emperor’s. Gower calls him Tiberius Constantine, who was Emperor (not of Rome, but) of the East, ad 578, and was succeeded, as in the story, by Maurice, ad 582. His capital was Constantinople, whither merchants from Syria could easily repair; but the greater fame of Rome caused the substitution of the Western for the Eastern capital.

156. God him see, God protect him. See note to C. 715.

161. al Europe. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. Ln. is written the note ‘Europa est tercia pars mundi.’

166. mirour, mirror. Such French words are frequently accented on the last syllable. Cf. minístr’ in l. 168.

171. han doon fraught, have caused to be freighted. All the MSS. have fraught, not fraughte. In the Glossary to Specimens of English, I marked fraught as being the infinitive mood, as Dr. Stratmann Edition: current; Page: [146] supposes, though he notes the lack of the final e. I have now no doubt that fraught is nothing but the past participle, as in William of Palerne, l. 2732—

‘And feithliche fraught ful of fine wines,’

which is said of a ship. The use of this past participle after a perfect tense is a most remarkable idiom, but there is no doubt about its occurrence in the Clerkes Tale, Group E. 1098, where we find ‘Hath doon yow kept,’ where Tyrwhitt has altered kept to kepe. On the other hand, Tyrwhitt actually notes the occurrence of ‘Hath don wroght’ in Kn. Tale, 1055, (A. 1913), which he calls an irregularity. A better name for it is idiom. I find similar instances of it in another author of the same period,

‘Thai strak his hed of, and syne it

Thai haf gert saltit in-til a kyt.’

Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Skeat, xviii. 167.

I.e. they have caused it (to be) salted. And again in the same, bk. viii. l. 13, we have the expression He gert held, as if ‘he caused to be held’; but it may mean ‘he caused to incline.’ Compare also the following:—

‘And thai sall let thame trumpit ill’; id. xix. 712.

I.e. and they shall consider themselves as evilly deceived.

In the Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 278, we find:—‘wher I have beforn ordeyned and do mad [caused to be made] my tombe.’

The infinitive appears to have been fraughten, though the earliest certain examples of this form seem to be those in Shakespeare, Cymb. i. 1. 126, Temp. i. 2. 13. The proper form of the pp. was fraughted (as in Marlowe, 2 Tamb. i. 2. 33), but the loss of final -ed in past participles of verbs of which the stem ends in t is common; cf. set, put, &c. Hence this form fraught as a pp. in the present instance. It is a Scandinavian word, from Swed. frakta, Dan. fragte. At a later period we find freight, the mod. E. form. The vowel-change is due to the fact that there was an intermediate form fret, borrowed from the French form fret of the Scandinavian word. This form fret disturbed the vowel-sound, without wholly destroying the recollection of the original guttural gh, due to the Swed. k. For an example of fret, we have only to consult the old black-letter editions of Chaucer printed in 1532 and 1561, which give us the present line in the form—‘These marchantes han don fret her ships new.’

185. ceriously, ‘seriously,’ i.e. with great minuteness of detail. Used by Fabyan, who says that ‘to reherce ceryously’ all the conquests of Henry V would fill a volume; Chron., ed. Ellis, p. 589. Skelton, in his Garland of Laurell, l. 581, has: ‘And seryously she shewyd me ther denominacyons’; on which Dyce remarks that it means seriatim, and gives a clear example. It answers to the Low Latin seriose, used in two senses; (1) seriously, gravely; (2) minutely, Edition: current; Page: [147] fully. In the latter case it is perhaps to be referred to the Lat. series, not serius. A similar word, cereatly (Lat. seriatim), is found three times in the Romance of Partenay, ed. Skeat, with the sense of in due order; cf. Ceriatly and Ceryows in the New E. Dict.

In N. and Q. 7 S. xii. 183, I shewed that Lydgate has at least ten examples of this use of the word in his Siege of Troye. In one instance it is spelt seryously (with s).

190. This refers to the old belief in astrology and the casting of nativities. Cf. Prol. A. 414–418. Observe that ll. 190–203 are not in the original, and were doubtless added in revision. This is why this sowdan in l. 186 is so far separated from the repetition of the same words in l. 204.

197. Tyrwhitt shews that this stanza is imitated closely from some Latin lines, some of which are quoted in the margin of many MSS. of Chaucer. He quotes them at length from the Megacosmos of Bernardus Silvestris, a poet of the twelfth century (extant in MS. Bodley 1265). The lines are as follows, it being premised that those printed in italics are cited in the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. and Ln.:—

‘Praeiacet in stellis series, quam longior aetas

Explicet et spatiis temporis ordo suis,

Sceptra Phoronei, fratrum discordia Thebis,

Flamma Phaethontis, Deucalionis aque.

In stellis Codri paupertas, copia Croesi,

Incestus Paridis, Hippolytique pudor.

In stellis Priami species, audacia Turni,

Sensus Ulixeus, Herculeusque uigor.

In stellis pugil est Pollux et nauita Typhis,

Et Cicero rhetor et geometra Thales.

In stellis lepidum dictat Maro, Milo figurat,

Fulgurat in Latia nobilitate Nero.

Astra notat Persis, Ægyptus parturit artes,

Graecia docta legit, praelia Roma gerit.’

See Bernardi Sylvestris Megacosmos, ed. C. S. Barach and J. Wrobel, Innsbruck, 1876, p. 16. The names Ector (Hector), &c., are too well known to require comment. The death of Turnus is told at the end of Vergil’s Æneid.

207, 208. Here have, forming part of the phrase mighte have grace, is unemphatic, whilst han (for haven) is emphatic, and signifies possession. See han again in l. 241.

211. Compare Squieres Tale, F. 202, 203, and the note thereon.

224. Mahoun, Mahomet. The French version does not mention Mahomet. This is an anachronism on Chaucer’s part; the Emperor Tiberius II. died ad 582, when Mahomet was but twelve years old.

228. I prey yow holde, I pray you to hold. Here holde is the infinitive mood. The imperative plural would be holdeth; see saveth, next line.

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236. Maumettrye, idolatry; from the Mid. E. maumet, an idol, corrupted from Mahomet. The confusion introduced by using the word Mahomet for an idol may partly account for the anachronism in l. 224. The Mahometans were falsely supposed by our forefathers to be idolaters.

242. noot, equivalent to ne woot, know not.

248. gret-è forms the fourth foot in the line. If we read gret, the line is left imperfect at the cæsura; and we should have to scan it with a medial pause, as thus:—

That thém | peróur ∥ —óf | his grét | noblésse ∥

Line 621 below may be read in a similar manner:—

But ná | thelées ∥ —thér | was gréet | moorning ∥

253. ‘So, when Ethelbert married Bertha, daughter of the Christian King Charibert, she brought with her, to the court of her husband, a Gallican bishop named Leudhard, who was permitted to celebrate mass in the ancient British Church of St. Martin, at Canterbury.’—Note in Bell’s Chaucer.

255. ynowe, being plural, takes a final e; we then read th’ende, as explained in note to l. 145. The pl. inoȝhe occurs in the Ormulum.

263. alle and some, collectively and individually; one and all. See Cler. Tale, E. 941, &c.

273–87. Not in the original; perhaps added in revision.

277. The word alle, being plural, is dissyllabic. Thing is often a plural form, being an A. S. neuter noun. The words over, ever, never are, in Chaucer, generally monosyllables, or nearly so; just as o’er, e’er, ne’er are treated as monosyllables by our poets in general. Hence the scansion is—‘Ov’r al | lë thing | ,’ &c.

289. The word at is inserted from the Cambridge MS.; all the other six MSS. omit it, which makes the passage one of extreme difficulty. Tyrwhitt reads ‘Or Ylion brent, or Thebes the citee.’ Of course he means brende, past tense, not brent, the past participle; and his conjecture amounts to inserting or before Thebes. It is better to insert at, as in MS. Cm.; see Gilman’s edition. The sense is—‘When Pyrrhus broke the wall, before Ilium burnt, (nor) at the city of Thebes, nor at Rome,’ &c. Nat (l. 290) = Ne at, as in Hl. Ylion, in medieval romance, meant ‘the citadel’ of Troy; see my note to l. 936 of the Legend of Good Women. Tyrwhitt well observes that ‘Thebes the citee’ is a French phrase. He quotes ‘dedans Renes la cite,’ Froissart, v. i. c. 225.

295–315. Not in the original, and clearly a later addition. They include an allusion to Boethius (see next note).

295. In the margin of the Ellesmere MS. is written—‘Vnde Ptholomeus, libro i. cap. 8. Primi motus celi duo sunt, quorum vnus est qui mouet totum semper ab Oriente in Occidentem vno modo super orbes, &c. Item aliter vero motus est qui mouet orbem stellarum currencium Edition: current; Page: [149] contra motum primum, videlicet, ab Occidente in Orientem super alios duos polos.’ The old astronomy imagined nine spheres revolving round the central stationary earth; of the seven innermost, each carried with it one of the seven planets, viz. the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars, had a slow motion from west to east, round the axis of the zodiac (super alios duos polos), to account for the precession of the equinoxes; whilst the ninth or outermost sphere, called the primum mobile, or the sphere of first motion, had a diurnal revolution from east to west, carrying everything with it. This exactly corresponds with Chaucer’s language. He addresses the outermost sphere or primum mobile (which is the ninth if reckoning from within, but the first from without), and accuses it of carrying with it everything in its irresistible westward motion; a motion contrary to that of the ‘natural’ motion, viz. that in which the sun advances along the signs of the zodiac. The result was that the evil influence of the planet Mars prevented the marriage. It is clear that Chaucer was thinking of certain passages in Boethius, as will appear from consulting his own translation of Boethius, ed. Morris, pp. 21, 22, 106, and 110. I quote a few lines to shew this:—

‘O þou maker of þe whele þat bereþ þe sterres, whiche þat art fastned to þi perdurable chayere, and turnest þe heuene wiþ a rauyssyng sweighe, and constreinest þe sterres to suffren þi lawe’; pp. 21, 22.

‘þe regioun of þe fire þat eschaufiþ by þe swifte moeuyng of þe firmament’; p. 110.

The original is—

‘O stelliferi conditor orbis

Qui perpetuo nixus solio

Rapidum caelum turbine uersas,

Legemque pati sidera cogis’;

Boeth. Cons. Phil. lib. i. met. 5.

‘Quique agili motu calet aetheris’; id. lib. iv. met. 1.

(See the same passages in vol. ii. pp. 16, 94).

To the original nine spheres, as above, was afterwards added a tenth or crystalline sphere; see the description in the Complaint of Scotland, ed. Murray (E. E. T. S.), pp. 47, 48. For the figure, see fig. 10 on Plate V., in my edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe (in vol. iii.).

Compare also the following passage:—

‘The earth, in roundness of a perfect ball,

Which as a point but of this mighty all

Wise Nature fixed, that permanent doth stay,

Wheras the spheres by a diurnal sway

Of the first Mover carried are about.’

Drayton: The Man in the Moon.

299. crowding, pushing. This is still a familiar word in East Edition: current; Page: [150] Anglia. Forby, in his Glossary of the East Anglian Dialect, says—‘Crowd, v. to push, shove, or press close. To the word, in its common acceptation, number seems necessary. With us, one individual can crowd another.’ To crowd a wheelbarrow means to push it. The expression ‘crod in a barwe,’ i.e. wheeled or pushed along in a wheelbarrow, occurs in the Paston Letters, ad 1477, ed. Gairdner, iii. 215.

302. A planet is said to ascend directly, when in a direct sign; but tortuously, when in a tortuous sign. The tortuous signs are those which ascend most obliquely to the horizon, viz. the signs from Capricornus to Gemini inclusive. Chaucer tells us this himself; see his Treatise on the Astrolabe, part ii. sect. 28, in vol. iii. The most ‘tortuous’ of these are the two middle ones, Pisces and Aries. Of these two, Aries is called the mansion of Mars, and we may therefore suppose the ascending sign to be Aries, the lord of which (Mars) is said to have fallen ‘from his angle into the darkest house.’ The words ‘angle’ and ‘house’ are used technically. The whole zodiacal circle was divided into twelve equal parts, or ‘houses.’ Of these, four (beginning from the cardinal points) were termed ‘angles,’ four others (next following them) ‘succedents,’ and the rest ‘cadents.’ It appears that Mars was not then situate in an ‘angle,’ but in his ‘darkest (i. e. darker) house.’ Mars had two houses, Aries and Scorpio. The latter is here meant; Aries being the ascendent sign, Scorpio was below the horizon, and beyond the western ‘angle.’

Now Scorpio was ‘called the house of death, and of trauaile, of harm, and of domage, of strife, of battaile, of guilefulnesse and falsnesse, and of wit’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 17. We may represent the position of Mars by the following table, where East represents the ascending sign, West the descending sign; and A., S., and C. stand for ‘angle,’ ‘succedent,’ and ‘cadent house’ respectively.

East.— | Aries. | Taurus. | Gemini. | Cancer. | Leo. | Virgo.
| 1. A. | 2. S. | 3. C. | 4. A. | 5. S. | 6. C.

West.— | Libra. | Scorpio. | Sagittarius. | Capricornus. | Aquarius. | Pisces.
| 7. A. | 8. S. | 9. C. | 10. A. | 11. S. | 12. C.

Again, the ‘darkest house’ was sometimes considered to be the eighth; though authorities varied. This again points to Scorpio.

‘Nulla diuisio circuli tam pessima, tamque crudelis in omnibus, quam octaua est.’—Aphorismi Astrologi Ludovici de Rigiis; sect. 35. I may also note here, that in Lydgate’s Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. Y 4, there is a long passage on the evil effects of Mars in the ‘house’ of Scorpio.

305. The meaning of Atazir has long remained undiscovered. But by the kind help of Mr. Bensly, one of the sub-librarians of the Cambridge University Library, I am enabled to explain it. Atazir or atacir is the Spanish spelling of the Arabic al-tasir, influence, given at p. 351 of Richardson’s Pers. Dict., ed. 1829. It is a noun derived from asara, a verb of the second conjugation, meaning to leave a mark Edition: current; Page: [151] on, from the substantive asar, a mark; the latter substantive is given at p. 20 of the same work. Its use in astrology is commented upon by Dozy, who gives it in the form atacir, in his Glossaire des Mots Espagnols dérivés de l’Arabique, p. 207. It signifies the influence of a star or planet upon other stars, or upon the fortunes of men. In the present case it is clearly used in a bad sense; we may therefore translate it by ‘evil influence,’ i. e. the influence of Mars in the house of Scorpio. On this common deterioration in the meaning of words, see Trench, Study of Words, p. 52. The word craft, for example, is a very similar instance; it originally meant skill, and hence, a trade, and we find star-craft used in particular to signify the science of astronomy.

307. ‘Thou art in conjunction in an unfavourable position; from the position in which thou wast favourably placed thou art moved away.’ This I take to mean that the Moon (as well as Mars) was in Scorpio; hence their conjunction. But Scorpio was called the Moon’s depression, being the sign in which her influence was least favourable; she was therefore ‘not well received,’ i. e., not supported by a lucky planet, or by a planet in a lucky position. weyved, pushed aside.

312. ‘Is there no choice as to when to fix the voyage?’ The favourable moment for commencing a voyage was one of the points on which it was considered desirable to have an astrologer’s opinion. Travelling, at that time, was a serious matter. Yet this was only one of the many undertakings which required, as was thought, to be begun at a favourable moment. Whole books were written on ‘elections,’ i.e. favourable times for commencing operations of all kinds. Chaucer was thinking, in particular, of the following passage, which is written in the margins of the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS.: ‘Omnes concordati sunt quod elecciones sint debiles nisi in diuitibus: habent enim isti, licet debilitentur eorum elecciones, radicem, i. [id est] natiuitates eorum, que confortat omnem planetam debilem in itinere.’ The sense of which is—‘For all are agreed, that “elections” are weak, except in the case of the rich; for these, although their elections be weakened, have a “root” of their own, that is to say, their nativities (or horoscopes); which root strengthens every planet that is of weak influence with respect to a journey.’ This is extracted, says Tyrwhitt, from a Liber Electionum by a certain Zael; see MS. Harl. 80; MS. Bodley 1648. This is a very fair example of the jargon to be found in old books on astrology. The old astrologers used to alter their predictions almost at pleasure, by stating that their results depended on several causes, which partly counteracted one another; an arrangement of which the convenience is obvious. Thus, if the aspect of the planets at the time inquired about appeared to be adverse to a journey, it might still be the case (they said) that such evil aspect might be overcome by the fortunate aspect of the inquirer’s horoscope; or, conversely, an ill aspect in the horoscope could be counteracted by a fit election of a time for action. A rich man would probably be fitted with a fortunate Edition: current; Page: [152] horoscope, or else why should he buy one? Such horoscope depended on the aspect of the heavens at the time of birth or ‘nativity,’ and, in particular, upon the ‘ascendent’ at that time; i. e. upon the planets lying nearest to the point of the zodiac which happened, at that moment, to be ascending, i. e. just appearing above the horizon. So Chaucer, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 4, (vol. iii. 191), explains the matter, saying—‘The assendent sothly, as wel in alle nativitez as in questiouns and elecciouns of tymes, is a thing which that thise Astrologiens gretly observen’; &c. The curious reader may find much more to the same effect in the same Treatise, with directions to ‘make roots’ in pt. ii. § 44.

The curious may further consult the Epitome Astrologiae of Johannes Hispalensis. The whole of Book iv. of that work is ‘De Electionibus,’ and the title of cap. xv. is ‘Pro Itinere.’

Lydgate, in his Siege of Thebes, just at the beginning, describes the astronomers as casting the horoscope of the infant Œdipus. They were expected

‘to yeue a judgement,

The roote i-take at the ascendent,

Truly sought out, by minute and degre,

The selfe houre of his natiuite,

Not foryet the heauenly mansions

Clerely searched by smale fraccions,’ &c.

To take a different example, Ashmole, in his Theatrum Chemicum, 1652, says in a note on p. 450—‘Generally in all Elections the Efficacy of the Starrs are (sic) used, as it were by a certaine application made thereof to those unformed Natures that are to be wrought upon; whereby to further the working thereof, and make them more available to our purpose. . . . And by such Elections as good use may be made of the Celestiall influences, as a Physitian doth of the variety of herbes. . . . But Nativities are the Radices of Elections, and therefore we ought chiefly to looke backe upon them as the principal Root and Foundation of all Operations; and next to them the quality of the Thing we intend to fit must be respected, so that, by an apt position of Heaven, and fortifying the Planets and Houses in the Nativity of the Operator, and making them agree with the thing signified, the impression made by that influence will abundantly augment the Operation,’ &c.; with much more to the same effect. Several passages in Norton’s Ordinall, printed in the same volume (see pp. 60, 100), shew clearly what is meant by Chaucer in his Prologue, ll. 415–7. The Doctor could ‘fortune the ascendent of his images,’ by choosing a favourable moment for the making of charms in the form of images, when a suitable planet was in the ascendent. Cf. Troil. ii. 74.

314. rote is the astrological term for the epoch from which to reckon. The exact moment of a nativity being known, the astrologers were supposed to be able to calculate everything else. See the last note.

332. Alkaron, the Koran; al is the Arabic article.

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333. Here Makomete is used instead of Mahoun (l. 224). See Washington Irving’s Life of Mahomet.

message, messenger. This is a correct form, according to the usages of Middle English; cf. l. 144. In like manner, we find prison used to mean a prisoner, which is often puzzling at first sight.

340. ‘Because we denied Mahomet, our (object of) belief.’

360. ‘O serpent under the form of woman, like that Serpent that is bound in hell.’ The allusion here is not a little curious. It clearly refers to the old belief that the serpent who tempted Eve appeared to her with a woman’s head, and it is sometimes so represented. I observed it, for instance, in the chapter-house of Salisbury Cathedral; and see the woodcut at p. 73 of Wright’s History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art. In Peter Comestor’s Historia Libri Genesis, we read of Satan—‘Elegit etiam quoddam genus serpentis (vt ait Beda) virgineum vultum habens.’ In the alliterative Troy Book, ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 144, the Tempter is called Lyuyaton (i. e. Leviathan), and it is said of him that he

‘Hade a face vne fourmet as a fre maydon’; l. 4451.

And, again, in Piers the Plowman, B. xviii. 355, Satan is compared to a ‘lusarde [lizard] with a lady visage.’ In the Ancren Riwle, p. 207, we are gravely informed that a scorpion is a kind of serpent that has a face somewhat like that of a woman, and puts on a pleasant countenance. To remember this gives peculiar force to ll. 370, 371. See also note to l. 404.

367. knowestow is a trisyllable; and the olde is to be read tholdè. But in l. 371, the word Makestow, being differently placed in the line, is to be read with the e slurred over, as a dissyllable.

380. moste, might. It is not always used like the modern must.

401. See Lucan’s Pharsalia, iii. 79—‘Perdidit o qualem uincendo plura triumphum!’ But Chaucer’s reference, evidently made at random, is unlucky. Lucan laments that he had no triumph to record.

404. The line is deficient at the beginning, the word But standing by itself as a foot. So also in A. 294, G. 341, &c. See Ellis’s Early English Pronunciation, pp. 333, 649. (This peculiarity was pointed out by me in 1866, in the Aldine edition of Chaucer, i. 174.) For the sense of scorpioun, see the reference to the Ancren Riwle, in note to l. 360, and compare the following extracts. ‘Thes is the scorpioun, thet maketh uayr mid the heauede, and enuenymeth mid the tayle’; Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 62. ‘The scorpion, the whiche enoynteth with his tongue, and prycketh sore with his taylle’; Caxton, Fables of Æsop; Lib. iv. fable 3. Chaucer repeats the idea, somewhat more fully, in the Marchaunts Tale, E. 2058–2060. So also this wikked gost means this Evil Spirit, this Tempter.

421. Pronounce ever rapidly, and accent súccessour on the first syllable. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Pt. and Cp. is the following Edition: current; Page: [154] note: ‘Nota, de inopinato dolore. Semper mundane leticie tristicia repentina succedit. Mundana igitur felicitas multis amaritudinibus est respersa. Extrema gaudii luctus occupat. Audi ergo salubre consilium; in die bonorum ne immemor sis malorum.’ This is one of the passages from Innocent’s treatise de Contemptu Mundi, of which I have already spoken in the note to B. 99–121 above (p. 140). Lib. i. c. 23 has the heading—‘De inopinato dolore.’ It begins:—‘Semper enim mundanae letitiae tristitia repentina succedit. Et quod incipit a gaudio, desinit in moerore. Mundana quippe felicitas multis amaritudinibus est respersa. Noverat hoc qui dixerat: “Risus dolore miscebitur, et extrema gaudii luctus occupat.” . . . Attende salubrem consilium: “In die bonorum, non immemor sis malorum.” ’

This passage is mostly made up of scraps taken from different authors. I find in Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, lib. ii. pr. 4—‘Quam multis amaritudinibus humanae felicitatis dulcedo respersa est’; which Chaucer translates by—‘The swetnesse of mannes welefulnesse is sprayned with many biternesses’; see vol. ii. p. 34; and the same expression is repeated here, in l. 422. Gower quotes the same passage from Boethius in the prologue to his Confessio Amantis. The next sentence is from Prov. xiv. 13—‘Risus dolore miscebitur, et extrema gaudii luctus occupat.’ The last clause (see ll. 426, 427) is from Ecclesiasticus, xi. 27 (in the Vulgate version). Cf. Troil. iv. 836.

438. Compare Trivet’s French prose version:—‘Dount ele fist estorier vne neef de vitaile, de payn quest apele bisquit, & de peis, & de feues, de sucre, & de meel, & de vyn, pur sustenaunce de la vie de la pucele pur treis aunx; e en cele neef fit mettre la richesse & le tresour que lempire Tiberie auoit maunde oue la pucele Constaunce, sa fille; e en cele neef fist la soudane mettre la pucele saunz sigle, & sauntz neuiroun, & sauntz chescune maner de eide de homme.’ I. e. ‘Then she caused a ship to be stored with victuals, with bread that is called biscuit, with peas, beans, sugar, honey, and wine, to sustain the maiden’s life for three years. And in this ship she caused to be placed the riches and treasure which the Emperor Tiberius had sent with the maid Constance his daughter; and in this ship the Sultaness caused the maiden to be put, without sail or oar, or any kind of human aid.’

foot-hot, hastily. It occurs in Gower, ed. Pauli, ii. 114; in The Romaunt of the Rose, l. 3827: Octovian, 1224, in Weber’s Met. Rom. iii. 208; Sevyn Sages, 843, in the same, iii. 34; Richard Coer de Lion, 1798, 2185, in the same, ii. 71, 86; and in Barbour’s Bruce, iii. 418, xiii. 454. Compare the term hot-trod, explained by Sir W. Scott to mean the pursuit of marauders with bloodhounds: see note 3 H to the Lay of the Last Minstrel. We also find hot fot, i. e. immediately, in the Debate of the Body and the Soul, l. 481. It is a translation of the O. F. phrase chalt pas, immediately, examples of which are given by Godefroy.

449–62. Not in the original; perhaps added in revision.

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451–62. Compare these lines with verses 3 and 5 of the hymn ‘Lustra sex qui iam peregit’ in the office of Lauds from Passion Sunday to Wednesday in Holy Week inclusive, in the Roman breviary.

This hymn was written by Venantius Fortunatus; see Leyser’s collection, p. 168.

Crux fidelis, inter omnes

Arbor una nobilis:

Silua talem nulla profert

Fronde, flore, germine:

Dulce ferrum, dulce lignum,

Dulce pondus sustinent. . . . . .

Sola digna tu fuisti

Ferre mundi uictimam;

Atque portum praeparare,

Arca mundo naufrago,

Quam sacer cruor perunxit,

Fusus Agni corpore.’

See the translation in Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 97, part 2 (new edition), beginning—‘Now the thirty years accomplished.’

We come still nearer to the original of Chaucer’s lines when we consider the form of prayer quoted in the Ancren Riwle, p. 34, which is there given as follows:—‘Salue crux sancta, arbor digna, quae sola fuisti digna portare Regem celorum et Dominum . . . . O crux gloriosa! o crux adoranda! o lignum preciosum, et admirabile signum, per quod et diabolus est victus, et mundus Christi sanguine redemptus.’

460. him and here, him and her, i. e. man and woman; as in Piers the Plowman, A. Pass. i. l. 100. The allusion is to the supposed power of the cross over evil spirits. See The Legends of the Holy Rood, ed. Morris; especially the story of the Invention of the Cross by St. Helen, p. 160—‘And anone, as he had made the [sign of the] crosse, þe grete multitude of deuylles vanyshed awaye’; or, in the Latin original, ‘statimque ut edidit signum crucis, omnis illa daemonum multitudo euanuit’; Aurea Legenda, ed. Grösse, 2nd ed. p. 311. Cf. Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 429–431.

461. The reading of this line is certain, and must not be altered. But it is impossible to parse the line without at once noticing that there is some difficulty in the construction. The best solution is obtained by taking which in the sense of whom. A familiar example of this use of which for who occurs in the Lord’s Prayer. See also Abbott’s Shakespearian Grammar, Sect. 265. The construction is as follows—‘O victorious tree, protection of true people, that alone wast worthy to bear the King of Heaven with His new wounds—the White Lamb that was hurt with the spear—O expeller of fiends out of both man and woman, on whom (i.e. the men and women on whom) thine arms faithfully spread out,’ &c. Limes means the arms of the cross, spread before a person to protect him.

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464. see of Grece, here put for the Mediterranean Sea.

465. Marrok, Morocco; alluding to the Strait of Gibraltar; cf. l. 947. So also in Barbour’s Bruce, iii. 688.

470–504. Not in the French text; perhaps added in revision.

474. Ther, where; as usual. knave, servant.

475. ‘Was eaten by the lion ere he could escape.’ Cf. l. 437.

480. The word clerkes refers to Boethius. This passage is due to Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 114–117, and 152–4; see vol. ii. pp. 117, 118.

491. See Revelation vii. 1-3.

497. Here (if that be omitted) As seems to form a foot by itself, which gives but a poor line. See note to l. 404.

500. Alluding to St. Mary the Egyptian (Maria Egiptiaca), who according to the legend, after a youth spent in debauchery, lived entirely alone for the last forty-seven years of her life in the wilderness beyond the Jordan. She lived in the fifth century. Her day is April 9. See Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art; Rutebuef, cd. Jubinal, ii. 106–150; Maundeville’s Travels, ed. Halliwell, p. 96; Aurea Legenda, ed. Grässe, cap. lvi. She was often confused with St. Mary Magdalen.

508. Northumberlond, the district, not the county. Yorkshire is, in fact, meant, as the French version expressly mentions the Humber.

510. of al a tyde, for the whole of an hour.

512. the constable; named Elda by Trivet and Gower.

519. Trivet says that she answered Elda in his own language, ‘en sessoneys,’ in Saxon, for she had learnt many languages in her youth.

525. The word deye seems to have had two pronunciations; in l. 644 it is dye, with a different rime. In fact, Mr. Cromie’s ‘Ryme-Index’ to Chaucer proves the point. On the one hand, deye rimes to aweye, disobeye, dreye, preye, seye, tweye, weye; and on the other, dye rimes to avoutrye, bigamye, compaignye, Emelye, genterye, lye, maladye, &c. So also, high appears both as hey and hy.

527. forgat hir minde, lost her memory.

531. The final e in plese is preserved from elision by the cæsural pause. Or, we may read plesen; yet the MSS. have plese.

533. Hermengild; spelt Hermyngild in Trivet; answering to A. S. Eormengild (Lappenberg, Hist. England, i. 285). Note that St. Hermengild was martyred just at this very time, Apr. 13, 846.

543. plages, regions; we even find the word in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, pt. i. act iv. sc. 4, and pt. ii. act i. sc. 1. The latter passage is—‘From Scythia to the oriental plage Of India.’

552. ‘Eyes of his mind.’ Jean de Meun has the expression les yex de cuer, the eyes of the heart; see his Testament, ll. 1412, 1683.

578. Alla, i.e. Ælla, king of Northumberland, ad 560–567; the same whose name Gregory (afterwards Pope) turned, by a pun, into Alleluia, according to the version of the celebrated story about Gregory and the English slaves, as given in Beda, Eccl. Hist. b. ii. c. 1.

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584. quyte her whyle, repay her time; i.e. her pains, trouble; as when we say ‘it is worth while.’ Wile is not intended.

585. ‘The plot of the knight against Constance, and also her subsequent adventure with the steward, are both to be found, with some variations, in a story in the Gesta Romanorum, ch. 101; MS. Harl. 2270. Occleve has versified the whole story’; Tyrwhitt. See vol. iii. p. 410, for further information. Compare the conduct of Iachimo, in Cymbeline.

609. See Troil. iv. 357.

620. Berth hir on hond, affirms falsely; lit. bears her in hand. Chaucer uses the phrase ‘to bere in hond’ with the sense of false affirmation, sometimes with the idea of accusing falsely, as here and in the Wyf of Bathes Prologue, D. 393; and sometimes with that of persuading falsely, D. 232, 380. In Shakespeare the sense is rather—‘to keep in expectation, to amuse with false pretences’; Nares’s Glossary. Barbour uses it in the more general sense of ‘to affirm,’ or ‘to make a statement,’ whether falsely or truly. In Dyce’s Skelton, i. 237, occurs the line—‘They bare me in hande that I was a spye’; which Dyce explains by ‘they accused me, laid to my charge that,’ &c. He refers us to Palsgrave, who has some curious examples of it. E. g., at p. 450:—‘I beare in hande, I threp upon a man that he hath done a dede or make hym beleve so, Ie fais accroyre . . . I beare hym in hande he was wode, Ie luy metz sus la raige, or ie luy metz sus quil estoyt enragé. What crime or yuell mayest thou beare me in hande of’; &c. So also: ‘Many be borne an hande of a faute, and punysshed therfore, that were neuer gylty; Plerique facinoris insimulantur,’ &c.; Hormanni Vulgaria, sig. m. ii. ed. 1530. In Skelton’s Why Come Ye Nat to Courte, l. 449, bereth on hand simply means ‘persuades.’

631–58. Not in the original. A later insertion, of much beauty.

634. ‘And bound Satan; and he still lies where he (then) lay.’ In the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, Christ descends into hell, and (according to some versions) binds him with chains; see Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 401.

639. Susanne; see the story of Susannah, in the Apocrypha.

641. The Virgin’s mother is called Anna in the Apocryphal Gospel of James. Her day is July 26. See Aurea Legenda, ed. Grässe, cap. cxxxi; Cowper’s Apocryphal Gospels, p. 4.

647. ‘Where that he gat (could get) for himself no favour.’

660. ‘For pitee renneth sone in gentil herte’; Knightes Tale, A. 1761. And see note to Sq. Tale, F. 479.

664. us avyse, deliberate with ourselves, consider the matter again. Compare the law-phrase Le roi s’avisera, by which the king refuses assent to a measure proposed. ‘We will consider whom to appoint as judge.’

666. I.e. a copy of the Gospels in Welsh or British, called in the French prose version ‘liure des Ewangeiles.’ Agreements were sometimes Edition: current; Page: [158] written on the fly-leaves of copies of the Gospels, as may be seen in two copies of the A. S. version of them.

669. A very similar miracle is recorded in the old alliterative romance of Joseph of Arimatheạ, l. 362. The French version has:—‘a peine auoit fini la parole, qe vne mayn close, com poyn de homme, apparut deuant Elda et quant questoient en presence, et ferri tiel coup en le haterel le feloun, que ambedeus lez eus lui enuolerent de la teste, & les dentz hors de la bouche; & le feloun chai abatu a la terre; et a ceo dist vne voiz en le oyance de touz: Aduersus filiam matris ecclesie ponebas scandalum; hec fecisti, et tacui.’ I. e. ‘Scarcely had he ended the word, when a closed hand, like a man’s fist, appeared before Elda and all who were in the presence, and smote such a blow on the nape of the felon’s neck that both his eyes flew out of his head, and the teeth out of his mouth; and the felon fell smitten down to the earth; and thereupon a voice said in the hearing of all, “Against the daughter of Mother Church thou wast laying a scandal; this hast thou done, and I held my peace.” ’ The reading tacui suggests that, in l. 676, the word holde should rather be held; but the MSS. do not recognise this reading.

697. hir thoughte, it seemed to her; thoughte is here impersonal; so in l. 699. The French text adds that Domulde (Donegild) was, moreover, jealous of hearing the praises of Constance’s beauty.

701. Me list nat, it pleases me not, I do not wish to. He does not wish to give every detail. In this matter Chaucer is often very judicious; Gower and others often give the more unimportant matters as fully as the rest. Cf. l. 706; and see Squyeres Tale, F. 401.

703. What, why. Cf. Squyeres Tale, F. 283, 298.

716. Trivet says—‘Puis a vn demy aan passe, vint nouele al Roy que les gentz de Albanie, qe sountz les Escotz, furent passes lour boundes et guerrirent les terres le Roy. Dount par comun counseil, le Roi assembla son ost de rebouter ses enemis. Et auant son departir vers Escoce, baila la Reine Constaunce sa femme en la garde Elda, le Conestable du chastel, et a Lucius, leuesqe de Bangor; si lour chargea que quant ele fut deliueres denlaunt, qui lui feisoient hastiuement sauoir la nouele’; i. e. ‘Then, after half-a-year, news came to the king that the people of Albania, who are the Scots, had passed their bounds, and warred on the king’s lands. Then by common counsel the king gathered his host to rebut his foes. And before his departure towards Scotland, he committed Queen Constance his wife to the keeping of Elda, the constable of the castle, and of Lucius, bishop of Bangor, and charged them that when she was delivered, they should hastily let him know the news.’

722. knave child, male child; as in Clerkes Tale, E. 444.

723. at the fontstoon, i. e. at his baptism; French text—‘al baptisme fu nome Moris.’

729. to doon his avantage, to suit his convenience. He hoped, by going only a little out of his way, to tell Donegild the news also, and to receive a reward for doing so. Trivet says that the old Edition: current; Page: [159] Queen was then at Knaresborough, situated ‘between England and Scotland, as in an intermediate place.’ Its exact site is less than seventeen miles west of York. Donegild pretends to be very pleased at the news, and gives the man a rich present.

736. lettres; so in all seven MSS.; Tyrwhitt reads lettre. But it is right as it is. Lettres is sometimes used, like Lat. literae, in a singular sense, and the French text has ‘les lettres.’ Examples occur in Piers Plowman, B. ix. 38; Bruce, ii. 80. See l. 744, and note to l. 747.

738. If ye wol aught, if you wish (to say) anything.

740. Donegild is dissyllabic here, as in l. 695, but in l. 805 it appears to have three syllables. Chaucer constantly alters proper names so as to suit his metre.

743. sadly, steadily, with the idea of long continuance.

747. lettre; here the singular form is used, but it is a matter of indifference. Exactly the same variation occurs in Barbour’s Bruce, ii. 80:—

‘And, among othir, lettres ar gayn

To the byschop off Androwis towne,

That tauld how slayn wes that baroun.

The lettir tauld hym all the deid,’ &c.

This circumstance, of exchanging the messenger’s letters for forged ones, is found in Matthew Paris’s account of the Life of Offa the first; ed. Wats, pp. 965–968.

748. direct, directed, addressed; French text ‘maundez.’

751. Pronounce horrible as in French.

752. The last word in this line should rather be nas (= was not), as has kindly been pointed out to me; though the seven MSS. and the old editions all have was. By this alteration we should secure a true rime.

754. elf; French text—‘ele fu malueise espirit en fourme de femme,’ she was an evil spirit in form of woman. Elf is the A. S. ælf, Icel. álfr, G. alp and elfe; Shakespeare writes ouphes for elves. ‘The Edda distinguishes between Ljósálfar, the elves of light, and Dökkálfar, elves of darkness; the latter are not elsewhere mentioned either in modern fairy tales or in old writers. . . . . In the Alvismál, elves and dwarfs are clearly distinguished as different. The abode of the elves in the Edda is A′lfheimar, fairy land, and their king the god Frey, the god of light. In the fairy tales the Elves haunt the hills; hence their name Huldufólk, hidden people; respecting their origin, life, and customs, see I′slenzkar þjóðsögur, i. 1. In old writers the Elves are rarely mentioned; but that the same tales were told as at present is clear’; note on the word álfr, in Cleasby and Vigfusson’s Icelandic Dictionary. See also Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, and Brand’s Popular Antiquities The word is here used in a bad sense, and is nearly equivalent to witch. In the Prompt. Parv. we find—‘Elfe, spryte, Lamia’; and Mr. Way notes that these elves were often supposed to bewitch children, and to use them cruelly.

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767. Pronounce ágreáble nearly as in French, and with an accent on the first and third syllables.

769. take, handed over, delivered. Take often means to give or hand over in Middle English: very seldom to convey or bring.

771. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Cp. and Pt. is written—‘Quid turpius ebrioso, cui fetor in ore, tremor in corpore, qui promit stulta, prodit occulta, cuius mens alienatur, facies transformatur? Nullum enim latet secretum ubi regnat ebrietas.’ This is obviously the original of the stanza, ll. 771–777; cf. note to B. 99 above. There is nothing answering to it in Trivet, but it is to be found in Pope Innocent’s treatise De Contemptu Mundi, lib. ii. c. 19—De ebrietate. Migne’s edition has ‘promittit multa’ for ‘promit stulta.’ The last clause is quoted from Prov. xxxi. 4 in the Vulgate version; our English versions omit it. See B. 2384.

778. ‘O Donegild, I have no language fit to tell,’ &c.

782. mannish, man-like, i. e. harsh and cruel, not mild and gentle like a woman. But Chaucer is not satisfied with the epithet, and says he ought rather to call her ‘fiend-like.’ Perhaps it is worth while to say that in Gower’s Conf. Amant., lib. vi., where Pauli (iii. 52) has ‘Most liche to mannes creature,’ the older edition by Chalmers has the form mannish. Lines 778–84 are not in the original.

789. ‘He stowed away plenty (of wine) under his girdle,’ i. e. drank his fill.

794. Pronounce constábl’ much as if it were French, with an accent on a. In l. 808 the accent is on o. Lastly, in l. 858, all three syllables are fully sounded.

798. ‘Three days and a quarter of an hour’; i. e. she was to be allowed only three days, and after that to start off as soon as possible. Tide (like tíð in Icelandic) sometimes means an hour. The French text says ‘deynz quatre iours,’ within four days.

801. croude, push; see ll. 296, 299 above; and note to l. 299.

813–26. Lines 813–819 are not in the French, and ll. 820–826 are not at all close to the original. The former stanza, which is due to Boeth. bk. i. met. 5. 22–30, was doubtless added in the revision.

827–33. The French text only has—‘en esperaunce qe dure comencement amenera dieu a bon fyn, et qil me purra en la mere sauuer, qi en mere et en terre est de toute puissaunce.’

835. The beautiful stanzas in ll. 834–868 are all Chaucer’s own; and of the next stanza, ll. 869–875, the French text gives but the merest hint.

842. eggement, incitement. The same word is used in other descriptions of the Fall. Thus, in Piers Plowman, B. i. 65, it is said of Satan that ‘Adam and Eue he egged to ille’; and in Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, B. 241, it is said of Adam that ‘thurgh the eggyng of Eue he ete of an apple.’

852. refut, refuge; see G. 75, and A. B. C. 14.

859. As lat, pray, let. See note to Clerkes Prologue, E. 7.

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873. purchace, provide, make provision. So in Troilus, bk. ii. 1125, the line ‘And of som goodly answere you purchace’ means—and provide yourself with some kind answer, i. e. be ready with a kind reply.

875–84. Much abridged from the French text.

885. tormented, tortured. However, the French text says the messenger acknowledged his drunkenness freely. Examination by torture was so common, that Chaucer seems to have regarded the mention of it as being the most simple way of telling the story.

893. out of drede, without doubt, certainly; cf. l. 869. The other equally common expression out of doute comes to much the same thing, because doute in Middle-English has in general the meaning of fear or dread, not of hesitation. See Group E. 634, 1155; and Prol. A. 487.

894. pleinly rede, fully read, read at length. In fact, Chaucer judiciously omits the details of the French text, where we read that King Ælla rushed into his mother’s room with a drawn sword as she lay asleep, roused her by crying ‘traitress!’ in a loud voice, and, after hearing the full confession which she made in the extremity of her terror, slew her and cut her to pieces as she lay in bed.

901. fleteth, floats. French text—‘le quinte an de cest exil, come ele fu flotaunt sur le mere,’ &c. Cf. fleet in l. 463.

905. The name of the castle is certainly not given in the French text, which merely says it was ‘vn chastel dun Admiral de paens,’ i. e. a castle of an admiral of the Pagans.

912. gauren, gaze, stare. See note to Squ. Tale, F. 190.

913. shortly, briefly; because the poet considerably abridges this part of the narrative. The steward’s name was Thelous.

925. The word Auctor, here written in the margin of E., signifies that this stanza and the two following ones are additions to the story by the author. At the same time, ll. 925–931 are really taken from Chaucer’s own translation of Pope Innocent’s treatise De Contemptu Mundi; see further in the note to B. 99 above. Accordingly, we also find here, in the margin of E., the following Latin note:—‘O extrema libidinis turpitudo, que non solum mentem effeminat, set eciam corpus eneruat. Semper sequ[u]ntur dolor et penitentia post,’ &c. This corresponds to the above treatise, lib. ii. c. 21, headed ‘De luxuria.’ The last clause is abbreviated; the original has:—‘Semper illam procedunt ardor et petulantia; semper comitantur fetor et immunditia; sequuntur semper dolor et poenitentia.’

932–45. These two stanzas are wholly Chaucer’s, plainly written as a parallel passage to that in ll. 470–504 above.

934. Golias, Goliath. See 1 Samuel xvii. 25.

940. See the story of Holofernes in the Monkes Tale, B. 3741; and the note. I select the spelling Olofernus here, because it is that of the majority of the MSS., and agrees with the title De Oloferno in the Monkes Tale.

947. In l. 465, Chaucer mentions the ‘Strait of Marrok,’ i. e. Morocco, though there is no mention of it in the French text; so here he alludes Edition: current; Page: [162] to it again, but by a different name, viz. ‘the mouth of Jubalter and Septe.’ Jubaltar (Gibraltar) is from the Arabic jabálu’t tárik, i. e. the mountain of Tarik; who was the leader of a band of Saracens that made a descent upon Spain in the eighth century. Septe is Ceuta, on the opposite coast of Africa.

965. shortly, briefly; because Chaucer here again abridges the original, which relates how the Romans burnt the Sultaness, and slew more than 11,000 of the Saracens, without a single death or even wound on their own side.

967. senatour. His name was Arsemius of Cappadocia; his wife’s name was Helen. Accent victorie on the o.

969. as seith the storie, as the history says. The French text relates this circumstance fully.

971. The French text says that, though Arsemius did not recognise Constance, she, on her part, recognised him at once, though she did not reveal it.

981. aunte. Helen, the wife of Arsemius, was daughter of Sallustius, brother of the Emperor Tiberius, and Constance’s uncle. Thus Helen was really Constance’s first cousin. Chaucer may have altered it purposely; but it looks as if he had glanced at the sentence—‘Cest heleyne, la nece Constaunce, taunt tendrement ama sa nece,’ &c., and had read it as—‘This Helen . . . loved her niece so tenderly.’ In reality, the word nece means ‘cousin’ here, being applied to Helen as well as to Constance.

982. she, i. e. Helen; for Constance knew Helen.

991. to receyven, i. e. to submit himself to any penance which the Pope might see fit to impose upon him. Journeys to Rome were actually made by English kings; Ælfred was sent to Rome as a boy, and his father, Æthelwulf, also spent a year there, but (as the Chronicle tells us) he went ‘mid micelre weorðnesse,’ with much pomp.

994. wikked werkes; especially the murder of his mother, as Trivet says. See note to l. 894.

999. Rood him ageyn, rode towards him, rode to meet him; cf. l. 391. See Cler. Tale, E. 911, and the note.

1009. Som men wolde seyn, some relate the story by saying. The expression occurs again in l. 1086. On the strength of it, Tyrwhitt concluded that Chaucer here refers to Gower, who tells the story of Constance in Book ii. of his Confessio Amantis. He observes that Gower’s version of the story includes both the circumstances which are introduced by this expression. But this is not conclusive, since we find that Nicholas Trivet also makes mention of the same circumstances. In the present instance the French text has—‘A ceo temps de la venuz le Roi a Rome, comensca Moris son diseotisme aan. Cist estoit apris priuement de sa mere Constance, qe, quant il irreit a la feste ou son seignur le senatour,’ &c.; i.e. At this time of the king’s coming to Rome, Maurice began his eighteenth year. He was secretly instructed by his mother Constance, that, when he should go to the Edition: current; Page: [163] feast with his lord the senator, &c. See also the note to l. 1086 below. Besides, Gower may have followed Chaucer.

1014. metes space, time of eating. This circumstance strikingly resembles the story of young Roland, who, whilst still a child, was instructed by his mother Bertha to appear before his uncle Charlemagne, by way of introducing himself. The story is well told in Uhland’s ballad entitled ‘Klein Roland,’ a translation of which is given at pp. 335–340 of my ‘Ballads and Songs of Uhland.’

‘They had but waited a little while,

When Roland returns more bold;

With hasty step to the king he comes,

And seizes his cup of gold.

“What ho, there! stop! you saucy imp!”

Are the words that loudly ring.

But Roland clutches the beaker still

With eyes fast fixed on the king.

The king at the first looked fierce and dark,

But soon perforce he smiled—

“Thou comest,” he said, “into golden halls

As though they were woodlands wild,” ’ &c.

The result is also similar; Bertha is reconciled to Charlemagne, much as Constance is to Ælla.

1034. aught, in any way, at all; lit. ‘a whit.’

1035. sighte, sighed. So also pighte, ‘pitched’; plighte, ‘plucked’; and shrighte, ‘shrieked.’ It occurs again in Troil. iii. 1080, iv. 714, 1217, v. 1633; and in the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1746.

1036. that he mighte, as fast as he could.

1038. ‘I ought to suppose, in accordance with reasonable opinion.’ Chaucer tells the story quite in his own way. There is no trace of ll. 1038–1042 in the French, and scarcely any of ll. 1048–1071, which is all in his own excellent strain.

1056. shet, shut, closed. Compare the description of Griselda in the Clerkes Tale, E. 1058–1061.

1058. Both twyes and owne are dissyllabic.

1060. all his halwes, all His saints. Hence the term All-hallow-mas, i. e. All Saints’ day.

1061. wisly, certainly. as have, I pray that he may have; see note to l. 859 above. ‘I pray He may so surely have mercy on my soul, as that I am as innocent of your suffering as Maurice my son is like you in the face.’

1078. After this line, the French text tells us that King Ælla presented himself before Pope Pelagius, who absolved him for the death of his mother. Pelagius II. was pope in 578–90.

1086. Here again, Tyrwhitt supposes Chaucer to follow Gower. But, in fact, Chaucer and Gower both consulted Trivet, who says Edition: current; Page: [164] here—‘Constaunce charga son fitz Morice del messager [or message] . . . . Et puis, quant Morice estoit deuaunt lempereur venuz, oue la compaignie honurable, et auoit son message fest de part le Roi son pere,’ &c.; i. e. ‘Constance charged her son Maurice with the message . . . . and then, when Maurice was come before the emperor, with the honourable company, and had done his message on behalf of the king his father,’ &c. Or, as before, Gower may have copied Chaucer.

1090. As he; used much as we should now use ‘as one.’ It refers to the Emperor, of course.

1091. Sente, elliptical for ‘as that he would send.’ Tyrwhitt reads send; but it is best to leave an expression like this as it stands in the MSS. It was probably a colloquial idiom; and, in the next line, we have wente. Observe that sente is in the subjunctive mood, and is equivalent to ‘he would send.’

1107. Chaucer so frequently varies the length and accent of a proper name that there is no objection to the supposition that we are here to read Cústancë in three syllables, with an accent on the first syllable. In exactly the same way, we find Grísildis in three syllables (E. 948), though in most other passages it is Grisíld. We have had Cústance, accented on the first syllable, several times; see ll. 438, 556, 566, 576, &c.; also Custáncë, three syllables, ll. 184, 274, 319, 612, &c. Tyrwhitt inserts a second your before Custance, but without authority.

1109. It am I; it is I. It is the usual idiom. So in the A. S. version of St. John vi. 20, we find ‘ic hyt com,’ i. e. I it am, and in a Dutch New Testament, ad 1700, I find ‘Ick ben ’t,’ i.e. I am it. The Mœso-Gothic version omits it, having simply ‘Ik im’; so does Wyclif’s, which has ‘I am.’ Tyndale, ad 1526, has ‘it ys I.’

1113. thonketh, pronounced thonk’th; so also eyl’th, B. 1171, Abyd’th, B. 1175. So also tak’th, l. 1142 below. of, for. So in Chaucer’s Balade of Truth, l. 19, we have ‘thank God of al,’ i. e. for all things. See my notes to Chaucer’s Minor Poems, vol. i. p. 552.

1123. The French text tells us that he was named Maurice of Cappadocia, and was also known, in Latin, as Mauritius Christianissimus Imperator. Trivet tells us no more about him, except that he accounts for the title ‘of Cappadocia’ by saying that Arsemius (the senator who found Constance and Maurice and took care of them) was a Cappadocian. Gibbon says—‘The Emperor Maurice derived his origin from ancient Rome; but his immediate parents were settled at Arabissus in Cappadocia, and their singular felicity preserved them alive to behold and partake the fortune of their august son. . . . . Maurice ascended the throne at the mature age of 43 years; and he reigned above 20 years over the east and over himself.’—Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, cap. xlv. He was murdered, with all his seven children, by his successor, Phocas the Usurper; Nov. 27, ad 600. His accession was in ad 582.

1127. The statement ‘I bere it not in minde,’ i.e. I do not remember it, may be taken to mean that Chaucer could find nothing about Edition: current; Page: [165] Maurice in his French text beyond the epithet Christianissimus, which he has skilfully expanded into l. 1123. He vaguely refers us to ‘olde Romayn gestes,’ that is, to lives of the Roman emperors, for he can hardly mean the Gesta Romanorum in this instance. Gibbon refers us to Evagrius, lib. v. and lib. vi.; Theophylact Simocatta; Theophanes, Zonaras, and Cedrenus.

1132. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. is written—‘A mane usque ad vesperam mutabitur tempus. Tenent tympanum et gaudent ad sonum organi,’ &c. See the next note.

1135. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. is written—‘Quis vnquam vnicam diem totam duxit in sua dilectione [vel delectatione] iocundam? quem in aliqua parte diei reatus consciencie, vel impetus Ire, vel motus concupiscencie non turbauerit? quem liuor Inuidie, vel Ardor Auaricie, vel tumor superbie non vexauerit? quem aliqua iactura vel offensa, vel passio non commouerit,’ &c. Cp. Pt. insert inde before non turbauerit. This corresponds to nothing in the French text, but it is quoted from Pope Innocent’s treatise, De Contemptu Mundi, lib. i. c. 22; see note to B. 99 above. The extract in the note to l. 1132 occurs in the same chapter, but both clauses in it are borrowed; the former from Ecclus. xviii. 26, the latter from Job, xxi. 12.

1143. I gesse, I suppose. Chaucer somewhat alters the story. Trivet says that Ælla died at the end of nine months after this. Half-a-year after, Constance repairs to Rome. Thirteen days after her arrival, her father Tiberius dies. A year later, Constance herself dies, on St. Clement’s day (Nov. 23), ad 584, and is buried at Rome, near her father, in St. Peter’s Church. The date 584, here given by Trivet, should rather be 583; the death of Tiberius took place on Aug. 14, 582; see Gibbon.

The Shipman’s Prologue.

1165. The host here refers to the Man of Lawes Tale, which had just been told, and uses the expression ‘thrifty tale’ with reference to the same expression above, B. 46. Most MSS. separate this end-link widely from the Tale, but MS. Hl. and MS. Arch. Seld. B. 14 have it in the right place. See vol. iii. pp. 417–9.

for the nones, for the nonce, for the occasion; see note to the Prologue, A. 379. The A. S. ānes (=once) is an adverb with a genitive case-ending; and, being an adverb, becomes indeclinable, and can accordingly be used as a dative case after the preposition for, which properly governs the dative.

1166. The Host here turns to the Parson (see Prol. A. 477), and adjures him to tell a tale, according to the agreement.

1167. yore, put for of yore, formerly, already.—M.

1169. Can moche good, know (or are acquainted with) much good; i. e. with many good things, Cf. B. 47.

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1170. Benedicite, bless ye; i. e. bless ye the Lord; the first word of the Song of the Three Children, and a more suitable exclamation than most of those in common use at the time. In the Knightes Tale, A. 1785, where Theseus is pondering over the strange event he had just witnessed, the word is pronounced in full, as five syllables. But in A. 2115, it is pronounced, as here, as a mere trisyllable. The syllables to be dropped are the second and third, so that we must say ben’cite. This is verified by a passage in the Townley Mysteries, p. 85, where it is actually spelt benste, and reduced to two syllables only. Cf. notes to B. 1974, and Troil. i. 780.

1171. man; dat. case after eyleth. Swearing is alluded to as a prevalent vice amongst Englishmen in Robert of Brunne, in the Persones Tale of Chaucer, and elsewhere.—M.

1172. O Iankin, &c.; ‘O Johnny, you are there, are you?’ That is, ‘so it is you whom I hear, is it, Mr. Johnny?’ A derisive interruption. It was common to call a priest Sir John, by way of mild derision; see Monkes Prol. (B. 3119) and Nonne Prestes Prol. (B. 4000). The Host carries the derision a little further by using the diminutive form. See note to B. 4000.

1173. a loller, a term of reproach, equivalent to a canting fellow. Tyrwhitt aptly cites a passage from a treatise of the period, referring to the Harleian Catalogue, no. 1666:—‘Now in Engelond it is a comun protectioun ayens persecutioun, if a man is customable to swere nedeles and fals and unavised, by the bones, nailes, and sides, and other membres of Christ. And to absteyne fro othes nedeles and unleful, and repreve sinne by way of charite, is mater and cause now, why Prelates and sum Lordes sclaundren men, and clepen hem Lollardes, Eretikes,’ &c.

The reader will not clearly understand this word till he distinguishes between the Latin lollardus and the English loller, two words of different origin which were purposely confounded in the time of Wyclif. The Latin Lollardus had been in use before Wyclif. Ducange quotes from Johannes Hocsemius, who says, under the date 1309—‘Eodem anno quidam hypocritae gyrovagi, qui Lollardi, sive Deum laudantes, vocabantur, per Hannoniam et Brabantiam quasdam mulieres nobiles deceperunt.’ He adds that Trithemius says in his Chronicle, under the year 1315—‘ita appellatos a Gualtero Lolhard, Germano quodam.’ Kilian, in his Dictionary of Mid. Dutch, says—‘Lollaerd, mussitator, mussitabundus’; i. e. a mumbler of prayers. This gives two etymologies for Lollardus. Being thus already in use as a term of reproach, it was applied to the followers of Wyclif, as we learn from Thomas Walsingham, who says, under the year 1377—‘Hi uocabantur a uulgo Lollardi, incedentes nudis pedibus’; and again—‘Lollardi sequaces Joannis Wiclif.’ But the Old English loller (from the verb to loll) meant simply a lounger, an idle vagabond, as is abundantly clear from a notable passage in Piers the Plowman, C-text (ed. Skeat), x. 188–218; where William tells us plainly—

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‘Now kyndeliche, by crist · beþ suche callyd lolleres,

As by englisch of oure eldres · of olde menne techynge.

He that lolleþ is lame · oþer his leg out of ioynte,’ &c.

Here were already two (if not three) words confused, but this was not all. By a bad pun, the Latin lolium, tares, was connected with Lollard, so that we find in Political Poems, i. 232, the following—

‘Lollardi sunt zizania,

Spinae, uepres, ac lollia,

Quae uastant hortum uineae.’

This obviously led to allusions to the Parable of the Tares, and fully accounts for the punning allusion to cockle, i. e. tares, in l. 1183. Mr. Jephson observes that lolium is used in the Vulgate Version, Matt. xii. 25; but this is a mistake, as the word there used is zizania. Gower, Prol. to Conf. Amant., ed. Pauli, i. 15, speaks of—

‘This newe secte of lollardie,

And also many an heresie.’

Also in book v., id. ii. 187,—

‘Be war that thou be nought oppressed

With anticristes lollardie,’ &c.

See Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. iii. 355–358; Wordsworth’s Eccl. Biography, i. 331, note.

1180. ‘He shall not give us any commentary on a gospel.’ To glose is to comment upon, with occasional free introduction of irrelevant matter. The gospel is the text, or portion of the Gospel commented upon.

1181. ‘We all agree in the one fundamental article of faith’; by which he insinuates—‘and let that suffice; we want no theological subtilties discussed here.’

1183. springen, scatter, sprink-le. The pt. t. is spreynde or spreynte; the pp. spreynd occurs in B. 422, 1830.—M. Gower, Conf. Amantis, bk. v., ed. Pauli, ii. 190, speaks of lollardie

‘Which now is come for to dwelle,

To sowe cockel with the corne.’

1185. body, i. e. self. Cf. lyf=a person, in P. Plowman, B. iii. 292.—M.

1186. See B. 3984, which suggests that there is a play upon words here. The Shipman will make his horse’s bells ring loudly enough to awake them all; or he will ring so merry a peal, as to rouse them like a church bell that awakes a sleeper.

1189. It is plain that the unmeaning words phislyas and phillyas, as in the MSS., must be corruptions of some difficult form. I think that form is certainly physices, with reference to the Physics of Aristotle, here conjoined with ‘philosophy’ and ‘law’ in order to include the chief forms of medieval learning. Aristotle was only known, in Chaucer’s time, in Latin translations, and Physices Liber would be a possible title for such a translation. Lewis and Short’s Lat. Dict. gives ‘physica, gen. Edition: current; Page: [168] physicae, and physice, gen. physices, f.,=ϕυσική, natural science, natural philosophy, physics, Cicero, Academ. 1. 7. 25; id. De Finibus, 3. 21. 72; 3. 22. 73.’ Magister Artium et Physices was the name of a degree; see Longfellow’s Golden Legend, § vi.

That Chaucer should use the gen. physices alone, is just in his usual manner; cf. Iudicum, B. 3236; Eneidos, B. 4549; Metamorphoseos, B. 93. Tyrwhitt’s reading of physike gives the same sense.

The Shipmannes Tale.

This Tale agrees rather closely with one in Boccaccio’s Decamerone, Day viii. nov. 1. See further in vol. iii. p. 420.

1191. Seint Denys, Saint Denis, in the environs of Paris. Cf. ll. 1247, 1249, and note to 1341.

1202. us, i. e. us women. This is clear proof that some of the opening lines of this Tale were not originally intended for the Shipman, but for the Wife of Bath, as she is the only lady in the company to whom they would be suitable. We may remember that Chaucer originally meant to make each pilgrim tell four Tales; so there is nothing surprising in the fact that he once thought of giving this to the Wife. This passage is parallel to D. 337–339.

1209. perilous. Cf. D. 339: ‘it is peril of our chastitee.’

1228. Referring to the common proverb—‘As fain as a fowl [bird] of a fair day’; cf. l. 1241 below, A. 2437, G. 1342.

1233. Daun, Dan, for Lat. Dominus, corresponding to E. sir, as in ‘Sir John,’ a common title for a priest. Cf. B. 3119.

1244. Shoop him, lit. shaped himself, set about, got ready. Cf. P. Plowman, C. i. 2, xiv. 247, and the notes.

1245. Brugges, Bruges; which, as Wright remarks, was ‘the grand central mart of European commerce in the middle ages.’ Cf. P. Plowman, C. vii. 278, and the note.

1256. graunges, granges; cf. notes to A. 3668, and A. 166.

1260. Malvesye, Malmsey; so named from Malvasia, now Napoli di Malvasia, a town on the E. coast of Lacedaemonia in the Morea. See note in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 206, where Malvasia is explained as the Ital. corruption of Monemvasia, from Gk. μόνη ἐμβασία, single entrance; with reference to its position.

1261. Vernage. In the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 203, vernage is said to be a red wine, bright, sweet, and somewhat rough, from Tuscany and Genoa, and other parts of Italy. The Ital. name is vernaccia, lit. the name of a thick-skinned grape. The information in this note and the preceding one is drawn from Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824: which see.

1262. volatyl, wild fowl, game; here used as a collective plural, to represent Lat. uolatilia. Littré quotes: ‘Tant ot les volatiles chieres’; Roman de la Rose, 20365. Wyclif has al volatile to translate cunctum Edition: current; Page: [169] uolatile, Gen. vii. 14; also my volatilis in Matt. xxii. 4, where the Vulgate has altilia. Cf. F. volaille.

1278. passed pryme, past 9 a.m. See notes to A. 3906, F. 73; and cf. B. 1396.

1281. his thinges, the things he had to say; cf. F. 78. It ‘means the divine office in the Breviary, i.e. the psalms and lessons from scripture which, being absent from the convent, he was bound to say privately’; Bell. curteisly, reverently. See note to l. 1321 below.

1287. under the yerde, still subject to the discipline of the rod. As girls were married at a very early age, this should mean ‘still quite a child.’ Cf. as hir list in l. 1286. And see E. 22. See Ælfric’s Colloquy (Wright’s Vocab. ed. Wülker, p. 102), where the boy says he is still sub uirga, on which the A. S. gloss is under gyrda. F. sous la verge (Littré).

1292. appalled, enfeebled, languid; see F. 365.

1293. dare, lie motionless. This is the original sense of the word, as in E. Friesic bedaren. So also Low G. bedaren, to be still and quiet; as in dat weer bedaart, the weather becomes settled; een bedaart mann, a man who has lost the fire of youth. Du. bedaren, to compose, to calm. The rather common M. E. phrase to droupe and dare means ‘to sink down and lie quiet,’ like a hunted animal in hiding; hence came the secondary sense ‘to lurk’ or ‘lie close,’ as in the Prompt. Parv. Cotgrave has F. blotir, ‘to squat, skowke, or lie close to the ground, like a daring lark or affrighted foul.’ Hence also a third sense, ‘to peer round,’ as a lurking creature that looks out for possible danger. The word is common in M. E., and in many passages the sense ‘to lie still’ suits better than ‘lurk,’ as it is usually explained.

1295. Were, ‘which might be,’ ‘which should happen to be’; the relative is understood. forstraught, distracted. Such is evidently the sense; but the word occurs nowhere else, and is incorrect. As far as I can make it out, Chaucer has coined this word incorrectly. The right word is destrat (vol. ii. p. 67, l. 1), from O. F. destrait, pp. of destraire, to tear asunder (as by horses), to torment, fatigue (Godefroy). Next, he turned it (1) into forstrait, pp. of forstraire (fortraire in Cotgrave), to purloin; and (2) into forstraught, as if it were the pp. of an A. S. *for-streccan, to stretch exceedingly. Thus, he has made one change by altering the prefix, and another by misdividing the word and substituting English for French. A similar mistake is seen in the absurd form distraught, used for ‘distracted,’ though it is, formally, equivalent to dis-straught, as if made up of the prefix dis- and the pp. of strecchen, to stretch. An early instance occurs in Lydgate’s Minor Poems, ed. Halliwell, p. 206, where we find ‘Distrauhte in thouhte,’ i.e. distracted in thought, mad. There is much confusion between the E. prefixes for-, fore-, and the F. fors-, for-. Chaucer has straughte (correctly), as the pt. t. of strecchen, in A. 2916.

1298. Accent labóured on the second syllable.

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1303. ‘God knows all’; implying, ‘I can contradict you, if I choose to speak.’

1321. port-hors, for porte-hors, lit. ‘carry-abroad,’ the F. equivalent of Lat. portiforium, a breviary. Also spelt portous, portess, &c. ‘The Portous, or Breviary, contained whatever was to be said by all beneficed clerks, and those in holy orders, either in choir, or privately by themselves, as they recited their daily canonical hours; no musical notation was put into these books.’—Rock, Church of our Fathers, v. iii. pt. 2, p. 212. Dan John had just been saying ‘his things’ out of it (l. 1281). The music was omitted to save space. See P. Plowman, B. xv. 122, and my note on the line.

1327. for to goon, i. e. even though going to hell were the penalty of my keeping secret what you tell me.

1329. ‘This I do, not for kinship, but out of true love.’

1335. a legende, a story of martyrdom, like that of a saint’s life.

1338. St. Martin of Tours, whose day is Nov. 11.

1341. St. Denis of France, St. Dionysius, bishop of Paris, martyred ad 272, whose day is Oct. 9. Near his place of martyrdom was built a chapel, which was first succeeded by a church, and then by the famous abbey of St. Denis, in which King Dagobert and his successors were interred. The French adopted St. Denis as their patron saint; see Chambers, Book of Days, ii. 427; Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, Oct. 9.

1353. sit, is becoming, befits; see E. 460, 1277.

1384. Geniloun, Genilon or Ganelon, the traitor who betrayed Charlemagne’s army at Roncesvalles. For this deed he was torn to death by wild horses, according to the romance-writers. See La Chanson de Roland, l. 3735. Cf. note to B. 3579, and Book of the Duchesse, 1121, and my note upon it.

1396. chilindre, a kind of portable sun-dial, lit. cylinder. A thirteenth-century Latin treatise on the use of the chilindre was edited by Mr. E. Brock for the Chaucer Society, and I here copy his clear description of the instrument. ‘The Chilindre (cylindrus) or cylinder is one of the manifold forms of the sun-dial, very simple in its construction, but rude and inaccurate as a time-shower. According to the following treatise, it consists of a wooden cylinder, with a central bore from top to bottom, and with a hollow space in the top, into which a moveable rotary lid with a little knob at the top is fitted. This lid is also bored in the centre, and a string passed through the whole instrument. Upon this string the chilindre hangs [perpendicularly] when in use. The style or gnomon works on a pin fixed in the lid. When the instrument is in use, the style projects at a right angle to the surface of the cylindrical body, through a notch in the side of the lid, but can, at pleasure, be turned down and slipt into the central bore, which is made a little wider at the top to receive it. The body of the chilindre is marked with a table of the points of the shadow, a table of degrees for finding the sun’s altitude, and spaces corresponding to Edition: current; Page: [171] the months of the year and the signs of the zodiac. Across these spaces are drawn six oblique hour-lines.

‘To ascertain the time of day by the chilindre, consider what month it is, and turn the lid round till the style stands directly over the corresponding part of the chilindre; then hold up the instrument by the string so that the style points towards the sun, or in other words, so that the shadow of the style falls perpendicularly, and the hour will be shewn by the lowest line reached by the shadow.’

Another treatise of the same character was subsequently edited by Mr. Brock for the same Society. It is entitled ‘Practica Chilindri; or the Working of the Cylinder; by John Hoveden.’

There is a curious reference to the same instrument in the following passage from Horman’s Vulgaria, leaf 338, back:—‘There be iorneyringis [day-circles, dials] and instrumentis lyke an hangynge pyler with a tunge lyllyng [lolling] out, to knowe what tyme of the day.’

In Wright’s Vocabularies, ed. Wülker, 572. 22, we find: ‘Chilindrus, anglice a leuel; uel est instrumentum quo hore notantur, anglice a chylaundre.’ It thus appears that the reading kalendar, in the old editions, is due to a mistake.

The most interesting comment on this passage is afforded by the opening lines of the Prologue to Part II. of Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, where Lydgate is clearly thinking of Chaucer’s words. Here also the black-letter edition of 1561 has Kalendar, but the reading of MS. Arundel 119 (leaf 18) is more correct, as follows:—

‘Passed the throp of Bowton on the Ble,

By my chilyndre I gan anon to se,

Thorgh the sonne, that ful cler gan shyne,

Of the clok[ke] that it drogh to nyne.’

pryme of day, 9 a.m., in the present passage; see above, and note the preparations for dinner in ll. 1399–1401; the dinner-hour being 10 a.m. See also note to A. 3906. ‘Our forefathers dined at an hour at which we think it fashionable to breakfast; ten o’clock was the time established by ancient usage for the principal meal’; Our Eng. Home, p. 33. In earlier times it was nine o’clock; see Wright, Hist. of Domestic Manners, p. 155.

1399. ‘As cheery as a magpie.’

1404. Qui la? who’s there. All the MSS. agree in thus cutting down the expression qui est la to two words; and this abbreviation is emphasised by the English gloss ‘Who ther’ in E. and Hn.; Cm. has Who there, without any French. It is clear, too, that the line is imperfect at the caesura, thus:—

Qui la? | quod he. | — Pe | ter it | am I ∥

This medial pause is probably intentional, to mark the difference between the speakers. Ed. 1532 (which Tyrwhitt follows) has Qui est la, in order to fill out the line. Wright has the same; and (as usual) suppresses the fact that the word est is not in the MS. which he follows ‘with literal accuracy.’

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Peter! by Saint Peter! a too common exclamation, shewing that even women used to swear. It occurs again in D. 446, 1332, and Hous of Fame, 1034, 2000.

1412. elenge, pronounced (eeléngga), in a dreary, tedious, lonely manner; drearily. From A. S. ǣlenge, lengthy, protracted; a derivative from lang, long; see P. Plowman, C. i. 204, and the note. In Pegge’s Kenticisms (E. D. S. Gloss. C. 3), we have: ‘Ellinge [pronounced éllinj], adj. solitary, lonely, melancholy, farre from neighbours. See Ray.’ It is also still in use in Sussex. The usual derivation from A.S. ellende, foreign, is incorrect; but it seems to have been confused with this word, whence the sense of ‘strange, foreign,’ was imported into it. See Alange in the New E. Dictionary.

1413. go we dyne, let us go and dine; as in P. Plowman, C. i. 227.

1417. Seint Yve. ‘St. Ivia, or Ivo,’ says Alban Butler, ‘was a Persian bishop, who preached in England in the seventh century.’ He died at St. Ive’s in Huntingdonshire. A church was also built in his honour at St. Ive’s in Cornwall. His day is April 25. This line is repeated in D. 1943. Cf. A. 4264.

1421. dryve forth, spend our time in; cf. P. Plowman, C. i. 225.

1423. pleye, ‘take some relaxation by going on a pilgrimage’; clearly shewing the chief object of pilgrimages. Cf. D. 557. The line also indicates that it was a practice, when men could no longer make a show in the world, to go on a pilgrimage, or ‘go out of the way’ somewhere, to avoid creditors.

1436. houshold. So in E. Hn. Cm.; Cp. Pt. Ln. Hl. T. have housbonde, housbond, but the application of this word to a housewife is not happy.

1441. messe, mass; it seems to have been said, on this occasion, about 9.30 a.m. It did not take long; cf. l. 1413.

1445. At-after, soon after. This curious form is still in use; see the Cleveland Glossary. So in the Whitby Glossary:—‘All things in order; ploughing first, sowing at-after.’ Cf. ‘at-after supper,’ Rich. III. iv. 3. 31; and see At, § 40, in the New E. Dict. We find also at-under and at-before. It occurs again in F. 1219.

1466. a myle-wey, even by twenty minutes (the time taken to walk a mile).

1470. Graunt mercy of, many thanks for.

1476. ‘God defend (forbid) that ye should spare.’

1484. took, handed over, delivered; see note to P. Plowman, C. iv. 47. And see l. 1594 below.

1496. let, leadeth, leads; note the various readings. Cf. ‘Thet is the peth of pouerte huerby let the holy gost tho thet,’ &c.; i.e. that is the path of poverty whereby the Holy Ghost leads those that, &c.—Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 185; and so again in the same, p. 115, l. 9, and p. 51, l. 13. In P. Plowman, B. iii. 157, the Rawlinson MS. has let instead of ledeth.

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1499. crowne; alluding to the priestly tonsure. See note to P. Plowman, C. i. 86.

1506. For bolt-upright, see note to A. 4194. This line is defective in the first foot; read—Hav’ | hir in | his, &c. Tyrwhitt reads Haven, but admits, in the notes, that the final n came out of his own head.

1515. the faire, the fair at Bruges. On fairs, see the note to P. Plowman, C. vii. 211.

1519. chevisaunce, a contract for borrowing money on his credit; see A. 282, and note to P. Plowman, B. v. 249. For the purpose of making such a contract, a proportional sum had to be paid down in ready money; see note to l. 1524.

1524. ‘A certain (number of) franks; and some (franks) he took with him.’ The latter sum refers to the money he had to pay down in order to get the chevisance made. See note to Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 528. And see l. 1558.

1542. Here sheeld is used as a plural, by analogy with pund, i.e. pounds. A sheeld was a French écu, or crown; see A. 278.

1557. Lumbardes, Lombards, the great money-lenders and bankers of the middle ages. Cf. ‘Lumbardes of Lukes, that lyuen by lone as lewes,’ Lombards from Lucca, that live by lending, as Jews do; P. Plowman, C. v. 194. Owing to the accent, Lumbard’s is dissyllabic.

1558. bond is misprinted hond in Wright’s edition; MS. Hl. has bond, correctly, though the note in Bell says otherwise.

1592. Marie, by St. Mary; the familiar ‘Marry!’ as used by our dramatists.

1595. yvel thedom, ill success. Cf. ‘Now, sere, evyl thedom com to thi snoute’; Coventry Mysteries, p. 139. This is printed by Halliwell in the form—‘Now, sere evyl Thedom, com to thi snoute,’ i.e. ‘now, sir Ill Success, come to thy snout’; but how a man can come to his own nose, we are not told.

1599. bele chere, fair entertainment, hospitality. Bele=mod. F. belle.

1606. ‘Score it upon my tally,’ make a note of it. See A. 570, and note to P. Plowman, C. v. 61.

1613. to wedde, as a pledge (common). Cf. A. 1218.

1621. large, liberal; hence E. largesse, liberality.

The Prioress’s Prologue.

1625. corpus dominus; of course for corpus domini, the Lord’s body. But it is unnecessary to correct the Host’s Latin.

1626. ‘Now long mayest thou sail along the coast!’

1627. marineer, Fr. marinier; we now use the ending -er; but modern words of French origin shew their lateness by the accent on the last syllable, as engineer.—M. The Fr. pionnier is pioner in Shakespeare, but is now pioneer.

1628. ‘God give this monk a thousand cart-loads of bad years!’ Edition: current; Page: [174] He alludes to the deceitful monk described in the Shipman’s Tale. A last is a very heavy load. In a Statute of 31 Edw. I. a weight is declared to be 14 stone; 2 weights of wool are to make a sack; and 12 sacks a last. This makes a last of wool to be 336 stone, or 42 cwt. But the dictionaries shew that the weight was very variable, according to the substance weighed. The word means simply a heavy burden, from A. S. hlæst, a burden, connected with hladan, to load; so that last and load are alike in sense. Laste, in the sense of heavy weight, occurs in Richard the Redeles, ed. Skeat, iv. 74. Quad is the Old English equivalent of the Dutch kwaad, bad, a word in very common use. In O. E., þe qued means the evil one, the devil; P. Pl. B. xiv. 189. Cf. note to A. 4357. The omission of the word of before quad may be illustrated by the expression ‘four score years,’ i.e. of years.

1630. ‘The monk put an ape in the man’s hood, and in his wife’s too.’ We should now say, he made him look like an ape. The contents of the hood would be, properly, the man’s head and face; but neighbours seemed to see peeping from it an ape rather than a man. It is a way of saying that he made a dupe of him. In the Milleres Tale (A. 3389), a girl is said to have made her lover an ape, i.e. a dupe; an expression which recurs in the Chanones Yemannes Tale, G. 1313. Spenser probably borrowed the expression from this very passage; it occurs in his Faerie Queene, iii. 9. 31:—

‘Thus was the ape,

By their faire handling, put into Malbeccoes cape.’

1632. ‘Never entertain monks any more.’

1637. See the description of the Prioress in the Prologue, A. 118.

The Prioresses Tale.

For general remarks upon this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 421.

1643. Cf. Ps. viii. 1-2. The Vulgate version has—‘Domine Dominus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum in uniuersa terra! Quoniam eleuata est magnificentia tua super caelos! Ex ore infantium et lactentium perfecisti laudem,’ &c.

1650. can or may, know how to, or have ability to do.

1651. The ‘white lily’ was the token of Mary’s perpetual virginity. See this explained at length in Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 245.

1655. ‘For she herself is honour, and, next after her Son, the root of bounty, and the help (or profit) of souls.’

1658. Cf. Chaucer’s A. B. C., or Hymn to the Virgin, (Minor Poems, vol. i. p. 266), where we find under the heading M—

‘Moises, that saugh the bush with flaumes rede

Brenninge, of which ther never a stikke brende,

Was signe of thyn unwemmed maidenhede;

Thou art the bush, on which ther gan descende

The Holy Gost, the which that Moises wende

Had been a-fyr.’

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So also in st. 2 of an Alliterative Hymn in Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 284.

1659. ‘That, through thy humility, didst draw down from the Deity the Spirit that alighted in thee.’

1660. thalighte=thee alighte, the two words being run into one. Such agglutination is more common when the def. art. occurs, or with the word to; cf. Texpounden in B. 1716.

1661. lighte may mean either (1) cheered, lightened; or (2) illuminated. Tyrwhitt and Richardson both take the latter view; but the following passage, in which hertes occurs, makes the former the more probable:—

‘But nathelees, it was so fair a sighte

That it made alle hir hertes for to lighte.’

Sq. Ta.; F. 395.

1664. Partly imitated from Dante, Paradiso, xxxiii. 16:—

‘La tua benignità non pur soccorre

A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate

Liberamente al dimandar precorre.

In te misericordia, in te pietate,

In te magnificenza, in te s’aduna

Quantunque in creatura è di bontate.

1668. goost biforn, goest before, dost anticipate. of, by. The eighth stanza of the Seconde Nonnes Tale (G. 50–56) closely resembles ll. 1664–70; being imitated from the same passage in Dante.

1677. Gydeth, guide ye. The plural number is used, as a token of respect, in addressing superiors. By a careful analysis of the words thou and ye in the Romance of William of Palerne, I deduced the following results, which are generally true in Mid. English. ‘Thou is the language of a lord to a servant, of an equal to an equal, and expresses also companionship, love, permission, defiance, scorn, threatening: whilst ye is the language of a servant to a lord, and of compliment, and further expresses honour, submission, or entreaty. Thou is used with singular verbs, and the possessive pronoun thine; but ye requires plural verbs, and the possessive your.’—Pref. to Will. of Palerne, ed. Skeat, p. xlii. Cf. Abbott’s Shakespearian Grammar, sect. 231.

1678. Asie, Asia; probably used, as Tyrwhitt suggests, in the sense of Asia Minor, as in the Acts of the Apostles.

1679. a Iewerye, a Jewry, i. e. a Jews’ quarter. In many towns there was formerly a Jews’ quarter, distinguished by a special name. There is still an Old Jewry in London. In John vii. 1 the word is used as equivalent to Judea, as also in other passages in the Bible and in Shakesp. Rich. II, ii. 1. 55. Chaucer (House of Fame, 1435) says of Josephus—

‘And bar upon his shuldres hye

The fame up of the Jewerye.’

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Thackeray uses the word with an odd effect in his Ballad of ‘The White Squall.’ See also note to B. 1749.

1681. vilanye. So the six MSS.; Hl. has felonye, wrongly. In the margin of the Ellesmere MS. is written ‘turpe lucrum,’ i. e. vile gain, which is evidently the sense intended by lucre of vilanye, here put for villanous lucre or filthy lucre, by poetical freedom of diction. See Chaucer’s use of vilanye in the Prologue, A. 70 and A. 726.

1684. free, unobstructed. People could ride and walk through, there being no barriers against horses, and no termination in a cul de sac. Cf. Troilus, ii. 616–8.

1687. Children an heep, a heap or great number of children. Of is omitted before children as it is before quad yere in B. 1628. For heep, see Prologue, A. 575.

1689. maner doctrine, kind of learning, i. e. reading and singing, as explained below. Here again of is omitted, as is usual in M.E. after the word maner; as—‘In another maner name,’ Rob. of Glouc. vol. i. p. 147; ‘with somme manere crafte,’ P. Plowman, B. v. 25: ‘no maner wight,’ Ch. Prol. A. 71; &c. See Mätzner, Englische Grammatik, ii. 2. 313. men used, people used; equivalent to was used. Note this use of men in the same sense as the French on, or German man. This is an excellent instance, as the poet does not refer to men at all, but to children. Moreover, men (spelt me in note to B. 1702) is an attenuated form of the sing. man, and not the usual plural.

1693. clergeon, not ‘a young clerk’ merely, as Tyrwhitt says, but a happily chosen word implying that he was a chorister as well. Ducange gives—‘Clergonus, junior clericus, vel puer choralis; jeune clerc, petit clerc ou enfant de chœur’; see Migne’s edition. And Cotgrave has—‘Clergeon, a singing man, or Quirester in a Queer [choir].’ It means therefore ‘a chorister-boy.’ Cf. Span. clerizon, a chorister, singing-boy; see New E. Dict.

1694. That, as for whom. A London street-boy would say—‘which he was used to go to school.’ That . . . his=whose.

1695. wher-as, where that, where. So in Shakespeare, 2 Hen. VI. i. 2. 58; Spenser, F. Q. i. 4. 38. See Abbott’s Shakesp. Grammar, sect. 135. thimage, the image; alluding to an image of the Virgin placed by the wayside, as is so commonly seen on the continent.

1698. Ave Marie; so in Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 35. The words were—‘Aue Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus uentris tui. Amen.’ See the English version in Specimens of Early English, ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 106. It was made up from Luke i. 28 and i. 42. Sometimes the word Jesus was added after tui, and, at a later period, an additional clause—‘Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.’ See Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 315; and iii. pt. 2, 134.

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1702. ‘For a good child will always learn quickly.’ This was a proverbial expression, and may be found in the Proverbs of Hending, st. 9:—

‘Me may lere a sely fode [one may teach a good child]

That is euer toward gode

With a lutel lore;

Yef me nul [if one will not] him forther teche,

Thenne is [his] herte wol areche

Forte lerne more.

Sely chyld is sone ylered; Quoth Hendyng.’

1704. stant, stands, is. Tyrwhitt says—‘we have an account of the very early piety of this Saint in his lesson; Breviarium Romanum, vi. Decemb.—Cuius uiri sanctitas quanta futura esset, iam ab incunabulis apparuit. Nam infans, cum reliquas dies lac nutricis frequens sugeret, quarta et sexta feria (i. e. on Wednesdays and Fridays) semel duntaxat, idque uesperi, sugebat.’ Besides, St. Nicholas was the patron of schoolboys, and the festival of the ‘boy-bishop’ was often held on his day (Dec. 6); Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 2. 215.

1708. Alma redemptoris mater. There is more than one hymn with this beginning, but the one meant is perhaps one of five stanzas printed in Hymni Latini Medii Ævi, ed. F. J. Mone, vol. ii. p. 200, from a St. Gallen MS. no. 452, p. 141, of the thirteenth century. The first and last stanzas were sung in the Marian Antiphon, from the Saturday evening before the 1st Sunday in Advent to Candlemas day. In l. 4 we have the salutation which Chaucer mentions (l. 1723), and in the last stanza is the prayer (l. 1724). These two stanzas are as follows:—

‘Alma redemptoris mater,

quam de caelis misit pater

propter salutem gentium;

tibi dicunt omnes “aue!”

quia mundum soluens a uae

mutasti uocem flentium. . . . .

Audi, mater pietatis,

nos gementes a peccatis

et a malis nos tuere;

ne damnemur cum impiis,

in aeternis suppliciis,

peccatorum miserere.’

There is another anthem that would suit almost equally well, but hardly comes so near to Chaucer’s description. It occurs in the Roman Breviary, ed. 1583, p. 112, and was said at compline from Advent eve to Candlemas day, like the other; cf. l. 1730. The words are:—

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‘Alma redemptoris mater, quae peruia caeli

Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,

Surgere qui curat, populo: Tu quae genuisti,

Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem,

Virgo priùs ac posteriùs, Gabrielis ab ore

Sumens illud “Aue!” peccatorum miserere.’

In the Myrour of Our Lady, ed. Blunt, p. 174, an English translation of the latter anthem is given, with the heading ‘Alma redemptoris mater.’

1709. antiphoner, anthem-book. ‘The Antiphoner, or Lyggar, was always a large codex, having in it not merely the words, but the music and the tones, for all the invitatories, the hymns, responses, versicles, collects, and little chapters, besides whatever else belonged to the solemn chanting of masses and lauds, as well as the smaller canonical hours’; Rock, Church of our Fathers, v. 3, pt. 2, p. 212.

1710. ner and ner, nearer and nearer. The phrase come neor and neor (=come nearer and nearer) occurs in King Alisaunder, in Weber’s Metrical Romances, l. 599.

1713. was to seye, was to mean, meant. To seye is the gerundial or dative infinitive; see Morris, Hist. Outlines of English Accidence, sect. 290.

1716. Texpounden, to expound. So also tallege=to allege, Kn. Ta., A. 3000 (Harl. MS.); tespye=to espy, Nonne Pr. Ta., B. 4478. See note to l. 1733.

1726. can but smal, know but little. Cf. ‘the compiler is smal learned’; Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, i. 10.—M. Cf. coude=knew, in l. 1735.

1733. To honoure; this must be read tonóure, like texpounden in l. 1716.

1739. To scholeward; cf. From Bordeaux ward in the Prologue, A. 397.—M.

1749. The feeling against Jews seems to have been very bitter, and there are numerous illustrations of this. In Gower’s Conf. Amant. bk. vii, ed. Pauli, iii. 194, a Jew is represented as saying—

‘I am a Jewe, and by my lawe

I shal to no man be felawe

To kepe him trouth in word ne dede.’

In Piers the Plowman, B. xviii. 104, Faith reproves the Jews, and says to them—

‘ȝe cherles, and ȝowre children · chieue [thrive] shal ȝe neure,

Ne haue lordship in londe · ne no londe tylye [till ,

But al bareyne be · & vsurye vsen,

Which is lyf þat owre lorde · in alle lawes acurseth.’

See also P. Pl., C. v. 194. Usury was forbidden by the canon law, and those who practised it, chiefly Jews and Lombards, were held to Edition: current; Page: [179] be grievous sinners. Hence the character of Shylock, and of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. Cf. note on the Jews in England in the Annals of England, p. 162.

1751. honest, honourable; as in the Bible, Rom. xii. 17, &c.

1752. swich, such. The sense here bears out the formation of the word from so-like.—M.

1753. your, of you. Shakespeare has ‘in your despite,’ Cymb. i. 6. 135; ‘in thy despite,’ 1 Hen. VI, iv. 7. 22. Despite is used, like the Early and Middle English maugre, with a genitive; as maugre þin, in spite of thee, in Havelok, ll. 1128, 1789.—M.

1754. ‘Which is against the respect due to your law.’ Cf. ‘spretaeque iniuria formae’; Æneid, i. 27.

1762. Wardrobe, privy. Godefroy’s O. F. Dict. shews that garderobe meant not only a wardrobe, or place for keeping robes, &c., but also any small chamber; hence the sense. See Cotgrave.

1764. ‘O accursed folk (composed) of Herods wholly new.’

1766. ‘Murder will out’; a proverb; see B. 4242.

1769. Souded to, confirmed in. From O. F. souder, Lat. solidare, whence E. solder. Wyclif’s later version has—‘hise leggis and hise feet weren sowdid togidere’; Acts, iii. 7. The reference in ll. 1770–5 is to Rev. xiv. 3, 4.

1793. Iesu. This word is written ‘Ihu’ in E. Hn. Cm.; and ‘ihc’ in Cp. Pt. Ln.; in both cases there is a stroke through the h. This is frequently printed Ihesu, but the retention of h is unnecessary. It is not really an h at all, but the Greek H, meaning long e (ē). So, also, in ‘ihc,’ the c is not the Latin c, but the Gk. c, meaning Σ or s; and ihc are the first three letters of the word ΙΗΣΟΥΣ = ιησους = iesus. Iesu, as well as Iesus, was used as a nominative, though really the genitive or vocative case. At a later period, ihs (still with a stroke through the h) was written for ihc as a contraction of iesus. By an odd error, a new meaning was invented for these letters, and common belief treated them as the initials of three Latin words, viz. Iesus Hominum Salvator. But as the stroke through the h or mark of contraction still remained unaccounted for, it was turned into a cross! Hence the common symbol I.H.S. with the small cross in the upper part of the middle letter. The wrong interpretation is still the favourite one, all errors being long-lived. Another common contraction is Xpc., where all the letters are Greek. The x is ch (χ), the p is r (ρ), and c is s, so that Xpc = chrs, the contraction for christus or Christ. This is less common in decoration, and no false interpretation has been found for it.

1794. inwith, within. This form occurs in E. Hn. Pt. Ln.; the rest have within. Again, in the Merchant’s Tale (E. 1944), MSS. E. Hn. Cm. Hl. have the form inwith. It occurs in the legend of St. Katharine, ed. Morton, l. 172; in Sir Perceval (Thornton Romances), l. 611; in Alliterative Poems, ed. Morris, A. 970; and in Palladius on Husbandry, ed. Lodge, iii. 404. Dr. Morris says it was Edition: current; Page: [180] (like utwith = without) originally peculiar to the Northern dialect. See the Glossary, and the note to l. 2159 below (p. 202).

1805. coomen; so in E. Hn.; comen in Pt. Cp. But it is the past tense = came. The spelling comen for the past tense plural is very common in Early English, and we even find com in the singular. Thus, in l. 1807, the Petworth MS. has ‘He come,’ equivalent to ‘coom,’ the o being long. But herieth in l. 1808 is a present tense.

1814. nexte, nighest, as in Kn. Ta. A. 1413. So also hext = highest, as in the Old Eng. proverb—‘When bale is hext, then bote is next,’ i.e. ‘when woe is highest, help is nighest.’ Next is for neh-est, and hext is for heh-est.

1817. newe Rachel, second Rachel, as we should now say; referring to Matt. ii. 18.

1819. dooth for to sterve, causes to die. So also in l. 1823, dide hem drawe = caused them to be drawn.

1822. Evidently a proverb; compare Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 1. 37–40 (vol. ii. p. 93); and note to P. Plowman, C. v. 140.

1826. The body occupied the place of honour. ‘The bier, if the deceased had been a clerk, went into the chancel; if a layman, and not of high degree, the bearers set it down in the nave, hard by the church-door’; Rock, Ch. of our Fathers, ii. 472. He cites the Sarum Manual, fol. c.

1827. the abbot; pronounced thabbòt. covent, convent; here used for the monks who composed the body over which the abbot presided. So in Shakespeare, Hen. VIII, iv. 2. 18—‘where the reverend abbot, With all his covent, honourably received him.’ The form covent is Old French, still preserved in Covent Garden.

1835. halse; two MSS. consulted by Tyrwhitt read conjure, a mere gloss, caught from the line above. Other examples of halse in the sense of conjure occur. ‘Ich halsi þe o godes nome’ = I conjure thee in God’s name; St. Marherete, ed. Cockayne, p. 17. Again, in Joseph of Arimathie, ed. Skeat, l. 400—

‘Vppon þe heiȝe trinite · I halse þe to telle’—

which closely resembles the present passage.

1838. to my seminge, i.e. as it appears to me.

1840. ‘And, in the ordinary course of nature.’

1843. Wil, wills, desires. So in Matt. ix. 13, I will have mercy = I require mercy; Gk. ἔλεον θέλω; Vulgate, misericordiam uolo. Cf. B. 45.

1848. In the Ellesmere MS. (which has the metrical pauses marked) the pause in this line is marked after lyf. The word sholde is dissyllabic here, having more than the usual emphasis; it has the force of ought to. Cf. E. 1146.

1852. In the Cursor Mundi, 1373–6, Seth is told to place three pippins under the root of Adam’s tongue.

1857. now is used in the sense of take notice that, without any Edition: current; Page: [181] reference to time. There is no necessity to alter the reading to than, as proposed by Tyrwhitt. See Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 2. 346, who refers to Luke ii. 41, John i. 44, and quotes an apt passage from Maundeville’s Travels, p. 63—‘Now aftre that men han visited the holy places, thanne will they turnen toward Jerusalem.’ In A. S. the word used in similar cases is sōþlīce = soothly, verily.

1873. Ther, where. leve, grant. No two words have been more confused by editors than lene and leue. Though sometimes written much alike in MSS., they are easily distinguished by a little care. The A. S. lȳfan or lēfan, spelt lefe in the Ormulum (vol. i. p. 308), answers to the Germ. erlauben, and means grant or permit, but it can only be used in certain cases. The verb lene, A. S. lǣnan, now spelt lend, often means to give or grant in Early English, but again only in certain cases. I quote from my article on these words in Notes and Queries, 4 Ser. ii. 127—‘It really makes all the difference whether we are speaking of to grant a thing to a person, or to grant that a thing may happen. “God lene thee grace,” means “God grant thee grace,” where to grant is to impart; but “God leue we may do right” means “God grant we may do right,” where to grant is to permit. . . . . Briefly, lene requires an accusative case after it, leue is followed by a dependent clause.’ Lene occurs in Chaucer, Prol. A. 611, Milleres Tale, A. 3777, and elsewhere. Examples of leue in Chaucer are (1) in the present passage, misprinted lene by Tyrwhitt, Morris, Wright, and Bell, though five of our MSS. have leue; (2) in the Freres Tale, D. 1644, printed lene by Tyrwhitt (l. 7226), leene by Morris, leeve by Wright and Bell; (3) (4) (5) in three passages in Troilus and Criseyde (ii. 1212, iii. 56, v. 1750), where Tyrwhitt prints leve, but unluckily recants his opinion in his Glossary, whilst Morris prints lene. For other examples see Stratmann, s. v. lænan and leven.

It may be remarked that leve in Old English has several other senses; such as (1) to believe; (2) to live; (3) to leave; (4) to remain; (5) leave, sb.; (6) dear, adj. I give an example in which the first, sixth, and third of these senses occur in one and the same line:—

‘What! leuestow, leue lemman, that i the [thee] leue wold?’

Will. of Palerne, 2358.

1874. Hugh of Lincoln. The story of Hugh of Lincoln, a boy supposed to have been murdered at Lincoln by the Jews, is placed by Matthew Paris under the year 1255. Thynne, in his Animadversions upon Speght’s editions of Chaucer (p. 45 of the reprint of the E. E. T. S.), addresses Speght as follows—‘You saye, that in the 29 Henry iii. eightene Jewes were broughte from Lincolne, and hanged for crucyfyinge a childe of eight yeres olde. Whiche facte was in the 39 Hen. iii., so that you mighte verye well haue sayed, that the same childe of eighte yeres olde was the same hughe of Lincolne; of whiche name there were twoe, viz. thys younger Seinte Hughe, and Seinte Hughe bishoppe of Lincolne, which dyed in the yere 1200, long before this Edition: current; Page: [182] little seinte hughe. And to prove that this childe of eighte yeres olde and that yonge hughe of Lincolne were but one; I will sett downe two auctoryties out of Mathewe Paris and Walsinghame, wherof the fyrste wryteth, that in the yere of Christe 1255, being the 39 of Henry the 3, a childe called Hughe was sleyne by the Jewes at Lyncolne, whose lamentable historye he delyvereth at large; and further, in the yere 1256, being 40 Hen. 3, he sayeth, Dimissi sunt quieti 24 Judei á Turri London., qui ibidem infames tenebantur compediti pro crucifixione sancti Hugonis Lincolniae: All which Thomas Walsingham, in Hypodigma Neustriae, confirmeth: sayinge, Ao. 1255, Puer quidam Christianus, nomine Hugo, à Judeis captus, in opprobrium Christiani nominis crudeliter est crucifixus.’ There are several ballads in French and English, on the subject of Hugh of Lincoln, which were collected by M. F. Michel, and published at Paris in 1834, with the title—‘Hugues de Lincoln, Recueil de Ballades Anglo-Normandes et Ecossoises relatives au Meurtre de cet Enfant.’ The day of St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, is Aug. 27; that of St. Hugh, boy and martyr, is June 29. See also Brand’s Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, i. 431. And see vol. iii. p. 423.

1875. With, by. See numerous examples in Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 1. 419, amongst which we may especially notice—‘Stolne is he with Iues’; Towneley Mysteries, p. 290.

Prologue to Sir Thopas.

1881. miracle, pronounced míracl’. Tyrwhitt omits al, and turns the word into mirácle, unnecessarily.

1883. hoste is so often an evident dissyllable (see l. 1897), that there is no need to insert to after it, as in Tyrwhitt. In fact, bigan is seldom followed by to.

1885. what man artow, what sort of a man art thou?

1886. woldest finde, wouldst like to find. We learn from this passage, says Tyrwhitt, that Chaucer ‘was used to look much upon the ground; that he was of a corpulent habit; and reserved in his behaviour.’ We cannot be quite sure that the poet is serious; but these inferences are probably correct; cf. Lenvoy a Scogan, 31.

1889. war you, mind yourselves, i. e. make way.

1890. as wel as I; said ironically. Chaucer is as corpulent as the host himself. See note to l. 1886 above.

1891. were, would be. tenbrace, to embrace. In the Romaunt of the Rose, true lovers are said to be always lean; but deceivers are often fat enough:—

‘For men that shape hem other wey

Falsly hir ladies to bitray,

It is no wonder though they be fat’; l. 2689.

1893. elvish, elf-like, akin to the fairies; alluding to his absent looks Edition: current; Page: [183] and reserved manner. See Elvish in the Glossary, and cf. ‘this elvish nyce lore’; Can. Yeom. Tale, G. 842. Palsgrave has—‘I waxe eluysshe, nat easye to be dealed with, Ie deuiens mal traictable.’

1900. Ye, yea. The difference in Old English between ye and yis (yes) is commonly well marked. Ye is the weaker form, and merely assents to what the last speaker says; but yis is an affirmative of great force, often followed by an oath, or else it answers a question containing a negative particle, as in the House of Fame, 864. Cf. B. 4006 below.

The Tale of Sir Thopas.

In the black-letter editions, this Tale is called ‘The ryme of Sir Thopas,’ a title copied by Tyrwhitt, but not found in the seven best MSS. This word is now almost universally misspelt rhyme, owing to confusion with the Greek rhythm; but this misspelling is never found in old MSS. or in early printed books, nor has any example yet been found earlier than the reign of Elizabeth. The old spelling rime is confirmed by the A. S. rīm, Icel. rím, Dan. rim, Swed. rim, Germ. reim, Dutch rijm, Old Fr. rime, &c. Confusion with rime, hoarfrost, is impossible, as the context always decides which is meant; but it is worth notice that it is the latter word which has the better title to an h, as the A. S. word for hoarfrost is hrīm. Tyrwhitt, in his edition of Chaucer, attempted two reforms in spelling, viz. rime for rhyme, and coud for could. Both are most rational, but probably unattainable.

Thopas. In the Supplement to Ducange we find—‘Thopasius, pro Topasius, Acta S. Wencesl. tom. 7. Sept. p. 806, col. 1.’ The Lat. topazius is our topaz. The whole poem is a burlesque (see vol. iii. p. 423), and Sir Topaz is an excellent title for such a gem of a knight. The name Topyas occurs in Richard Coer de Lion, ed. Weber, ii. 11, as that of a sister of King Richard I; but no such name is known to history.

The metre is that commonly used before and in Chaucer’s time by long-winded ballad-makers. Examples of it occur in the Romances of Sir Percevall, Sir Isumbras, Sir Eglamour, and Sir Degrevant (in the Thornton Romances, ed. Halliwell), and in several romances in the Percy Folio MS. (ed. Hales and Furnivall), such as Libius Disconius, Sir Triamour, Sir Eglamour, Guy and Colbrande, The Grene Knight, &c.; see also Amis and Amiloun, and Sir Amadas in Weber’s Metrical Romances; and Lybeaus Disconus, The King of Tars, Le Bone Florence, Emare, The Erle of Tolous, and Horn Childe in Ritson’s collection. To point out Chaucer’s sly imitations of phrases, &c. would be a long task; the reader would gain the best idea of his manner by reading any one of these old ballads. To give a few illustrations is all that can be attempted here; I refer the reader to Prof. Kölbing’s elaborate article in the Englische Studien, xi. 495, for further information; also to the dissertation by C. J. Bennewitz mentioned in vol. iii. Edition: current; Page: [184] p. 424. It is remarkable that we find in Weber a ballad called ‘The Hunting of the Hare,’ which is a pure burlesque, like Chaucer’s, but a little broader in tone and more obviously comic.

1902. Listeth, lordes, hearken, sirs. This is the usual style of beginning. For example, Sir Bevis begins—

‘Lordynges, lystenyth, grete and smale’;

and Sir Degaré begins—

‘Lystenyth, lordynges, gente and fre,

Y wylle yow telle of syr Degaré.’

Warton well remarks—‘This address to the lordings, requesting their silence and attention, is a manifest indication that these ancient pieces were originally sung to the harp, or recited before grand assemblies, upon solemn occasions’; Obs. on F. Queene, p. 248.

1904. solas, mirth. See Prol. l. 798. ‘This word is often used in describing the festivities of elder days. “She and her ladyes called for their minstrells, and solaced themselves with the disports of dauncing”; Leland, Collectanea, v. 352. So in the Romance of Ywaine and Gawin:—

“Full grete and gay was the assemble

Of lordes and ladies of that cuntre,

And als of knyghtes war and wyse,

And damisels of mykel pryse;

Ilkane with other made grete gamen

And grete solace, &c.” ’ (l. 19, ed. Ritson).

Todd’s Illust. of Chaucer, p. 378.

1905. gent, gentle, gallant. Often applied to ladies, in the sense of pretty. The first stanzas in Sir Isumbras and Sir Eglamour are much in the same strain as this stanza.

1910. Popering. ‘Poppering, or Poppeling, was the name of a parish in the Marches of Calais. Our famous antiquary Leland was once rector of it. See Tanner, Bib. Brit. in v. Leland.’—Tyrwhitt. Here Calais means the district, not the town. Poperinge has a population of about 10,500, and is situate about 26 miles S. by W. from Ostend, in the province of Belgium called West Flanders, very near the French ‘marches,’ or border. Ypres (see A. 448) is close beside it. place, the mansion or chief house in the town. Dr. Pegge, in his Kentish Glossary, (Eng. Dial. Soc.), has—‘Place, that is, the manor-house. Hearne, in his pref. to Antiq. of Glastonbury, p. xv, speaks of a manour-place.’ He refers also to Strype’s Annals, cap. xv.

1915. payndemayn. ‘The very finest and the whitest [kind of bread] that was known, was simnel-bread, which . . . . was as commonly known under the name of pain-demayn (afterwards corrupted into [painmain or] payman); a word which has given considerable trouble to Tyrwhitt and other commentators on Chaucer, but which means no Edition: current; Page: [185] more than “bread of our Lord,” from the figure of our Saviour, or the Virgin Mary, impressed upon each round flat loaf, as is still the usage in Belgium with respect to certain rich cakes much admired there’; Chambers, Book of Days, i. 119. The Liber Albus (ed. Riley, p. 305) speaks of ‘demesne bread, known as demeine,’ which Mr. Riley annotates by—‘Panis Dominicus. Simnels made of the very finest flour were thus called, from an impression upon them of the effigy of our Saviour.’ Tyrwhitt refers to the poem of the Freiris of Berwick, in the Maitland MS., in which occur the expressions breid of mane and mane breid. It occurs also in Sir Degrevant (Thornton Romances, p. 235):—

‘Paynemayn prevayly

Sche brouȝth fram the pantry,’ &c.

It is mentioned as a delicacy by Gower, Conf. Amantis, bk. vi. (ed. Pauli, iii. 22).

1917. rode, complexion. scarlet in grayn, i. e. scarlet dyed in grain, or of a fast colour. Properly, to dye in grain meant to dye with grain, i. e. with cochineal. In fact, Chaucer uses the phrase ‘with greyn’ in the epilogue to the Nonne Prestes Tale; B. 4649. See the long note in Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language, ed. Smith, pp. 54–62, and the additional note on p. 64. Cf. Shak. Tw. Nt. i. 5. 255.

1920. saffroun; i. e. of a yellow colour. Cf. Bottom’s description of beards—‘I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawney beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow’; Mids. Nt. Dr. i. 2. In Lybeaus Disconus (ed. Ritson, Met. Rom. ii. 6, or ed. Kaluza, l. 139) a dwarf s beard is described as ‘yelow as ony wax.’

1924. ciclatoun, a costly material. From the O. Fr. ciclaton, the name of a costly cloth. [It was early confused with the Latin cyclas, which Ducange explains by ‘vestis species, et panni genus.’ The word cyclas occurs in Juvenal (Sat. vi. 259), and is explained to mean a robe worn most often by women, and adorned with a border of gold or purple; see also Propertius, iv. 7. 40.] Ciclatoun, however, is of Eastern origin, as was well suggested in the following note by Col. Yule in his edition of Marco Polo, i. 249:—

‘The term suklát is applied in the Punjab trade-returns to broad-cloth. Does not this point to the real nature of the siclatoun of the Middle Ages? It is, indeed, often spoken of as used for banners, which implies that it was not a heavy woollen. But it was also a material for ladies’ robes, for quilts, leggings, housings, pavilions. Michel does not decide what it was, only that it was generally red and wrought with gold. Dozy renders it “silk stuff brocaded with gold,” but this seems conjectural. Dr. Rock says it was a thin glossy silken stuff, often with a woof of gold thread, and seems to derive it from the Arabic sakl, “polishing” (a sword), which is improbable.’ Compare the following examples, shewing its use for tents, banners, &c.:—

Edition: current; Page: [186]

‘Off silk, cendale, and syclatoun

Was the emperours pavyloun’; . . .

‘Kyng Richard took the pavylouns

Off sendels and off sykelatouns’;

Rich. Coer de Lion (Weber, ii. 90 and 201).

‘There was mony gonfanoun

Of gold, sendel, and siclatoun’;

Kyng Alisaunder (Weber, i. 85).

Richardson’s Pers. and Arab. Dict. (ed. Johnson, 1829), p. 837, gives: ‘Pers. saqlatūn, scarlet cloth (whence Arab. siqlāt, a fine painted or figured cloth)’; and the derivation is probably (as given in the New E. Dict.) from the very Pers. word which has given us the word scarlet; so that it was originally named from its colour. It was afterwards applied to various kinds of costly materials, which were sometimes embroidered with gold. See Ciclaton in Godefroy, and in the New E. Dict.; and Scarlet in my Etym. Dictionary.

The matter has been much confused by a mistaken notion of Spenser’s. Not observing that Sir Thopas is here described in his robes of peace, not in those of war (as in a later stanza), he followed Thynne’s spelling, viz. chekelatoun, and imagined this to mean ‘that kind of guilded leather with which they [the Irish] use to embroder theyr Irish jackes’; View of the State of Ireland, in Globe edition, p. 639, col. 2. And this notion he carried out still more boldly in the lines—

‘But in a jacket, quilted richly rare

Upon cheklaton, he was straungely dight’;

F. Q. vi. 7. 43.

1925. Jane, a small coin. The word is known to be a corruption of Genoa, which is spelt Jeane in Hall’s Chronicles, fol. xxiv. So too we find Janueys and Januayes for Genoese. See Bardsley’s English Surnames, s. v. Janeway. Stow, in his Survey of London, ed. 1599, p. 97, says that some foreigners lived in Minchin Lane, who had come from Genoa, and were commonly called galley-men, who landed wines, &c. from the galleys at a place called ‘galley-key’ in Thames Street. ‘They had a certaine coyne of silver amongst themselves, which were half-pence of Genoa, and were called galley half-pence. These half-pence were forbidden in the 13th year of Henry IV, and again by parliament in the 3rd of Henry V, by the name of half-pence of Genoa. . . . Notwithstanding, in my youth, I have seen them passe currant,’ &c. Chaucer uses the word again in the Clerkes Tale (E. 999), and Spenser adopted it from Chaucer; F. Q. iii. 7. 58. Mr. Wright observes that ‘the siclaton was a rich cloth or silk brought from the East, and is therefore appropriately mentioned as bought with Genoese coin.’

1927. for rivéer, towards the river. This appears to be the best reading, and we must take for in close connexion with ryde; perhaps it Edition: current; Page: [187] is a mere imitation of the French en riviere. It alludes to the common practice of seeking the river-side, because the best sport, in hawking, was with herons and waterfowl. Tyrwhitt quotes from Froissart, v. 1. c. 140—‘Le Comte de Flandres estoit tousjours en riviere—un jour advint qu’il alla voller en la riviere—et getta son fauconnier un faucon apres le heron.’ And again, in c. 210, he says that Edward III ‘alloit, chacun jour, ou en chace on en riviere,’ &c. So we read of Sir Eglamour:—

‘Sir Eglamore tooke the way

to the riuèr ffull right’;

Percy Folio MS. ii. 347.

Of Ipomydon’s education we learn that his tutor taught him to sing, to read, to serve in hall, to carve the meat, and

‘Bothe of howndis and haukis game

Aftir he taught hym, all and same,

In se, in feld, and eke in ryuere,

In wodde to chase the wild dere,

And in the feld to ryde a stede,

That all men had joy of his dede.’

Weber’s Met. Romances, ii. 283.

See also the Squire of Low Degree, in Ritson, vol. iii. p. 177.

1931. ram, the usual prize at a wrestling match. Cf. Gk. τραγῳδία.

stonde, i.e. be placed in the sight of the competitors; be seen. Cf. Prol. A. 548, and the Tale of Gamelyn, 172. Tyrwhitt says—‘Matthew Paris mentions a wrestling-match at Westminster, ad 1222, in which a ram was the prize, p. 265.’ Cf. also—

‘At wresteling, and at ston-castynge

He wan the prys without lesynge,’ &c.;

Octouian Imperator, in Weber’s Met. Rom. iii. 194.

1933. paramour, longingly; a common expression; see the Glossary.

1937. hepe, mod. E. ‘hip,’ the fruit of the dog-rose; A. S. hēope.

1938. Compare—‘So hyt be-felle upon a day’; Erle of Tolous, Ritson’s Met. Rom. iii. 134. Of course it is a common phrase in these romances.

1941. worth, lit. became; worth upon=became upon, got upon. It is a common phrase; compare—

‘Ipomydon sterte vp that tyde;

Anon he worthyd vppon his stede’;

Weber, Met. Rom. ii. 334.

1942. launcegay, a sort of lance. Gower has the word, Conf. Amant. bk. viii. (ed. Pauli, iii. 369). Cowel says its use was prohibited by the statute of 7 Rich. II, cap. 13. Camden mentions it in his Remaines, p. 209. Tyrwhitt quotes, from Rot. Parl. 29 Hen. VI, n. 8, the following—‘And the said Evan then and there with a launcegaye smote the said William Tresham throughe the body a foote and more, whereof he died.’ Sir Walter Raleigh (quoted by Richardson) says—‘These Edition: current; Page: [188] carried a kind of lance de gay, sharp at both ends, which they held in the midst of the staff.’ But this is certainly a corrupt form. It is no doubt a corruption of lancezagay, from the Spanish azagaya, a word of Moorish origin. Cotgrave gives—‘Zagaye, a fashion of slender, long, and long-headed pike, used by the Moorish horsemen.’ It seems originally to have been rather a short weapon, a kind of half-pike or dart. The Spanish word is well discussed in Dozy, Glossaire des mots Espagnols et Portugais dérivés de l’Arabe, 2nd ed. p. 225. The Spanish azagaya is for az-zagaya, where az is for the definite article al, and zagaya is a Berber or Algerian word, not given in the Arabic dictionaries. It is found in Old Spanish of the fourteenth century. Dozy quotes from a writer who explains it as a Moorish half-pike, and also gives the following passage from Laugier de Tassy, Hist. du royaume d’Alger, p. 58—‘Leurs armes sont l’azagaye, qui est une espéce de lance courte, qu’ils portent toujours à la main.’ The Caffre word assagai, in the sense of javelin, was simply borrowed from the Portuguese azagaia.

1949. a sory care, a grievous misfortune. Chaucer does not say what this was, but a passage in Amis and Amiloun (ed. Weber, ii. 410) makes it probable that Sir Thopas nearly killed his horse, which would have been grievous indeed; see l. 1965 below. The passage I allude to is as follows:—

‘So long he priked, withouten abod,

The stede that he on rode,

In a fer cuntray,

Was ouercomen and fel doun ded;

Tho couthe he no better red [counsel];

His song was “waileway!” ’

Readers of Scott will remember Fitz-James’s lament over his ‘gallant grey.’

1950. This can hardly be other than a burlesque upon the Squire of Low Degree (ed. Ritson, iii. 146), where a long list of trees is followed up, as here, by a list of singing-birds. Compare also the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1367:—

‘There was eek wexing many a spyce,

As clow-gelofre and licoryce,

Gingere, and greyn de paradys,

Canelle, and setewale of prys,’ &c.

Observe the mention of notemigges in the same, l. 1361.

Line 21 of the Milleres Tale (A. 3207) runs similarly:—

‘Of licorys or any setewale.’

Maundeville speaks of the clowe-gilofre and notemuge in his 26th chapter; see Specimens of E. Eng. ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 171. Cetewale is generally explained as the herb valerian, but is certainly zedoary; see the Glossary. Clowe-gilofre, a clove; notemuge, a nutmeg. Edition: current; Page: [189] ‘Spiced ale’ is amongst the presents sent by Absolon to Alisoun in the Milleres Tale (A. 3378). Cf. the list of spices in King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, 6790–9.

1955. leye in cofre, to lay in a box.

1956. Compare Amis and Amiloun, ed. Weber, ii. 391:—

‘She herd the foules grete and smale,

The swete note of the nightingale,

Ful mirily sing on tre.’

See also Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 613–728. But Chaucer’s burlesque is far surpassed by a curious passage in the singular poem of The Land of Cockaygne (MS. Harl. 913), ll. 71–100:—

‘In þe praer [meadow] is a tre

Swiþe likful for to se.

Þe rote is gingeuir and galingale,

Þe siouns beþ al sed[e]wale;

Trie maces beþ þe flure;

Þe rind, canel of swet odur;

Þe frute, gilofre of gode smakke, &c.

Þer beþ briddes mani and fale,

Þrostil, þruisse, and niȝtingale,

Chalandre and wod[e]wale,

And oþer briddes wiþout tale [number],

Þat stinteþ neuer by har miȝt

Miri to sing[e] dai and niȝt,’ &c.

1964. as he were wood, as if he were mad, ‘like mad.’ So in Amis and Amiloun (ed. Weber), ii. 419:—

‘He priked his stede night and day

As a gentil knight, stout and gay.’

Cf. note to l. 1949.

1974. seinte, being feminine, and in the vocative case, is certainly a dissyllable here—‘O seintè Márie, ben’cite.’ Cf. note to B. 1170 above.

1977. Me dremed, I dreamt. Both dremen (to dream) and meten (also to dream) are sometimes used with a dative case and reflexively in Old English. In the Nonne Prestes Tale we have me mette (l. 74) and this man mette (l. 182); B. 4084, 4192.

1978. An elf-queen. Mr. Price says—‘There can be little doubt that at one period the popular creed made the same distinctions between the Queen of Faerie and the Elf-queen that were observed in Grecian mythology-between their undoubted parallels, Artemis and Persephone.’ Chaucer makes Proserpine the ‘queen of faerie’ in his Marchauntes Tale; but at the beginning of the Wyf of Bathes Tale, he describes the elf-queen as the queen of the fairies, and makes elf and fairy synonymous. Perhaps this elf-queen in Sire Thopas (called the queen of fairye in l. 2004) may have given Spenser the hint for his Faerie Edition: current; Page: [190] Queene. But the subject is a vast one. See Price’s Preface, in Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, pp. 30–36; Halliwell’s Illustrations of Fairy Mythology; Keightley’s Fairy Mythology; Warton’s Observations on the Faerie Queene, sect. ii; Sir W. Scott’s ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, &c.

1979. under my gore, within my robe or garment. In l. 2107 (on which see the note) we have under wede signifying merely ‘in his dress.’ We have a somewhat similar phrase here, in which, however, gore (lit. gusset) is put for the whole robe or garment. That it was a mere phrase, appears from other passages. Thus we find under gore, under the dress, Owl and Nightingale, l. 515; Reliquiae Antiquae, vol. i. p. 244, vol. ii. p. 210; with three more examples in the Gloss. to Böddeker’s Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253. In one of these a lover addresses his lady as ‘geynest under gore,’ i. e. fairest within a dress. For the exact sense of gore, see note to A. 3237.

1983. In toune, in the town, in the district. But it must not be supposed that much sense is intended by this inserted line. It is a mere tag, in imitation of some of the romances. Either Chaucer has neglected to conform to the new kind of stanza which he now introduces (which is most likely), or else three lines have been lost before this one. The next three stanzas are longer, viz. of ten lines each, of which only the seventh is very short. For good examples of these short lines, see Sir Gawayne and the Greene Knyȝt, ed. Morris; and for a more exact account of the metres here employed, see vol. iii. p. 425.

1993. So wilde. Instead of this short line, Tyrwhitt has:—

‘Wherin he soughte North and South,

And oft he spied with his mouth

In many a forest wilde.’

But none of our seven MSS. agrees with this version, nor are these lines found in the black-letter editions. The notion of spying with one’s mouth seems a little too far-fetched.

1995. This line is supplied from MS. Reg. 17 D. 15, where Tyrwhitt found it; but something is so obviously required here, that we must insert it to make some sense. It suits the tone of the context to say that ‘neither wife nor child durst oppose him.’ We may, however, bear in mind that the meeting of a knight-errant with one of these often preceded some great adventure. ‘And in the midst of an highway he [Sir Lancelot] met a damsel riding on a white palfrey, and there either saluted other. Fair damsel, said Sir Lancelot, know ye in this country any adventures? Sir knight, said that damsel, here are adventures near hand, and thou durst prove them’; Sir T. Malory, Morte Arthur, bk. vi. cap. vii. The result was that Lancelot fought with Sir Turquine, and defeated him. Soon after, he was ‘required of a damsel to heal her brother’; and again, ‘at the request of a lady’ he recovered a falcon; an adventure which ended in a fight, as usual. Kölbing points out a parallel line in Sir Guy of Warwick, 45–6:—

Edition: current; Page: [191]

‘In all Englond ne was ther none

That durste in wrath ayenst hym goon’;

Caius MS., ed. Zupitza, p. 5.

1998. Olifaunt, i. e. Elephant; a proper name, as Tyrwhitt observes, for a giant. Maundeville has the form olyfauntes for elephants. By some confusion the Mœso-Goth. ulbandus and A.S. olf[Editor: illegible character]nd are made to signify a camel. Spenser has put Chaucer’s Olifaunt into his Faerie Queene, bk. iii. c. 7. st. 48, and makes him the brother of the giantess Argantè, and son of Typhoeus and Earth. The following description of a giant is from Libius Disconius (Percy Folio MS. vol. ii. p. 465):—

‘He beareth haires on his brow

Like the bristles of a sow,

His head is great and stout;

Eche arme is the lenght of an ell,

His fists beene great and fell,

Dints for to driue about.’

Sir Libius says:—

‘If God will me grace send,

Or this day come to an end

I hope him for to spill,’ &c.

Another giant, 20 feet long, and 2 ells broad, with two boar’s tusks, and also with brows like bristles of a swine, appears in Octouian Imperator, ed. Weber, iii. 196. See also the alliterative Morte Arthure, ed. Brock, p. 33.

2000. child; see note to l. 2020. Termagaunt; one of the idols whom the Saracens (in the medieval romances) are supposed to worship. See The King of Tars, ed. Ritson (Met. Rom., ii. 174–182), where the Sultan’s gods are said to be Jubiter, Jovin (both forms of Jupiter), Astrot (Astarte), Mahoun (Mahomet), Appolin (Apollo), Plotoun (Pluto), and Tirmagaunt. Lybeaus Disconus (Ritson, Met. Rom. ii. 55) fought with a giant ‘that levede yn Termagaunt.’ The Old French form is Tervagant, Ital. Tervagante or Trivigante, as in Ariosto. Wheeler, in his Noted Names of Fiction, gives the following account—‘Ugo Foscolo says: “Trivigante, whom the predecessors of Ariosto always couple with Apollino, is really Diana Trivia, the sister of the classical Apollo.” . . . . According to Panizzi, Trivagante or Tervagante is the Moon, or Diana, or Hecate, wandering under three names. Termagant was an imaginary being, supposed by the crusaders, who confounded Mahometans with pagans, to be a Mahometan deity. This imaginary personage was introduced into early English plays and moralities, and was represented as of a most violent character, so that a ranting actor might always appear to advantage in it. See Hamlet, iii. 2. 15.’ Fairfax, in his translation of Tasso (c. i. st. 84), speaks of Termagaunt and Mahound, but Tasso mentions ‘Macometto’ only. See also Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7. 47. Hence comes our termagant in the sense of a noisy boisterous woman. Shakespeare has—‘that hot Edition: current; Page: [192] termagant Scot’; 1 Hen. IV., v. 2. 114. Cf. Ritson’s note, Met. Rom. iii. 257.

2002. slee, will slay. In Anglo-Saxon, there being no distinct future tense, it is expressed by the present. Cf. go for will go in ‘we also go with thee’; John xxi. 3.

2005. simphonye, the name of a kind of tabor. In Ritson’s Ancient Songs, i. lxiv., is a quotation from Hawkins’s Hist. of Music, ii. 284, in which that author cites a passage from Batman’s translation of Bartholomaeus de Proprietatibus Rerum, to the effect that the symphonie was ‘an instrument of musyke . . . made of an holowe tree [i.e. piece of wood], closyd in lether in eyther syde; and mynstrels beteth it with styckes.’ Probably the symphangle was the same instrument. In Rob. of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, ll. 4772–3, we find:—

‘Yn harpe, yn thabour, and symphangle,

Wurschepe God, yn trumpes and sautre.’

Godefroy gives the O.F. spellings cifonie, siphonie, chifonie, cinfonie, cymphonie, &c.; all clearly derived from the Greek συμϕωνία; see Luke, xv. 25. Cf. Squyre of Lowe Degre, 1070–7.

2007. al-so mote I thee, as I may thrive; or, as I hope to thrive; a common expression. Cf. ‘So mote y thee’; Sir Eglamour, ed. Halliwell, l. 430; Occleve, De Regimine Principum, st. 620. Chaucer also uses ‘so thee ik,’ i. e. so thrive I, in the Reves Prologue (A. 3864) and elsewhere.

2012. Abyen it ful soure, very bitterly shalt thou pay for it. There is a confusion between A. S. súr, sour, and A. S. sár, sore, in this and similar phrases; both were used once, but now we should use sorely, not sourly. In Layamon, l. 8158, we find ‘þou salt it sore abugge,’ thou shalt sorely pay for it; on the other hand, we find in P. Plowman, B. ii. 140:—

‘It shal bisitte ȝowre soules · ful soure atte laste.’

So also in the C-text, though the A-text has sore. Note that in another passage, P. Plowman, B. xviii. 401, the phrase is—‘Thow shalt abye it bittre.’ For abyen, see the Glossary.

2015. fully pryme. See note to Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4045. Prime commonly means the period from 6 to 9 a.m. Fully prime refers to the end of that period, or 9 a.m.; and even prime alone may be used with the same explicit meaning, as in the Nonne Pres. Ta., B. 4387.

2019. staf-slinge. Tyrwhitt observes that Lydgate describes David as armed only ‘with a staffe-slynge, voyde of plate and mayle.’ It certainly means a kind of sling in which additional power was gained by fastening the lithe part of it on to the end of a stiff stick. Staff-slyngeres are mentioned in the romance of Richard Coer de Lion, l. 4454, in Weber’s Metrical Romances, ii. 177. In Col. Yule’s edition of Marco Polo, ii. 122, is a detailed description of the artillery engines of the middle ages. They can all be reduced to two classes; those Edition: current; Page: [193] which, like the trebuchet and mangonel, are enlarged staff-slings, and those which, like the arblast and springold, are great cross-bows. Conversely, we might describe a staff-sling as a hand-trebuchet.

2020. child Thopas. Child is an appellation given to both knights and squires, in the early romances, at an age when they had long passed the period which we now call childhood. A good example is to be found in the Erle of Tolous, ed. Ritson, iii. 123:—

‘He was a feyre chylde, and a bolde,

Twenty wyntur he was oolde,

In londe was none so free.’

Compare Romance of ‘Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild,’ pr. in Ritson, iii. 282; the ballad of Childe Waters, &c. Byron, in his preface to Childe Harold, says—‘It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation “Childe,” as “Childe Waters,” “Childe Childers,” &c., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted.’ He adopts, however, the late and artificial metre of Spenser.

2023. A palpable imitation. The first three lines of Sir Bevis of Hampton (MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ff. ii. 38, leaf 94, back) are—

‘Lordynges, lystenyth, grete and smale,

Meryar then the nyghtyngale

I wylle yow synge.

In a long passage in Todd’s Illustrations to Chaucer, pp. 284–292, it is contended that mery signifies sweet, pleasant, agreeable, without relation to mirth. Chaucer describes the Frere as wanton and merry, Prol. A. 208; he speaks of the merry day, Kn. Ta. 641 (A. 1499); a merry city, N. P. Ta. 251 (B. 4261); of Arcite being told by Mercury to be merry, i.e. of good cheer, Kn. Ta. 528 (A. 1386); in the Manciple’s Tale (H. 138), the crow sings merrily, and makes a sweet noise; Chanticleer’s voice was merrier than the merry organ, N. P. Ta. 31 (B. 4041); the ‘erbe yve’ is said to be merry, i. e. pleasant, agreeable, id. 146 (B. 4156); the Pardoner (Prol. A. 714) sings merrily and loud. We must remember, however, that the Host, being ‘a mery man,’ began to speak of ‘mirthe’; Prol. A. 757, 759. A very early example of the use of the word occurs in the song attributed to Canute—‘Merie sungen the Muneches binnen Ely,’ &c. See the phrase ‘mery men’ in l. 2029.

2028. The phrase to come to toune seems to mean no more than simply to return. Cf. Specimens of E. Eng., ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 48—

‘Lenten ys come wiþ loue to toune’—

which merely means that spring, with its thoughts of love, has returned. See the note on that line.

2034. for paramour, for love; but the par, or else the for, is redundant. Iolite, amusement; used ironically in the Kn. Ta. 949 (A. 1807). Sir Thopas is going to fight the giant for the love and amusement of Edition: current; Page: [194] one who shone full bright; i.e. a fair lady, of course. But Sir Thopas, in dropping this mysterious hint to his merry men, refrains from saying much about it, as he had not yet seen the Fairy Queen, and had only the giant’s word for her place of abode. The use of the past tense shone is artful; it implies that he wished them to think that he had seen his lady-love; or else that her beauty was to be taken for granted. Observe, too, that it is Sir Thopas, not Chaucer, who assigns to the giant his three heads.

2035. Do come, cause to come; go and call hither. Cf. House of Fame, l. 1197:—

‘Of alle maner of minstrales,

And gestiours, that tellen tales

Bothe of weping and of game.’

Tyrwhitt’s note on gestours is—‘The proper business of a gestour was to recite tales, or gestes; which was only one of the branches of the Minstrel’s profession. Minstrels and gestours are mentioned together in the following lines from William of Nassyngton’s Translation of a religious treatise by John of Waldby; MS. Reg. 17 C. viii. p. 2:—

I warne you furst at the beginninge,

That I will make no vain carpinge

Of dedes of armys ne of amours,

As dus mynstrelles and jestours,

That makys carpinge in many a place

Of Octoviane and Isembrase,

And of many other jestes,

And namely, whan they come to festes;

Ne of the life of Bevys of Hampton,

That was a knight of gret renoun,

Ne of Sir Gye of Warwyke,

All if it might sum men lyke, &c.

I cite these lines to shew the species of tales related by the ancient Gestours, and how much they differed from what we now call jests.’

The word geste here means a tale of the adventures of some hero, like those in the Chansons de geste. Cf. note to l. 2123 below. Sometimes the plural gestes signifies passages of history. The famous collection called the Gesta Romanorum contains narratives of very various kinds.

2038. royales, royal; some MSS. spell the word reales, but the meaning is the same. In the romance of Ywain and Gawain (Ritson, vol. i.) a maiden is described as reading ‘a real romance.’ Tyrwhitt thinks that the term originated with an Italian collection of romances relating to Charlemagne, which began with the words—‘Qui se comenza la hystoria el Real di Franza,’ &c.; edit. Mutinae, 1491, folio. It was reprinted in 1537, with a title beginning—‘I reali di Franza,’ &c. He refers to Quadrio, t. vi. p. 530. The word roial (in some MSS. real) Edition: current; Page: [195] occurs again in l. 2043. Kölbing remarks that the prose romance of Generides is called a royal historie, though it has nothing to do with Charlemagne.

2043. No comma is required at the end of this line; the articles mentioned in ll. 2044–6 all belong to spicery. Cf. additional note to Troilus, vol. ii. p. 506.

2047. dide, did on, put on. The arming of Lybeaus Disconus is thus described in Ritson’s Met. Rom. ii. 10:—

‘They caste on hym a scherte of selk,

A gypell as whyte as melk,

In that semely sale;

And syght [for sith] an hawberk bryght,

That rychely was adyght

Wyth mayles thykke and smale.’

2048. lake, linen; see Glossary. ‘De panno de lake’; York Wills, iii. 4 (anno 1395).

2050. aketoun, a short sleeveless tunic. Cf. Liber Albus, p. 376.

‘And Florentyn, with hys ax so broun,

All thorgh he smoot

Arm and mayle, and akketoun,

Thorghout hyt bot [bit]’;

Octouian, ed. Weber, iii. 205.

‘For plate, ne for acketion,

For hauberk, ne for campeson’;

Richard Coer de Lion, ed. Weber, ii. 18.

The Glossary to the Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, has—‘Acton, a wadded or quilted tunic worn under the hauberk.—Planché, i. 108.’ Thynne, in his Animadversions (Early Eng. Text Soc.), p. 24, says—‘Haketon is a slevelesse jackett of plate for the warre, couered withe anye other stuffe; at this day also called a jackett of plate.’

It is certain that the plates were a later addition. It is the mod. F. hoqueton, O. F. auqueton; and it is certain that the derivation is from Arab. al-qoton or al-qutun, lit. ‘the cotton’; so that it was originally made of quilted cotton. See auqueton in Godefroy, hoqueton in Devic’s Supp. to Littré, and Acton in the New E. Dict.

2051. habergeoun, coat of mail. See Prol. A. 76, and the note.

2052. For percinge, as a protection against the piercing. So in P. Plowman, B. vi. 62, Piers puts on his cuffs, ‘for colde of his nailles,’ i.e. as a protection against the cold. So too in the Rom. of the Rose, l. 4229.

2053. The hauberk is here put on as an upper coat of mail, of finer workmanship and doubtless more flexible.

‘The hauberk was al reed of rust,

His platys thykke and swythe just’;

Octouian, ed. Weber, iii. 200.

Edition: current; Page: [196]

‘He was armed wonder weel,

And al with plates off good steel,

And ther aboven, an hawberk’;

Richard Coer de Lion, ed. Weber, ii. 222.

2054. Jewes werk, Jew’s work. Tyrwhitt imagined that Jew here means a magician, but there is not the least foundation for the idea. Mr. Jephson is equally at fault in connecting Jew with jewel, since the latter word is etymologically connected with joy. The phrase still remains unexplained. I suspect it means no more than wrought with rich or expensive work, such as Jews could best find the money for. It is notorious that they were the chief capitalists, and they must often have had to find money for paying armourers. Or, indeed, it may refer to damascened work; from the position of Damascus.

2055. plate. Probably the hauberk had a breastplate on the front of it. But on the subject of armour, I must refer the reader to Godwin’s English Archaeologist’s Handbook, pp. 252–268; Planché’s History of British Costume, and Sir S. R. Meyrick’s Observations on Body-armour, in the Archaeologia, vol. xix. pp. 120–145.

2056. The cote-armour was not for defence, but a mere surcoat on which the knight’s armorial bearings were usually depicted, in order to identify him in the combat or ‘debate.’ Hence the modern coat-of-arms.

2059. reed, red. In the Romances, gold is always called red, and silver white. Hence it was not unusual to liken gold to blood, and this explains why Shakespeare speaks of armour being gilt with blood (King John, ii. 1. 316), and makes Lady Macbeth talk of gilding the groom’s faces with blood (Macbeth, ii. 2. 56). See also Coriol. v. 1. 63, 64; and the expression ‘blood bitokeneth gold’; Cant. Tales, D. 581.

2060. Cf. Libeaus Desconus, ed. Kaluza, 1657–8:—

‘His scheld was asur fin,

Thre bores heddes ther-inne.’

And see the editor’s note, at p. 201.

2061. ‘A carbuncle (Fr. escarboucle) was a common [armorial] bearing. See Guillim’s Heraldry, p. 109.’—Tyrwhitt.

2062. Sir Thopas is made to swear by ale and bread, in ridiculous imitation of the vows made by the swan, the heron, the pheasant, or the peacock, on solemn occasions.

2065. Iambeux, armour worn in front of the shins, above the mailarmour that covered the legs; see Fairholt. He tells us that, in Roach Smith’s Catalogue of London Antiquities, p. 132, is figured a pair of cuirbouilly jambeux, which are fastened by thongs. Spenser borrows the word, but spells it giambeux, F. Q. ii. 6. 29.

quirboilly, i. e. cuir bouilli, leather soaked in hot water to soften it that it might take any required shape, after which it was dried and became exceedingly stiff and hard. In Matthew Paris (anno 1243) it is Edition: current; Page: [197] said of the Tartars—‘De coriis bullitis sibi arma leuia quidem, sed tamen impenetrabilia coaptarunt.’ In Marco Polo, ed Yule, ii. 49, it is said of the men of Carajan, that they wear armour of boiled leather (French text, armes cuiracés de cuir bouilli). Froissart (v. iv. cap. 19) says the Saracens covered their targes with ‘cuir bouilli de Cappadoce, ou nul fer ne peut prendre n’attacher, si le cuir n’est trop échaufé.’ When Bruce reviewed his troops on the morning of the battle of Bannockburn, he wore, according to Barbour, ‘ane hat of qwyrbolle’ on his ‘basnet,’ and ‘ane hye croune’ above that. Some remarks on cuir bouilli will be found in Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 344.

2068. rewel-boon, probably whale-ivory, or ivory made of whales’ teeth. In the Turnament of Tottenham, as printed in Percy’s reliques, we read that Tyb had ‘a garland on her hed ful of rounde bonys,’ where another copy has (says Halliwell, s. v. ruel) the reading—‘fulle of ruelle-bones.’ Halliwell adds—‘In the romaunce of Rembrun, p. 458, the coping of a wall is mentioned as made ‘of fin ruwal, that schon swithe brighte.’ And in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ff. v. 48, fol. 119, is the passage—

‘Hir sadille was of reuylle-bone,

Semely was þat sight to se,

Stifly sette with precious stone,

Compaste about with crapote [toad-stone].’

In Sir Degrevant, 1429, a roof is said to be—

‘buskyd above

With besauntus ful bryghth,

All of ruel-bon,’ &c.

Quite near the beginning of the Vie de Seint Auban, ed. Atkinson, we have—

‘mes ne ert d’or adubbec, ne d’autre metal,

de peres preciuses, de ivoire ne roal’;

i.e. but it was not adorned with gold nor other metal, nor with precious stones, nor ivory, nor rewel. Du Cange gives a Low Lat. form rohanlum, and an O. Fr. rochal, but tells us that the MS. readings are rohallum and rohal. The passage occurs in the Laws of Normandy about wreckage, and should run—‘dux sibi retinet . . . ebur, rohallum, lapides pretiosas’; or, in the French version, ‘I’ivoire, et le rohal, et les pierres precieuses.’ Ducange explains the word by ‘rock-crystal,’ but this is a pure guess, suggested by F. roche, a rock. It is clear that, when the word is spelt rochal, the ch denotes the same sound as the Ger. ch, a guttural resembling h, and not the F. ch at all. Collecting all the spellings, we find them to be, in French, rohal, rochal, roal; and, in English, ruwal, rewel, ruel, (reuylle, ruelle). The h and w might arise from a Teutonic hw, so that the latter part of the word was originally -hwal, i.e. whale; hence, perhaps, Godefroy explains F. rochal as ‘ivoire de morse,’ ivory of the walrus (A. S. hors-hwæl). The Edition: current; Page: [198] true origin seems rather to be some Norse form akin to Norweg. röyrkval (E. rorqual). Some whales, as the cachalot, have teeth that afford a kind of ivory; and this is what seems to be alluded to. The expression ‘white as whale-bone,’ i.e. white as whale-ivory, was once common; see Weber’s Met. Romances, iii. 350; and whales-bone in Nares. Most of this ivory was derived, however, from the tusk of the walrus or the narwhal. Sir Thopas’s saddle was ornamented with ivory.

2071. cipress, cypress-wood. In the Assembly of Foules, l. 179, we have—

‘The sailing firr, the cipres, deth to pleyne’—

i. e. the cypress suitable for lamenting a death. Vergil calls the cypress ‘atra,’ Æn. iii. 64, and ‘feralis,’ vi. 216; and as it is so frequently a symbol of mourning, it may be said to bode war.

2078. In Sir Degrevant (ed. Halliwell, p. 191) we have just this expression—

‘Here endyth the furst fit.

Howe say ye? will ye any more of hit?’

2085. love-drury, courtship. All the six MSS. have this reading. According to Wright, the Harl. MS. has ‘Of ladys loue and drewery,’ which Tyrwhitt adopts; but it turns out that Wright’s reading is copied from Tyrwhitt; the MS. really has—‘And of ladys loue drewery,’ like the rest.

2088. The romance or lay of Horn appears in two forms in English. In King Horn, ed. Lumby, Early Eng. Text Soc., 1866, printed also in Mätzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben, i. 207, the form of the poem is in short rimed couplets. But Chaucer no doubt refers to the other form with the title Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild, in a metre similar to Sir Thopas, printed in Ritson’s Metrical Romances, iii. 282. The Norman-French text was printed by F. Michel for the Bannatyne Club, with the English versions, in a volume entitled—Horn et Riemenhild; Recueil de ce qui reste des poëmes relatifs à leurs aventures, &c. Paris, 1845. See Mr. Lumby’s preface and the remarks in Mätzner.

It is not quite clear why Chaucer should mention the romance of Sir Ypotis here, as it has little in common with the rest. There are four MS. copies of it in the British Museum, and three at Oxford. ‘It professes to be a tale of holy writ, and the work of St. John the Evangelist. The scene is Rome. A child, named Ypotis, appears before the Emperor Adrian, saying that he is come to teach men God’s law; whereupon the Emperor proceeds to interrogate him as to what is God’s Law, and then of many other matters, not in any captious spirit, but with the utmost reverence and faith. . . . There is a little tract in prose on the same legend from the press of Wynkyn de Worde’; J. W. Hales, in Hazlitt’s edition of Warton’s Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ii. 183. It was printed in 1881, from the Vernon MS. at Oxford, in Horstmann’s Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, pp. 341–8. It is hard to believe that, by Ypotys, Chaucer meant (as some say) Ypomadoun.

Edition: current; Page: [199]

The romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton (i.e. Southampton) was printed from the Auchinleck MS. for the Maitland Club in 1838, 4to. Another copy is in MS. Ff. 2. 38, in the Cambridge University Library. It has lately been edited, from six MS. copies and an old printed text, by Prof. Kölbing, for the Early Eng. Text Society. There is an allusion in it to the Romans, meaning the French original. It appears in prose also, in various forms. See Warton’s Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 142, where there is also an account of Sir Guy, in several forms; but a still fuller account of Sir Guy is given in the Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, ii. 509. This Folio MS. itself contains three poems on the latter subject, viz. Guy and Amarant, Guy and Colbrande, and Guy and Phillis. ‘Sir Guy of Warwick’ has been edited for the Early Eng. Text Society by Prof. Zupitza.

By Libeux is meant Lybeaus Disconus, printed by Ritson in his Metrical Romances, vol. ii. from the Cotton MS. Caligula A. 2. A later copy, with the title Libius Disconius, is in the Percy Folio MS. ii. 404, where a good account of the romance may be found. The best edition is that by Dr. Max Kulaza, entitled Libeaus Desconus; Leipzig, 1890. The French original was discovered in 1855, in a MS. belonging to the Duc d’Aumale. Its title is Li Biaus Desconneus, which signifies The Fair Unknown.

Pleyndamour evidently means plein d’amour, full of love, and we may suspect that the original romance was in French; but there is now no trace of any romance of that name, though a Sir Playne de Amours is mentioned in Sir T. Malory’s Morte Darthur, bk. ix. c. 7. Spenser probably borrowed hence his Sir Blandamour, F. Q. iv. 1. 32.

2092. After examining carefully the rimes in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Mr. Bradshaw finds that this is the sole instance in which a word which ought etymologically to end in -ye is rimed with a word ending in -y without a following final e. A reason for the exception is easily found; for Chaucer has here adopted the swing of the ballad metre, and hence ventures to deprive chiualryë of its final e, and to call it chivalry’ so that it may rime with Gy, after the manner of the ballad-writers; cf. Squyre of Lowe Degre, 79, 80. So again chivalryë, druryë become chivalry, drury; ll. 2084, 2085. We even find plas for plac-e, 1971; and gras for grac-e, 2021.

2094. glood, glided. So in all the MSS. except E., which has the poor reading rood, rode. For the expression in l. 2095, compare—

‘But whenne he was horsede on a stede,

He sprange als any sparke one [read of] glede’;

Sir Isumbras, ed. Halliwell, p. 107.

‘Lybeaus was redy boun,

And lepte out of the arsoun [bow of the saddle]

As sperk thogh out of glede’;

Lybeaus Disconus, in Ritson, ii. 27.

Edition: current; Page: [200]

‘Then sir Lybius with ffierce hart,

Out of his saddle swythe he start

As sparcle doth out of fyer’;

Percy Folio MS. ii. 440.

2106. The first few lines of the romance of Sir Perceval of Galles (ed. Halliwell, p. 1) will at once explain Chaucer’s allusion. It begins—

‘Lef, lythes to me

Two wordes or thre

Of one that was faire and fre

And felle in his fighte;

His right name was Percyvelle,

He was fostered in the felle,

He dranke water of the welle,

And ȝitt was he wyghte!’

Both Sir Thopas and Sir Perceval were water-drinkers, but it did not impair their vigour.

In the same romance, p. 84, we find—

‘Of mete ne drynke he ne roghte,

So fulle he was of care!

Tille the nynte daye byfelle

That he come to a welle,

Ther he was wonte for to duelle

And drynk take hym thare.’

These quotations set aside Mr. Jephson’s interpretation, and solve Tyrwhitt’s difficulty. Tyrwhitt says that ‘The Romance of Perceval le Galois, or de Galis, was composed in octosyllable French verse by Chrestien de Troyes, one of the oldest and best French romancers, before the year 1191; Fauchet, l. ii. c. x. It consisted of above 60,000 verses (Bibl. des Rom. t. ii. p. 250) so that it would be some trouble to find the fact which is, probably, here alluded to. The romance, under the same title, in French prose, printed at Paris, 1530, fol., can be an abridgement, I suppose, of the original poem.’

2107. worthy under wede, well-looking in his armour. The phrase is very common. Tyrwhitt says it occurs repeatedly in the romance of Emare, and refers to folios 70, 71 b, 73 a, and 74 b of the MS.; but the reader may now find the romance in print; see Ritson’s Metrical Romances, ii. pp. 214, 229, 235, 245. The phrase is used of ladies also, and must then mean of handsome appearance when well-dressed. See Amis and Amiloun, ed. Weber, ii. pp. 370, 375. Cf. l. 1979.

2108. The story is here broken off by the host’s interruption. MSS. Pt. and Hl. omit this line, and MSS. Cp. and Ln. omit ll. 2105–7 as well.

Edition: current; Page: [201]

Prologue to Melibeus.

2111. of, by. lewednesse, ignorance; here, foolish talk.

2112. also, &c.; as verily as (I hope) God will render my soul happy. See Kn. Ta. A. 1863, 2234.

2113. drasty, filthy. Tyrwhitt and Bell print drafty, explained by full of draff or refuse. But there is no such word; the adjective (were there one) would take the form draffy. See drestys, i.e. dregs, lees of wine, in the Prompt. Parv., and Way’s note, which gives the spelling drastus (a plural form) as occurring in MS. Harl. 1002. The Lat. feces is glossed by drastys in Wright’s Vocab., ed. Wülcker, p. 625, l. 16. And the Lat. feculentus is glossed by the A. S. dræstig in the same, col. 238, l. 20.

2123. in geste, in the form of a regular story of adventure of some well-known hero; cf. House of Fame, 1434, 1515. The gestes generally pretended to have some sort of historical foundation; from Low Lat. gesta, doings. Sir Thopas was in this form, but the Host would not admit it, and wanted to hear about some one who was more renowned. ‘Tell us,’ he says, ‘a tale like those in the chansons de geste, or at least something in prose that is either pleasant or profitable.’

2131. ‘Although it is sometimes told in different ways by different people.’

2137. ‘And all agree in their general meaning.’ sentence, sense; see ll. 2142, 2151.

2148. Read it—Tenforcë with, &c.

The Tale of Melibeus.

For the sources of the Tale of Melibeus, see vol. iii. p. 426. It may suffice to say here that Chaucer’s Tale is translated from the French version entitled Le Livre de Mellibee et Prudence, ascribed by M. Paul Meyer to Jean de Meung. Of this text there are two MS. copies in the British Museum, viz. MS. Reg. 19 C. vii. and MS. Reg. 19 C. xi, both of the fifteenth century; the former is said by Mr. T. Wright to be the more correct. It is also printed, as forming part of Le Menagier de Paris, the author of which embodied it in his book, written about 1393; the title of the printed book being—‘Le Menagier de Paris; publié pour la première fois par la Société des Bibliophiles François; a Paris m.d. ccc. xlvi’; (tome i. p. 186); ed. J. Pichon. In the following notes, this is alluded to as the French text.

This French version was, in its turn, translated from the Liber Consolationis et Consilii of Albertano of Brescia, excellently edited for the Chaucer Society in 1873 by Thor Sundby, with the title ‘Albertani Brixiensis Liber Consolationis et Consilii.’ This is alluded to, in the following notes, as the Latin text. Thor Sundby’s edition is most helpful, as the editor has taken great pains to trace the sources of the Edition: current; Page: [202] very numerous quotations with which the Tale abounds; and I am thus enabled to give the references in most cases. I warn the reader that Albertano’s quotations are frequently inexact.

Besides this, the Tale of Melibeus has been admirably edited, as a specimen of English prose, in Mätzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben, ii. 375, with numerous notes, of which I here make considerable use. Owing to the great care taken by Sundby and Mätzner, the task of explaining the difficulties in this Tale has been made easy. The more important notes from Mätzner are marked ‘Mr.’

The first line or clause (numbered 2157) ends with the word ‘Sophie,’ as shewn by the slanting stroke. The whole Tale is thus divided into clauses, for the purpose of ready reference, precisely as in the Six-text edition; I refer to these clauses as if they were lines. The ‘paragraphs’ are the same as in Tyrwhitt’s edition.

2157. Melibeus. The meaning of the name is given below (note to l. 2600).

Prudence. ‘It is from a passage of Cassiodorus, quoted by Albertano in cap. vi., that he [Albertano] has taken the name of his heroine, if we may call her so, and the general idea of her character:—“Superauit cuncta infatigabilis et expedita prudentia”; Cass. Variarum lib. ii. epist. 15.’—Sundby.

Sophie, i. e. wisdom, σοϕία. Neither the Latin nor the French text gives the daughter’s name.

2159. Inwith, within; a common form in Chaucer; see note to B. 1794. Y-shette, pl. of y-shet, shut; as in B. 560.

2160. Thre; Lat. text, tres; Fr. text, trois. Tyrwhitt has foure, as in MSS. Cp. Ln.; yet in l. 2562, he prints ‘thin enemies ben three,’ and in l. 2615, he again prints ‘thy three enemies.’ Again, in l. 2612, it is explained that these three enemies signify, allegorically, the flesh, the world, and the devil.

2164. As ferforth, as far; as in B. 19, 1099, &c. Mätzner also quotes from Troilus, ii. 1106—‘How ferforth be ye put in loves daunce.’

2165. Mätzner would read—‘ever the lenger the more’; but see E. 687, F. 404.

2166. Ovide, Ovid. The passage referred to is—

‘Quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere nati

Flere uetet? non hoc illa monenda loco.

Cum dederit lacrimas, animumque expleuerit aegrum,

Ille dolor uerbis emoderandus erit.’

Remedia Amoris, 127–130.

2172. Warisshe, recover; Cp. Ln. Hl. be warisshed, be cured. Chaucer uses this verb elsewhere both transitively and intransitively, so that either reading will serve. For the transitive use, see below, ll. 2207, 2466, 2476, 2480; also F. 856, 1138, 1162; Book of Duch. 1104. For the intransitive use, observe that, in F. 856, Cp. Pt. Ln. have—‘then wolde myn herte Al waryssche of this bitter peynes Edition: current; Page: [203] smerte’; and cf. Morte Arthure, 2186—‘I am wathely woundide, waresche mon I neuer!’—M.

Lat. text—‘Filia tua, dante Domino, bene liberabitur.’

2174. Senek, Seneca. ‘Non affligitur sapiens liberorum amissione, non amicorum; eodem animo enim fert illorum mortem quo suam expectat’; Epist. 74, § 29.

2177. Lazarus; see John, xi. 35.

2178. Attempree, moderate; Lat. text, ‘temperatus fletus.’ Hl. attemperel, which Mätzner illustrates. Cf. D. 2053, where Hl. has attemperelly; and E. 1679, where Hl. has attemperely. Cf. ll. 2570, 2728 below.

Nothing defended, not at all forbidden.

2179. See Rom. xii. 15.

2181. ‘According to the doctrine that Seneca teaches us.’ Cf. ‘Non sicci sint oculi, amisso amico, nec fluant; lacrimandum est, non plorandum’; Epist. 63, § 1.

2183. This is also, practically, from Seneca: ‘Quem amabis extulisti, quaere quem ames; satius est amicum reparare, quam flere’; Epist. 63, § 9.

2185. Iesus Syrak, Jesus the son of Sirach. ‘Ecclesiasticus is the title given in the Latin version to the book which is called in the Septuagint The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach’; Smith, Dict. of the Bible. Compare the title ‘A prayer of Jesus the son of Sirach’ to Ecclus. ch. li. But the present quotation is really from Prov. xvii. 22. It is the next quotation, in l. 2186, that is from Ecclus. xxx. 25 (Vulgate), i. e. xxx. 23 in the English version. The mistake is due to misreading the original Lat. text, which quotes the passages in the reverse order, as being from ‘Jesus Sirac’ and ‘alibi.’

2187. From Prov. xxv. 20; but the clause is omitted in the modern Eng. version, though Wycliffe has it. The Vulgate has:—‘Sicut tinea uestimento, et uermis ligno: ita tristitia uiri nocet cordi.’ The words in the shepes flees (in the sheep’s fleece) are added by Chaucer, apparently by way of explanation. But the fact is that, according to Mätzner, the Fr. version here has ‘la tigne, ou lartuison, nuit a la robe,’ where artuison is the Mod. F. artison, explained by Cotgrave as ‘a kind of moth’; and I strongly suspect that ‘in the shepes flees’ is due to this ‘ou lartuison,’ which Chaucer may have misread as en la toison. It looks very like it. I point other similar mistakes further on.

Anoyeth, harms; F. nuit, L. nocet. The use of to here is well illustrated by Mätzner, who compares Wycliffe’s version of this very passage; ‘As a moghe to the cloth, and a werm to the tree, so sorewe of a man noyeth to the herte’; whereas Purvey’s later version thrice omits the to. In the Persones Tale, Group I. 847, anoyeth occurs both with to and without it.

2188. Us oghte, it would become us; oghte is in the subjunctive mood. Cf. hem oughte, it became them, in l. 2458; thee oughte, it became thee, in l. 2603.—Mr. The pres. indic. form is us oweth.

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Goodes temporels; F. text, biens temporels. Chaucer uses the F. pl. in -es or -s for the adjective in other places, and the adj. then usually follows the sb. Cf. lettres capitals, capital letters, Astrolabe, i. 16. 8; weyes espirituels, spiritual ways, Pers. Tale, I. 79; goodes espirituels, id. 312; goodes temporeles, id. 685; thinges espirituels, id. 784.—Mr.

2190. See Job, i. 21. Hath wold, hath willed (it); see 2615.

2193. Quotations from Solomon and from Ecclesiasticus are frequently confused, both throughout this Tale, and elsewhere. The reference is to Ecclus. xxxii. 24, in the Vulgate (cf. A. V. xxxii. 19); here Wycliffe has:—‘Sone, withoute counseil no-thing do thou; and after thi deede thou shalt not othynke’ (i. e. of-thinke, repent).

Thou shalt never repente; here Hl. has—‘the thar neuer rewe,’ i. e. it needeth never for thee to rue it.

2202. With-holde, retained. Cf. A. 511; Havelok, 2362.—Mr.

2204. Parties, &c.; Fr. text: supporter partie.—Mr.

2205. Hool and sound; a common phrase. Cf. Rob. of Glouc. pp. 163, 402, ed. Hearne (ll. 3417, 8301, ed. Wright); King Horn, l. 1365 (in Morris’s Specimens of English); also l. 2300 below.—Mr.

2207. ‘Heal, put a stop to, war by taking vengeance; a literal and very happy translation from the French—aussi doit on guerir guerre par vengence.’—Bell. Tyrwhitt omits the words by vengeaunce, and Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 320) defends him, arguing that ‘the physicians are represented as agreeing with the surgeons’; whereas Chaucer expressly says that ‘they seyden a fewe wordes more.’ The words ‘by vengeaunce’ are in all the seven MSS. and in the French original. Admittedly, they make nonsense, but the nonsense is expressly laid bare and exposed afterwards, when it appears that the physicians did not really add this clause, but Melibeus dreamt that they did (2465–2480). The fact is, however, that the words par vengence were wrongly interpolated in the French text. Chaucer should have omitted them, but the evidence shews that he did not. I decline to falsify the text in order to set the author right. We should then have to set the French text right also!

2209. ‘Made this matter much worse, and aggravated it.’

2210. Outrely, utterly, entirely, i. e. without reserve; Fr. text tout oultre. Not from A. S. ūtor, outer, utter, but from F. oultre, outre, moreover; of which one sense, in Godefroy, is ‘excessivement.’ See E. 335, 639, 768, 953; C. 849; &c.

2216. Fr. text—‘en telle maniere que tu soies bien pourveu d’espies et guettes.’—Mr.

2218. To moeve; Fr. text, de mouvoir guerre; cf. the Lat. phrase mouere bellum.—Mr.

2220. The Lat. text has here three phrases for Chaucer’s ‘common proverb.’ It has: ‘non enim subito uel celeriter est iudicandum, “omnia enim subita probantur incauta,” et “in iudicando criminosa est celeritas,” et “ad poenitendum properat qui cito iudicat.” ’ Of these, the first is from Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. c. 17; and the second and Edition: current; Page: [205] third from Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, 254 and 32 (ed. Friedrich, Berolini, 1880). For iudicando, as in some MSS., Friedrich has the variant vindicando. Cf. the Proverbs of Hending, l. 256: ‘Ofte rap reweth,’ haste often rues. See note to 2244.

2221. Men seyn; this does not necessarily mean that Chaucer is referring to a proverb. He is merely translating. The Lat. text has; ‘quare dici consueuit, Optimum iudicem existimem, qui cito intelligit et tarde iudicat.’ It also quotes two sentences (nos. 311 and 128) from Publilius Syrus: ‘Mora omnis odio est, sed facit sapientiam’; and—‘Deliberare utilia mora est tutissima.’ Mätzner points out that there are two other sentences (nos. 659 and 32) in Publilius, which come very near the expression in the text, viz. ‘Velox consilium sequitur poenitentia’; and—‘Ad poenitendum properat, qui cito iudicat.’

2223. See John, viii. 3-8. For he wroot, Hl. has ‘hem wrot,’ which is obviously wrong.

2227. Made contenaunce, made a sign, made a gesture. Among the senses of F. contenance, Cotgrave gives: ‘gesture, posture, behaviour, carriage.’

2228. Fr. text—‘qui ne scevent que querre se monte.’—Mr.

2229. ‘The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water’; Prov. xvii. 14.

2231. ‘The chylde may rue that is vnborn’; Chevy Chase, l. 9.

2235. ‘A tale out of season is as music in mourning’; Ecclus. xxii. 6.

2237. Not from ‘Solomon,’ but from ‘Jesus, son of Sirach,’ as before. The Lat. text agrees with the Vulgate version of Ecclus. xxxii. 6: ‘ubi auditus non est, ne effundas sermonem’; the E. version (verse 4) is somewhat different, viz. ‘Pour not out words where there is a musician, and shew not forth wisdom out of time.’ Chaucer gives us the same saying again in verse; see B. 3991.

2238. Lat. text: ‘semper consilium tunc deest, quando maxime opus est’; from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 594. (Read cum opus est maxime.)

2242. Cf. F. text—‘Sire, dist elle, je vous prie que vous ne vous hastez, et que vous pour tous dons me donnez espace.’—Wright.

2243. Piers Alfonce, Petrus Alfonsi. ‘Peter Alfonsus, or Alfonsi, was a converted Spanish Jew, who flourished in the twelfth century, and is well known for his Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of stories and moralisations in Latin prose, which was translated afterwards into French verse, under the title of the Chastoiement d’un pere a son fils. It was a book much in vogue among the preachers from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.’—Wright. Tyrwhitt has a long note here; he says that a copy of this work is in MS. Bibl. Reg. 10 B. xii in the British Museum, and that there is also a copy of another work by the same author, entitled Dialogus contra Judaeos, in MS. Harl. 3861. He also remarks that the manner and style of the Disciplina Clericalis ‘show many marks of an Eastern original; and one of his stories Of a trick put upon a thief is entirely taken from the Calilah a Damnah, a celebrated collection of Oriental apologues.’ All the best fables of Alfonsus Edition: current; Page: [206] were afterwards incorporated (says Tyrwhitt) into the Gesta Romanorum. He was born at Huesca, in Arragon, in 1062, and converted to Christianity in 1106.

The words here referred to are the following: ‘Ne properes ulli reddere mutuum boni uel mali, quia diutius expectabit te amicus, et diutius timebit te inimicus’; Disc. Cler. xxv. 15; ed. F. W. V. Schmidt, Berlin, 1827, 4to., p. 71.

2244. The proverbe, &c.; not in either the Latin or the French texts. Cf. the proverb of Hending—‘ofte rap reweth,’ often haste rues it. Heywood has—‘The more haste, the worse speed’; on which Ray notes—‘Come s’ha fretta non si fa mai niente che stia bene’; Ital. Qui trop se hâte en cheminant, en beau chemin se fourvoye souvent; Fr. Qui nimis properè minus prosperè; et nimium properans serius absoluit.

‘Tarry a little, that we may make an end the sooner, was a saying of Sir Amias Paulet. Presto e bene non si conviene; Ital.’ See 2325 below, and observe that Chaucer has the same form of words in Troil. i. 956.

2247. From Ecclesiastes, vii. 28. Cf. A. 3154.

2249. From Ecclus. xxv. 30 (Vulgate): ‘Mulier, si primatum habeat, contraria est uiro suo.’ Not in the A.V.; cf. v. 22 of that version.

2250. From Ecclus. xxxiii. 20–22 (Vulgate); 19–21 (A.V.).

2251. After noght be, ed. 1550 adds—‘if I shuld be counsayled by the’; but this is redundant. See next note.

2252–3. These clauses are omitted in the MSS. and black-letter editions, but are absolutely necessary to the sense. The French text has—‘car il est escript: la jenglerie des femmes ne puet riens celer fors ce qu’elle ne scet. Apres, le philosophe dit: en mauvais conseil les femmes vainquent les hommes. Pour ces raisons, je ne doy point user de ton conseil.’ It is easy to turn this into Chaucerian English, by referring to ll. 2274, 2280 below, where the missing passage is quoted with but slight alteration.

The former clause is quoted from Marcus Annaeus Seneca, father of Seneca the philosopher, Controversiarum Lib. ii. 13. 12:—‘Garrulitas mulierum id solum nouit celare, quod nescit.’ Cf. P. Plowman, B. v. 168; xix. 157; and see the Wyf of Bathes Tale, D. 950. The second clause is from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 324:—‘Malo in consilio feminae uincunt uiros.’

2257. ‘Non est turpe cum re mutare consilium’; Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv. 38, § 1.

Maketh no lesing, telleth no lie; compare the use of lyer just above.

Turneth his corage, changes his mind. Mätzner quotes a similar phrase from Halliwell’s Dict., s. v. Torne:—

‘But thogh a man himself be good,

And he torne so his mood

That he haunte fooles companye,

It shal him torne to grete folie.’

MS. Lansdowne 793, fol. 68.

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2258. Thar ye nat, it needs not that ye; i. e. you are not obliged. But yow lyke, unless you please (lit. unless it please you).

2259. Ther, where. What that him lyketh, whatever he likes.

2260. Save your grace, with the same sense as the commoner phrase ‘save your reverence.’ The Lat. text has ‘salua reuerentia tua’; which shews the original form of the phrase.

As seith the book. Here ‘the book’ probably means no more than the Latin text, which has ‘nam qui omnes despicit, omnibus displicet’; without any reference.

2261. Senek. Mätzner says this is not to be found in Seneca; in fact, the Latin text refers us to ‘Seneca, De Formula Honestae Vitae’; but Sundby has found it in Martinus Dumiensis, Formula Honestae Vitae, cap. iii. This shews that it was attributed to Seneca erroneously. Moreover, the original is more fully expressed, and runs thus—‘Nullius imprudentiam despicias; rari sermonis ipse, sed loquentium patiens auditor; seuerus non saeuus, hilares neque aspernans; sapientiae cupidus et docilis; quae scieris, sine arrogantia postulanti imperties; quae nescieris, sine occultatione ignorantiae tibi benigne postula impertiri.’ Cf. Horace, Epist. vi. 67, 68.

2265. Rather, sooner. See Mark, xvi. 9. The weakness of this argument for the goodness of woman appears by comparison with P. Plowman, C. viii. 138: ‘A synful Marye the seyh er seynt Marie thy moder,’ i.e. Christ was seen by St. Mary the sinner earlier than by St. Mary His mother, after His resurrection.

2266–9. This reappears in verse in the March. Tale, E. 2277–2290.

2269. Alluding to Matt. xix. 17; Luke xviii. 19.

2273. Or noon, or not. So elsewhere; see B. 2407, F. 778, I. 962, 963, 964.

2276. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xx. 297, on which my note is as follows. ‘Perhaps the original form of this commonly quoted proverb is this:—“Tria sunt enim quae non sinunt hominem in domo permanere; fumus, stillicidium, et mala uxor”; Innocens Papa, de Contemptu Mundi, i. 18. It is a mere compilation from Prov. x. 26, xix. 13, and xxvii. 15. Chaucer refers to it in his Tale of Melibeus, Prologue to Wife of Bathes Tale (D. 278), and Persones Tale (I. 631); see also Kemble’s Solomon and Saturn, pp. 43, 53, 63; Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, p. 83.’ Cf. Wright’s Bibliographia Britannica, Anglo-Norman Period, pp. 333, 334; Hazlitt’s Proverbs, pp. 114, 339; Ida von Düringsfeld, Sprichwörter, vol. i. sect. 303; Peter Cantor, ed. Migne, col. 331; &c. A medieval proverbial line expresses the same thus:—

‘Sunt tria dampna domus, imber, mala femina, fumus.’

2277. From Prov. xxi. 9; cf. Prov. xxv. 24. See D. 775.

2286. The Lat. text has: ‘uulgo dici consueuit, Consilium feminile nimis carum aut nimis uile.’ Cf. B. 4446, and the note.

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2288. The examples of Jacob, Judith, Abigail, and Esther are again quoted, in the same order, in the March. Tale, E. 1362–74. See Gen. xxvii; Judith, xi-xiii; 1 Sam. xxv. 14; Esther, vii.

2293. Forme-fader, first father. Here forme represents the A. S. forma, first, cognate with Goth. fruma, Lat. primus. Cf. ‘Adam ure forme fader’; O. E. Homilies, ed. Morris, ii. 101; so also in Hampole, Pr. Cons. 483; Legends of the Holy Rood, ed. Morris, p. 62; Allit. Poems, A. 639.

2294. To been a man allone, for a man to be alone; for this idiom, cf. I. 456, 469, 666, 849, 935.—Mr. See Gen. ii. 18.

2296. Confusioun; see B. 4354, and the note.

2297. Lat. text:—‘quare per uersus dici consueuit:

Quid melius auro? Iaspis. Quid iaspide? Sensus.

Quid sensu? Mulier. Quid muliere? Nihil.’

Sundby quotes from Ebrardi Bituniensis Graecismus, cum comm. Vincentii Metulini, fol. C. 1, back—

Quid melius auro? Iaspis. Quid iaspide? Sensus.

Quid sensu? Ratio. Quid ratione? Deus.

(A better reading is Auro quid melius.)

In MS. Harl. 3362, fol. 67, as printed in Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 91, we find:—

Vento quid leuius? fulgur. Quid fulgure? flamma.

Flamma quid? mulier. Quid muliere? nichil.

And these lines are immediately followed by the second quotation above, with the variations ‘Auro quid melius,’ ‘Sensu quid,’ and ‘nichil’ for ‘Deus.’

2303. From Prov. xvi. 24.

2306. For the use of to with biseken, cf. 2940 below.—Mr.

2308. From Tobit, iv. 20 (Vulgate); iv. 19 (A. V.). Dresse, direct; Lat. ‘ut uias tuas dirigat.’

2309. From James, i. 5. At this point the Fr. text is much shortened, pp. 20–30 of the Latin text being omitted.

2311. Lat. text (p. 33):—‘a te atque consiliariis tuis remoueas illa tria, quae maxime sunt consilio contraria, scilicet iram, uoluptatem siue cupiditatem atque festinantiam.’

2315. Lat. text:—‘iratus semper plus putat posse facere, quam possit.’

2317. The Lat. text shews that the quotation is not from Seneca’s De Ira, but from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 281:—‘Iratus nil non criminis loquitur loco.’ Cf. D. 2005, I. 537.

2320. From 1 Tim. vi. 10. See C. 334, I. 739.

2325. Lat. ‘Ad poenitendum properat, qui cito iudicat’; from Publil. Syrus, Sent. 32. (Read cito qui.) See l. 2244 above, and the note.

2331. From Ecclus. xix. 8, 9 (A. V.).

2333. Lat. text (p. 40):—‘Et alius dixit: Vix existimes ab uno posse celari secretum.’

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2334. The book. Lat. text:—‘Consilium absconditum quasi in carcere tuo est retrusum, reuelatum uero te in carcere suo tenet ligatum.’ Compare Petrus Alfonsi, Disciplina Clericalis, iv. 3. Cf. Ecclus. viii. 22 (Vulgate); viii. 19 (A. V.).

2337. Lat. text:—‘Ait enim Seneca: Si tibi ipse non imperasti, ut taceres, quomodo ab alio silentium quaeris?’ This, however, is not from Seneca, but from Martinus Dumiensis, De Moribus, Sent. 16. Sundby further quotes from Plutarch (Opera, ed. Hutten. Tubingae, 1814, vol. xiv. p. 395):—Ὅπερ ἂν σιωπα̑σθαι βούλῃ, μηδενὶ εἵπῃς· ἢ πω̑ς παρά τινος ἀπαιτήσεις τὸ πιστὸν τη̑ς σιωπη̑ς, ὃ μὴ παρέσχες σεαυτῳ̑;

2338. Plyt, plight, condition. It rimes with appetyt, E. 2336, and wyte, G. 953. It occurs again in the Complaint of Anelida, 297, and Parl. of Foules, 294; and in Troilus, ii. 712, 1738, iii. 1039. The modern spelling is wrong, as it is quite a different word from the verb to plight. See it discussed in my Etym. Dict., Errata and Addenda, p. 822.

2342. Men seyn. This does not appear to be a quotation, but a sort of proverb. The Lat. text merely says:—‘Et haec est ratio quare magnates atque potentes, si per se nesciunt, consilium bonum uix aut nunquam capere possunt.’

2348. From Prov. xxvii. 9.

2349. From Ecclus. vi. 15:—‘Amico fideli non est comparatio; et non est digna ponderatio auri et argenti contra bonitatem fidei illius.’ L. 2350 is a sort of paraphrase of the latter clause.

2351. From Ecclus. vi. 14:—‘Amicus fidelis, protectio fortis; qui autem inuenit illum, inuenit thesaurum.’ ‘He [Socrates] was wonte to saie, that there is no possession or treasure more precious then a true and an assured good frende.’—N. Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Socrates, § 13.

2352. Cf. Prov. xxii. 17; Ecclus. ix. 14.

2354. Cf. Job xii. 12.

2355. From Cicero, De Senectute, vi. 17:—‘Non uiribus aut uelocitatibus aut celeritate corporum res magnae geruntur, sed consilio, auctoritate, sententia; quibus non modo non orbari, sed etiam augeri senectus solet.’

2357. From Ecclus. vi. 6.

2361. From Prov. xi. 14; cf. xv. 22.

2363. From Ecclus. viii. 17.

2364. Lat. text:—‘Scriptum est enim, Proprium est stultitiae aliena uitia cernere, suorum autem obliuisci.’ From Cicero, Disput. Tusc. iii. 30. 73.

2366. ‘Sic habendum est, nullam in amicitia pestem esse maiorem quam adulationem, blanditiam, assentationem’; Cicero, Laelius, xxvi. 97 [or xxv.]

2367. Lat. text:—‘In consiliis itaque et in aliis rebus non acerba uerba, sed blanda timebis.’ The last six words are from Martinus Dumiensis, De Quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus, cap. iii. Cf. Prov. xxviii. 23.

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2368. From Prov. xxix. 5. The words in the next clause (2369) seem to be merely another rendering of the same passage.

2370. ‘Cauendum est, ne assentatoribus patefaciamus aures neue adulari nos sinamus’; Cicero, De Officiis, i. 26.

2371. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. iii. 6:—‘Sermones blandos blaesosque cauere memento.’

2373. ‘Cum inimico nemo in gratiam tuto [al. tute] redit’; Publilius Syrus, Sent. 91.

2374. Lat. text:—‘Quare Ysopus dixit:

Ne confidatis secreta nec his detegatis,

Cum quibus egistis pugnae discrimina tristis.’

2375. Not from Seneca, but from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 389:—‘Nunquam ubi diu fuit ignis deficit uapor’; but the MSS. differ in their readings. ‘There is no fire without some smoke’; Heywood’s Proverbs.

2376. From Ecclus. xii. 10.

2379. The passage alluded to is the following:—‘Ne te associaueris cum inimicis tuis, cum alios possis repperire socios; quae enim mala egeris notabunt, quae uero bona fuerint deuitabunt [Lat. text, deuiabunt]’; cf. Petrus Alfonsi, Disciplina Clericalis, iv. 4. The words ‘they wol perverten it’ seem to be due to the reading deuiabunt, taken to mean ‘they will turn aside,’ in a transitive sense.

2381. Lat. text (pp. 50, 51); ‘ut quidam philosophus dixit, Nemo ei satis fidus est, quem metuit.’

2382. Inexactly quoted from the Latin text, taken from Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 7:—‘Malus custos diuturnitatis est metus, contraque beniuolentia fidelis uel ad perpetuitatem . . . Nulla uis imperii tanta est, quae premente metu possit esse diuturna.’

2384. From Prov. xxxi. 4, where the Vulgate has: ‘Noli regibus, o Lamuel, noli regibus dare uinum; quia nullum secretum est ubi regnat ebrietas.’ Cf. C. 561 (and note), 585, 587.

2386. Cassidorie, Cassiodorus, who wrote in the time of Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths (ad 475–526). The quotation is from his Variarum lib. x. epist. 18:—‘quia laesionis instar est occulte consulere, et aliud uelle monstrare.’ In the Latin text, cap. xxiii, the heading of the chapter is:—‘De Vitando consilium illorum, qui secreto aliud consulunt, et palam aliud seuelle ostendunt.’ Chaucer’s rendering is far from being a happy one.

2387. Cf. Prov. xii. 5; but note that the Lat. text has:—‘Malus homo a se nunquam bonum consilium refert’; which resembles Publilius Syrus, Sent. 354:—‘Malus bonum ad se nunquam consilium refert.’

2388. From Ps. i. 1.

2391. Tullius. The reference is to Cicero’s De Officiis, ii. 5, as quoted in the ‘Latin text’:—‘quid in unaquaque re uerum sincerumque sit, quid consentaneum cuique rei sit, quid consequens, ex quibus Edition: current; Page: [211] quaeque gignantur, quae cuiusque rei caussa sit.’ This is expanded in the English, down to l. 2400.

2405. For distreyneth, MS. Hl. has the corrupt reading destroyeth. The reading is settled by the lines in Chaucer’s Proverbs (see the Minor Poems, vol. i. p. 407):—

‘Who-so mochel wol embrace

Litel therof he shal distreyne.’

The Lat. text has: ‘Qui nimis capit parum stringit’; the Fr. text has: ‘Qui trop embrasse, pou estraint.’

2406. Catoun, Dionysius Cato; Distich. iii. 15:—

‘Quod potes, id tentato; operis ne pondere pressus

Succumbat labor, et frustra tentata relinquas.’

2408. The Lat. text has:—‘Ait enim Petrus Alfunsus, Si dicere metuas unde poeniteas, semper est melius non quam sic.’ From his Disciplina Clericalis, vi. 12.

2411. Defenden, forbid, i. e. advise one not to do. This passage is really a quotation from Cicero, De Officiis, i. 9:—‘Bene praecipiunt qui uetant quidquid agere, quod dubites aequum sit an iniquum.’

2413. The Lat. text has:—‘Nunc superest uidere, quando consilium uel promissum mutari possit uel debeat.’ This shews that the reading counseil, as in Hl., is correct.

2415. Lat. text:—‘Quae de nouo emergunt, nouo indigent consilio, ut leges dicunt.’

2416. Lat. text:—‘Inde et Seneca dixit, Consilium tuum si audierit hostis, consilii dispositionem permutes.’ But no such sentence has been discovered in Seneca.

2419. Lat. text:—‘Generaliter enim nouimus, Turpes stipulationes nullius esse momenti, ut leges dicunt,’ for which Sundby refers us to the Digesta, xlv. 1. 26.

2421. ‘Malum est consilium, quod mutari non potest’: Publilius Syrus, Sent. 362.

2431. First and forward; so in l. 2684. We now say ‘first and foremost.’

2436. See above, ll. 2311–2325; vol. iv. p. 208.

2438. Anientissed, annulled, annihilated, done away with. In Rom. iv. 14, where Wycliffe’s earlier text has anentyschid, the later text has distried. The Prompt. Parv. has: ‘Anyyntyschyn, or enyntyschyn, Exinanio.’ From O. F. anientiss-, pres. pt. stem of anientir, to bring to nothing, variant of anienter, a verb formed from prep. a, to, and O. F. nient (Ital. niente, mod. F. néant), nothing. The form nient answers to Lat. *ne-entem or *nec-entem, from ne, nec, not, and entem, acc. of ens, being. See the New E. Dict. Cf. anyente in P. Plowman, C. xx. 267, xxi. 389. As yow oghte, as it behoved you; Hl. as ye oughte. Both phrases occur.

2439. Talent; Fr. text, ‘ta voulonte’; i.e. your desire, wish. ‘Talent, Edition: current; Page: [212] . . . will, desire, lust, appetite, an earnest humour unto’; Cotgrave. Cf. C. 540, and l. 2441 below.

2444. This paragraph is omitted in MS. Hl.

2447. Hochepot; Hl. hochepoche, whence E. hodgepodge. From F. hochepot, ‘a hotch-pot, or gallimaufrey, a confused mingle-mangle of divers things jumbled or put together’; Cotgrave. This again is from the M. Du. hutspot, with the same sense; from hutsen, to shake, and pot. See Hotchpot in my Etym. Dict. Ther been ye condescended, and to that opinion ye have submitted.

2449. Reward, regard; for reward is merely an older spelling of ‘regard.’ So in Parl. of Foules, 426; Leg. of Good Women, 375, 399, 1622.

2454. Lat. text:—‘Humanum enim est peccare, diabolicum uero perseuerare.’ Sundby refers us to St. Chrysostom, Adhortatio ad Theodorum lapsum, I. 14 (Opera, Paris, 1718, fol.; i. 26); where we find (in the Lat. version):—‘Nam peccare quidem, humanum est; at in peccatis perseuerare, id non humanum est, sed omnino satanicum.’ It is also quoted by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, lib. xvii. c. 45.

2459. Lat. text:—‘ad illorum officium spectat omnibus prodesse et nulli nocere.’ This (says Sundby) is quoted from the Decretals of Gregory IX., lib. i. tit. 37. cap. 3.

2467. Cf. Lat. text:—‘scilicet Contraria contrariis curantur.’

2473. Fr. text:—‘Or veez, dist Prudence, comment un chascun croist legierement ce qu’il veut et desire!’—Mr.

2479. For good, &c., ‘namely, in the sense that good,’ &c.

2482. See Rom. xii. 17; cf. 1 Thess. v. 15; 1 Cor. iv. 12. The Lat. text quotes part of verses 17–21 of Rom. xii. But it is clear that Chaucer has altered the wording, and was thinking of 1 Pet. iii. 9.

2485. After wyse folk, Cp. inserts ‘and olde folk,’ and Ln. ‘and the olde folke.’ The Fr. text has: ‘les advocas, les sages, et les anciens.’ Ed. 1532 also inserts ‘and olde folke’; and perhaps it should be inserted.

2487. Warnestore, to supply with defensive materials, to garrison, protect; see 2521, 2523, 2525 below. ‘And wel thei were warnestured of vitailes inow’; Will. of Palerne, 1121. We also find a sb. of the same form. ‘In eche stude hii sette ther strong warnesture and god’; Rob. of Glouc. 2075 (ed. Hearne, p. 94). ‘The Sarazins kept it [a castle] that tym for ther chefe warnistour’; Rob. of Brunne, tr. of Langtoft, ed. Hearne, p. 180. ‘I will remayn quhill this warnstor be gane’; Wallace, bk. ix. l. 1200, where ed. 1648 has ‘till all the stuffe be gone.’ Correctly warnisture; a derivative of O. F. warnir, garnir, to supply (E. garnish). Godefroy gives O. F. ‘garnesture, garnisture, garniture, warnesture, s. f. provisions, ressource; authentication; garnison, forteresse’; with eight examples. Cf. E. garrison (M. E. garnison), garment (M. E. garnement), and garniture. The last of these is, in fact, nothing but the O. F. warnisture in a more modern Edition: current; Page: [213] form. Hence we obtain the sense by consulting Cotgrave, who gives: ‘Garniture, garniture, garnishment, furniture; provision, munition, store, necessary implements.’ It also appears that the word is properly a substantive, with the spelling warnisture; it became warnistore or warnestore by confusion with O. F. estor, a store; and, as the word store was easily made into a verb, it was easy to treat warnestore in the same way. It is a sb. in Rob. of Gloucester, as shewn above, but appears as a verb in Will. of Palerne. MS. Hl. has warmstore (with m for ni); and the same error is in the editions of Wright, Bell, and Morris. Ed. 1532 has warnstore.

2494. From Ps. cxxvii. 1 (cxxvi. 1, Vulgate).

2496. From Dionysius Cato, lib. iv. dist. 14:—‘Auxilium a nobis petito, si forte laboras; Nec quisquam melior medicus quam fidus amicus.’

2499. Piers Alfonce, Petrus Alfonsi, in his Disciplina Clericalis, xviii. 10:—‘Ne aggrediaris uiam cum aliquo nisi prius eum cognoueris; si quisquam ignotus tibi in uia associauerit, iterque tuum inuestigauerit, dic te uelle longius ire quam disposueris; et si detulerit lanceam, uade ad dextram; si ensem, ad sinistram.’

2505. The repetition of that before ye, following the former that before for, is due to a striving after greater clearness. It is not at all uncommon, especially in cases where the two thats are farther apart. Cf. the use of he and him in l. 2508.

Lete the keping, neglect the protection; A. S. lǣtan.

2507. ‘Beatus homo qui semper est pauidus; qui uero mentis est durae, corruet in malum’; Prov. xxviii. 14. Hence the quotation-mark follows bityde.

2509. Counterwayte embusshements, ‘be on the watch against lyings in ambush.’ ‘Contregaitier, v. act. épier, guetter de son côté; refl. se garder, se mettre en garde’; Godefroy. Three examples are given of the active use, and four of the reflexive use. Espiaille, companies of spies; it occurs again in the sense of ‘a set of spies’ in D. 1323. Mätzner well remarks that espiaille does not mean ‘spying’ or ‘watching,’ as usually explained, but is a collective sb., like O. F. rascaille, poraille, pedaille. Godefroy, in his O. F. Dict., makes the same mistake, though his own example is against him. He has: ‘Espiaille, s. f. action d’épier: Nous avons ja noveles par nos espiailles’; i. e. by means of our spies (not of our spyings). This quotation is from an A. F. proclamation made in London, July 26, 1347.

2510. Senek, Seneca; but, as before, the reference is really to the Sentences of Publilius Syrus. Of these the Lat. text quotes no less than four, viz. Nos. 542, 607, 380, and 116 (ed. Dietrich); as follows:—

‘Qui omnes insidias timet, in nullas incidet.’

‘Semper metuendo sapiens euitat malum.’

‘Non cito perit ruina, qui ruinam timet.’

‘Caret periculo, qui etiam [cum est] tutus cauet.’

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2514. Senek; this again is from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 255:—‘Inimicum, quamuis humilem, docti est metuere.’

2515. The Lat. and Fr. texts both give the reference, correctly, to Ovid’s Remedia Amoris; see l. 421:—

‘Parva necat morsu spatiosum uipera taurum;

A cane non magno saepe tenetur aper.’

Chaucer has here interpolated the reference to ‘the thorn pricking the king’ between his translations of these two lines. The interpolation occurs neither in the French nor in the Latin text.

Wesele, weasel. The origin of this queer mistake is easily perceived. The Fr. text has: ‘La petite vivre occist le grant torel.’ Here vivre represents Lat. uipera, a viper (cf. E. wivern); but Ch. has construed it as if it represented Lat. uiuerra, a ferret.

2518. The book. The quotation is from Seneca, Epist. 111. § 3:—‘Quidam fallere docuerunt, dum falli timent.’ (For Quidam read Nam multi). Tyrwhitt’s text is here imperfect, and he says he has patched it up as he best could; but the MSS. (except Cp. and Ln.) give a correct text.

2520. Lat. text:—‘Cum irrisore consortium non habeas; loquelae eius assiduitatem quasi toxica fugias.’ From Albertano of Brescia, who here quotes from his own work, De Arte Eloquendi, p. cviii.; according to Sundby.

2521. Warnestore, protect; see note to 2487 above, and see 2523.

2523. Swiche as han, ‘such as castles and other kinds of edifices have.’

Artelleries, missile weapons; cf. 1 Sam xx. 40, 1 Macc. vi. 51 (A.V.). ‘Artillarie now a dayes is taken for ii. thinges: Gunnes and Bowes’; Ascham, Toxophilus, ed. Arber, p. 65. In Chaucer’s time it referred to bows, crossbows, and engines for casting stones. Cotgrave explains F. artillier as ‘one that maketh both bowes and arrowes.’

2525–6. Owing to the repetition of the words grete edifices, one of the early scribes (whom others followed) passed from one to the other, thus omitting the words ‘apperteneth som tyme to pryde and eek men make heighe toures and grete edifices.’ But MSS. Cp. and Ln. supply all but the last three words ‘and grete edifices,’ and as we know that ‘grete edifices’ must recur, they really supply all but the sole word ‘and,’ which the sense absolutely requires. Curiously enough, these very MSS. omit the rest of clause 2525, so that none of the MSS. are perfect, but the text is easily pieced together. It is further verified by the Lat. text, which has:—‘Munitio turrium et aliorum altorum aedificiorum ad superbiam plerumque pertinet . . . . praeterea turres cum magno labore et infinitis expensis fiunt; et etiam cum factae fuerint, nihil ualent, nisi cum auxilio prudentium et fidelium amicorum et cum magnis expensis defendantur.’ The F. text supplies the gap with—‘appartiennent aucune fois a orgueil: apres on fait les tours et les grans edifices.’—MS. Reg. 19 C. vii. leaf 133, back. Hence there is no doubt as to the reading.

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All former editions are here defective, and supply the gap with the single word is, which is found in ed. 1532.

2526. With gret costages, at great expense: Fr. text, ‘a grans despens.’

Stree, straw; MS. Hl. has the spelling straw. We find the phrase again in the Book of the Duch. 671; also ‘ne roghte of hem a stree,’ id. 887; ‘acounted nat a stree,’ id. 1237; ‘ne counted nat three strees,’ id. 718.

2530. Lat. text:—‘unum est inexpugnabile munimentum, amor ciuium.’ Not from Cicero; but from Seneca, De Clementia, i. 19. 5.

2534. ‘In omnibus autem negotiis, prius quam aggrediare, adhibenda est praeparatio diligens’; Cicero, De Officiis, i. 21.

2537. Lat. text:—‘Longa praeparatio belli celerem uictoriam facit.’ But the source is unknown; it does not seem to be in Cicero. Mätzner quotes a similar saying from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 125:—‘Diu apparandum est bellum, ut uincas celerius.’

2538. ‘Munitio quippe tunc efficitur praeualida, si diuturna fuerit excogitatione roborata’; Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. epist. 17.

2545. Tullius. This refers to what has already preceded in 2391–2400, the passage referred to being one from Cicero’s De Officiis, ii. 5, where we are bidden to consider several points, viz. (1) ‘quid in quaque re uerum sincerumque sit; (2) quid consentaneum cuique rei sit; (3) quid consequens; (4) ex quo quidque gignatur; (5) quae cuiusque rei caussa sit.’ All these five points are taken below in due order; viz. (1) in 2546; (2) in 2550; (3) in 2577; (4) in 2580; and (5) in 2583.

2546. Trouthe; referring to uerum in clause (1) in the last note.

2550. Consentinge; i. e. consentaneum in clause (2) in note to 2545. Cf. 2571. MS. Hl. has here the false reading couetyng, but in l. 2571 it has consentynge.

2551. Lat. text:—‘qui et quot et quales.’ Thus whiche means ‘of what sort.’ The words and whiche been they, omitted in MS. E. only, are thus seen to be necessary; cf. l. 2552, where the phrase is repeated.

2558. Cosins germayns; Lat. ‘consanguineos germanos.’ Neigh kinrede, relations near of kin; cf. ‘nis but a fer kinrede’ in 2565.

2561. Reward, regard, care; as above, in 2449; (see the note).

2565. Litel sib, slightly related; ny sib, closely related. Cf. ‘ne on his mæges láfe þe swa néah sib wǽre,’ nor with the relict of his kinsman who was so near of kin; Laws of King Cnut, § vii; in Thorpe’s Ancient Laws, i. 364.

2570. As the lawe; Sundby refers to Justinian’s Codex, VIII. iv. 1.

2573. That nay; Fr. text—‘que non.’

2577. Consequent; i. e. ‘consequens’ in clause (3), note to 2545.

2580. Engendringe; i. e. ‘ex quo quidque gignatur’ in clause (4), note to 2545.

2582. Mätzner says this is corrupt; but it is quite right, though obscure. The sense is—‘and, out of the taking of vengeance in return for that, would arise another vengeance’; &c. Engendre is here taken Edition: current; Page: [216] in the sense of ‘be engendred’ or ‘breed’; see the New E. Dict. The Fr. text is clearer: ‘de la vengence se engendrera autre vengence.’

2583. Causes; i. e. ‘caussa’ in clause (5), note to 2545.

2585. The Lat. text omits Oriens, which seems to be here used as synonymous with longinqua. ‘Caussa igitur iniuriae tibi illatae duplex fuit efficiens, scilicet remotissima et proxima.’

2588. ‘Occasio uero illius caussae, quae dicitur caussa accidentalis, fuit odium,’ &c. So below, the Lat. text has caussa materialis, caussa formalis, and caussa finalis.

2591. It letted nat, it tarried not; Lat. text, ‘nec per eos remansit.’ This intransitive use of letten is awkward and rare. It occurs again in P. Plowman, C. ii. 204, xx. 76, 331.

2594. Book of Decrees; Sundby refers us to the Decretum Gratiani; P. ii, Caussa 1, Qu. 1. c. 25:—‘uix bono peraguntur exitu, quae malo sunt inchoata principio.’

2596. Thapostle, the apostle Paul. The Lat. text refers expressly to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, meaning 1 Cor. iv. 5; but Chaucer has accommodated it to Rom. xi. 33.

2600. The Lat. text informs us that Melibeus signifies mel bibens. For similar curiosities of derivation, see note to G. 87. There was a town called Meliboea (Μελίβοια) on the E. coast of Thessaly.

2605. From Ovid, Amor. i. 8. 104:—‘Impia sub dulci melle uenena latent.’

2606. From Prov. xxv. 16.

2611. The three enemys, i. e. the flesh, the devil and the world. The entrance of these into man through the five senses is the theme of numerous homilies. See especially Sawles Warde, in O. Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, First Series, p. 245; and the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 263.

2614. Deedly sinnes, the Seven Deadly Sins; see the Persones Tale. Fyve wittes, five senses; cf. P. Plowman, C. ii. 15, xvi. 257.

2615. Wold, willed; pp. of willen. F. text—‘a voulu.’ See 2190 above; Leg. of Good Women, 1209; Compl. of Venus, 11; P. Plowman, B. xv. 258; Malory’s Morte Arthure, bk. xviii. c. 15—‘[he] myghte haue slayne vs and he had wold’; and again, in c. 19—‘I myght haue ben maryed and I had wolde.’ Gower has—‘if that he had wold’; Conf. Amantis, ii. 9.

2618. Falle, befall, come to pass; F. text—‘advenir.’

2620. Were, would be; F. text—‘ce seroit moult grant dommage.’

2623–4. The missing portion is easily supplied. The French text (MS. Reg. 19 C. vii, leaf 136) has:—‘Et a ce respont Dame Prudence, Certes, dist elle, Ie t’octroye que de vengence vient molt de maulx et de biens; mais vengence n’appartient pas a vn chascun, fors seulement aux iuges et a ceulx qui ont la iuridicion sur les malfaitteurs.’ Here ‘mais vengence’ should rather be ‘mais faire vengence,’ as in MS. Reg. 19 C. xi. leaf 59, back, and in the printed edition. It is Edition: current; Page: [217] clear that the omission of this passage is due to the repetition of trespassours at the end of 2622 and 2624.

2627. Lat. text—‘nam, ut ait Seneca, Bonis nocet, qui malis parcit.’ This corresponds to—‘Bonis necesse est noceat, qui parcit malis’; Pseudo-Seneca, De Moribus, Sent. 114; see Publilius Syrus, ed. Dietrich, p. 90. The Fr. text has:—‘Cellui nuit [al. nuist] aux bons, qui espargne les mauvais.’ Chaucer’s translation is so entirely at fault, that I think his MS. must have been corrupt; he has taken nuist aux as maistre, and then could make but little of espargne, which he makes to mean ‘proveth,’ i. e. tests, tries the quality of; perhaps his MS. had turned espargne (or esparne) into esprouve. MSS. Cp. Pt. Ln. turn it into reproveth; this makes better sense, but contradicts the original still more.

2628. ‘Quoniam excessus tunc sunt in formidine, cùm creduntur iudicibus displicere’; Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. epist. 4.

2629. Lat. text:—‘Et alibi dixit, Iudex, qui dubitat ulcisci, multos improbos facit’; slightly altered from Publ. Syrus, Sent. 526:—‘Qui ulcisci dubitat, inprobos plures facit.’

2630. From Rom. xiii. 4. For spere, as in all the copies, Chaucer should have written swerd. The Fr. text has glaive; Lat. gladium.

2632. Ye shul retourne or have your recours to the Iuge; explanatory of the F. text—‘tu recourras au iuge.’

2633. As the lawe axeth and requyreth; explanatory of the Fr. text—‘selon droit.’ For this use of axeth (= requires), cf. P. Plowman, C. i. 21, ii. 34.

2635. Many a strong pas; Fr. text—‘moult de fors pas.’ MS. Hl. has:—‘many a strayt passage.’

2638. Not from Seneca, but (as in other places where Seneca is mentioned) from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 320 (ed. Dietrich):—‘Male geritur, quicquid geritur fortunae fide.’

2640. Again from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 189 (ed. Dietrich):—‘Fortuna uitrea est; tum quum splendet frangitur.’

2642. Seur (E. sure) and siker are mere variants of the same word; the former is O. F. seur, from Lat. acc. secūrum; the latter is from Lat. sécŭrus, with a different accentuation and a shortening of the second vowel. We also have a third form, viz. secure.

2645. Again from Publ. Syrus, Sent. 173:—‘Fortuna nimium quem fouet, stultum facit.’

2650. From Rom. xii. 19; cf. Deut. xxxii. 35, Ps. xciv. 1.

2653. From Publ. Syrus, Sent. 645:—‘Veterem ferendo iniuriam inuites nouam.’

2655. Holden over lowe, esteemed too low, too lightly.

2656. From Publ. Syrus, Sent. 487:—‘Patiendo multa [al. inulta] eueniunt [al. ueniunt] quae nequeas pati.’ Mowe suffre, be able to endure. For mowe, Wright wrongly prints nowe; MS. Hl. has mowe, correctly.

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2663. From Caecilii Balbi Sententiae, ed. Friedrich, 1870, no. 162:—‘Qui non corripit peccantem gnatum, peccare imperat.’

2664. ‘And the judges and sovereign lords might, each in his own land, so largely tolerate wicked men and evil-doers,’ &c. Lat. text:—‘si multa maleficia patiuntur fieri.’

2667. Let us now putte, let us suppose; Fr. text—‘posons.’ A more usual phrase is ‘putte cas,’ put the case; cf. note to 2681.

2668. As now, at present; see 2670.

2671. From Seneca, De Ira, ii. 34, § 1:—‘Cum pare contendere, anceps est; cum superiore, furiosum; cum inferiore, sordidum.’

2675. From Prov. xx. 3.

2678. From Publilius Syrus, Sent. 483:—‘Potenti irasci sibi periclum est quaerere.’

2679. From Dion. Cato, Dist. iv. 39:—

‘Cede locum laesus Fortunae, cede potenti;

Laedere qui potuit, aliquando prodesse ualebit.’

2681. Yet sette I caas, but I will suppose; Fr. text—‘posons,’ as in 2667 above.

2684. First and foreward; Fr. text—‘premierement.’ See note to 2431 above.

2685. The poete; Fr. text, ‘le poete.’ Not in the Latin text, and the source of the quotation is unknown. Cf. Luke, xxiii. 41.

2687. Seint Gregorie. Not in the Lat. text; source unknown.

2692. From 1 Pet. ii. 21.

2700. Referring to 2 Cor. iv. 17.

2702. From Prov. xix. 11, where the Vulgate has:—‘Doctrina uiri per patientiam noscitur.’

2703. From Prov. xiv. 29, where the Vulgate has:—‘Qui patiens est multa gubernatur prudentia.’

2704. From Prov. xv. 18.

2705. From Prov. xvi. 32.

2707. From James, i. 4:—‘Patientia autem opus perfectum habet.’

2713. Corage, desire, inclination; cf. E. 1254.

2715. The Fr. text is fuller: ‘et si ie fais un grant exces, car on dit que exces n’est corrige que par exces, c’est a dire que oultrage ne se corrige fors que par oultrage.’—Mr. Perhaps part of the clause has been accidentally omitted, owing to repetition of ‘exces.’

2718. ‘Quid enim discrepat a peccante, qui se per excessum nititur uindicare?’—Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. epist. 30.

2721. Lat. text:—‘ait enim Seneca, Nunquam scelus scelere uindicandum.’ Not from Seneca; Sundby refers us to Martinus Dumiensis, De Moribus, S. 139.

2723. Withouten intervalle . . . delay; the Fr. text merely has ‘sans intervalle.’ Chaucer explains the word intervalle.

2729. ‘Qui impatiens est sustinebit damnum’; Prov. xix. 19.

2730. Of that that, in a matter that.

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2731. Lat. text (p. 95):—‘Culpa est immiscere se rei ad se non pertinenti.’ Sundby refers us to the Digesta, l. xvii. 36.

2732. From Prov. xxvi. 17.

2733. Outherwhyle, sometimes, occasionally; cf. 2857. So in Ch. tr. of Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 12. 119 (vol. ii. p. 89); P. Plowman, C. vi. 50, vii. 160, xxii. 103, &c.

2740. From Ecclesiastes, x. 19:—‘pecuniae oboediunt omnia.’

2741. All the copies have power; but, as Mätzner remarks, we should read poverte; the Fr. text has povrete.

2743. Richesses ben goode; the Lat. text here quotes 1 Tim. iv. 4.

2744. ‘Homo sine pecunia est quasi corpus sine anima’ is written on a fly-leaf of a MS.; see my Pref. to P. Plowman, C-text, p. xx.

2746. All the MSS. have Pamphilles instead of Pamphilus. The allusion is to Pamphilus Maurilianus, who wrote a poem, well-known in the fourteenth century, entitled Liber de Amore, which is extant in MSS. (e. g. in MS. Bodley 3703) and has been frequently printed. Tyrwhitt cites the lines here alluded to from the Bodley MS.

‘Dummodo sit diues cuiusdam nata bubulci,

Eligit e mille, quem libet, illa uirum.’

Sundby quotes the same (with ipsa for illa) from the Paris edition of 1510, fol. a iiii, recto. Chaucer again refers to Pamphilus in F. 1110, on which see the note.

2748. This quotation is not in the Latin text, and is certainly not from Pamphilus; but closely follows Ovid’s lines in his Tristia, i. 9. 5:—

‘Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos;

Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.’

See notes to B. 120 and B. 3436.

2751. Neither is this from Pamphilus, but from some author quoted by Petrus Alfonsi, Discip. Cler. vi. 4, who says:—‘ait quidam uersificator, Clarificant [al. Glorificant] gazae priuatos nobilitate.’

2752. We know, from the Lat. text, that there is here an allusion to Horace, Epist. i. 6. 37:—

‘Et genus et formam regina pecunia donat.’

2754. The Lat. text has mater criminum, and the Fr. text, mere des crimes. It is clear that Chaucer has misread ruines for crimes, or his MS. was corrupt; and he has attempted an explanation by subjoining a gloss of his own—‘that is to seyn . . . overthrowinge or fallinge doun.’ The reference is to Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. ix. epist. 13:—‘Ut dum mater criminum necessitas tollitur, peccandi ambitus auferatur.’

2756. ‘Est una de aduersitatibus huius saeculi grauioribus libero homini, quod necessitate cogitur, ut sibi subueniat, requirere inimicum’; Petrus Alfonsi, Disciplina Clericalis, iv. 4.

2758. Lat. text:—‘O miserabilis mendicantis conditio! Nam, si petit, pudore confunditur; et si non petit, egestate consumitur; sed ut Edition: current; Page: [220] mendicet necessitate compellitur’; Innocentius III (Papa), De Contemptu Mundi, lib. i. c. 16. See note to B. 99, at p. 142.

2761. ‘Melius est enim mori quam indigere’; Ecclus. xl. 29; cf. A.V., Ecclus, xl. 28. See note to B. 114, at p. 142.

2762. ‘Melior est mors quam uita amara’; Ecclus. xxx. 17. The Fr. text has:—‘Mieulx vault la mort amere que telle vie’; where, as in Chaucer, the adjective is shifted.

2765. How ye shul have you, how you ought to behave yourself. In fact, behave is merely a compound of be- and have.

2766. Sokingly, gradually. In the Prompt. Parv. we find ‘Esyly, or sokyngly, Sensim, paulatim.’ And compare the following:—‘Domitius Corbulo vsed muche to saie, that a mannes enemies in battaill are to be ouercomed (sic) with a carpenters squaring-axe, that is to saie, sokingly, one pece after another. A common axe cutteth through at the first choppe; a squaring-axe, by a little and a little, werketh the same effecte.’—Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Julius Caesar, § 32.

2768. From Prov. xxviii. 20.

2769. From Prov. xiii. 11.

2773. Not in the Latin text.

2775. ‘Detrahere igitur alteri aliquid, et hominem hominis incommodo suum augere commodum, magis est contra naturam, quam mors, quam paupertas, quam dolor, quam cetera, quae possunt aut corpori accidere aut rebus externis’; Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 5.

2779. ‘For idleness teacheth much evil’; Ecclus. xxxiii. 27.

2780. From Prov. xxviii. 19; cf. xii. 11.

2783. Cf. Prov. xx. 4.

2784. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. i. 2:—

‘Plus uigila semper, nec somno deditus esto;

Nam diuturna quies uitiis alimenta ministrat.’

2785. Quoted again in G. 6, 7; see note to G. 7.

2789. Fool-large, foolishly liberal; Fr. text, ‘fol larges.’ Cf. 2810.

2790. Chincherye, miserliness, parsimony; from the adj. chinche, which occurs in 2793. Chinche, parsimonious, miserly, is the nasalised form of chiche; see Havelok, 1763, 2941; and see Chinch in the New E. Dictionary. To the examples there given add:—‘A Chinche, tenax: Chinchery, tenacitas’; Catholicon Anglicum.

‘But such an other chinche as he

Men wisten nought in all the londe.’

Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 288.

2792. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. iv. 16:—

‘Utere quaesitis opibus; fuge nomen auari;

Quo tibi diuitias, si semper pauper abundas?’

2795. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. iii. 22:—

‘Utere quaesitis, sed ne uidearis abuti;

Qui sua consumunt, quum deest, aliena sequuntur.’

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2796. Folily, foolishly. We find M. E. folliche, both adj. and adv., and follichely, folily as adv. It is spelt folily in Wycliffe, Num. xii. 11, and in the Troy-book, 573; also folili, Will. of Palerne, 4596; folyly, Rom. of the Rose, 5942 (see the footnote).

2800. Weeldinge (so in E., other MSS. weldinge), wielding, i. e. power.

2802. Not in the Latin text.

2807. Compare Prov. xxvii. 20.

2811. ‘Quamobrem nec ita claudenda est res familiaris, ut eam benignitas aperire non possit; nec ita reseranda, ut pateat omnibus’; Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 15.

2818. See Prov. xv. 16; xvi. 8.

2820. The prophete, i. e. David; see Ps. xxxvii. 16.

2824. See 2 Cor. i. 12.

2825. ‘Riches are good unto him that hath no sin’; Ecclus. xiii. 24.

2828. From Prov. xxii. 1.

2829. The reference seems to be to Prov. xxv. 10 in the Vulgate version (not in the A. V.):—‘Gratia et amicitia liberant; quas tibi serua, ne exprobrabilis fias.’

2832. The reference is clearly to the following:—‘Est enim indigni [al. digni] animi signum, famae diligere commodum’; Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. epist. 4. This is quoted by Albertano (p. 120), with the reading ingenui for indigni; hence Chaucer’s ‘gentil.’ Mätzner refers us to the same, lib. v. epist. 12:—‘quia pulchrum est commodum famae.’

2833. ‘Duae res sunt conscientia et fama. Conscientia tibi, fama proximo tuo’; Augustini Opera, ed. Caillou, Paris, 1842, tom. xxi. p. 347.—Mr.

2837. Fr. text:—‘il est cruel et villain.’—Mr.

2841. Lat. text:—‘nam dixit quidam philosophus, Nemo in guerra constitutus satis diues esse potest. Quantumcunque enim sit homo diues, oportet illum, si in guerra diu perseuerauerit, aut diuitias aut guerram perdere, aut forte utrumque simul et personam.’—p. 102.

2843. See Ecclesiastes, v. 11.

2851. ‘With the God of heaven it is all one, to deliver with a great multitude, or a small company: For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from heaven.’ 1 Macc. iii. 18, 19.

2854. The gap is easily detected and filled up by comparison with the Fr. text, which Mätzner cites from Le Menagier de Paris, i. 226, thus:—‘pour ce . . . que nul n’est certain s’il est digne que Dieu lui doint victoire ne plus que il est certain se il est digne de l’amour de Dieu ou non.’ We must also compare the text from Solomon, viz. Ecclesiastes, ix. 1, as it stands in the Vulgate version.

2857. Outher-whyle, sometimes; see note to 2733.

2858. The seconde book of Kinges, i. e. Liber secundus Regum, now called ‘the second book of Samuel.’ The reference is to 2 Sam. xi. 25, Edition: current; Page: [222] where the Vulgate has: ‘uarius enim euentus est belli; nunc hunc et nunc illum consumit gladius.’ The A. V. varies.

2860. In as muchel; Fr. text:—‘tant comme il puet bonnement.’ This accounts for goodly, i. e. meetly, fitly, creditably. Cotgrave has: ‘Bonnement, well, fitly, aptly, handsomely, conveniently, orderly, to the purpose.’

2861. Salomon; rather Jesus son of Sirach. ‘He that loveth danger shall perish therein’; Ecclus. iii. 26.

2863. The werre . . nothing, ‘war does not please you at all.’

2866. Seint Iame is a curious error for Senek, Seneca. For the Fr. text has:—‘Seneque dit en ses escrips,’ according to Mätzner; and MS. Reg. 19 C. xi (leaf 63, col. 2) has ‘Seneques.’ There has clearly been confusion between Seneques and Seint iaques. Hence the use of the pl. epistles is correct. The reference is to Seneca, Epist. 94, § 46; but Seneca, after all, is merely quoting Sallust:—‘Nam concordia paruae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur’; Sallust, Jugurtha, 10.

2870. From Matt. v. 9.

2872. Brige, strife, contention; F. brigue, Low Lat. briga. ‘Brigue, s. f. . . . debate, contention, altercation, litigious wrangling about any matter’; Cotgrave. See Brigue in the New E. Dict.

2876. Here Hl. has pryde and despysing for homlinesse and dispreysinge, thus spoiling the sense. The allusion is to our common saying—Familiarity breeds contempt.

2879. Syen, saw; Cm. seyen; Ln. sawe; Cp. saugh.

2881. Lat. text (p. 107):—‘scriptum est enim, Semper ab aliis dissensio incipiat, a te autem reconciliatio.’ From Martinus Dumiensis, De Moribus, Sent. 49.

2882. The prophete, i. e. David; Ps. xxxiv. 14.

2883. The words ‘as muchel as in thee is’ are an addition, due to the Fr. text:—‘tant comme tu pourras.’—Mr.

2884. The use of to after pursue is unusual; Mätzner compares biseke to, in 2940 below and 2306 above.

2886. From Prov. xxviii. 14.

2891. Fr. text:—‘Pour ce dit le philosophe, que les troubles ne sont pas bien cler voyans.’ Cf. the Fr. proverb:—‘À l’œil malade la lumière nuit, an eie distempered cannot brook the light; sick thoughts cannot indure the truth’; Cotgrave.

2895. From Prov. xxviii. 23.

2897. This quotation is merely an expansion of the former part of Eccles. vii. 3, viz. ‘sorrow is better than laughter’; the latter part of the same verse appears in 2900, immediately below.

2901. I shal not conne answere, I shall not be able to answer; Fr. text:—‘ie ne sauroie respondre.’—Mr.

2909. From Prov. xvi. 7.

2915. Fr. text:—‘ie met tout mon fait en vostre disposition.’—Mr.

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2925. Referring to Ps. xx. 4 (Vulgate)—‘in benedictionibus dulce-dinis’; A. V.—‘with the blessings of goodness,’ Ps. xxi. 3.

2930. From Ecclus. vi. 5:—‘Verbum dulce multiplicat amicos, et mitigat inimicos.’ The A. V. omits the latter clause, having only:—‘Sweet language will multiply friends.’

2931. Fr. text:—‘nous mettons nostre fait en vostre bonne voulente.’—Mr.

2936. Hise amendes, i.e. amends to him. For hise or his, Cp. Ln. have him, which is a more usual construction. Cf. ‘What shall be thy amends For thy neglect of truth?’ Shak., Sonnet 101. ‘If I have wronged thee, seek thy mends at the law’; Greene, Looking-Glass for London, ed. Dyce, 1883, p. 122.

2940. Biseke to; so in 2306; see note to 2884.

2945. From Ecclus. xxxiii. 18, 19:—‘Hear me, O ye great men of the people, and hearken with your ears, ye rulers of the congregation: Give not thy son and wife, thy brother and friend, power over thee while thou livest.’

2965. Not from Seneca, but from Martinus Dumiensis, De Moribus, S. 94 (Sundby). The Lat. text has:—‘ubi est confessio, ibi est remissio.’

2967. Neither is this from Seneca, but from the same source as before. The Lat. text has:—‘Proximum ad innocentiam locum tenet uerecundia peccati et confessio.’

2973. Lat. text:—‘Nihil enim tam naturale est, quam aliquid dissolui eo genere, quo colligatum est.’ From the Digesta, lib. xvii. 35.

2984. Lat. text:—‘Semper audiui dici, Quod bene potes facere, noli differre.’ Fr. text:—‘Le bien que tu peus faire au matin, n’attens pas le soir ne l’endemain.’

2986. Messages, messengers; Cp. messagers; Hl. messageres. See B. 144, 333. In 2992, 2995, we have the form messagers.

2997. Borwes, sureties; as in P. Plowman, C. v. 85. In 3018 it seems to mean ‘pledges’ rather than ‘sureties.’

3028. A coveitous name, a reputation for covetousness.

3030. From 1 Tim. vi. 10. See C. 334.

3032. Lat. text (p. 120):—‘Scriptum est enim, Mallem perdidisse quam turpiter accepisse.’ This is from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 479:—

‘Perdidisse ad assem mallem, quam accepisse turpiter.’

3036. Also from P. Syrus, Sent. 293:—

‘Laus noua nisi oritur, etiam uetus amittitur.’

3040. For ‘it is writen,’ the Fr. text has ‘le droit dit.’ This indicates the source. The Lat. text has:—‘priuilegium meretur amittere, qui concessa sibi abutitur potestate.’ This Sundby traces to the Decretalia Gregorii IX., iii. 31. 18.

3042. Which I trowe . . do; Lat. ‘quod non concedo.’

3045. Ye moste . . curteisly; Lat. ‘remissius imperare oportet.’

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3047. Lat. text:—‘Remissius imperanti melius paretur’; from Seneca, De Clementia, i. 24. 1.

3049. ‘Ait enim Seneca’; the Lat. text then quotes from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 64:—‘Bis uincit, qui se uincit in uictoria.’

3050. Lat. text:—‘Nihil est laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro uiro dignius, placabilitate atque clementia.’ From Cicero, De Officiis, i. 25. 88.

3054. Of mercy, i.e. on account of your mercy.

3056. ‘Male uincit iam quem poenitet uictoriae’; Publilius Syrus, Sent. 366. Attributed to Seneca in the Latin text.

3059. From James, ii. 13.

3066. Unconninge, ignorance; cf. Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 131; Prick of Conscience, l. 169.

3067. Misborn, borne amiss, misconducted. See Life of Beket, l. 1248.

The Monk’s Prologue.

3079. The tale of Melibee (as told above) is about a certain Melibeus and his wife Prudence, who had a daughter called Sophie. One day, while Melibeus is absent, three of his enemies break into his house, beat his wife, and wound his daughter. On returning, he takes counsel as to what must be done. He is for planning a method of revenge, but his wife advises him to forgive the injuries, and in the end her counsels prevail.

3082. corpus Madrian, body of Madrian: which has been interpreted in two ways. Urry guessed it to refer to St. Materne, bishop of Treves, variously commemorated on the 14th, 19th, or 25th of September, the days of his translations being July 18 and October 23. Mr. Steevens suggested, in a note printed in Tyrwhitt’s Glossary, that the ‘precious body’ was that of St. Mathurin, priest and confessor, commemorated on Nov. 1 or Nov. 9. The latter is more likely, since in his story in the Golden Legende, edit. 1527, leaf 151 back, the expressions ‘the precious body’ and ‘the holy body’ occur, and the story explains that his body would not stay in the earth till it was carried back to France, where he had given directions that it should be buried.

3083. ‘Rather than have a barrel of ale, would I that my dear good wife had heard this story.’ Cf. morsel breed, B. 3624.

lief is not a proper name, as has been suggested, I believe, by some one ignorant of early English idiom. Cf. ‘Dear my lord,’ Jul. Caesar, ii. 1. 255; and other instances in Abbott’s Shakesp. Grammar, sect. 13.

3101. ‘Who is willing (or who suffers himself) to be overborne by everybody.’

3108. neighëbor, three syllables; thannè, two syllables.

3112. Observe the curious use of seith for misseith.

3114. Monk. See him described in the Prologue, A. 165.

3116. Rouchester. The MSS. have Rouchester, (Hl. Rowchestre), Edition: current; Page: [225] shewing that Lo stands alone in the first foot of the line. Tyrwhitt changed stant into stondeth, but all our seven MSS. have stant.

According to the arrangement of the tales in Tyrwhitt’s edition, the pilgrims reach Rochester after coming to Sittingborne (mentioned in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue), though the latter is some eleven miles nearer Canterbury. The present arrangement of the Groups remedies this. See note to B. 1165, at p. 165.

3117. Ryd forth, ride forward, draw near us.

3119. Wher, whether. dan, for Dominus, a title of respect commonly used in addressing monks. But Chaucer even uses it of Arcite, in the Knightes Tale, and of Cupid, Ho. Fame, 137.

3120. The monk’s name was Piers. See B. 3982, and the note.

3124. Cf. ‘He was not pale as a for-pyned goost’; Prol. A. 205. Jean de Meun says, in his Testament, l. 1073, that the friars have good pastures (il ont bonnes pastures).

3127. as to my doom, in my judgment.

3130. Scan the line—Bút a góvernoúr wylý and wýs. The Petworth MS. inserts ‘boþ’ before ‘wyly’: but this requires the very unlikely accentuation ‘govérnour’ and an emphasis on a. The line would scan better if we might insert art, or lyk, after But, but there is no authority for this.

3132. Read—A wél-faríng persónë, after which comes the pause, as marked in E. and Hn.

3139. The monk’s semi-cope, which seems to have been an ample one, is mentioned in the Prologue, A. 262. In Jack Upland, § 4, a friar is asked what is signified by his ‘wide cope.’

3142. ‘Shaven very high on his crown’; alluding to the tonsure.

3144. the corn, i. e. the chief part or share.

3145. borel men, lay-men. Borel means ‘rude, unlearned, ignorant,’ and seems to have arisen from a peculiar use of borel or burel, sb., a coarse cloth; so that its original sense, as an adj., was ‘in coarse clothing,’ or ‘rudely clad.’ See borrel and burel in the New Eng. Dictionary.

shrimpes, diminutive or poor creatures.

3146. wrecched impes, poor grafts, weakly shoots. Cf. A. S. impian, to graft, imp, a graft; borrowed from Low Lat. impotus, a graft, from Gk. ἔμϕυτος, engrafted.

3152. lussheburghes, light coins. In P. Plowman, B. xv. 342, we are told that ‘in Lussheborwes is a lyther alay (bad alloy), and yet loketh he lyke a sterlynge.’ They were spurious coins imported into England from Luxembourg, whence the name. See Liber Albus, ed. Riley, 1841, p. 495; and Blount’s Nomolexicon. Luxembourg is called Lusscheburghe in the Allit. Morte Arthure, l. 2388. The importation of this false money was frequently forbidden, viz. in 1347, 1348, and 1351.

3157. souneth into, tends to, is consistent with; see Prol. A. 307, and Sq. Ta., F. 517. The following extracts from Palsgrave’s French Dictionary are to the point. ‘I sownde, I appartayne or belong, Ie tens. Edition: current; Page: [226] Thys thyng sowndeth to a good purpose, Ceste chose tent a bonne fin.’ Also, ‘I sownde, as a tale or a report sowndeth to ones honesty or dyshonesty, Ie redonde. I promise you that this matter sowndeth moche to your dishonoure, Ie vous promets que ceste matyere redonde fort a votre deshonneur.’

3160. Seint Edward. There are two of the name, viz. Edward, king and martyr, commemorated on March 16, 18, or 19, and the second King Edward, best known as Edward the Confessor, commemorated on Jan. 5. In Piers the Plowman, B. xv. 217, we have—

‘Edmonde and Edwarde · eyther were kynges,

And seyntes ysette · tyl charite hem folwed.’

But Edward the Confessor is certainly meant; and there is a remarkable story about him that he was ‘warned of hys death certain dayes before hee dyed, by a ring that was brought to him by certain pilgrims coming from Hierusalem, which ring hee hadde secretly given to a poore man that askyd hys charitie in the name of God and sainte Johan the Evangelist.’ See Mr. Wright’s description of Ludlow Church, where are some remains of a stained glass window representing this story, in the eastern wall of the chapel of St. John. See also Chambers, Book of Days, i. 53, 54, where we read—‘The sculptures upon the frieze of the present shrine (in Westminster Abbey) represent fourteen scenes in the life of Edward the Confessor. . . . He was canonized by Pope Alexander about a century after his death. . . . He was esteemed the patron-saint of England until superseded in the thirteenth century by St. George.’ These fourteen scenes are fully described in Brayley’s Hist. of Westminster Abbey, in an account which is chiefly taken from a life of St. Edward written by Ailred of Rievaulx in 1163. Three ‘Lives of Edward the Confessor’ were edited, for the Master of the Rolls, by Mr. Luard in 1858. See Morley’s Eng. Writers, 1888, ii. 375.

3162. celle, cell. The monk calls it his cell because he was ‘the keper’ of it; Prol. 172.

3163. Tragédie; the final ie might be slurred over before is, in which case we might read for to for to (see footnote); but it is needless. The definition of ‘tragedy’ here given is repeated from Chaucer’s own translation of Boethius, which contains the remark—‘Glose. Tragedie is to seyn, a ditee [ditty] of a prosperitee for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchednesse’; bk. ii. pr. 2. 51. This remark is Chaucer’s own, as the word Glose marks his addition to, or gloss upon, his original. His remark refers to a passage in Boethius immediately preceding, viz. ‘Quid tragoediarum clamor aliud deflet, nisi indiscreto ictu fortunam felicia regna uertentem?’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, lib. ii. prosa 2. See also the last stanza of ‘Cresus’ in the Monkes Tale (vol. i. p. 268).

3169. exametron, hexameter. Chaucer is speaking of Latin, not of English verse; and refers to the common Latin hexameter used in heroic verse; he would especially be thinking of the Thebaid of Statius, Edition: current; Page: [227] the Metamorphoseon Liber of Ovid, the Aeneid of Vergil, and Lucan’s Pharsalia. This we could easily have guessed, but Chaucer has himself told us what was in his thoughts. For near the conclusion of his Troilus and Criseyde, which he calls a tragedie, he says—

‘And kis the steppes wheras thou seest pace

Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.’

Lucan is expressly cited in B. 401, 3909.

3170. In prose. For example, Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum and De Claris Mulieribus contain ‘tragedies’ in Latin prose. Cf. ll. 3655, 3910.

3171. in metre. For example, the tragedies of Seneca are in various metres, chiefly iambic. See also note to l. 3285.

3177. After hir ages, according to their periods; in chronological order. The probable allusion is to Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum, which begins with Adam and Nimrod, and keeps tolerably to the right order. For further remarks on this, shewing how Chaucer altered the order of these Tragedies in the course of revision, see vol. iii. p. 428.

The Monkes Tale.

For some account of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 427.

3181. Tragédie; accented on the second syllable, and riming with remédie; cf. B. 3163. Very near the end of Troilus and Criseyde, we find Chaucer riming it with comédie. That poem he also calls a tragedie (v. 1786)—

‘Go, litel book, go, litel myn tragédie,’ &c.

3183. fillen, fell. nas no, for ne was no, a double negative. Cf. Ch. tr. of Boethius—‘the olde age of tyme passed, and eek of present tyme now, is ful of ensaumples how that kinges ben chaunged in-to wrecchednesse out of hir welefulnesse’; bk. iii. pr. 5. 3.

3186. The Harl. MS. has—‘Ther may no man the cours of hir whiel holde,’ which Mr. Wright prefers. But the reading of the Six-text is well enough here; for in the preceding line Chaucer is speaking of Fortune under the image of a person fleeing away, to which he adds, that no one can stay her course. Fortune is also sometimes represented as stationary, and holding an ever-turning wheel, as in the Book of the Duchesse, 643; but that is another picture.

3188. Be war by, take warning from.

Lucifer.

3189. Lucifer, a Latin name signifying light-bringer, and properly applied to the morning-star. In Isaiah xiv. 12 the Vulgate has—‘Quomodo cecidisti de caelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris? corruisti in terram, qui uulnerabas gentes?’ &c. St. Jerome, Tertullian, St. Gregory, and Edition: current; Page: [228] other fathers, supposed this passage to apply to the fall of Satan. It became a favourite topic for writers both in prose and verse, and the allusions to it are innumerable. See note to Piers the Plowman, B. i. 105 (Clar. Press Series). Gower begins his eighth book of the Confessio Amantis with the examples of Lucifer and Adam.

Sandras, in his Étude sur Chaucer, p. 248, quotes some French lines from a ‘Volucraire,’ which closely agree with this first stanza. But it is a common theme.

3192. sinne, the sin of pride, as in all the accounts; probably from 1 Tim. iii. 6. Thus Gower, Conf. Amant. lib. i. (ed. Pauli, i. 153):—

‘For Lucifer, with them that felle,

Bar pride with him into helle.

Ther was pride of to grete cost,

Whan he for pride hath heven lost.’

3195. artow, art thou. Sathanas, Satan. The Hebrew sâiân means simply an adversary, as in 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 22; &c. A remarkable application of it to the evil spirit is in Luke x. 18. Milton also indentifies Lucifer with Satan; Par. Lost, vii. 131; x. 425; but they are sometimes distinguished, and made the names of two different spirits. See, for example, Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 270–283.

3196. Read misérie, after which follows the metrical pause.

Adam.

3197. Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium begins with a chapter ‘De Adam et Eua.’ It contains the passage—‘Et ex agro, qui postea Damascenus, . . . ductus in Paradisum deliciarum.’ Lydgate, in his Fall of Princes (fol. a 5), has—

‘Of slyme of the erthe, in damascene the feelde,

God made theym aboue eche creature.’

The notion of the creation of Adam in a field whereupon afterwards stood Damascus, occurs in Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, where we find (ed. 1526, fol. vii)—‘Quasi quereret aliquis, Remansit homo in loco vbi factus est, in agro scilicet damasceno? Non. Vbi ergo translatus est? In paradisum.’ See also Maundeville’s Travels, cap. xv; Genesis and Exodus, ed. Morris, l. 207; and note in Mätzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben, ii. 185.

3199. Cf. ‘Formatus est homo . . de spurcissimo spermate’; Innocent III., De Miseria Conditionis Humanae, i. 1 (Köppel).

3200. So Boccaccio—‘O caeca rerum cupiditas! Hii, quibus rerum cinnium, dante Deo, erat imperium,’ &c. Cf. Gen. i. 29; ii. 16.

Sampson.

3205. The story of Sampson is also in Boccaccio, lib. i. c. 17 (not 19, as Tyrwhitt says). But Chaucer seems mostly to have followed Edition: current; Page: [229] the account in Judges, xiii-xvi. The word annunciat, referring to the announcement of Samson’s birth by the angel (Judges xiii. 3), may have been suggested by Boccaccio, whose account begins—‘Praenunciante per angelum Deo, ex Manue Israhelita quodam et pulcherrima eius vxore Sanson progenitus est.’ thangel in l. 3206=the angel.

3207. consecrat, consecrated. A good example of the use of the ending -at; cf. situate for situated.—M. Shakespeare has consecrate; Com. of. Err. ii. 2. 134.

3208. whyl he mighte see, as long as he preserved his eyesight.

3210. To speke of strengthe, with regard to strength; to speke of is a kind of preposition.—M. Cf. Milton’s Samson Agonistes, 126–150.

3211. wyves. Samson told the secret of his riddle to his wife, Judges xiv. 17; and of his strength to Delilah, id. xvi. 17.

3215. al to-rente, completely rent in twain. The prefix to- has two powers in Old English. Sometimes it is the preposition to in composition, as in towards, or M. E. to-flight (G. zuflucht), a refuge. But more commonly it is a prefix signifying in twain, spelt zer- in German, and dis- in Mœso-Gothic and Latin. Thus to-rente=rent in twain; to-brast=burst in twain, &c. The intensive adverb al, utterly, was used not merely (as is commonly supposed) before verbs beginning with to-, but in other cases also. Thus, in William of Palerne, l. 872, we find—‘He was al a-wondred,’ where al precedes the intensive prefix a-=A. S. of. Again, in the same poem, l. 661, we have—‘al bi-weped for wo,’ where al now precedes the prefix bi-. In Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Skeat, x. 596, is the expression—

‘For, hapnyt ony to slyde or fall,

He suld be soyne to-fruschit al.’

Where al to-fruschit means utterly broken in pieces. Perhaps the clearest example of the complete separability of al from to is seen in l. 3884 of William of Palerne;—

‘Al to-tare his atir· þat he to-tere miȝt’;

i. e. he entirely tore apart his attire, as much of it as he could tear apart. But at a later period of English, when the prefix to- was less understood, a new and mistaken notion arose of regarding al to as a separable prefix, with the sense of all to pieces. I have observed no instance of this use earlier than the reign of Henry VIII. Thus Surrey, Sonnet 9, has ‘al-to shaken’ for shaken to pieces. Latimer has—‘they love and al-to love (i. e. entirely love) him’; Serm. p. 289. For other examples, see Al-to in the Bible Word-book; and my notes in Notes and Queries, 3 Ser. xii. 464, 535; also All, § C. 15, in the New E. Dict.

3220. Samson’s wife was given to a friend; Judges, xiv. 20. She was afterwards burnt by her own people; Judges, xv. 6.

3224. on every tayl; one brand being fastened to the tails of two foxes; Judg. xv. 4.

3225. cornes. The Vulgate has segetes and fruges; also uineas for Edition: current; Page: [230] vynes, and cliueta for oliveres. The plural form cornes is not uncommon in Early English. Cf. ‘Quen thair corns war in don,’ i. e. when their harvests were gathered in; Spec. of Eng. pt. ii. ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 70, l. 39. And again, ‘alle men-sleeris and brenneris of houses and cornes [misprinted corves] ben cursed opynly in parische chirches’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 329.

3234. wang-toth, molar tooth. This expression is taken from the Vulgate, which has—‘Aperuit itaque Dominus molarem dentem in maxilla asini’; where the A. V. has only—‘an hollow place that was in the jaw’; Judg. xv. 19.

3236. Judicum, i. e. Liber Judicum, the Book of Judges. Cf. note to B. 93, at p. 141.

3237. Gazan, a corruption of Gazam, the acc. case, in Judg. xvi. 1, Vulgate version.

3244. ne hadde been, there would not have been. Since hadde is here the subjunctive mood, it is dissyllabic. Read—worldë n’ haddë.

3245. sicer, from the Lat. sicera, Greek σίκερα, strong drink, is the word which we now spell cider; see Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, i. 363, note. It is used here because found in the Vulgate version of Judges xiii. 7; ‘caue ne uinum bibas, nec siceram.’ I slightly amend the spelling of the MSS., which have ciser, siser, sythir, cyder. Wyclif has sither, cyther, sidir, sydur.

3249. twenty winter, twenty years; Judg. xvi. 31. The English used to reckon formerly by winters instead of years; as may be seen in a great many passages in the A. S. Chronicle.

3253. Dalida; from Gk. Δαλιδά, in the Septuagint. The Vulgate has Dalila; but Chaucer (or his scribes) naturally adopted a form which seemed to have a nearer resemblance to an accusative case, such being, at that time, the usual practice; cf. Briseide (from Briseida), Criseyde and Anelida. Lydgate also uses the form Dalida.

3259. in this array, in this (defenceless) condition.

3264. querne, hand-mill. The Vulgate has—‘et clausum in carcere molere fecerunt’; Judg. xvi. 21. But Boccaccio says—‘ad molas manuarias coegere.’ The word occurs in the House of Fame, 1798; and in Wyclif’s Bible, Exod. xi. 5; Mat. xxiv. 41. In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 181, the story of Samson is alluded to, and it is said of him that he ‘uil [fell] into þe honden of his yuo [foes], þet him deden grinde ate querne ssamuolliche,’ i. e. who made him grind at the mill shamefully (in a shameful manner). Lydgate copies Chaucer rather closely, in his Fall of Princes, fol. e 7:—

‘And of despite, after as I fynde,

At their quernes made hym for to grinde.’

3269. Thende, the end. Caytif means (1) a captive, (2) a wretch. It is therefore used here very justly.

3274. two pilers, better than the reading the pilers of MS. E.; because two are expressly mentioned; Judg. xvi. 29.

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3282. So Boccaccio—‘Sic aduersa credulitas, sic amantis pietas, sic mulieris egit inclyta fides. Vt quem non poterant homines, non uincula, non ferrum uincere, a mulieribus latrunculis uinceretur.’ Lydgate has the expressions—

‘Beware by Sampson your counseyll well to kepe,

Though [misprinted That] Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe’;

and again:—

‘Suffre no nightworm within your counseyll crepe,

Though Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe.’

Hercules.

3285. There is little about Hercules in Boccaccio; but Chaucer’s favourite author, Ovid, has his story in the Metamorphoses, book ix, and Heroides, epist. 9. Tyrwhitt, however, has shewn that Chaucer more immediately copies a passage in Boethius, de Cons. Phil. lib. iv. met. 7, which is as follows:—

‘Herculem duri celebrant labores;

Ille Centauros domuit superbos;

Abstulit saeuo spolium leoni;

Fixit et certis uolucres sagittis;

Poma cernenti rapuit draconi,

Aureo laeuam grauior metallo;

Cerberum traxit triplici catena.

Victor immitem posuisse fertur

Pabulum saeuis dominum quadrigis.

Hydra combusto periit ueneno;

Fronte turpatus Achelous amnis

Ora demersit pudibunda ripis.

Strauit Antaeum Libycis arenis,

Cacus Euandri satiauit iras,

Quosque pressurus foret altus orbis

Setiger spumis humeros notauit.

Ultimus caelum labor irreflexo

Sustulit collo, pretiumque rursus

Ultimi caelum meruit laboris.’

But it is still more interesting to see Chaucer’s own version of this passage, which is as follows (ed. Morris, p. 147; cf. vol. ii. p. 125):—

‘Hercules is celebrable for his harde trauaile; he dawntede þe proude Centauris, half hors, half man; and he rafte þe despoylynge fro þe cruel lyoun; þat is to seyne, he slouȝ þe lyoun and rafte hym hys skyn. He smot þe birds þat hyȝten arpijs in þe palude of lyrne wiþ certeyne arwes. He rauyssede applis fro þe wakyng dragoun, & hys hand was þe more heuy for þe goldene metal. He drouȝ Cerberus þe hound of helle by his treble cheyne; he, ouer-comer, as it is seid, haþ put an vnmeke lorde fodre to his cruel hors; þis is to sein, þat Edition: current; Page: [232] hercules slouȝ diomedes and made his hors to etyn hym. And he, hercules, slouȝ Idra þe serpent & brende þe venym; and achelaus þe flode, defoulede in his forhede, dreinte his shamefast visage in his strondes; þis is to seyn, þat achelaus couþe transfigure hymself into dyuerse lykenesse, & as he fauȝt wiþ ercules, at þe laste he turnide hym in-to a bole [bull]; and hercules brak of oon of hys hornes, & achelaus for shame hidde hym in hys ryuer. And he, hercules, caste adoun Antheus þe geaunt in þe strondes of libye; & kacus apaisede þe wraþþes of euander; þis is to sein, þat hercules slouȝ þe monstre kacus & apaisede wiþ þat deeþ þe wraþþe of euander. And þe bristlede boor markede wiþ scomes [scums, foam] þe sholdres of hercules, þe whiche sholdres þe heye cercle of heuene sholde þreste [was to rest upon]. And þe laste of his labours was, þat he sustenede þe heuene upon his nekke unbowed; & he deseruede eftsones þe heuene, to ben þe pris of his laste trauayle.’

And in his House of Fame, book iii. (l. 1413), he mentions—

‘Alexander, and Hercules,

That with a sherte his lyf lees.’

3288. Hercules’ first labour was the slaying of the Nemean lion, whose skin he often afterwards wore.

3289. Centauros; this is the very form used by Boethius, else we might have expected Centaurus or Centaures. After the destruction of the Erymanthian boar, Hercules slew Pholus the centaur; and (by accident) Chiron. His slaughter of the centaur Nessus ultimately brought about his own death; cf. l. 3318.

3290. Arpies, harpies. The sixth labour was the destruction of the Stymphalian birds, who ate human flesh.

3291. The eleventh labour was the fetching of the golden apples, guarded by the dragon Ladon, from the garden of the Hesperides.

3292. The twelfth labour was the bringing of Cerberus from the lower world.

3293. Busirus. Here Chaucer has confused two stories. One is, that Busiris, a king of Egypt, used to sacrifice all foreigners who came to Egypt, till the arrival of Hercules, who slew him. The other is ‘the eighth labour,’ when Hercules killed Diomedes, a king in Thrace, who fed his mares with human flesh, till Hercules slew him and gave his body to be eaten by the mares, as Chaucer himself says in his translation. The confusion was easy, because the story of Busiris is mentioned elsewhere by Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 6, in a passage which Chaucer thus translates (see vol. ii. p. 43):—‘I have herd told of Busirides, þat was wont to sleen his gestes [guests] þat herberweden [lodged] in his hous; and he was sleyn him-self of Ercules þat was his gest.’ Lydgate tells the story of Busiris correctly.

3295. serpent, i.e. the Lernean hydra, whom Chaucer, in the passage from Boethius, calls ‘Idra [or Ydra] the serpent.’

3296. Achelois, seems to be used here as a genitive form from Edition: current; Page: [233] a nominative Achelo; in his translation of Boethius we find Achelous and Achelaus. The spelling of names by old authors is often vague. The line means—he broke one of the two horns of Achelous. The river-god Achelous, in his fight with Hercules, took the form of a bull, whereupon the hero broke off one of his horns.

3297. The adventures with Cacus and Antaeus are well known.

3299. The fourth labour was the destruction of the Erymanthian boar.

3300. longe, for a long time; in the margin of MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24, is written the gloss diu.

3307. The allusion is to the ‘pillars’ of Hercules. The expression ‘both ends of the world’ refers to the extreme points of the continents of Europe and Africa, world standing here for continent. The story is that Hercules erected two pillars, Calpe and Abyla, on the two sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. The words ‘seith Trophee’ seem to refer to an author named Trophaeus. In Lydgate’s prologue to his Fall of Princes, st. 41, he says of Chaucer that—

‘In youth he made a translacion

Of a boke whiche called is Trophe

In Lumbarde tonge, as men may rede and se;

And in our vulgar, long er that he deyde,

Gave it the name of Troylus and Creseyde.’

This seems to say that Trophe was the Italian name of a Book (or otherwise, the name of a book in Italian), whence Chaucer drew his story of Troilus. But the notion must be due to some mistake, since that work was taken from the ‘Filostrato’ of Boccaccio. The only trace of the name of Trophaeus as an author is in a marginal note—possibly Chaucer’s own—which appears in both the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., viz. ‘Ille vates Chaldeorum Tropheus.’ See, however, vol. ii. p. lv, where I shew that, in this passage at any rate, Trophee really refers to Guido delle Colonne, who treats of the deeds of Hercules in the first book of his Historia Troiana, and makes particular mention of the famous columns (as to which Ovid and Boethius are alike silent).

3311. thise clerkes, meaning probably Ovid and Boccaccio. See Ovid’s Heroides, epist. ix., entitled Deianira Herculi, and Metamorph. lib. ix.; Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, lib. i. cap. xviii., and De Mulieribus Claris, cap. xxii. See also the Trachineae of Sophocles, which Chaucer of course never read.

3315. wered, worn; so in A. 75, and B. 3320, wered is the form of the past tense. Instances of verbs with weak preterites in Chaucer, but strong ones in modern English, are rare indeed; but there are several instances of the contrary, e. g. wep, slep, wesh, wex, now wept, slept, washed, waxed. Wore is due to analogy with bore; cf. could for coud.

3317. Both Ovid and Boccaccio represent Deianira as ignorant of the fatal effects which the shirt would produce. See Ovid, Metam. Edition: current; Page: [234] ix. 133. Had Chaucer written later, he might have included Gower among the clerks, as the latter gives the story of Hercules and Deianira in his Conf. Amantis, lib. ii. (ed. Pauli, i. 236), following Ovid. Thus he says—

‘With wepend eye and woful herte

She tok out thilke vnhappy sherte,

As she that wende wel to do.’

3326. For long upbraidings of Fortune, see The Boke of the Duchesse, 617; Rom. Rose, 5407; Boethius, bk. i. met. 5; &c.

Nabugodonosor.

3335. Nabugodonosor; generally spelt Nabuchodonosor in copies of the Vulgate, of which this other spelling is a mere variation. Gower has the same spelling as Chaucer, and relates the story near the end of book i. of the Conf. Amantis (ed. Pauli, i. 136). Both no doubt took it directly from Daniel i-iv.

3338. The vessel is here an imitation of the French idiom; F. vaisselle means the plate, as Mr. Jephson well observes. Cf. l. 3494.

3349. In the word statue the second syllable is rapidly slurred over, like that in glorie in l. 3340. See the same effect in the Kn. Tale, ll. 117, 1097 (A. 975, 1955).

3356. tweye, two; a strange error for three, whose names are familiar; viz. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Balthasar.

3373. Balthasar; so spelt by Boccaccio, who relates the story very briefly, De Cas. Virorum Illust., lib. ii. cap. 19. So also, by Peter Comestor, in his Historia Scholastica; and by Gower, Conf. Amant., lib. v (ed. Pauli, ii. 365). The Vulgate generally has Baltassar; Daniel, cap. v.

3379. and ther he lay; cf. l. 3275 above.

3384. The word tho is supplied for the metre. The scribes have considered vesselles (sic) as a trisyllable; but see ll. 3391, 3416, 3418.

3388. Of, for. Cf. ‘thank God of al,’ i. e. for all; in Chaucer’s Balade of Truth.—M. See note in vol. i. pp. 552–3.

3422. Tyrwhitt has trusteth, in the plural, but thou is used throughout. Elsewhere Chaucer also has ‘on whom we truste,’ Prol. A. 501; ‘truste on fortune,’ B. 3326; cf. ‘syker on to trosten,’ P. Pl. Crede, l. 350.

3427. Dárius, so accented. degree, rank, position.

3429–36. I have no doubt that this stanza was a later addition.

3436. proverbe. The allusion is, in the first place, to Boethius, de Cons. Phil., bk. iii. pr. 5—‘Sed quem felicitas amicum fecit, infortunium Edition: current; Page: [235] faciet inimicum’; which Chaucer translates—‘Certes, swiche folk as weleful fortune maketh freendes, contrarious fortune maketh hem enemys’; see vol. ii. p. 63. Cf. Prov. xix. 4—‘Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour,’ &c. So also—‘If thou be brought low, he [i. e. thy friend] will be against thee, and will hide himself from thy face’; Ecclus. vi. 12. In Hazlitt’s Collection of English Proverbs, p. 235, we find—

‘In time of prosperity, friends will be plenty;

In time of adversity, not one among twenty.’

See also note to l. 120 above; and, not to multiply instances, note st. 19 of Goldsmith’s Hermit:—

‘And what is friendship but a name,

A charm that lulls to sleep;

A shade that follows wealth or fame,

And leaves the wretch to weep?’

Zenobia.

3437. Cenobia. The story of Zenobia is told by Trebellius Pollio, who flourished under Constantine, in cap. xxix. of his work entitled Triginta Tyranni; but Chaucer no doubt followed later accounts, one of which was clearly that given by Boccaccio in his De Mulieribus Claris, cap. xcviii. Boccaccio relates her story again in his De Casibus Virorum, lib. viii. c. 6; in an edition of which, printed in 1544, I find references to the biography of Aurelian by Flavius Vopiscus, to the history of Orosius, lib. vii. cap. 23, and to Baptista Fulgosius, lib. iv. cap. 3. See, in particular, chap. xi. of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where the story of Zenobia is given at length. Palmyra is described by Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 21. Zenobia’s ambition tempted her to endeavour to make herself a Queen of the East, instead of remaining merely Queen of Palmyra; but she was defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian, ad 273, and carried to Rome, where she graced his triumph, ad 274. She survived this reverse of fortune for some years.

Palimerie. Such is the spelling in the best MSS.; but MS. Hl. reads—‘of Palmire the queene.’ It is remarkable that MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 19 has the reading—‘Cenobia, of Belmary quene,’ which suggests confusion with Belmarie, in the Prol. A. 57; but see the note to that line. It occupied the site of the ancient Tadmor, or ‘city of palmtrees,’ in an oasis of the Great Syrian desert. It has been in ruins since about ad 1400.

3441. In the second ne in, the e is slurred over; cf. nin, Sq. Ta., F. 35.

3442. Perse. This (like l. 3438) is Chaucer’s mistake. Boccaccio says expressly that she was of the race of the Ptolemies of Egypt; but further Edition: current; Page: [236] on he remarks—‘Sic cum Persis et Armenis principibus, vt illos urbanitate et facetia superaret.’ This may account for the confusion.

3446. Boccaccio says (de Mul. Clar.)—‘Dicunt autem hanc a pueritia sua spretis omnino muliebribus officiis, cum iam corpusculum eduxisset in robur, syluas & nemora incoluisse plurimum, & accinctam pharetra, ceruis caprisque cursu atque sagittis fuisse infestam. Inde cum in acriores deuenisset uires, ursus amplecti ausam, pardos, leonesque insequi, obuios expectare, capere & occidere, ac in praedam trahere.’ This accounts for the word office, and may shew how closely Chaucer has followed his original.

3496. lafte not, forbore not; see A. 492.

3497. She was acquainted with Egyptian literature, and studied Greek under the philosopher Longinus, author of a celebrated treatise on ‘The Sublime.’

3502. housbonde. Her husband was Odenathus, or Odenatus, the ruler of Palmyra, upon whom the emperor Gallienus had bestowed the title of Augustus. He was murdered by some of his relations, and some have even insinuated that Zenobia consented to the crime. Most scribes spell the name Onedake, by metathesis for Odenake (Odenate), like the spelling Adriane for Ariadne.

3507. doon hem flee, cause them (her and her husband) to flee.

3510. Sapor I. reigned over Persia ad 240–273. He defeated the emperor Valerian, whom he kept in captivity for the rest of his life. After conquering Syria and taking Caesarea, he was defeated by Odenatus and Zenobia, who founded a new empire at Palmyra. See Gibbon, Decline, &c., chap. x.

3511. proces, succession of events. fil, fell, befell.

3512. title, pronounced nearly as title in French, the e being elided before had.

3515. Petrark. Tyrwhitt suggests that perhaps Boccaccio’s book had fallen into Chaucer’s hands under the name of Petrarch. We may, however, suppose that Chaucer had read the account in a borrowed book, and did not certainly know whether Petrarch or Boccaccio was the author. Instances of similar mistakes are common enough in Early English. Modern readers are apt to forget that, in the olden times, much information had to be carried in the memory, and there was seldom much facility for verification or for a second perusal of a story.

3519. cruelly. The Harl. MS. has the poor reading trewely, miswritten for crewely.

3525. Claudius II., emperor of Rome, ad 268–270. He succeeded Gallienus, as Chaucer says, and was succeeded by Aurelian.

3535. Boccaccio calls them Heremianus and Timolaus, so that Hermanno (as in the MSS.) should probably be Heremanno. Professor Robertson Smith tells me that the right names are Herennianus and Timoleon. The line cannot well be scanned as it stands.

3550. char, chariot. Boccaccio describes this ‘currum, quem sibi ex auro gemmisque praeciocissimum Zenobia fabricari fecerat.’

Edition: current; Page: [237]

3556. charged, heavily laden. She was so laden with chains of massive gold, and covered with pearls and gems, that she could scarcely support the weight; so says Boccaccio. Gibbon says the same.

3562. vitremyte. I have no doubt this reading (as in Tyrwhitt) is correct. All the six MSS. in the Six-text agree in it. The old printed editions have were autremyte, a mere corruption of were a u[i]tremyte; and the Harl. MS. has wyntermyte, which I take to be an attempt to make sense of a part of the word, just as we have turned écrevisse into cray-fish. What the word means, is another question; it is perhaps the greatest ‘crux’ in Chaucer. As the word occurs nowhere else, the solution I offer is a mere guess. I suppose it to be a coined word, formed on the Latin vitream mitram, expressing, literally, a glass head-dress, in complete contrast to a strong helmet. My reasons for supposing this are as follows.

(1) With regard to mitra. In Low-Latin, its commonest meaning is a woman’s head-dress. But it was especially and widely used as a term of mockery, both in Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. The mitra was the cap which criminals were made to wear as a sign of degradation; see Carpenter’s Supp. to Ducange, s. v. Mitra; Vocabulario degli Accad. della Crusca, s. v. Mitera; and any large Spanish Dict. s. v. Mitra. Even Cotgrave has—‘Mitré, mitred; hooded with a miter, wearing a miter; set on a pillory or scaffold, with a miter of paper on his head.’ The chief difficulty in this derivation is the loss of the r, but Godefroy has a quotation (s. v. mite, 2), which would suit the sense—‘mites de toile costonnees, et par dessus ung grand chappel de fer ou de cuir bouilli.’

(2) With regard to vitream. This may refer to a proverb, probably rather English than foreign, to which I have never yet seen a reference. But its existence is clear. To give a man ‘a glazen hood’ meant, in Old English, to mock, delude, cajole. It appears in Piers the Plowman, B. xx. 171, where a story is told of a man who, fearing to die, consulted the physicians, and gave them large sums of money, for which they gave him in return ‘a glasen houve,’ i. e. a hood of glass, a thing that was no defence at all Still clearer is the allusion to the same proverb in Chaucer himself, in a passage explained by no previous editor, in Troil. and Cres. v. 469, where Fortune is said to have an intention of deluding Troilus; or, as the poet says,

‘Fortune his howve entended bet to glase,’

i. e. literally, Fortune intended to glaze his hood still better for him, i. e. to make a still greater fool of him. In the Aldine edition, howue is printed howen in this passage, but howue occurs elsewhere; Tyrwhitt has hove, a common variation of howue. If this note is unsatisfactory, I may yet claim to have explained in it at least one long-standing difficulty; viz. this line in Troilus. Tyrwhitt long ago explained that, in Chaucer, the phrases to set a man’s hood, and to set a man’s cap, have a like meaning, viz. to delude him. Chaucer uses verre for glass Edition: current; Page: [238] in another passage of a similar character, viz. in Troil. and Cres. ii. 867, where we read—

‘And forthy, who that hath an hede of verre,

Fro cast of stones war him in the werre.’

3564. a distaf. This is from Boccaccio’s other account, in the De Casibus Virorum. ‘Haec nuper imperatoribus admiranda, nunc uenit miseranda plebeis. Haec nunc galeata concionari militibus assueta, nunc uelata cogitur muliercularum audire fabellas. Haec nuper Orienti praesidens sceptra gestabat, nunc Romae subiacens, colum, sicut ceterae, baiulat.’ Zenobia survived her disgrace for some years, living at Rome as a private person on a small estate which was granted to her, and which, says Trebellius Pollio, ‘hodie Zenobia dicitur.’

Peter, King of Spain.

3565. See vol. iii. p. 429, for the order in which the parts of the Monk’s Tale are arranged. I follow here the arrangement in the Harleian MS. Peter, king of Castile, born in 1334, is generally known as Pedro the Cruel. He reigned over Castile and Leon from 1350 to 1362, and his conduct was marked by numerous acts of unprincipled atrocity. After a destructive civil war, he fell into the hands of his brother, Don Enrique (Henry). A personal struggle took place between the brothers, in the course of which Enrique stabbed Pedro to the heart; March 23, 1369. See the ballad by Sir Walter Scott, entitled the Death of Don Pedro, in Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads, commencing—

‘Henry and Don Pedro clasping

Hold in straining arms each other;

Tugging hard and closely grasping,

Brother proves his strength with brother.’

It is remarkable that Pedro was very popular with his own party, despite his crimes, and Chaucer takes his part because our Black Prince fought on the side of Pedro against Enrique at the battle of Najera, April 3, 1367; and because John of Gaunt married Constance, daughter of Pedro, about Michaelmas, 1371.

3573. See the description of Du Gueschlin’s arms as given below. The ‘field’ was argent, and the black eagle appears as if caught by a rod covered with birdlime, because the bend dexter across the shield seems to restrain him from flying away. The first three lines of the stanza refer to Bertrand Du Gueschlin, who ‘brew,’ i. e. contrived Pedro’s murder, viz. by luring him to Enrique’s tent. But the last three lines refer to another knight who, according to Chaucer, took a still more active part in the matter, being a worker in it. This second person was a certain Sir Oliver Mauny, whose name Chaucer conceals under the synonym of wicked nest, standing for O. Fr. mau ni, where Edition: current; Page: [239] mau is O. Fr. for mal, bad or wicked, and ni is O. Fr. for nid, Lat. nidus, a nest. Observe too, that Chaucer uses the word need, not deed. There may be an excellent reason for this; for, in the course of the struggle between the brothers, Enrique was at first thrown, ‘when (says Lockhart) one of Henry’s followers, seizing Don Pedro by the leg, turned him over, and his master, thus at length gaining the upper hand, instantly stabbed the king to the heart. Froissart calls this man the Vicomte de Roquebetyn, and others the Bastard of Anisse.’ I have no doubt that Chaucer means to tell us that the helper in Enrique’s need was no other than Mauny. He goes on to say that this Mauny was not like Charles the Great’s Oliver, an honourable peer, but an Oliver of Armorica, a man like Charles’s Ganelon, the well-known traitor, of whom Chaucer elsewhere says (Book of the Duchess, l. 1121)—

‘Or the false Genelon,

He that purchased the treson

Of Rowland and of Olivere.’

This passage has long been a puzzle, but was first cleared up in an excellent letter by Mr. Furnivall in Notes and Queries, which I here subjoin; I may give myself the credit, however, of identifying ‘wicked nest’ with O. Fr. mau ni.

‘The first two lines [of the stanza] describe the arms of Bertrand du Guesclin, which were, a black double-headed eagle displayed on a silver shield, with a red band across the whole, from left to right [in heraldic language, a bend dexter, gules]—“the lymrod coloured as the glede” or live coal—as may be seen in Anselme’s Histoire Généalogique de France, and a MS. Généalogies de France in the British Museum. Next, if we turn to Mr. D. F. Jamison’s excellent Life and Times of Bertrand du Guesclin, we not only find on its cover Bertrand’s arms as above described, but also at vol. ii. pp. 92–4, an account of the plot and murder to which Chaucer alludes, and an identification of his traitorous or “Genylon” Oliver, with Sir Oliver de Mauny of Brittany (or Armorica), Bertrand’s cousin [or, according to Froissart, cap. 245, his nephew].

‘After the battle of Monteil, on March 14, 1369, Pedro was besieged in the castle of Monteil near the borders of La Mancha, by his brother Enrique; who was helped by Du Guesclin and many French knights. Finding escape impossible, Pedro sent Men Rodriguez secretly to Du Guesclin with an offer of many towns and 200,000 gold doubloons if he would desert Enrique and reinstate Pedro. Du Guesclin refused the offer, and “the next day related to his friends and kinsmen in the camp, and especially to his cousin, Sir Oliver de Mauny, what had taken place.” He asked them if he should tell Enrique; they all said yes: so he told the king. Thereupon Enrique promised Bertrand the same reward that Pedro had offered him, but asked him also to assure Men Rodriguez of Pedro’s safety if he would come to his (Du Guesclin’s) lodge. Relying on Bertrand’s assurance, Pedro came to him on Edition: current; Page: [240] March 23; Enrique entered the lodge directly afterwards, and after a struggle, stabbed Pedro, and seized his kingdom.

‘We see then that Chaucer was justified in asserting that Du Guesclin and Sir Oliver Mauny “brew this cursednesse”; and his assertion has some historical importance; for as his patron and friend, John of Gaunt, married one of Pedro’s daughters [named Constance] as his second wife [Michaelmas, 1371], Chaucer almost certainly had the account of Pedro’s death from his daughter, or one of her attendants, and is thus a witness for the truth of the narrative of the Spanish chronicler Ayala, given above, against the French writers, Froissart, Cuvelier, &c., who make the Bégue de Villaines the man who inveigled Pedro. This connexion of Chaucer with John of Gaunt and his second wife must excuse the poet in our eyes for calling so bad a king as Pedro the Cruel “worthy” and “the glorie of Spayne, whom Fortune heeld so hy in magestee.”

‘In the Corpus MS. these knights are called in a side-note Bertheun Claykyn (which was one of the many curious ways in which Du Guesclin’s name was spelt) and Olyuer Mawny; in MS. Harl. 1758 they are called Barthilmewe Claykeynne and Olyuer Mawyn; and in MS. Lansdowne 851 they are called Betelmewe Claykyn and Oliuer Mawnye. Mauni or Mauny was a well-known Armorican or Breton family. Chaucer’s epithet of “Genilon” for Oliver de Mauny is specially happy, because Genelon was the Breton knight who betrayed to their death the great Roland and the flower of Charlemagne’s knights to the Moors at Roncesvalles. Charles’s or Charlemagne’s great paladin, Oliver, is too well known to need more than a bare mention.’—F. J. Furnivall, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, viii. 449.

Peter, King of Cyprus.

3581. In a note to Chaucer’s Prologue, A. 51, Tyrwhitt says—‘Alexandria in Egypt was won, and immediately afterwards abandoned, in 1365, by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. The same Prince, soon after his accession to the throne in 1352, had taken Satalie, the antient Attalia; and in another expedition about 1367 he made himself master of the town of Layas in Armenia. Compare 11 Mémoire sur les Ouvrages de Guillaume de Machaut, Acad. des Ins. tom. xx. pp. 426, 432, 439; and Mémoire sur la Vie de Philippe de Maizières, tom. xvii. p. 493.’ He was assassinated in 1369, Cf. note to A. 51.

Barnabo of Lombardy.

3589. ‘Bernabo Visconti, duke of Milan, was deposed by his nephew and thrown into prison, where he died in 1385.’—Tyrwhitt. This date of Dec. 18, 1385 is that of the latest circumstance incidentally referred to in the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer had been sent to treat with Visconti Edition: current; Page: [241] in 1378, so that he knew him personally. See Froissart, bk. ii. ch. 158; Engl. Cyclopaedia, s. v. Visconti; Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 109. And see vol. i. p. xxxii.

Ugolino of Pisa.

3597. ‘Chaucer himself has referred us to Dante for the original of this tragedy: see Inferno, canto xxxiii.’—Tyrwhitt. An account of Count Ugolino is given in a note to Cary’s Dante, from Villani, lib. vii. capp. 120–127. This account is different from Dante’s, and represents him as very treacherous. He made himself master of Pisa in July 1288, but in the following March was seized by the Pisans, who threw him, with his two sons, and two of his grandsons, into a prison, where they perished of hunger in a few days. Chaucer says three sons, the eldest being five years of age. Dante says four sons.

3606. Roger; i. e. the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, who was Ugolino’s enemy.

3616. This line is imperfect at the caesura; accent but. Tyrwhitt actually turns herde into hered, to make it dissyllabic; but such an ‘emendation’ is not legitimate. The Harl. MS. has—‘He herd it wel, but he saugh it nought’; where Mr. Jephson inserts ne before saugh without any comment. Perhaps read—he [ne] spak.

‘The hour drew near

When they were wont to bring us food; the mind

Of each misgave him through his dream, and I

Heard, at its outlet underneath, lock’d up

The horrible tower: whence, uttering not a word,

I look’d upon the visage of my sons.

I wept not: so all stone I felt within.

They wept: and one, my little Anselm, cried,

“Thou lookest so! Father, what ails thee?” ’ &c.

Cary’s Dante.

3621. Dante does not mention the ages; but he says that the son named Gaddo died on the fourth day, and the other three on the fifth and sixth days. Observe that Chaucer’s tender lines, ll. 3623–8, are his own.

3624. Morsel breed, morsel of bread; cf. barel ale for barrel of ale, B. 3083.—M.

3636. ‘I may lay the blame of all my woe upon thy false wheel.’ Cf. B. 3860.

3640. two; there were now but two survivors, the youngest, according to Chaucer, being dead.

‘They, who thought

I did it through desire of feeding, rose

O’ the sudden, and cried, “Father, we should grieve

Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gavest

These weeds of miserable flesh we wear,

And do thou strip them off from us again.” ’

Cary’s Dante.

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3651. Dant; i. e. Dante Alighieri, the great poet of Italy, born in 1265, died Sept. 14, 1321. Chaucer mentions him again in his House of Fame, book i., as the author of the Inferno, in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, l. 360, and in the Wyf of Bathes Tale, D. 1126.

Nero.

3655. Swetonius; this refers to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius; but it would be a mistake to suppose that Chaucer has followed his account very closely. Our poet seems to have had a habit of mentioning authorities whom he did not immediately follow, by which he seems to have meant no more than that they were good authorities upon the subject. Here, for instance, he merely means that we can find in Suetonius a good account of Nero, which will give us all minor details. But in reality he draws the story more immediately from other sources, especially from Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum, lib. vii. cap. 4, from the Roman de la Rose, and from Boethius, de Cons. Philos. lib. ii. met. 6, and lib. iii. met. 4. The English Romaunt of the Rose does not contain the passage about Nero, but it is interesting to refer to Chaucer’s translation of Boethius. Vincent of Beauvais has an account of Nero, in his Speculum Historiale, lib. ix. capp. 1-7, in which he chiefly follows Suetonius. See also Orosius, lib. vii. 7, and Eutropius, lib. vii.

3657. South; the MSS. have North, but it is fair to make the correction, as Chaucer certainly knew the sense of Septemtrioun, and the expression is merely borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, ed. Méon, l. 6271, where we read,

‘Cis desloiaus, que ge ci di;

Et d’Orient et de Midi,

D’Occident, de Septentrion

Tint il la juridicion.’

And, in his Boethius, after saying that Nero ruled from East to West, he adds—‘And eke þis Nero gouernede by Ceptre alle þe peoples þat ben vndir þe colde sterres þat hyȝten þe seuene triones; þis is to seyn, he gouernede alle þe poeples þat ben vndir þe parties of þe norþe. And eke Nero gouerned alle þe poeples þat þe violent wynde Nothus scorchíþ, and bakiþ þe brennynge sandes by his drie hete; þat is to seyne, alle þe poeples in þe souþe’; ed. Morris, p. 55 (cf. vol. ii. p. 45).

3663. From Suetonius; cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 285.

3665. This is from Suetonius, who says—‘Piscatus est rete aurato, purpura coccoque funibus nexis’; cap. xxx. So also Orosius, vii. 7; Eutropius, vii. 9.

3669. This passage follows Boethius, bk. ii. met. 6, very closely, as is evident by comparing it with Chaucer’s translation (see vol. ii. p. 44). ‘He leet brenne the citee of Rome, and made sleen the senatoures. And he, cruel, whylom slew his brother. And he was maked Edition: current; Page: [243] moist with the blood of his moder; that is to seyn, he leet sleen and slitten the body of his moder, to seen wher he was conceived; and he loked on every halve upon her colde dede body; ne no tere ne wette his face; but he was so hard-herted that he mighte ben domesman, or Iuge, of hir dede beautee. . . . Allas, it is a grevous fortune, as ofte as wikked swerd is ioigned to cruel venim; that is to seyn, venimous crueltee to lordshippe.’ Thus Chaucer himself explains domesman (l. 3680) by Iuge, i.e. judge. In the same line ded-è is dissyllabic.

3685. a maister; i. e. Seneca, mentioned below by name. In the year 65, Nero, wishing to be rid of his old master, sent him an order to destroy himself. Seneca opened a vein, but the blood would not flow freely; whereupon, to expedite its flow, he entered into a warm bath, and thence was taken into a vapour stove, where he was suffocated. ‘Nero constreynede Senek, his familier and his mayster, to chesen on what deeth he wolde deyen’; Chaucer’s Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 5. 34 (vol. ii. 63).

3692. ‘It was long before tyranny or any other vice durst attack him’; literally, ‘durst let dogs loose against him.’ To uncouple is to release dogs from the leash that fastened them together; see P. Pl. B. pr. 206. Compare—

‘At the uncoupling of his houndes.’

Book of the Duchesse, l. 377.

‘The laund on which they fought, th’ appointed place

In which th’ uncoupled hounds began the chace.’

Dryden; Palamon and Arcite, bk. ii. l. 845.

3720. ‘Where he expected to find some who would aid him.’ Suetonius says—‘ipse cum paucis hospitia singulorum adiit. Verum clausis omnium foribus, respondente nullo, in cubiculum rediit,’ &c.; cap. xlvii. He afterwards escaped to the villa of his freedman Phaon, four miles from Rome, where he at length gave himself a mortal wound in the extremity of his despair. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 6459–76.

3736. girden of, to strike off; cf. ‘gurdeth of gyles hed,’ P. Pl. B. ii. 201. A gird is also a sharp striking taunt or quip.—M.

Holofernes.

3746. Oloferne. The story of Holofernes is to be found in the apocryphal book of Judith.

3750. For lesinge, for fear of losing, lest men should lose.

3752. ‘He had decreed to destroy all the gods of the land, that all nations should worship Nabuchodonosor only,’ &c.; Judith, iii. 8.

3756. Eliachim. Tyrwhitt remarks that the name of the high priest was Joacim; Judith, iv. 6. But this is merely the form of the name in our English version. The Vulgate version has the equivalent form Eliachim; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 4.

3761. upright, i. e. on his back, with his face upwards. See Knightes Tale, l. 1150 (A. 2008), and the note to A. 4194.

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Antiochus.

3765. Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria (bc 175–164). Paraphrased from 2 Maccabees, ix. 7, 28, 10, 8, 7, 3-7, 9-12, 28.

Alexander.

3821. There is a whole cycle of Alexander romances, in Latin, French, and English, so that his story is common enough. There is a good life of him by Plutarch, but in Chaucer’s time the principal authority for an account of him was Quintus Curtius. See Ten Brink, Hist. Eng. Lit., bk. ii. sect. 8.

3826. ‘They were glad to send to him (to sue) for peace.’

3843. write, should write, pt. subj.; hence the change of vowel from indic. wroot.—M. The i is short.

3845. ‘So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died’; 1 Mac. i. 7. Machabee, i. e. the first book of the Maccabees.

3850. Quintus Curtius says that Alexander was poisoned by Antipater; and this account is adopted in the romances. Cf. Barbour’s Bruce, i. 533.

3851. ‘Fortune hath turned thy six (the highest and most fortunate throw at dice) into an ace (the lowest).’ Cf. note to B. 124.

3860. ‘Which two (fortune and poison) I accuse of all this woe.’

Julius Caesar.

3862. For humble bed Tyrwhitt, Wright, and Bell print humblehede, as in some MSS. But this word is an objectionable hybrid compound, and I think it remains to be shewn that the word belongs to our language. In the Knightes Tale, Chaucer has humblesse, and in the Persones Tale, humilitee. Until better authority for humblehede can be adduced, I am content with the reading of the four best MSS., including the Harleian, which Wright silently alters.

3863. Julius. For this story Chaucer refers us below to Lucan, Suetonius, and Valerius; see note to l. 3909. There is also an interesting life of him by Plutarch. Boccaccio mentions him but incidentally.

3866. tributárie; observe the rime with aduersárie. Fortune in l. 3868 is a trisyllable; so also in l. 3876.

3870. ‘Against Pompey, thy father-in-law.’ Rather, ‘son-in-law’; for Caesar gave Pompey his daughter Julia in marriage.

3875. puttest; to be read as putt’st; and thórient as in l. 3883.

3878. Pompeius. Boccaccio gives his life at length, as an example of misfortune; De Casibus Virorum, lib. vi. cap. 9. He was killed Sept. 29, bc 48, soon after the battle of Pharsalia in Thessaly (l. 3869).

3881. him, for himself; but in the next line it means ‘to him.’—M.

3885. Chaucer refers to this triumph in the Man of Lawes Tale, B. 400; but see the note. Cf. Shak. Henry V, v. prol. 28.

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3887. Chaucer is not alone in making Brutus and Cassius into one person; see note to l. 3892.

3891. cast, contrived, appointed; pp., after hath.

3892. boydekins, lit. bodkins, but with the signification of daggers. It is meant to translate the Lat. pugio, a poniard. In Barbour’s Bruce, i. 545, Caesar is said to have been slain with a weapon which in one edition is called a punsoun, in another a botkin, and in the Edinburgh MS. a pusoune, perhaps an error for punsoune, since Halliwell’s Dictionary gives the form punchion. Hamlet uses bodkin for a dagger; Act iii. sc. 1. l. 76. In the margin of Stowe’s Chronicle, ed. 1614, it is said that Caesar was slain with bodkins; Nares’ Glossary. Nares also quotes—‘The chief woorker of this murder was Brutus Cassius, with 260 of the senate, all having bodkins in their sleeves’; Serp. of Division, prefixed to Gorboduc, 1590.

3906. lay on deying, lay a-dying. In l. 3907, deed=mortally wounded.

3909. recomende, commit. He means that he commits the full telling of the story to Lucan, &c. In other words, he refers the reader to those authors. Cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 254, 274.

Lucan (born ad 39, died ad 65) was the author of the Pharsalia, an incomplete poem in ten books, narrating the struggle between Pompey and Caesar. There is an English translation of it by Rowe.

Suetonius Tranquillus (born about ad 70) wrote several works, the principal of which is The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

Valerius. There were two authors of this name, (1) Valerius Flaccus, author of a poem on the Argonautic expedition, and (2) Valerius Maximus, author of De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus Libri ix. Mr. Jephson says that Valerius Flaccus is meant here, I know not why. Surely the reference is to Valerius Maximus, who at least tells some anecdotes of Caesar; lib. iv. c. 5; lib. vii. cap. 6.

3911. word and ende, beginning and end; a substitution for the older formula ord and ende. Tyrwhitt notes that the suggested emendation of ord for word was proposed by Dr. Hickes, in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 70. Hickes would make the same emendation in Troil. and Cres. v. 1669;

‘And of this broche he tolde him ord and ende,’

where the editions have word. He also cites the expression ord and ende from Cædmon; see Thorpe’s edition, p. 225, l. 30. We also find from orde ōð ende=from beginning to end, in the poem of Elene (Vercelli MS.), ed. Grein, l. 590. Orde and ende occurs also at a later period, in the Ormulum, l. 6775; and still later, in Floriz and Blancheflur, l. 47, ed. Lumby, in the phrase,

‘Ord and ende he haþ him told

Hu blauncheflur was þarinne isold.’

Tyrwhitt argues that the true spelling of the phrase had already become Edition: current; Page: [246] corrupted in Chaucer’s time, and such seems to have been the fact, as all the MSS. have word. See Zupitza’s note to Guy of Warwick, l. 7927, where more examples are given; and cf. my note to Troil. ii. 1495. Ord and ende explains our modern odds and ends; see Garnett’s Essays, p. 37. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find a w prefixed to a word where it is not required etymologically, especially before the vowel o. The examples wocks, oaks, won, one, wodur, other, wostus, oast-house, woth, oath, wots, oats, wolde, old, are all given in Halliwell’s Prov. Dictionary.

Croesus.

3917. Cresus; king of Lydia, bc 560–546, defeated by Cyrus at Sardis. Cyrus spared his life, and Croesus actually survived his benefactor. Chaucer, however, brings him to an untimely end. The story of Croesus is in Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum, lib. iii. cap. 20. See also Herodotus, lib. 1; Plutarch’s life of Solon, &c. But Boccaccio represents Croesus as surviving his disgraces. Tyrwhitt says that the story seems to have been taken from the Roman de la Rose, ll. 6312–6571 (ed. Méon); where the English Romaunt of the Rose is defective. In Chaucer’s translation of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2, see vol. ii. p. 28, we find this sentence: ‘Wistest thou not how Cresus, the king of Lydiens, of whiche king Cyrus was ful sore agast a litel biforn, that this rewliche [pitiable] Cresus was caught of [by] Cyrus, and lad to the fyr to ben brent; but that a rayn descendede doun fro hevene, that rescowede him?’ In the House of Fame, bk. i. ll. 104–6, we have an allusion to the ‘avision’ [vision, dream] of

‘Cresus, that was king of Lyde,

That high upon a gebet dyde.’

See also Nonne Pr. Ta. l. 318 (B. 4328). The tragic version of the fate of Croesus is given by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, iii. 17; and I give an extract, as it seems to be the account which is followed in the Roman de la Rose. It must be premised that Vincent makes Croesus to have been taken prisoner by Cyrus three times.

‘Alii historiographi narrant, quod in secunda captione, iussit eum Cyrus rogo superponi et assari, et subito tanta pluuia facta est, vt eius immensitate ignis extingueretur, vnde occasionem repperit euadendi. Cumque postea hoc sibi prospere euenisse gloriaretur, et opum copia nimium se iactaret, dictum.est ei a Solone quodam sapientissimo, non debere quemquam in diuitiis et prosperitate gloriari. Eadem nocte uidit in somnis quod Jupiter eum aqua perfunderet, et sol extergeret. Quod cum filiae suae mane indicasset, illa (vt res se habebat) prudenter absoluit, dicens: quod cruci esset affigendus et aqua perfundendus et sole siccandus. Quod ita demum contigit, nam postea a Cyro crucifixus est.’ Compare the few following lines from the Roman de la Rose, with ll. 3917–22, 3934–8, 3941, and l. 3948:—

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‘Qui refu roi de toute Lyde;

Puis li mist-l’en où col la bride,

Et fu por ardre au feu livrés,

Quant par pluie fu délivrés,

Qui le grant feu fist tout estraindre: . . .

Jupiter, ce dist, le lavoit,

Et Phebus la toaille avoit,

Et se penoit de l’essuier . .

Bien le dist Phanie sa fille,

Qui tant estoit saige et soutille . . .

L’arbre par le gibet vous glose,’ &c.

3951. The passage here following is repeated from the Monkes Prologue, and copied, as has been said, from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2. It is to be particularly noted that the passage quoted from Boethius in the note to B. 3917 almost immediately precedes the passage quoted in the note to B. 3163.

3956. See note to B. 3972 below.

The Nonne Prestes Prologue.

3957. the knight. See the description of him, Prol. A. 43.

3961. for me, for myself, for my part. Cp. the phrase ‘as for me.’—M.

3970. ‘By the bell of Saint Paul’s church (in London).’

3972. The host alludes to the concluding lines of the Monkes Tale, l. 3956, then repeats the words no remedie from l. 3183, and cites the word biwaille from l. 3952. Compare all these passages.

3982. Piers. We must suppose that the host had by this time learnt the monk’s name. In B. 3120 above, he did not know it.

3984. ‘Were it not for the ringing of your bells’; lit. were there not a clinking of your bells (all the while). ‘Anciently no person seems to have been gallantly equipped on horseback, unless the horse’s bridle or some other part of the furniture was stuck full of small bells. Vincent of Beauvais, who wrote about 1264, censures this piece of pride in the knights-templars; Hist. Spec. lib. xxx. c. 85’; &c.—Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry (ed. Hazlitt), ii. 160; i. 264. See also note to Prol. A. 170.

3990. ‘Ubi auditus non est, non effundas sermonem’; Ecclus. xxxii. 6. (Vulgate); the A. V. is different. See above, B. 2237. The common proverb, ‘Keep your breath to cool your broth,’ nearly expresses what Chaucer here intends.

3993. substance is explained by Tyrwhitt to mean ‘the material part of a thing.’ Chaucer’s meaning seems not very different from Shakespeare’s in Love’s La. Lost, v. 2. 871—

‘A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it; never in the tongue

Of him that makes it.’

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3995. ‘For the propriety of this remark, see note to Prol. A. 166’; Tyrwhitt.

4000. Sir; ‘The title of Sir was usually given, by courtesy, to priests, both secular and regular’; Tyrwhitt. Tyrwhitt also remarks that, ‘in the principal modern languages, John, or its equivalent, is a name of contempt or at least of slight. So the Italians use Gianni, from whence Zani [Eng. zany]; the Spaniards Juan, as Bobo Juan, a foolish John; the French Jean, with various additions.’ The reason (which Tyrwhitt failed to see) is simply that John is one of the commonest of common names. For example, twenty-three popes took that name; and cf. our phrase John Bull, which answers to the French Jean Crapaud, and the Russian Ivan Ivanovitch, ‘the embodiment of the peculiarities of the Russian people’; Wheeler’s Noted Names of Fiction. Ivan Ivanovitch would be John Johnson in English and Evan Evans in Welsh. Hence sir John became the usual contemptuous name for a priest; see abundant examples in the Index to the Parker Society’s publications.

4004. serve has two syllables; hence rek, in the Harl. MS., is perhaps better than rekke of the other MSS. A bene, the value of a bean; in the Milleres Tale a kers (i. e. a blade of grass) occurs in a similar manner (A. 3756); which has been corrupted into ‘not caring a curse’!

4006. Ye, yea, is a mild form of assent; yis is a stronger form, generally followed, as here, by some form of asseveration. See note to B. 1900 above.

4008. attamed, commenced, begun. The Lat. attaminare and Low Lat. intaminare are equivalent to contaminare, to contaminate, soil, spoil. From Low Lat. intaminare comes F. entamer, to cut into, attack, enter upon, begin. From attaminare comes the M. E. attame or atame, with a similar sense. The metaphor is taken from the notion of cutting into a joint of meat or of broaching or opening a cask. This is well shewn by the use of the word in P. Plowman, B. xvii. 68, where it is said of the Good Samaritan in the parable that he ‘breyde to his boteles, and bothe he atamede,’ i.e. he went hastily to his bottles, and broached or opened them both. So here, the priest broached, opened, or began his tale.

The Nonne Preestes Tale.

We may compare Dryden’s modernised version of this tale, entitled ‘The Cock and the Fox.’ See further in vol. iii. pp. 431–3.

4011. stape. Lansd. MS. reads stoupe, as if it signified bent, stooped; but stoop is a weak verb. Stape or stope is the past participle of the strong verb stapen, to step, advance. Stape in age=advanced in years. Roger Ascham has almost the same phrase: ‘And [Varro] beyng depe stept in age, by negligence some wordes do scape and fall from him in those bookes as be not worth the taking up,’ &c.—The Schoolmaster, ed. Mayor, p. 189; ed. Arber, p. 152.

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4018–9. by housbondrye, by economy; fond hir-self, ‘found herself,’ provided for herself.

4022. Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle. The widow’s house consisted of only two apartments, designated by the terms bower and hall. Whilst the widow and her ‘daughters two’ slept in the bower, Chanticleer and his seven wives roosted on a perch in the hall, and the swine disposed themselves on the floor. The smoke of the fire had to find its way through the crevices of the roof. See Our English Home, pp. 139, 140. Cf. Virgil, Ecl. vii. 50—‘assidua postes fuligine nigri.’ Also—

‘At his beds feete feeden his stalled teme,

His swine beneath, his pullen ore the beame.’

Hall’s Satires, bk. v. sat. 1; v. 1. p. 56, ed. 1599.

4025. No deyntee (Elles. &c.); Noon deynteth (Harl.).

4029. hertes suffisaunce, a satisfied or contented mind, literally heart’s satisfaction. Cf. our phrase ‘to your heart’s content.’

4032. wyn . . . whyt nor reed. The white line was sometimes called ‘the wine of Osey’ (Alsace); the red wine of Gascony, sometimes called ‘Mountrose,’ was deemed a liquor for a lord. See Our English Home, p. 83; Piers Pl. prol. l. 228.

4035. Seynd bacoun, singed or broiled bacon. an ey or tweye, an egg or two.

4036. deye. The daia (from the Icel. deigja) is mentioned in Domesday among assistants in husbandry; and the term is again found in 2nd Stat. 25 Edward III (ad 1351). In Stat. 37 Edward III (ad 1363), the deye is mentioned among others of a certain rank, not having goods or chattels of 40s. value. The deye was usually a female, whose duty was to make butter and cheese, attend to the calves and poultry, and other odds and ends of the farm. The dairy (in some parts of England, as in Shropshire, called a dey-house) was the department assigned to her. See Prompt. Parv., p. 116.

4039. In Caxton’s translation of Reynard the Fox, the cock’s name is Chantecleer. In the original, it is Canticleer; from his clear voice in singing. In the same, Reynard’s second son is Rosseel; see l. 4524.

4041. merier, sweeter, pleasanter. In Todd’s Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 284, there is a long passage illustrative of mery in the sense of ‘pleasant.’ Cf. l. 4156. orgon is put for orgons or organs. It is plain from gon in the next line, that Chaucer meant to use this word as a plural from the Lat. organa. Organ was used until lately only in the plural, like bellows, gallows, &c. ‘Which is either sung or said or on the organs played.’—Becon’s Acts of Christ, p. 534. It was sometimes called a pair of organs. See note to P. Plowman, C. xxi. 7.

4044. Cf. Parl. of Foules, 350:—

‘The cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.’

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Orloge (of an abbey) occurs in Religious Pieces, ed. Perry, p. 56; and see Stratmann.

4045. ‘The cock knew each ascension of the equinoctial, and crew at each; that is, he crew every hour, as 15° of the equinoctial make an hour. Chaucer adds [l. 4044] that he knew the hour better than the abbey-clock. This tells us, clearly, that we are to reckon clock-hours, and not the unequal hours of the solar or ‘artificial’ day. Hence the prime, mentioned in l. 4387, was at a clock-hour, at 6, 7, 8, or 9, suppose. The day meant is May 3, because the sun [l. 4384] had passed the 21st degree of Taurus (see fig. 1 of Astrolabe). . . . The date, May 3, is playfully denoted by saying [l. 4379] that March was complete, and also (since March began) thirty-two days more had passed. The words “since March began” are parenthetical; and we are, in fact, told that the whole of March, the whole of April, and two days of May were done with. March was then considered the first month in the year, though the year began with the 25th, not with the 1st; and Chaucer alludes to the idea that the Creation itself took place in March. The day, then, was May 3, with the sun past 21 degrees of Taurus. The hour must be had from the sun’s altitude, rightly said (l. 4389) to be Fourty degrees and oon. I use a globe, and find that the sun would attain the altitude 41° nearly at 9 o’clock. It follows that prime in l. 4387 signifies the end of the first quarter of the day, reckon-from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m.’—Skeat’s Astrolabe, (E. E. T. S.), p. lxi. This rough test, by means of a globe, is perhaps sufficient; but Mr. Brae proved it to be right by calculation. Taking the sun’s altitude at 41½°, he ‘had the satisfaction to find a resulting hour, for prime, of 9 o’clock a. m. almost to the minute.’ It is interesting to find that Thynne explains this passage very well in his Animadversions on Speght’s Chaucer; ed. Furnivall, p. 62, note 1.

The notion that the Creation took place on the 18th of March is alluded to in the Hexameron of St. Basil (see the A. S. version, ed. Norman, p. 8, note j), and in Ælfric’s Homilies, ed. Thorpe, i. 100.

4047. Fifteen degrees of the equinoctial = an exact hour. See note to l. 4045 above. Skelton imitates this passage in his Phillyp Sparowe, l. 495.

4050. And batailed. Lansd. MS. reads Enbateled, indented like a battlement, embattled. Batailed has the same sense.

4051. as the Ieet, like the jet. Beads used for the repetition of prayers were frequently formed of jet. See note to Prol. A. 159.

4060. damoysele Pertelote. Cf. our ‘Dame Partlet.’

‘I’ll be as faithful to thee

As Chaunticleer to Madame Partelot.’

The Ancient Drama, iii. p. 158.

In Le Roman de Renart, the hen is called Pinte or Pintain.

4064. in hold; in possession. Cf. ‘He hath my heart in holde’; Greene’s George a Greene, ed. Dyce, p. 256.

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4065. loken in every lith, locked in every limb.

4069. my lief is faren in londe, my beloved is gone away. Probably the refrain of a popular song of the time.

4079. herte dere. This expression corresponds to ‘dear heart,’ or ‘deary heart,’ which still survives in some parts of the country.

4083. take it nat agrief=take it not in grief, i. e. take it not amiss, be not offended.

4084. me mette, I dreamed; literally it dreamed to me.

4086. my swevene recche (or rede) aright, bring my dream to a good issue; literally ‘interpret my dream favourably.’

4090. Was lyk. The relative that is often omitted by Chaucer before a relative clause, as, again, in l. 4365.

4098. Avoy (Elles.); Away (Harl.). From O. F. avoi, interj. fie! It occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, 7284, 16634.

4113. See the Chapter on Dreams in Brand’s Pop. Antiquities.

4114. fume, the effects arising from gluttony and drunkenness. ‘Anxious black melancholy fumes.’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. p. 438, ed. 1845. ‘All vapours arising out of the stomach,’ especially those caused by gluttony and drunkenness. ‘For when the head is heated it scorcheth the blood, and from thence proceed melancholy fumes that trouble the mind.’—Ibid. p. 269.

4118. rede colera. . . red cholera caused by too much bile and blood (sometimes called red humour). Burton speaks of a kind of melancholy of which the signs are these—‘the veins of their eyes red, as well as their faces.’ The following quotation explains the matter. ‘Ther be foure humours, Bloud, Fleame, Cholar, and Melancholy. . . . First, working heate turneth what is colde and moyst into the kind of Fleme, and then what is hot and moyst, into the kinde of Bloud; and then what is hot and drye into the kinde of Cholera; and then what is colde and drye into the kinde of Melancholia. . . . By meddling of other humours, Bloud chaungeth kinde and colour: for by meddling of Cholar, it seemeth red, and by Melancholy it seemeth black, and by Fleame it seemeth watrie, and fomie.’—Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 6. So also—‘in bloud it needeth that there be red Cholera’; lib. iv. c. 10; &c.

The following explains the belief as to dreams caused by cholera. Men in which red Cholera is excesssive ‘dreame of fire, and of lyghtening, and of dreadful burning of the ayre’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 10. Those in which Melancholia is excessive dream ‘dredfull darke dreames, and very ill to see’; id. c. 11. And again: ‘He that is Sanguine hath glad and liking dreames, the melancholious dremeth of sorrow, the Cholarike, of firy things, and the Flematike, of Raine, Snow,’ &c.; id. lib. vi. c. 27.

4123. the humour of malencolye. ‘The name (melancholy) is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause, as Bruel observes, μελανχολία quasi μελαιναχόλη, from black choler.’ Fracastorius, in his second book of Intellect, calls those melancholy Edition: current; Page: [252] ‘whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding.’—Bruton’s Anat. of Melancholy, p. 108, ed. 1805.

4128. ‘That cause many a man in sleep to be very distressed.’

4130. Catoun. Dionysius Cato, de Moribus, l. ii. dist. 32: somnia ne cures. ‘I observe by the way, that this distich is quoted by John of Salisbury, Polycrat. l. ii. c. 16, as a precept viri sapientis. In another place, l. vii. c. 9, he introduces his quotation of the first verse of dist. 20 (l. iii.) in this manner:—“Ait vel Cato vel alius, nam autor incertus est.” ’—Tyrwhitt. Cf. note to G. 688.

4131. do no fors of=take no notice of, pay no heed to. Skelton, i. 118, has ‘makyth so lytyll fors,’ i.e. cares so little for.

4153. ‘Wormwood, centaury, pennyroyal, are likewise magnified and much prescribed, especially in hypochondrian melancholy, daily to be used, sod in whey. And because the spleen and blood are often misaffected in melancholy, I may not omit endive, succory, dandelion, fumitory, &c., which cleanse the blood.’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. pp. 432, 433. See also p. 438, ed. 1845. ‘Centauria abateth wombe-ache, and cleereth sight, and vnstoppeth the splene and the reines’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. xvii. c. 47. ‘Fumus terre [fumitory] cleanseth and purgeth Melancholia, fleme, and cholera’; id. lib. xvii. c. 69. ‘Medicinal herbs were grown in every garden, and were dried or made into decoctions, and kept for use’; Wright, Domestic Manners, p. 279.

4154. ellebor. Two kinds of hellebore are mentioned by old writers; ‘white hellebore, called sneezing powder, a strong purger upward’ (Burton’s Anat. of Mel. pt. 2. § 4. m. 2. subsec. 1.), and ‘black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy.’—Ibid. subsec. 2.

4155. catapuce, caper-spurge, Euphorbia Lathyris. gaytres (or gaytrys) beryis, probably the berries of the buck-thorn, Rhamnus catharticus; which (according to Rietz) is still called, in Swedish dialects, the getbärs-trä (goat-berries tree) or getappel (goat-apple). I take gaytre to stand for gayt-tre, i. e. goat-tree; a Northern form, from Icel. geit (gen. geitar), a goat. The A.S. gāte-trēow, goat-tree, is probably the same tree, though the prov. Eng. gaiter-tree, gatten-tree, or gatteridge-tree is usually applied to the Cornus sanguinea or corneltree, the fruits of which ‘are sometimes mistaken for those of the buck-thorn, but do not possess the active properties of that plant’; Eng. Cyclop., s. v. Cornus. The context shews that the buck-thorn is meant. Langham says of the buck-thorn, that ‘the beries do purge downwards mightily flegme and choller’; Garden of Health, 1633, p. 99 (New E. Dict., s. v. Buckthorn). This is why Chanticleer was recommended to eat them.

4156. erbe yve, herb ive or herb ivy, usually identified with the ground-pine, Ajuga chamæpitys. mery, pleasant, used ironically; as the leaves are extremely nausecus.

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4160. graunt mercy, great thanks; this in later authors is corrupted into grammercy or gramercy.

4166. so mote I thee, as I may thrive (or prosper). Mote=A. S. mōt-e, first p. s. pr. subj.

4174. Oon of the gretteste auctours. ‘Cicero, De Divin. l. i. c. 27, relates this and the following story, but in a different order, and with so many other differences, that one might be led to suspect that he was here quoted at second-hand, if it were not usual with Chaucer, in these stories of familiar life, to throw in a number of natural circumstances, not to be found in his original authors.’—Tyrwhitt. Warton thinks that Chaucer took it rather from Valerius Maximus, who has the same story; i. 7. He has, however, overlooked the statement in l. 4254, which decides for Cicero. I here quote the whole of the former story, as given by Valerius. ‘Duo familiares Arcades iter una facientes, Megaram venerunt; quorum alter ad hospitem se contulit, alter in tabernam meritoriam devertit. Is, qui in hospitio venit, vidit in somnis comitem suam orantem, ut sibi cauponis insidiis circumvento subveniret: posse enim celeri ejus accursu se imminenti periculo subtrahi. Quo viso excitatus, prosiluit, tabernamque, in qua is diversabatur, petere conatus est. Pestifero deinde fato ejus humanissimum propositum tanquam supervacuum damnavit, et lectum ac somnum repetiit. Tunc idem ei saucius oblatus obsecravit, ut qui auxilium vitae suae ferre neglexisset, neci saltem ultionem non negaret. Corpus enim suum à caupone trucidatum, tum maxime plaustro ad portam ferri stercore coöpertum. Tam constantibus familiaris precibus compulsus, protinus ad portam cucurrit, et plaustrum, quod in quiete demonstratum erat, comprehendit, cauponemque ad capitale supplicium perduxit.’ Valerii Maximi, lib. i. c. 7 (De Somniis). Cf. Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 27.

4194. oxes; written oxe in Hl. Cp. Ln; where oxe corresponds to the older English gen. oxan, of an ox—oxe standing for oxen (as in Oxenford, see note on l. 285 of Prologue). Thus oxes and oxe are equivalent.

4200. took of this no keep, took no heed to this, paid no attention to it.

4211. sooth to sayn, to say (tell) the truth.

4232. gapinge. The phrase gaping upright occurs elsewhere (see Knightes Tale, A. 2008), and signifies lying flat on the back with the mouth open. Cf. ‘Dede he sate uprighte,’ i.e. he lay on his back dead. The Sowdone of Babyloyne, l. 530.

4235. Harrow, a cry of distress; a cry for help. ‘Harrow! alas! I swelt here as I go.’—The Ordinary; see vol. iii. p. 150, of the Ancient Drama. See F. haro in Godefroy and Littré; and note to A. 3286.

4237. outsterte (Elles., &c.); upsterte (Hn., Harl.)

4242. A common proverb. Skelton, ed. Dyce, i. 50, has ‘I drede mordre wolde come oute.’

4274. And preyde him his viáge for to lette, And prayed him to abandon his journey.

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4275. to abyde, to stay where he was.

4279. my thinges, my business-matters.

4300. ‘Kenelm succeeded his father Kenulph on the throne of the Mercians in 821 [Haydn, Book of Dates, says 819] at the age of seven years, and was murdered by order of his aunt, Quenedreda. He was subsequently made a saint, and his legend will be found in Capgrave, or in the Golden Legend.’—Wright.

St. Kenelm’s day is Dec. 13. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says:—[Kenulph] ‘dying in 819, left his son Kenelm, a child only seven years old [see l. 4307] heir to his crown, under the tutelage of his sister Quindride. This ambitious woman committed his person to the care of one Ascobert, whom she had hired to make away with him. The wicked minister decoyed the innocent child into an unfrequented wood, cut off his head, and buried him under a thorn-tree. His corpse is said to have been discovered by a heavenly ray of light which shone over the place, and by the following inscription:—

In Clent cow-pasture, under a thorn,

Of head bereft, lies Kenelm, king born.’

Milton tells the story in his History of Britain, bk. iv. ed. 1695, p. 218, and refers us to Matthew of Westminster. He adds that the ‘inscription’ was inside a note, which was miraculously dropped by a dove on the altar at Rome. Our great poet’s verson of it is:—

‘Low in a Mead of Kine, under a thorn,

Of Head bereft, li’th poor Kenelm King-born’

Clent is near the boundary between Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

Neither of these accounts mentions Kenelm’s dream, but it is given in his Life, as printed in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall (Phil. Soc. 1862), p. 51, and in Caxton’s Golden Legend. St. Kenelm dreamt that he saw a noble tree with waxlights upon it, and that he climbed to the top of it; whereupon one of his best friends cut it down, and he was turned into a little bird, and flew up to heaven. The little bird denoted his soul, and the flight to heaven his death.

4307. For traisoun, i. e. for fear of treason.

4314. Cipioun. The Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, as annotated by Macrobius, was a favourite work during the middle ages. See note to l. 31 of the Parl. of Foules.

4328. See the Monkes Tale, B. 3917, and the note, p. 246.

4331. Lo heer Andromacha. Andromache’s dream is not to be found in Homer. It is mentioned in chapter xxiv. of Dares Phrygius, the authority for the history of the Trojan war most popular in the middle ages. See the Troy-book, ed. Panton and Donaldson (E. E. T. S.), l. 8425; or Lydgate’s Siege of Troye, c. 27.

4341. as for conclusioun, in conclusion.

4344. telle . . . no store, set no store by them; reckon them of no value; count them as useless.

4346. never a del, never a whit, not in the slightest degree.

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4350. This line is repeated from the Compleynt of Mars, l. 61.

4353–6. ‘By way of quiet retaliation for Partlet’s sarcasm, he cites a Latin proverbial saying, in l. 344, ‘Mulier est hominis confusio,’ which he turns into a pretended compliment by the false translation in ll. 345, 346.’—Marsh. Tyrwhitt quotes it from Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Hist. x. 71. Chaucer has already referred to this saying above; see p. 207, l. 2296. ‘A woman, as saith the philosofre [i. e. Vincent], is the confusion of man, insaciable, &c.’; Dialogue of Creatures, cap. cxxi. ‘Est damnum dulce mulier, confusio sponsi’; Adolphi Fabulae, x. 567; pr. in Leyser, Hist. Poet. Med. Aevi, p. 2031. Cf. note to D. 1195.

4365. lay, for that lay. Chaucer omits the relative, as is frequently done in Middle English poetry; see note to l. 4090.

4377. According to Beda, the creation took place at the vernal equinox; see Morley, Eng. Writers, 1888, ii. 146. Cf. note to l. 4045.

4384. See note on l. 4045 above.

4395. Cf. Man of Lawes Tale, B. 421, and note. See Prov. xiv. 13.

4398. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written ‘Petrus Comestor,’ who is probably here referred to.

4402. See the Squieres Tale, F. 287, and the note.

4405. col-fox; explained by Bailey as a ‘coal-black fox’; and he seems to have caught the right idea. Col- here represents M. E. col, coal; and the reference is to the brant-fox, which is explained in the New E. Dict. as borrowed from the G. brand-fuchs, ‘the German name of a variety of the fox, chiefly distinguished by a greater admixture of black in its fur; according to Grimm, it has black feet, ears, and tail.’ Chaucer expressly refers to the black-tipped tail and ears in l. 4094 above. Mr. Bradley cites the G. kohlfuchs and Du. koolvos, similarly formed; but the ordinary dictionaries do not give these names. The old explanation of col-fox as meaning ‘deceitful fox’ is difficult to establish, and is now unnecessary.

4412. undern; see note to E. 260.

4417. Scariot, i. e. Judas Iscariot. Genilon; the traitor who caused the defeat of Charlemagne, and the death of Roland; see Book of the Duchesse, 1121, and the note in vol. i. p. 491.

4418. See Vergil, Æn. ii. 259.

4430. bulte it to the bren, sift the matter; cf. the phrase to boult the bran. See the argument in Troilus, iv. 967; cf. Milton, P. L. ii. 560.

4432. Boece, i. e. Boethius. See note to Kn. Tale, A. 1163.

Bradwardyn. Thomas Bradwardine was Proctor in the University of Oxford in the year 1325, and afterwards became Divinity Professor and Chancellor of the University. His chief work is ‘On the Cause of God’ (De Causâ Dei). See Morley’s English Writers, iv. 61.

4446. colde, baneful, fatal. The proverb is Icelandic; ‘köld eru opt kvenna-ráð,’ cold (fatal) are oft women’s counsels; Icel. Dict. s. v. kaldr. It occurs early, in The Proverbs of Alfred, ed. Morris, Text 1, l. 336:—‘Cold red is quene red.’ Cf. B. 2286, and the note.

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4450–6. Imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 15397–437.

4461. Phisiologus. ‘He alludes to a book in Latin metre, entitled Physiologus de Naturis xii. Animalium, by one Theobaldus, whose age is not known. The chapter De Sirenis begins thus:—

Sirenae sunt monstra maris resonantia magnis

Vocibus, et modulis cantus formantia multis,

Ad quas incaute veniunt saepissime nautae,

Quae faciunt sompnum nimia dulcedine vocum.’

—Tyrwhitt.

See The Bestiary, in Dr. Morris’s Old English Miscellany, pp. 18, 207; Philip de Thaun, Le Bestiaire, l. 664; Babees Book, pp. 233, 237; Mätzner’s Sprachproben, i. 55; Gower, C. A. i. 58; and cf. Rom. Rose, Eng. Version, 680 (in vol. i. p. 122).

4467. In Douglas’s Virgil, prol. to Book xi. st. 15, we have—

‘Becum thow cowart, craudoun recryand,

And by consent cry cok, thi deid is dycht’;

i. e. if thou turn coward, (and) a recreant craven, and consent to cry cok, thy death is imminent. In a note on this passage, Ruddiman says—‘Cok is the sound which cocks utter when they are beaten.’ But it is probable that this is only a guess, and that Douglas is merely quoting Chaucer. To cry cok! cok! refers rather to the utterance of rapid cries of alarm, as fowls cry when scared. Brand (Pop. Antiq., ed. Ellis, ii. 58) copies Ruddiman’s explanation of the above passage.

4484. Boethius wrote a treatise De Musica, quoted by Chaucer in the Hous of Fame; see my note to l. 788 of that poem (vol. iii. p. 260).

4490. ‘As I hope to retain the use of my two eyes.’ So Havelok, l. 2545:—

‘So mote ich brouke mi Rith eie!’

And l. 1743:—‘So mote ich brouke finger or to.’

And l. 311:—‘So brouke i euere mi blake swire!’

swire=neck. See also Brouke in the Glossary to Gamelyn.

4502. daun Burnel the Asse. ‘The story alluded to is in a poem of Nigellus Wireker, entitled Burnellus seu Speculum Stultorum, written in the time of Richard I. In the Chester Whitsun Playes, Burnell is used as a nickname for an ass. The original word was probably brunell, from its brown colour; as the fox below is called Russel, from his red colour.’—Tyrwhitt. The Latin story is printed in The Anglo-Latin Satirists of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright, i. 55; see also Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 356. There is an amusing translation of it in Lowland Scotch, printed as ‘The Unicornis Tale’ in Small’s edition of Laing’s Select Remains of Scotch Poetry, ed. 1885, p. 285. It tells how a certain young Gundulfus broke a cock’s leg by throwing a stone at him. On the morning of the day when Gundulfus was to be ordained and to receive a benefice, the cock took his revenge by not crowing till much later Edition: current; Page: [257] than usual; and so Gundulfus was too late for the ceremony, and lost his benefice. Cf. Warton, Hist. E. P., ed. 1871, ii. 352; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 338. As to the name Russel, see note to l. 4039.

4516. See Rom. of the Rose (E. version), 1050. MS. E. alone reads courtes; Hn. Cm. Cp. Pt. have court; Ln. courte; Hl. hous.

4519. Ecclesiaste; not Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiasticus, xii. 10, 11, 16 Cf. Tale of Melibeus, B. 2368.

4525. Tyrwhitt cites the O. F. form gargate, i. e. (throat), from the Roman de Rou. Several examples of it are given by Godefroy.

4537. O Gaufred. ‘He alludes to a passage in the Nova Poetria of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, published not long after the death of Richard I. In this work the author has not only given instructions for composing in the different styles of poetry, but also examples. His specimen of the plaintive style begins thus:—

‘Neustria, sub clypeo regis defensa Ricardi,

Indefensa modo, gestu testare dolorem;

Exundent oculi lacrimas; exterminet ora

Pallor; connodet digitos tortura; cruentet

Interiora dolor, et verberet aethera clamor;

Tota peris ex morte sua. Mors non fuit eius,

Sed tua, non una, sed publica mortis origo.

O Veneris lacrimosa dies! O sydus amarum!

Illa dies tua nox fuit, et Venus illa venenum.

Illa dedit vulnus,’ &c.

These lines are sufficient to show the object and the propriety of Chaucer’s ridicule. The whole poem is printed in Leyser’s Hist. Poet. Med. Ævi, pp. 862–978.’—Tyrwhitt. See a description of the poem, with numerous quotations, in Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 400; cf. Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 341.

4538. Richard I. died on April 6, 1199, on Tuesday; but he received his wound on Friday, March 26.

4540. Why ne hadde I = O that I had.

4547. streite swerd = drawn (naked) sword. Cf. Aeneid, ii. 333, 334:—

‘Stat ferri acies mucrone corusco

Stricta, parata neci.’

4548. See Aeneid, ii. 550–553.

4553. Hasdrubal; not Hannibal’s brother, but the King of Carthage when the Romans burnt it, bc 146. Hasdrubal slew himself; and his wife and her two sons burnt themselves in despair; see Orosius, iv. 13. 3, or Ælfred’s translation, ed. Sweet, p. 212. Lydgate has the story in his Fall of Princes, bk. v. capp. 12 and 27.

4573. See note to Ho. Fame, 1277 (in vol. iii. p. 273). ‘Colle furit’; Morley, Eng. Writers, 1889, iv. 179.

4584. Walsingham relates how, in 1381, Jakke Straw and his men killed many Flemings ‘cum clamore consueto.’ He also speaks of the noise made by the rebels as ‘clamor horrendissimus.’ See Jakke in Edition: current; Page: [258] Tyrwhitt’s Glossary. So also, in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 450, it is said, with respect to the same event—‘In the Vintry was a very great massacre of Flemings.’

4590. houped. See Piers Plowman, B. vi. 174; ‘houped after Hunger, that herde hym,’ &c.

4616. Repeated in D. 1062.

4633. ‘Mes retiengnent le grain et jettent hors la paille’; Test. de Jean de Meun, 2168.

4635. my Lord. A side-note in MS. E. explains this to refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury; doubtless William Courtenay, archbishop from 1381 to 1396. Cf. note to l. 4584, which shews that this Tale is later than 1381; and it was probably earlier than 1396. Note that good men is practically a compound, as in l. 4630. Hence read good, not gōd-e.

Epilogue to the Nonne Preestes Tale.

4641. Repeated from B. 3135.

4643. Thee wer-e nede, there would be need for thee.

4649. brasil, a wood used for dyeing of a bright red colour; hence the allusion. It is mentioned as being used for dyeing leather in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 364. ‘Brasil-wood; this name is now applied in trade to the dye-wood imported from Pernambuco, which is derived from certain species of Cæsalpinia indigenous there. But it originally applied to a dye-wood of the same genus which was imported from India, and which is now known in trade as Sappan. The history of the word is very curious. For when the name was applied to the newly discovered region in S. America, probably, as Barros alleges, because it produced a dye-wood similar in character to the brazil of the East, the trade-name gradually became appropriated to the S. American product, and was taken away from that of the E. Indies. See some further remarks in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, 2nd ed. ii. 368–370.

‘This is alluded to also by Camoẽs (Lusiad, x. 140). Burton’s translation has:—

“But here, where earth spreads wider, ye shall claim

Realms by the ruddy dye-wood made renowned;

These of the ‘Sacred Cross’ shall win the name,

By your first navy shall that world be found.”

‘The medieval forms of brazil were many; in Italian, it is generally verzi, verzino, or the like.’—Yule, Hobson-Jobson, p. 86.

Again—‘Sappan, the wood of Cæsalpinia sappan; the baqqam of the Arabs, and the Brazil-wood of medieval commerce. The tree appears to be indigenous in Malabar, the Deccan, and the Malay peninsula.’—id. p. 600. And in Yule’s edition of Marco Polo, ii. 315, he tells us that ‘it is extensively used by native dyers, chiefly for common and cheap Edition: current; Page: [259] cloths, and for fine mats. The dye is precipitated dark-brown with iron, and red with alum.’

Cf. Way’s note on the word in the Prompt. Parv. p. 47.

Florio explains Ital. verzino as ‘brazell woode, or fernanbucke [Pernambuco] to dye red withall.’

The etymology is disputed, but I think brasil and Ital. verzino are alike due to the Pers. wars, saffron; cf. Arab. warīs, dyed with saffron or wars.

greyn of Portingale. Greyn, mod. E. grain, is the term applied to the dye produced by the coccus insect, often termed, in commerce and the arts, kermes; see Marsh, Lectures on the E. Language, Lect. III. The colour thus produced was ‘fast,’ i. e. would not wash out; hence the phrase to engrain, or to dye in grain, meaning to dye of a fast colour. Various tones of red were thus produced, one of which was crimson, and another carmine, both forms being derivatives of kermes. Of Portingale means ‘imported from Portugal.’ In the Libell of English Policy, cap. ii. (l. 132), it is said that, among ‘the commoditees of Portingale’ are:—‘oyl, wyn, osey [Alsace wine], wex, and graine.’

4652. to another, to another of the pilgrims. This is so absurdly indefinite that it can hardly be genuine. Ll. 4637–4649 are in Chaucer’s most characteristic manner, and are obviously genuine; but there, I suspect, we must stop, viz. at the word Portingale. The next three lines form a mere stop-gap, and are either spurious, or were jotted down temporarily, to await the time of revision. The former is more probable.

This Epilogue is only found in three MSS.; (see footnote, p. 289). In Dd., Group G follows, beginning with the Second Nun’s Tale. In the other two MSS., Group H follows, i. e. the Manciple’s Tale; nevertheless, MS. Addit. absurdly puts the Nunne, in place of another. The net result is, that, at this place, the gap is complete; with no hint as to what Tale should follow.

It is worthy of note that this Epilogue is preserved in Thynne and the old black-letter editions, in which it is followed immediately by the Manciple’s Prologue. This arrangement is obviously wrong, because that Prologue is not introduced by the Host (as said in l. 4652).

In l. 4650, Thynne has But for Now; and his last line runs—‘Sayd to a nother man, as ye shal here.’ I adopt his reading of to for unto (as in the MSS.).

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NOTES TO GROUP C.

The Phisiciens Tale.

For remarks on the spurious Prologues to this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 434. For further remarks on the Tale, see the same, p. 435, where its original is printed in full.

1. The story is told by Livy, lib. iii.; and, of course, his narrative is the source of all the rest. But Tyrwhitt well remarks, in a note to l. 12074 (i.e. C. 140):—‘In the Discourse, &c., I forgot to mention the Roman de la Rose as one of the sources of this tale; though, upon examination, I find that our author has drawn more from thence, than from either Gower or Livy.’ It is absurd to argue, as in Bell’s Chaucer, that our poet must necessarily have known Livy ‘in the original,’ and then to draw the conclusion that we must look to Livy only as the true source of the Tale. For it is perfectly obvious that Tyrwhitt is right as regards the Roman de la Rose; and the belief that Chaucer may have read the tale ‘in the original’ does not alter the fact that he trusted much more to the French text. In this very first line, he is merely quoting Le Roman, ll. 5617, 8:—

‘Qui fu fille Virginius,

Si cum dist Titus Livius.’

The story in the French text occupies 70 lines (5613–5682, ed. Méon); the chief points of resemblance are noted below.

Gower has the same story, Conf. Amant. iii. 264–270; but I see no reason why Chaucer should be considered as indebted to him. It is, however, clear that, if Chaucer and Gower be here compared, the latter suffers considerably by the comparison.

Gower gives the names of Icilius, to whom Virginia was betrothed, and of Marcus Claudius. But Chaucer omits the name Marcus, and ignores the existence of Icilius. The French text does the same.

11. This is the ‘noble goddesse Nature’ mentioned in the Parl. of Foules, ll. 368, 379. Cf. note to l. 16.

14. Pigmalion, Pygmalion; alluding to Ovid, Met. x. 247, where it is said of him:—

‘Interea niueum mira feliciter arte

Sculpit ebur, formamque dedit, qua femina nasci

Nulla potest; operisque sui concepit amorem.’

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In the margin of E. Hn. is the note—‘Quere in Methamorphosios’; which supplies the reference; but cf. note to l. 16 below, shewing that Chaucer also had in his mind Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16379. So also the author of the Pearl, l. 750; see Morris, Allit. Poems.

16. In the margin of E. Hn. we find the note:—‘Apelles fecit mirabile opus in tumulo Darii; vide in Alexandri libro .1.o [Hn. has .6.o]; de Zanze in libro Tullii.’ This note is doubtless the poet’s own; see further, as to Apelles, in the note to D. 498.

Zanzis, Zeuxis. The corruption of the name was easy, owing to the confusion in MSS. between n and u.1 In the note above, we are referred to Tullius, i.e. Cicero. Dr. Reid kindly tells me that Zeuxis is mentioned, with Apelles, in Cicero’s De Oratore, iii. § 26, and Brutus, § 70; also, with other artists, in Academia, ii. § 146; De Finibus, ii. § 115; and alone, in De Inventione, ii. § 52, where a long story is told of him. Cf. note to Troil. iv. 414.

However, the fact is that Chaucer really derived his knowledge of Zeuxis from Le Roman de la Rose (ed. Méon, l. 16387); for comparison with the context of that line shews numerous points of resemblance to the present passage in our author. Jean de Meun is there speaking of Nature, and of the inability of artists to vie with her, which is precisely Chaucer’s argument here. The passage is too long for quotation, but I may cite such lines as these:—

‘Ne Pymalion entaillier’ (l. 16379),

‘voire Apelles

Que ge moult bon paintre appelles,

Biautés de li james descrive

Ne porroit,’ &c. (l. 16381).

‘Zeuxis neis par son biau paindre

Ne porroit a tel forme ataindre,’ &c. (l. 16387).

Si cum Tules le nous remembre

Ou livre de sa retorique’; (l. 16398).

Here the reference is to the passage in De Oratore, iii. § 26.

‘Mes ci ne péust-il riens faire

Zeuxis, tant séust bien portraire,

Ne colorer sa portraiture,

Tant est de grant biauté Nature.’ (l. 16401).

A little further on, Nature is made to say (l. 16970):—

‘Cis Diex méismes, par sa grace, . . .

Tant m’ennora, tant me tint chere,

Qu’il m’establi sa chamberiere . . .

Por chamberiere! certes vaire,

Por connestable, et por vicaire.’

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20. See just above; and cf. Parl. of Foules, 379—‘Nature, the vicaire of thalmighty lord.’

32–4. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 16443–6.

35. From this line to l. 120, Chaucer has it all his own way. This fine passage is not in Le Roman, nor in Gower.

37. I. e. she had golden hair; cf. Troil. iv. 736, v. 8.

49. Perhaps Chaucer found the wisdom of Pallas in Vergil, Aen. v. 704:—

‘Tum senior Nautes, unum Tritonia Pallas

Quem docuit, multaque insignem reddidit arte.’

50. fácound, eloquence; cf. facóunde in Parl. Foules, 558.

54. Souninge in, conducing to; see A. 307, B. 3157, and notes.

58. Bacus, Bacchus, i. e. wine; see next note.

59. youthe, youth; such is the reading in MSS. E. Hn., and edd. 1532 and 1561. MS. Cm. has lost a leaf; the rest have thought, which gives no sense. It is clear that the reading thought arose from misreading the y of youthe as þ (th). How easily this may be done appears from Wright’s remark, that the Lansdowne MS. has youthe, whilst, in fact, it has þouht.

Tyrwhitt objects to the reading youthe, and proposes slouthe, wholly without authority. But youthe, meaning ‘youthful vigour,’ is right enough; I see no objection to it at all. Rather, it is simply taken from Ovid, Ars Amat. i. 243:—

‘Illic saepe animos iuuenum rapuere puellae;

Et Venus in uinis, ignis in igne fuit.’

Only a few lines above (l. 232), Bacchus occurs, and there is a reference to wine, throughout the context. Cf. the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 4925:—

‘For Youthe set man in al folye . . .

In leccherye and in outrage.’

Cf. note to l. 65.

60. Alluding to a proverbial phrase, occurring in Horace, Sat. ii. 3. 321, viz. ‘oleum adde camino’; and elsewhere.

65. This probably refers to the same passage in Ovid as is mentioned in the note to l. 59. For we there find (l. 229):—

‘Dant etiam positis aditum conuiuia mensis;

Est aliquid, praeter uina, quod inde petas . .

Vina parant animos, faciuntque caloribus aptos’; &c.

79. See A. 476, and the note. Chaucer is here thinking of the same passage in Le Roman de la Rose. I quote a few lines (3930–46):—

‘Une vielle, que Diex honnisse!

Avoit o li por li guetier,

Qui ne fesoit autre mestier

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Fors espier tant solement

Qu’il ne se maine folement . . .

Bel-Acueil se taist et escoute

Por la vielle que il redoute,

Et n’est si hardis qu’il se moeve,

Que la vielle en li n’aperçoeve

Aucune fole contenance,

Qu’el scet toute la vielle dance.’

See the English version in vol. i. p. 205, ll. 4285–4300.

82. See the footnote for another reading. The line there given may also be genuine. It is deficient in the first foot.

85. This is like our proverb:—‘Set a thief to catch [or take] a thief.’ An old poacher makes a good gamekeeper.

98. Cf. Prov. xiii. 24; P. Plowman, B. v. 41.

101. See a similar proverb in P. Plowman, C. x. 265, and my note on the line. The Latin lines quoted in P. Plowman are from Alanus de Insulis, Liber Parabolarum, cap. i. 31; they are printed in Leyser, Hist. Poet. Med. Aevi, 1721, p. 1066, in the following form:—

‘Sub molli pastore capit lanam lupus, et grex

Incustoditus dilaceratur eo.’

117. The doctour, i. e. the teacher; viz. St. Augustine. (There is here no reference whatever to the ‘Doctor’ or ‘Phisicien’ who is supposed to tell the tale.) In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. is written ‘Augustinus’; and the matter is put beyond doubt by a passage in the Persones Tale, I. 484:—‘and, after the word of seint Augustin, it [Envye] is sorwe of other mannes wele, and Ioye of othere mennes harm.’ See note to I. 484.

The same idea is exactly reproduced in P. Plowman, B. v. 112, 113. Cf. ‘Inuidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis’; Horace, Epist. i. 2. 57.

135. From Le Roman, l. 5620–3; see vol. iii. p. 436.

140. cherl, dependant. It is remarkable that, throughout the story, MSS. E. Hn. and Cm. have cherl, but the rest have clerk. In ll. 140, 142, 153, 164, the Camb. MS. is deficient; but it at once gives the reading cherl in l. 191, and subsequently.

Either reading might serve; in Le Roman, l. 5614, the dependant is called ‘son serjant’; and in l. 5623, he is called ‘Li ribaus,’ i. e. the ribald, which Chaucer Englishes by cherl. But when we come to C. 289, the MSS. gives us the choice of ‘fals cherl’ and ‘cursed theef’; very few have clerk (like MS. Sloane 1685). Cf. vol. iii. p. 437.

153, 154. The ‘churl’s’ name was Marcus Claudius, and the ‘judge’ was ‘Appius Claudius.’ Chaucer simply follows Jean de Meun, who calls the judge Apius; and speaks of the churl as ‘Claudius li chalangieres’ in l. 5675.

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165. Cf. Le Roman, l. 5623–7; see vol. iii. p. 436.

168–9. From Le Roman, 5636–8, as above.

174. The first foot is defective; read—Thou | shalt have | al, &c. al right, complete justice. MS. Cm. has alle.

184. Cf. Le Roman, l. 5628–33.

203. From Le Roman, 5648–54.

207–253. The whole of this fine passage appears to be original. There is no hint of it in Le Roman de la Rose, except as regards l. 225, where Le Roman (l. 5659) has:—‘Car il par amors, sans haine.’ We may compare the farewell speech of Virginius to his daughter in Webster’s play of Appius and Virginia, Act iv. sc. 1.

240. Iepte, Jephtha; in the Vulgate, Jephte. See Judges, xi. 37, 38. MSS. E. Hn. have in the margin—‘fuit illo tempore Jephte Galaandes’ [error for Galaadites]. This reference by Virginia to the book of Judges is rather startling; but such things are common enough in old authors, especially in our dramatists.

255. Here Chaucer returns to Le Roman, 5660–82. The rendering is pretty close down to l. 276.

280. Agryse of, shudder at; ‘nor in what kind of way the worm of conscience may shudder because of (the man’s) wicked life’; cf. ‘of pitee gan agryse,’ B. 614. When agryse is used with of, it is commonly passive, not intransitive; see examples in Mätzner and in the New E. Dictionary. Cf. been afered, i. e. be scared, in l. 284.

‘Vermis conscientiae tripliciter lacerabit’; Innocent III., De Contemptu Mundi, l. iii. c. 2.

286. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 93:—‘repentant folk, that stinte for to sinne, and forlete [give up] sinne er that sinne forlete hem.’

Words of the Host.

In the Six-text Edition, pref. col. 58, Dr. Furnivall calls attention to the curious variations in this passage, in the MSS., especially in ll. 289–292, and in 297–300; as well as in ll. 487, 488 in the Pardoneres Tale. I note these variations below, in their due places.

287. wood, mad, frantic, furious; esp. applied to the transient madness of anger. See Kn. Tale, A. 1301, 1329, 1578; also Mids. Nt. Dr. ii. 1. 192. Cf. G. wüthend, raging.

288. Harrow! also spelt haro; a cry of astonishment; see A. 3286, 3825, B. 4235, &c. ‘Haro, the ancient Norman hue and cry; the exclamation of a person to procure assistance when his person or property was in danger. To cry out haro on any one, to denounce his evil doings’; Halliwell. Spenser has it, F. Q. ii. 6. 43; see Harrow in Nares, and the note above, to A. 3286.

On the oaths used by the Host, see note to l. 651 below.

289. fals cherl is the reading in E. Hn., and is evidently right; see Edition: current; Page: [265] note to l. 140 above. It is supported by several MSS., among which are Harl. 7335, Addit. 25718, Addit. 5140, Sloane 1686, Barlow 20, Hatton 1, Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24 and Mm. 2. 5, and Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 3. A few have fals clerk, viz. Sloane 1685, Arch. Seld. B. 14, Rawl. Poet. 149, Bodley 414. Harl. 7333 has a fals thef, Acursid Iustise; out of which numerous MSS. have developed the reading a cursed theef, a fals Iustice, which rolls the two Claudii into one. It is clearly wrong, but appears in good MSS., viz. in Cp. Pt. Ln. Hl. See vol. iii. pp. 437–8, and the note to l. 291 below.

290. shamful. MSS. Ln. Hl. turn this into schendful, i.e. ignominious, which does not at all alter the sense. It is a matter of small moment, but I may note that of the twenty-five MSS. examined by Dr. Furnivall, only the two above-named MSS. adopt this variation.

291, 292. Here MSS. Cp. Ln. Hl., as noted in the footnote, have two totally different lines; and this curious variation divides the MSS. (at least in the present passage) into two sets. In the first of these we find E. Hn. Harl. 7335, Addit. 25718, Addit. 5140, Sloane 1685 and 1686, Barlow 20, Arch. Seld. B. 14, Rawl. Poet. 149, Hatton 1, Bodley 414, Camb. Dd. 4. 24, and Mm. 2. 5, Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 3. In the second set we find Cp. Ln. Hl., Harl. 1758, Royal 18. C. 2, Laud 739, Camb. Ii. 3. 26, Royal 17. D. 15, and Harl. 7333.

There is no doubt as to the correct reading; for the ‘false cherl’ and ‘false justice’ were two different persons, and it was only because they had been inadvertently rolled into one (see note to l. 289) that it became possible to speak of ‘his body,’ ‘his bones,’ and ‘him.’ Hence the lines are rightly given in the text which I have adopted.

There is a slight difficulty, however, in the rime, which should be noted. We see that the t in advocats was silent, and that the word was pronounced (ad·vokaa·s), riming with allas (alaa·s), where the raised dot denotes the accent. That this was so, is indicated by the following spellings:—Pt. aduocas, and so also in Harl. 7335, Addit. 5140, Bodl. 414; Rawl. Poet. 149 has advocas; whilst Sloane 1685, Sloane 1686, and Camb. Mm. 2. 5 have aduocase, and Barlow 20, advocase. MS. Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3 has aduocasse. The testimony of ten MSS. may suffice; but it is worth noting that the F. pl. aduocas occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, 5107.

293. ‘Alas! she (Virginia) bought her beauty too dear’; she paid too high a price; it cost her her life.

297–300. These four lines are genuine; but several MSS., including E. Hn. Pt., omit the former pair (297–8), whilst several others omit the latter pair. Ed. 1532 contains both pairs, but alters l. 299.

299. bothe yiftes, both (kinds of) gifts; i. e. gifts of fortune, such as wealth, and of nature, such as beauty. Compare Dr. Johnson’s poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, imitated from the tenth satire of Juvenal.

303. is no fors, it is no matter. It must be supplied, for the sense. Edition: current; Page: [266] Sometimes Chaucer omits it is, and simply writes no fors, as in E. 1092, 2430. We also find I do no fors, I care not, D. 1234; and They yeve no fors, they care not, Romaunt of the Rose, 4826. Palsgrave has—‘I gyue no force, I care nat for a thing, Il ne men chault.’

306. Ypocras is the usual spelling, in English MSS., of Hippocrates; see Prologue A. 431. So also in the Book of the Duchess, 571, 572:—

‘Ne hele me may physicien,

Noght Ypocras, ne Galien.’

In the present passage it does not signify the physician himself, but a beverage named after him. ‘It was composed of wine, with spices and sugar, strained through a cloth. It is said to have taken its name from Hippocates’ sleeve, the term apothecaries gave to a strainer’; Halliwell’s Dict. s. v. Hippocras. In the same work, s. v. Ipocras, are several receipts for making it, the simplest being one copied from Arnold’s Chronicle:—‘Take a quart of red wyne, an ounce of synamon, and half an unce of gynger; a quarter of an ounce of greynes, and long peper, and halfe a pounde of sugar; and brose all this, and than put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore, with the wyne: and lete it hange over a vessel, tyll the wyne be rune thorowe.’ Halliwell adds that—‘Ipocras seems to have been a great favourite with our ancestors, being served up at every entertainment, public or private. It generally made a part of the last course, and was taken immediately after dinner, with wafers or some other light biscuits’; &c. See Pegge’s Form of Cury, p. 161; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, pp. 125–128, 267, 378; Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 285; and Nares’s Glossary, s. v. Hippocras.

Galianes. In like manner this word (hitherto unexplained as far as I am aware) must signify drinks named after Galen, whose name is spelt Galien (in Latin, Galienus) not only in Chaucer, but in other authors. See the quotation above from the Book of the Duchess. Speght guessed the word to mean ‘Galen’s works.’

310. lyk a prelat, like a dignitary of the church, like a bishop or abbot. Mr. Jephson, in Bell’s edition, suggests that the Doctor was in holy orders, and that this is why we are told in the Prologue, l. 438, that ‘his studie was but litel on the bible.’ I see no reason for this guess, which is quite unsupported. Chaucer does not say he is a prelate, but that he is like one; because he had been highly educated, as a member of a ‘learned profession’ should be.

Ronyan is here of three syllables and rimes with man; in l. 320 it is of two syllables, and rimes with anon. It looks as if the Host and Pardoner were not very clear about the saint’s name, only knowing him to swear by. In Pilkington’s Works (Parker Society), we find a mention of ‘St. Tronian’s fast,’ p. 80; and again, of ‘St. Rinian’s fast,’ p. 551, in a passage which is a repetition of the former. The forms Ronyan and Rinian are evidently corruptions of Ronan, a saint whose Edition: current; Page: [267] name is well known to readers of ‘St. Ronan’s Well.’ Of St. Ronan scarcely anything is known. The fullest account that can easily be found is the following:—

‘Ronan, B. and C. Feb. 7.—Beyond the mere mention of his commemoration as S. Ronan, bishop at Kilmaronen, in Levenax, in the body of the Breviary of Aberdeen, there is nothing said about this saint. . . Camerarius (p. 86) makes this Ronanus the same as he who is mentioned by Beda (Hist. Ecc. lib. iii. c. 25). This Ronan died in ad 778. The Ulster annals give at [ad] 737 (736)—“Mors Ronain Abbatis Cinngaraid.” Ængus places this saint at the 9th of February,’ &c.; Kalendars of Scottish Saints, by Bp. A. P. Forbes, 1872, p. 441. Kilmaronen is Kilmaronock, in the county and parish of Dumbarton. There are traces of St. Ronan in about seven place-names in Scotland, according to the same authority. Under the date of Feb. 7 (February vol. ii. 3 B), the Acta Sanctorum has a few lines about St. Ronan, who, according to some, flourished under King Malduin, ad 664–684; or, according to others, about 603. The notice concludes with the remark—‘Maiorem lucem desideramus.’ Beda says that ‘Ronan, a Scot by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth either in France or Italy,’ was mixed up in the controversy which arose about the keeping of Easter, and was ‘a most zealous defender of the true Easter.’ This controversy took place about ad 652, which does not agree with the date above.

311. Tyrwhitt thinks that Shakespeare remembered this expression of Chaucer, when he describes the Host of the Garter as frequently repeating the phrase ‘said I well’: Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3. 11; ii. 1. 226; ii. 3. 93, 99.

in terme, in learned terms; cf. Prol. A. 323.

312. erme, to grieve. For the explanation of unusual words, the Glossary should, in general, be consulted; the Notes are intended, for the most part, to explain only phrases and allusions, and to give illustrations of the use of words. Such illustrations are, moreover, often omitted when they can easily be found by consulting such a work as Stratmann’s Old English Dictionary. In the present case, for example, Stratmann gives twelve instances of the use of earm or arm as an adjective, meaning wretched; four examples of ermlic, miserable; seven of earming, a miserable creature; and five of earmthe, misery. These twenty-eight additional examples shew that the word was formerly well understood. We may further note that a later instance of ermen or erme, to grieve, occurs in Caxton’s translation of Reynard the Fox, ad 1481; see Arber’s reprint, p. 48, l. 5: ‘Thenne departed he fro the kynge so heuyly that many of them ermed,’ i.e. then departed he from the king so sorrowfully that many of them mourned, or were greatly grieved.

313. cardiacle, pain about the heart, spasm of the heart; more correctly, cardiake, as the l is excrescent. See Cardiacle and Cardiac in the New E. Dictionary. In Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 32, Edition: current; Page: [268] we have a description of ‘Heart-quaking and the disease Cardiacle.’ We thus learn that ‘there is a double manner of Cardiacle,’ called ‘Diaforetica’ and ‘Tremens.’ Of the latter, ‘sometime melancholy is the cause’; and the remedies are various ‘confortatives.’ This is why the host wanted some ‘triacle’ or some ale, or something to cheer him up.

314. The Host’s form of oath is amusingly ignorant; he is confusing the two oaths ‘by corpus Domini’ and ‘by Christes bones,’ and evidently regards corpus as a genitive case. Tyrwhitt alters the phrase to ‘By corpus domini,’ which wholly spoils the humour of it.

triacle, a restorative remedy; see Man of Lawes Tale, B. 479.

315. moyste, new. The word retains the sense of the Lat. musteus and mustus. In Group H. 60, we find moysty ale spoken of as differing from old ale. But the most peculiar use of the word is in the Prologue, A. 457, where the Wyf of Bath’s shoes are described as being moyste and newe.

corny, strong of the corn or malt; cf. l. 456. Skelton calls it ‘newe ale in cornys’; Magnificence, 782; or ‘in cornes,’ Elynour Rummyng, 378. Baret’s Alvearie, s.v. Ale, has: ‘new ale in cornes, ceruisia cum recrementis.’ It would seem that ale was thought the better for having dregs of malt in it.

318. bel amy, good friend; a common form of address in old French. We also find biaus douz amis, sweet good friend; as in—

‘Charlot, Charlot, biaus doux amis’;

Rutebuef; La Disputoison de Charlot et du Barbier, l. 57.

Belamy occurs in an Early Eng. Life of St. Cecilia, MS. Ashmole 43, l. 161; and six other examples are given in the New Eng. Dictionary. Similar forms are beau filtz, dear son, Piers Plowman, B. vii. 162; beau pere, good father; beau sire, good sir. Cf. beldame.

321. ale-stake, inn-sign. Speght interprets this by ‘may-pole.’ He was probably thinking of the ale-pole, such as was sometimes set up before an inn as a sign; see the picture of one in Larwood and Hotten’s History of Signboards, Plate II. But the ale-stakes of the fourteenth century were differently placed; instead of being perpendicular, they projected horizontally from the inn, just like the bar which supports a painted sign at the present day. At the end of the ale-stake a large garland was commonly suspended, as mentioned by Chaucer himself (Prol. 667), or sometimes a bunch of ivy, box, or evergreen, called a ‘bush’; whence the proverb ‘good wine needs no bush,’ i. e. nothing to indicate where it is sold; see Hist. Signboards, pp. 2, 4, 6, 233. The clearest information about ale-stakes is obtained from a notice of them in the Liber Albus, ed. Riley, where an ordinance of the time of Richard II. is printed, the translation of which runs as follows: ‘Also, it was ordained that whereas the ale-stakes, projecting in front of the taverns in Chepe and elsewhere in the said city, extend too far over the king’s highways, to the impeding of riders and others, and, by reason of their excessive weight, to the great deterioration of the houses to which they Edition: current; Page: [269] are fixed, . . . it was ordained, . . . that no one in future should have a stake bearing either his sign or leaves [i.e. a bush] extending or lying over the king’s highway, of greater length than 7 feet at most,’ &c. And, at p. 292 of the same work, note 2, Mr. Riley rightly defines an ale-stake to be ‘the pole projecting from the house, and supporting a bunch of leaves.’

The word ale-stake occurs in Chatterton’s poem of Ælla, stanza 30, where it is used in a manner which shews that the supposed ‘Rowley’ did not know what it was like. See my note on this; Essay on the Rowley Poems, p. xix; and cf. note to A. 667.

322. of a cake; we should now say, a bit of bread; the modern sense of ‘cake’ is a little misleading. The old cakes were mostly made of dough, whence the proverb ‘my cake is dough,’ i. e. is not properly baked; Taming of the Shrew, v. 1. 145. Shakespeare also speaks of ‘cakes and ale,’ Tw. Nt. ii. 3. 124. The picture of the ‘Simnel Cakes’ in Chambers’ Book of Days, i. 336, illustrates Chaucer’s use of the word in the Prologue, l. 668.

324. The Pardoner was so ready to tell some ‘mirth or japes’ that the more decent folks in the company try to repress him. It is a curious comment on the popular estimate of his character. He has, moreover, to refresh himself, and to think awhile before he can recollect ‘some honest (i. e. decent) thing.’

327, 328. The Harleian MS. has—

‘But in the cuppe wil I me bethinke

Upon some honest tale, whil I drinke.’

The Pardoneres Prologue.

Title. The Latin text is copied from l. 334 below; it appears in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS. The A. V. has—‘the love of money is the root of all evil’; 1 Tim. vi. 10. It is well worth notice that the novel by Morlinus, quoted in vol. iii. p. 442, as a source of the Pardoner’s Tale, contains the expression—‘radice malorum cupiditate affecti.’

336. bulles, bulls from the pope, whom he here calls his ‘liege lord’; see Prol. A. 687, and Piers the Plowman, B. Prol. 69. See also Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 308.

alle and somme, one and all. Cf. Clerkes Tale, E. 941, and the note.

337. patente; defined by Webster as ‘an official document, conferring a right or privilege on some person or party’; &c. It was so called because ‘patent’ or open to public inspection. ‘When indulgences came to be sold, the pope made them part of his ordinary revenue; and, according to the usual way in those, and even in much later times, of farming the revenue, he let them out usually to the Dominican friars’; Massingberd, Hist. Eng. Reformation, p. 126.

345. ‘To colour my devotion with.’ For saffron, MS. Harl. reads savore. Tyrwhitt rightly prefers the reading saffron, as ‘more Edition: current; Page: [270] expressive, and less likely to have been a gloss.’ And he adds—‘Saffron was used to give colour as well as flavour.’ For example, in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 275, we read of ‘capons that ben coloured with saffron.’ And in Winter’s Tale, iv. 3. 48, the Clown says—‘I must have saffron to colour the warden-pies.’ Cf. Sir Thopas, B. 1920. As to the position of with, cf. Sq. Ta., F. 471, 641.

346. According to Tyrwhitt, this line is, in some MSS. (including Camb. Dd. 4. 24. and Addit. 5140), replaced by three, viz.—

‘In euery village and in euery toun,

This is my terme, and shal, and euer was,

Radix malorum est cupiditas.’

Here terme is an error for teme, a variant of theme; so that the last two lines merely repeat ll. 333–4.

347. cristal stones, evidently hollow pieces of crystal in which relics were kept; so in the Prologue, A. 700, we have—

‘And in a glas he hadde pigges bones.’

348. cloutes, rags, bits of cloth. ‘The origin of the veneration for relics may be traced to Acts, xix. 12. Hence clouts, or cloths, are among the Pardoner’s stock’; note in Bell’s edition.

349. Reliks. In the Prologue, we read that he had the Virgin Mary’s veil and a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s ship. Below, we have mention of the shoulder-bone of a holy Jew’s sheep, and of a miraculous mitten. See Heywood’s impudent plagiarism from this passage in his description of a Pardoner, as printed in the note to l. 701 of Dr. Morris’s edition of Chaucer’s Prologue. See also a curious list of relics in Chambers’ Book of Days, i. 587; and compare the humorous descriptions of the pardoner and his wares in Sir David Lyndesay’s Satyre of the Three Estates, ll. 2037–2121. Chaucer probably here took several hints from Boccaccio’s Decamerone, Day 6, Nov. 10, wherein Frate Cipolla produces many very remarkable relics to the public gaze. See also the list of relics in Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall (E. E. T. S.), pp. xxxii, 126–9.

350. latoun. The word latten is still in use in Devon and the North of England for plate tin, but as Halliwell remarks, that is not the sense of latoun in our older writers. It was a kind of mixed metal, somewhat resembling brass both in its nature and colour, but still more like pinchbeck. It was used for helmets (Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 2067), lavers (P. Pl. Crede, 196), spoons (Nares), sepulchral memorials (Way in Prompt. Parv.), and other articles. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 350, remarks that the escutcheons on the tomb of the Black Prince are of laton over-gilt, in accordance with the Prince’s instructions; see Nichols’s Royal Wills, p. 67. He adds—‘In our old Church Inventories a cross of laton frequently occurs.’ See Prol. A. 699, and the note. I here copy the description of this metal given in Batman upon Bartholomè; lib. xvi. c. 5. ‘Of Laton. Edition: current; Page: [271] Laton is called Auricalcum, and hath that name, for, though it be brasse or copper, yet it shineth as gold without, as Isidore saith; for brasse is calco in Greeke. Also laton is hard as brasse or copper; for by medling of copper, of tinne, and of auripigment [orpiment] and with other mettal, it is brought in the fire to the colour of gold, as Isidore saith. Also it hath colour and likenesse of gold, but not the value.’

351. The expression ‘holy Jew’ is remarkable, as the usual feeling in the middle ages was to regard all Jews with abhorrence. It is suggested, in a note to Bell’s edition, that it ‘must be understood of some Jew before the Incarnation.’ Perhaps the Pardoner wished it to be understood that the sheep was once the property of Jacob; this would help to give force to l. 365. Cp. Gen. xxx.

The best comment on the virtues of a sheep’s shoulder-bone is afforded by a passage in the Persones Tale (De Ira), I. 602, where we find—‘Sweringe sodeynly withoute avysement is eek a sinne. But lat us go now to thilke horrible swering of adiuracioun and coniuracioun, as doon thise false enchauntours or nigromanciens in bacins ful of water, or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fyr, or in a shulder-boon of a sheep’; &c. Cf. also a curious passage in Trevisa’s tr. of Higden’s Polychronicon, lib. i. cap. 60, which shews that it was known among the Flemings who had settled in the west of Wales. He tells us that, by help of a bone of a wether’s right shoulder, from which the flesh had been boiled (not roasted) away, they could tell what was being done in far countries, ‘tokens of pees and of werre, the staat of the reeme, sleynge of men, and spousebreche.’ Selden, in his notes to song 5 of Drayton’s Polyolbion, gives a curious instance of such divination, taken from Giraldus, Itin. i. cap. 11; and a writer in the Retrospective Review, Feb. 1854, p. 109, says it is ‘similar to one described by Wm. de Rubruquis as practised among the Tartars.’ And see spadebone in Nares. Cf. Notes and Queries, 1 S. ii. 20.

In Part I. of the Records of the Folk-lore Society is an article by Mr. Thoms on the subject of divination by means of the shoulder-bone of a sheep. He shews that it was still practised in the Scottish Highlands down to the beginning of the present century, and that it is known in Greece. He further cites some passages concerning it from some scarce books; and ends by saying—‘let me refer any reader desirous of knowing more of this wide-spread form of divination to Sir H. Ellis’s edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, iii. 179, ed. 1842, and to much curious information respecting Spatulamancia, as it is called by Hartlieb, and an analogous species of divination ex anserino sterno, to Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, 2nd ed. p. 1067.’

355. The sense is—‘which any snake has bitten or stung.’ The reference is to the poisonous effects of the bite of an adder or venomous snake. The word worm is used by Shakespeare to describe the asp whose bite was fatal to Cleopatra; and it is sometimes used to describe a dragon of the largest size. In Icelandic, the term ‘miðgarðsormr,’ Edition: current; Page: [272] lit. worm of the middle-earth, signifies a great sea-serpent encompassing the entire world.

363. Fastinge. This word is spelt with a final e in all seven MSS.; and as it is emphatic and followed by a slight pause, perhaps the final e should be pronounced. Cp. A. S. fæstende, the older form of the present participle. Otherwise, the first foot consists of but one syllable.

366. For heleth, MS. Hl. has kelith, i. e. cooleth.

379. The final e in sinne must not be elided; it is preserved by the caesura. Besides, e is only elided before h in the case of certain words.

387. assoile, absolve. In Michelet’s Life of Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt, chap. ii, there is a very similar passage concerning Tetzel, the Dominican friar, whose shameless sale of indulgences roused Luther to his famous denunciations of the practice. Tetzel ‘went about from town to town, with great display, pomp, and expense, hawking the commodity [i.e. the indulgences] in the churches, in the public streets, in taverns and ale-houses. He paid over to his employers as little as possible, pocketing the balance, as was subsequently proved against him. The faith of the buyers diminishing, it became necessary to exaggerate to the fullest extent the merit of the specific. . . . The intrepid Tetzel stretched his rhetoric to the very uttermost bounds of amplification. Daringly piling one lie upon another, he set forth, in reckless display, the long list of evils which this panacea could cure. He did not content himself with enumerating known sins; he set his foul imagination to work, and invented crimes, infamous atrocities, strange, unheard of, unthought of; and when he saw his auditors stand aghast at each horrible suggestion, he would calmly repeat the burden of his song:—Well, all this is expiated the moment your money chinks in the pope’s chest.’ This was in the year 1517.

390. An hundred mark. A mark was worth about 13s. 4d., and 100 marks about £66 13s. 4d. In order to make allowance for the difference in the value of money in that age, we must at least multiply by ten; or we may say in round numbers, that the Pardoner made at least £700 a year. We may contrast this with Chaucer’s own pension of 20 marks, granted him in 1367, and afterwards increased till, in the very last year of his life, he received in all, according to Sir Harris Nicolas, as much as £61 13s. 4d. Even then his income did not quite attain to the 100 marks which the Pardoner gained so easily.

397. dowve, a pigeon; lit. a dove. See a similar line in the Milleres Tale, A. 3258.

402. namely, especially, in particular; cf. Kn. Ta. 410 (A. 1068).

406. blakeberied. The line means—‘Though their souls go a-black-berrying’; i. e. wander wherever they like. This is a well-known crux, which all the editors have given up as unintelligible. I have been so fortunate as to obtain the complete solution of it, which was printed in Notes and Queries, 4 S. x. 222, xii. 45, and again in my preface to the C-text of Piers the Plowman, p. lxxxvii. The simple explanation is that, by a grammatical construction which was Edition: current; Page: [273] probably due (as will be shewn) to an error, the verb go could be combined with what was apparently a past participle, in such a manner as to give the participle the force of a verbal substantive. In other words, instead of saying ‘he goes a-hunting,’ our forefathers sometimes said ‘he goes a-hunted.’ The examples of this use are at least seven. The clearest is in Piers Plowman, C. ix. 138, where we read of ‘folk that gon a-begged,’ i. e. folk that go a-begging. In Chaucer, we not only have ‘goon a-begged,’ Frank. Tale, F. 1580, and the instance in the present passage, but yet a third example in the Wyf of Bath’s Tale, Group D. 354, where we have ‘goon a-caterwawed,’ with the sense of ‘to go a-caterwauling’; and it is a fortunate circumstance that in two of these cases the idiomatic forms occur at the end of a line, so that the rime has preserved them from being tampered with. Gower (Conf. Amant. bk. i. ed. Chalmers, pp. 32, 33, or ed. Pauli, i. 110) speaks of a king of Hungary riding out ‘in the month of May,’ adding—

‘This king with noble purueiance

Hath for him-selfe his chare [car] arayed,

Wherein he wolde ryde amayed,’ &c.

that is, wherein he wished to ride a-Maying. Again (in bk. v, ed. Chalmers, p. 124, col. 2, or ed. Pauli, ii. 132) we read of a drunken priest losing his way:—

‘This prest was dronke, and goth a-strayed’;

i.e. he goes a-straying, or goes astray.

The explanation of this construction I take to be this; the -ed was not really a sign of the past participle, but a corruption of the ending -eth (A. S. -að) which is sometimes found at the end of a verbal substantive. Hence it is that, in the passage from Piers Plowman above quoted, one of the best and earliest MSS. actually reads ‘folk that gon a-beggeth.’ And again, in another passage (P. Pl., C. ix. 246) is the phrase ‘gon abrybeth,’ or, in some MSS., ‘gon abrybed,’ i.e. go a-bribing or go a-thieving, since Mid. Eng. briben often means to rob. This form is clearly an imitation of the form a-hunteth in the old phrase gon a-hunteth or riden an honteth, used by Robert of Gloucester (Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 14, l. 387):—

‘As he rod an honteth, and par-auntre [h]is hors spurnde.’

Now this honteth is the dat. case of a substantive, viz. of the A.S. huntað or huntoð. This substantive would easily be mistaken for a part of a verb, and, particularly, for the past participle of a verb; just as many people at this day are quite unable to distinguish between the true verbal substantive and the present participle in -ing. This mistake once established, the ending -ed would be freely used after the verbs go or ride. In D. 1778, we even find go walked, without a.

The result is that the present phrase, hitherto so puzzling, is a mere variation of ‘gon a blake-berying,’ i.e. ‘go a-gathering blackberries,’ a humorous expression for ‘wander wherever they please.’ A not very Edition: current; Page: [274] dissimilar expression occurs in the proverbial saying—‘his wits are gone a-wool-gathering.’

The Pardoner says, in effect, ‘I promise them full absolution; however, when they die and are buried, it matters little to me in what direction their souls go.’

407. Tyrwhitt aptly adduces a parallel passage from the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 5763 (or l. 5129 in the French)—

‘For oft good predicacioun

Cometh of evel entencioun.’

‘Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife’; Phil. i. 15.

413. In Piers Plowman (B-text), v. 87, it is said of Envy that—

‘Eche a worde that he warpe · was of an addres tonge.’

Cf. Rom. iii. 13; Ps. cxl. 3.

440. for I teche, because I teach, by my teaching.

441. Wilful pouerte signifies voluntary poverty. This is well illustrated by the following lines concerning Christ in Piers Plowman, B. xx. 48, 49:—

‘Syth he that wroughte al the worlde · was wilfullich nedy,

Ne neuer non so nedy · ne pouerer deyde.’

Several examples occur in Richardson’s Dictionary in which wilfully has the sense of willingly or voluntarily. Thus—‘If they wylfully would renounce the sayd place and put them in his grace, he wolde vtterlye pardon theyr trespace’; Fabyan’s Chronicle, c. 114. It even means gladly; thus in Wyclif’s Bible, Acts xxi. 17, we find, ‘britherin resseyuyden vs wilfulli.’ Speaking of palmers, Speght says—‘The pilgrim travelled at his own charge, the palmer professed wilful poverty.’

The word wilful still means willing in Warwickshire; see Eng. Dialect Soc. Gloss. C. 6.

445. The context seems to imply that some of the apostles made baskets. So in Piers Plowman, B. xv. 285, we read of St. Paul—

‘Poule, after his prechyng · panyers he made.’

Yet in Acts xviii. 3 we only read that he wrought as a tent-maker. However, it was St. Paul who set the example of labouring with his hands; and, in imitation of him, we find an early example of basket-making by St. Arsenius, ‘who, before he turned hermit, had been the tutor of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius,’ and who is represented in a fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, by Pietro Laurati, as ‘weaving baskets of palm-leaves’; whilst beside him another hermit is cutting wooden spoons, and another is fishing. See Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed. ii. 757.

Note that baskettes is trisyllabic, as in Palladius on Husbandry, bk. xii. l. 307.

448. The best description of the house-to-house system of begging, as adopted by the mendicant friars, is near the beginning of the Edition: current; Page: [275] Sompnour’s Tale, D. 1738. They went in pairs to the farm-houses, begging a bushel of wheat, or malt, or rye, or a piece of cheese or brawn, or bacon or beef, or even a piece of an old blanket. Nothing seems to have come amiss to them.

450. See Prologue, A. 255; and cf. the description of the poor widow at the beginning of the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4011.

The Pardoneres Tale.

For some account of the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 439. The account which I here quote as the ‘Italian’ text is that contained in Novella lxxxii of the Libro di Novelle.

Observe also the quotations from Pope Innocent given in vol. iii. pp. 444, 445. To which may be added, that Chaucer here frequently quotes from his Persones Tale, which must have been written previously. Compare ll. 475, 482, 504, 529, 558, 590, 631–650, with I. 591, 836, 819, 820, 822, 793, 587–593.

463. In laying the scene in Flanders, Chaucer probably followed an original which is now lost. Andrew Borde, in his amusing Introduction of Knowledge, ch. viii, says:—‘Flaunders is a plentyfull countre of fyshe & fleshe & wyld fowle. Ther shal a man be clenly serued at his table, & well ordred and vsed for meate & drynke & lodgyng. The countre is playn, & somwhat sandy. The people be gentyl, but the men be great drynkers; and many of the women be vertuous and wel dysposyd.’ He describes the Fleming as saying—

‘I am a Fleming, what for all that,

Although I wyll be dronken other whyles as a rat?

“Buttermouth Flemyng” men doth me call,’ &c.

464. haunteden, followed- after; cf. note to l. 547. The same expression occurs in The Tale of Beryn, a spurious (but not ill-told) addition to the Canterbury Tales:—

‘Foly, I haunted it ever, ther myght no man me let’; l. 2319.

473. grisly, terrible, enough to make one shudder. It is exactly the right word. The mention of these oaths reminds us of the admission of my Uncle Toby in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, ch. xi, that ‘our armies swore terribly in Flanders.’

474. to-tere, tear in pieces, dismember. Cf. to-rente in B. 3215; see note on p. 229. Chaucer elsewhere says—‘For Cristes sake ne swereth nat so sinfully, in dismembringe of Crist, by soule, herte, bones, and body; for certes it semeth, that ye thinke that the cursede Iewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre him more’; Persones Tale (De Ira), I. 591. And see ll. 629–659 below.

‘And than Seint Johan seid—“These [who are thus tormented in Edition: current; Page: [276] hell] ben thei that sweren bi Goddes membris, as bi his nayles and other his membris, and thei thus dismembrid God in horrible swerynge bi his limmes’; Vision of Wm. Staunton (ad 1409), quoted in Wright’s St. Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 146. In the Plowman’s Tale (Chaucer, ed. 1561, fol. xci) we have—

‘And Cristes membres al to-tere

On roode as he were newe yrent.’

Barclay, in his Ship of Fools (ed. Jamieson, i. 97), says—

‘Some sweryth armes, naylys, herte, and body,

Terynge our Lord worse than the Jowes hym arayed.’

And again (ii. 130) he complains of swearers who crucify Christ afresh, swearing by ‘his holy membres,’ by his ‘blode,’ by ‘his face, his herte, or by his croune of thorne,’ &c. See also the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 64; Political, &c., Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 193; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 60, 278, 499. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 264, quotes (from an old MS.) the old second commandment in the following form:—

‘II. Thi goddes name and b[e]autte

Thou shalt not take for wel nor wo;

Dismembre hym not that on rode-tre

For the was mad boyth blak and blo.’

477. tombesteres, female dancers. ‘Sir Perdicas, whom that kinge Alysandre made to been his heire in Grece, was of no kinges blod; his dame [mother] was a tombystere’; Testament of Love, Book ii. ed. 1561, fol. ccxcvi b.

Tombestere is the feminine form; the A. S. spelling would be tumbestre; the masc. form is the A. S. tumbere, which is glossed by saltator, i. e. a dancer; the verb is tumbian, to dance, used of Herodias’ daughter in the A. S. version of Mark, vi. 22. The medieval idea of tumbling was, that the lady stood on her hands with her heels in the air; see Strutt, Sports, &c. bk. iii. c. 5.

On the feminine termination -ster (formerly -estre, or -stre) see the remarks in Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language, printed in (the so-called) Smith’s Student’s Manual of the English Language, ed. 1862, pp. 207, 208, with an additional note at p. 217. Marsh’s remarks are, in this case, less clear than usual. He shews that the termination was not always used as a feminine, and that, in fact, its force was early lost. It is, however, merely a question of chronology. That the termination was originally feminine in Anglo-Saxon, is sufficiently proved by the A. S. version of the Gospels. There we find the word witega frequently used in the sense of prophet; but, in one instance, where it is necessary to express the feminine, we find this accomplished by the use of this very termination. ‘And anna wæs witegystre (another MS. witegestre)’; i. e. and Anna was a prophetess, Luke, ii. 36. Similar instances might easily be multiplied; see Dr. Morris’s Hist. Outlines of Eng. Accidence, pp. 89, 90. Thus, wasshestren (pl.) is used as the translation Edition: current; Page: [277] of lotrices; Old Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, ii. 57. But it is also true that, in the fourteenth century, the feminine force of this termination was becoming very weak, so that, whilst in P. Plowman, B. v. 306, we find ‘Beton the brewestere’ applied to a female brewer, we cannot thence certainly conclude that ‘brewestere’ was always feminine at that period. On the other hand, we may point to one word, spinster, which has remained feminine to this very day.

Dr. Morris remarks that tombestere is a hybrid word; in which I believe that he has been misled by the spelling. It is a pure native word, from the A. S. tumbian, but the scribes have turned it from tumbestere into tombestere, by confusion with the French tomber. Yet even the Fr. tomber was once spelt tumber (Burguy, Roquefort), being, in fact, a word of Germanic origin. An acrobat can still be called a tumbler: we find ‘rope-dancers and tumblers’ in Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, § 4. Indeed, the Cambridge MS. has here the true spelling tumbesteris, whilst the Corpus, Petworth, and Lansdowne MSS. have the variations tomblisteres and tomblesters. The A. S. masc. form tumbere occurs in Ælfric’s Vocabulary.

As to the source of the suffix -ster, it is really a compound suffix, due to composition of the Aryan suffixes -es and -ter-; cf. Lat. mag-is-ter, min-is-ter, poet-as-ter. The feminine use is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon and to some other Teutonic languages.

478. fruytesteres, female sellers of fruit; see note to last line.

479. wafereres, sellers of confectionery, confectioners. The feminine form wafrestre occurs in Piers Plowman, v. 641. From Beaumont and Fletcher we learn that ‘wafer-women’ were often employed in amorous embassies, as stated in Nares’ Glossary, q.v.

483. holy writ. In the margin of the MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. and Hl. is the note—‘Nolite inebriari vino, in quo est luxuria,’ quoted from the Vulgate version of Eph. v. 18. See vol. iii. p. 444.

487. Cp. Ln. have here two additional spurious lines. Cp. reads—

‘So drunke he was, he nyste what he wrought,

And therfore sore repente him oughte.

Heroudes, who-so wole the stories seche,

Ther may ye lerne and by ensample teche.’

Of the second line, Dr. Furnivall remarks—‘Besides being a line of only 4 measures, it is foolish—how could Lot in the grave repent him? Both lines [those in italics] interrupt the flow of the story, and weaken the instances brought forward.’ He adds—‘None of our best MSS. have these spurious lines.’

They evidently arose from the stupidity of some scribe, who did not understand that soghte is here the pt. t. subj., meaning ‘were to seek.’ He therefore ‘corrected’ Chaucer’s grammar by writing wol for wel and seche for soghte; and he then had to make up two more lines to hide the alteration.

488. ‘Herod, (as may be seen by any one) who would consult the Edition: current; Page: [278] “stories” carefully.’ The Harleian MS. has the inferior reading story; but the reference is particular, not vague. Peter Comestor (died ad 1198) was the author of an Historia Scholastica, on which account he was called ‘the maister of stories,’ or ‘clerk of the stories,’ as explained in my note to Piers Plowman, B. vii. 73. The use of the plural is due to the fact that the whole Historia Scholastica, which is a sort of epitome of the Bible, with notes and additions, is divided into sections, each of which is also called ‘Historia.’ The account of Herod occurs, of course, in the section entitled Historia Evangelica, cap. lxxii; De decollatione ioannis. Cf. Matt. xiv; Mark vi. And see vol. iii. p. 444.

492. Senek, Seneca. The reference appears to be, as pointed out by Tyrwhitt, to Seneca’s Letters; Epist. lxxxiii: ‘Extende in plures dies illum ebrii habitum: numquid de furore dubitabis? nunc quoque non est minor, sed brevior.’

496. ‘Except that madness, when it has come upon a man of evil nature, lasts longer than does a fit of drunkenness.’ See Shrew in Trench, Select Glossary.

499. ‘First cause of our misfortune’; alluding to the Fall of Adam. See l. 505.

501. boght us agayn, redeemed us; a translation of the Latin redemit. Hence we find Christ called, in Middle English, the Aȝenbyer. ‘See now how dere he [Christ] boughte man, that he made after his owne ymage, and how dere he aȝenboght us, for the grete love that he hadde to us’; Sir J. Maundeville, Prologue to his Voiage (Specimens of Eng. 1298–1393, p. 165). See l. 766 below.

504. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 819.

505. Here, in the margin of MS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. Hl., is a quotation from ‘Hieronymus contra Jovinianum’ (i.e. from St. Jerome): ‘Quamdiu ieiunauit Adam, in Paradiso fuit; comedit et eiectus est; eiectus, statim duxit uxorem.’ See Hieron. contra Jov. lib. ii. c. 15; ed. Migne, ii. 305.

510. defended, forbidden. Even Milton has it; see P. Lost, xi. 86. See also l. 590 below.

512. ‘O gluttony! it would much behove us to complain of thee!’ See vol. iii. pp. 444, 445. The quotation ‘Noli auidus’ (iii. 445) is from the close of Ecclus. xxxvii.

517. Here Chaucer is thinking of a passage in Jerome, which also occurs in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 6. In such cases, Chaucer consulted Jerome himself, rather than his copyist, as might be shewn. I therefore quote from the former.

‘Propter breuem gulae uoluptatem, terrae lustrantur et maria: et ut mulsum uinum preciosusque cibus fauces notras transeat, totius uitae opera desudamus.’—Hieronymus, contra Iouinianum, lib. ii.; in Epist. Hieron. Basil. 1524, t. ii. p. 76.

At the same time, he had an eye to the passage in Pope Innocent, quoted in vol. iii. p. 445. ‘The shorte throte’ answers to ‘Tam breuis est,’ &c.

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522. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written the quotation—‘Esca ventri, et venter escis. Deus autem et hunc et illam destruet.’ For illam, the usual reading of the Vulgate is has; see 1 Cor. vi. 13.

526. whyte and rede, white wine and red wine; see note to Piers Plowman, B. prol. 228, and the note to B. 4032 above, p. 249.

527. Again from Jerome (see note to l. 517). ‘Qualis [est] ista refectio post ieiunium, cum pridianis epulis distendimur, et guttur nostrum meditatorium efficitur latrinarum.’—Hieron. c. Iouin. lib. ii.; in Epist. Hieron. Basil. 1524, t. ii. p. 78.

529. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Ad Philipenses, capitulo tertio.’ See Phil. iii. 18. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 820.

534. See the quotation in vol. iii. p. 445.

537. ‘How great toil and expense (it is) to provide for thee!’ Chaucer is here addressing man’s appetite for delicacies. Cf. fond, Non. Pr. Tale, B. 4019.

538. See the quotation in vol. iii. p. 445.

There is a somewhat similar passage in John of Salisbury, as follows:—

‘Multiplicantur fercula, cibi alii aliis farciuntur, condiuntur haec illis, et in iniuriam naturae, innatum relinquere, et alienum coguntur afferre saporem. Conficiuntur et salsamenta . . . Coquorum solicitudo fervet arte multiplici,’ &c.—Joh. Salisburiensis, Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 6.

539. There is here an allusion to the famous disputes in scholastic philosophy between the Realists and Nominalists. To attempt any explanation of their language is to become lost in subtleties of distinction. It would seem however that the Realists maintained that everything possesses a substance, which is inherent in itself, and distinct from the accidents or outward phenomena which the thing presents. According to them, the form, smell, taste, colour, of anything are merely accidents, and might be changed without affecting the substance itself. See the excellent article on Substance in the Engl. Cyclopaedia; also that on Nominalists. Cf. Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 526.

According to Chaucer, then, or rather, according to Pope Innocent III., (of all people), the cooks who toil to satisfy man’s appetite change the nature of the things cooked so effectually as to confound substance with accident. Translated into plain language, it means that those who partook of the meats so prepared, could not, by means of their taste and smell, form any precise idea as to what they were eating. The art is not lost. Cf. Troil. iv. 1505.

547. haunteth, practises, indulges in; cf. l. 464. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Qui autem in deliciis est, viuens mortuus est.’ This is a quotation from the Vulgate version of 1 Tim. v. 6, but with Qui for quae, and mortuus for mortua.

549. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Luxuriosa res vinum, et contumeliosa ebrietas.’ The Vulgate version of Prov. xx. 1 Edition: current; Page: [280] agrees with this nearly, but has tumultuosa for contumeliosa. This is of course the text to which Chaucer refers. And see note to the parallel passage at B. 771–7. The variant contumeliosa occurs in the text as quoted by St. Jerome, Contra Jovinianum, lib. ii. 10 (Köppel).

554. He means that the drunkard’s stertorous breathing seems to repeat the sound of the word Sampsoún. The word was probably chosen for the sake of its nasal sounds, to imitate a sort of grunt. Perhaps we should here pronounce the m and n as in French, but with exaggerated emphasis. So also in l. 572.

555. See note to the Monkes Tale, B. 3245. In Judges, xiii. 4, 7, the command to drink no wine is addressed, not to Samson, but to his mother. Of Samson himself it is said that he was ‘a Nazarite,’ which implies the same thing; see Numbers, vi. 3, 5.

558. sepulture, burial; see Pers. Tale, I. 822.

561. In Chaucer’s Tale of Melibeus (B. 2383) we find—‘Thou shalt also eschewe the conseiling of folk that been dronkelewe; for they ne can no conseil hyde; for Salomon seith, Ther is no privetee ther-as regneth dronkenesse’; and see B. 776. The allusion is to Prov. xxxi. 4: ‘Noli regibus, O Lamuel, noli regibus dare uinum; quia nullum secretum est ubi regnat ebrietas.’ This last clause is quite different from that in our own version; which furnishes, perhaps, a reason why the allusion here intended has not been perceived by previous editors.

563. namely, especially. Tyrwhitt’s note is as follows: ‘According to the geographers, Lepe was not far from Cadiz. This wine, of whatever sort it may have been, was probably much stronger than the Gascon wines, usually drunk in England. La Rochelle and Bordeaux (l. 571), the two chief ports of Gascony, were both, in Chaucer’s time, part of the English dominions.

‘Spanish wines might also be more alluring upon account of their great rarity. Among the Orders of the Royal Household, in 1604, is the following (MS. Harl. 293, fol. 162): “And whereas, in tymes past, Spanish wines, called Sacke, were little or noe whit used in our courte, and that in later years, though not of ordinary allowance, it was thought convenient that noblemen . . . might have a boule or glas, &c. We understanding that it is now used as common drinke . . . reduce the allowance to xii. gallons a day for the court,” ’ &c. Several regulations to be observed by London vintners are mentioned in the Liber Albus, ed. Riley, pp. 614–618. Amongst them is—‘Item, that white wine of Gascoigne, of la Rochele, of Spain, or other place, shall not be put in cellars with Rhenish wines.’ See also note to l. 565.

564. To selle, for sale; the true gerund, of which to is, in Anglo-Saxon, the sign. So also ‘this house to let’ is the correct old idiom, needing no such alteration as some would make. Cf. Morris, Hist. Outlines of Eng. Accidence, sect. 290, subsect. 4. Fish Street leads out of Lower Thames Street, close to the North end of London Bridge. The Harleian MS. alone reads Fleet Street, which is certainly wrong. Edition: current; Page: [281] Considering that Thames Street is especially mentioned as a street for vintners (Liber Albus, p. 614), and that Chaucer’s own father was a Thames Street vintner, there can be little doubt about this matter. The poet is here speaking from his own knowledge; a consideration which gives the present passage a peculiar interest. Chepe is Cheapside.

565. This is a fine touch. The poet here tells us that some of this strong Spanish wine used to find its way mysteriously into other wines; not (he ironically suggests) because the vintners ever mixed their wines, but because the vines of Spain notoriously grew so close to those of Gascony that it was not possible to keep them apart! Crepeth subtilly= finds its way mysteriously. Observe the humour in the word growing, which expresses that the mixture of wines must be due to the proximity of the vines producing them in the vineyards, not to any accidental proximity of the casks containing them in the vintners’ cellars. In fact, the different kinds of wine were to be kept in different cellars, as the Regulations in the Liber Albus (pp. 615–618) shew. ‘Item, that no Taverner shall put Rhenish wine and White wine in a cellar together. ‘Item, that new wines shall not be put in cellars with old wines.’ ‘Item, that White wine of Gascoigne, of la Rochele, of Spain, or other place shall not be put in cellars with Rhenish wines.’ ‘Item, that white wine shall not be sold for Rhenish wine.’ ‘Item, that no one shall expose for sale wines counterfeit or mixed, made by himself or by another, under pain of being set upon the pillory.’ But pillories have vanished, and all such laws are obsolete.

570. ‘He is in Spain’; i. e. he is, as it were, transported thither. He imagines he has never left Cheapside, yet is far from knowing where he is, as we should say.

571. ‘Not at Rochelle,’ where the wines are weak.

579. ‘The death of Attila took place in 453. The commonly received account is that given by Jornandes, that he died by the bursting of a blood-vessel on the night of his marriage with a beautiful maiden, whom he added to his many other wives; some, with a natural suspicion, impute it to the hand of his bride. Priscus observes, that no one ever subdued so many countries in so short a time. . . . Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis, and Priscus, Excerpta de Legationibus, furnish the best existing materials for the history of Attila. For modern compilations, see Buat, Histoire des Peuples de l’Europe; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns; and Gibbon, capp. xxxiv and xxxv’; English Cyclopaedia. And see Amédée Thierry, Histoire d’Attila.

Mr. Jephson (in Bell’s Chaucer) quotes the account of Attila’s death given by Paulus Diaconus, Gest. Rom. lib. xv: ‘Qui reuersus ad proprias sedes, supra plures quas habebat uxores, valde decoram, indicto nomine, sibi in matrimonium iunxit. Ob cuius nuptias profusa conuiuia exercens, dum tantum uini quantum nunquam antea insimul bibisset, cum supinus quiesceret, eruptione sanguinis, qui ei de naribus solitus erat effluere, suffocatus et extinctus est.’

The older account in Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis, § 82, is of more Edition: current; Page: [282] interest. ‘Qui [Attila], ut Priscus historicus refert, extinctionis suae tempore puellam, Ildico nomine, decoram valde, sibi in matrimonium post innumerabiles uxores, vt mos est gentis illius, socians: eiusque in nuptiis magna hilaritate resolutus, vino somnoque grauatus, resupinus iacebat; redundansque sanguis, qui ei solitè de naribus effluebat, dum consuetis meatibus impeditur, itinere ferali faucibus illapsus eum extinxit.’

585. Lamuel, i. e. King Lemuel, mentioned in Prov. xxxi. 1, q. v.; not to be confused, says Chaucer, with Samuel. The allusion is to Prov. xxxi. 4, 5; and not (as Mr. Wright suggests) to Prov. xxiii. In fact, in the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written ‘Noli uinum dare,’ words found in Prov. xxxi. 4. See note to l. 561.

590. Compare Pers. Tale, I. 793.

591. Hasard, gambling. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Policratici libro primo; Mendaciorum et periuriarum mater est Alea.’ This shews that the line is a quotation from lib. i. [cap. 5] of the Polycraticus of John of Salisbury, bishop of Chartres, who died in 1180. See some account of this work in Prof. Morley’s Eng. Writers, iii. 180. ‘In the first book, John treats of temptations and duties and of vanities, such as hunting, dice, music, mimes and minstrelsy, magic and soothsaying, prognostication by dreams and astrology.’ See also the account of gaming, considered as a branch of Avarice in the Ayenbyte of Inwyt, ed. Morris, pp. 45, 46.

595. Cf. ‘Nonne satis improbata est cuiusque artis exercitatio, qua quanto quisque doctior, tanto nequior? Aleator quidem omnis hic est.’—Joh. Sarisb. Polycrat. i. 5.

603. Stilbon. It should rather be Chilon. Tyrwhitt remarks—‘John of Salisbury, from whom our author probably took this story and the following, calls him Chilon; Polycrat. lib. i. c. 5. “Chilon Lacedaemonius, iungendae societatis causa missus Corinthum, duces et seniores populi ludentes inuenit in alea. Infecto itaque negotio reuersus est [dicens se nolle gloriam Spartanorum, quorum uirtus constructo Byzantio clarescebat, hac maculare infamia, ut dicerentur cum aleatoribus contraxisse societatem].” Accordingly, in ver. 12539 [l. 605], MS. C. 1 [i. e. MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24] reads very rightly Lacedomye instead of Calidone, the common reading [of the old editions]. Our author has used before Lacedomie for Lacedaemon, v. 11692 [Frank. Tale, F. 1380].’

In the Petw. MS., the name Stilbon is explained as meaning Mercurius. So, in Liddell and Scott’s Gk. Lexicon, we have ‘στίλβων, -οντος, ὁ, the planet Mercury, Arist. Mund. 2. 9; cf. Cic. Nat. D. 2. 20.’ The original sense of the word was ‘shining,’ from the verb στίλβειν, to glitter.

Chaucer has given the wrong name. He was familiar with the name Stilbon (for Mercury), as it occurs (1) in the Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum, c. 27; (2) in the work of Martianus referred to in E. 1732; and (3) in the Anticlaudian, Distinctio quarta, c. 6. Cf. D. 671; E. 1732; Ho. Fame, 986; Notes and Queries, 8th S. iv. 175.

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608. The first foot has but one syllable, viz. Pley. atte, for at the. Tyrwhitt oddly remarks here, that ‘atte has frequently been corrupted into at the,’ viz. in the old editions. Of course atte is rather, etymologically, a corruption of at the; Tyrwhitt probably means that the editors might as well have let the form atte stand. If so, he is quite right; for, though etymologically a corruption, it was a recognised form in the fourteenth century.

621. This story immediately follows the one quoted from John of Salisbury in the note to l. 603. After ‘societatem,’ he proceeds:—‘Regi quoque Demetrio, in opprobrium puerilis leuitatis, tali aurei a rege Parthorum dati sunt.’ What Demetrius this was, we are not told; perhaps it may have been Demetrius Nicator, king of Syria, who was defeated and taken prisoner by the Parthians 138 bc, and detained in captivity by them for ten years. This, however, is but a guess. Compare the story told of our own king, in Shakespeare’s Henry V, Act i. sc. 2.

628. To dryve the day awey, to pass the time. The same phrase occurs in Piers Plowman, B. prol. 224, where it is said of the labourers who tilled the soil that they ‘dryuen forth the longe day with Dieu vous saue, Dame emme,’ i. e. amuse themselves with singing idle songs.

633. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. and Pt. is the quotation ‘Nolite omnino iurare,’ with a reference (in Hn. only) to Matt. v. The Vulgate version of Matt. v. 34 is—‘Ego autem dico uobis, non iurare omnino, neque per caelum, quia thronus Dei est.’

635. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Pt. is written—‘Ieremie quarto Iurabis in veritate, in Iudicio, et Iusticia’; see Jer. iv. 2.

There are several points of resemblance between the present passage and one in the Persones Tale (De Ira), I. 588–594, part of which has been already quoted in the note to l. 474. So also Wyclif: ‘ȝit no man schulde swere, nouther for life ne dethe, no but with these thre condiciones, that is, in treuthe, in dome, and in rightwisenes, as God sais by the prophet Ieremye’; Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 483. Hence one of the ‘olde bokes’ mentioned in l. 630 is the Treatise by Frère Lorens from which the Persones Tale is largely taken.

639. the firste table, i. e. the commandments that teach us our duty towards God; those in the second table teach us our duty to our neighbour.

641. seconde heste, second commandment. Formerly, the first two commandments were considered as one; the third commandment was therefore the second, as here. The tenth commandment was divided into two parts, to make up the number. See Wyclif’s treatise on ‘The ten Comaundements’; Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 82. Thus Wyclif says—‘The secounde maner maundement of God perteyneth to the Sone. Thow schalt not take the name of thi Lord God in veyn, neþþer in word, neiþer in lyvynge.’ So also in Hampole’s Prose Treatises, ed. Perry, p. 10; Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. Perry (E. E. T. S.), pp. 5, 25. See note to l. 474; and cf. Pers. Tale, I. 588.

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643. rather, sooner; because this commandment precedes those which relate to murder, &c.

646. ‘They that understand his commandments know this,’ &c.

649. Wyclif says—‘For it is written in Ecclesiasticus, the thre and twenti chapitre, there he seith this: A man much sweringe schal be fulfilled with wickidnesse, and veniaunce schal not go away fro his hous’; Works, iii. 84. Chaucer here quotes the same text; see Ecclus. xxiii. 11. And he quotes it once more, in I. 593.

651. So Wyclif, iii. 483—‘hit is not leeful to swere by creaturis, ne by Goddys bonys, sydus, naylus, ne armus, or by ony membre of Cristis body, as þe moste dele of men usen.’

Tyrwhitt says—‘his nayles, i. e. with which he was nailed to the cross. Sir J. Maundevi le, c. vii—“And thereby in the walle is the place where the 4 Nayles of our Lord weren hidd; for he had 2 in his hondes, and 2 in his feet: and one of theise the Emperoure of Constantynoble made a brydille to his hors, to bere him in bataylle; and thorgh vertue thereof he overcame his enemies,” &c. He had said before, c. ii., that “on of the nayles that Crist was naylled with on the cross” was “at Constantynoble; and on in France, in the kinges chapelle.” ’

Mr. Wright adds, what is doubtless true, that these nails ‘were objects of superstition in the middle ages.’ Nevertheless, I am by no means satisfied that these comments are to the point. I strongly suspect that swearers did not stop to think, nor were they at all particular as to the sense in which the words might be used. Here, for example, nails are mentioned between heart and blood; in the quotation from Wyclif which begins this note, we find mention of ‘bones, sides, nails, and arms,’ followed by ‘any member of Christ’s body.’ Still more express is the phrase used by William Staunton (see note to l. 474 above) that ‘God’s members’ include ‘his nails.’ On the other hand, in Lewis’s Life of Pecock, p. 155 [or p. 107, ed. 1820], is a citation from a MS. to the effect that, in the year 1420, many men died in England ‘emittendo sanguinem per iuncturas et per secessum, scilicet in illis partibus corporis per quas horribiliter iurare consueuerunt, scilicet, per oculos Christi, per faciem Christi, per latera Christi, per sanguinem Christi, per cor Christi preciosum, per clauos Christi in suis manibus et pedibus.’ See ’Snails in Nares’ Glossary. A long essay might be written upon the oaths found in our old authors, but the subject is, I think, a most repulsive one.

652. Here Tyrwhitt notes—‘The Abbey of Hailes, in Glocestershire, was founded by Richard, king of the Romans, brother to Henry III. This precious relick, which was afterwards called “the blood of Hailes,” was brought out of Germany by the son of Richard, Edmund, who bestowed a third part of it upon his father’s Abbey of Hailes, and some time after gave the other two parts to an Abbey of his own foundation at Ashrug near Berkhamsted.—Hollinshed, vol. ii. p. 275.’ The Legend says that the holy blood was obtained by Titus from Joseph of Arimathea. Titus put it in the temple of Peace, in Rome. Edition: current; Page: [285] Thence Charlemagne took half of it to Germany, where Edmund found it, as said above. The Legend is printed in Horstmann’s Altenglische Legenden, p. 275. ‘A vial was shewn at Hales in Glocestershire, as containing a portion of our blessed Saviour’s blood, which suffered itself to be seen by no person in a state of mortal sin, but became visible when the penitent, by his offerings, had obtained forgiveness. It was now discovered that this was performed by keeping blood, which was renewed every week, in a vial, one side of which was thick and opaque, the other transparent, and turning it by a secret hand as the case required. A trick of the same kind, more skilfully executed, is still annually performed at Naples.’—Southey, Book of the Church, ch. xii. He refers to Fuller, b. vi. Hist. of Abbeys, p. 323; Burnet, i. 323, ed. 1681. See also the word Hales in the Index to the works published by the Parker Society; Pilgrimages to Walsingham and Canterbury (by Erasmus), ed. J. G. Nichols, 2nd ed. 1875, p. 88; Dodsley’s Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, i. 339, where a long account is given, with a reference to Hearne’s ed. of Benedictus Abbas, ii. 751; and Skelton’s Garland of Laurel, l. 1461, on which see Dyce’s note.

653. ‘My chance is seven; yours is five and three.’ This is an allusion to the particular game called hazard, not to a mere comparison of throws to see which is highest. A certain throw (here seven) is called the caster’s chance. This can only be understood by an acquaintance with the rules of the game. See the article Hazard in Supplement to Eng. Cyclopaedia, or in Hoyle’s Games. See the note to B. 124; and see the Monkes Tale, B. 3851. Compare—‘Not unlyke the use of foule gamesters, who having lost the maine by [i. e. according to] true iudgement, thinke to face it out with a false oath’; Lyly’s Euphues and his England, ed. Arber, p. 289.

656. In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 241, when the soldiers dice for Christ’s garments, one says—

‘I was falsly begyled withe thise byched bones,

Ther cursyd thay be.’

The readings are:—E. Cp. bicched; Ln. becched; Hl. bicched; Hn. Cm. bicche; Pt. and old edd. thilk, thilke (wrongly). Besides which, Tyrwhitt cites bichet, MS. Harl. 7335; becched, Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24; and, from other MSS., bicched, bicchid, bitched, bicche. The general consensus of the MSS. and the quotation from the Towneley Mysteries establish the reading given in the text beyond all doubt. Yet Tyrwhitt reads bicchel, for which he adduces no authority beyond the following. ‘Bickel, as explained by Kilian, is talus, ovillus et lusorius; and bickelen, talis ludere. See also Had. Junii Nomencl. n. 213. Our dice indeed are the ancient tesserae (κύβοι) not tali (ἀστράγαλοι); but, both being games of hazard, the implements of one might be easily attributed to the other. It should seem from Junius, loc. cit., that the Germans had preserved the custom of playing with the natural bones, Edition: current; Page: [286] as they have different names for a game with tali ovilli, and another with tali bubuli.’

I find in the Tauchnitz Dutch Dictionary—‘Bikkel, cockal. Bikkelen, to play at cockals.’ Here cockal is the old name for a game with four hucklebones (Halliwell), and is further made to mean the hucklebone itself. But there is nothing to connect bicched with Du. bickel, and the sense is very different. From the article on Bicched in the New Eng. Dict., it appears that the sense is ‘cursed, execrable,’ and is an epithet applied to other things besides dice. It is evidently an opprobrious word, and seems to be derived from the sb. bitch, opprobriously used. There is even a quotation in which the verb bitch means to bungle or spoil a business. We may explain it by ‘cursed bones.’

662. pryme, about nine o’clock; see notes to A. 3906, B. 2015. Here it means the canonical hour for prayer so called, to announce which bells were rung.

664. A hand-bell was carried before a corpse at a funeral by the sexton. See Rock, Church of Our Fathers, ii. 471; Grindal’s Works, p. 136; Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, l. 1964.

666. That oon of them, the one of them; the old phrase for ‘one of them.’ knave, boy.

667. Go bet, lit. go better, i. e. go quicker; a term of encouragement to dogs in the chase. So in the Legend of Good Women, 1213 (Dido, l. 290), we have—

‘The herd of hertes founden is anoon,

With “hey! go bet! prik thou! lat goon, lat goon!” ’

In Skelton’s Elynour Rummyng, l. 332, we have—‘And bad Elynour go bet.’ Halliwell says—‘Go bet, an old hunting cry, often introduced in a more general sense. See Songs and Carols, xv; Shak. Soc. Pap. i. 58; Chaucer, C. T. 12601 [the present passage]; Dido, 288 [290]; Tyrwhitt’s notes, p. 278; Ritson’s Anc. Pop. Poetry, p. 46. The phrase is mentioned by [Juliana] Berners in the Boke of St. Alban’s, and seems nearly equivalent to go along.’ It is strange that no editor has perceived the exact sense of this very simple phrase. Cf. ‘Keep bet our good,’ i. e. take better care of my property; Shipmannes Tale, B. 1622.

679. this pestilence, during this plague. Alluding to the Great Plagues that took place in the reign of Edward III. There were four such, viz. in 1348–9, 1361–2, 1369, and 1375–6. As Chaucer probably had the story from an Italian source, the allusion must be to the first and worst of these, the effects of which spread nearly all over Europe, and which was severely felt at Florence, as we learn from the description left by Boccaccio. See my note to Piers Plowman, B. v. 13.

684. my dame, my mother; as in H. 317; Piers Plowman, B. v. 37.

695. avow, vow; to make avow is the old phrase for to vow. Tyrwhitt alters it to a vow, quite unnecessarily; and the same alteration has been made by editors in other books, owing to want of familiarity Edition: current; Page: [287] with old MSS. It is true that the form vow does occur, as, e. g. in P. Plowm. B. prol. 71; but it is no less certain that avow occurs also, and was the older form; since we have oon auow (B. 334), and the phrase ‘I make myn avou,’ P. Plowman, A. v. 218; where no editorial sophistication can evade giving the right spelling. Equally clear is the spelling in the Prompt. Parv.—‘Avowe, Votum. Awowyn, or to make awowe, Voveo.’ And Mr. Way says—‘Auowe, veu; Palsgrave. This word occurs in R. de Brunne, Wiclif, and Chaucer. The phrase “performed his auowe” occurs in the Legenda Aurea, fol. 47.’ Those who are familiar with MSS. know that a prefixed a is often written apart from the word; thus the word now spelt accord is often written ‘a corde’; and so on. Hence, even when the word is really one word, it is still often written ‘a uow,’ and is naturally printed a vow in two words, where no such result was intended. Tyrwhitt himself prints min avow in the Knightes Tale, A. 2237, and again this avow in the same, A. 2414; where no error is possible. See more on this word in my note to l. 1 of Chevy Chase, in Spec. of Eng. 1394–1579. I have there said that the form vow does not occur in early writers; I should rather have said, it is by no means the usual form.

698. brother, i. e. sworn friend; see Kn. Tale, A. 1131, 1147. In l. 704, yboren brother means brother by birth.

709. to-rente, tare in pieces, dismembered. See note to l. 474 above.

713. This ‘old man’ answers to the romito or hermit of the Italian text. Note an old (indefinite), as compared with this olde (definite) in l. 714.

715. Tyrwhitt, in his Glossary, remarks—‘God you see! 7751 [D. 2169]; God him see! 4576 [B. 156]. May God keep you, or him, in his sight! In Troilus, ii. 85, it is fuller1:—God you save and see!’ Gower has—‘And than I bidde, God hir see!’ Conf. Amant. bk. iv. (ed. Chalmers, p. 116, col. 2, or ed. Pauli, ii. 96). In Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, ed. Stallybrass, i. 21, we find a similar phrase in O. H. German:—‘daz si got iemer schouwe’; Iwain, l. 794. Cf. ‘now loke the owre lorde!’ P. Plowman, B. i. 207. See also l. 766 below.

727. This is a great improvement upon the Italian Tale, which represents the hermit as fleeing from death. ‘Fratelli miei, io fuggo la morte, che mi vien dietro cacciando mi.’

Professor Kittredge, of Harvard University, informs me that ll. 727–733 are imitated from the first Elegy of Maximian, of which ll. 1-4, 223–8 are as follows:—

‘Almula cur cessas finem properare senectus?

Cur et in hoc fesso corpore tarda sedes?

Solue, precor, miseram tali de carcere uitam;

Mors est iam requies, uiuere poena mihi . . .

Hinc est quod baculo incumbens ruitura senectus

Assiduo pigram uerbere pulsat humum.

Edition: current; Page: [288]

Et numerosa mouens certo uestigia passu

Talia rugato creditur ore loqui:

“Suscipe me, genetrix, nati miserere laborum,

Membra uelis gremio fessa fouere tuo.” ’

Cf. Calderon, Les Tres Justicias en Una; Act ii. sc. 1.

731. leve moder, dear mother Earth; see ‘genetrix’ above.

734. cheste. Mr. Jephson (in Bell’s edition) is puzzled here. He takes cheste to mean a coffin, which is certainly the sense in the Clerk’s Prologue, E. 29. The simple solution is that cheste refers here, not to a coffin, but to the box for holding clothes which, in olden times, almost invariably stood in every bedroom, at the foot of the bed. ‘At the foot of the bed there was usually an iron-bound hutch or locker, which served both as a seat, and as a repository for the apparel and wealth of the owner, who, sleeping with his sword by his side, was prepared to protect it against the midnight thief’; Our English Home, p. 101. It was also called a coffer, a hutch, or an ark. The old man is ready, in fact, to exchange his chest, containing all his worldly gear, for a single hair-cloth, to be used as his shroud.

743. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. and Pt. is the quotation ‘Coram canuto capite consurge,’ from Levit. xix. 32. Hence we must understand Agayns, in l. 743, to mean before, or in presence of. Cf. B. 3702.

748. God be with you is said, with probability, to have been the original of our modern unmeaning Good bye! go or ryde, a general phrase for locomotion; go here means walk. Cp. ‘ryde or go,’ Kn. Tale, A. 1351. Cf. note to l. 866.

771. The readings are:—E. Hn. Cm. an .viij.; Ln. a .vij.; Cp. Pt. Hl. a seuen. The word eighte is dissyllabic; cf. A. S. eahta, Lat. octo. Wel ny an eighte busshels=very nearly the quantity of eight bushels. The mention of florins is quite in keeping with the Italian character of the poem. Those coins were so named because originally coined at Florence, the first coinage being in 1252; note in Cary’s Dante, Inferno, c. xxx. The expression ‘floreyn of florence’ occurs in The Book of Quintessence, ed. Furnivall, p. 6. The value of an English florin was 6s. 8d.; see note to Piers Plowman, B. ii. 143. There is an excellent note on florins in Thynne’s Animadversions on Speght’s Chaucer, ed. Furnivall, p. 45.

781. In allusion to the old proverb—‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ Cotgrave, s. v. Fleute, gives the corresponding French proverb thus:—‘Ce qui est venu par la fleute s’en retourne avec le tabourin; that the pipe hath gathered, the tabour scattereth; goods ill gotten are commonly ill spent.’ In German—‘wie gewonnen, so zerronnen.’

782. wende, would have weened, would have supposed. It is the past tense subjunctive.

790. doon us honge, lit. cause (men) to hang us; we should now say, cause us to be hanged. ‘The Anglo-Saxons nominally punished theft with death, if above 12d. value; but the criminal could redeem Edition: current; Page: [289] his life by a ransom. In the 9th of Henry I. this power of redemption was taken away, 1108. The punishment of theft was very severe in England, till mitigated by Peel’s Acts, 9 and 10 Geo. IV. 1829.’—Haydn, s. v. Theft.

793. To draw cuts is to draw lots; see Prologue, 835, 838, 845. A number of straws were held by one of the company; the rest drew one apiece, and whoever drew the longest (or the shortest) was the one on whom the lot fell. The fatal straw was the cut; cf. Welsh cwtws, a lot. In France, the lot fell on him who drew the longest straw; so that their phrase was—‘tirer la longue paille.’

797. So in the Italian story—‘rechi del pane e del vino,’ let him fetch bread and wine.

806–894. Here Chaucer follows the general sense of the Italian story rather closely, but with certain amplifications.

807. That oon, the one; that other, the other (vulgarly, the tother).

819. conseil, a secret; as in P. Plowman, B. v. 168. We still say—‘to keep one’s own counsel.’

838. rolleth, revolves; cf. D. 2217, Troil. v. 1313.

844. So the Italian story—‘Il Demonio . . . mise in cuore a costui,’ &c.; the devil put it in his heart; see vol. iii. p. 441.

848. leve, leave. ‘That he had leave to bring him to sorrow.’

851–878. Of this graphic description there is no trace in the Italian story as we now have it. Cf. Rom. and Juliet, v. 1.

860. al-so, as. The sense is—as (I hope) God may save my soul. That our modern as is for als, which is short for also, from the A. S. eall-swá, is now well known. This fact was doubted by Mr. Singer, but Sir F. Madden, in his Reply to Mr. Singer’s remarks upon Havelok the Dane, accumulated such a mass of evidence upon the subject as to set the question at rest for ever. It follows that as and also are doublets, or various spellings of the same word.

865. sterve, die; A. S. steorfan. The cognate German sterben retains the old general sense. See l. 888 below.

866. goon a paas, walk at an ordinary foot-pace; so also, a litel more than paas, a little faster than at a foot-pace, Prol. 825. Cotgrave has—‘Aller le pas, to pace, or go at a foot-pace; to walk fair and softly, or faire and leisurely.’ nat but, no more than only; cf. North of England nobbut. The time meant would be about twenty minutes at most.

888. In the Italian story—‘amendue caddero morti,’ both of them fell dead; see vol. iii. p. 442.

889. Avicen, Avicenna; mentioned in the Prologue, l. 432. Avicenna, or Ibn-Sina, a celebrated Arabian philosopher and physician, born near Bokhara ad 980, died ad 1037. His chief work was a treatise on medicine known as the Canon (‘Kitâb al-Kânûn fi’l-Tibb,’ that is, ‘Book of the Canon in Medicine’). This book, alluded to in the next line, is divided into books and sections; and the Arabic word for ‘section’ is in the Latin version denoted by fen, from the Arabic fann, a part of any science. Chaucer’s expression is not quite Edition: current; Page: [290] correct; he seems to have taken canon in its usual sense of rule, whereas it is really the title of the whole work. It is much as if one were to speak of Dante’s work in the terms—‘such as Dante never wrote in any Divina Commedia nor in any canto.’ Lib. iv. Fen 1 of Avicenna’s Canon treats ‘De Venenis.’

895. Against this line is written, in MS. E. only, the word ‘Auctor’; to shew that the paragraph contained in ll. 895–903 is a reflection by the author.

897. The final e in glutonye is preserved by the caesural pause; but the scansion of the line is more easily seen by supposing it suppressed. Hence in order to scan the line, suppress the final e in glutonye, lay the accent on the second u in luxúrie, and slur over the final -ie in that word. Thus—

O glút | oný’ | luxú | rie and hás | ardrýë ∥

904. good’ men is the common phrase of address to hearers in old homilies, answering to the modern ‘dear brethren.’ The Pardoner, having told his tale (after which Chaucer himself has thrown in a moral reflection), proceeds to improve his opportunity by addressing the audience in his usual professional style; see l. 915.

907. noble, a coin worth 6s. 8d., first coined by Edward III. about 1339. See note to P. Plowman, B. iii. 45.

908. So in P. Plowman, B. prol. 75, it is said of the Pardoner that he ‘raughte with his ragman [bull] rynges and broches.’

910. Cometh is to be pronounced Com’th, as in Prol. 839; so also in l. 925 below.

920. male, bag; see Prol. 694. Cf. E. mail-bag.

935. The first two syllables in peravénture are to be very rapidly pronounced; it is not uncommon to find the spelling peraunter, as in P. Plowman, B. xi. 10.

937. which a, what sort of a, how great a, what a.

945. Ye, for a grote, yea, even for a groat, i. e. 4d.

946. have I, may I have; an imprecation.

947. so theech, a colloquialism for so thee ich, as I may thrive, as I hope to thrive. The Host proceeds to abuse the Pardoner.

951. This is a reference to the ‘Invention of the Cross,’ or finding of the true cross by St. Helen, the mother of Constantine; commemorated on May 3. See Chambers, Book of Days, i. 586; Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints.

962. right ynough, quite enough; right is an adverb. Cf. l. 960.

Edition: current; Page: [291]

NOTES TO GROUP D.

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.

There is nothing whatever to connect this Prologue with any preceding Tale. In MS. E. and most others, it follows the Man of Law’s Tale, which cannot be right, as that Tale must be followed by the Shipman’s Prologue. Curiously enough, that Prologue does follow the Man of Law’s Tale in the Harleian MS., but the Wife of Bath’s Tale is made to follow next, in place of the Shipman’s Tale.

In MS. Pt., and several others, the Wife’s Prologue follows the Merchant’s Tale; such is the arrangement in edd. 1532 and 1561. This is possible, as the Merchant’s Tale ends a Fragment, and the Wife’s Prologue begins one; but it is easier to fit the lines at the end of the Merchant’s Tale to the Squire’s Prologue. In the Royal MS. 18. C. 2, and in MSS. Laud 739 and Barlow 20, there is an attempt to introduce the Wife’s Prologue by some spurious lines which are printed in vol. iii. p. 446. I just note that we have a genuine Epilogue to the Merchant’s Tale (see E. 2419–2440); which is quite enough to put the above lines out of court.

MS. Ln. has a different arrangement. It gives eight spurious lines at the end of the Squire’s Tale, and then four more spurious lines to link them with the Wife’s Prologue; see vol. iii. p. 446.

In the Ellesmere MS. there are numerous quotations in the margin, as will be noted in due course. In the Essays on Chaucer, pp. 293, the Rev. W. W. Woollcombe has shewn that the passages which seem to be taken from John of Salisbury are really taken from Jerome, whom John copied, verbally, at some length. I may add, that I came independently to the same conclusion; indeed, it becomes obvious, on investigation, that such was the case. Chaucer’s chief sources for this Prologue are: Jerome’s Epistle against Jovinian, and Le Roman de la Rose. I quote the former (frequently) from Hieronymi Opus Epistolarum, edited by Erasmus, printed at Basle in 1524.

1. auctoritee, authoritative text, quotable statement of a good author. ‘Though there were no written statement on the subject, my own experience would enable me to speak of the evils of marriage.’ Cf. the Edition: current; Page: [292] character of the Wife in the Prologue, A. 445–476. Lines 1-3 are imitated from Le Rom. de la Rose, 13006–10.

6. So in A. 460, with she hadde for I have had; see note to that line.

7. The alternative reading (in the footnote) does not agree with l. 6. MS. E. is quite right here. Probably MS. Cm. would have given us the same reading, but it is here mutilated.

11. In E., a sidenote has:—‘In Cana Galilee’; from John, ii. 1.

12–13. In E., a sidenote has:—‘Qui enim semel iuit ad nuptias, docuit semel esse nubendum.’ This is from Hieronymi lib. i. c. Jovinianum; Epist. (ut supra), t. ii. p. 29. But the edition has uenit for iuit, and semel docuit.

14–22. This also is from Jerome, as above (p. 28):—‘Siquidem et illa in Euangelio Iohannis Samaritana, sextum se maritum habere dicens, arguitur a domino, quod non sit uir eius. Vbi enim numerus maritorum est, ibi uir, qui proprie unus est, esse desiit.’ Cf. John, iv. 18.

23–25. In the margin of E. we find:—‘Non est uxorum numerus diffinitus.’ About 15 lines after the last quotation, we find in Jerome:—‘non esse uxorum numerum definitum.’ This is immediately preceded (in Jerome) by a quotation from St. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 29), which is also quoted in the margin of E.

28. In the margin of E.—‘Crescite et multiplicamini’; Gen. i. 28. The text was suggested by the fact that Jerome quotes it near the beginning of his letter (p. 18). Soon after (p. 19), he quotes Matt. xix. 5, which Chaucer quotes accordingly in l. 31.

33. bigamye. ‘Bigamy, according to the canonists, consisted not only in marrying two wives at a time, but in marrying two spinsters successively.’—Bell.

octogamye, marriage of eight husbands. This queer word is due to Jerome, and affords clear proof of Chaucer’s indebtedness. ‘Non damno digamos, imò nec trigamos; et (si dici potest) octogamos’; p. 29. Cf. ‘A dodecagamic Potter,’ in a note to ‘And a polygamic Potter,’ in Shelley’s Prologue to Peter Bell the Third.

35. here, hear; a gloss in E. has ‘audi.’ See 1 Kings, xi. 3.

44. Tyrwhitt says that, after this verse, some MSS. (as Camb. Dd. 4. 24, Ii. 3. 26, and Egerton 2726) have the six lines following:—

‘Of whiche I have pyked out the beste

Both of here nether purs and of here cheste.

Diverse scoles maken parfyt clerkes,

And diverse practyk in many sondry werkes

Maken the werkman parfyt sekirly;

Of five husbondes scoleryng am I.’

He adds—‘if these lines are not Chaucer’s, they are certainly more in his manner than the generality of the imitations of him. Perhaps he wrote them, and afterwards blotted them out. They come in but Edition: current; Page: [293] awkwardly here, and he has used the principal idea in another place:—

For sondry scoles maken sotil clerkes;

Womman of many scoles half a clerk is’; E. 1427.

I beg leave to endorse Tyrwhitt’s opinion; the six lines are certainly genuine, and I therefore repeat them, in a better spelling and form.

Of whiche I have y-piked out the beste,

Bothe of hir nether purs and of hir cheste.

Diverse scoles maken parfit clerkes;

Divers praktyk in many sondry werkes

Maketh the werkman parfit sekirly;

Of fyve housbondes scolering am I.

I know of no other example of scoler-ing, i. e. young scholar.

46. In the margin of E. is here written—‘Si autem non continent, nubant’; from 1 Cor. vii. 9.

47. In the margin of E. is a quotation from Jerome, p. 28; but it is really from the Vulgate, 1 Cor. vii. 39; viz.—‘Quod si dormierit uir eius, libera est; cui uult, nubat, tantum in Domino.’ Cf. Rom. vii. 3.

51–52. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 28, and 1 Cor. vii. 9, here quoted in the margin of E.

54. ‘Primus Lamech sanguinarius et homicida, unam carnem in duas diuisit uxores’; Jerome (as above), p. 29, l. 1; partly quoted here in the margin of E. Cf. Gen. iv. 19–23. ‘There runs through the whole of this doctrine about bigamy a confusion between marrying twice and having two wives at once.’—Bell. See the allusions to Lamech in F. 550, and Anelida, 150.

55–56. In the margin of E. is:—‘Abraham trigamus: Iacob quadrigamus.’ Discussed by Jerome, p. 19, near the bottom.

61. ‘Ecce, inquit [Iouinianus], Apostolus profitetur de uirginibus Domini se non habere praeceptum; et qui cum autoritate de maritis et uxoribus iusserat, non audet imperare quod Dominus non praecepit. . . . Frustra enim iubetur, quod in arbitrio eius ponitur cui iussum est’; &c.—Jerome (as above), p. 25.

65. See 1 Cor. vii. 25, here quoted in the margin of E.

69. ‘Si uirginitatem Dominus imperasset, uidebatur nuptias condemnare, et hominum auferre seminarium, unde et ipsa uirginitas nascitur’; Jerome, p. 25.

75. Tyrwhitt aptly quotes from Lydgate’s Falls of Princes, fol. xxvi:—

‘And oft it happeneth, he that hath best ron

Doth not the spere like his desert possede.’

We must conclude that a dart or spear was the prize given (in some games) to the best runner. That dart here means ‘prize,’ appears from another proof altogether. For in the margin of E. we here find a quotation from Jerome, p. 26, which runs in a fuller form, thus:—‘Proponit ἀγωνοθέτης praemium, inuitat ad cursum, tenet in manu Edition: current; Page: [294] uirginitatis brauium, . . . et clamitat, . . . qui potest capere, capiat.’ The word brauium, i. e. prize in a race, is borrowed from the Vulgate, 1 Cor. ix. 24, where the Greek has βραβεῑον. ‘Catch who so may,’ in l. 76, represents ‘qui potest capere, capiat.’ Hence cacche here means ‘win.’

81. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 7, here quoted in E.

84. ‘Haec autem dico secundum indulgentiam’; 1 Cor. vii. 6.

87. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 1, here quoted in E.

89. tassemble, for to assemble, to bring together.

Cf. ‘qui ignem tetigerit, statim aduritur,’ &c.—Jerome, p. 21.

91. Cf. ‘Simulque considera, quod aliud donum uirginitatis sit, aliud nuptiarum’; Jerome (as above), ii. 22.

96. preferre is evidently a neuter verb here, meaning ‘be preferable to.’

101. tree, wood; alluding to 2 Tim. ii. 20.

103. a propre yifte, a gift peculiar to him; see 1 Cor. vii. 7, here quoted in E.

105. See Rev. xiv. 1-4, a line or two from which is here quoted in E.

110. fore, track, course, footsteps; glossed ‘steppes’ in MS. E. Some MSS. have the inferior lore, shewing that the scribes understood the word no better than the writer of the note in Bell’s Chaucer, who says—‘Harl. MS. reads fore, which is probably a mere clerical error.’ Wright, however, correctly retains fore. It occurs again in D. 1935, q. v., where Tyrwhitt again alters it to lore. Bradley gives ten examples of it, to which I can add another, viz. ‘he folowede the fore of an oxe,’ Trevisa, ii. 343 (repeated from the example in i. 197, which Bradley cites). A. S. fōr, a course, way; from faran (pt. t. fōr), to go. Cf. Matt. xix. 21, which is quoted in Cp. and Pt.

115. ‘Et cur, inquies, creata sunt genitalia, et sic a conditore sapientissimo fabricati sumus, &c. . . ipsa organa . . sexus differentiam praedicant’; Jerome (as above), p. 42.

117. I give the reading of E., which seems much the best. For wight, Cm. has wyf. Hn. has: And of so parfit wys a wight y-wroght; which is also good. But Cp. Pt. Ln. have: And of so parfyt wise and why y-wrought. Hl. has: And in what wise was a wight y-wrought. The last reading is the worst.

128. ther, where, wherein. With l. 130, cf. 1 Cor. vii. 3, where the Vulgate has ‘Uxori uir debitum reddat.’

135. ‘Nunquam ergo cessemus a libidine, ne frustra huiuscemodi membra portemus’; Jerome, p. 42.

144. hoten, be called; A. S. hātan. The sense is—‘Let virgins be as bread made of selected wheaten flour; and let us wives be called barley-bread; nevertheless Jesus refreshed many a man with barleybread, as St. Mark tells us.’ Chaucer makes a slight mistake; it is St. John who speaks of barley-loaves; see John vi. 9 (cf. Mark vi. 38). For hoten, Tyrwhitt, Wright, Bell, and Morris, all give the mistaken reading eten, which misses the whole point of the argument; but Edition: current; Page: [295] Gilman has hoten. There is no question as to what the Wife should eat, but only as to her condition in life. It is the Wife herself who is compared to something edible.

The comparison is from Jerome (as above), p. 21:—‘Velut si quis definiat: Bonum est triticeo pane uesci, et edere purissimam similam. Tamen ne quis compulsus fame stercus bubulum: concedo ei, ut uescatur et hordeo.’

147. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 20, here quoted in E.

151. daungerous, difficult of access; cf. l. 514.

155. In the margin of E.—‘Qui uxorem habet, et debitor dicitur, et esse in praeputio, et seruus uxoris,’ &c. From Jerome (as above), p. 26.

156. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 28, here quoted in E.

158. Alluding to 1 Cor. vii. 4, here quoted in E.

161. Alluding to Eph. v. 25, here quoted in E.

167–168. What, why. to-yere, this year; cf. to-day. ‘To-yere, horno, hornus, hornotinus’; Catholicon Anglicum. The phrase is still in use in some of our dialects.

170. another tonne. This expression is probably due to Le Roman de la Rose, 6839:—

‘Jupiter en toute saison

A sor le suel de sa maison,

Ce dit Omers, deus plains tonneaus,’ &c.

This again is from Homer’s two urns, sources of good and evil (Iliad, xxiv. 527), as quoted by Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2. See note in vol. ii. p. 428 (l. 53). It is suggested that the Pardoner has been used to a tun of ale, and now he must expect to have a taste of something less pleasant. Cf. l. 177.

One of Gower’s French Balades contains the lines:—

‘Deux tonealx ad [Cupide] dont il les gentz fait boire;

L’un est assetz plus douls que n’est pyment,

L’autre est amier plus que null arrement.’

180. The saying referred to is written in the margin of Dd., as Tyrwhitt tells us. It runs:—‘Qui per alios non corrigitur, alii per ipsum corrigentur.’ With regard to its being written in Ptolemy’s Almagest, Tyrwhitt quaintly remarks:—‘I suspect that the Wife of Bath’s copy of Ptolemy was very different from any that I have been able to meet with.’ The same remark applies to her second quotation in l. 326 below. I have no doubt that the Wife is simply copying, for convenience, these words in Le Roman de la Rose, 7070:—

‘Car nous lisons de Tholomee

Une parole moult honeste

Au comencier de s’Almageste,’ &c.

Jean de Meun then cites a passage of quite another kind, but the Wife of Bath did not stick at such a trifle. The Almagest is mentioned again in the same, l. 18772.

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As to the above saying, cf. Barbour’s Bruce, i. 121, 2; and my notes to the line at pp. 545 and 612 of the same. ‘Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum’; cf. Rom. de la Rose, 8041; Robert of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, 8086.

183. Almageste. The celebrated astronomer, Claudius Ptolemaeus, who flourished in the second century, wrote, as his chief work, the μεγάλη σύνταξις τη̑ς ἀστρονομίας. This work was also called, for brevity, μεγάλη, and afterwards μεγίστη (greatest); out of which, by prefixing the Arab. article al, the Arabs made Al-mejisti, or Al-magest.

197. Here wér-e is made dissyllabic. For The three, Hl. has Tuo; which is clearly wrong.

199. In the margin of E. is written part of the last sentence in Part I. of Jerome’s treatise:—‘hierophantas quoque Atheniensium usque hodie cicutae sorbitione castrari; et postquam in pontificatum fuerint electi, uiros esse desinere.’ Probably quoted to emphasize the sense of uiros.

207–210. Imitated from Le Rom. de la Rose, 13478–82.

218. Dunmowe, in Essex, N. W. of Chelmsford. Tyrwhitt refers us to Blount’s Ancient Tenures, p. 162, and adds:—‘This whimsical institution was not peculiar to Dunmow; there was the same in Bretagne. “A l’Abbaie Sainct Melaine, près Rennes, y a, plus de six cens ans sont, un costé de lard encore tous frais et non corrumpu; et neantmoins voué et ordonné aux premiers, qui par an et jour ensemble mariez ont vescut san debat, grondement, et sans s’en repentir.”—Contes d’Eutrap, t. ii. p. 161.’ See P. Plowman, C. xi. 276, and my long note on the subject.

220. fawe, fain; a variant form of fain, A. S. fægen, fægn. See Havelok, 2160; Alisaunder, ed. Weber, 1956; &c.

221. Here occurs the first reference to the Aureolus Liber de Nuptiis, written by a certain Theophrastus, who is mentioned below (l. 671), and in E. 1310. Jerome gives a long extract from this work in his book against Jovinian (so frequently cited above), and has thus preserved a portion of it; and John of Salisbury transferred the whole extract bodily to his Policraticus. It is clear that Chaucer used the work of Jerome rather than that of John of Salisbury. The extract from Theophrastus occurs not far from the end of the first book of the epistle against Jovinian; and near the beginning of it occur the words—‘de foro ueniens quid attulisti?’—Jerome (as above), p. 51. This probably suggested the present line, as it is a question put by a wife to her husband.

226. and bere hem, i. e. and wrongly accuse them, or make them believe.

227. Tyrwhitt quotes two corresponding lines from Le Roman de la Rose:—

‘Car plus hardiment que nulz homs

Certainement jurent et mentent.’

He refers to l. 19013; but in Méon’s edition, these are ll. 18336–7.

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229. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 9949:—‘Ce ne di-ge pas por les bonnes.’

231. wys, cunning. In MSS. E. and Hn. the caesural pause is marked after wyf. The line, as it stands, is imperfect, and only to be scanned by making the pause after wyf occupy the space of a syllable. The reading wys-e gets over the difficulty, but is hardly what we should expect; it is remarkable that E. Hn. and Cm. all read wys, without a final e; cf. wys in A. 68, 785, 851. The only justification of the form wys-e would be to consider it as feminine; and such seems to be the case in Gower, Conf. Am., ed. Pauli, i. 156:—‘His doughter wis-e Petronel-le.’ if that she can hir good, if she knows what is to her advantage.

232. ‘Will make him believe that the chough is mad.’ In the New E. Dict., s. v. Chough, Dr. Murray shews that the various readings cou, cowe, kowe, &c. tend to prove that cow in this passage may well mean ‘chough’ or ‘jackdaw’ rather than ‘cow.’ This solves the difficulty; for the allusion is clearly to one of the commonest of medieval stories, told of various talking birds, originally of a parrot.

Very briefly, the story runs thus. A jealous husband, leaving his wife, sets his parrot to watch her. On his return, the bird reports her misconduct. But the wife avers that the parrot lies, and tries to prove it by an ingenious stratagem. The husband believes his frail wife’s plot, and promptly wrings the bird’s neck for telling stories, under the impression that it has gone mad.

I formerly explained this in The Academy, April 5, 1890, p. 239. In the no. for April 19, p. 269, Mr. Clouston referred me to his paper on ‘The Tell-tale Bird’ printed in the Chaucer Society’s Originals and Analogues, p. 439, with reference to the Manciple’s Tale, which relates a similar story. See the account of the Manciple’s Tale in vol. iii. p. 501. It is the story of the Husband and the Parrot, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.

This line of Chaucer’s seems to have attracted attention, though there is nothing to shew how it was understood. Thus, in Roy’s Rede me and be nott Wrothe, ed. Arber, p. 80, we find:—

‘Because they canne flatter and lye,

Makynge beleve the cowe is wode.’

In Awdelay’s Fraternyte of Vacabondes (E. E. T. S.), p. 14, we find: ‘Gyle Hather is he, that wyll stand by his Maister when he is at dinner, and byd him beware that he eate no raw meate, because he would eate it himself. This is a pickthanke knaue, that would make his Maister beleue that the Cowe is woode.’ Palsgrave, in his French Dictionary, p. 421, has:—‘I am borne in hande of a thyng; On me faict a croyre. He wolde beare me in hande the kowe is woode; il me veult fayre a croyre de blanc que ce soit noyr.’ The spelling coe for ‘jackdaw’ occurs in Skelton’s Phyllyp Sparowe, l. 468. See also Hoccleve’s Works, ed. Furnivall, p. 217, where ‘Magge, the good kowe’ is Edition: current; Page: [298] an obvious error for ‘Magge the wode kowe,’ since ‘Magge’ is a name for a mag-pie. This I also explained in The Academy, April 1, 1893, p. 285.

233. ‘And she will take witness, of her own maid, of her (the maid’s) assent (to her truth).’ This is part of the proof of the correctness of the interpretation of the preceding line. For, in most of the versions of the tale above referred to, the lady is aided and abetted by a maid who is in her confidence.

235. Here Chaucer takes several hints from the book of Theophrastus as quoted by Jerome; see note to l. 221. Thus (in Jerome, as above, p. 51) we find:—‘Deinde per noctes totas garrulae conquestiones:—Illa ornatior procedit in publicum; haec honoratior ab omnibus: ego in conuentu feminarum misella despicior. Cur aspiciebas uicinam? Quid cum ancillula loquebaris?’ It is continued at l. 243; cf. ‘Non amicum habere possumus, non sodalem.’ Next, at l. 248; cf. ‘Pauperem alere difficile est, diuitem ferre tormentum.’ Next, at l. 253; cf. ‘Pulchra cito adamatur . . . Difficile custoditur quod plures amant.’ Jean de Meun also quotes from Theophrastus plentifully, mentioning him by name in Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 8599; see the whole passage. ‘Caynard, obsolete, adapted from F. cagnard, sluggard (according to Littré, from Ital. cagna, bitch, fem. of cane, dog). A lazy fellow, a sluggard; a term of reproach. (1303) Rob. of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, l. 8300: A kaynarde ande an olde folte [misprinted folle]. (About 1310) in Wright’s Lyric Poems, xxxix. 110 (1842): This croked caynard, sore he is a-dred.’—New Eng. Dict. (where the present passage is also quoted).

246. See A. 1261, and the note. Wright here adds two more examples. He says—‘In the satirical poem of Doctor Double-ale, [in Hazlitt’s Early Pop. Poetry, iii. 308], we have the lines:—

Then seke another house,

This is not worth a louse;

As dronken as a mouse.

Among the Letters relating to the Suppression of Monasteries (Camden Soc.), p. 133, there is one from a monk of Pershore, who says that his brother monks of that house “drynk an bowll after collacyon tell ten or xii. of the clock, and cum to mattens as dronck as mys.” ’

248. See note to l. 235 above; so again, for l. 253, cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 8617–8638.

255. Cf. Ovid, Heroid. xvi. 288:—

‘Lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae.’

257. Probably Chaucer was thinking of a passage in Theophrastus, following soon after that quoted in the note to l. 235. ‘Alius forma, alius ingenio, alius facetiis, alius liberalitate sollicitat.’ But Theophrastus is referring to the accomplishments of the wooers rather than of the women wooed. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, ll. 8629–36—‘S’ele est bele,’ &c.

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263. Clearly from Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 8637—

‘Car tor de toutes pars assise

Envis eschape d’estre prise.’

265. Immediately after, we have—

‘S’ele rest lede, el vuet à tous plaire;

. . . vuet tous ceus qui la voient.’

269. See in Hazlitt’s Proverbs: ‘Joan’s as good as my lady in the dark.’

271. ‘It is a hard matter to control a thing that no one would willingly keep.’ Simply translated from Theophrastus (see note to l. 235), who has—‘Molestum est possidere, quod nemo habere dignetur.’

272. helde, a variant form of holde, hold, keep; from A. S. healdan. As Chaucer usually has holde (see D. 1144), helde is probably used for the sake of the rime. Note that it is the only example of a rime in -elde in the whole of the Canterbury Tales; indeed, the only other example is in Troil. ii. 337–8. We find the same rime in King Horn, l. 911:—

‘Mi rengne thu schalt welde,

And to spuse helde

Reynild mi doghter.’

275. Again from Theophrastus (near the beginning):—‘Non est ergo uxor ducenda sapienti. Primum enim impediri studia philosophiae,’ &c.

277. welked, withered; see C. 738, and Stratmann.

278. Chaucer quotes this, as from Solomon, in the Pers. Tale, I. 631, and explains it there more fully; and again, in the Tale of Melibeus, B. 2276. An Anglo-French poet named Herman wrote a poem ‘on the three words, smoke, rain, and woman, which, according to Solomon, drive a man from his house; and it appears from the poem that it was composed at the suggestion of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1147.’—T. Wright, Biographia Brit. Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 333. See also my note to P. Plowman, C. xx. 297, quoted in the note to B. 2276 above, at p. 207.

282. This again is from Theophrastus (see note to l. 235):—‘Si iracunda, si fatua, si deformis, si superba, si foetida; quodcunque uitii est, post nuptias discimus.’

285. Immediately after the last quotation there follows:—‘Equus, asinus, bos, canis, et uilissima mancipia, uestes quoque et lebetes, sedile lignum, calix et urceolus fictilis probantur prius, et sic emuntur: sola uxor non ostenditur, ne ante displiceat, quàm ducatur.’

293. Next follows:—‘Attendenda semper eius est facies, et pulchritudo laudanda . . . Vocanda “domina,” celebrandus natalis eius, . . . honoranda nutrix eius, et gerula, seruus, patrimus, et alumnus,’ &c. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 13914.

303–306. Next follows:—‘et formosus assecla, et procurator calamistratus, et in longam securamque libidinem exectus spado: sub quibus nominibus adulteri delitescunt.’

Chaucer has merely taken the general idea, and given it a form peculiarly adapted to his sketch. That he really was thinking of this Edition: current; Page: [300] passage is clear from the fact that, in the margin of E., appears this note—‘Et procurator calamistratus.’

311. of our dame, of the mistress, i. e. of myself.

312. Seint Iame, St. James; see A. 466, and the note.

320. Alis, Alice; A. F. Alice, Alys, Aleyse; Lat. Alicia. Skelton rimes Ales with tales; Elinour Rummyng, 351–2.

322. at our large, free, at large; we now drop our. Cf. A. 1283.

325. See notes to ll. 180, 183. We need not search in Ptolemy for this saying.

327. who hath the world in honde, i. e. who has abundant wealth. Cf. l. 330. The sense of the proverb is, that the wisest man is he who is contented, who cares nothing that others are much richer than himself. Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 6, 8; and the proverb—‘Content is all.’ In the margin of E. is written the Latin form of the saying:—‘Inter omnes altior existit, qui non curat in cuius manu sit mundus.’

333. werne, forbid, refuse. The idea is from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 7447:—

‘Moult est fox qui tel chose esperne,

C’est la chandele en la lanterne;

Qui mil en i alumeroit,

Ja mains de feu n’i troveroit.

Chascun set la similitude,’ &c.

It was quite a proverbial phrase, as the last line shews. It occurs, for example, in Alexander and Dindimus, ed. Skeat, l. 233, and in the original Latin text of the same. Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere used the device of ‘a lighted candle, by which others are lighted, with the motto Non degener addam’; i. e. I will add without loss.—Mrs. Palliser, Historic Devices, p. 263. Cicero (De Officiis, i. 16) quotes three lines from Ennius containing the same idea.

342. From 1 Tim. ii. 9, here quoted in the margin of E.

350. his, its. The pronoun is here neuter, and is the same in all the MSS. Tyrwhitt altered it to hire (her), but needlessly. But in l. 352, the sex of the cat is defined. As to the singed cat, ‘that, as they say, does not like to roam,’ see The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, (Folk Lore Soc.), 1890, pp. 219, 241.

354. goon a-caterwawed, go a-caterwauling. I explain the suffix -ed as put for -eth, A. S. -að, as in on huntað, a-hunting; where -að is a substantival suffix. I have given several examples of this curious substitution in the note to C. 406, q. v. Cotgrave has: ‘Aller à gars, to hunt after lads; (a wench) to go a caterwawling.’ And see Caterwaul in the New Eng. Dict.

357. Clearly from Le Rom. de la Rose, 14583:—

‘Nus ne puet metre en fame garde,

S’ele meisme ne se garde:

Se c’iert Argus qui la gardast,

Qui de ses cent yex l’esgardast, . . .

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N’i vaudroit sa garde mès riens:

Fox est qui se garde tel mesriens.’

As to Argus, see Ovid, Met. i. 625.

362. Here Chaucer again quotes largely from Hieronymus c. Iouinianum, lib. ii.; in Epist. (Basil. 1524), ii. 36, 37. Many of the passages are cited from the Vulgate, but they are all found in this treatise of Jerome’s, which furnishes the real key. Jerome says:—‘Per tria mouetur terra, quartum autem non potest ferre; si seruus regnet, et stultus si saturetur panibus, et odiosa uxor (see l. 366) si habeat bonum uirum, et ancilla si eiciat dominam suam. Ecce et hic inter malorum magnitudinem uxor ponitur’; p. 37. Really quoted from Prov. xxx. 21–23.

371. Again from Jerome, p. 37: ‘Infernus, et amor mulieris, et terra quae non satiatur aqua, et ignis non dicit “satis est.” ’ Really from Prov. xxx. 16, where the A. V. has ‘the grave’ instead of ‘hell.’ Note that Jerome here has amor mulieris, though the Vulgate has os uuluae. The passage is quoted in E., with dicent for dicit.

373. wylde fyr, wild fire; i. e. fiercely burning fire, probably with reference to lighted naphtha or the like. Chaucer again uses the term in the Pers. Tale, I. 445. Greek fire was of a like character. In the Romance of Rich. Coer de Lion, l. 2627, we find:—

‘King Richard, oute of hys galye,

Caste wylde-fyr into the skye,

And fyr Gregeys into the see,

And al on fyr wer[en] the[y] . . .

The see brent all off fyr Gregeys.’

Thus the Greek fire, at any rate, was not quenched by the sea. See La Chimie au moyen âge, par M. Berthelot, p. 100.

376. From Jerome (p. 36):—‘Sicut in ligno uermis, ita perdit uirum suum uxor malefica.’ Quoted in the margin of E., with perdet for perdit. Cf. ‘Sicut . . uermis ligno,’ Prov. xxv. 20 (Vulgate); not in the A. V.

378. Jerome has (p. 39):—‘Nemo enim melius scire potest quid sit uxor uel mulier, illo qui passus est.’ (Quoted in E.)

386. byte and whyne, i.e. both bite (when in a bad temper) and whine or whinny as if wanting a caress (when in a good one). It is made clearer by the parallel line in Anelida, l. 157, on which see my note in vol. i. p. 535.

389. Cf. our proverb—‘first come, first served.’ Hazlitt quotes the medieval Lat. proverb—‘Ante molam primus qui venit, non molat imus.’ And Mr. Wright quotes the French proverb of the fifteenth century—‘Qui premier vient au moulin premier doit mouldre.’ Cotgrave, s. v. Mouldre, has the same; with arrive for vient, and le premier for premier.

392. hir lyve, i. e. during their (whole) life. With ll. 393–6, cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 14032–42.

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399. colour, pretext; as in Acts, xxvii. 30.

401. In the margin of Cp. and Ln. is the medieval line: ‘Fallere, flere, nere, dedit Deus in muliere.’ Pt. has the same, with statuit for dedit.

406. grucching, grumbling; mod. E. grudge. Hl. has chidyng.

407. Suggested by the complaint of a jealous man to his wife, in Le Roman de la Rose, 9129:—

‘Car quant ge vous voil embracier

Por besier et por solacier,’ &c.

414. ‘Everything has its price.’

415. This proverb has occurred before; see A. 4134. Lydgate quotes it in st. 2 of a poem with the burden—‘Lyk thyn audience, so utter thy langage’; see Polit., Relig., and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 25, l. 15. John of Salisbury says:—‘Veteri celebratur prouerbio: quia uacuae manus temeraria petitio est’; Policraticus, lib. v. c. 10.

418. Cf. l. 417. Bacon was considered as a common food for rustics. Cf. ‘bacon-fed knaves’; 1 Hen. IV. ii. 2. 88. It is not worth while to discuss the matter further.

430. conclusioun, purpose, aim, object.

432. Wilkin was evidently, like Malle or Malkin, a name for a pet lamb or sheep; see B. 4021. In this line (if mekely be trisyllabic, and lok’th monosyllabic), the word our-e is dissyllabic, which is not common in Chaucer.

433. ba, kiss; see note to A. 3709.

435. spyced conscience, scrupulous conscience; see note to A. 526.

446. Peter, by St. Peter; cf. Hous of Fame, 1034, 2000; also G. 665, and the note; and B. 1404. I shrewe you, I beshrew you.

460. This story is from Valerius Maximus; Pliny tells it of one Mecenius. In the margin of E., the reference is exactly given, viz. to ‘Valerius, lib. 6. cap. 3,’ which is quite right. I quote the passage: ‘Egnatii autem Metelli longe minori de caussa; qui uxorem, quod vinum bibisset, fuste percussam interemit. Idque factum non accusatore tantum, sed etiam reprehensore caruit; unoquoque existimante, optimo illam exemplo violatae sobrietatis poenas pependisse.’—Valerii Maximi lib. vi. c. 3. Cf. Pliny, xiv. 13; Tertullian, Apologeticus, 6. Chaucer twice quotes again the same chapter; see notes to ll. 642, 647.

464. moste I thinke, I must (needs) think. For moste, Cm. has muste, Ln. must. So also moste=must, in l. 478.

467. From Le Roman de la Rose, 13656:—

‘Car puis que fame est enyvree

Il n’a point en li de deffense.’

Cf. Ovid, Art. Amat. iii. 765; &c.

469. Cf. Le Roman de la Rose, 13136:—

‘Par Diex! si me plest-il encores:

Quant ge m’i sui bien porpensée,

Moult me délite en ma pensée,

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Et me resbaudissent li membre,

Quant de mon bon tens me remembre,

Et de la jolivete vie

Dont mes cuers a si grant envie.’

And again, just above, l. 13128:—

‘Més riens n’i vaut le regreter;

Qui est alé, ne puet venir,’ &c.

These lines form part of the speech of La Vieille, on whom the Wife of Bath is certainly modelled; cf. note to A. 461.

483. Ioce, in Latin Judocus, a Breton saint, whose day is Dec. 13, and who died in ad 669. Alban Butler says that his hermitage became a famous monastery, which stood in the diocese of Amiens, and was called St. Josse-sur-mer. This part of France became familiar to many Englishmen in the course of the wars of Edward III. See, however, Le Testament de Jean de Meung, 461–4, which I take to mean:—‘When dame Katherine sees the proof of Sir Joce, who cares not a prune for his wife’s love, she is so fearful that her own husband will do her a like harm, that she often makes for him a staff of a similar bit of wood’; F. ‘Si li refait sovent d’autel fust une croce.’ It is obvious that Chaucer has copied this in l. 484, and that he here found his rime to croce.

484. ‘I made a stick for him of the same wood’; i.e. I retaliated by rousing his jealousy; compare the last note. Croce, a staff, O. F. croce, F. crosse; see Croche in the New E. Dictionary. Cf. Prompt. Parv., p. 103, note 5; and my note to P. Plowm. C. xi. 92.

487. In Hazlitt’s Proverbs is given—‘To fry in his own grease,’ from Heywood; it is explained to mean ‘to be very passionate,’ but means rather ‘to torment oneself.’ He also quotes, from Heywood:—

‘She fryeth in hir owne grease, but as for my parte,

If she be angry, beshrew her angry harte.’

See also Rich. Coer de Lion, 4409; Lydgate’s Temple of Glas, ed. Schick, pp. 14, 94.

492. The story is given by Jerome, in the treatise so often quoted above. ‘Legimus quendam apud Romanos nobilem, cum eum amici arguerent quare uxorem formosam et castam et diuitem repudiasset, protendisse pedem, et dixisse eis: Et hic soccus quem cernitis, uidetur uobis nouus et elegans, sed nemo scit praeter me ubi me premat.’—Hieron. c. Iouinianum, lib. i.: Epist. ii. 52 (Basil. 1524). John of Salisbury has the same story, almost in the same words, but gives the name of the noble Roman, viz. P. Cn. Graecinus. See his Policraticus, lib. v. c. 10. Chaucer alludes to it again below, in E. 1553.

495. She went thrice to Jerusalem; see A. 463.

496. ‘Across the arch which usually divides the chancel from the nave in English churches was stretched a beam, on which was placed a rood, i. e. a figure of our Lord on the cross.’—Bell.

498. In the margin of E. is the note:—‘Appelles fecit mirabile opus Edition: current; Page: [304] in tumulo Darij: vnde in Alexandro, libro sexto.’ There is a similar sidenote at C. 16; see note to that line. This tomb of Darius is due to fiction. The description of it occurs (as said) in the sixth book of the Alexandreid, a vast poem in Latin, by one Philippe Gualtier de Chatillon, a native of Lille and a canon of Tournay, who flourished about ad 1200. According to this poet, the tomb was the work of a Jewish artist named Apelles. See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 353–5, and G. Douglas, ed. Small, i. 134.

503. There is a parallel passage in Le Rom. de la Rose, 14678–99.

514. daungerous, sparing, not free; cf. l. 151.

517. Wayte, observe, watch; ‘observe what thing it is that we have a difficulty in obtaining.’

521. ‘With great demur (or caution) we set forth all we have to sell.’ With daunger implies that the seller makes a great difficulty of selling things, i. e. drives a hard bargain, and makes a great favour of it. Withoute daunger means without opposition, or without resistance; Gower, C. A. v. ii. p. 40.

Outen, put out, set out or forth, is from A. S. ūtian, verb, a derivative of ūt, out. Both here and in G. 834, Tyrwhitt needlessly alters the reading to uttren, against all the MSS. The note in Bell’s Chaucer says—‘Difficulty in making our market makes us bring out all our ware for sale’; which is utterly remote from the true sense, and would be the conduct of a reckless, not of a cautious woman. Compare the next two lines.

522. ‘A great throng of buyers makes ware dear (because there is then great demand); and offering things too cheaply makes people think they are of little value (because there is then too ready a supply).’ Hence the wise woman is careful not to be in too great a hurry to sell; and such is the meaning of l. 521. It is further implied that, when she gets her expected price, she does not hold out for a higher one.

552. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 9068, which again is from Ovid. ‘Spectatum ueniunt, ueniunt spectentur ut ipsae’; Art. Amat. i. 99.

553. ‘How could I know where my favour was destined to be bestowed?’

555. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 13726:—

‘Sovent voise à la mestre eglise,

Et face visitacions,

A noces, à processions,

A geus, à festes, à karoles,’ &c.

556. vigilies, festivals held on the eves or vigils of saints’ days. See note to A. 377.

557. For preching, Cm. has prechyngis, and Hl. prechings; but all the rest have preching, which I therefore retain. To preching means ‘to any place where a sermon was being preached’; much as we say ‘to church.’ But the sermons were often given in the open air. The Wife’s object was to go wherever there was a concourse of people, in order to shew her best clothes. Women still go ‘to church’ for a like Edition: current; Page: [305] reason. Wycliff speaks strongly of the evil of pilgrimages; see his Works, ed. Matthew, p. 279; ed. Arnold, i. 83.

558. ‘The miracle-plays were favourite occasions for people to assemble in great numbers.’—Wright. Wright refers to a tale among his Latin Stories, p. 100. See the Sermon against Miracle-Plays, in Reliquiae Antiquae, ii. 42; reprinted in Mätzner’s Sprachproben, ii. 224.

559. ‘And wore upon (me) my gay scarlet gowns.’ The use of upon without a case following it is curious; but see D. 1018, 1382 below.

The word gyte occurs again in A. 3954, where Simkin’s wife wears ‘a gyte of reed,’ i.e. a red gown. Nares shews that it is used thrice by Gascoigne, and once by Fairfax. The sense of ‘robe’ will suit the passage there quoted. Skelton has gyte in Elynour, l. 68, where the sense of ‘robe’ or ‘dress’ is certain. It is clearly the same word as the Lowland Scotch gyde, a dress, robe; see note to A. 3954 (p. 118). That the word meant both ‘veil’ and ‘gown’ appears from the fact that Roquefort explains the derived O. F. wiart as a veil with which women cover their faces; whilst Godefroy explains its variant form guiart as a dress or vestment.

560. The sense is; ‘the worms, moths, and mites never fretted them (i. e. my dresses) one whit; I say it at my peril.’ There is no difficulty, and the reading is quite correct. Yet Tyrwhitt altered peril to paraille, which he explains by ‘apparel,’ and Wright actually explains perel, in the Harl. MS., in the same way! Such an explanation turns the whole into nonsense, as it could then only mean: ‘the worms, &c. never devoured themselves (!) at all upon my apparel.’ Tyrwhitt evidently took it to mean ‘never fed themselves upon (i. e. with) my apparel’; but it is impossible that frete hem could ever be so interpreted. Frete can only mean ‘devoured,’ and it requires an accusative case; this accusative is hem, which can only refer to the gytes or ‘gowns.’ And this leaves no other sense for peril except precisely ‘peril,’ which is of course right. Upon my peril is clearly a phrase, with the same sense as ‘at my peril.’ The phrase is no recondite one; cf. Rich. III. iv. i. 26, where we find ‘on my peril’; and again, ‘upon his peril,’ in Antony, v. 2. 143; Cymbeline, v. 4. 189.

566. of my purveyance, owing to my prudence, or prudent foresight; cf. l. 570. Purveyance, providence, and prudence are mere variants; from Lat. prouidentia.

572. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 13354:—

‘Moult a soris povre secors,

Et fait en grant peril sa druge,

Qui n’a c’ung partuis à refuge.

Tout ainsinc est-il de la fame,’ &c.

In Kemble’s Solomon and Saturn, p. 57, several parallel proverbs are given; e.g.—

‘Mus miser est antro qui tantum clauditur uno.’

‘Dolente la souris qui ne seit c’un pertuis.’

He refers us to Collins’ Dict. of Span. Proverbs, p. 36; MS. Harl. Edition: current; Page: [306] 3362, fol. 40; Grüter, Florilegium Ethico-politicum, p. 32; G. Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, p. 67; MS. Proverbs, Corp. Chr. Cam. no. 450; MS. Harl. 1800, fol. 37 b. The proverb in Herbert is—‘The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken’; cf. Hazlitt’s Proverbs, p. 380.

575. ‘I made him believe’; see above. enchanted, bewitched, viz. with philtres or love-potions; according to an old belief. See Othello, i. 2. 63–79. Cf. also Le Rom. de la Rose, 13895:—‘Si croi que m’aves enchantee’; and the note to D. 747 (p. 311).

581. Red occurs so frequently as an epithet of gold, that association of gold with blood was easy enough. See note to B. 2059 (p. 196).

602. a coltes tooth, the tooth of a young colt. Cf. ‘Young folks [are] most apt to love . . . the colt’s evil is common to all complexions’; Burton, Anat. of Mel. pt. 3. sec. 2. mem. 2. subsec. 1. ‘Your colt’s tooth is not cast yet’; Hen. VIII. i. 3. 48. And see A. 3888, E. 1847.

603. Gat-tothed; see note to A. 468.

604. ‘I bore the impress of the seal of saint Venus.’

609, 610. Venerien, influenced by Venus; Marcien, influenced by Mars; cf. ll. 611, 612.

613. ascendent, the sign in the ascendant (or just rising in the east) at my birth. This sign was Taurus, which was also called ‘the mansion of Venus.’ When Mars was seen in this sign when ascending, it shewed the influence of Mars on Venus. Cf. the ‘Compleint of Mars.’

In the margin of E. is a Latin note, referring us to ‘Mansor Amphorison’ 19’; followed by a quotation. The reference is to a treatise called ‘Almansoris Propositiones,’ which begins with the words:—‘Aphorismorum compendiolum, mi Rex, petiisti,’ &c. Hence ‘Amphorison’ 19’ is an error for ‘Aphorismorum 19.’ This treatise is printed in a small volume entitled ‘Astrologia Aphoristica Ptolomaei, Hermetis, . . . Almansoris, &c.; Ulmae, 1641.’ In this edition, the section quoted (at p. 66) is not 19, but 14; and runs thus:—‘Cuicunque fuerint in ascendente infortunae, turpem notam in facie patietur.’ With ‘infortunae,’ we must supply ‘planetae’; and the object of this quotation is, clearly, to explain l. 619. Still more to the point is a remark in sect. 74 of a treatise printed in the same volume, entitled ‘Cl. Ptolomaei Centum Dicta’; where we find—‘Quicunque Martem ascendentem habet, omnino cicatricem in facie habebit.’

Immediately after the above, in the margin of E., is a second quotation, with a reference in the words:—‘Hec Hermes in libro fiducie; Amphoris degdot. 24degdot.’ Here ‘Amphorismo’ should be ‘Aphorismo.’ The quotation occurs in a third treatise, printed in the same volume as the other two already mentioned, with the title ‘Hermetis centum Aphorismorum liber.’ In this printed edition, the section quoted is not the 24th, but the 25th; and runs thus:—‘In natiuitatibus mulierum, cum fuerit ascendens aliqua de domibus Veneris, Marte existente in eis [vel e contrario]1, erit mulier impudica. Idem erit, si Capricornum habuerit Edition: current; Page: [307] in ascendente.’ Here ‘aliqua . . . Veneris’ means ‘one of the mansions of Venus; her two mansions being Taurus and Libra.’ The former is expressly referred to in l. 613, and is therefore intended.

In sect. 28 of the same treatise, we find:—‘Cum fuerit interrogatio pro muliere, simpliciter accipe significationem à Venere.’ Hence Venus is the planet that ruled over women.

‘The woman that is born in this time [i. e. under Taurus] shall be effectuall . . . she shall have many husbands and many children; she shall be in her best estate at xvi years, and she shall have a sign in the middest of her body.’—Shepherdes Kalender, ed. 1656, sig. Q 5.

618. The phrase ‘la chambre Venus’ occurs in Le Rom. de la Rose, 13540.

621. wis, surely, certainly: ‘for, may God so surely be my,’ &c.

624. ‘Ne vous chaut s’il est cors ou lons’; Rom. de la Rose, 8554.

634. on the list, on the ear. Such is the sense of lust in the Ancren Riwle, p. 212, l. 7, where the editor mistakes it. In Sir Ferumbras, l. 1900, mention is made of a man striking another ‘on the luste’ with his hand. The original sense of A. S. hlyst is the sense of ‘hearing’; but the Icel. hlust commonly means ‘ear.’ Cf. E. listen. For on the list, Hl. Cm. and Tyrwhitt have with his fist; but Tyrwhitt, in his note on the line, inclines to the reading here given, and quotes from Sir T. More’s poem entitled ‘A Merry Jest of a Serjeant,’ the lines:—

‘And with his fist

Upon the lyst

He gave hym such a blow.’

This juvenile poem is printed at length in the Preface to Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, ed. 1827, i. 64.

640. ‘Although he had sworn to the contrary’; see a similar use of this phrase in A. 1089; and the note at p. 65.

642. Romayn gestes, the ‘Roman gests,’ in the collection called Gesta Romanorum, or stories of a like character. The reference, however, in this case is to Valerius Maximus, lib. vi. c. 3, as is certified by the note in the margin of E., viz. ‘Valerius, lib. vi. fol. 19.’ The passage is: ‘Horridum C. quoque Sulpicii Galli maritale supercilium. Nam uxorem dimisit, quod eam capite aperto foris versatam cognouerat.’

647. This story is from the same chapter in Valerius. The passage is: ‘Jungendus est his P. Sempronius Sophus, qui coniugem repudii nota affecit, nihil aliud quam se ignorante ludos ausam spectare.’

648. someres game, summer-game; called somer-game in P. Plowman, B. v. 413; and, in later English, a summering; a rural sport at Midsummer. The great day was on Midsummer eve, and the games consisted of athletic sports, followed usually by bonfires. See Brand’s Pop. Antiquities; Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv. c. 3. § 22; the description of the Cotswold Games in Chambers, Book of Days, i. 714; the word Summering in Nares’ Glossary, &c. They were not always respectably conducted.

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‘Daunces, karols, somour-games,

Of manye swych come many shames.’

Rob. of Brunne, Handl. Synne, l. 4684.

‘As the common sorte of vnfaythfull women are wonte to goe forth vnto weddynges and may-games’; Paraphr. of Erasmus, 1549; Tim. f. 8. Stubbes is severe upon May-games and Whitsun-games; see his Anatomy of Abuses, ed. Furnivall (Shak. Soc.), p. 149.

651. See Ecclus. xxv. 25:—‘Give the water no passage; neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad.’ The Latin version is here quoted in the margin of E.

655. This is clearly a quotation of some old saying, as shewn by the metre, which here varies, and becomes irregular. There is a slightly different version of it in Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 233:—

‘Who that byldeth his howse all of salos,

And prikketh a blynde horsse over the falowes,

And suffereth his wif to seke many halos,

God sende hym the blisse of everlasting galos!’

The proverb implies that these three things are the signs of a foolish man. Salwes are osiers; the osier is commonly called sally in Shropshire, and the same name is given to all kinds of willows. It is not from the Lat. salix directly, but from the native A.S. sealh, which is merely cognate with salix, not borrowed from it. The three foolish things to do are; to build a house all of osiers, to spur a blind horse over a fallow-field, and to allow a wife to go on a pilgrimage. To go on a pilgrimage is here called ‘to seek hallows,’ i. e. saints, or saints’ shrines; and the expression was a common one; cf. A. 14. ‘Gone to seke hallows’ occurs in Skelton, i. 426, l. 7, ed. Dyce; and the editor quotes two more examples at p. 337 of vol. ii.

659. ‘I do not care the value of a haw for his proverbs.’ In l. 660, nof stands for ne of; see footnote.

662. ‘Si het quicunques l’en chastoie’; Rom. de la Rose, 10012.

669. This book was evidently a MS. containing several choice extracts from various authors; see l. 681.

671. Valerie. This refers to a treatise which Mr. Wright attributes to Walter Mapes, entitled Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum, and common in manuscripts; the subject is, De non ducenda uxore. See Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, 1840, ii. 188, note. ‘As to the rest of the contents of this volume, Hieronymus contra Jovinianum, and Tertullian de Pallio are sufficiently known; and so are the letters of Eloisa and Abelard, the Parables of Solomon, and Ovid’s Art of Love. I know of no Trotula but one, whose book Curandarum aegritudinum muliebrium, ante, in, et post partum, is printed int. Medicos antiquos, Ven. 1547. What is meant by Crisippus, I cannot guess.’—Tyrwhitt.

Theofraste, Theophrastus, i. e. the treatise mentioned above; see note to l. 221. It is frequently quoted above; see notes to ll. 221, 235, 257, 271, 282, 285, 293, 303. He is called Theofrates in Le Roman, l. 8599.

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676. Tertulan, Tertullian. I do not quite understand why Tyrwhitt (see note to l. 671) singled out his treatise De Pallio, which is a treatise recommending the wearing of the Greek pallium in preference to the Roman toga. Quite as much to the present purpose are his treatises De Exhortatione Castitatis, dissuading a friend from marrying a second time; and De Monogamia and De Pudicitia, much to the same purport.

677. Crisippus, Chrysippus. There were at least two of this name: (1) the Stoic philosopher, born bc 280, died 207, praised by Cicero (Academics) and Horace. Also (2) the physician of Cnidos, in the time of Alexander the Great, frequently mentioned by Pliny. It is highly probable that neither the Wife of Bath nor Chaucer knew much about him. The poet certainly caught the name from Jerome’s treatise against Jovinian, near the end of bk. i.; Epist. i. 52. We there find:—‘Ridicule Chrysippus ducendam uxorem sapienti praecipit, ne Iouem Gamelium et Genethlium uiolet.’

Helowys, Heloise, niece of Fulbert, a canon in the cathedral of Paris, was secretly married to the celebrated Abelard, a proficient in scholastic learning. She afterwards became a nun in the convent of Argenteuil, of which she was, in course of time, elected the prioress. Thence she removed, with her nuns, to the oratory of the Paraclete, near Troyes, where the last twenty years of her life were spent. She died in 1164, and was buried in Abelard’s tomb. I have no doubt at all that Chaucer derived his knowledge of her from the short sketch of her life given in Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 8799–8870, where the title of ‘abbess’ (F. abéesse) is conferred upon her. Only a few lines above, we find the name of Valerius, who (it is there said, at l. 8727) declared that a modest woman was rarer than a phœnix; and again, at l. 8759, we find: ‘Si cum Valerius raconte’; and, at l. 8767:—

‘Valerius qui se doloit

De ce que Rufin se voloit

Marier,’ &c.

This identifies Valerius as being the very one, whose name Walter Mapes assumed; as is explained above (note to l. 671).

As to Trotula, I may here observe, in addition to what is said in the note to l. 671, that Warton mentions a MS. in Merton College, with the title ‘Trottula Mulier Salerniterna de passionibus mulierum’; another copy (which I have seen) is in the Camb. Univ. Library. He adds—‘there is also extant, “Trottula, seu potius Erotis medici muliebrium liber”; Basil. 1586; 4to.’ See Warton, Hist. E. Poet. 1840, ii. 188, note.

692. peintede, depicted; alluding to the fable in Æsop, where a sculptor represented a man conquering a lion. The lion’s criticism was to the effect that he had heard of cases in which the lion conquered the man. So likewise, the Wife’s view of clerks differed widely from the clerk’s view of wives. In the margin of E. is the note—‘Quis pinxit leonem?’ The fable is amongst the ‘Fables of Æsop’ as Edition: current; Page: [310] printed by Caxton, lib. iv. fab. 15; see Jacobs’ edition, i. 251. In his note upon the sources of this fable, Mr. Jacobs refers us to—‘Romulus, iv. 15. Man and Lion (statue). 1. Lôqman, 7; Sophos, 58. II. Plutarch, Apophth., Laced. 69; Scol. Eurip., Kor., 103; Aphth. 38; Phaedrus, App. Burm., p. 20; Gabr., i. (not in Babrius); Avian, 24. III. Ademar, 52; Marie, 69; Berach., 56; Wright, ii. 28. IV. Kirch., i. 80; Lafontaine, iii. 10; Rob., Oest. V. Spectator, no. 11; L. 100, J. 84; Croxall, 30 (Lion and Statue).’

It is well put by Steele, in The Spectator, no. 11: ‘Your quotations put me in mind of the Fable of the Lion and the Man. The Man, walking with that noble Animal, shewed him, in the Ostentation of Human Superiority, a Sign of a Man killing a Lion. Upon which the Lion said very justly, We Lions are none of us Painters, else we could shew you a hundred Men killed by Lions, for one Lion killed by a Man.’ Observe that here, as in Chaucer, the reference is to a painting, not to sculpture.

696. all the mark of Adam, all beings made like Adam, i. e. all males. This idiomatic expression is cleared up by reference to F. 880, where merk means ‘image’ or ‘likeness’; see that passage.

697. The children of Mercurie are the clerks, and those of Venus are the women; see ll. 693, 694. See below.

699, 700. Here the reference is to astrology. The whole matter is explained in a side-note in E., which is copied from § 2 of Almansoris Astrologi Propositiones (see note to l. 613 above), and requires some correction. It should run as follows:—‘Vniuscuiusque planetarum septem exaltacio in illo loco esse dicitur, in quo substantialiter patitur ab alio contrarium, veluti Sol in Ariete, qui Saturni casus est. Sol enim habet claritatem, Saturnus tenebrositatem. . . . Et sic Mercurius in Virgine, qui casus est Veneris. Alter [scilicet Mercurius] namque significat scientiam et philosophiam. Altera vero causat alacritates et quicquid est saporiferum corpori.’ I take this to mean, that the sign which is called the ‘exaltation’ of one planet (in which it exhibits its greatest influence) is also the ‘dejection’ of another which is there weakest. Thus the sign Virgo was the ‘exaltation’ of Mercury; but it was also the ‘dejection’ of Venus, whose ‘exaltation’ was in Pisces. For the dejection of every planet occurs in the sign opposite to that in which is its exaltation; and Virgo and Pisces are opposite. The word casus is here used in the astrological sense of ‘dejection.’ It further follows that Pisces was the ‘depression’ of Mercury, which Chaucer expresses by the term desolat. The note also tells us that the planet Mercury implies ‘science and philosophy’; whilst Venus implies ‘lively joys and whatever is agreeable to the body.’

Venus is again alluded to as being in her exaltation in Pisces, in F. 273. Gower refers to Virgo as being the exaltation of Mercury; Conf. Amant. iii. 121.

715. Eva, Eve. The spelling Eva is frequently contrasted with that of Ave, the salutation of Gabriel to Mary. Tyrwhitt says:—‘Most Edition: current; Page: [311] of the following instances are mentioned in the Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore. See also Rom. de la Rose, 9140, 9615, et suiv.’ In Méon’s edition of Le Rom. de la Rose, Deianira is mentioned in l. 9235, and Samson in l. 9243; I do not quite make out Tyrwhitt’s numbering of the lines.

721. Cf. the Monkes Tale, B. 3205, 3256.

725. Cf. the Monkes Tale, B. 3285, 3310.

727. From Jerome against Jovin., lib. i. (near the end); Epist. i. 52. ‘Socrates Xantippen et Myron neptem Aristidis duas habebat uxores . . . Quodam autem tempore cum infinita conuicia ex superiori loco ingerenti Xantippae restitisset, aqua perfusus immunda, nihil amplius respondit, quàm, capite deterso: Sciebam (inquit) futurum, ut ista tonitrua hymber sequeretur.’ The story is thus told by Erasmus, as translated by Udall. ‘Socrates, after that he had within dores forborne his wife Xantippe, a greate while scoldyng, and at the last beyng wearie, had set him doune without the strete doore, she beyng moche the more incensed, by reason of her housbandes quietnesse and stilnesse, powred down a pisse-bolle upon him out of a windore, and al beraied him. But upon soche persones as passed by, laughing and hauing a good sport at it, Socrates also, for his part, laughed again as fast as the best, saiyng: Naie, I thought verie well in my minde, and did easily prophecie, that after so great a thonder would come a raine.’—Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Socrates, § 59.

733. These instances are also from Jerome, some twenty lines further on (same page). ‘Quid referam Pasiphaën, Clytemnestram, et Eriphylam; quarum prima deliciis diffluens, quippe regis uxor, tauri dicitur expetisse concubitus: altera occidisse uirum ob amorem adulteri: tertia prodidisse Amphiar[a]um, et saluti uiri monile aureum praetulisse.’ This passage is quoted, almost in the same words, in the margin of E. As to Eriphyle, Chaucer shews that he possessed further information, as he mentions Thebes. He consulted, in fact, the Thebaid of Statius, bk. iv, where we learn that Eriphyle betrayed her husband Amphiaraus, for a golden necklace; he was thus forced to accompany Polynices to the siege of Thebes, where he perished by being swallowed up by an earthquake. Chaucer again calls him Amphiorax in Anelida, 57, and in Troilus, ii. 105, v. 1500. Cf. Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, part 3.

747. Tyrwhitt says:—‘In the Epistola Valerii, in MS. Reg. 12. D. iii. [in the British Museum], the story is told thus: “Luna virum suum interfecit quem nimis odivit: Lucilia suum quem nimis amavit. Illa sponte miscuit aconita: haec decepta furorem propinavit pro amoris poculo.” Lima and Luna in many MSS. are only distinguishable by a small stroke over the i, which may easily be overlooked where it is, and supposed where it is not.’ However, the right name is neither Lima nor Luna, but Liuia (Livia), which is easily confused with either of the other forms. Livia poisoned her husband Drusus (son of Tiberius), at the instigation of Sejanus, ad 23. See Ben Jonson’s Edition: current; Page: [312] Sejanus, Act ii. sc. 1. Lucia (or rather Lucilia) was the wife of Lucretius the poet; see Tennyson’s poem of Lucretius (Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 369).

757. This is a stock story, told of various people. Tyrwhitt says that it occurs in the Epistola Valerii, of one Pavorinus, and that the story begins:—‘Pavorinus flens ait Arrio.’ Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, ii. 369) referring to the same story, gives the name as Pacuvius. It is, in fact, one of the stories in the Gesta Romanorum (tale 33), where it is ascribed to Valerius. (By Valerius is, of course, meant the Epistola Valerii of Walter Mapes, where it duly appears, as Tyrwhitt notes, and may be found in MS. Reg. 12. D. iii; as is observed by Sir F. Madden, in a note to Warton’s Hist. E. Poet., ed. Hazlitt, 1871, i. 250. It does not refer to Valerius Maximus, as I have ascertained.)

In the Gesta, it is told of Paletinus, who lamented to his friend Arrius that a certain tree in his garden was fatal, for three of his wives had, successively, hung themselves upon it. Arrius at once begged to have some slips of it; and Paletinus ‘found this remarkable tree the most productive part of his estate.’

The story is really from Cicero, De Oratore, lib. ii. 69; 278. ‘Salsa sunt etiam, quae habent suspicionem ridiculi absconditam; quo in genere est illud Siculi, cum familiaris quidam quereretur, quod diceret, uxorem suam suspendisse se de ficu. Amabo te, inquit, da mihi ex ísta arbore, quos seram, surculos.’

Thus the original story only mentions one wife. This is just how stories grow.

A similar story is ascribed to Diogenes. ‘When he [Diogenes] had on a time espied women hanging upon an olive-tree, and there strangled to death with the halters: Would God (said he) that the other trees had like fruite hanging on them!’—Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes, Diogenes, § 124.

766. The horrible story of ‘the Widow of Ephesus’ is of this character, but not quite so bad, as her husband died naturally. See Wright’s introduction to his edition of The Seven Sages, p. lxvi; and the text of the same, pp. 84–9. It occurs in John of Salisbury, Policraticus, viii. 11. And see Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, 1890, p. 228; Clouston’s Pop. Tales, i. 29.

769. Alluding, doubtless, to Jael and Sisera; see note to A. 2007.

775. ‘I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon, than to keep house with a wicked woman’; Ecclus. xxv. 16. Cf. Prov. xxi. 19.

778. From Prov. xxi. 9; and ll. 780, 781 seem to have been suggested by the following verse (xxi. 10).

782. This is from Jerome, near the end of bk. i. of his treatise against Jovinian (p. 52):—‘Scribit Herodotus, quod mulier cum ueste deponat et uerecundiam.’ This again is from Herodotus, bk. i. c. 8, where it is told as a saying of Gyges:—ἃμα δὲ κιθω̑νι ἐκδυομένῳ, συνεκδύεται καὶ τὴν αἰδω̑ γυνή.

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784. From Prov. xi. 22.

799. breyde, started, woke up. The A.S. verb bregdan is properly a strong verb, with the pt. t. brægd; so that the true form of the pt. t. in M.E. is breyd, without a final e. But it was turned into a weak verb, with the pt. t. breyd-e (as here), by confusion with such verbs as seyd-e, deyd-e, leyd-e, and the like. It is remarkable that our author is inconsistent in the use of the form for the pt. t. In his earlier poems, he has the older form abrayd, riming with sayd (pp.), Book of the Duch. 192; or abreyd, riming with seyd (pp.), Ho. of Fame, 110. But in the Cant. Tales, we find only the weak form breyd-e, riming with seyd-e, preyd-e, and deyd-e, B. 3728; with seyd-e, leyd-e, B. 837; and with seyd-e, A. 4285, F. 1027. Also abreyd-e, riming with seyd-e, deyd-e, A. 4190, E. 1061.

816. This is one of the ways in which our MSS, have perished.

824. Cf. ‘from Hulle to Cartage’; A. 404; and see C. 722.

844. now elles, now otherwise; i.e. and so you may; I defy you.

847. Sidingborne, Sittingbourne, about forty miles from London, and beyond Rochester, which is mentioned in the Monk’s Prologue, B. 3116.

The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.

For a discussion of the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 447.

A very similar story occurs in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, bk. i. (p. 89, Pauli’s edition), where the hero of the story is named Florent, and is said to have been a grandson of the Roman Emperor Claudius.

It also occurs in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish MS. of the fourteenth century. The Irish text was printed, together with a translation by Dr. Whitley Stokes, in The Academy, Apr. 23, 1892, p. 399. Dr. Stokes claims for the Tale a Celtic origin. See also The Academy, Apr. 30, 1892.

Chaucer’s Tale has been modernised by Dryden. This later version contains many spirited lines, but lacks the grace of the original. It is interesting as a commentary, and is worth comparison.

This Tale has been well edited, with notes, in Mätzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben, i. 338.

857. The author of the spurious Pilgrim’s Tale, which, it is said, William Thynne wished to insert in his edition of Chaucer, has plagiarised from the opening lines of the Wife of Bath’s Tale in the coolest manner. I quote some of his lines, for comparison, from Thynne’s Animadversions, &c., ed. Furnivall, Appendix I., p. 79, ll. 85–98:—

‘The cronikis old from kynge Arthur

He could rehers, and of his founder

Tell full many a whorthy story.

Wher this man walked, there was no farey

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Ner other spiritis, for his blessynges

And munbling of his holy thinges

Did vanquyche them from euery buch and tre:

There is no nother incubus but he;

For Chaucer sathe, in the sted of the quen elfe,

“Ther walketh now the limitour himself.”

For whan that the incubus dyd fle,

Yt was to bringe .vii. worse than he;

And that is the cause there beyn now no fareys

In hallis, bowris, kechyns, ner deyris.’

For a general discussion of the legends about King Arthur, see the essay in vol. i. (p. 401) of the Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall. In Malory’s Morte Arthure we have an example of a fairy in Arthur’s sister, Morgan le Fay, who was ‘put to scole in a nonnery; and ther she lerned so moche that she was a grete clerke of nygromancye’; bk. i. cap. 2.

860. elf-queen, Proserpine, according to Chaucer; see E. 2229; also B. 754, 1978, and the notes.

861. Hence the ‘fairy-rings,’ as Dryden tells us:—

‘And where the jolly troop had led the round,

The grass unbidden rose, and mark’d the ground.’

On the subject of Fairies, see Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, and similar works. Tyrwhitt notes that few old authors tell us so much about them as Gervase of Tilbury.

866. limitours, limiters; see A. 209, and the note; D. 1711; P. Plowman, B. v. 138, C. xxiii. 346; Massingberd, Eng. Reformation, p. 110.

868. The number of mendicant friars in England, during the latter half of the fourteenth century, was indeed large. In Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 400, we read that ‘now ben mony thousand of freris in Englond’; and, at p. 511, that they were, ‘as who seith, withoute noumbre.’ In P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 269, Conscience accuses the friars of waxing ‘oute of numbre,’ and reminds them that ‘Hevene haveth evene numbre, and helle is withoute numbre.’

869. The occurrence here of three consecutive lines (869–871) in which the first foot is deficient, consisting only of a single accented syllable, is worth notice. The way in which Tyrwhitt ‘amends’ these lines is most surprising. He inserts and five times, and his first line defies scansion, though I suppose he made hall’s a monosyllable, and kichen-es trisyllabic, whereas it plainly has but two syllables. Here is his result.

‘Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,

Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,

Thropes and bernes, shepenes, and dairies,

This maketh that ther ben no faeries.’

Note that he actually seems to have read dairies and faeries as Edition: current; Page: [315] riming dissyllabic words! In which case the last of these four lines would have but four accents! But the rime merely concerns the two final syllables of those quadrisyllabic words. The riming of the two former syllables is unessential, and for the purpose of rime, accidental and otiose.

MS. Pt. admits and before boures; and MS. Hl. admits and before toures and dairies (which does not alter the character of the lines). With these exceptions, all the seven MSS. omit all the five and’s inserted by Tyrwhitt; and, in fact, they are all of them superfluous.

For the benefit of those who are but little acquainted with this peculiarity of Middle English metre, I cite four consecutive lines of a similar character from Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, ll. 1239–1242:—

‘Drogh | the brydyl from his horses hede,

Let | hym goon, and took no maner hede,

Thorgh | the gardyn that enclosed was,

Hym | to pasture on the grene gras.’

There are plenty more of the same kind in the same poem; e. g. 1068, 1081, 1082, 1089, 1103, 1107, 1116, 1120, 1122, 1123, 1140, 1141, 1151, &c., &c., all printed in Specimens of English from 1394–1579, ed. Skeat, pp. 28–34. For similar lines in Hoccleve, see the same, p. 16, st. 604, l. 6; st. 605, l. 2; p. 20, st. 622, l. 2; p. 21, st. 624, l. 4.

871. Thropes=thorpes, villages; see E. 199.

shipnes, stables, or cow-houses; see A. 2000. ‘Shippen, Shuppen, a cow-house’; E. D. S. Gloss. B. I. ‘Shippen, an ox-house’; id. B. 6. ‘Shuppen, a cow-house’; id. B. 7; ‘Shippen, a cow-house’; id. B. 15.

875. undermeles, for undern-meles, undern-times. For the time of undern, see note to E. 260. Meel (pl. meles) is the A. S. mǣl, a time. The time referred to, in this particular instance, seems to be the middle of the afternoon; or simply ‘afternoons,’ as opposed to ‘mornings.’ For this sense, cf. ‘Undermele, Postmeridies,’ in the Prompt. Parv. Nares, s. v. under-meal, gives other instances; but he fails to realise the changeable sense of the word; and is quite wrong in saying (s. v. undertime) that the last-named word is unconnected with undern. He also wrongly dissociates undern from arndern and orndern.

876. ‘All religious persons were bound, if possible, to recite the divine office . . at the proper hour, in the choir; but secular priests, not living in common, and friars, being by their rule obliged to walk about within their limitation, to beg their maintenance, were allowed to say it privately, . . as they walked.’—Bell. Cf. B. 1281.

880. incubus. Milton (P. R. ii. 152) speaks of Belial as being, after Asmodai, ‘the fleshliest incubus.’ Mr. Jerram’s note on the line says: ‘Some of the ejected angels were believed not to have fallen into hell, but to have remained in the middle of the region of air (P. R. ii. 117), where in various shapes they tempt men to sin. It was said that they hoped to counteract the effects of Christ’s coming by engendering with some virgin a semi-demon, who should be a power of evil. In this way Merlin, and even Luther, were reported to have been Edition: current; Page: [316] begotten.’ See the Romance of Merlin, ed. Wheatley, ch. i. pp. 9, 10; and the poem of Merlin in the Percy Folio MS.

881. Tyrwhitt and others adopt the reading no dishonour, as in the old black-letter editions; and MS. Cm. has the reading non. At first sight, this looks right, but a little reflection will incline us rather to adopt the reading of nearly all the MSS., as given in the present text. For to say that the friar was an incubus, and yet did women no dishonour, is contradictory. The meaning is, possibly, that the friar brought upon women dishonour, and nothing more; whereas the incubus never failed to cause conception. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 257) adopts the reading here given, but interprets it thus:—‘The dishonour of a woman is, in the eyes of the Wife of Bath, to be reckoned not as a crime, but as a peccadillo.’ (See the whole passage.) The subject will hardly bear further discussion; but it is impossible to ignore the repeated charges of immorality brought against the friars by Wyclif and others. Wyclif says—‘thei slen wommen that withstonden hem in this synne’; Works, ed. Matthew, p. 6.

884. fro river, i. e. he was returning from hawking at the river-side. See B. 1927, and the note.

887. maugree hir heed, lit. ‘in spite of her head,’ i. e. in spite of all she could do, without her consent. Cf. A. 1169, 2618; also I. 974, where we find:—‘if the womman, maugree hir heed, hath been afforced.’ Mätzner remarks that, in some cases, we find a part of the head referred to, instead of the whole head. Hence the expressions: maugre his nose, Rob. of Gloucester, 2090 (p. 94, ed. Hearne); maugree thyne yen, Ch. C. T., D. 315; maugree hir eyen two, id., A. 1796; maugree my chekes, Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, C. 54; m. here chekis, P. Plowman, B. iv. 50; &c.

909. lere, learn; as in B. 181, 630, C. 325, 578, &c. But the right sense is ‘teach.’ See l. 921.

twelf-month, &c. ‘There seems to have been some mysterious importance attached to this particular time of grace,’ &c.—Bell. I think not. The solution is simply, that it takes an extra day to make the date agree. If we fix any date, as Nov. 21, 1890, the space of a year afterwards only brings us to Nov. 20, 1891; if we want to keep to the same day of the month, we must make the space include ‘a year and a day.’ This is what any one would naturally do; and that is all. Cf. A. 1850, and the note. ‘Year and Day, is a time that determines a right in many cases; . . . So is the Year and Day given in case of Appeal, in case of Descent after Entry or Claim,’ &c.; Cowell, Intrepreter of Words and Terms. See l. 916 below; and cf. Eight days, i. e. a week, in the New Eng. Dictionary.

922. cost, coast, i. e. region; as in 1 Sam. v. 6; Matt. viii. 34, &c.

924. The scansion is—Two cré-a-túr-es áccordínge in-fére.

925. Cf. Gower, Conf. Amant. i. 92:—

‘To som woman it is plesaunce

That to another is grevaunce’; &c.

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929–30. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9977–94. For y-plesed, Tyrwhitt and Wright read y-preised, contrary to the seven best MSS.; which gives an imperfect rime. preysed rimes with reysed (D. 706).

940. galle, sore place. ‘Galle, soore yn man or beeste’; Prompt. Parv. ‘Let the galled jade wince’; Hamlet, iii. 2. 253.

clawe means ‘to scratch’; and to clawe upon the galle is to scratch or rub a sore. This may be taken in two ways; hence the difficulty about the reading in l. 941, where E. Cm. have kike, i.e. kick, whilst Hn. Hl. have like, and Cp. Pt. Ln. have loke or he seith us soth. The last of these three variations gives no sense, and is certainly wrong; but either of the other readings will serve. I take them in order.

(1) kike, kick. Here the sense is:—‘if any one scratch us on a sore place (and so hurt us), we shall kick, because he tells us the truth (too plainly).’ This goes well with the context, as it answers to the repreve us of our vyce in l. 937.

(2) like, like (it), be pleased. Here the sense is:—‘if any one stroke us on a sore place (and so soothe the itching), we shall be pleased, because he tells us the truth (or what we think to be the truth).’ But I feel inclined to reject this reading, because it gives so forced a sense to the words—for he seith us sooth. There is, however, no difficulty about the use of claw in the sense of ‘to rub lightly, so as to soothe irritation’; for which see examples in the New English Dictionary. It is particularly used in the phrase to claw one’s back, i. e. to soothe, flatter; but the word galle suggests a place where friction would rather hurt than soothe.

I leave it to the reader to settle this nice question.

949. rake-stele, the handle of a rake. The word stele is still in use provincially. ‘Stale, any stick, or handle, such as the stick of a mop or a fork’; South Warwickshire; E. D. S. Gl. C. 6. ‘Stale [stae·ul], s. handle; as, mop-stale, pick-stale, broom-stale’; Elworthy’s West Somerset Words. And see Steal in Ray’s Glossary; Stele in Nares; Steale in Halliwell; &c. Cf. A. 3785; P. Plowman, C. xxii. 279. Golding translates Ovid’s hastile (Metam. vii. 676) by ‘Iaueling-steale.’ The e is ‘open’; cf. A. S. stela; hence the rime with hele (A. S. helan) is perfect.

950. ‘Car fame ne puet riens celer’; Rom. de la Rose, 19420. See also the same, 16549–70.

952. Ovyde; see Metamorph. xi. 174–193. But Chaucer seems to have purposely altered the story, since Ovid attributes the betrayal of the secret to Midas’ barber, not his wife; and again, Ovid says that the barber dug a hole, and whispered it into the pit. Chaucer’s version is an improved one. Cf. Troil. iii. 1389.

961. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 16724–32.

968. Dryden is plainer, and less polite:—‘But she must burst or blab.’ Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 16568–9.

972. bitore, bittern; bumbleth, makes a bellowing noise, which is also expressed by bumping or booming. Note that MS. Cm. has Edition: current; Page: [318] bumbith. Owing to the loud booming note of the male bittern, it is called in A. S. rāre-dumle or rāre-dumbla, from rārian, to roar; see Wright’s Glossaries. In provincial English, it is called a butter-bump, or a bumble; or, from its frequenting moist places, a bog-bumper, a bogdrum, or a bull o’ the bog; see Swainson’s Provincial Names of British Birds, E. D. S., p. 146. It was formerly thought that the cry was produced by the bird plunging its bill into mud and then blowing, as in the present passage; others thought that it put its bill into a reed, a view taken by Dryden, as he here has the line:—‘And, as a bittern bumps within a reed.’ Sir T. Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, bk. iii. c. 27, controverts these notions, and attributes the note to the conformation of the bird’s organs of voice. ‘The same contradiction of the common notion is given, from personal experience, by the Rev. S. Fovargue, in his New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, pp. 19–21’; note to Sir T. Browne, ed. S. Wilkin. The same editor further refers us to papers by Dr. Latham and Mr. Yarrell in the Linnaean Transactions, vols. iv, xv, and xvi. See Prof. Newton’s Dict. of Birds.

981. There is not much ‘remnant’ of the tale; Ovid adds that some reeds grew out of the pit, which, when breathed upon by the South wind, uttered the words which had been buried.

992. This reminds us of Chaucer’s own vision of Alcestis and her nineteen attendant ladies in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women.

997. Cf. Gower, Conf. Amantis, i. 93:—

‘In a forest, there under a tree

He sigh where sat a creature,

A lothly womannish figure,

That, for to speke of flesshe and boon,

So foul yet sigh he never noon.’

Also, in the Marriage of Sir Gawaine, st. 15:—

‘And, as he rode over a more,

Hee see a lady where she sate

Betwixt an oake and a greene hollen [holly];

She was cladd in red scarlett. . . .

Her nose was crooked and turnd outward,

Her mouth stood foule a-wry;

A worse formed lady than shee was

Neuer man saw with his eye.’

1004. can, know; but the form is singular, to agree with folk. Cf. the proverb—‘older and wiser’—in Hazlitt’s Collection; and see A. 2448.

1018. wereth on, wears upon (her), has on; cf. l. 559 above.

calle, caul; a close-fitting netted cap or head-dress, often richly ornamented; see Fairholt, Costume in England, s. v. Caul.

1021. pistell, (1) an epistle, as in E. 1154; hence (2), a short lesson, as here.

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1024. holde his day, kept his time, come back at the specified time. hight, promised.

1028. ‘Queen Guenever is here represented sitting as judge in a Court of Love, similar to those in fashion in later ages. . . Fontenelle (in the third volume of his works, Paris, 1742) has given a description of one of the fantastic suits tried in these courts . . . The best source of information on these strange follies is a book entitled Erotica, seu Amatoria, Andreæ Capellarii Regis, &c., written about ad 1170, and published at Dorpmund in 1610.’—Bell.

1038. Cf. Gower, Conf. Amantis, i. 96:—

‘That alle women levest wolde

Be soverein of mannes love,’ &c.

So also in the Marriage of Sir Gawaine, st. 28:—

—‘a woman will have her will,

And this is all her cheef desire.’

1069. The scansion is—‘Shold’ ev’r | so foul | e dis | pará | ged be.’

1074. It is curious to note how Chaucer seems to have felt that romance-writers were constrained to describe feasts, a duty which he usually evades. Cf. A. 2197, B. 419, 1120, E. 1710, F. 278. In fact, the original business of the minstrel was to praise his lord’s bounty, especially on grand occasions.

1081. So in Gower’s Conf. Amantis, i. 100:—

‘But as an oule fleeth by nighte

Out of all other briddes sighte,

Right so this knight, on daies brode,’ &c.

This line, for a wonder, is unaltered by Dryden in his paraphrase.

1085. walweth, rolls from side to side, turns about restlessly; cf.

Leg. Good Wom. 1166; Troil. i. 699; Rom. Rose, 2562.

1088. Fareth, pronounced as Far’th; cf. tak’th in 1072.

1090. dangerous, distant, unapproachable; see D. 151.

1109. Gentilesse. See my notes (in vol. i. 431, 553) on R. R. 2190, and Gentilesse. Compare Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 6 and met. 6; Roman de la Rose, ed. Méon, 6603–6616, and 18807–19096; and see B. 2831.

1114. Cf. privee n’apert in l. 1136; ‘in private and in public.’

1117. wol we, desires that we; see 1130 below.

1121. Cf. Balade of Gentilesse, ll. 16, 17.

1128. Cf. Dante, Purgat. vii. 121:—

‘Rade volte risurge per li rami

L’umana probitate: e questo vuole

Quei che la dà, perchè da lui si chiami.’

Cary’s translation is:—

‘Rarely into the branches of the tree

Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains

He who bestows it, that as His free gift

It may be called.’

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Marsh notes that similar sentiments occur in the Canzone prefixed to the fourth Trattato in Dante’s Convito.

1135. The general sense is—‘if gentle conduct were naturally implanted in a particular family, none of that family could ever behave badly.’ Cf. ll. 1150, 1151.

‘Were virtue by descent, a noble name

Could never villanise his father’s fame.’

Dryden’s paraphrase.

1140. Chaucer’s tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 7. 43, mentions ‘the mountaigne that highte Caucasus.’ This is probably where he got the name from. Cf. Shakespeare’s ‘frosty Caucasus’; Rich. II. i. 3. 295. The whole passage is imitated from another place in Boethius, where Chaucer’s translation has:—‘Certes, yif that honour of poeple were a natural yift to dignitees, it ne mighte never cesen . . . to don his office, right as fyr in every contree ne stinteth nat to eschaufen and to ben hoot’; bk. iii. pr. 4. 44–8. In l. 1139, Dryden merely alters in to to.

1142. lye, i. e. blaze. ‘Hevene y-leyed wose syth,’ whoever sees heaven in a blaze; Relig. Antiq. i. 266. The sb. lye, a flame, occurs in P. Pl. C. xx. 172. Cf. A. S. lȳg, līg, flame.

1146–56. Much altered and expanded in Dryden.

1158. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 2181:—

‘For vilany makith vilayn;

And by his dedis a cherl is seyn.’

1165. ‘Incunabula Tulli Hostilii agreste tugurium cepit: ejusdem adolescentia in pecore pascendo fuit occupata: validior aetas imperium Romanum rexit, et duplicavit: senectus excellentissimis ornamentis decorata in altissimo majestatis fastigio fulsit.’—Valerius Maximus, lib. iii. c. 4 (De Humili Loco Natis). Cf. Livy, i. 22; Dionysius Halicarnasseus, iii; Ælian, xiv. 36.

1168. Senek, Seneca. Boece, Boethius; see note to 1109.

1184. Ll. 1183–1190 are imitated from the following; ‘Honesta, inquit [Epicurus], res est laeta paupertas. Illa uero non est paupertas, si laeta est. Cui enim cum paupertate bene conuenit, diues est. Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.’—Seneca, Epist. ii. § 4. This passage is quoted by John of Salisbury, Policraticus, l. vii. c. 13.

Othere clerkes also includes Epicurus, whose sentiments Seneca here expresses; see Diogenes Laertius, x. 11. MS. E. here quotes the words ‘honesta res est laeta paupertas’ in the margin, and refers to ‘Seneca, in epistola.’ It also has:—‘Pauper est qui eget, eo quod non habet; sed qui non habet, nec appetit habere, ille diues est; de quo intelligitur id Apocalypsis tertio [Rev. iii. 17]—dicis quia diues sum.’ With l. 1187 cf. Rom. de la Rose, 18766:—‘Et convoitise fait povrece.’

1191. All the editions adopt the reading is sinne, as in all the MSS. except E. and Cm. (the two best); see footnote, p. 354. But surely this is nonsense, and exactly contradicts l. 1183.

1192. In the margin of MS. E. are quoted two lines from Juvenal, Edition: current; Page: [321] Sat. x. 21, 22:—‘Cantabit uacuus coram latrone uiator; Et nocte ad lumen trepidabit arundinis umbram.’ The latter of these lines should come first, and the usual readings are motae (not nocte), lunam, and trepidabis. However, it is only the other (and favourite) line that is here alluded to. The same line is quoted in Piers Plowman, B. xiv. 305; and is alluded to in Chaucer’s tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 5. 129–130. In Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, ii. 364, is the remark:—‘For it is said comounli, that a wey-goer, whan he is voide, singith sure bi the theef.’

1195. In the margin of E. is written:—‘Secundus philosophus: Paupertas est odibile bonum, sanitatis mater, curarum remocio, sapientie reparatrix, possessio sine calumpnia.’ This is the very passage quoted, even more fully, in Piers Plowman, B. xiv. 275 (C. xvii. 117). Tyrwhitt’s note is—‘In this commendation of Poverty, our author seems plainly to have had in view the following passage of a fabulous conference between the emperor Adrian and Secundus the philosopher, reported by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, lib. x. cap. 71. “Quid est paupertas? Odibile bonum, sanitatis mater, remotio curarum, sapientie repertrix, negotium sine damno, possessio absque calumnia, sine sollicitudine felicitas.” What Vincent has there published seems to have been extracted from a larger collection of Gnomae under the name of Secundus, which are still extant in Greek and Latin. See Fabricius, Bib. Gr., l. vi. c. x, and MS. Harl. 399.’ Thus l. 1195 is a translation of Paupertas est odibile bonum, so that the proposal by Dr. Morris (Aldine edition of Chaucer, vol. i. p. vi) to adopt the reading hatel from MSS. Cp. Pt. Ln. instead of hateful, is founded on a mistake. The expression is contradictory, but it is so intentionally. ‘Poverty is a gift which its possessors hate’ is, of course, the meaning. Dryden well explains it:—

‘Want is a bitter and a hateful good,

Because its virtues are not understood.’

1196. This translates ‘remotio curarum.’

1197. This translates ‘sapientie reparatrix,’ not ‘repertrix.’

1199. elenge, miserable, hard to bear. Elenge is also spelt alenge, alinge, alange; see Alange in the New English Dictionary, though the proper form is rather alenge. It is a derivative of the intensive A. S. prefix ǣ and lenge, a secondary form of lang, long; so that A. S. ǣlenge meant protracted, tedious, wearisome, as in Alfred’s tr. of Boethius, xxxix. 4. But it was confused with the M. E. elend, strange, foreign, and so acquired the sense of ‘strange’ as well as ‘trying’ or ‘miserable.’ See Elynge in the Gl. to P. Plowman, and the note to P. Pl. C. i. 204; also Mätzner’s note to the Land of Cokayne, l. 15.

1200. This line translates ‘possessio absque calumnia.’ The E. challenge is, in fact, derived from calumnia, through Old French.

1202. Understand him: ‘maketh (him) know his God and himself’; see Dryden’s paraphrase. Against this line, in the margin of MS. E., Edition: current; Page: [322] is written:—‘Unde et Crates ille Thebanus, proiecto in mari non paruo auri pondere, Abite (inquit) pessime male cupiditates! Ego uos mergam, ne ipse mergar a uobis.’ Probably Chaucer once intended to introduce this story into the text. It relates, apparently, to Crates of Thebes, the Cynic philosopher, who flourished about bc 320.

1203. spectacle, i. e. an optic glass, a kind of telescope. In the modern sense, the word was used in the plural, as at present. From Lydgate’s London Lickpenny, st. 7, we learn that ‘spectacles to reede’ was, in his time, one of the cries of London. Cf. prospectyves, i.e. perspective glasses, in F. 234. Chaucer is here thinking of a passage in Le Roman de la Rose, where the E. version (l. 5551) has:—

‘For infortune makith anoon

To knowe thy freendis fro thy foon.’

This, again, is from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 8. 22–33. Compare Chaucer’s poem on Fortune, ll. 9, 32, 34, and my notes upon these lines; vol. i. pp. 383, 544.

1208. See note to l. 1276 below; and cf. D. 1.

1210. Compare C. 743, and the note.

1215. For also, Tyrwhitt reads also so, against all authority, as he admits. The text is right as it stands. Eld-e is dissyllabic, the final e being preserved by the cæsura; and also means no more than ‘so.’ I suspect this is quoted from some French proverb. Dryden alters ‘filth’ to ‘ugliness.’

1224. repair, great resort, viz. of visitors.

1234. ‘I care not which of the two it shall be.’ Cf. Gower, Conf. Amantis, i. 103:—

‘Chese for us bothe, I you praie,

And what as ever that ye saie,

Right as ye wolle, so wol I.

My lord, she saide, grauntmercy.

For of this word that ye now sain,

That ye have made me soverein,

My destinè is overpassed’; &c.

1260. toverbyde, to over-bide, to outlive. Tyrwhitt substitutes to overlive, from the black-letter editions. Gra-ce is dissyllabic.

1261. shorte, shorten; see D. 365.

The Friar’s Prologue.

1276. auctoritees; a direct reference to l. 1208 above. This goes far to show that the Friar’s Tale was written immediately after the Wife’s Tale. The Friar says, quite truly, that the Wife’s Tale contains passages not unlike ‘school-matter,’ or disquisitions in the schools. Such a passage is that in ll. 1109–1212. Tyrwhitt shews that auctoritas was the usual word applied to a text of scripture; Bell adds, that it was applied, as now, to any authority for a statement. We might very well translate auctoritees by ‘quotations.’

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1284. mandements, ‘citations, or summonses, addressed to those accused of breaches of the canons, to appear and answer in the archdeacon’s court’; Bell. Hence the name somnour, i. e. a server of summonses.

1285. tounes ende (whence the name Townsend); we should now say, ‘at the entry to every town’; cf. l. 1537. The Somnour was often opposed with violence, and was a very unpopular character.

1294. The limiters had to cultivate the art of flattery, because they lived by begging from house to house.

asterisks After this line all the MSS. (except Hl.) wrongly insert lines 1307, 1308 (on p. 359). Perhaps the poet himself introduced these lines here at first, and afterwards perceived how much better they came in after l. 1306. It is not an important matter.

1296. MS. Hl. has:—‘Our host answerd and sayd the sompnour this’; which cannot be right.

The Freres Tale.

With respect to the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 450.

1300. erchedeken. As to the duties of the archdeacon, here described, compare A. 655, 658. He enforced discipline by threats of excommunication, and inflicted fines for various offences. Compare Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 166.

1305. I. e. he punished church-reeves if they did ill, and all cases in which wills or contracts had been wantonly violated. ‘Lakke of sacraments’ refers, chiefly, to the neglect of the precept to communicate at Easter; also to neglect of baptism, and, possibly, of matrimony, as that was also a ‘sacrament’ in the church of our fathers.

1307–8. These two lines occur here in MS. Hl. only; see note to 1294 above.

1309. Usury was prohibited by the Canon Law; cf. P. Plowman, C. vii. 239.

1314. ‘No fine could save the accused from punishment.’

1315. ‘The neglect to pay tithes and Easter offerings came under the archdeacon’s jurisdiction, as the bishop’s diocesan officer. The friar does not scruple to make an invidious use of this subject at the expense of the parochial clergy, because, being obliged by his rule to gain his livelihood by begging, he had no interest in tithes.’—Bell.

1317. Alluding to the shape of the bishop’s crosier. In P. Plowman, C. xi. 92, the crosier is described as having a hook at one end, by which he draws men back to a good life, and a spike at the other, which he uses against hardened offenders. On the crosier, see Rock, Church of Our Fathers, ii. 181. The bishop dealt with such offenders as were contumacious to the archdeacon.

1321. For the character of a Somnour, see A. 623.

1323. espiaille, set of spies; see note to B. 2509, p. 213.

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1324. taughte, informed; the final e is not clided.

1327. wood were, should be, were to be as mad as a hare. See ‘As mad as a March hare’ in Hazlitt’s Proverbs.

1329. The mendicant orders were subject only to their own general or superior, not to the bishops. In the piece called Jack Upland (§ 11), Jack asks the friars—‘Why be ye not vnder your bishops visitations, and leegemen to our king?’—British Poets, ed. Chalmers, 1810; i. 567.

1331. terme, i. e. during the term.

1332. Peter, by saint Peter. ‘The summoner’s repartee is founded upon the law by which houses of ill-fame were exempted from ecclesiastical interference, and licensed.’—Bell. ‘Stewes, are those places which were permitted in England to women of professed incontinency . . . But king Henry VIII., about the year 1546, prohibited them for ever.’—Cowel’s Interpreter. Cock Lane, Smithfield, contained such houses; see my notes to P. Plowman, C. vii. 366, 367.

1343. approwours, agents, men who looked after his profits. From the O. Fr. approuer, apprower, to cause to profit, to enrich; from the O. Fr. sb. prou, profit, whence also E. prowess. Miswritten as approver in the seventeenth century, though distinct from approve (from approbare). See the New Eng. Dictionary. Tyrwhitt has the spelling approvers.

1347. Cristes curs, i. e. excommunication.

1349. atte nale, put for atten ale, lit. at the ale, where ale is put for ‘ale-house.’ Atten is for A. S. æt tham, where tham is the dat. neut. of the def. article. The expression is common; as in ‘fouhten atten ale,’ fought at the ale-house, P. Plowman, C. i. 43; ‘with ydel tales atte nale,’ id. C. viii. 19. ‘Thou hast not so much charity in thee as to goe to the Ale with a Christian’; Two Gent. of Verona, ii. v. 61. So also atte noke, for atten oke, at the oak; see note to P. Pl. C. vii. 207.

1350. See John, xii. 6; and cf. the Legend of Judas Iscariot, printed (from MS. Harl. 2277) in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall, 1862; p. 107.

1352. duetee (Cp. dewete) is trisyllabic; see l. 1391. It is a coined word, having no Latin equivalent. The spelling duete occurs, in Anglo-French, in the Liber Albus, p. 211, l. 23.

1356. Sir Robert; the title of Sir was usually given to one of the secular clergy; cf. note to B. 4000, p. 248.

1364. hir, her; so in E. Hn., but other MSS. have thee. The reading given is the better. The Somnour fined the man, but let the woman go; and then said that he let her go out of friendship for the man. This is intelligible; but the reading thee gives no sense to the words for thy sake.

1365. ‘You need not take any more trouble in this matter.’

1367. bryberý-es (four syllables), i. e. modes of robbery. So in MSS. Hn. Cm. Cp. MSS. Hl. Pt. Ln. have bribours, which will not scan, unless (as in Hl.) we also read Certeinly, giving a line defective in the first foot. Tyrwhitt inserts many before mo, to fill up the line.

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1369. dogge for the bowe, a dog used to accompany an archer, to follow up a stricken deer; see the next line. The docility of such a dog is alluded to in E. 2014.

1373. ‘And, because such acquaintance brought him in the chief part of all his income.’

1377. ribybe. In l. 1573, she is called ‘an old rebekke.’ So in Skelton’s Elinour Rummyng, l. 492:—‘There came an old rybybe.’ And Ben Jonson speaks of ‘some good ribibe . . . you would hang now for a witch’; The Devil is an Ass, i. 1. 16. But probably Skelton and Ben Jonson merely took the word from Chaucer. A ribybe was, properly, a two-stringed Moorish fiddle; see note to A. 3331. Gifford’s note on the passage in Ben Jonson, says:—‘Ribibe, together with its synonym rebeck, is merely a cant term for an old woman. A ribibe, the reader knows, is a rude kind of a fiddle, and the allusion is, probably, to the inharmonious nature of its sounds.’ Halliwell suggests some (improbable) confusion between vetula and vitula.

I suspect that this old joke, for such it clearly is, arose in a very different way, viz. from a pun upon rebekke, a fiddle, and Rebekke, a married woman, from the mention of Rebecca in the marriage-service. For Chaucer himself notices the latter in E. 1704, which see. Observe that the form rebekke, as applied to the fiddle, is a corrupt one, though it is found in other languages. See rebebe in Godefroy’s O. F. Dictionary, and rebec in Littré.

1378. Cause and wolde are dissyllabic; and brybe, to rob, is a verb. But the editors ignore such elementary facts. The old editions insert haue a before brybe; and the modern editions insert han a; which, as Wright observes, is not to be found in the MSS!

1381. See A. 103, 104, 108; and, for courtepy, A. 290.

1382. hadde upon, had on; cf. D. 559, 1018.

1384. ‘Well overtaken, well met.’ So in Partonope of Blois, 6390: ‘Syr, wele atake!’ Cf. G. 556.

1394. for the name, because of the disgrace attaching to the very name. The Friar is severe.

1405. sworn-e, a plural form; the word sworn being here used adjectivally. See note to A. 1132, p. 66.

1408. venim, spite. wariangles, shrikes. According to C. Swainson (Provincial Names of British Birds), this is the Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio), called in Yorkshire the Weirangle or Wariangle. Some make it the Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor). Thus Ray, in his Provincial Words, ed. 1674, p. 83, gives warringle as a name for the Great Butcher-bird in the Peak of Derbyshire. ‘This Bird,’ says Willughby, ‘in the North of England is called Wierangle, a name, it seems, common to us with the Germans, who (as Gesner witnesseth) about Strasburg, Frankfort, and elsewhere, call it Werkangel or Warkangel, perchance (saith he) as it were Wurchangel, which literally rendered signifies “a suffocating angel.” ’ So also, the mod. G. name is Würgengel, as if from würgen and Engel. But this is a form Edition: current; Page: [326] due to popular etymology, as will presently appear. Cotgrave has ‘Pie engrouée, a Wariangle, or a small Woodpecker’; but a wariangle is really a Shrike; indeed Cotgrave also has: ‘Arneat, the ravenous birde called a Shrike, Nynmurder, Wariangle’; which is correct. In the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, l. 1706, the word wayryngle occurs as a term of abuse, signifying ‘a little villain’; this is probably the same word, and answers to a dimin. form of A. S. wearg (Icel. vargr, O. H. G. warg, warc), a felon, with the suffix -incel, as seen in A. S. rāp-incel, a little rope, hūs-incel, a little house. Bradley cites, as parallel forms, the O. H. G. warchengil (see below), and the M. L. G. wargingel, which are probably formed in a similar way. The epithet ‘little felon’ or ‘little murderer’ agrees with other names for the shrike, viz. ‘butcher-bird,’ ‘murdering-bird,’ ‘nine-murder,’ ‘nine-killer,’ so called because it impales beetles and small birds on thorns, for the purpose of pulling them to pieces. This is why I take venim to mean ‘spite’ rather than ‘poison’ in this passage.

Schmeller, in his Bavarian Dict., ii. 999, says that the Lanius excubitor is called, in O. H. G. glosses, Warchengel (Graff, i. 349); also Wargengel, Würgengel, and Würger.

1413. north contree. This is a sly joke, because, in the old Teutonic mythology, hell was supposed to be in the north. Wright refers us, for this belief, to his St. Patrick’s Purgatory. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 111, about Lucifer’s sitting in the north; cf. Isaiah, xiv. 13, 14; Milton, P. L. v. 755–760; Myrour of our Lady, ed. Blunt, p. 189. In the Icelandic Gylfaginning, we find—‘niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr,’ i. e. downwards and northwards lies the way to hell. Cf. l. 1448.

1428. laborous is right; offyc-e is trisyllabic.

1436. A proverbial expression; still in use in Lancashire and elsewhere; see N. and Q., 7 S. x. 446, 498. Cf. ‘a taker and a bribing [robbing] feloe, and one for whom nothing was to hotte nor to heauie.’ Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes; Cicero, § 50.

‘Their loues they on the tenter-hookes did racke,

Rost, boyl’d, bak’d, too too much white, claret, sacke,

Nothing they thought too heauy nor too hot,

Canne followed Canne, and pot succeeded pot.’

John Taylor; Pennilesse Pilgrimage.

Of course the sense is—‘too hot to hold.’ Tyrwhitt quotes a similar phrase from Froissart, v. i. c. 229, ‘ne laissoient riens a prendre, s’il n’estoit trop chaud, trop froid, ou trop pesant.’

1439. ‘Were it not for my extortion, I could not live.’

1451. ‘What I can thus acquire is the substance of all my income.’ See note to A. 256; and Feck in the New Eng. Dictionary.

1456. Read ben’cite; and observe the rime: prey-e, sey ye. Pronounce: (prei·yǝ, sei·yǝ), where (ǝ) represents the obscure vowel, or the a in China.

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1459. Such questions were eagerly discussed in the middle ages; see l. 1461–5.

1463. make yow seme, make it seem to you. Tyrwhitt has wene (for seme), which occurs in MS. Cp. only.

1467. iogelour, juggler; for their tricks, see F. 1143. Wright says:—‘The jogelour (joculator) was originally the minstrel, and at an earlier period was an important member of society. He always combined mimicry and mountebank performances with poetry and music. In Chaucer’s time he had so far degenerated as to have become a mere mountebank, and as it appears, to have merited the energetic epithet here applied to him.’ Cf. my note to P. Plowman, C. xvi. 207.

1472. Read abl’ is. MS. Hl. has:—‘As most abíl is our-e pray to take.’ Cf. F. habile, for which Cotgrave gives one meaning as ‘apt unto anything he undertakes.’

1476. pryme, 9 a.m., a late time with early risers. See note to B. 4045, p. 250.

1483–91. Cf. Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 62–71; Job, i. 12; ii. 6.

1502. I suspect this to be an allusion to a story similar to that entitled ‘A Lay of St. Dunstan’ in the Ingoldsby Legends.

1503. This probably alludes to some of the legends about the apostles. Thus, in The Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 36, l. 72, some fiends are represented as doing the will of St. James the Greater; and in the same, p. 368, l. 50, a fiend says of St. Bartholomew:—‘He mai do with us al that he wole, for bi-neothe him we beoth.’ Cf. Acts, xix. 15.

1508. ‘The adoption of the bodies of the deceased by evil spirits in their wanderings upon earth, was an important part of the medieval superstitions of this country, and enters largely into a variety of legendary stories found in the old chroniclers.’—Wright. Bell quotes from Hamlet, ii. 2:—‘The spirit that I have seen May be the devil,’ &c.

1509. renably, reasonably. The A. F. form of ‘reasonable’ was resnable (as in the Life of Edw. the Confessor, l. 1602); and, by the law that s became silent before l, m, and n (as in isle, blasmer, disner, E. isle, blame, dine), this became renable. See note to P. Plowman, C. i. 176.

1510. Phitonissa; this is another spelling of pythonissa, which is the word used, in the Vulgate version of 1 Chron. x. 13, with reference to the witch of Endor. In 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, the phrase is mulier pythonem habens. The witch of Endor is also called phitonesse in Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. iv, ed. Pauli, ii. 66; Barbour’s Bruce, iv. 753; Skelton’s Philip Sparowe, l. 1345; Lydgate’s Falls of Princes, bk. ii. leaf xl, ed. Wayland; Gawain Douglas, prol. to the Æneid, ed. Small, ii. 10, l. 2; and in Sir D. Lyndesay’s Monarchè, bk. iv. l. 5842. And see Hous of Fame, 1261. Cf. πνευ̑μα Πύθωνος, Acts, xvi. 16.

1518. in a chayer rede, lecture about this matter as in a professorial chair, lecture like a professor; cf. l. 1638. The fiend is satirical.

1519. Referring to Vergil’s Æneid, bk. vi, and Dante’s Inferno.

1528. This much resembles A. 1132, q. v.

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1541. for which, for which reason; stood, stood still, was stuck fast.

1543. In Brand’s Popular Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 15, ‘Heit or Heck’ is mentioned as being ‘a well-known interjection used by the country people to their horses.’ Brand adds that ‘the name of Brok is still, too, in frequent use amongst farmers’ draught oxen.’ In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 9, is the exclamation ‘hyte!’ The word for ‘stop!’ was ‘ho!’ like the modern whoa! This explains a line in Gascoigne’s Dan Bartholmew of Bathe, ed. Hazlitt, i. 136:—‘His thought sayd haight, his sillie speache cryed ho.’ Bell notes that ‘Hayt is still the word used by waggoners in Norfolk, to make their horses go on’; and adds—‘Brok means a badger, hence applied to a gray horse, myne owene lyard boy (l. 1563). Scot is a common name for farm-horses in East-Anglia; as in A. 616.’ In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 9, names of oxen are Malle, Stott (doubtless miswritten for Scott), Lemyng, Morelle, and White-horne. The Craven Glossary says hyte is used to turn horses to the left; whilst the Ger. hott! or hottot! is used to turn them to the right. In Shropshire, ’ait or ’eet, said to horses, means ‘go from me’; see Waggoners’ Words in Miss Jackson’s Shropsh. Wordbook.

1548. MS. Hl. has—‘her schal we se play.’ Tyrwhitt has pray, which gives a false rime, for it should be prey-e; see l. 1455, and the note to l. 1456. The six MSS. all have a pley.

1559. thakketh (pronounced thakk’th) his hors, pats, or strokes his horses; to encourage them. From A. S. þaccian, to stroke (a horse), Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, p. 303, l. 10. So also in A. 3304. (Not to thwack, or whack.)

1560. I adopt the reading of MSS. E. and Hn. MSS. Cm. Pt. Ln. have:—‘And they bigunne to drawe and to stoupe,’ which throws an awkward accent on the former to. MS. Hl. has:—‘And thay bygon to drawen and to stowpe.’ But I take to-stoupe to be a compound verb, with the sense ‘stoop forward’; though I can find no other example of its use. Being uncommon, it would easily have been resolved into two words, and this would necessitate the introduction of to before drawen. Bigonne usually takes to after it, but not always; cf. ‘Iapen tho bigan,’ B. 1883.

1563. twight, pulled, lit. ‘twitched.’ ‘Liard, a common appellative for a horse, from its grey colour, as bayard was from bay (see A. 4115). See P. Plowman, C. xx. 64 [and my note on the same]. Bp. Douglas, in his Virgil, usually puts liart for albus, incanus, &c.’—T. Other names of horses are, Favel for a chestnut, Dun for a dun horse, Ferrand for an iron-gray, and Morel, i. e. mulberry-coloured, for a roan.

1564. I give the reading of MSS. Hn. Cp. Pt. Ln., and of the black-letter editions. MS. Hl. has ‘I pray god saue thy body and seint loy’; for which Cm. has ‘the body,’ as if ‘the’ were the original reading, and ‘body’ a supplied word. I take se-ynt to be dissyllabic, as in A. 120, 509, 697, D. 604. As to seint Loy, the patron-saint of goldsmiths, farriers, smiths, and carters, see note to A. 120.

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1568. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 10335–6: ‘car ge fesoie Une chose, et autre pensoie.’

1570. upon cariage, by way of quitting my claim to this cart and team; a satirical reflection on his failure to win anything by the previous occurrence. Cariage was a technical term for a service of carrying, or a payment in lieu of it, due from a tenant to his landlord or feudal superior; see the New Eng. Dictionary, s. v. Carriage, I. 4. The landlord used to claim the use of the tenant’s horses and carts for his own service, without payment for the use of them; and the tenant could only get off by paying cariage. This difficult use of the word is exemplified by two other passages in Chaucer, one of which is in the Cant. Tales, I. 752; q. v. The other is in his Boethius, bk. i. pr. 4, l. 50, where he says:—‘The poeple of the provinces ben harmed outher by privee ravynes, or by comune tributes or cariages,’ where the Lat. text has uectigalibus.

1573. rebekke, old woman; lit. Rebecca; see note to l. 1377 above.

1576. Twelve pence was a considerable sum in those days; being equivalent to something like fifteen shillings of our present money.

1580. winne thy cost, earn your expenses.

1582. viritrate, a term of contempt for an old woman. Cf. ‘thou olde trot,’ addressed to an old woman; Thersites, in Hazlitt’s Old Plays, i. 415. Jamieson gives trat, an old woman; with three examples from G. Douglas. Levins (1570) has: ‘Tratte, anus.’

1591. wisly, certainly. I ne may, I cannot (come).

1593. go, walk; as usual, when used with ryde.

1595. axe a libel, apply to have a written declaration of the complaint against me, i. e. a copy of the indictment.

1596. procutour, proctor, to appear on my behalf. Only MS. Hl. has the full form procuratour; the rest have procutour or procatour, as suitable for the metre. These forms are interesting, as furnishing the intermediate step between procurator and proctor. So, in the Prompt. Parv., we find ‘proketowre, Procurator,’ and ‘prokecye, Procuracia’; whence, by loss of e, proctor and proxy. there is dissyllabic, as in A. 3165, and frequently.

1613. Seinte Anne, saint Anna, whose day is July 26. In Luke, ii. 36, is mentioned ‘Anna the prophetess.’ At the commencement of the apocryphal gospel of Mary, we are told that the virgin’s ‘father’s name was Joachim, and her mother’s Anna.’ This is the saint Anna here alluded to. See B. 641; G. 70; and Cursor Mundi, l. 10147. Hence it became a common practice to give a girl the name of Mary Ann, which combined the name of the virgin with that of her mother.

1617. I payde, and which I paid.

1618. lizt, liest; a common form; see P. Plowman, C. vii. 138 (B. v. 163); Plowman’s Crede, 542.

1630. stot, properly a stallion (as in A. 615), or a bullock; also applied, as in the Cleveland Glossary, to an old ox. Here it clearly means ‘old cow,’ as a term of abuse.

Edition: current; Page: [330]

1635. by right; because the old woman really meant it; cf. l. 1568.

1644. leve, grant. Tyrwhitt wrongly has lene, lend. The difference between these two words, which are constantly confused (being written leue, lene, often indistinguishably) is explained in my note to P. Plowman, B. v. 263. Leue (grant, permit) is usually followed by a dependent clause; but lene (lend, grant, give) by an accusative case.

1647. I supply and to fill up the line. This and appears in all the modern editions, but without authority, and without any notice that the MSS. omit it. Yet it neither appears in any one of our seven MSS. nor in MSS. Dd., Ii., or Mm. Neither does it appear in the black-letter editions. Indeed MS. E. marks the scansion thus: After the text of Crist | Poul | and John; as if the word ‘Poul’ occupied a whole foot of the verse. And I can readily believe that the line was meant to be so scanned.

1657. See Ps. x. 9. sit, short for sitteth.

1661. See 1 Cor. x. 13. over, above, beyond.

1662. For Christ as a ‘knight,’ see P. Plowman, C. xxi. 11; Ancren Riwle, p. 390.

1663. For Somnours, several MSS. have Somnour. MS. Cm. is defective; MS. Dd. supports the reading which I have given. It is immaterial, as thise Somnours includes the particular Somnour who was one of the party.

The Sompnour’s Prologue.

1676. The words of St. Paul, 2 Cor. xii. 4, have suggested numerous accounts of revelations made to saints regarding heaven and hell. In Bede’s Eccl. History, bk. iii. c. 19, we are told how St. Furseus saw a vision of hell; so also did St. Guthlac, as related in his life, cap. 5. A long vision of purgatory is recounted in the Revelation to the Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber; and another in the account of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, in the Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann. Long descriptions of hell are common, as in the Cursor Mundi, l. 23195, and Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, l. 6464. But the particular story to which Chaucer here alludes is, probably, not elsewhere extant.

1688. Possibly Chaucer was thinking of the wings of Lucifer, greater than any sails, as described in Dante’s Inferno, xxxiv. 48; whence also Milton speaks of Satan’s ‘sail-broad vans,’ P. L. ii. 927. A carrik or carrack is a large trading-ship, and we have here the earliest known example of the use of the word in English; see Carrack in the New Eng. Dictionary.

1690–1. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 7577–8; in vol. i. p. 257.

1695. Line 2119 of the House of Fame is: ‘Twenty thousand in a route’; here we have the same line with the addition of freres. Edition: current; Page: [331] Both lines are cast in the same mould, both being deficient in the first foot. Thus the scansion is: Twen | ty thou | sand, &c. In order to conceal this fact, Tyrwhitt reads: ‘A twenty thousand,’ &c., against all authority; but Wright, Bell, Morris, and Gilman all allow the line to stand as Chaucer wrote it, and as it is here given. The black-letter editions do the same. It is a very small matter that all the copies except E. have on for in; as the words are equivalent, I keep in (as in E.), because in is the reading in the Hous of Fame.

The Somnours Tale.

For further remarks about this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 452.

It is principally directed against the Frere; see the description of him in the Prologue, A. 208.

1710. Holderness is an extremely flat district; it lies at the S. E. angle of Yorkshire, between Hull, Driffield, Bridlington and Spurn Point; see the Holderness Glossary, E. D. S. 1877. We find that Chaucer makes no attempt here, as in the Reeve’s Tale, to imitate the Yorkshire dialect.

1712. to preche. The friars were popular preachers of the middle ages. They were to live by begging, and were therefore often called the Mendicant Orders; see l. 1912, and the notes to A. 208, 209. The friar of our story was a Carmelite; see note to l. 2116.

1717. trentals. A trental (from Low Lat. trentale, O. F. trentel) was an office of thirty masses, to be said on so many consecutive days, for the benefit of souls in purgatory. It also meant, as here, the sum paid for the same to the priest or friar. See Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 299, 374; ed. Matthew (E. E. T. S.) pp. 211, 516; and the poem entitled St. Gregory’s Trental, in Religious, Political, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 83.

1722. possessioners. This term seems to have been applied (1) to the regular orders of monks who possessed landed property, and (2) to the beneficed clergy. I think there is here particular reference to the latter, as indicated by the occurrence of preest in l. 1727, curat in 1816, and viker and persone in l. 2008. The friars, on the contrary, were supposed to have no endowments, but to subsist entirely upon alms; they contrived, however, to evade this restriction, and in Pierce the Plowman’s Crede, there is a description of a Dominican convent built with considerable splendour. I take the expression ‘Thanked be god’ in l. 1723 to be a parenthentical remark made by the Somnour who tells the story, as it is hardly consistent with the views of the friars. As to the perpetual jealousies between the friars and the possessioners, see P. Plowman, B. v. 144.

1728. It was usual (as said in note to l. 1717) to sing the thirty masses on thirty consecutive days, as Chaucer here remarks. But the friar says they are better when ‘hastily y-songe’; and it would appear Edition: current; Page: [332] that the friars used occasionally to sing all the thirty masses in one day, and so save a soul from twenty-nine days of purgatory; cf. ll. 1729, 1732. In English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 8, we have an example of this. The wardens are there directed to summon the Minorite Friars to say the dirge, ‘and on the morwe to seie a trent of masses atte same freres.’

In Jack Upland, § 13, we find: ‘Why make ye [freres] men beleeue that your golden trentall sung of you, to take therefore ten shillings, or at least fiue shillings, woll bring souls out of hell, or out of purgatorie?’

1730. oules. The M. E. forms oule, owel, owul, as well as A. S. awul, awel, are various spellings of E. awl, which see in the New Eng. Dict. Hence oules means awls or piercing instruments. In the Life of St. Katherine, l. 2178, the tormentors torture the saint with ‘eawles of irne,’ i.e. iron awls. In Horstmann’s South-English Legendary (E. E. T. S.), St. Blase is tormented with ‘oules kene,’ which tore his flesh as when men comb wool (p. 487, l. 84); hence he became the patron saint of wool-combers. Similar tortures were applied by fiends in the medieval descriptions of hell. See Ancren Riwle, p. 212; St. Brandan, ed. Wright, pp. 22, 48.

‘There are the furies tossing damnèd souls

On burning forks.’

Marlowe, Faustus, Act v. sc. 4.

1734. qui cum patre. ‘This is part of the formula with which prayers and sermons are still sometimes concluded in the Church of England.’—Bell. In a sermon for Ascension Day, in Morris’s O. E. Homilies, ii. 115, we have at the end an allusion, in English, to Christ, after which follows:—‘qui cum patre et spiritu sancto uiuit et regnat per omnia secula seculorum.’ Such was the usual formula.

1740. The friars often begged in pairs; in this way, each was a check upon the other as regarded the things thus obtained. In Jack Upland, § 23, we find the friars are asked:—‘What betokeneth that ye goe tweine and tweine togither?’ Langland tells us how he met two friars; see P. Plowman, C. xi. 8.

1741. tables, writing tablets. In Horman’s Vulgaria, leaf 81, we read:—‘Tables be made of leues of yuery, boxe, cyprus, and other stouffe, daubed with waxe to wrytte on.’ And again, in the same:—‘Poyntellis of yron, and poyntyllis of syluer, bras, boon, or stoone.’ This is a survival of the use of the Roman waxed tablet and stilus.

1743. Jack Upland (§ 20) asks the friar:—‘Why writest thou hir names in thy tables that yeueth thee mony?’ The usual reason was, that the donors might be prayed for; see l. 1745. Cf. l. 1752.

1745. Ascaunces, as if, as though, as if to promise. In G. 838, q. v., it means ‘you might suppose that,’ or ‘possibly.’ In Troilus, i. 205, it means ‘as if to say’; Boccaccio’s Italian has quasi dicesse. It also occurs in Troilus, i. 292; Lydgate, Fall of Princes, fol. 136 b (Tyrwhitt); Edition: current; Page: [333] Tale of Beryn, 1797; Palladius on Husbandry, vi. 39; Sidney’s Arcadia, ed. 1622, p. 162; and in Gascoigne’s Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 113, where the marginal note has ‘as who should say.’ See the New Eng. Dictionary, where the etymology is said to be unknown.

I have since found that it is a hybrid compound. The first part of it is E. as, used superflously and tautologically; the latter part of it is the O. F. quanses, ‘as if,’ first given in a dictionary by Godefroy in 1889, with six examples, and three other spellings, viz. qanses, quainses, and queinsi. Godefroy refers us to Romania, xviii. 152, and to Foerster’s edition of Cliges, note to l. 4553. Kilian gives Mid. Du. ‘quantsuys, quasi’; borrowed from O. French, without any prefix.

1746. Nothing came amiss to the friars. They begged for ‘corn, monee, chese,’ &c.; see Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 304. And in Skelton’s Colin Clout, l. 842, we read of the friars:—

‘Some to gather chese;

Loth they are to lese

Eyther corne or malte;

Somtyme meale and salte,

Somtyme a bacon-flycke,’ &c.

1747. Goddes here translated the French expression de Dieu, meaning ‘sent from God.’ Tyrwhitt says that the true meaning of de Dieu ‘is explained by M. de la Monnoye in a note upon the Contes de D. B. Periers, t. ii. p. 107. Belle serrure de Dieu: Expression du petit peuple, qui raporte pieusement tout à Dieu. Rien n’est plus commun dans la bouche des bonnes vieilles, que ces espèces d’Hébraïsmes: Il m’en conte un bel écu de Dieu; Il ne me reste que ce pauvre enfant de Dieu. Donnez-moi une bénite aumône de Dieu. See goddes halfpeny in l. 1749. (The explanation by Speght, and in Cowel’s Interpreter, s. v. kichell, seems to be, as Tyrwhitt says, an invention.)

kechil, a little cake. The form kechell occurs in the Ormulum, l. 8662; answering to the early A. S. coecil, occurring as a gloss to tortum in the Epinal Glossary, 993; different from A. S. cīcel (for cȳcel), given as cicel in Bosworth’s Dictionary. The cognate M. H. G. word is küechelīn (Schade), O. H. G. chuochelīn, double dimin. from O. H. G. kuocho (G. Kuchen), a cake; see Kuchen in Kluge. The E. cake is a related word, but with a difference in vowel-gradation.

trip, ‘a morsel.’ ‘Les tripes d’un fagot, the smallest sticks in a faggot’; Cotgrave.

1749. masse-peny, a penny for saying a mass. Jack Upland, § 19, says:—‘Freer, whan thou receiuest a peny for to say a masse, whether sellest thou Gods body for that peny, or thy prayer, or els thy travell?’

1751. ‘dagon, a slip, or piece. It is found in Chaucer, Berners, and Steevens’ Supp. to Dugdale, ii. ap. 370, applied in each instance to a blanket’; Halliwell. Cf. M. E. dagge, a strip of cloth.

1755. hostes man, servant to the guests at the convent. Hoste seems here to mean ‘guest,’ which is one of the meanings of O. F. hoste (see Edition: current; Page: [334] Cotgrave). This sense is rare in M. E., but it occurs in the Romance of Merlin, ed. Wheatley, iii. 684, last line but one. Because he ‘bare the bag,’ this attendant on the friars was nicknamed Iscariot; cf. John, xii. 6. ‘Thei leden with hem a Scarioth, stolen fro is eldris by thefte, to robbe pore men bi beggynge’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 49.

1768. the gode man, the goodman, or master of the house. MS. Hl. has housbond-man, and MSS. Cp. Ln. bonde man; all with the same sense. place, house; cf. note to B. 1910; p. 184.

1770. Deus hic, God be here; ‘the ordinary formula of benediction on entering a house’; Wright.

1775. A fine realistic touch; the friar made himself quite at home.

1778. go walked, gone on a walk. For go walked, as in all the seven MSS., Tyrwhitt substitutes y-walked, suppressing this characteristic idiom. See note to C. 406; p. 272.

1792. glose, gloss, interpretation, as distinguished from the text.

1794. Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 6. In the margin of E., ‘Litera occidit, &c.’

1804. Kissing was an ordinary form of salutation.

1810. It was usual, I believe, to use a form of deprecation of this sort in reply to praise. The sense is—‘but I am aware that I have defects, and may God amend them.’

1816. curats, parish clergy; cf. note to l. 1722.

1820. Cf. ‘thou shalt catch men’; Luke, v. 10; ‘fishers of men,’ Matt. iv. 19; Rom. Rose, (E. version), 7492.

1824. ‘For (the sake of the) holy Trinity.’ Seint-e is feminine.

1825. pissemyre, ant. Cf. ‘as angry as a wasp,’ in Heywood’s Proverbs.

1832. Ie vous dy, I tell you. A common phrase; see King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 79; Rom. of the Rose, 7408 (in vol. i. p. 254).

1834. ire (Lat. ira) is one of the seven deadly sins; hence the friar’s sermon against it, in ll. 2005–2088.

1842. ‘But I hope no animal is ever killed on my account.’ A strong hint that he always expected some special provision to be made for him.

1845. Cf. John, iv. 34; Job, xxiii. 12.

1853. toun, village; or, precincts of this farm-house.

1857. Visions of saints being carried to heaven are not uncommon. Bede relates one, of Saint Earcongota; Eccl. Hist. bk. iii. c. 8.

1859. fermerer, the friar who had charge of the infirmary. Put for enfermerer, from O. Fr. enfermerier (Godefroy). So also fermorie, an infirmary, in P. Pl. B. xiii. 108.

1862. maken hir Iubilee, keep their jubilee; i. e. having served fifty years in the convent, they have obtained certain privileges, one of which was to go about alone; see note to l. 1740. Tyrwhitt refers us to Ducange, s. v. Sempectæ.

1864. trikling, so E. Hn.; Cm. trynkelynge (probably by error); rest trilling. Cf. B. 1864.

1866. ‘Nothing but a thanksgiving would have been appropriate for Edition: current; Page: [335] a child dying in infancy, of whose translation to paradise the friar pretends that he had seen a vision’; Bell.

1872. burel (Pt. Hl. borel) folk, lay folk, the laity. ‘The term seems to have arisen from the material of their clothing, which was not used by the clergy’; Wright. Cf. borel, in D. 356; borel men, i. e. laymen, in B. 3145; and borel clerkes, lay clerks, learned laymen, in P. Plowman, B. x. 286.

1877. See Luke, xvi. 19, 20.

1880. In the margin of E., ‘Melius est animam saginare quam corpus.’ Jean de Meun, in his Testament, 346, says of misers: ‘Amegrient leurs ames, plus que leurs cors n’engressent.’

1881. See 1 Tim. vi. 8.

1885. See Exod. xxxiv. 28.

1890. See 1 Kings, xix. 8.

1894. See Levit. x. 9.

1906. mendinants, mendicant friars. Tyrwhitt has mendiants, but, in his notes, admits that mendinants is the right reading, as he found the word to be ‘constantly so spelled in the Stat. 12 Rich. II. capp. 7, 8, 9, 10.’ The same spelling occurs repeatedly in P. Plowman; see note to P. Pl. C. xvi. 3. See Mendiener, to beg, in Godefroy’s O. Fr. Dictionary.

1911. ‘The thridde deceyt of thise ordris is that thei passen othere in preyeris, bothe for tyme thei preyen and for multitude of hem’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 317.

1915–7. See note to C. 505; p. 278.

1923. See Matt. v. 3. by freres, (1922), concerning friars. Certainly, there is no ‘text’ to this effect; but the friar trusted to find it in a maner glose, in some kind of comment on the text.

1926. An allusion to possessioners; see note to l. 1722.

1929. Iovinian. I think this is the same Jovinian as is mentioned in D. 675; for Chaucer frequently quotes the treatise by Jerome against this heretic. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 30, refers in a footnote to ‘Jovinian, the enemy of fasts and of celibacy, who was persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerome.’ The other Jovinian was a fabulous Roman emperor, who was awhile deposed, like Nebuchadnezzar, for his pride and luxury, as related in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 59 (or chapter 23 in the English version).

walkinge as a swan, i. e. with slow and stately gait. Jerome (Contra Iovin. i. 40) calls Jovinian ‘iste formosus monachus, crassus, nitidus, et quasi sponsus semper incedens.’

1931. ‘All as full of wine as a bottle in the buttery.’

1932. For gret, ed. 1550 has lytle; but, as Tyrwhitt remarks, the expression is ironical.

1933. Davit is put for David, for the rime. MSS. E. Hn. Ln. have Dauit; Cm. dauith; Cp. Hl. dauid; Pt. davyd.

1934. Lo but is the reading of MS. E. But the right reading is probably buf, not but. The readings are; E. but; Hn. Cm. Ln. buf; Edition: current; Page: [336] Cp. buff; Pt. boþ (wrongly); Hl. boef; ed. 1550, bouffe. This gives the line in the following form:—

Lo, ‘buf!’ they seye, ‘cor meum eructavit!’

Here the interjectional ‘buf!’ is probably intended to represent the sound of eructation. We find baw! as an interjection of strong contempt in P. Plowman, C. xiii. 74, xxii. 398.

Ps. xlv (xliv in the Vulgate) begins, in Latin, with the words Cor meum eructauit uerbum bonum; and the Somnour here takes eructauit in the most literal sense.

1935. fore, path, course; such is certainly the right reading, as in D. 110, on which see the note.

1937. See James, i. 22.

1938. at a sours, at a soaring, in her rise, in her upward swoop. The same word as source of a river; from F. source, O. F. sorse, the fem. pp. of the verb which arose from Lat. surgere. Most likely, this is the origin of the later souse, v., in the sense ‘to swoop downward’; see Pope, Epilogue to Satires, Dial. ii. 15; Sh. K. John, v. 2. 150; Spenser, F. Q. i. 5. 8. See my note on the House of Fame, l. 544. In the Book of St. Alban’s, fol. d1, back, we find: ‘Iff your hawke nym the fowle a-lofte, ye shall say, she toke it at the mount or at the souce’; where the r is dropped.

1939. their, for the eir, the air; see footnote.

1943. Seint Yve; see the note to B. 1417 (p. 172), with which this line entirely coincides.

1944. ‘If thou wert not our brother, thou wouldst not fare well’; see l. 1951.

1947. welden, wield, have the full use of.

1963–5. These lines are quoted by the friar as (supposed) ejaculations by Thomas.

1968. In the margin of MS. E., ‘Omnis virtus unita fortior est seipsa dispersa.’ Compare the fable in Æsop about the difficulty of breaking a bundle of sticks; and see Boeth. bk. iii. pr. 11. 37–40.

1973. See Luke, x. 7. In the margin of MS. E., ‘Dignus est operarius mercede, &c.’

1980. ‘In the life of Thomas of India.’ For this construction, see note to F. 209. St. Thomas the apostle is often so called, because he is said to have preached in India; and perhaps the tradition is true; see my note on P. Plowman, C. xxii. 165, and especially the remarks in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 292. Cf. note to E. 1230 (p. 353).

The mention of the ‘building up of churches’ refers to a well-known legend of St. Thomas, who built churches with the money given to him by King Gondoforus for the purpose of building a palace.

‘Churchene he arerde mani on, and preostes he sette there.’

Legends of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 381.

The story is prettily told in Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art.

Edition: current; Page: [337]

Cf. ‘Seyn Tomas of Ynde’; Amis and Amiloun, 758, in Weber, Met. Rom. ii. 401. So also in The Assumption of our Lady, 775; in King Horn, ed. Lumby, p. 96; Political and other Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 112, l. 19, p. 123, l. 278, p. 139, l. 735.

How intent the friars were on building fine churches and convents for their own use, appears from Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 5, 14; Pierce the Plowman’s Crede, 191; Jack Upland, § 10, and § 33; Skelton’s Colin Clout, 936; &c.

1986. ‘As will be best for thee.’ Tyrwhitt has the for thy; but thy is right. I find in the New E. Dict., s. v. Best, 8 b, a quotation from Sir E. Sandys, Europae Speculum (1637), 247: ‘I have also, to my best, avoyded that rashnesse.’ Cf. ‘for your beste,’ in B. 2427.

1989. ‘Be not as a lion in thy house, nor frantick among thy servants’; Ecclus. iv. 30. In the margin of MS. E. is the Vulgate version (Ecclus. iv. 35):—‘Noli esse sicut leo in domo tua, euertens domesticos tuos, et opprimens subiectos tibi.’

1993. hir, her; so in all the MSS. but Pt., which has yre. Tyrwhitt has wrongly taken ire as the reading, and Wright and Bell follow him, without giving any notice that MS. Hl. reads hir! But it makes all the difference; hir means ‘thy wife’; cf. ll. 1994–2004, all of which lines are robbed of their meaning by this insidious and uncalled-for alteration. Even ed. 1550 and ed. 1561 have her.

It is easily seen how the error crept in, viz. from confusion with the friar’s sermon against ire; but that does not really begin till we come to l. 2005.

As this passage has been so grossly misunderstood, I annex an outline of the sense intended. ‘Beware of thy wife; she is like the snake in the grass; remember how many men have lost their lives through their wives. But your wife is a meek one; then why strive? No serpent is so venomous as a provoked woman.’ The fact is, that this passage is imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 16779, &c., where the author bids us beware of women, as being like Vergil’s ‘snake in the grass.’ See next note. With ll. 2001–3 cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9832–6.

1995. Cf. ‘latet anguis in herba’; Vergil, Ecl. iii. 95. See F. 512, 513. But Chaucer took this at second-hand, viz. from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16793; and combined it with another passage from the same, 9832–6, which, in its turn, is copied from Ovid, Ars Amat. ii. 376:—‘Nec breuis ignaro uipera laesa pede Femina quam,’ &c.

2002. tret, short for tredeth, treads. Cm. has trat. Cf. hit, hideth, F. 512; rit, rideth, A. 974; &c.

2003. Cf. ‘furens quid foemina possit’; Vergil, Æn. v. 6.

‘Nulla uis flammae tumidique uenti

Tanta, nec teli metuenda torti

Quanta cum coniux uiduata taedis

Ardet et odit.’

Seneca, Medea; iii. 567.

2005. Here begins the sermon against ire. See the Persones Tale, Edition: current; Page: [338] I. 533. oon, &c., ‘one of the chief of the seven Deadly Sins’; all of which are described in the Persones Tale; see I. 387.

After l. 2004, MS. Hl. has two spurious lines, for which see the footnote. It is probable, however, that they are reminiscences of two genuine lines; for they occur in Le Rom. de la Rose, 16536–8. There are two more such after l. 2012, where the sense of grate is not obvious.

2007. himself, i. e. the sinner. See Pers. Tale, I. 557.

2009. homicyde; see this, in full, in the Pers. Tale, I. 564–579.

2010. ‘Ire comth of pryde’; I. 534.

2017. ‘Potestat, a chief magistrate’; Halliwell. ‘Podestà, a potestate, a mayor’; Florio. See Malory, Morte Arth. bk. v. c. 8.

2018. Senek, Seneca. The story is given in Seneca’s De Ira, i. 16, beginning:—‘Cn. Piso fuit memoria nostra, uir a multis uitiis integer, sed prauus,’ &c. It ends:—‘Constituti sunt in eodem loco perituri tres, ob unius innocentiam.’ This Piso was a governor of Syria under Tiberius. Precisely the same story is told, of the emperor Heraclius, in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. cxl. Warton gravely describes it in the words—‘The emperor Eraclius reconciles (!) two knights.’

2030–1. Wright says these two lines are not in Tyrwhitt, but he is mistaken. His note was meant to refer to the spurious lines (in MS. Hl.) after l. 2037; the former of which is repeated from l. 2030.

2043. ‘This story is also in Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 14. It differs a little from one in Herodotus, lib. iii.’ [capp. 34, 35].—Tyrwhitt. Seneca’s story begins:—‘Cambysen regem nimis deditum uino Praexaspes unus ex carissimis monebat.’

2048. Here MS. Hl. inserts two more spurious lines, for the fourth time; see the footnote.

2061. MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Ln. Dd. all insert ful, which is necessary to the rhythm. MSS. Pt. Hl. omit it, and actually read dronk-e (!), with an impossible final e. Tyrwhitt has dranke, omitting ful, and even Wright, Bell, and Morris have dronk-e, with the same omission. Owing to the carelessness of scribes, who often added an idle final e, such forms as dranke, dronke are not very astonishing. But it would be very curious to know how these editors scanned this line.

2075. Placebo. ‘The allusion is to an anthem in the Romish church, from Ps. cxvi. 9, which in the Vulgate [Ps. cxiv. 9] stands thus: Placebo Domino in regione uiuorum. Hence the complacent brother in the Marchant’s Tale is called Placebo.’—Tyrwhitt. Being used in the office for the dead, this anthem was familiar to every one; and ‘to sing Placebo’ came to mean ‘to be complaisant’; as in Bacon, Essay 20. See Pers. Tale, I. 617; and see my notes to P. Plowman, C. iv. 467 (B. iii. 307), B. xv. 122.

2079. This story is also from Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 21. Cf. Herodotus, i. 189, 202; v. 52. In these authorities, the river is called the Gyndes; and in Alfred’s translation of Orosius, bk. ii. c. 4, it is the Gandes. ‘Sir John Maundeville (Travels, cap. 5) tells this story of the Euphrates.’—Wright.

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2085. he, i. e. Solomon; see Prov. xxii. 24, 25.

2090. as Iust as is a squire, as exact (i. e. upright) as a square. He means that he will deal out exact justice, and not condone the sick man’s anger without appointing him a penance for it. A squire is a measuring-square, or T-square, as explained in my Dictionary; it is used for measuring right angles with exactitude. For the use of the word, see Shak. L. L. L. v. 2. 474; Spenser, F. Q. ii. 1. 58; Minshew’s Dict.; Romaunt of the Rose, 7064; Floris and Blancheflur, ed. Lumby, 325. Cotgrave gives: ‘A l’esquierre, justly, directly, evenly, straightly; by line and levell, to a haire.’ Godefroy, s. v. esquarre, refers us to the O. F. translation of 1 Kings, v. 17; ‘e que tuz fussent taillie a esquire.’ Lydgate has: ‘By compas cast, and squared out by squyers’; Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. F 5, back, col. 1.

2095. ‘Thei [the friars] cryen faste that thei haf more power in confessioun then other curatis; for thei may schryve alle that comen to hem, bot curatis may no ferther then her owne parischens’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 374. Cf. Rom. Rose, 6390–8 (vol. i. 238).

2098. So in I. 1008: ‘but-if it lyke to thee of thyn humilitee.’

2105. ‘The pavements were made of encaustic tiles, and therefore must have been rather expensive.’—Wright. See my note to Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, l. 194; and Our English Home, p. 20.

2107. ‘For the sake of Him who harried hell’; see note to A. 3512; p. 107.

2116. Elie, Elias, Elijah. Elisee, Eliseus, Elisha. There was great strife among the four orders of friars as to the priority of their order. The Carmelites, who took their name from mount Carmel (see 1 Kings, xviii. 19, 20), actually pretended that their order was founded by the prophet Elijah when he retired to mount Carmel to escape the wrath of Ahab; and by this unsurpassable fiction secured to themselves the credit of priority to the rest. It is therefore clear that the friar of Chaucer’s story was a Carmelite, as no other friar would have alluded to this story. See Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 353; Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, 382.

2119. for seinte charitee; a common expression. It occurs in the Tale of Gamelin, 513; with which Chaucer was familiar. Cf. B. 4510.

2126. your brother. This alludes to the letters of fraternity, which friars were accustomed to grant, under the conventual seal, to such laymen as had given them benefactions or were likely to leave them money in their wills. The benefactors received in return a brotherly participation in such spiritual benefits as the friars could confer. Thus, in Jack Upland, §§ 28, 29, we find:—‘Why be ye [friars] so hardie to grant, by letters of fraternitie, to men and women, that they shall have part and merite of all your good deeds, and ye weten neuer whether God be apayed with your deeds because of your sin? . . . What betokeneth that yee haue ordeined that, whan such one as ye haue made your brother or sister, and hath a letter of your seale, that letter mought be brought in your holy chapter, and there be rad, Edition: current; Page: [340] or els yee will not pray for him?’ See Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 377, 420; ed. Matthew, p. 4. Such lay brethren were usually dressed for burial in a friar’s habit; see Milton, P. L. iii. 479; Rock, Church of our Fathers, i. 487. A benefactor could even thus belong to all the orders of friars at once; cf. P. Plowman, C. x. 343 (B. vii. 192). This gives point to the question in l. 1955 above.

2156. His meynee, i. e. the menials of the sick man.

2159. His companion was in the nearest inn; see l. 1779.

2162. court, the house of the lord of the manor. ‘The larger country-houses consisted generally of an enclosed court, from which circumstance this name was usually given to the manorial residence, and it has been preserved to modern times, as a common term for gentlemen’s seats.’—Wright. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 344. It was also called a place; see note to B. 1910; p. 184.

2164. ‘Of ech sich privat seete, by licence of the pope, ben maad, some chapeleyns of houshold, summe chapeleyns of honour,’ &c.; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 511. ‘Frere, what charity is this, to be confessors of lords and ladies,’ &c.; Jack Upland, § 37. And see Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 333; P. Plowman, B. v. 136–142, xx. 341–345.

2185. maister. The hypocrite here declines to be called ‘master,’ though he had allowed the good wife to call him so twice without reproof; see ll. 1800, 1836; and cf. l. 1781. At the same time, he declares that he had gained the title of Master in the schools. As he was the prior or principal of his convent (see ll. 2260, 2265, 2276) he may have been ‘capped,’ or have received the degree of Master of Divinity. ‘Also capped freris, that ben calde maystres of dyvynite, have her chaumber and servise as lordis or kynges. . . . And what cursidenesse in this . . . to gete hym a cappe of maysterdome, by preyer of lordis and grete giftis,’ &c.; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 376. An LL.D. of Edinburgh is ‘capped,’ or has a doctor’s cap momentarily laid upon his head, when he receives his degree; as I know by experience.

See also Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, ll. 498, 574.

2187. See Matt. xxiii. 7, 8.

2196. See Matt. v. 13.

2205. ‘How does it seem to me?’ Read think’th.

2209. ‘I consider him to be in a kind of frenzy’; cf. 2240, 2292.

2219. Shewe here means ‘to propose’ or ‘propound.’

2235. See Chaucer’s own explanation of the method of propagation of a sound, in the Hous of Fame, 782–821. He seems to have taken it from Boethius, De Musica, i. 14; see vol. iii. p. 260.

2238. my cherl, i. e. my serf; as being his dependant. It probably implies vassalage.

2244. Cf. A. 100. Although the squire was not above winning ‘a new gown,’ he was probably a young man of (future) equal rank with the lord of the manor. In fact, his scornful boldness proves it.

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2247. goune-cloth. ‘In the middle ages, the most common rewards, and even those given by the feudal landholders to their dependants and retainers, were articles of apparel, especially the gown or outward robe. . . . Money was comparatively very scarce in the middle ages; and as the household retainers were lodged and fed, clothing was almost the only article they wanted.’—Wright.

2259. ‘The regular number of monks or friars in a convent had been fixed at twelve, with [i. e. besides] their superior; in imitation, it is said, of the number of twelve apostles and their divine master. The larger religious houses were considered as consisting of a certain number of convents. Thus Thorn, speaking of the abbot of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, says:—Anno Domini m.c.xlvi, iste Hugo reparavit antiquum numerum monachorum istius monasterii, et erant lx. monachi professi praeter abbatem, hoc est, quinque conuentus in universo.—Decem Scriptores, col. 1807.’—Wright. That is, this house consisted of sixty-one members, the abbot and five convents of twelve each. The smaller (single) convents were also called cells, and the principal, the prior; see A. 172, and note that, in A. 167, the Monk is said, not to be an abbot, but to be fit to be an abbot. The expression ‘his covent,’ in l. 2261, shews that the friar confessor was the prior or head of his cell.

2279. ‘Yif a frere be a maister, or a riche frere in-mong hise bretheren, he shal be loutid and worshipid more then Cristis lawe techith,’ &c.; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 306.

2281. This implies that the squire, with the rest, had heard the friar preach in church that morning, and had been greatly bored by the sermon.

2289. I supply the word as, which is plainly wanted. MS. Hl. supplies elles, but I believe as to be right. The way in which the second as came to be dropped in this line, is very curious. It arose from misunderstanding the spelling of Ptolemy.

The occurrence of an unpronounceable P at the beginning of Ptolomee made the scribes think something must be omitted. Hence several of them introduced a stroke through the p, which stood as an abbreviation for ‘ro,’ and this turned it into Protholomee, which looked right, but made the second as superfluous. Thus MSS. Cp. Hl. both have ‘protholome,’ with the mark of abbreviation; in MSS. E. Hn. Dd. it is expanded into ‘Protholomee’ at length. We again find the scribes in the same difficulty in D. 324. A still stranger spelling is plotolomee, for which see vol. iii. p. 359, l. 18. Cf. the note on Ptolemy in the same volume, at p. 354.

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NOTES TO GROUP E.

The Clerkes Prologue.

1. clerk. See the description of him, Prol. A. 285.

3. were newe spoused, who should be (i. e. is) newly wedded; see Rom. de la Rose, (F. version), 1004; in vol. i. p. 136.

6. See Eccles. iii. 1; ‘To every thing there is a season,’ &c.

7. as beth, pray be. The word as, nearly equivalent to ‘I pray,’ is sometimes used thus with the imperative mood. Since as is short for al-so, it means literally even so, just so. Cp. as keep, A. 2302; as sende, A. 2317; as doth, F. 458; ‘as beth not wroth with me,’ Troil. and Cress. v. 145; ‘as go we seen,’ i. e. pray let us go to see, id. 523; see also A. 3777. See Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 2. 505.

10. A French proverb. ‘Ki en jeu entre jeu consente,’ i. e. approves of; Le Roux de Lincy, Proverbes Français, ii. 85.

18. Heigh style, lofty, learned, somewhat pedantic style; see l. 41.

22. yerde, control, governance; lit. yard, rod; so we say ‘under the rod.’ Cf. B. 1287, and the note at p. 169.

27. Padowe, Padua, in the N. E. of Italy. Petrarch resided at Arqua, two miles from Padua. He died July 18, 1374. See vol. iii. p. 454; vol. i. p. xxv.

33. of poetrye, with his poetry. Of is similarly used in l. 34.

34. Linian; ‘the canonist Giovanni di Lignano, once illustrious, now forgotten, though several works of his remain. He was made Professor of Canon Law at Bologna in 1363, and died at Bologna in 1383’; Morley’s English Writers, v. 339. Tyrwhitt first pointed out the person here alluded to, and says—‘there is some account of him in Panzirolus, de Cl. Leg. Intrepret. l. iii. c. xxv:—Joannes, a Lignano, agri Mediolanensis vico, oriundus, et ob id Lignanus dictus,’ &c. One of his works, entitled Tractatus de Bello, is extant in MS. Reg. 13 B. ix [Brit. Mus.]. He composed it at Bologna in the year 1360. He was not however a mere lawyer. Chaucer speaks of him as excelling in philosophy, and so does his epitaph in Panzirolus. The only specimen of his philosophy that I have met with is in MS. Harl. 1006. It is an astrological work, entitled Conclusiones Judicii composite per Domnum Johannem de Lyniano super coronacione Domni Urbani Edition: current; Page: [343] Pape VI. ad 1387,’ &c. Lignano is here said to be near Milan, and to have been the lawyer’s birthplace. In l. 38, Chaucer speaks of his death, showing that Chaucer wrote this prologue later than 1383.

43. proheme, proem, introduction. Petrarch’s treatise (taken from Boccaccio’s Decamerone, Day x. Novel 10) is entitled ‘De obedientia ac fide uxoria Mythologia.’ It is preceded by a letter to Boccaccio, but this is not here alluded to. What Chaucer means is the first section of the tale itself, which begins thus:—‘Est ad Italiae latus occiduum Vesulus, ex Apennini iugis mons unus altissimus . . . Padi ortu nobilissimus, qui eius a latere fonte lapsus exiguo orientem contra solem fertur, mirisque mox tumidus incrementis . . . Liguriam gurgite uiolentus intersecat; dehinc Aemiliam, atque Flaminiam, Venetiamque discriminans . . . in Adriaticum mare descendit.’ Pemond, Piedmont. Saluces, Saluzzo, S. of Turin. Vesulus, Monte Viso. See the description of the route from Mont Dauphin to Saluzzo, by the Col de Viso, in Murray’s Guide to Switzerland and Piedmont. Cf. Vergil, Aen. x. 708.

51. To Emelward, towards Aemilia. Tyrwhitt says—‘One of the regions of Italy was called Aemilia, from the via Aemilia, which crossed it from Placentia [Piacenza] to Rimini. Placentia stood upon the Po. Pitiscus, Lex. Ant. Rom. in v. Via Aemilia. Petrarch’s description . . . is a little different.’ See note above. Ferrare, Ferrara, on the Po, not far from its mouth. Venyse, rather the Venetian territory than Venice itself.

54. ‘It seems to me a thing irrelevant, excepting that he wishes to impart his information.’

56. this, contraction for this is (see footnote); common.

The Clerkes Tale.

57. In many places this story is translated from Petrarch almost word for word; and as Tyrwhitt remarks, it would be endless to cite illustrative passages from the original Latin; see further in vol. iii. p.453. The first stanza is praised by Professor Lowell, in his Study Windows, p. 208, where he says—‘What a sweep of vision is here!’ Chaucer is not quite so close a translator here as usual; the passage in Petrarch being—‘Inter caetera ad radicem Vesuli, terra Salutiarum, uicis et castellis satis frequens, Marchionum arbitrio nobilium quorundum regitur uirorum.’

82. leet he slyde, he allowed to pass unattended to, neglected. So we find ‘Let the world slide’; Induction to Taming of the Shrew, l. 5; and ‘The state of vertue never slides’; The Sturdy Rock (in Percy’s Reliques). See March’s Student’s Manual of Eng. Lang. p. 125, where the expression is noted as still current in America. Petrarch has—‘alia pene cuncta negligeret.’ With ll. 83–140, cf. Shakesp. Sonnets, i-xvii.

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86. flockmele, in a flock or troop; Pet. has ‘cateruatim.’ ‘Treuly theder came flockemele the multitude of tho blessyd sowlys’:—Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber, c. 55; p. 107. Palsgrave’s French Dict. has—‘Flockmeale, par troupeaux’; fol. 440, back. Cf. E. piece-meal; we also find wukemalum, week by week, Ormulum, 536; lim-mele, limb from limb, Layamon, 25618; hipyllmelum, by heaps, Wycl. Bible, Wisdom xviii. 25: Koch, Eng. Gramm. ii. 292.

99. ‘Although I have no more to do with this matter than others have who are here present.’ Observe that the Marquis is addressed as ye, not thou, the former being a title of respect.

103–105. These three lines are not in the original.

106. We should have expected to find here us lyketh ye, i. e. you are pleasing to us; but we really have an instance of a double dative, so that us lyketh yow is equivalent to ‘it pleases us with respect to you.’ The nominative case is ye, the dative and accusative yow or you. Yow leste, it may please you, in l. 111, is the usual idiom.

107. and ever han doon, and (both you and your doings) have ever brought it about. Such is the usual force of doon; cf. ll. 253, 1098.

115. Cf. Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Skeat, i. 266–8.—M.

118–119. Expanded from—‘uolant enim dies rapidi.’

121. still as stoon; Latin text, ‘tacita.’ Cf. F. 171.

129. we wol chese yow, we will choose for you.

147. Ther, where. This line is Chaucer’s own.

157. Bountee, goodness. streen, race, stock. Petrarch has—‘Quicquid in homine boni est, non ab alio quam a Deo est.’

168. As, as if. This line, in Petrarch, comes after l. 173. Lines 174, 175 are Chaucer’s own.

172. as ever, &c., as ever I may thrive, as I hope to thrive.

190–196. Expanded from—‘Et ipse nihilominus eam ipsam nuptiarum curam domesticis suis imposuit, edixitque diem.’

197–203. Expanded from—‘Fuit haud procul a palatio uillula paucorum atque inopum incolarum.’

211–217. Sometimes Chaucer translates literally, and sometimes he merely paraphrases, as here. Lines 215–217 are all his own.

220. rype and sad corage, a mature and staid disposition. Petrarch has—‘sed uirilis senilisque animus uirgineo latebat in pectore.’

223. spinning; i. e. she spun whilst keeping the sheep; see a picture of St. Geneviève in Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art. Line 224 is Chaucer’s.

227. shredde and seeth, sliced and sod (or boiled). Lat. ‘domum rediens oluscula et dapes fortunae congruas praeparabat, durumque cubiculum sternebat,’ &c.

229. on lofte, aloft. She kept up her father’s life, i. e. sustained him. His death is recorded in l. 1134.

234. For this line the Latin has only the word transiens.

237. in sad wyse, soberly; Lat. ‘senili grauitate.’

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242. Here the people means the common people; Lat. ‘uulgi oculis.’ In the next line he is empathic, meaning that his eyes were quicker to perceive than theirs.

253. hath don make, hath caused to be made. Lat. ‘Ipse interim et anulos aureos et coronas et balteos conquirebat.’ Chaucer inserts asure, the colour of fidelity; see F. 644, and note. For balteos he substitutes the English phrase broches and ringes; cf. P. Plowm. B. prol. 75.

257. Scan—Bý | a maýd | e lýk | to hír | statúrë.∥

259. Here Chaucer apparently omits a sentence, namely:—‘Uenerat expectatus dies, et cum nullus sponsae rumor audiretur, admiratio omnium uehementer excreuerat.’ But he has, in fact, given us this above, in ll. 246–8.

260. undern (lit. the intervening or middle period) has two meanings in the Teutonic tongues; (1) mid-forenoon, i. e. originally 9 a.m.; and (2) mid-afternoon, originally 3 p.m. In this passage it is clearly the former that is meant; indeed in l. 981, where it occurs again, the original has ‘proximae lucis hora tertia,’ i.e. 9 a.m. In this passage, the original has hora prandii, meaning luncheon-time, which in Chaucer’s time would often be 9 a.m.; see note to B. 1396, at p. 171; and cf. Ælfric’s Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 77. See note to Piers Pl. B. vi. 147; and see Undern in the Glossary.

But it may be noted here, that the sense of undern is variable. Sometimes it meant the period from 9 to 12, or the middle of that period, i.e. about 10.30 or 11. Sometimes, the period from 3 to 6 p.m., or the middle of it, i.e. about 4.30 or 4. In modern E. dialects, it means about 4 p.m. See B. 4412, D. 875.

260–294. Expanded and improved from the following short passage: ‘Hora iam prandii aderat, iamque apparatu ingenti domus tota feruebat. Tum Gualtherus, aduentanti ueluti sponsae obuiam profecturus, domo egreditur, prosequente uirorum et matronarum nobilium caterua. Griseldis omnium quae erga se pararentur ignara, peractis quae agenda domi erant, aquam e longinquo fonte conuectans paternum limen intrabat: ut, expedita curis aliis, ad uisendam domini sui sponsam cum puellis comitibus properaret.’

322. governeth, arrange, dispose of. Observe the use of the plural imperative, as a mark of respect. When the marquis addresses Griseldis as ye, it is a mark of extreme condescension on his part; the Latin text has tu and te.

337–343. Expanded from—‘insolito tanti hospitis aduentu stupidam inuenere; quam iis uerbis Gualtherus aggreditur.’

350. yow avyse, consider the matter; really a delicate way of expressing refusal. Compare the legal formula le roy s’avisera for expressing the royal refusal to a proposed measure.

364. For to be deed, even if I were to be dead, were to die; Lat. ‘et si me mori iusseris, quod moleste feram.’

375–376. These characteristic lines are Chaucer’s own. So are ll. 382, 383.

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381. corone, nuptial garland; Lat. ‘corona.’ See Brand’s Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, ii. 123.

388. snow-whyt; Lat. ‘niueo.’ Perhaps Spenser took a hint from this; F. Q. i. 1. 4. In the Leg. of Good Women, l. 1198, Chaucer calls a horse paper-whyt.

393. Repeated, slightly altered, from l. 341.

409. thewes, mental qualities. So also in E. 1542; Gower, Conf. Amant. lib. vii. sect. 1 (ed. Pauli, iii. 85); Spenser, F. Q. i. 9. 3; i. 10. 4; ii. 1. 33, &c. ‘The common signification of the word thews in our old writers, is manners, or qualities of mind and disposition . . . By thews Shakespeare means unquestionably brawn, nerves, muscular vigour (Jul. Caes. i. 3; 2 Hen. IV, iii. 2; Hamlet, i. 3). And to this sense, and this only, the word has now settled down; the other sense, which was formerly so familiar in our literature, is quite gone out and forgotten. [With respect to theawe=sinew, in Layamon, l. 6361] Sir F. Madden remarks (iii. 471):—“This is the only instance in the poem of the word being applied to bodily qualities, nor has any other passage of an earlier date than the sixteenth century been found in which it is so used.” It may be conjectured that it had only been a provincial word in this sense, till Shakespeare adopted it’; Craik’s English of Shakespeare; note on Jul. Caesar, i. 3. 81.

412. embrace, hold fast; ‘omnium animos nexu sibi magni amoris astrinxerat.’ Compare Tennyson’s Lord of Burleigh with ll. 394–413.

413. Nearly identical with Troil. i. 1078.

421. royally; alluding to the royal virtues of Griseldis.

429. Not only the context, but the Latin text, justifies the reading homlinesse. Feet is fact, i. e. act. The Latin is—‘Neque uero solers sponsa muliebria tantum haec domestica, sed, ubi res posceret, publica etiam obibat officia.’ Lines 432–434 are Chaucer’s own.

444. ‘Although it would have been liefer to her to have borne a male child’; i. e. she would rather, &c. The Latin has—‘quamuis filium maluisset.’

449–462. Expanded from—‘Cepit (ut fit) interim Gualtherum, cum iam ablactata esset infantula (mirabilis quaedam quàm laudabilis, [aliter, an mirabile quidem magis quam laudabile,] doctiores iudicent) cupiditas satis expertam charae fidem coniugis experiendi altius [aliter, ulterius], et iterum atque iterum retentandi.’

452. tempte, make trial of, prove; see ll. 1152, 1153 below. sadnesse, constancy, equanimity.

483. Note Walter’s use of the word thee here, and of thy twice in the next stanza, instead of the usual ye. It is a slight, but significant sign of insult, offered under pretence of reporting the opinion of others. In l. 492 we have your again.

504. thing, possession. Lat. ‘de rebus tuis igitur fac ut libet.’

516. a furlong wey or two, the distance of one or two furlongs, a short distance, a little. The line simply means—‘a little after.

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525. stalked him; marched himself in, as we should say. This use of him is remarkable, but not uncommon.

533–539. Lat. ‘Iussus sum hanc infantulam accipere, atque eam—Hîc sermone abrupto, quasi crudele ministerium silentio exprimens, subticuit.’ Compare ‘Quos ego—’; Vergil, Aen. i. 135.

540–546. Lat. ‘Suspecta uiri fama; suspecta facies; suspecta hora; suspecta erat oratio; quibus etsi clare occisum iri dulcem filiam intelligeret, nec lachrymulam tamen ullam, nec suspirium dedit.’ Mr. Wright quotes this otherwise, putting dulce for dulcem, and stopping at intelligeret.

547–567. Chaucer expands the Latin, and transposes some of the matter. Lines 561–563 precede ll. 547–560 in the original, which merely has—‘in nutrice quidem, nedum in matre durissimum; sed tranquilla fronte puellulam accipiens aliquantulum respexit & simul exosculans benedixit, ac signum sanctae crucis impressit, porrexitque satelliti.’

570. After That in this line, we ought, in strict grammar, to have ye burie in the next line, instead of the imperative burieth. But the phrase is idiomatic, and as all the seven best MSS. agree in this reading, it is best to retain it. Tyrwhitt alters That but to But if.

579. Somwhat, in some degree. But Petrarch says differently—‘uehementer paterna animum pietas mouit.’

582–591. Lat. ‘Iussit satelliti obuolutam pannis, cistae iniectam, ac iumento impositam, quiete omni quanta posset diligentia Bononiam deferret ad sororem suam, quae illic comiti de Panico nupta erat,’ &c.

586. ‘But, under penalty of having his head cut off’; lit. of cutting off his head.

589. Boloigne, Bologna, E. by S. from Modena, and a long way from Saluzzo. Panik answers to the de Panico in note to l. 582; Boccaccio has Panago. I observe in the map the river Panaro flowing between Modena and Bologna; perhaps there is some connexion between the names. Tyrwhitt has Pavie (Pavia) in his text, but corrects it in the notes.

602. in oon, in one and the same state: ever in oon, always alike, continually; so also in l. 677. Cf. Kn. Ta. 913 (A. 1771).

607. This must mean—‘no accidental sign of any calamity.’

612. A knave child, a male child, boy; as in Barbour’s Bruce, xiii. 693; English Gilds, ed. T. Smith, p. 30.

615. merië; three syllables; cf. A. 1386, B. 4156. Ll. 621–623 are Chaucer’s own.

625. sikly berth, hardly bear, dislike. Lat. ‘populum aegre ferre,’ &c.

643. Lat. ‘ne te inopinus et subitus dolor turbet.’

645–651. Expanded from—‘Dixi (ait) et repeto, nihil possum seu uelle, seu nolle, nisi quae tu; neque uero in ijs filiis quicquam habeo, praeter laborem.’

663. plesancë, three syllables; stabl’, one syllable.

666. ‘The pain of death is not to be compared to the pleasure of your Edition: current; Page: [348] love.’ Lat. ‘nec mors ipsa nostro fuerit par amori.’ Cf. ll. 817, 1091.

687. ever lenger, &c., i. e. ever the longer (he thinks of it) the more he wonders. In the more, the word the is for A. S. þý.

700. And he; cf. And ye, l. 105.

701–707. Expanded from—‘sed sunt qui, ubi semel inceperint, non desinant; immo incumbant, haereantque proposito.’

704. a stake; cf. Macb. v. 7. 1; Jul. Caesar, iv. 1. 48.

714. more penible, more painstaking; Lat. ‘obsequentior.’

719. ‘She made it clear that no wife should of herself, on account of any worldly anxiety, have any will, in practice, different from that of her husband.’

722. sclaundre, ill fame, ill report concerning Walter. See l. 730.

738. message, a messenger; Lat. ‘nuncios Romam misit.’ So in Old English we find prisoun or prison for prisoner; Piers Pl. B. vii. 30.

772. anon, immediately. It was not uncommon in olden times for girls to be married at twelve years of age. The Wife of Bath was first married at that age; see D. 4.

797. Lat. ‘magna omnis fortuna seruitus magna est; non mihi licet, quod cuilibet liceret agricolae.’

850. were agrees with the word clothes following; cf. it ben, Piers Plowm. B. vi. 56. She did not really bring her husband even the dower of her old clothes, as they had been taken from her. Lines 851–861 are all Chaucer’s own, and shew his delicacy of touch.

866. Lat. ‘neque omnino alia mihi dos fuit, quam fides et nuditas.’

871. Probably suggested by Job, i. 21. So l. 902 is from Job, iii. 3.

880–882. These lines are Chaucer’s own; l. 880 is characteristic of him. The phrase in l. 880 seems to have been proverbial. Cf. ‘I walke as werme, withoute wede’; Coventry Mysteries, p. 28. But Chaucer got it from Le Roman de la Rose, 445; see his translation, l. 454; vol. i. p. 112.

888–889. The latter part of l. 888, and l. 889, are Chaucer’s own.

903. lyves, alive; a lyves creature, a creature alive, a living being. Lyves is an adverb, formed like nedes, from the genitive case of the substantive. There are other instances of its use.

‘Yif I late him liues go’; Havelok, 509.

i. e. if I let him go away alive. And again lyues=alive, in Piers Pl. B. xix. 154. Nearly repeated from Troil. iv. 251–2.

910. After this line, Chaucer has omitted the circumstance of Janicola’s preserving his daughter’s old clothing; ‘tunicam eius hispidam, et attritam senio, abditam paruae domus in parte seruauerat.’ See l. 913.

911. Agayns, towards, so as to meet. To go agayns, in M. E., is to go to meet. So also to come agayns, to ride agayns (or agayn). See Agayn in Glossary to Spec. of Eng. (Morris and Skeat); and Barbour’s Bruce, xiv. 420. Ll. 915–917 are Chaucer’s own.

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916. ‘For the cloth was poor, and many days older now than on the day of her marriage.’

932. ‘Men speak of Job, and particularly of his humility.’ Cf. Job, xl. 4, xlii. 1-6.

934. Namely of men, especially of men, where men is emphatic. The whole of this stanza (932–938) is Chaucer’s.

938. but, except, unless; falle, fallen, happened; of-newe, newly, an adverbial expression. It means then, ‘unless it has happened very lately.’ In other words, ‘If there is an example of a man surpassing a woman in humility, it must have happened very lately; for I have never heard of it.’

939. Pars Sexta. This indication of a new part comes in a fitting place, and is taken from Tyrwhitt, who may have found it in a MS. But there is no break here in the Latin original, nor in any of the MSS. of Chaucer which I have consulted. erl of Panik; Lat. ‘Panicius comes.’

940. more and lesse, greater or smaller; i. e. everybody. So also in the Frank. Tale, ‘riveres more and lesse’; F. 1054. So also moche and lyte, great and small, Prol. 494; moste and leste, greatest and least, A. 2198. Spenser has, F. Q. vi. 6. 12,—

‘’Gainst all, both bad and good, both most and least.’

941. alle and some, i. e. all and one, one and all. See Morris’s Eng. Accidence, sect. 218, p. 142.

960. wommen; some MSS. have womman, as in Tyrwhitt. But MS. E. is right. Petrarch uses the word foeminas, not foeminam.

965. yvel biseye, ill provided; lit. ill beseen. The word yvel is pronounced here almost as a monosyllable (as it were yv’l), as is so commonly the case with ever; indeed generally, words ending with el and er are often thus clipped. A remarkable instance occurs in the Milleres Tale (A. 3715), where we not only have a similar ending, but the word ever in the same line—

‘That trewë love was ever so yvel biset.’

See also yvel apayed in line 1052 below. The converse to yvel biseye, is richely biseye, richly provided or adorned, in l. 984 below.

981. Lat. ‘Proximae lucis hora tertia comes superuenerat’; see note to l. 260.

995–1008. These two stanzas are Chaucer’s own, and are so good that they must have been a later addition; Prof. Ten Brink suggests the date 1387 (Eng. Lit. ii. 123, Eng. version). In MS. E. the word Auctor is inserted in the margin, and l. 995 begins with a large capital letter. At the beginning of l. 1009 is a paragraph-mark, shewing where the translation begins again. unsad, unsettled. Cf. Shakesp. Cor. i. 1. 186, Jul. Caesar, i. 1. 55; Scott, Lady of the Lake, v. 30.

999. ‘Ever full of tittle-tattle, which would be dear enough at a half-penny.’ See n. to l. 1200. Iane, a small coin of Genoa (Janua); see Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 1925. The first stanza (995–1001) is supposed Edition: current; Page: [350] to be uttered by the sober and discreet part of the population; see l. 1002.

1031. lyketh thee, pleases thee. The marquis addresses her as thou, because all suppose her to be a menial.

1039. mo, lit. more; but also used in the sense of others, or, as here, another. The modern phrase would be, ‘as you did somebody else.’ The extreme delicacy of the hint is admirable. This use of mo is common in Chaucer; see the Glossary. So also, in Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, we have, at p. 47, l. 51—

‘Y sike for vnsete;

Ant mourne ase men doþ mo’;

i. e. I sigh for unrest, and mourn as other men do. And on the next page, p. 48, l. 22, we have

‘Mody meneþ so doþ mo,

Ichot ycham on of þo’;

i. e. ‘The moody moan as others do; I wot I am one of them.’ In l. 240 of How the Good Wife taught her Daughter, pr. with Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Skeat, we find—‘And slanderit folk vald euir haue ma,’ i. e. would ever have others like themselves. Somewhat similar is the expression oþer mo, where we should now say others as well; Piers Plowman, C. v. 10, xxii. 54. A somewhat similar use of mo occurs in Tudor English. ‘It fortuned Diogenes to . . make one among the moo at a dyner.’—Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes (1564), bk. i. § 91. So also:—‘that he also, emong the mo [i. e. the rest] might haue his pleasure’; id. bk. ii. § 13. Tyrwhitt’s suggestion that Chaucer has licentiously turned me into mo for the mere sake of getting a rime, in which he has hitherto been followed by nearly every editor, is only to be repudiated. It may well have been with the very purpose of guarding against this error that, in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., the original Latin text is here quoted in the margin—‘unum bona fide te precor ac moneo: ne hanc illis aculeis agites, quibus alteram agitasti.’ Chaucer, who throughout surpasses his original in delicacy of treatment, did not permit himself to be outdone here; and Boccaccio also has the word altra. The use of me would have been a direct charge of unkindness, spoiling the whole story. See l. 1045 and l. 449.

1049. gan his herte dresse, addressed his heart, i. e. prepared it, schooled it. The M. E. dresse is our modern direct; both being from Lat. dirigere.

1053. Here we may once more note the use of the word thy, the more so as it is used with a quite different tone. We sometimes find it used, as here, between equals, as a term of endearment; it is, accordingly, very significant. See l. 1056.

1066. that other, the other, the boy.

1071. non, any, either. The use of it is due to the preceding nat.

1079. Professor Morley, in his English Writers, v. 342, aptly remarks here—‘And when Chaucer has told all, and dwelt with an Edition: current; Page: [351] exquisite pathos of natural emotion all his own upon the patient mother’s piteous and tender kissing of her recovered children—for there is nothing in Boccaccio, and but half a sentence in Petrarch, answering to these four beautiful stanzas (1079–1106)—he rounds all, as Petrarch had done, with simple sense, which gives religious meaning to the tale, then closes with a lighter strain of satire which protects Griselda herself from the mocker.’

1098. ‘Hath caused you (to be) kept.’ For the same idiom, see Kn. Tale, A. 1913; Man of Law’s Tale, B. 171, and the note. Cf. ‘Wher I have beforn ordeyned and do mad [caused to be made] my tombe.’ Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 278.

1133. His wyves fader, i. e. Janicola. This circumstance should have been mentioned before l. 1128, as in the original.

1140. For of (Ellesmere MS.) the other MSS. read in.

1141. auctour, author, i. e. Petrarch, whom Chaucer follows down to l. 1162. Ll. 1138–1141 are Chaucer’s own, and may be compared with his poem on the Golden Age (vol. i. 380).

1144. importable, intolerable; Lat.—‘huius uxoris patientiam, quae mihi uix imitabilis uidetur.’ Of course ll. 1147–8 are Chaucer’s.

1151. ‘Receive all with submission.’ Fr. en gré, gratefully, in good part. sent, sendeth; present tense, as in Piers Plowman, C. xxii. 434. The past tense is sente, which would not rime.

1152. ‘For it is very reasonable that He should prove (or test) that which He created.’

1153. boghte, (hath) redeemed. See St. James, i. 13.

1162. Here Petrarch ends his narrative, and here, beyond all doubt, Chaucer’s translation originally ended also. From this point to the end is the work of a later period, and in his best manner, though unsuited to the coy Clerk. He easily links on his addition by the simple expression lordinges, herkneth; and in l. 1170, he alludes to the Wife of Bath, of whom probably he had never thought when first translating the story.

We can thus understand the stanza in the footnote, on p. 424. It is genuine, but was rejected at the time of adding ll. 1163–1212. It was afterwards expanded into The Monkes Prologue, with the substitution of the patient Prudence for the patient Griselda; see B. 3083–6.

1177. Here the metre changes; the stanzas are of six lines; and all six stanzas are linked together. There are but three rimes throughout; -ence in the first and third lines of every stanza, -aille in the second, fourth, and sixth, (requiring eighteen rimes in all), and -inde in the fifth line. It is a fine example even from a metrical point of view alone.

1188. Chichevache, for chiche vache, i. e. lean cow. The allusion is to an old fable, of French origin, which describes a monstrous cow named Chiche Vache as feeding entirely upon patient wives, and being very lean in consequence of the scarcity of her diet. A later form of the fable adds a second beast, named Bicorne (two-horned), who, by adopting the wiser course of feeding upon patient husbands, was Edition: current; Page: [352] always fat and in good case. Mr. Wright says—‘M. Achille Jubinal, in the notes to his Mystères inédits du xv Siècle, tom. i. p. 390, has printed a French poetical description of Chichevache from a MS. of the fourteenth century. In the French miracle of St. Geneviève, of the fifteenth century (Jubinal, ib. p. 281), a man says satirically to the saint,

“Gardez vous de la chicheface,

El vous mordra s’el vous encontre,

Vous n’amendez point sa besoigne.” ’

A poem by Lydgate on Bycorne and Chichevache is printed in Mr. Halliwell’s Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, p. 129 (Percy Society); see Morley’s English Writers, vi. 107, and his Shorter English Poems, p. 55. In his Étude sur G. Chaucer, p. 221, M. Sandras refers us, for information about Chicheface, lit. ‘thin face’ or ‘ugly face’ (of which Chiche vache was a perversion), to the Histoire Littéraire de France, vol. xxiii. Dr. Murray refers us to Montaiglon, Poésie franç. 15e et 16e siècles (1855), ii. 191. The passage in Chaucer means, ‘Beware of being too patient, lest Chichevache swallow you down.’

1189. Folweth Ekko, imitate Echo, who always replies.

1196. The forms chamail, kamail, a camel, occur in the A.F. Romance of King Horn, ed. Brede and Stengel, l. 4177. For the M.E. camayl, see Rich. Cuer de Lion, 2323; Cursor Mundi, 3304 (Trin. MS.).

1200. ‘Always talk (or rattle) on, like a mill’ (that is always going round and making a noise). ‘Janglinge is whan men speken to muche biforn folk, and clappen as a mille, and taken no kepe what they seye’; Ch. Persones Tale, De Superbia (I. 406). Palsgrave’s French Dict. has—‘I clappe, I make a noyse as the clapper of a mill, Ie clacque.’

‘Thou art as fulle of clappe, as is a mille.’

Hoccleve, de Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, p. 7.

Cf. ‘As fast as millwheels strike’; Tempest, i. 2. 281.

1204. aventaille, the lower half of the moveable part of a helmet which admitted air; called by Spenser the ventail, F. Q. iv. 6. 19; v. 8. 12; and by Shakespeare the beaver, Hamlet, i. 2. 230. It is explained, in Douce’s Illustrations of Shakespeare, that the moveable part of the helmet in front was made in two parts, which turned on hinges at the sides of the head. The upper part is the visor, to admit of vision, the lower the ventail, to admit of breathing. Both parts could be removed from the face, but only by lifting them upwards, and throwing them back. If the visor alone were lifted, only the upper part of the face was exposed; but if the ventail were lifted, the visor also went with it, and the whole of the face was seen. Compare Fairfax’s Tasso, vii. 7:—

‘But sweet Erminia comforted their fear,

Her ventail up, her visage open laid.’

So also in Hamlet. With reference to the present passage, Mr. Jephson says that and eek his aventaille is a perfect example of bathos. I fail to see why; the weapon that pierced a ventail would pass into the Edition: current; Page: [353] head, and inflict a death-wound. The passage is playful, but not silly.

1206. couche, cower. Hence the phrase—‘to play couch-quail’; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 348.

1211. ‘As light as a leaf on a linden-tree’ was an old proverb. See Piers Pl. B. i. 154.

The Marchauntes Prologue.

1213. Weping and wayling; an expression caught from l. 1212, and linking this Prologue to the foregoing Tale. Yet in fourteen MSS. the Merchant’s Tale is separated from the Clerk’s; Trial Forewords, by F. J. Furnivall (Chaucer Soc.), p. 28.

1221–2. What, why. at al, in every respect; like Lat. omnino.

1227. This theme is enlarged upon in Lenvoy de Chaucer à Bukton, a late minor poem (vol. i. 398).

1230. Seint Thomas. Whenever this Apostle is mentioned, he is nearly always said to be of India, to distinguish him, it may be, from Saint Thomas of Canterbury. See D. 1980, and the note. Some account of the shrine of St. Thomas, of the manner of his death, and of miracles wrought by him, is given in Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 18. Colonel Yule tells us that the body of St. Thomas lay at Mailapúr, a suburb of Madras. The legend of St. Thomas’s preaching in India is of very high antiquity. St. Jerome speaks of the Divine Word being everywhere present in His fulness ‘cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae,’ &c.; Sci. Hieronomi Epist. lix., ad Marcellam. Gregory of Tours (ad 544–595) speaks of the place in India where the body of St. Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa in the year 394. See the whole of Colonel Yule’s long note upon the subject; and the account of Saint Thomas in Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art.

The Marchantes Tale.

For remarks on the sources of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 458. The modern version by Pope may be compared, though it was a juvenile performance. Cf. Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 28.

This Tale frequently adopts passages from the Tale of Melibeus, which was doubtless written several years before it. See also the article by Dr. Köppel in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. 86, p. 39.

1246. Pavye, Pavia. I suppose that Chaucer had no special reason for locating the tale in Lombardy.

1248–52. For sixty, some MSS. have lx.; the scribes of MSS. Hl. and Ln. wrongly have fourty, which looks as if they took lx. to mean xl. I see no point in turning the former sixty (in 1248) into fourty, as Wright does, on the pretence that the first twenty years of his life did not count. Sixty was considered a great age (l. 1401).

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1251. seculeer, secular; as distinguished from the monks and friars. Chaucer probably speaks ironically, meaning that these holy orders were as bad as the rest. See l. 1322.

1267–1392. The whole of this passage presents the arguments that prevailed with January; as shewn by the words For which (i. e. wherefore) in l. 1393. That is to say, Chaucer here purposely keeps reasons against marriage out of sight, reserving them for ll. 1521–1565, 1659–1681. Hence the opinion in l. 1269, that a man should marry when old, is not Chaucer’s opinion at all.

1270. ‘The fruit of his treasure,’ i. e. purchased with his own wealth. A queer reason, and not Chaucer’s. Cf. l. 1276.

1277. sit wel, is very fit. Palsgrave has: ‘It sytteth, it becometh, il siet.’

1284. For blisful, MS. Hl. wrongly has busily.

1294. Theofraste, Theophrastus. The allusion is to the Liber Aureolus Theophrasti de Nuptiis, partly preserved by St. Jerome, who quotes a long extract from it in his tractate Contra Iovinianum, lib. i. John of Salisbury quotes the same passage, almost word for word, in his Polycraticus, lib. viii. c. 11. The point discussed is:—‘an uir sapiens ducat uxorem.’ Amongst other things, he has a passage answering to ll. 1296–1304 below. ‘Quod si propter dispensationem domus . . . ducuntur uxores: multo melius seruus fidelis dispensat, obediens auctoritati domini, et dispensationi eius obtemperans quàm uxor . . . Assidere autem aegrotanti magis possunt amici et uernulae beneficiis obligati, quàm illa quae nobis imputat lachrymas suas, et haereditatis spe uendit illuuiem.’ Cf. Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 366.

1305–6. These two lines occur in E. Cm., and are doubtless correct.

The MSS. vary considerably; see Six-Text, Pref. p. 70.

Hn.—And if thow take a wyf she wole destroye

Thy good substance, and thy body annoye.

N.B. The words in italics are added in a later hand.

Hl.—And if that thou take a wif be war

Of oon peril which declare I ne dar.

Neither of these lines will scan. MSS. Harl. 7335 and Bodley 686 nearly agree with this, but read be wel y-war for be war.

Arch. Seld.—And if thow take a wiff in thin age oolde

Ful lightly maist thow be a cokewoolde.

Pt.—And if thou take a wif that to the is vntrewe

Ful ofte tyme it shal the r[é]we.

So also MS. Harl. 1758, Laud 600 and 739, Lichfield, &c. The black-letter editions of 1550 and 1561 have a much better version of the same, for they omit that and is in the former (too long) line, and insert sore before rewe in the latter (too short) one.

Dd.—And if thow take a wyf of heye lynage

She shal be hauteyn and of gret costage.

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So also (according to Tyrwhitt) the Haistwell MS. and MS. Royal 17. D. xv; and, according to Furnivall, MS. Chr. Ch. C. 6.

In six MSS., according to Tyrwhitt, they are omitted; and on this account he omits them, on the plea that they ‘form the opening of a new argument, . . and consequently would have been cancelled, if he [Chaucer] had lived to publish his work.’ But the sense is quite complete in the form in which I give them, from the two best MSS.

1311. Against this line is written, in the margin of MS. E.—‘Uxor est diligenda quia donum Dei est: Iesus filius Sirac: domus et diuicie dantur a parentibus, a Domino autem proprie uxor bona uel prudens.’ But the reference is wrong; the quotation is not from Ecclesiasticus (or Jesus the son of Sirach), but from Prov. xix. 14. The Vulgate has uxor prudens, omitting bona uel. The whole quotation is from Albertano of Brescia’s Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1315. Compare B. 1199, and I. 1068.

1318. This parenthetical line is Chaucer’s very own.

1319. ‘Sacramentum hoc magnum est’; Eph. v. 32. Marriage, in the Romish Church, is one of the seven sacraments.

1323–35. All from Albertano of Brescia’s Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1326. Hl. has body-naked; but all the rest (like the old editions) have bely-naked, which is the usual expression; see examples in Halliwell.

1328. In the margin of E.—‘Faciamus ei adiutorium,’ &c. From Gen. ii. 18, 24.

1335–6. From Le Roman de la Rose, 16640–4.

1337. Seint-e is feminine; ben’cite is trisyllabic.

1358–61. Of course these lines are genuine; they occur in nearly every MS. but E. and Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3. The scribe of E. slipped from reed in 1357 to rede in 1362; a common mistake. Dr. Furnivall objects that wyse in 1359 is made to rime with wyse in 1360, and rede in 1361 with rede in 1362; the riming words being used in the same sense. This is not the case. The first wyse is plural; the second is singular, and used generally. The first rede means ‘advise’; the second, ‘read.’ To leave them out would give a rime of reed (monosyllable) with rede (dissyllable).

1362. The examples of Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther are quoted, in the same order and in similar terms, in the Tale of Melibeus; see B. 2288–2291, and the Notes.

1373, 4. Mardochee, Mordecai; in the Vulgate, Mardochaeus. Assuere, Ahasuerus; in the Vulgate, Assuerus; see l. 1745.

1376. In the margin of MS. Hn. is written:—‘Seneca: sicut nichil est suberbus benigna coniuge, ita nichil est crudelius infesta muliere.’ This is from Albertano of Brescia, Lib. Consolationis, cap. v. (p. 18). Sundby gives the reference, not to Seneca, but to Fulgentius, Mythologiarum, L. i. c. 27.

1377. bit, biddeth, bids. The passage referred to is in Dionysius Edition: current; Page: [356] Cato, lib. iii. dist. 25, and is given in the margin of MSS. E. Hn. and Dd.,

Uxoris linguam, si frugi est, ferre memento.

Quoted, at second-hand, from Albertano (Köppel).

1380. In the margin of MS. E.—‘Bona mulier fidelis custos est, et bona domus.’ From Albertano, as above.

1381–2. ‘Ubi non est mulier, ingemiscit egens’; Ecclus. xxxvi. 27. Albertano quotes this, but alters egens to eger; hence Chaucer has ‘the syke man’; see Köppel’s article, p. 42.

1384. See Eph. v. 25, 28, 29, 31.

1385. thou lovest, thou wilt love; the present for the future; in the second instance. There is no real difficulty here, though Tyrwhitt makes one, and alters the text to love thou.

1401. ‘On the brink of my grave.’ Cf. Ps. xxx. 3, 9; &c.

1407–16. ‘Uxorem accipias potius puellam quam uiduam’; from Albertano. See Köppel’s article, p. 42.

1412. mo, more in number; T. has more (badly).

1418. ‘I like fish when old, preferring a full grown pike to a pikerel; and I like flesh young, preferring veal to beef.’

1424. Wades boot, Wade’s boat. Wade was a famous hero of antiquity, to whom Chaucer again alludes in Troil. iii. 614. In the Traveller’s Song, l. 22, we find:—‘Witta wēold Swǣfum, Wada Hælsingum,’ i. e. Witta ruled over the Swabians, Wada over the Hælsings.’ Wade is again mentioned in the alliterative Morte Arthure, l. 964. In a translation of Guido delle Colonne, in MS. Laud K. 76, in the Bodleian library, the romance of Wade is mentioned in conjunction with those of Havelok and Horn, both of which are well known; see the whole passage, as cited in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, in a note to Section III. In Sir Beves of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, 2605, we have an allusion to his fight with a fire-drake or fiery dragon. And in Sir T. Malory’s Morte Arthur, bk. vii. c. 9, we find:—‘were thou as wyghte as euer was Wade or Launcelot.’ Speght knew the story, but has not recorded it; his note is:—‘Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his straunge exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I pass it over.’ On which Tyrwhitt remarks—‘Tantamne rem tam negligenter? Mr. Speght probably did not foresee, that posterity would be as much obliged to him for a little of this fabulous matter concerning Wade and his bote, as for the gravest of his annotations.’ Tyrwhitt also refers us, for a mention of Wade, to Camden’s Britannia, 907, and to Charlton’s History of Whitby, p. 40. M. Michel endeavoured to collect the particulars concerning Wade, and published them in a brochure, entitled Wade: Lettre à M. Henri Ternaux-Compans, &c. sur une Tradition Angloise du Moyen Age; Paris, 1837; 8vo. But it does not tell us much more that is helpful, except in furnishing a reference to the Wilkina Saga, capp. 18–20.

After all, the most light is given us by the following sentence in the Edition: current; Page: [357] Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. Vigfusson and Powell, i. 168, with reference to the Lay of Weyland. ‘Weyland is trapped by Nidad, king of the Niars, hamstrung, and forced to work for him in his forge on the isle of Seastead in lake Wolfmere. He contrives to slay his tyrant’s sons, beguile his daughter [named Bodwild], and by the aid of a pair of wings which he has fashioned to soar away from his prison-house, rejoicing in his revenge. . . . That the King’s daughter had a son by Weyland, the famous Wade (the memory of whose magic boat Wingelock lingered in N. England till the Reformation), we know from Wilkina Saga.’

I entirely differ from M. Michel’s extraordinary conclusion about the boat—‘Nous avons quelques raisons de croire que ce bateau n’étoit pas d’une course aussi rapide: en effet, dans l’Edda il est dit qu’Odin avoit un valet et une servante nommés Ganglate et Ganglæt, mots qu’on dit signifier marchant lentement.’ Of course Ganglati and Ganglöt (as they should be written) mean ‘slow-goer,’ but this has nothing to do with Guingelot, which is merely a French spelling of some such form as Wingelok. It is obvious that the sole use of a magic boat is to transport its possessor from place to place in a few minutes, like the magic wings of Wade’s own father. This is all we need to know, to see the point of the allusion. Old widows, says Chaucer in effect, know too much of the craft of Wade’s boat; they can fly from place to place in a minute, and, if charged with any misdemeanour, will swear they were a mile away from the place at the time alleged. Mr. Pickwick, on the other hand, being only a man, failed to set up the plea of an alibi, and suffered accordingly.

1425. broken harm. This is one of the phrases which Tyrwhitt includes in his list as being ‘not understood’; nor is it easy. But if we take it in connexion with the context, I think it can be explained. Harm is ‘mischief, injury’; broken is ‘fragmentary,’ as in ‘broken meat,’ and the like; so that broken harm refers to slight disconnected acts of mischief, or what we should now call ‘petty annoyances,’ or ‘small worries.’ Thus the sense is that ‘widows know so much about ways of creating small annoyances, that I should never live in peace with one.’ Taken all together, ll. 1424–6 simply imply that ‘old widows are so full of tricks for deceiving me, and can inflict at pleasure such small but constant annoyances, that I,’ &c.

1447. Take him, let him take; see the Exhortation in the Marriage-Service in the Book of Common Prayer; cf. Pers. Tale, I. 939, 940, 861.

1469. Cf. F. 202.

1474. disputisoun, disputation. Many MSS. have disputacioun, which is too long. The form, as Tyrwhitt remarks, is quite correct; see B. 4428, F. 890. Spelt desputeson in Gower, Conf. Amant. i. 90. See disputoison in Godefroy, with the variants in -aison, -eison, -eson, -ison. Compare orison with oration.

1476. Placebo. This name has reference to his complaisant disposition; see note to D. 2075. So, in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Edition: current; Page: [358] Morris, p. 60, we have: ‘The verthe zenne is, thet huanne hi alle zingeth Placebo, thet is to zigge: “mi lhord zayth zoth, my lhord doth wel”; and wendeth to guode al thet the guodeman deth other zayth, by hit guod, by hit kuead.’

1485. This quotation is not from Solomon, but from Jesus son of Sirach; see Ecclus. xxxii. 19:—‘Do nothing without advice, and when thou hast once done, repent not.’ Chaucer follows the Vulgate version; see note to B. 2193, where the quotation recurs.

1516. ‘Your heart hangs on a jolly pin,’ i. e. is in a merry state. A pin was a name for a wooden peg; and to hang on a pin was to be hung up conspicuously. Palsgrave, p. 844, has: ‘Upon a mery pynne, de hayt; as, il a le cueur de hayt’; cf. ‘Hait, liveliness, . . . cheerfulness’ in Cotgrave. Halliwell gives: ‘on the pin, on the qui vive.’ Later, the phrase became in a merry pin, i. e. in a good humour; but this is thought to refer to the pins or pegs in a ‘peg-tankard’; see Pin in Nares. Cowper, in his John Gilpin, has ‘in merry pin.’

1523. See Seneca, De Beneficiis, capp. 14–16; Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 270. However, it is really taken from Map’s Epistola Valerii, c. 9: ‘Philosophicum est: Videto cui des. Ethica est: Videto cui te des.’—Anglia, xiii. 183. Cf. P. Plowman, B. vii. 74, and the note.

1535. chydester, the feminine form of chyder, which is the form used in MSS. Pt. and Hl. I can find no other example; but, in the Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 150, 4266, we find chideresse.

1536. mannish wood, with masculine manners, and mad; virago-like. Certainly the right reading, and found in E. Hn. Cm. Unluckily, Tyrwhitt and others have adopted the nonsensical reading of Pt. and Hl., viz. a man is wood! Cp. Ln. have of maneres wood, which is better, but is clearly a mere substitution for the original mannish. For mannish, masculine, we have Chaucer’s own authority; see B. 782, and the note.

1538. ‘A metaphor from horses, meaning, No woman is without faults, just as there is no horse which will trot perfectly sound in all respects.’—Bell. From Albertano of Brescia, Liber de Amore Dei: ‘Nulla tam bona uxor, in qua non inuenias quod queraris.’—Köppel.

1553. ‘I know best where my shoe pinches me.’ This story has been already alluded to; see D. 492, and the note.

1558. Tyrwhitt has:—‘By him that made water, fire, erthe, and aire.’ This will not scan, and the word fire is introduced merely to please the editor, being found in none of the seven MSS., nor in the old editions. When Chaucer wishes to mention all the four elements, he does so; see A. 1246, 2992.

1560–1. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 14055–6:—

‘Car cil a moult poi de savoir

Qui seus cuide sa fame avoir.’

1582. Cf. Boeth. bk. v. met. 4. 8; Troil. i. 365; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 158.

1584. E. Hn. have se ful many, but the rest omit ful. Scan the Edition: current; Page: [359] line by reading many a in one foot, and making figúr-e trisyllabic, as in B. 3412, E. 16.

1592. voys, fame, general approval.

1609. Read inpossibl’, and wer-e. were, would be.

1640–1. The seven deadly sinnes, for which see the Persones Tale. ‘The popular medieval treatises on the seven sins arrange the minor transgressions connected with each as branches of the primary tree.’—Wright. And each of the branches have twigs, as Chaucer himself says; see I. 389. Cf. my note to P. Plowman, C. viii. 70.

1665. forbed-e, may (God) forbid. sente, subj., could send.

1682. This line is incomplete in all the seven MSS. There is a pause at the caesura, so that the word for occupies the whole of the third foot. Tyrwhitt conceals this fact by inserting but before thinne. Cf. D. 1647, and the note.

1684–7. These four parenthetical lines interrupt the story rather awkwardly. They obviously belong to the narrator, the Marchant, as it is out of the question that Justinus had heard of the Wife of Bath. Perhaps it is an oversight.

If we take these lines in this way, it is necessary to read we have in l. 1686, as in Hn. The other MSS. and editions read ye have. I explain ‘which we have on honde’ as meaning, ‘which we are now discussing.’ Moreover, the reading we is exactly appropriate after the reading us of l. 1684, where it is difficult to see how us can refer to any but the Canterbury pilgrims.

1693. Maius is a masculine form, because the name of the month is so; see l. 1748.

1702. sacrement, i.e. of marriage; see l. 1319. The couple also used to ‘receive the sacrament,’ i. e. the eucharist, in the modern sense.

1704. Referring to the prayers in the marriage service, which mention Isaac and Rebecca, and Abraham and Sarah.

1709–52. Quoted by Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, ii. 354.

1716. Orpheus, the celebrated minstrel, whose story is in Ovid, Met. x. 1-85; xi. 1-66. Mentioned again in the Book of the Duchesse, 569; House of Fame, 1203; Troil. iv. 791. For the minstrelsy at the feast, cf. F. 78.

Amphioun, Amphion, king of Thebes, who helped to build Thebes by the magic of his music; Hyginus, Fab. 6 and 7; cf. Ovid, Met. vi. 221, 271, 402; xv. 427. Already mentioned in connexion with Thebes in A. 1546. (The i is shortened.)

1719. Cf. ‘Ther herde I trumpe Ioab also’; Ho. of Fame, 1245. ‘Joab blew a trumpet,’ 2 Sam. ii. 28; xviii. 16; xx. 22.

1720. Theodomas; also mentioned in the above passage, Ho. of Fame, 1246. As he blew a trumpet at Thebes, when the city was in fear (or danger), he is clearly to be identified with the Thiodamas mentioned in the Thebaid of Statius. He succeeded Amphiaraus as augur, and furiously excited the besiegers to attack Thebes. His invocation was succeeded by a great sound of trumpets (Theb. viii. Edition: current; Page: [360] 343), but Statius does not expressly say that he blew a trumpet himself.

1723. Venus; cf. F. 272–274.

1727. fyrbrond, fire-brand, torch; which she carried as appropriate to the marriage procession. This attribute of Venus is found in Le Roman de la Rose, l. 3434:—

‘Ele tint ung brandon flamant

En sa main destre, dont la flame

A eschauffee mainte dame.’

Observe that l. 2250 of the Legend of Good Women runs thus:—‘N’ Ymenëus, that god of wedding is.’ This agrees with line 1730 except as regards the prefixed Ne. The ‘fire-brand’ reappears in l. 1777 below.

1731. his lyf, i. e. during his life, in all his life.

1732. Marcian. Chaucer is still thinking of his own House of Fame (cf. notes to ll. 1719, 1720), where he had already mentioned Marcian, at l. 985. Martianus Minneus Felix Capella, a native of Carthage, was a writer of the fifth century, and wrote the Nuptials of Philology and Mercury, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. This consists of two books, immediately followed by seven books on the Seven Sciences; see Warton’s Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, iii. 77; Smith’s Classical Dictionary, s. v. Capella; Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, l. 130.

1734. hir; cf. ‘he, Theofraste,’ in l. 1294; also ll. 1368, 1373. For him (as in E. Cm.), MSS. Hn. Hl. have he (badly).

1745. Assuer, Ahasuerus, as in l. 1374. There is a special reference here to the banquet at which Esther obtained her request; see Esther, v. 6. See further in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, i. 288, iii. 142.

1754. For other allusions to Paris and Eleyne, see Parl. of Foules, 290, 291; Book of the Duch. 331.

1783. The word ‘Auctor’ in the margin of MS. E. signifies that ll. 1783–1794 form a reflection on the subject by the author, who here personates the Marchant. There are similar passages further on, viz. ll. 1866–1874, 2057–2068, 2107–2115, and 2125–2131.

1784. bedeth, proffers; cf. G. 1065. From Boeth. bk. iii. pr. 5. 50.

1785. false hoomly hewe, O false domestic servant! Cp. Pt. Ln. have the reading holy, which doubtless arose, as Wright points out, from missing the mark of abbreviation in the form ‘hōly,’ i. e. homly. ‘Tyrwhitt, however,’ he adds, ‘adopts this reading, mistakes the meaning of the word hewe, adds of, which is found in none of the MSS.; and in his text it stands false of holy hewe, which he supposes to signify false of holy colour. Conjectural emendations are always dangerous.’ Yet Wright silently adopts such emendations over and over again; cf. l. 1812 below. Cf. hoomly fo in ll. 1792, 1794.

1786. ‘Like the sly and treacherous snake in the bosom.’ This refers to the fable in Phaedrus, lib. iv. fab. 18. But Chaucer probably Edition: current; Page: [361] took it from the Gesta Romanorum, ch. clxxiv. For numerous references, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, 1890, p. 201.

1790. Here the monosyllabic pp. born takes a final e in the definite form, as noticed by Prof. Child; see Ellis, E. E. Pronunc. p. 350, § 32. Cf. her dreint-e lord, Gower, C. A., ii. 105; and see B. 69.

1793. From Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 5:—‘Quae uero pestis efficacior ad nocendum, quàm familiaris inimicus?’ See vol. ii. p. 63.

1795. his ark diurne, the daily arc of his apparent motion. See Chaucer on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 7:—‘To knowe the arch of the day’; or, as in l. 7 of the same:—‘tak ther thyn ark of the day.’

1797. On thorisonte, upon the horizon; i. e. the time was come for the sun to descend below it.

that latitude; because the apparent motion of the sun depends upon the latitude as well as upon the day of the year; cf. the Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 13.

1799. hemisperie, the hemisphere above the horizon; see the Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. i. § 18.

1807. ipocras, the usual medieval spelling of Hippocrates; but the name is here given to a prepared drink. Halliwell (s. v. Hippocras) defines it as ‘a beverage composed of wine, with spices and sugar, strained through a cloth. It is said to have taken its name from Hippocrates’ sleeve, the term [which] apothecaries gave to a strainer.’ Long and elaborate recipes for it exist, and may be found in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, pp. 125 and 267; and in Halliwell’s Dictionary, s. v. ipocras. The shortest is that in Arnold’s Chronicle:—‘Take a quarte of red wyne, an ounce of synamon, and halfe an unce of gynger; a quarter of an ounce of greynes [i. e. cardamoms], and longe peper, and half a pounde of suger; and brose [bruise] all this, and than put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore [i. e. for the purpose], with the wyne; and lete it hange over a vessel, tyll the wyne be rune thorowe.’ All the recipes insist upon the straining, and some direct the use of as many as six straining-bags. See Our English Home, p. 83.

clarree, clarified wine; see note to A. 1471.

vernage, a sweet wine, sometimes red, but more often white; ‘grown in Tuscany, and other parts of Italy, and [it] derived its name from the thick-skinned grape, vernaccia (corresponding with the vinaciola of the ancients), that was used in the preparation of it. The wine known as vernaccia in Tuscany was always of a white or golden colour. See Bacci, Nat. Vinor. Hist., pp. 20, 62.’—Henderson, Hist. of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824; quoted in the Babees Book, ed. Furn vall, p. 203. Florio’s Ital. Dict. gives:—‘Vernaccia, a kinde of strong wine like malmesie or muskadine, or bastard wine.’ Chaucer speaks of it again, in conjunction with malvesye; see B. 1261. For other notices of it, see Babees Book, pp. 125, 267, and the Glossary; Halliwell, s. v. Piment; Gower, C. A., iii. 8; Squyer of Lowe Degree, l. 754. The derivation, sometimes given, of vernage from Verona, is clearly wrong.

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1810. dan, i. e. Dominus, a common title; see note to B. 3119.

Constantine. ‘Dan Constantine, according to Fabricius, Bibl. Med. Æt. t. i. p. 423, ed. Pat. 4to., wrote about the year 1080. His works, including the treatise mentioned in the text, were printed at Basil, 1536, fol.’—T. He has been mentioned before; see A. 433; and cf. Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, ii. 368.

1812. nas no-thing eschu, was not at all remiss, or shy. Cm. Ln. read was; the rest nas; but the sense is the same. Tyrwhitt reads—he wolde nothing eschue. Wright says: ‘the Harl. MS. reads nas, which seems not to furnish so good a grammatical construction’; accordingly, he reads—he wold nothing eschieu. Morris likewise reads wolde; and Bell reads wold. But the editors are all wrong; for the verb eschew-e will not rime with coitu, and it is clear that they did not know that eschu is here an adjective! Yet it occurs again in the Pers. Tale, Group I, 971; and I subjoin three more examples.

‘She is escheue [read eschu] of bothe two.’

Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 286.

‘Yit gooses dounge eschew is.’

Palladius on Husbandry, bk. i. l. 528.

In this passage it rimes with mew-es, pl. sb.

‘Her taste is eke eschewe.’—id. bk. iv. l. 586.

Godefroy gives the O. F. adj. eschif, eskif, ‘animé de sentiments hostiles, défavorables, mauvais, mécontent, de mauvaise volonté, rétif.’ Amongst his examples, we find the spellings eskius, eschius, eskieus, esqueus, eskieu, esquieu, esehieu; where the -s is a case-ending. The O. F. adj. is derived from the adj. which appears as M. H. G. schiech, cognate with E. shy. Chaucer’s eschu is, accordingly, just as good an adjective as the mod. E. shy.

1817. travers, curtain, drawn across to form a screen; as in Troil. iii. 674. Ill spelt trauas in the Prompt. Parv., but explained by transversum, which is the Low Latin form. See Way’s note; he quotes—“i. trauers du satin vermaille,” so that they were sometimes made of crimson satin. In the Kingis Quair, st. 90, we find the form trauerse; in st. 82 it is spelt travesse, and is there applied to a screen which happened to be nearly transparent, as was not the case in our text. See vol. ii. pp. 478, 506.

1819. A note in Bell’s Chaucer gives a translation of the form of blessing the nuptial bed to be found in old service-books.

1825. houndfish, dog-fish. I suppose this is the spotted dog-fish, Scyllium catulus, or Scyllium canicula. Randle Holme has: ‘Dog fish, or Sea dog fish. It is by the Dutch termed a Flackhund and a Hundfisch; the skin is hard and redish, beset with hard and sharp scales, sharp, and rough and black; the Belly is more white and softer.’ Bk. ii. ch. xiv. See Gloss. to the Babees Book; Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 201.

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1840. In the Pers. Tale, Chaucer says just the contrary; see I. 859.

1849. shaketh. Cf. ‘The slake skin trembleth upon myn empted body’; Ch. tr. of Boethius, bk. i. met. 1. 12.

1862. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 19931–2.

1879. a penner. ‘The penner was a case containing the pens, ink, and other apparatus of writing, which the clerk carried about with him, as the Eastern students do at the present day. As such articles belonged only to clergy and scholars, we understand why the squire Damyan was obliged to borrow one for his use. An early vocabulary entitled Nominale mentions, among the Nomina rerum pertinentium clerico, ‘Hoc pennare, a pener.’—Wright. See Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 682. 15; also 601. 34.

1881. compleynt. See specimens in Chaucer’s Compleints of Mars, of Venus, and of Anelida; also the Compleint to his Lady. And cf. F. 943–948.

1883. heng, i. e. which hung; the relative is omitted.

1887. two of Taur, the second degree of Taurus. Tyrwhitt unluckily altered two to ten, on the plea that ‘the time given (four days complete, l. 1893) is not sufficient for the moon to pass from the second degree of Taurus into Cancer.’ And he then proceeds to shew this, taking the mean daily motion of the moon as being 13 degrees, 10 minutes, and 35 seconds. But, as Mr. Brae has shewn, in his edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe, p. 93, footnote, it is a mistake to reckon here the moon’s mean motion; we must rather consider her actual motion. The question is simply, can the moon move from the 2nd degree of Taurus to the 1st of Cancer (through 59 degrees) in four days? Mr. Brae says decidedly, that examples of such motion are to be seen ‘in every almanac.’

E.g. in the Nautical Almanac, in June, 1886, the moon’s longitude at noon was 30° 22′ on the 9th, and 90° 17′ on the 13th; i. e. the moon was in the first of Taurus on the former day, and in the first of Cancer on the latter day, at the same hour; which gives (very nearly) a degree more of change of longitude than we here require. The MSS. all have two or tuo, and they are quite right. The motion of the moon is so variable that the mean motion affords no safe guide.

1887–8. The i in gliden, biden (as in M. E. riden, E. ridden) is short.

1921. At-after, immediately after; a compound preposition; see F. 302.

1924. a gentil man, a man of rank, as squires usually were, although in service, and therefore a hewe (1785). Cf. l. 1907, and note to D. 2243.

1932. This proceeding was quite in accordance with ancient custom. See the tale of Eglamore, in the Percy Folio MS., st. 11; and the Ballad of Sir Cauline, st. 9.

1943–4. Misarranged and corrupt in MS. Hl.

1962. precious, over-nice, scrupulous, prim; as in D. 148.

1966. evensong. Only Cp. Ln. have euesong. Perhaps even was Edition: current; Page: [364] pronounced as e’en (een); cf. yest’re’en, Hallowe’en. But eve for even is very common.

1971. For Was, only Hn. Hl. have As. The latter seems to afford an easier construction, and is adopted by the editors. But we are bound to take the reading Was, as in most MSS., and explain it. I take it thus:—‘Whether it were . . that the heavens stood in such a condition, that it was a fortunate time.’ This is quite exact, though one dependent clause on the top of another is not felicitous. The reference is, of course, to the old astrological belief about fortunate positions of the planets; cf. A. 417. See Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 62–71.

1986. Chaucer’s favourite line; see note to F. 479.

1991. lete, allowed; A. S. læten. MS. Harl. omits him.

2002. visit-è; trisyllabic. See the footnote.

2013. lowe means ‘tractable, docile, obedient’; cf. note to D. 1369. ‘And after that he had with lacke of vitailles brought those pratlers as lowe as dogge to the bowe’; Udall, tr. of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes; Antigonus, § 27. This shews how the dogs were tamed.

2018. lady, lady’s. See note to A. 88.

2021. ‘Alluding to the Epicurean philosophy.’—Bell. See A. 335–8.

2026. honestly, honourably, worthily; cf. l. 2028.

2032. he, viz. Guillaume de Lorris. There were two authors of Le Roman de la Rose, but the reference is here to the earlier portion of it; see ll. 130–146, 480–512, 645–688 of the English version, where the description of the garden occurs; and for the description of the well mentioned in l. 2036, see ll. 1462–1634 of the same.

2034. ‘Hortorum decus et tutela Priapus’; Ovid, Fast. i. 415.

2038. Pluto. In his Introductory Discourse, Tyrwhitt remarks:—‘The machinery of the Fairies, which Chaucer has used so happily, was probably added by himself; and indeed, I cannot help thinking that his Pluto and Proserpine were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania . . . . This observation is not meant to extend further than the King and Queen of Faery; in whose characters I think it is plain that Shakespeare, in imitation of Chaucer, has dignified our Gothic Elves with the manners and language of the classical Gods and Goddesses. In the rest of his Faery system, Shakespeare seems to have followed the popular superstition of his own time.’

This remark is important; I doubt if the influence of Chaucer upon Shakespeare in this matter has been sufficiently recognised. In both works, the Fairy king and queen have a dispute in hand, which is settled by the assistance of mortals.

Not only here, but in the Hous of Fame, 1509–1511, Chaucer refers us to Claudian as his authority for Pluto and Proserpine; see note to l. 2232 below.

2046. The insertion of smal is necessary; the rime wiket, cliket, being a feminine one.

cliket, (1) a latch, (2) a latch-key; here used in the latter sense. In Shropshire, the word is used of a particular kind of fastening for a gate, Edition: current; Page: [365] which Miss Jackson thus describes. ‘An iron link is attached to the gate by means of a staple; this link is terminated by a short hasp-like bolt. On the gate-post is an iron plate, having in it a kind of key-hole, into which the before-mentioned bolt fits, much after the manner of the fastening of a trunk, thus securing the gate.’

2058. scorpion, scorpion; see notes to B. 360, 404; cf. H. 271, and see Chaucer’s description of the scorpion in the Book of the Duchesse, ll. 636–641. Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Naturale, bk. xx. c. 160, quotes from the Liber de Naturis Rerum—‘Scorpio blandum et quasi virgineum dicitur vultum habere, sed habet in cauda nodosa venenatum aculeum, quo pungit et inficit proximantem.’ And see Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 1. 10–14; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 62, l. 13.

2080. Soul, sole; cf. the law-phrase femme sole. See P. de Thaun, Bestiary, 1250; Morris, O. E. Misc. p. 22; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 226.

2093. Damian, here to be read as Dam-yan, nearly in two syllables. Benignely, favourably; altered by Tyrwhitt to brenningly, without authority; pronounced benign-e-ly, in four syllables.

2107. ‘What might it avail thee if thou couldst see to the very horizon?’

2109. ‘For it is just as good to be deceived when blind.’

2111. See note to A. 1390.

2115. Cf. ‘Of sufferance cometh ease’; in Heywood’s Proverbs.

2117. To scan the line, we must read warm-e, and émprentèd. Emprented hath would run much better. The scribes who wrote warm probably pronounced the last word as clikét; but the rime is feminine. And see l. 2121, 2123.

2125. The reference is to the story of Pyramus in Ovid, Met. iv. 55; especially (in l. 2126) to the line—‘Quid non sentit amor?’

2127. he, i. e. the lover; used generally. This line answers to l. 742 of the Legend of Good Women:—‘But what is that, that love can nat espye’; where love means a lover.

2133. This has to be taken in connexion with ll. 2222–4 below, in which the date is said to be a little before June 12; see note to the line. Consequently, the ‘eight days’ mentioned in l. 2132 must be the first eight days of June. Again, if we refer to l. 2049, we see that January used to go to the garden ‘in the summer season,’ which would seem to be intended to begin with June. Accordingly, the month of June is here expressed, in a mere parenthesis, by the phrase ‘ere the month of July.’ Hence the sense really is—‘ere that eight days (of the summer season) were passed, (of the month) before that of July.’ And the whole passage merely means—‘before the 8th of June was over,’ or simply, ‘on June 8.’ This date precisely agrees with that given, by quite a different method, in ll. 2222–4.

As the month meant is here certainly that of June, as shewn by Mr. Brae in 1851 (see his edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe, pp. 67, 83), Mr. Brae proposed to read Juin for Juil. But this was because he followed Tyrwhitt’s text, which has of for er, and therefore reads—

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‘er that daies eighte

Were passed of the month of Juil, befill,’ &c.

And it is the fact, that, with the reading of, we also should have to accept the reading Juin. But we must set against this the fact that no MS. (at least of any authority) reads either Juin or of! Tyrwhitt has made this alteration silently, and Wright and Bell have silently adopted it. Morris also makes the alteration, but prints of in italics to shew that it is not the reading of his MS. These silent conjectural emendations are very troublesome, as they are copied by one editor after another without any enquiry as to the sense of the context.

The Harl. MS., supposed to be followed by Wright, actually has a stop before ‘er’; the reading being—‘were passid . er the moneth of Iuyl bifille.’ The reading bifille (might befal) is probably due to taking Iuyl as the nominative to this verb, whereas bifil is meant to be impersonal, with the sense—‘it happened.’

2138–2148. This passage is almost entirely composed of fragments of Solomon’s Song. We may compare ll. 2138–2140 with ch. ii. vv. 10, 11, 12; l. 2141 with ch. i. v. 15; l. 2142 with ch. iv. v. 10; l. 2143 with ch. iv. vv. 12, 16; ll. 2144, 2145 with ch. iv. vv. 9, 10; l. 2146 with ch. iv. v. 7.

2194. The first foot is defective (in all seven MSS.). To fill out the line, Tyrwhitt inserts owen before lord; a ‘correction’ which Wright and Bell silently adopt. There is no hint as to the source of this owen. Thynne’s edition (as frequently elsewhere) agrees with the seven MSS.

2200. This drowning in a sack is quite oriental. Cf. ‘There yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea’; Byron, The Corsair, iii. 8.

2202. wenche. For this word, cf. H. 220, and Ho. of Fame, 206.

2222. in Geminis, in the sign of Gemini. We are also told that he was near his ‘declination of Cancer,’ i. e. his maximum northern declination, which he obtains when entering Cancer, at the summer solstice. In Chaucer’s time, the sun entered Cancer about June 12, and therefore just before that day was in Gemini. Taking this statement in conjunction with the ‘eight days’ of the summer season mentioned in l. 2132, we may feel sure that the date meant is June 8, just four days before the sun left Gemini, and attained his maximum declination. See my edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe (E.E.T.S.), p. lv., which requires partial correction, as shewn in the note to l. 2132 above.

2224. The ‘exaltation’ of a planet was the sign in which it was (quite arbitrarily) supposed to exercise its greatest power. The exaltation of Jupiter was Cancer, as Chaucer correctly says.

2227. This notion of identifying Pluto with the king of Fairyland occurs again in the Romance of Sir Orpheo; see Ritson, Met. Rom. ii. 259. Sir Orpheo is the Greek Orpheus, who redeemed Eurydice from ‘the kyng of fayrè,’ i. e. from Pluto. See the remarks on this poem in Warton, Hist. E. Poet. ed. 1871, i. 31, 32.

The construction of this sentence is awkward. Lines 2231–3 are Edition: current; Page: [367] parenthetical; Pluto is in apposition with This king in l. 2234, and agrees with the verb sette in the same.

2229–30. Tyrwhitt prints these lines differently, thus:—

Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina,

Which that he ravisshed out of Ethna.

This reading is from MS. Harl. 7335; and T. adds—‘In some other MSS. Ethna, by a manifest error of the copyist, has been changed into Proserpina [as in Cp. Pt. Ln.]. The passage being thus made nonsense, other transcribers left out the [second] line, and substituted in its stead—

Eche after other, right as any lyne.’

But it would appear that the line just quoted, which Tyrwhitt pronounces to be a substitution, is really the original reading, and we must not hastily reject it. It is found in E. Cm. and Hl., whilst in Hn. the line has been erased or omitted, and then filled in (in a spurious form) by a later hand.

Wright and Bell have followed Tyrwhitt’s lead, and altered the passage accordingly. Morris silently changes the preserpine of the Harl. MS. to Preserpina, and gives the next line in the objectionable form—‘Whiche that he ravysched out of Cecilia’ (Sicily).

It seems very much better to restore the original reading, especially when we notice that Próserpýne (not Prosérpiná) is the undoubted reading in the House of Fame, 1511, and that quen-e is constantly dissyllabic (see B. 161, 1671, G. 1089). In l. 2264, we again have Próserpýn.’ The old black-letter editions are not of much value; still they give line 2230 as in my text, except that they wrongly change any into a.

2232. Claudian; Claudius Claudianus, at the close of the fourth century, wrote an epic poem in three books De raptu Proserpinae, which he left unfinished, besides several other works. He is mentioned again in the Ho. of Fame, 449, 1509. The story of Proserpine is also in Ovid, Fasti, iv. 427; and in Gower, C. A., ii. 170.

2240. The line is plainly imperfect, both in sense and rhythm, yet is the same in all seven MSS. and in ed. 1550. They agree in reading:—

Ten hundred thousand telle(n) I can.

Tyrwhitt reads:—

Ten hundred thousand stories tell I can.

He does not tell us where he found the word stories. Wright and Bell silently adopt stories; Morris inserts it between square brackets. It occurs, however, in a parallel line, F. 1412, as well as in a similar passage in the Leg. of Good Women, Prol. A. 274.

2247. From Eccles. vii. 28. Cf. B. 2247, where Chaucer quotes the same passage.

2250. I. e. the author of Ecclesiasticus. This book contains both praise and dispraise of women; see Ecclus. xxiii. 22–26; xxv. 17–26; Edition: current; Page: [368] xxvi. 1-3, 7-16, 22–27; xxxvi. 21–24; xl. 19, 23; xlii. 9-14. The dispraise predominates.

2252. wilde fyr; see A. 4172, and the note.

2264. ‘So you shall, if you so wish.’

2265. ‘I swear by the soul of my mother’s sire’; i. e. by Saturn (Ovid, Fasti, vi. 285). The wisdom of Saturn is referred to in A. 2444. Tyrwhitt altered sires into Ceres, for which I find no authority. Wright notes that Hl. has sires, and Ln. sire; and adds—‘Ceres is of course the word intended.’ I see no evidence for it; and I do not admit that an editor should alter all that he fails to understand.

2273. visage, pronounced (vizaa·j), the e being elided. We still say ‘to face a thing out.’ ‘Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign’; 1 Hen. VI. v. 3. 142; and see Com. Errors, iii. 1. 6; Tam. Shrew, ii. 291; Tw. Nt. iv. 2. 201; &c.

2279–2281. Repeated from B. 2266, 7; so also ll. 2286–2290 is taken from B. 2268, 9.

2283. Cf. The Second Nonnes Tale, G. 512.

2284. Here ‘the Romayn gestes’ simply means Roman history. The Gesta Romanorum also contains a story of a devoted wife, in ch. vi; the story of Lucretia, ch. cxxxv; and of the faithful wife of Guido, ch. clxxii. But there are other stories of a very different character.

2300. Referring to 1 Kings, xi. 12.

2304. ye, i. e. ye men. So in all the seven MSS. Tyrwhitt alters it to—That he of women wrote. But why? Cf. D. 688–696.

2308. ‘As ever I desire to keep my tresses whole.’ See Brouke in the Glossary.

2310. ‘That would wish (to do) us a disgrace.’

2321–2. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 10131–2:—

‘Cerchant prés et jardins et gaus,

Plus envoisiés que papegaus.’

See also above, B. 1559, 1957.

2335. plyt, condition. ‘An allusion to the well-known vulgar error about the longings of pregnant women.’—Bell.

2355. By confusion with l. 2357, MS. Harl. alters agayn his sighte to his sight agayn, and then misses ll. 2356, 7.

2365. From Ovid; see B. 2167, and the note.

2367. store, bold, rude, audacious, impudent; lit. ‘great.’ A. S. stōr, great; Icel. stórr, great, rough, strong, proud. Stronge must here have a similar sense:—‘O bold rude lady.’ Strong-e and stor-e both have final e, as being vocatives.

2410. ‘He who misapprehends comes to a false conclusion.’

Epilogue to the Merchant’s Tale.

2420. swich a wyf, such a wife as that described in the Merchant’s Tale.

2422. bees, bees. Elsewhere, the pl. is been; see B. 4582, F. 204.

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2431. in conseil, in (secret) counsel, between ourselves. For this use of conseil, see C. 819, and the note; also G. 145, 192.

2435. The phrase cause why is now considered vulgar; it is common in London. Caus-e is dissyllabic.

2436. of somme, by some, by some one. So of whom=by whom; in the next line. He says, he need not say by whom it would be told; for women are sure to utter such things, as is expressly said in D. 950. This alludes, of course, to the ladies in the company, and, in particular, to the Wife of Bath, who was not the person to keep such things to herself. outen, to utter; a rare word; it occurs again in G. 834, and in D. 521. Also in The Tale of Beryn, 2408.

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NOTES TO GROUP F.

The Squieres Tale.

1. There is nothing to link this tale with the preceding one; hence it begins a new Group. In many MSS. (including E.) it follows the preceding Epilogue without any break. In other MSS. it follows the Man of Law’s Tale; but that is the wrong place for it. See note to B. 1165; also vol. iii. p. 462.

2. An allusion to Prol. l. 97, unless (which is quite as probable) the passage in the Prologue was written afterwards.

9. Sarray, Sarai. This place has been identified, past all doubt, by Colonel Yule in his edition of Marco Polo’s Travels, vol. i. p. 5, and vol. ii. p. 424. The modern name is Tzarev, near Sarepta. Sarepta is easily found on any good map of Russia by following the course of the Volga from its mouth upwards. At first this backward course runs N.W. till we have crossed the province of Astrakhan, when it makes a sudden bend, at Sarepta and Tsaritzin. Tsarev is now a place of no importance, but the ancient Sarai was so well known, that the Caspian Sea was sometimes named from it; thus it is called ‘the sea of Sarain’ in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 424; ‘the sea of Sarra’ in the Catalan map of 1375; and Mare Seruanicum, or the Sea of Shirwan, by Vincent of Beauvais. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight’s Chaucer, speaks to the same effect, and says of ‘Sara’ that it is ‘a place yet well knowen, and bordering vppon the lake Mare Caspium.’ Sarai was the place where Batu Khan, the grandson of Gengis Khan, held his court. Batu, with his Mongolian followers known as the Golden Horde, had established an empire in Kaptchak, or Kibzak, now S.E. Russia, about ad 1224. The Golden Horde further invaded Russia, and made Alexander Newski grand-duke of it, ad 1252. (See Golden Horde in Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates.)

Chaucer has here confused two accounts. There were two celebrated Khans, both grandsons of Gengis Khan, who were ruling about the same time. Batu Khan held his court at Sarai, and ruled over the S.E. of Russia; but the Great Khan, named Kublai, held his court at Cambaluc, the modern Pekin, in a still more magnificent manner. And it is easy to see that, although Chaucer names Sarai, his description really applies to Cambaluc. See vol. iii. pp. 471–2.

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10. Russye, Russia; invaded by the Golden Horde, as just explained. The end of the Tartar influence in Russia was in the year 1481, when Svenigorod, general of Ivan III., defeated them at the battle of Bielawisch. In the following year Ivan assumed the title of czar.

12. Cambinskan; so in all seven MSS. (Six-text and Harleian), except that in the Ellesmere MS. it more resembles Cambyuskan. Yet Tyrwhitt prints Cambuscan, probably in deference to Milton, who, however, certainly accents the word wrongly, viz. on the second syllable; Il Penseroso, l. 110. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight’s Chaucer, speaking of the year 1240, says—‘whiche must be in the tyme of the fyrst Tartariane emperor called Caius canne, beinge, I suppose, he whome Chaucer namethe Cambiuscan, for so ys [it in] the written copies, such affynytye is there betwene those two names.’ Now, although the celebrated Gengis Khan died probably in 1227, the allusion to the ‘fyrst Tartariane emperor’ is clear; so that Thynne makes the forms Cambius, Caius (perhaps miswritten for Cāius, i. e. Camius) and Gengis all equivalent. But this is the very result for which Colonel Yule has found authority, as explained in vol. iii. p. 471; to which the reader is referred. It is there explained that Chaucer has again confused two accounts; for, whilst he names Gengis Khan (the first ‘Grand Khan’), his description really applies to Kublai Khan, his grandson, the celebrated ‘Grand Khan’ described by Marco Polo.

18. lay, religious profession or belief. ‘King Darie swor by his lay’: King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1325. From A. F. lei, law. See lei in Stratmann.

20. This line scans ill as it stands in most MSS. Tyrwhitt and Wright insert and, which gives two accented ‘ands’—

And pí | tous ánd | just ánd | alwéy | ylíche.

The Hengwrt MS. has—

Pietous and lust, and euere-moore yliche,

which, otherwise spelt, becomes—

Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche—

and this is the reading which I have adopted in the text. However, I have since observed that Chaucer twice makes pi-e-tous trisyllabic, viz. in Troil. iii. 1444, v. 451; and the Hengwrt MS. has the same spelling here. The common reading, with this alteration, becomes quite right. That is, we may read—

And piëtous and Iust, alwey y-liche.

22. centre; often used in the sense of a fulcrum or pivot, or point of extreme stability. Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 533—

‘Proof against all temptation, as a rock

Of adamant, and, as a centre, firm.’

The old astronomy supposed the centre of the earth to be the fixed centre of the universe.

30. Tyrwhitt inserts sone after eldeste; fortunately, it is not in the Edition: current; Page: [372] MSS. Whiche is a dissyllable, the e denoting the plural form. The words th’ eldest’ form but two syllables, the e’s being elided; but we may fairly preserve the e in highte (cf. l. 33) from elision, for the greater emphasis, by a short pause; and we then have a perfect line—

Of which | e th’ el | dest’ high | te—Al | garsyf.

31. Cambalo. I have no doubt that this name was suggested by the Cambaluc of Marco Polo. See vol. iii. p. 472.

39. longing for, belonging to. Cf. longen, Kn. Ta. 1420 (A. 2278).

44. I deme, I suppose. This looks as if Chaucer had read some account of a festival made by the Grand Khan on one of his birthdays, from which he inferred that he always held such a feast every year; as, indeed, was the case. See vol. iii. p. 473.

45. He leet don cryen, he caused (men) to have the feast cried. The use of both leet and don is remarkable; cf. E. 523. He gave his orders to his officers, and they took care that the proclamation was made.

47. It is not clear why Chaucer hit upon this day in particular. Kublai’s birthday was in September, but perhaps Chaucer noted that the White Feast was on New Year’s day, which he took to mean the vernal equinox, or some day near it. The day, however, is well defined. The ‘last Idus’ is the very day of the Ides, i. e. March 15. The sun entered Aries, according to Chaucer (Treatise on the Astrolabe, ii. 1. 4) on March 12, at the vernal equinox; and, as a degree answers to a day very nearly, would be in the first degree of Aries on the 12th, in the second on the 13th, in the third on the 14th, in the fourth on the 15th, and in the fifth (or at the end of the fourth) on the 16th, as Chaucer most expressly says below; see note to l. 386. The sign Aries was said, in astrology, to be the exaltation of the Sun, or that sign in which the Sun had most influence for good or ill. In particular, the 19th degree of Aries, for some mysterious reason, was selected as the Sun’s exaltation, when most exactly reckoned. Chaucer says, then, that the Sun was in the sign of Aries, in the fourth degree of that sign, and therefore nigh (and approaching to) the 19th degree, or his special degree of exaltation. Besides this, the poet says the sun was in the ‘face’ of Mars, and in the mansion of Mars; for ‘his mansioun’ in l. 50 means Mars’s mansion. This is exactly in accordance with the astrology of the period. Each sign, such as Aries, was said to contain 30 degrees, or 3 faces; a face being 10 degrees. The first face of Aries (degrees 1-10) was called the face of Mars, the second (11–20) the face of the Sun, the third (21–30) that of Venus. Hence the sun, being in the fourth degree, was in Mars’s face. Again, every planet had its (so-called) mansion or house; whence Aries was called the mansion of Mars, Taurus that of Venus, Gemini that of Mercury, &c. See Chaucer’s Astrolabe, in vol. iii. p. lxxviii; or Johannis Hispalensis Isagoge in Astrologiam, which gives all the technical terms.

50. Martes is a genitive from the nom. Mart. or Marte (A. 2021), which is itself formed, as usual, from the Latin acc. Martem.

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51. In the old astrology, different qualities are ascribed to the different signs. Thus Aries is described as choleric and fiery in MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 15. 18, tract 3, p. 11. So, too, Tyrwhitt quotes from the Calendrier des Bergers that Aries is ‘chault et sec,’ i. e. hot and dry.

53. agayn, against, opposite to. So also in Kn. Ta. 651 (A. 1509).

54. What for; cf. Mod. Eng. what with. See Kn. Tale, 595 (A. 1453).

59. deys, raised platform, as at English feasts. But this is in Marco Polo too; see vol. iii. p. 473. Cf. Kn. Tale, l. 1342 (A. 2200); and note to Prol. l. 370.

63. In a similar indirect manner, Chaucer describes feasts, &c. elsewhere: see Kn. Ta. 1339 (A. 2197); Man of Lawes Tale, B. 701–707. And Spenser imitates him; F. Q. i. 12. 14; v. 3. 3.

67. sewes, seasoned broths. ‘Sewes and potages’; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 151, l. 523; cf. p. 149, l. 509.

68. Mr. Wright’s note on the line is—‘It is hardly necessary to observe that swans were formerly eaten at table, and considered among the choicest ornaments of the festive board. Tyrwhitt informs us that at the intronization of Archbp. Nevil, 6 Edward iv, there were “Heronshawes iiijc.” [i. e. 400]; Leland’s Collectanea, vi. 2: and that at another feast in 1530 we read of “16 Heronsews, every one 12d”; Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, ii. 12.’ Heronsew is derived from A. F. heronceau, variant of heroncel. Godefroy gives herouncel, from the Liber Custumarum, i. 304 (14 Edw. II.), and the pl. heroncaulx in an account dated 1330. Cotgrave only has ‘Haironneau, a young heron,’ and ‘Hairon, a heron, herne, herneshaw.’ Halliwell quotes ‘Ardeola, an hearnesew’ from Elyot’s Dict. 1559, and the form herunsew from Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 88. Certainly heronsewe is the name of a bird, not of a dish, as some have guessed, by comparing the sewes in l. 67. In fact, the word heronsew (for heron) is still used in Swaledale, Yorkshire. And in Hazlitt’s old Plays (The Disobedient Child), vol. ii. p. 282, we have—

‘There must be also pheasant and swan;

There must be heronsew, partridge, and quail.’

See the quotations in Nares; also Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. iii. 450, 507; iv. 76; vii. 13; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 152, l. 539. Cf. handsaw, for hernshaw, in Hamlet, ii. 2. Heroncel, or -ceu, or -ceau, is simply the diminutive form; so also, lioncel, or lionçeau, as a diminutive of lion.

70. som mete; viz. ‘horses, dogs, and Pharaoh’s rats.’ See vol. iii. p. 474.

73. pryme; the word prime seems to mean, in Chaucer, the first quarter of the day, reckoned from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and more particularly, the end of that period, i. e. 9 a.m. In the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4387, the cock crew at prime, or 9 a.m. So here, the Squire says it is 9 o’clock, and he must proceed quickly with his story. The word is used in different senses by different writers.

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75. firste, first design or purpose. I believe this reading is right. MS. Harl. has purpos, which will not scan: unless my be omitted, as in Tyrwhitt, though that MS. retains my. MSS. Cp. Ln. insert purpos as well as firste, making the line too long: whilst Hn. Cm. Pt. agree with the text here given, from MS. E.

76. The second syllable in after is rapidly pronounced, and thridde is a dissyllable.

78. thinges, pieces of music. Minstrelsy at feasts was common; cf. Man of Lawes Tale, B. 705; March. Tale, E. 1715.

80. The incident of a man riding into the hall is nothing uncommon. Thus we have, in the Percy Folio MS. ii. 486, the line—

‘The one came ryding into the hall.’

Warton observes—‘See a fine romantic story of a Comte de Macon who, while revelling in his hall with many knights, is suddenly alarmed by the entrance of a gigantic figure of a black man, mounted on a black steed. This terrible stranger, without receiving any obstruction from guards or gates, rides directly forward to the high table, and, with an imperious tone, orders the count to follow him—Nic. Gillos. Chron. ann. 1120.’ Alexander rode into a hall up to the high table, according to the romance, ed. Weber, l. 1083. See also Warton’s Obs. on the Fairy Queen, p. 202; the Ballad of King Estmere; and Stowe’s Survey of London, p. 387, ed. 1599. In Scott’s Rokeby, Bertram rides into a church.

81. stede of bras, &c. See note to l. 209, and vol. iii. pp. 465, 475.

95. Sir Gawain, nephew to king Arthur, according to the British History which goes by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth, is always upheld as a model of courtesy in the French romances and the English translations of them. He is often contrasted with Sir Kay, who was equally celebrated for churlishness. See the Percy Folio MS.; Sir Gawain, ed. by Sir F. Madden; Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight, ed. by Dr. Morris; the Morte D’Arthur, &c. Cf. Rom. Rose, 2205–12.

103. Accordant, according. The change from the Fr. -ant to the common Eng. -ing should be noted.—M.

106. style, stile. Such puns are not common in Chaucer; cf. E. 1148.—M.

116. day naturel. In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. c. 7 (see vol. iii. p. 194), Chaucer explains that the day artificial is the time from sunrise to sunset, which varies; to which he adds—‘but the day natural, that is to seyn 24 houres, is the revolucioun of the equinoxial with as moche partie of the zodiak as the sonne of his propre moevinge passeth in the mene whyle.’ See note to B. 2.

122. the air, pronounced th’air, as usual with Chaucer; see D. 1939.

129. wayted, watched; allnding to the care with which the maker watched for the moment when the stars were in a propitious position, according to the old belief in astrology.

131. seel, seal. Mr. Wright notes that ‘the making and arrangement Edition: current; Page: [375] of seals was one of the important operations of medieval magic, and treatises on this subject are found in MSS.’ He refers to MS. Arundel, no. 295, fol. 265. Solomon’s seal is still commemorated in the name of a flower.

132. mirour. For some account of this, see vol. iii. p. 476, and note to l. 231.

137. over al this, besides all this. Elsewhere over-al is a compound word, meaning everywhere; as in Prol. 216.—M.

150. Compare Tale xv (The Ravens) in the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, about the child who understood the language of all birds.

154. and whom, &c., and to whom it will do good, or operate as a remedy; alluding to the virtues attributed to many herbs. So Spenser, F. Q. i. 2. 10—

‘O who can tell

The hidden power of herbes, and might of magicke spell!’

162. with the platte, with the flat side of it; see l. 164. Cf. Troil. iv. 927.

171. Stant, stands; contracted from standeth; so also in l. 182. Cf. sit for sitteth in l. 179, hit for hideth in l. 512, and note to E. 1151.

184. ‘By means of any machine furnished with a windlass or a pulley.’ The modern windlass looks like a compound of wind and lace, but really stands for windel-as, variant of the form windas here used. The confusion would be facilitated by the fact that there was another form windlas (probably from wind and lace) with a different meaning, viz. that of a circuitous way or path; see note to Hamlet, ii. 1. 65 (Clar. Press). In the Promptorium Parvulorum, our word is spelt both wyndlas and wyndas; p. 529. The Mid. E. windas may have been derived from the Low-German directly, or more probably from the Old French, which has both guindas and windas. The meaning and derivation are clearly shewn by the Du. windas, which means a winding-axle or capstan, from the sb. as, an axle; so, too, the Icel. vindâss. In Falconer’s Shipwreck, canto 1, note 3, the word windlass is used in the sense of capstan.

190. gauren, gaze, stare. Used again by Chaucer, A. 3827, B. 3559, and in Troil. and Cres. ii. 1157 (vol. ii. p. 225). In the Clerkes Tale (E. 1003), he has gazed. Mr. Wedgwood is perhaps right in considering gaze and gaure (also spelt gare) as mere variations of the same word. Cf. the adj. garish, i. e. staring, in Milton, Il Pens. 141. For the occasional change of s to r, see my Principles of Eng. Etymology, i. 379.

guaring, i. e. stupor, occurs in Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 7.

193. Lumbardye, Lombardy, formerly celebrated for horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from a patent in Rymer, 2 Edw. II—‘De dextrariis in Lumbardiâ emendis,’ i.e. of horses to be bought in Lombardy.

195. Poileys, Apulian. Apulia was called Poille or Poile in Old French, and even in Middle English; the phrase ‘king of Poile’ occurs in the Seven Sages (ed. Weber), l. 2019. It was celebrated for Edition: current; Page: [376] its horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from MS. James vi. 142 (Bodleian Library), a passage in which Richard, archbishop of Armagh, in the fourteenth century, has the words—‘nec mulus Hispaniae, nec dextrarius Apuliae, nec repedo Æthiopiae, nec elephantus Asiae, nec camelus Syriae.’ Chaucer ascribes strength and size to the horses of Lombardy, and high breeding to those of Apulia.

200. goon, i.e. move, go about, have motion.

201. of Fairye, of fairy origin, magical. I do not subscribe to Warton’s opinion (Obs. on Faerie Queene, p. 86) that this necessarily means that it was ‘the work of the devil.’ Cf. the same expression in Piers Pl. B. prol. 6.

203. Compare the Latin proverb—‘quot homines, tot sententiae.’ See Hazlitt’s Eng. Proverbs, pp. 340, 437. A good epigram on this proverb is given in Camden’s Remaines concerning Britaine, ed. 1657, sig. Gg.

‘So many heads, so many wits—fie, fie!

Is’t not a shame for Proverbs thus to lie?

My selfe, though my acquaintance be but small,

Know many heads that have no wit at all.’

207. the Pegasee, Pegasus. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Hl. is written ‘i. equs Pegaseus,’ meaning ‘id est, equus Pegaseus’; shewing that Chaucer was thinking of the adjective Pegaseus rather than of the sb. Pegasus, the name of the celebrated winged horse of Bellerophon and of the Muses. Cf. Lydgate’s Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 92.

209. ‘Or else it was the horse of the Greek named Sinon.’ This very singular-looking construction is really common in Middle English; yet the scribe of the Harleian MS. actually writes ‘the Grekissch hors Synon,’ which makes Sinon the name of the horse; and this odd blunder is retained in the editions by Wright, Bell, and Morris. The best way of clearing up the difficulty is by nothing similar examples; a few of which are here appended:—

‘The kinges meting Pharao’;

i. e. the dream of King Pharaoh; Book of the Duchesse, l. 282.

‘The erles wif Alein’;

i. e. the wife of earl Alein; Rob. of Gloucester, in Spec. of Eng., ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 11, l. 303.

‘Themperours moder william,’

i. e. the mother of the Emperor named William; Will. of Palerne, l. 5437.

‘Pieres pardon þe plowman’;

i. e. the pardon of Piers the Plowman; P. Pl. B. xix. 182.

‘In Piers berne þe plowman’;

i. e. in the barn of Piers the Plowman; id. xix. 354.

‘For Piers loue þe plowman’;

i. e. for love of Piers the Plowman; id. xx. 76. Chaucer again alludes Edition: current; Page: [377] to Sinon in the House of Fame, i. 152, and in the Legend of Good Women, Dido, 8; which shews that he took that legend partly from Vergil, Aen. ii. 195. But note that Chaucer here compares a horse of brass to the Trojan horse; this is because the latter was also said to have been of brass, not by Vergil, but by Guido delle Colonne; see note to l. 211. This is why Gower, in his Confess. Amant. bk. i., and Caxton, in his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, both speak of the Trojan horse as a ‘horse of brass’; see Spec. of English, 1394–1579, ed. Skeat, p. 91, l. 67.

211. olde gestes, old accounts. The account of the taking of Troy most valued in the middle ages was not that by Vergil or Homer, but the Latin prose story written in 1287 by Guido delle Colonne, who obtained a great reputation very cheaply, since he borrowed his work almost entirely from an old French Roman de Troie, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. See the preface to The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and Donaldson (Early English Text Society). And see vol. ii. p. lxi.

219. Iogelours, jugglers. See the quotation from Marco Polo, i. 340, in vol. iii. p. 473; and cf. The Franklin’s Tale, F. 1140–1151, and the notes.

223. comprehende; so in the MSS. But read comprende; see Troil. iii. 1687; and pronounce lew-ed-nes fully.

224. ‘They are very prone to put down things to the worst cause.’

226. maister-tour, principal tower, the donjon or keep-tower. So also maistre strete, principal street, Kn. Ta. 2044 (A. 2902); maister temple, Leg. of Good Women, l. 1016.

230. For slye, MS. Hl. has heigh, an inferior reading. Mr. Marsh observes upon this line—‘This reasoning reminds one of the popular explanation of table-turning and kindred mysteries. Persons who cannot detect the trick . . . ascribe the alleged facts to electricity. . . . Men love to cheat themselves with hard words, and indolence often accepts the name of a phenomenon as a substitute for the reason of it’; Origin and Progress of the English Language, Lect. ix. p. 427.

231. The magic mirror in Rome was said to have been set up there by Vergil, who was at one time reverenced, not as a poet, but as a great enchanter. The story occurs in the Seven Sages, in the Introduction to his edition of which Mr. Wright says, at p. lix., ‘The story of Virgil’s tower, which was called salvatio Romae, holds rather a conspicuous place in the legendary history of the magician. Such a tower is first mentioned, but without the name of Virgil, in a Latin MS. of the eighth century, in a passage published by Docen and republished by Keller, in his introduction to the Sept Sages. Vincent of Beauvais, in the thirteenth century . . . describes Virgil’s tower; and it is the subject of a chapter in the legendary history of Virgilius.’ See also the other version of the Seven Sages edited by Weber, and reprinted in Mätzner’s Sprachproben, i. 254; where the mirror is mentioned. Edition: current; Page: [378] Gower tells the story of this mirror in his Confessio Amantis, bk. v. It occurs also in the Chronicle of Helinand, and in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury; Morley’s Eng. Writers, iv. 225. Warton notes that the same fiction is in Caxton’s Troybook, bk. ii. ch. 22. It also occurs in Higden, Polychronicon, bk. i. c. 24.

232. ‘Alhazeni et Vitellonis Opticae are extant, printed at Basil, 1572. The first is supposed by his editor to have lived about ad 1100, and the second to ad 1270.’—Tyrwhitt. Hole’s Brief Biographical Dictionary has the notices—‘Alhazel or Alhazen, Arabian Astronomer and Optician; died ad 1038’; and—‘Vitello or Vitellio, Polish Mathematician; floruit circa 1254.’ See also the remarks in Warton (Hist. Eng. Poetry), on the Clerk’s Tale. Alhacen (sic) is mentioned in Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 18234. In l. 18376 of the same, we find the very phrase: ‘Par composicions diverses’; and again, in l. 18387: ‘Par les diversités des angles.’ Mirrors are there described at length. R. Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, bk. xiii. c. 19, declares that ‘the wonderous deuises and miraculous sights and conceipts made and conteined in glasse, doo farre exceed all other.’

233. Aristotle, the famous Grecian philosopher, born bc 384, died 322. writen in hir lyves, wrote in their lifetime. Observe that writen is here the past tense. The pres. pl. is wryten; pt. s. wrat, wrot, or wroot; pt. pl. writen; pp. writen.

238. Thelophus. Telephus, king of Mysia, in opposing the landing of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy, was wounded by the spear of Achilles. But as an oracle declared that the Greeks would require his aid, he was healed by means of the rust taken from the same spear. Chaucer may easily have learnt this story from his favourite Ovid, who says—

‘Telephus aeterna consumptus tabe perisset

Si non quae nocuit dextra tulisset opem.

Tristium, lib. v. El. 2. 15.

And again—

‘Vulnus Achilleo quae quondam fecerat hosti,

Vulneris auxilium Pelias hasta tulit.’

Remed. Amor. 47.

See also Met. xii. 112; xiii. 171; Ex Ponto, ii. 2. 26; Propertius, Eleg. ii. 1. 65 (or 63). Or he may have taken it from Dante, Inferno, xxxi. 5; or from Hyginus, Fab. 101. Cf. Shak. 2 Hen. VI., v. i. 100.

247. Canaceës; four syllables, as in l. 631.

250. Great skill in magic was attributed in the middle ages to Moses and Solomon, especially by the Arabs. Moses was supposed to have learnt magic from the Egyptians; cf. Acts vii. 22; Exod. vii. 11. See the story of the Fisherman and Genie in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, where the genie invokes the name of Solomon.

253. ‘Some said it was a wonderful thing to make glass from fernashes, since glass does not resemble fern-ashes at all.’ Glass contains two principal ingredients, sand and some kind of alkali. For the latter, Edition: current; Page: [379] the calcined ashes of seaweed, called kelp, were sometimes used; or, according to Chaucer, the ashes of ferns. Modern chemistry has developed many greater wonders.

256. ‘But, because men have known it (the art of glass-making) so long, their talking and wonder about it ceases.’ The art is of very high antiquity, having been known even to the Egyptians. so fern, so long ago; Chaucer sometimes rimes words which are spelt exactly alike, but only when their meanings differ. See Prol. l. 17, where seke, to seek, rimes with seke, sick. Other examples are seen in the Kn. Tale, see being repeated in A. 1955–6; caste in A. 2171–2; caas in A. 2357–8; and fare in A. 2435–6. Imperfect rimes like disport, port, Prol. 137, 138, are common; see Prol. 241, 433, 519, 579, 599, 613, 811; Kn. Ta. 379, 381 (A. 1237, 1239), &c. For examples of fern compare—

‘Ye, farewel al the snow of ferne yere,’

i. e. good bye to all last year’s snow; Troil. and Cres. v. 1176 (see vol. ii. p. 394). So also fernyere, long ago, in P. Pl. B. v. 440; spelt uernyere, in Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 92. Adverbs commonly terminate in -e, but the scribes are right in writing fern here; see A. S. Gospels, Matt. xi. 21, for the forms gefyrn, gefern, meaning long ago. Occleve, in La Male Regle, 196, uses the expression fern ago, i. e. long ago; Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 31. And in Levins’s Manipulus Vocabulorum, ed. Wheatley, we find—‘Old farne years, anni praeteriti, seculum prius.’

With these examples in view, we might interpret ferne halwes in Chaucer’s Prologue, l. 14, by ‘olden’ rather than by ‘distant’ saints; yet the latter is decisively authenticated by a passage in his translation of Boethius, bk. ii. met. 7, where the expression ‘renoun ysprad to ferne poeples, goth by dyverse tonges,’ can only mean ‘distant’ peoples. Fern, in the sense of old, is explained at once by the Gothic fairnis, old; but, in the sense of distant, would seem to be corruptly and incorrectly formed, since the A. S. feorran, meaning far, is strictly an adverb, from the adjective feorr. But in course of time this adverb came to be declined as an adjective; see the examples in Stratmann, s. v. feorren.

258. Cf. ‘What is the cause of thunder’; K. Lear, iii. 4. 160. The opinions of various ancient philosophers as to the cause of thunder are given in Plutarch’s treatise, De Placitis Philosophorum (περὶ τω̑ν ἀρεσκόντων τοι̑ς ϕιλοσόϕοις), lib. iii. c. 3. It was usually believed to result from the collision of clouds. ‘Fulmina autem collisa nubila faciunt’; Isidore, Originum lib. xiii. c. 9. Cf. A. S. Leechdoms, iii. 281.

263. For a full explanation of this difficult passage, I must be content to refer the reader to Mr. Brae’s edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe, pp. 77 and 86, and my own edition of the same (E. E. T. S.), p. lvi. The chief points that now seem tolerably certain are these.

(1) The Angle Meridional was an astrological term. The heavens were divided into twelve equal parts called ‘mansions,’ and four of Edition: current; Page: [380] these mansions were technically called ‘angles’; the angle meridional was the same as the tenth mansion, which was bounded on the one edge by the meridian, and on the other by a semi-circle passing through the N. and S. points of the horizon, and lying 30° to the E. of the meridian; so that, at the equinoxes, at any place situate on the equator, the sun would cross this portion of the sky between 10 a.m. and the hour of noon.

(2) Since this ‘angle’ corresponds to the end of the forenoon, the sun leaves the said angle at the moment of noon, and l. 263 means no more than ‘it was now past noon.’

(3) The ‘royal beast’ means the king of beasts, the lion, and (here in particular) the sign of the zodiac named Leo. This sign, on March 15, in Chaucer’s time, and in the latitude of London, began to ‘ascend,’ or rise above the horizon, just about noon. An additional reason for calling Leo ‘royal’ is because the principal star in the constellation is called Regulus in Latin, Βασιλίσκος in Greek, and Melikhi in Arabic, all epithets signifying kingly or royal.

(4) But, before the Tartar king rose from the feast, the time past noon had so increased that the star called Aldiran, situate in Leo, was now rising above the horizon. In other words it was very nearly two o’clock. It may be added, that, by the time the whole of the sign had ascended, it would be about a quarter to three. Hence Chaucer speaks of the sign as yet (i. e. still) ascending.

The chief remaining point is to fix the star Aldiran.

Most MSS. read Aldrian, owing to the frequent shifting of r in a word; just as brid, for instance, is the old spelling of bird. But the Hengwrt MS. is right. The name Aldiran, Aldurin, or Aldiraan, occurs in the old Parisian star-lists as the name of a star in the constellation Leo, and is described in them as being ‘in fronte Leonis.’ The word means ‘the two fore-paws,’ and the notes of the star’s position are such that I am persuaded it is the star now called θ Hydrae, situate near the Lion’s fore-paws, as commonly drawn. The only objection to this explanation arises from the comparative insignificance of the star; but whoever will take the trouble to examine the old lists will see that certain stars were chosen quite as much for the sake of position as of brightness. When it was desired to mark particular points in the sky, bright stars were chosen if they were conveniently placed; but, failing that, any would serve the purpose that were fairly distinct. This is why, in a star-list of only 49 stars in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ii. 3. 3, such stars as δ Capricorni, δ Aquarii, δ Ophiuchi, &c., find a place. The star Aldiran (θ Hydrae) was remarkable for rising, in the latitude of Paris, just before the splendid star α Leonis of the first magnitude, whose coming it thus heralded. That star is also found in the same star-lists, with the name Calbalesed, or ‘the lion’s heart’; in Latin, Cor Leonis; another name for it being Regulus, as stated above.

On the whole, we fairly suppose Chaucer’s meaning to be, that before Edition: current; Page: [381] the feast concluded, it was not only past noon, but nearly two hours past noon.

269. chambre of parements. Tyrwhitt’s note is—‘Chambre de parement is translated by Cotgrave, the presence-chambre, and lit de parement, a bed of state. Parements originally signified all sorts of ornamental furniture or clothes, from Fr. parer, to adorn. See Kn. Ta. 1643 (A. 2501), and Legend of Good Women; Dido, l. 181.’ He adds that the Italians use camera de’ paramenti in the same sense.

272. Venus children, the worshippers or subjects of Venus. It merely means the knights and ladies at the feast, whose thoughts then turned upon love, because the season was astrologically favourable for it; cf. Kn. Tale, 1628, 1629 (A. 2486). The reason is given in l. 273, viz. that ‘hir lady,’ i. e. their lady or goddess, as represented by the planet Venus, was then situate in the sign Pisces. This sign, in astrology, is called the ‘exaltation’ of Venus, or the sign in which she exerts most power. Hence the expression ful hye, and the statement that Venus regarded her servants with a friendly aspect. In the Wyf of Bathes Prol. (D. 704), Chaucer has the line—

‘In Pisces, wher Venus is exaltat.’

‘Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces’; Sir T. Browne, Works, ed. Wilkin, iv. 382.

287. Lancelot, the celebrated lover of queen Guinever in the Arthur romances. Cp. Dante, Inf. v. 128.

291. ‘The steward bids (them) to be quick with the spices.’ Cf. Joseph of Arimathea, ed. Skeat, note to l. 698. And see vol. ii. 506.

300. Hath is here used like the mod. F. il y a, for which O. F. often has a only. The sense is—‘there is plenty.’ The idiom is borrowed from French, and the text is correct. (I owe this note to a friend.)

316. ‘You must twirl round a pin (which) stands in his ear.’

318. ‘You must also tell him to what place or country you wish to ride.’

334. Ryde, ride; so in the Six-text; Hl. has Byd, i. e. bid.

340. The bridle is here said to have been put away with the jewels. So also, when Richard I., in a crusade, took Cyprus, among the treasures in the castles are mentioned precious stones, golden cups, &c., together with golden saddles, bridles, and spurs; Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Iter Hierosol. c. xli. p. 328; in Vet. Script. Angl. tom. ii.

346. Tyrwhitt inserts that after Til, to fill up the line. It is not required; it is one of the many lines in which the first syllable is lacking.

347. ‘Sleep, digestion’s nurse, winked upon them, and bade them take notice, that much drink and exercise must require repose.’ Cf. 2 Hen. IV., iii. 1. 6. Tyrwhitt supposes l. 349 to be corrupt; I do not know why.

351. To scan the line, retain the e in seyde, preserved by the caesura.

Edition: current; Page: [382]

352. By the old physicians, blood was supposed to be in domination, or chief power, for seven hours, from the ninth hour of the night (beginning at 8 p.m.) to the third hour of the day. Tyrwhitt quotes from a book De Natura, ascribed to Galen, tom. v. p. 327—‘Sanguis dominatur horis septem, ab hora noctis nona ad horam diei tertiam.’ Other authorities were pleased to state the matter somewhat differently. ‘Six houres after midnight bloud hath the mastery, and in the sixe houres afore noon choler reigneth, and six houres after noon raigneth melancholy, and six hours afore midnight reigneth the flegmatick’; Shepheardes Kalender, ed. 1656, ch. xxix. Chaucer no doubt followed this latter account, which he may have found in the original French Calendrier des Bergers; see note to l. 51, p. 373.

358. fumositee, fumes arising from wine-drinking. See C. 567; and concerning dreams, see the Nonne Prestes Tale, 103–149 (B. 4113–59).

359. no charge, no weight; to which no weight, or no significance, can be attached.

360. pryme large; probably the same as fully pryme, Sir Thop., B. 2015, which see. It must then mean the time when the period of prime was quite ended; i. e. 9 a.m. This would be a very late hour for rising, but the occasion was exceptional.

365. appalled, enfeebled, languid; lit. ‘rendered pallid,’ cf. Kn. Ta. 2195 (A. 3053); and Shipm. Tale, B. 1290–2:—

‘ “Nece,” quod he, “it oghte y-nough suffyse

Fyve houres for to slepe upon a night,

But it were for an old appalled wight,” ’ &c.

373. ‘Before the sun began to rise’; i. e. before 6 a.m., as it was near the equinox.

374. maistresse, governess; as appears from the Phis. Tale, C. 72.

376–377. Though the sense is clear, the grammar is incurably wrong. Chaucer says—‘These old women, that would fain seem wise, just as did her governess, answered her at once.’ What he means is—‘This governess, that would fain seem wise, as such old women often do, answered her,’ &c. The second part of this tale seems to have been hastily composed, left unfinished, and never revised. Cf. l. 382.

383. wel a ten, i. e. about ten. Cf. Prol. l. 24.

386. four. The Harl. MS. wrongly has ten. There is no doubt about it, because on March 15, the day before, the sun was in the third degree of the sign; on the 16th, he was in the fourth degree.

387. It means—‘and, moreover, the sun had risen but four degrees above the horizon’; i. e. it was not yet a quarter past six.

396. her hertes, their hearts. lighte, to feel light, to feel happy; an unusual use of the verb; but see F. 914. In l. 398, the sudden change to the singular she is harsh.

401. Again hastily written. Chaucer says—‘The point for which every tale is told—if it be delayed till the pleasure of them that have Edition: current; Page: [383] hearkened after (or listened attentively to) the former part of it grows cold—then the pleasantness of it passes off, on account of the prolixity in telling it; and the more so, the longer it is spun out.’ Knotte is cognate with the Lat. nodus (written for gnodus), as used by Horace, Ars Poet. l. 191.

409. fordrye, exceedingly dry. The tree was white too, owing to loss of its bark. This reminds me of the famous Arbre Sec, or Dry Tree; see Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 119; Maundeville, ed. Halliwell, p. 68; Mätzner, Sprachproben, ii. 185.

428. faucon peregryn. ‘This species of falcon is thus described in the Tresor de Brunet Latin, P. i. ch. Des Faucons; MS. Reg. 19 C. x. “La seconde lignie est faucons, qui hom apele pelerins, par ce que nus ne trove son ni; ains est pris autresi come en pelerinage, et est mult legiers a norrir, et mult cortois et vaillans, et de bone maniere” [i. e. the second kind is the falcon which is called the pilgrim (or peregrine), because no one ever finds its nest; but it is otherwise taken, as it were on pilgrimage, and is very easily fed, and very tame and bold, and well-mannered]. Chaucer adds that this falcon was of fremde lond, i. e. from a foreign country.’—Tyrwhitt.

435. ledene, language; from A. S. læden, leden, sometimes used in the sense of language, though it is, after all, a mere corruption of Latin, which is the sense which it most often bears. Thus, the inscription on the cross of Christ is said to have been written ‘Ebreisceon stafon, and Grecisceon, and Leden stafon,’ in Hebrew letters and in Greek and Latin letters; John, xix. 20. So also ‘on Ledenisc gereorde,’ in the Latin language; Beda, bk. iv. c. 1. Hence the word was used more generally in the sense of language; as, ‘Mara is, on ure lyden, biternes,’ i. e. Marah is, in our speech, bitterness; Exod. xv. 23. This extension of the meaning, and the form of the word, were both influenced, probably, by confusion with the sb. lēod, people. The student should learn to distinguish this word from the A. S. lēoð, G. lied, a song. Tyrwhitt notes that Dante uses latino in the sense of language; ‘E cantine gli augelli Ciascuno in suo latino’; Canzone 1.

458. as dooth, so do, pray do. See Note to Cler. Tale, E. 7.

469. ‘As verily as may the great God of nature help me.’ Wisly, verily, is quite different from wysly, wisely; cf. Kn. Ta. 1376 (A. 2234).

471. ‘To heal your hurts with quickly.’ Note the position of with; and cf. l. 641.

474. aswowne=a swowne=on swoune, in a swoon.

479. Chaucer’s favourite line; he repeats it four times. See Kn. Ta. 903 (A. 1761); March. Ta. 9860 (E. 1986); Prol. to Leg. G. W. 503. Also, in The Man of Lawes Ta. B. 660, we have it again in the form—‘As gentil herte is fulfild of pitee.’

480. similitude is pronounced nearly as sim’litude.

483. kytheth, manifests. Cf. Rom. Rose, 2187–2238 (vol. i. p. 172).

490. ‘And to make others take heed by my example, as the lion is Edition: current; Page: [384] chastised (or reproved) by means of the dog.’ The explanation of this passage was a complete riddle to me till I fortunately discovered the proverb alluded to. It appears in George Herbert’s Jacula Prudentum (Herbert’s Works, ed. Willmott, 1859, p. 328) in the form ‘Beat the dog before the lion,’ where before means in the sight of. This is cleared up by Cotgrave, who, in his French Dictionary, s. v. Batre, has the proverb—‘Batre le chien devant le Lion, to punish a mean person in the presence, and to the terror of, a great one.’ It is even better explained by Shakespeare, Othello, ii. 3. 272—‘What, man! there are ways to recover the general again: you are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion.’

499. Ther, where. The numerous expressions in this narrative certainly shew that the falcon was really a princess (cf. l. 559) who had been changed into a falcon for a time, as is so common in the Arabian Tales. Thus, in l. 500, the roche or rock may be taken to signify a palace, and the tercelet (l. 504) to be a prince. This gives the whole story a human interest.

505–506. welle, well, fountain. Al were he, although he was.

511. coloures, colours; and, in a secondary sense, pretences, which meaning is also intended; cf. l. 560. On dyeing in grain, i. e. of a fast colour, see note to Sir Thopas, B. 1917.

512. hit him, hideth himself. The allusion is to the well-known lines ‘Qui legitis flores . . . fugite hinc, latet anguis in herba’; Verg. Bucol. iii. 92. Cf. D. 1994; and Macbeth, i. 5. 66.

516. Read kēp’th. MS. Hl. gives lines 514–6 thus:—

‘Right so this god of loue, this ypocrite,

Doth so his sermonys and his obseruaunce

Under subtil colour and aqueyntaunce.’

517. sowneth in-to, tend to, are consonant with; see Prol. 307.

518. Cf. P. Plowm. B. xv. 109. Both passages are from Matt. xxiii. 27.

537. Chaucer clearly quotes this as a proverb; true man means honest man, according to Dogberry; Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 54. The sense seems to be much the same as ‘You cannot make a silk purse of a sow’s ear,’ or ‘Once a knave, always a knave.’ Compare the use of theef in Anelida, l. 161; also—

‘Alas! I see a serpent or a theef,

That many a trewe man hath doon mescheef’;

Knightes Tale, 467 (A. 1325).

548. The reading Troilus (in E. Hn.) must be a mistake, because he was not guilty of transferring his love to another; it was Cressida who did that, so that the falcon would take care not to refer to that story. Paris deserted Oenone for Helen, and Jason deserted Medea for Glauce. Lamech was the first to have two wives, viz. Adah and Zillah; Edition: current; Page: [385] Gen. iv. 23. The whole of this passage is a recast of Chaucer’s earlier poem of Anelida, where Lamech is introduced just in the same way (l. 150).

555. Imitated, but not with good taste, from Mark, i. 7.

558. This line resembles Troil. ii. 637.

579. ‘Whether it was a grief to me, does not admit of doubt.

583. ‘Such grief I felt because he could not stay.’

593. Chaucer has this expression again, Kn. Ta. 2184 (A. 3042); Troilus, iv. 1586. It was a common proverb. Shakespeare has it frequently; Two G. of Ver. iv. i. 62; Rich. II., i. 3. 278; King Lear, iii. 2. 70. An early example of it is in Matt. Paris (Record Series), i. 20:—‘Vitam in tantam sanctitatem commutavit, faciendo de necessitate virtutem,’ &c.

596. to borwe, for a security; borwe being a sb., not a verb. Cf. Kn. Ta. 360, 764 (A. 1218, 1622). Hence it means, ‘Saint John being for a security,’ i. e. Saint John being my security; as in The Complaint of Mars, l. 9. She pledges herself by Saint John, the apostle of truth; see 1 John, iii. 19, iv. 20. Lydgate has ‘seint John to borowe’ in his Complaint of the Black Knight, st. 2.

601. ‘When he has well said everything, he has done (all he means to do).’

602. This is a common proverb; cf. Com. of Errors, iv. 3. 64; Tempest, ii. 2. 103; Marlowe, Jew of Malta, iii. 4.

607. From Boethius, De Cons. Phil. lib. iii. met. 2:—

‘Repetunt proprios quaeque recursus

Redituque suo singula gaudent.’

A few lines above is a passage answering to ll. 611–620, which in the original runs thus (cf. vol. ii. p. 56):—

‘Quae canit altis garrula ramis

Ales, caueae clauditur antro:

Huic licet illita pocula melle,

Largasque dapes dulci studio

Ludens hominum cura ministret,

Si tamen, arto saliens tecto,

Nemorum gratas uiderit umbras,

Sparsis pedibus proterit escas,

Siluas tantum maesta requirit,

Siluas dulci uoce susurrat.’

Chaucer repeats the example yet a third time, in the Manciple’s Tale, H. 163. Moreover, Jean de Meun copied the whole passage in Le Roman de la Rose, 14145.

617–1223. Eight leaves are here lost in MS. HI.

618. newefangel, i. e. eager for novelty; of four syllables, as in l. 89 of the Manc. Tale, H. 193. The word newefangelnesse will be found in the poem of Anelida, l. 141, and in Leg. of Good Wom., Prol. Edition: current; Page: [386] 154. ‘Be not newfangil in no wise’; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 51, l. 115; cf. p. 9, l. 13. And see the Balade against Women Unconstant, l. 1 (vol. i. p. 409).

624. kyte. Mr. Jephson notes that ‘the kite is a cowardly species of hawk, quite unfit for falconry, and was therefore the emblem of everything base.’

640. Compare ll. 153–155, which shew that Canace knew what herbs to choose.

644. Blue was the colour of truth and constancy; hence the expression ‘true blue’; cf. Cler. Tale, E. 254. Green (l. 646) signified inconstancy. Lydgate, in his Fall of Princes, fol. e 7, speaking of Dalilah, says—

‘In stede of blewe, which stedefast is and clene,

She louyd chaungys of many diuers grene.’

‘True blue will never stain’; Proverb.

‘’Twas Presbyterian true blue’; Hudibras, i. i. 191.

Tyrwhitt draws attention to the Balade against Women Unconstant (in vol. i. p. 409), the burden of which is—

‘In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grene.’

648. tidifs. The tidif is mentioned as an inconstant bird in Prol. to Leg. G. W. l. 154—

‘And tho that hadde doon unkindenesse

As dooth the tydif, for newfangelnesse,’ &c.

Drayton uses tydy as the name of a small bird, Polyolb. xiii. 79; not the wren, which is mentioned five lines above. In a piece called The Parlament of Byrdes, pr. for A. Kytson, one of the birds is called a tytyfer; see Hazlitt’s Early Pop. Poetry, iii. 177. Schmeller gives Zitzerl as the Bavarian name for a wren; but cf. E. tit.

649–650. These lines are transposed in Tyrwhitt’s edition. Such a transposition makes the sense much clearer, beyond doubt. But I am not convinced that the confused construction in the text is not Chaucer’s own. It is very like his manner. Cf. notes to ll. 376, 401.

667. Observe that Cambalo, if not inserted here in the MSS. by error, is quite a different person from the Cambalus in l. 656 (called Cambalo in l. 31). He is Canace’s lover, who is to fight in the lists against her brothers Cambalo and Algarsif, and win her. Spenser (F. Q. iv. 3) introduces three brethren as suitors for Canace, who have to fight against Cambello her brother; this is certainly not what Chaucer intended, nor is it very satisfactory.

671–672. Some suppose these two lines to be spurious. I believe them to be genuine; for they occur in MS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt., and others, and are not to be too lightly rejected. The Lansdowne MS. has eight lines here, which are certainly spurious. In MS. E., atfer l. 672, the rest of the page is blank. The lines are quite intelligible, if we add the words He entreth. We then have—‘Apollo (the sun) whirls up his chariot so highly (continues his course in the zodiac) till he enters the Edition: current; Page: [387] mansion of the god Mercury, the cunning one’; the construction in the last line being similar to that in l. 209. The sun was described as in Aries, l. 51. By continuing his upward course, i. e. his Northward course, by which he approached the zenith daily, he would soon come to the sign Gemini, which was the mansion of Mercury. It is a truly Chaucerian way of saying that two months had elapsed. We may conclude that Chaucer just began the Third Part of this Tale, but never even finished the first sentence. It is worth noting that these two lines are imitated at the beginning of the (spurious) poem called The Flower and the Leaf; and in Skelton’s Garland of Laurel, l. 1471.

The Words of the Franklin.

675. youthe is a dissyllable; observe the rime with allow the, i. e. commend thee, which is written as one word (allowthe) in several MSS.

683. pound, i. e. pounds worth of land.

686. possessioun, i. e. property, wealth. Cf. D. 1722.

688. and yet shal, and shall still do so.

The Prologue of the Franklin’s Tale.

709. Britons, Bretons, inhabitants of Brittany. Observe Chaucer’s mention of Armorik or Armorica in l. 729.

As to the existence of early Breton Lays, a fact which Ritson rashly denied in his anxiety to blame Warton (see Ritson, Met. Rom. iii. 332), the reader may consult Price’s remarks in the latest edition of Warton, 1871, vol. i. 169–177. It cannot be doubted that the Lais of Marie de France were, in a large measure, founded upon Breton tales which she had heard or found recorded. Sir F. Madden refers us, for further information, to De la Rue’s Essais sur les Bardes, &c., iii. 47–100; Robert, Fables Inédites, &c., i. ciii-clix.; the Preface to Roman du Rénart; and Costello’s Specimens of the Early Poetry of France, 43–49. The Lais of Marie de France were edited by Roquefort, Paris, 1820; and by Warnke, Halle, 1885. See further in vol. iii. p. 480.

721. Pernaso, Parnassus. The form is Parnaso in Anelida, 16, and Ho. of Fame, 521; see also Troilus, iii. 1810, and my note to Anelida, 16. A side-note, in the margin of E., shews that Chaucer is here quoting a part of the first three lines of the Prologus to the Satires of Persius.

‘Nec fonte labra prolui caballino,

Neque in bicipiti somniasse Parnasso

Memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem.’

722. Cithero, Cicero; spelt Scithero in E. Hn., but Cithero in Cp. Pt. Ln. The three latter MSS. stupidly insert ne before Cithero, thus destroying both sense and metre, and tempting Mr. Wright to make the purely gratuitous suggestion, that Chaucer did it on purpose(!), in order to make the Frankeleyn appear really ignorant.

723. I. e. he knows no ‘colours’ of rhetoric; cf. F. 511.

Edition: current; Page: [388]

The Frankeleyns Tale.

729. Armorik, Armorica, the modern Brittany.

743. A note in Bell says this is meant ‘ironically.’ On the contrary, it is explanatory, and in perfect keeping with the context. Cf. l. 751, and the full discussion of the matter in ll. 764–790.

764. This passage is clearly founded on Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 9465–9534, a piece which is too long to be quoted. Compare, for example, ll. 9479–9482:—

‘Car il convient amor morrir

Quant amant vuelent seignorir.

Amors ne puet durer ne vivre,

Se n’est en cuer franc et delivre.’

Compare also ll. 8489–90 of the same:—

‘Qu’onques Amor et seignorie

Ne s’entrefirent compaignie.’

And see Kn. Ta., A. 1625–6. Spenser copies ll. 764–6 very closely; F. Q. iii. 1. 25. And see Butler, Hudib. iii. 1. 553–560; Pope, Eloisa, 76.

774. So in P. Plowman, C. xvi. 138, we find patientes uincunt. The reference is to Dionysius Cato, Distichorum lib. i. 38:—

‘Quem superare potes, interdum uince ferendo,

Maxima enim morum semper patientia uirtus.’

And again, in his Breves Sententiae, Sent. xl., he has:—‘Parentes patientia uince.’ But Chaucer’s words agree still more closely with an altered version of Cato which is quoted in Old Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, 2 Ser. p. 80, in the form:—‘Quem superare nequis, patienter uince ferendo.’ Compare the proverb—‘uincit qui patitur’; also Vergil, Æn. v. 710; Ovid, Art. Amat. ii. 197, Am. iii. 11. 7, Am. i. 2. 10. See also Troil. iv. 1584.

792. This is from the same passage of Le Roman as that mentioned in the note to l. 764. Compare, for example, the following lines (9489–94), where serjant means ‘servant’:—

‘Car cil, quant par amor amoit,

Serjant à cele se clamoit

Qui sa mestresse soloit estre;

Or se clame seignor et mestre

Sur cele que dame ot clamée,

Quant ele iert par amor amée.’

801. Penmarch Point is a headland near Quimper, in the department of Finisterre; a little to the S. of Brest.

Tyrwhitt’s derivation of this name, from pen, a head, and mark, a mark or boundary, assumes that mark is a Celtic word. No doubt pen represents Bret. penn (Welsh pen), a head, a promontory; but, instead of mark I can only find Bret. march (Welsh and Cornish march, Irish marc), a horse. In the sense of boundary, mark is Teutonic.

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808. Kayrrud, Caer-rud; evidently an old Celtic name. Caer is the Bret. ker, kear, a town; Welsh and Cornish caer, a fort, town. And perhaps rud is ‘red’; cf. Bret. rus, Welsh rhudd, Cornish rudh, red. It does not appear in the map.

Arveragus, a Latinised form of a Celtic name; spelt Aruiragus in Juvenal, Sat. iv. 127. Arviragus, son of Cymbeline, one of the fabulous kings of Britain, married a daughter of the Roman emperor Claudius; see Rob. of Glouc. l. 1450.

815. Dorigene; also a Celtic name. ‘Droguen, or Dorguen, was the wife of Alain I.—Lobineau, t. i. p. 70.’—Tyrwhitt. Lobineau was the author of a history of Brittany.

830. Cf. ‘Gutta cauat lapidem’; Ovid, Epist. iv. 10. 5.

861. Cf. ‘That she ne hath foot on which she may sustene’; Anelida, 177.

867. In ydel, in vain. In P. Plowman, A. vi. 61, we have in idel, and in B. v. 580, an ydel, in the same sense. With this passage, cf. Boeth. bk. i. met. 5. 22; bk. iii. met. 9. 1-10.

879. Cf. ‘a fayr party of so grete a werk’; Boeth. bk. i. met. 5. 38.

880. thyn owene merk, thine own likeness; cf. ‘ad imaginem suam,’ Gen. i. 27. It appears, from P. Plowman, B. xv. 343, C. xviii. 73, that the words merke and preynte (print) were both used of the ‘impression’ upon a coin. From a comparison of the Vulgate version of Gen. i. 27 and Matt. xxii. 20, we see that imago was used in the same way. This explains how merk came to mean ‘likeness,’ and how mark of Adam (in D. 696) came to mean ‘all such as are made in Adam’s likeness.’ See that passage.

883. menes, means, instruments of Thy will. The sing. mene, in the same sense, occurs in P. Plowman, C. xvii. 96, and frequently in Sir Generides, where it is spelt meane.

886. ‘All’s for the best’; a popular rendering of Romans, viii. 28. Cf. Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 194–6.

889. this, short for this is; as in many other places.

899. delitables, a good example of a French pl. adj. in s. So also royales, B. 2038. See my note to P. Plowman, C. x. 342.

900. ches, chess. Chess was played in England even before the Conquest, in the days of Canute. ‘Tables’ is another name for back-gammon, and was called tabularum ludus in Latin. See Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv. c. 2. §§ 4, 16.

913. The odour is to be read as Th’odóur.

918. At-after, after; as in F. 302.

938. Aurelius. Tyrwhitt remarks that ‘this name, though of Roman origin, was common, we may presume, among the Britons. One of the princes mentioned by Gildas was called Aurelius Conanus. Another British king is called Aurelius Ambrosius by Geoffrey of Monmouth.’ See Fabyan’s History, pt. 1. capp. 93, 108.

942. With-outen coppe, without a cup. This expression means that he drank his penance in full measure, not by small quantities Edition: current; Page: [390] at a time. It occurs again in the Prologu to the Tale of Beryn, ll. 306, 460.

948. Chaucer wrote such things himself; see Leg. of Good Women, 423, and the note. See also, in his Minor Poems, the Complaint of Mars, the roundel in the Parl. of Foules, 680; and the exquisite triple roundel called Merciles Beautè.

950. The syllables as a fu- form the third foot. Some MSS. have fuyre, i. e. fire (see the footnote); but hell is not the place where fire was supposed to languish. The reading furye, i. e. fury, also presents some difficulty, but we must take languish to mean ‘endure continual pain.’ This precisely agrees with Chaucer’s language in Troilus, iv. 22–24.

We have already had a confusion between fury and fire in A. 2684. The reading furie is perfectly established by help of F. 448 (this furial pyne of helle), and by further comparing l. 1101 below.

951. Ekko, Echo. So in the Book of the Duch. 735. Chaucer probably took this from Le Rom. de la Rose, 1447; see the English version, ll. 1469–1538. But he had learnt, by this time, that the true original was Ovid (Metamorph. iii. 407). Hence the side-note in MS. E.—‘Methamorposios’—(sic).

963. And hadde, and she had; with a sudden change of subject.

974. Madame is here trisyllabic; in l. 967, the last syllable is very light.

982. The -ie in Aurelie is slurred over; know-e is dissyllabic. Cf. l. 989.

992. Lok-e, for Lok-en, imper. plural.

993. The first foot contains Ye remoe-; and the final -e of remoev-e is not cut off. Otherwise, place an accent on the syllable re-.

999–1000. These two lines are placed lower down in Tyrwhitt’s edition, after l. 1006, on the authority of three inferior MSS., viz. Harl. 7335, Harl. 7333, and Barlow 20. But the old editions agree with the best MSS., and nothing is gained by the change.

1018. A humorous apology for a poetical expression.

1031. A side-note in E. has—‘The compleint of Aurelius to the goddes and to the sonne.’

1033. after, i. e. according to. The change of seasons depends on the sun’s change of declination, which causes his position (called herberwe or ‘harbour’ in l. 1035) to be high or low in the sky. See note to l. 1058.

1045. In MS. E., Lucina is glossed by ‘luna,’ i. e. the moon; see A. 2085.

1049. Read knowen as know’n. All the six MSS. keep the final n; but Cp. Pt. Ln. drop the word that.

1054. more and lesse, greater and smaller, i. e. rivers.

1058. Leoun, the sign Leo. In l. 906, May 6 is mentioned, and the events recorded in ll. 906–1016 all belong to this day. Ll. 1019–1081 belong to the evening of the same day. But, in May, the sun is in Edition: current; Page: [391] Taurus, and the moon, when in opposition, would be in the opposite sign, which is Scorpio; and we should expect the reading—‘of Scorpioun.’ As it stands, the text means:—‘at the next opposition that takes place with the sun in Leo’; i. e. not at the very next opposition, with the sun in Taurus; nor yet after that, with the sun in Gemini or Cancer. The reason for the delay is astrological; for Leo was the mansion of the Sun, so that the sun’s power would then be greatest; besides which, the sign Leo greatly increased a planet’s influence; see A. 2462, and the note.

We may notice the various allusions in the above lines. In l. 1033, the sun’s declination changes from day to day, and with it the solar power and heat; so that the vegetable kingdom fails or grows according as the sun’s ‘harbour,’ or position in the ecliptic, causes his meridian altitude to be low or high (l. 1035). In l. 1046, the power of the moon over the tides is mentioned; and, in l. 1050, the dependence of lunar upon solar light. The highest tides occur when the sun and moon are either in conjunction or opposition; the latter is here fixed upon. If, says Aurelius, the sun and moon could always remain in opposition, viz. by moving at the same apparent rate (l. 1066), the moon would always remain at the full (l. 1069), and the spring-flood, or highest flood, would last all the while (l. 1070).

1074. Here Luna is identified with Proserpina; see note to A. 2051, where I have quoted the sentence—‘Diana, quae et Luna, Proserpina, Hecate nuncupatur.’ And see the parallel lines in A. 2081–2.

1077. Delphos, Delphi; Chaucer adopts, as usual, the accusative form. Ovid has Delphi, Met. x. 168; Delphica templa, Met. xi. 414.

1086. ‘Let him choose, as far as I am concerned, whether he wishes to live or die.’ whether is here cut down to whe’r, as frequently.

1088. Cf. ‘And in his host of chivalrye the flour’; A. 982.

1094–1096. imaginatyf, of a suspicious fancy. doute, fear.

1110. This is the Pamphilus already referred to in B. 2746 (see note to that line). The poem relates the poet’s love for Galatea. In the note to B. 2746, I have given the title of the poem as De Amore. Another title is—Pamphili Mauriliani Pamphilus, sive De Arte Amandi Elegiae. Skelton alludes to it also, and Dyce’s note (in his ed. of Skelton, ii. 345) tells us—‘It is of considerable length, and though written in barbarous Latin, was by some attributed to Ovid. It may be found in a little volume edited by Goldastus, Ovidii Nasonis Pelignensis Erotica et Amatoria Opuscula, &c. 1610.’ Tyrwhitt quotes the first four lines, from MS. Cotton, Titus A. xx—‘Vulneror, et clausum porto sub pectore telum,’ &c. In the margin of E. is here written—‘Pamphilus ad Galatheam,’ followed by the line—‘Vulneror . . . telum.’ Chaucer imitates this line in ll. 1111, 1112. And see Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 370.

1113. sursanure, a wound healed outwardly only. A F. word, from Lat. super and sanare. See soursanëure in Godefroy.

1115. But, unless. come therby, get at it, get hold of it.

1118. ‘There was a celebrated and very ancient university at Orleans, Edition: current; Page: [392] which fell into disrepute as the university of Paris became famous; and the rivalry probably led to the imputation that the occult sciences were cultivated at Orleans.’—Wright.

1121. ‘In every hiding-place and corner’; cf. G. 311, 658.

1130. I here quote from my Preface to Chaucer’s Astrolabe (E.E.T.S.), p. lix. ‘The twenty-eight “moon-stations” of the Arabs are given in Ideler’s Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung der Sternnamen, p. 287. He gives the Arabic names, the stars that help to fix their positions, &c. See also Mr. Brae’s edition of the Astrolabe, p. 89. For the influence of the moon in these mansions, we must look elsewhere, viz. in lib. i. cap. 11, and lib. iv. cap. 18 of the Epitome Astrologiae of Johannes Hispalensis. Suffice it to say that there are 12 temperate mansions, 6 dry ones, and 10 moist ones.’ The number 28 corresponds with the number of days in a lunation.

1132. Cf. Chaucer’s remark in his Astrolabe, ii. 4. 36—‘Natheles, thise ben observauncez of iudicial matiere and rytes of payens, in which my spirit ne hath no feith.’

1133. In speaking of the First Commandment, Hampole says: ‘Astronomyenes byhaldes the daye and the houre and the poynte that man es borne in, and vndir whylke syngne he es borne, and the poynte that he begynnes to be in, and by thire syngnes, and other, thay saye that that sall befall the man aftyrwarde; but theyre errowre es reproffede of haly doctours.’—Eng. Prose Treatises of Hampole, ed. Perry, p. 9. So also in Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. Perry, p. 5.

1141. tregetoures, jugglers. Cf. F. 218, 219; Hous of Fame, 1260, and my note upon the line; also the same, 1277, and my note on it. From O. F. trasgeter, (Prov. trasgitar), answering to a Low Lat. transiectare, i. e. to throw across, cause to pass. Thus the original sense of tregetour was one who caused rapid changes, by help of some mechanical contrivance. See Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 342; and note 9 to Bk. i. c. 61; Cornelius Agrippa, on Juggling; Ritson, Anc. Met. Romances, vol. i. p. ccv; and the verses on the Tregetour in Lydgate’s Dance of Machabre. Treget means imposture, juggling, deceit, in the E. version of the Romaunt of the Rose, 6267, 6312, 6825; and tregetrie means the same, 6374, 6382. (Not allied to trebuchet, as suggested by Tyrwhitt.)

1180. dawes, days; variant of dayes. The pl. dawes occurs here only; but dayes rimes with layes in l. 709 above, with delayes in l. 1293 below, and (in the phr. now a dayes) with Iayes, G. 1396, and assayes, E. 1164. Chaucer also has dawe, v., to dawn, riming with felawe, A. 4250, and awe, B. 3872. The variant dawes is due to the A. S. dagas, where the g is followed, not by e, but by a; hence we only find it in the plural. But it is not uncommon; it occurs in St. Brandan, ed. Wright, p. 5, l. 3; Havelok, 2344; King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1436; Gower, Conf. Am. ii. 113, where it rimes with sawes; &c.

1204. The use of our is graphic; it occurs in all six MSS. Tyrwhitt has the.

1222. Gerounde, the river Gironde; Sayne, the Seine. That is, all Edition: current; Page: [393] the S.W. coast from the Gironde to Brest, and all the N.W. coast from Brest to Honfleur; thus including much more than just the W. promontory.

1224. Here ceases the gap in Hl., F. 617–1223.

1241. Accent mágicién on the first and last syllables.

1245. ‘The sun grew old, and his hue was like that of latten.’ For latoun, later latten, see note to C. 350. That is, the sun had a dull coppery hue, as in December, when it may be said to be ‘old,’ as it was approaching the end of its annual course. Cf. yonge sonne; A. 7.

1246. ‘Who, when in his hot declination (i. e. in the sign of Cancer, when his northern declination was greatest) used to shine like burnished gold, with bright beams; but he had now arrived in Capricornus, where he was at his lowest altitude (i. e. at the winter solstice); and shone but dimly.’

In Chaucer’s time, the sun entered Capricorn on December 13; see his Treatise on the Astrolabe, ii. 1. 12.

1252. In the margin of E. is written—‘Janus biceps’; referring to ‘Iane biceps’ in Ovid’s Fasti, i. 65; and ‘Iane biformis,’ id. l. 89. The allusion is to the approach of January, after the winter solstice. This season, as indicated in ll. 1253, 1254, is the time of Christmas and New-Year festivities, when wine is drunk from horns, and the boar’s head appears at feasts. See Brand’s Pop. Antiq., ed. Ellis, i. 484, for the carol sung at the bringing in of the boar’s head as the first dish on Christmas day, as e. g. in the Inner Temple and at Queen’s College, Oxford. He quotes from Dekker:—‘like so many bores’ heads stuck with branches of rosemary, to be served in for brawne at Christmas.’

Skelton speaks of ‘Ianus, with his double chere,’ i. e. face; Garl. of Laurell, 1515. Cf. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 19; and ii. 754; Spenser, F. Q. vii. 7. 41.

1255. ‘Nowel,’ i. e. ‘the birthday,’ or Christmas day. From O. F. noël (Prov. nadal); from Lat. natalem. Cotgrave quotes a French proverb:—‘Tant crie on Noël qu’il vient, So long is Christmas cried that at length it comes.’ Littré gives, as the second sense of Noël—‘Cantique en langue vulgaire, ayant ordinairement pour sujet la naissance de Jésus-Christ, que l’on chante à l’approche de la Noël.’ Hence ‘to cry Noël’ was to sing a Christmas carol; as was usual on Christmas eve. He further explains that ‘Noël!’ subsequently became a cry on any occasion of great rejoicing; so that, in this way, ‘to cry Noël’ meant to proclaim glad tidings. Hence the silly confusion of the word with ‘nouvelles,’ in the imaginative accounts of it given by some English writers.

1266. Read I n’ can; see note to A. 764.

1273. ‘The astronomical tables, composed by order of Alphonso X, king of Castile, about the middle of the thirteenth century, were called sometimes Tabulae Toletanae, from their being adapted to the city of Toledo. There is a very elegant copy of them in MS. Harl. 3647.’—T. Edition: current; Page: [394] In Chaucer’s Astrolabe, ii. 44. 16, we find:—‘And if hit so be that hit [i. e. the time for which the change in a planet’s position is being reckoned] passe 20 [years], consider wel that fro 1 to 20 ben anni expansi, and fro 20 to 3,000 ben anni collecti.’ The changes in position of the various planets were obtained from these tables. The quantities denoting the amount of a planet’s motion during round periods of years, such as twenty, forty, or sixty years, were entered in a table headed Anni collecti. Similar quantities for lesser periods, from one year up to twenty years, were entered under the headings 1, 2, 3, &c.; and such years were called Anni expansi, i. e. single or separate years. See Ptolemy’s Almagest, lib. vi. and lib. ix.; and the note in vol. iii. p. 367.

1276. rotes, roots. The ‘root’ is the tabulated quantity belonging to a given fixed date or era, from which corresponding quantities can be calculated by addition or subtraction. Thus the longitude of a planet at a given date is the ‘root’; and its longitude at another date, say twenty-three years later, can be obtained from the Toletan tables by adding (1) its change of longitude in twenty years, as given in the table of Anni collecti, and (2) its further change in three years, as given in the table of Anni expansi. Chaucer uses the term ‘root’ again in B. 314; and in his Astrolabe, ii. 44. 1; q. v.

1277. ‘Centre’ was a technical name for the end of the small brass projection on the ‘rete’ of an astrolabe which denoted the position of a fixed star (usually of the first magnitude). See Chaucer’s Astrolabe, Fig. 2 (in vol. iii.); and Centre in the Glossary. ‘Argument’ is an astronomical term still in use, and means ‘the angle, arc, or other mathematical quantity, from which another required quantity may be deduced, or on which its calculation depends’; New Eng. Dictionary.

In Chaucer’s Astrolabe, § 44 of Part II. is headed—‘Another maner conclusion, to knowe the mene mote and the argumentis of any planete.’

1278. proporcionels convenients, fitting proportionals; referring to a table of ‘proportional parts,’ by which fractional parts of a year can be taken into consideration, in calculating the motions of the planets.

1279. equacions, equations; probably here used in the sense of ‘exact quantities.’ Thus the ‘exact quantity’ of a planet’s motion, during a given time, can be obtained by adding together the motion during the ‘collect’ years, the ‘expanse’ years, and the fraction of a year; see the last note.

1280. eighte spere, eighth sphere; cf. ‘ninthe speere’ in l. 1283. In the old astronomy (as explained more fully in the note to B. 295), there were nine imaginary spheres, viz. the seven spheres of the seven planets, the eighth sphere or sphere of fixed stars (supposed to have a slow motion from west to east about the poles of the zodiac, to account for the precession of the equinoxes), and the ninth sphere or primum mobile, which had a diurnal motion from east to west, and carried Edition: current; Page: [395] everything with it. Alnath is still a name for the bright star a Arietis, of the first magnitude, which was necessarily situate in the eighth sphere. But the head of the fixed Aries, or the true equinoctial point, was in the ninth sphere above it.

The exact amount of the precession of the equinoxes (which is what Chaucer here alludes to) could be ascertained by observing, from time to time, the distance between the true equinoctial point and the star Alnath, which was conveniently situated for the purpose, being in the head of Aries. In the time of Hipparchus (bc 150), the distance of Alnath from the true equinoctial point was but a few degrees; but at the present time it is ‘shove,’ in longitude, some 35° from the same. (The readings thre for eighte in l. 1280, and fourthe for ninthe in l. 1283, given by Wright from MS. Hl., are of course absurd).

1285. firste mansioun, first mansion, viz. of the moon. It was called Alnath, from the star. In the margin of E. is written—‘Alnath dicitur prima mansio lunae.’ Cf. note to l. 1130; and see l. 1289. His object was, clearly, to calculate the moon’s position; see l. 1287.

1288. ‘And knew in whose “face” the moon arose, and in what “term,” and all about it.’ Each sign of the zodiac, containing thirty degrees, was divided into three equal parts, each of ten degrees, called faces in the astrological jargon of the time. Not only each sign, but each face, was assigned to some peculiar planet; hence whos means ‘of which planet.’ Besides this equal division of each sign, we find unequal divisions, called terms. For example, the sign Aries, considered as a whole, was called ‘the mansion of Mars.’ Again, of this sign, degrees one to ten were called ‘the face of Mars’; degrees eleven to twenty, ‘the face of the Sun’; and degrees twenty-one to thirty, ‘the face of Venus.’ Lastly, of the same sign, degrees one to six were ‘a term of Jupiter’; degrees seven to twelve, of Venus; degrees thirteen to twenty, of Mercury; twenty-one to twenty-five, of Mars; and twenty-six to thirty, of Saturn. Of course, the whole of this assignment was purely fanciful, imposed at first by arbitrary authority, and afterwards kept up by tradition. Cf. l. 1293.

1311–1322. These lines form a ‘Complaint,’ quite in the style of the Compleint of Anelida, q. v. Thus, l. 1318 is like Anelida, l. 288:—‘As verily ye sleen me with the peyne.’ The ‘complaint’ of Dorigen begins at l. 1355.

1340. ‘Other colour then asshen hath she noon’; Anelida, 173.

1348. ‘She wepeth, waileth, swowneth pitously’; Anelida, 169.

1355. In the margin of E. is written—‘The compleynt of Dorigene ayeyns Fortune.’

1367. Tyrwhitt remarks that all these examples are taken from book i. of Hieronymus contra Iouinianum. In fact, this reference is expressly supplied in the margin of E., at l. 1465, where we find—‘Singulas has historias et plures, hanc materiam concernentes, recitat beatus Ieronimus contra Iouinianum in primo suo libro, cap. 39°.’ There is a similar note in Hn., at l. 1395.

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On reference to Jerome, I find that the passages referred to are worthy of being expressly quoted, especially as Chaucer does not adhere to the order of the original. Moreover, most of them are quoted in the side-notes to E., with more or less correctness. I therefore give below all such as are worth giving.

1368. The passage in Jerome is as follows:—‘Triginta Atheniensium tyranni cum Phidonem in conuiuio necassent, filias eius uirgines ad se uenire iusserunt, et scortorum more nudari: ac super pauimenta, patris sanguine cruentata, impudicis gestibus ludere, quae paulisper dissimulato doloris habitu, cum temulentos conuiuas cernerent, quasi ad requisita naturae egredientes, inuicem se complexae praecipitauerunt in puteum, ut uirginitatem morte seruarent’; p. 48. This story (quoted in full in MS. E.) refers to the excesses committed in Athens by the Thirty Tyrants, who were overthrown by Thrasybulus, bc 403.

1370. ‘They commanded (men) to arrest his daughters.’

1379. Jerome has:—‘Spartiatae et Messenii diu inter se habuere amicitias, intantum ut ob quaedam sacra etiam uirgines ad se mutuo mitterent. Quodam igitur tempore, cum quinquaginta uirgines Lacedaemoniorum Messenii uiolare tentassent, de tanto numero ad stuprum nulla consensit, sed omnes libentissime pro pudicitia occubuerunt’; p. 48. Cf. Orosius, i. 14. 1.

1380. Lacedomie, Lacedaemonia; as in C. 605.

1387. Jerome has:—‘Aristoclides Orchomeni tyrannus adamauit uirginem Stymphalidem, quae cum patre occiso ad templum Dianae confugisset, et simulacrum eius teneret, nec ui posset auelli, in eodem loco confossa est’; p. 48. I suppose that Orchomenus is here the town so called in Arcadia, rather than the more famous one in Boeotia; for the district of Stymphalus is in Arcadia, and near Orchomenus.

1399. Jerome has:—‘Nam Hasdrubalis uxor capta, et incensa urbe, cum se cerneret a Romanis capiendam esse, apprehensis ab utroque latere paruulis filiis, in subiectum domus suae deuolauit incendium’; Valerius Maximus has a similar story, lib. iii. c. 2. ext. 8; cf. Orosius, iv. 13. 3. Chaucer has already alluded to this story; see note to B. 4553.

1402. alle; Valerius Maximus merely says—‘dextra laeuaque communes filios trahens.’

1405. Jerome says:—‘Ad Romanas foeminas transeam, et primam ponam Lucretiam; quae uiolatae pudicitiae pudens superuiuere, maculam corporis cruore deleuit’; p. 50. In the margin of E. we find:—‘primo ponam Lucretiam . . . deleuit’; with the reading nolens for pudens. See also the legend of Lucretia in the Legend of Good Women.

1409. Jerome says:—‘Quis ualeat silentio praeterire septem Milesias uirgines, quae Gallorum impetu cuncta uastante, ne quid indecens ab hostibus sustinerent, turpitudinem morte fugerunt; exemplum sui cunctis uirginibus relinquentes, honestis mentibus magis pudicitiam curae esse, quam uitam’; p. 50. MS. E. quotes this as far as ‘Gallorum.’ As Miletus is in Caria, perhaps Galli refers here to the Gallograeci or Galatae.

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1414. ‘Xenophon in Cyri maioris scribit infantia, occiso Abradote uiro, quem Panthea uxor miro amore dilexerat, collocasse se iuxta corpus lacerum; et confosso pectore, sanguinem suum mariti infudisse uulneribus’; p. 50. MS. E. cites the first eight words of this, with the spelling Abradate; whence Chaucer’s Habradate. Chaucer’s account of Panthea’s exclamation is evidently imaginary. The story is told at length in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, bk. vii. Abradates, king of the Susi, was killed in battle against the Egyptians. His wife Panthea slew herself with a dagger, and fell with her head upon his breast.

1426. ‘Demotionis Areopagitarum principis uirgo filia, audito sponsi Leosthenis interitu, qui bellum Lamiacum concitarat, se interfecit: asserens quanquam intacta esset corpore, tamen si alterum accipere cogeretur, quasi secundum acciperet, cum priori mente nupsisset’; p. 48. E. quotes the first five words of this.

1428. ‘Quo ore laudandae sunt Scedasi filiae in Leuctris Boeotiae, quas traditum est absente patre duo iuuenes praetereuntes iure hospitii suscepisse. Qui multum indulgentes uino, uim per noctem intulere uirginibus. Quae amissae pudicitiae nolentes superuiuere, mutuis conciderunt uulneribus’; p. 48. E. quotes the first six words, with the spelling Cedasii. The story of Scedasus (Σκέδασος) and his daughters is told at length by Plutarch, being the third story in his Amatoriae Narrationes (ἐρωτικαὶ διηγήσεις).

1432. ‘Nicanor uictis Thebis atque subuersis, unius uirginis captiuae amore superatus est. Cuius coniugium expetens, et uoluntarios amplexus, quod scilicet captiua optare debuerat, sensit pudicis mentibus plus uirginitatem esse quàm regnum; et interfectam propria manu, flens et lugens amator tenuit’; p. 49. E. cites a few words of this, with the spelling Nichanor. The reference is to the taking of Thebes by Alexander, bc 336. Nicanor was one of his officers.

1434. This story, in Jerome, immediately follows the former:—‘Narrant scriptores Graeci et aliam Thebanam uirginem, quam hostis Macedo corruperat, dissimulasse paulisper dolorem, et uiolatorem uirginitatis suae iugulasse postea dormientem; seque interfecisse gladio, ut nec uiuere uoluerit post perditam castitatem, nec ante mori, quàm sui ultrix existeret.’ E. quotes a few words of this.

1437. Chaucer has translated here very literally. For Jerome has:—‘Quid loquar Nicerati coniugem? quae impatiens iniuriae uiri, mortem sibi ipsa consciuit; ne triginta tyrannorum, quos Lysander uictis Athenis imposuerat, libidinem substineret’; p. 49. Compare Plutarch’s Life of Lysander. Niceratus, son of Nicias, was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants, who were imposed upon Athens by Lysander, bc 404.

1439. ‘Alcibiades ille Socraticus, uictis Atheniensibus, fugit ad Pharnabacum [i. e. Pharnabazum]. Qui accepto precio à Lysandro principe Lacedaemoniorum, iussit eum interfici. Cumque suffocato caput esset ablatum, et missum Lysandro in testimonium caedis expletae, reliqua pars corporis iacebat insepulta. Sola igitur concubina Edition: current; Page: [398] contra crudelissimi hostis imperium inter extraneos et imminente discrimine, funeri iusta persoluit; mori parata pro mortuo, quem uiuum dilexerat’; pp. 49, 50. E. quotes the first four words. See Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades; or the extracts from it in my edition of ‘Shakespeare’s Plutarch,’ p. 304. The woman’s name was Timandra; cf. Timon of Athens, iv. 3.

1442–4. Jerome says:—‘Alcestin fabulae ferunt pro Admento sponte defunctam, et Penelopes pudicitia Homeri carmen est’; p. 50. Quoted in E., with the spellings Alcesten, Adameto, and Omeri. Cf. Legend of Good Women, l. 432, and the note; also vol. iii. p. xxix.

1445. ‘Laodamia quoque poetarum ore cantatur, occiso apud Troiam Protesilao, noluisse superuiuere’; p. 50. E. quotes most of this, with the spellings Lacedomia and Protheselao. See Ovid, Heroid. Ep. xiii.; Hyginus, Fabula 243.

1448. ‘Sine Catone uiuere Martia potuit, Portia sine Bruto non potuit’; p. 50. Partly quoted in E. The death of Portia is told by Plutarch, at the very end of his Life of M. Brutus.

1451. ‘Artemisia quoque uxor Mausoli insignis pudicitiae fuisse perhibetur. Quae cum esset regina Cariae . . . defunctum maritum sic semper amauit, ut uiuum, et mirae magnitudinis exstruxit sepulchrum; intantum, ut usque hodie omnia sepulchra preciosa ex nomine eius Mausolaea nuncupentur’; p. 49. E. quotes a part of this, with the spelling Arthemesia. There is an account of her in Valerius Maximus, bk. iv. cap. 6. ext. I. Hence comes our word mausoleum.

1452. Barbarye, barbarian territory, heathendom. Cf. ‘the Barbre nacioun’; B. 281.

1453. Jerome says:—‘Teuta Illyricorum regina, ut longo tempore uiris fortissimis imperaret, et Romanos saepe frangeret, miraculo utique meruit castitatis’; p. 49. Called Teutana by Florus, ii. 5. 2. Pliny says that Teuta, the queen of the Illyrians, put to death some Roman ambassadors; Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 6. 11.

1455. Tyrwhitt omits this line and the next. Both lines appear in the old editions; but they are omitted in all the seven MSS. except E. They are certainly genuine, because the names in them are taken from Jerome, like the rest. E. has the spelling Bilyea, but I alter it to Bilia (as in the old editions) because such is Jerome’s spelling. The story is rather a long one.

‘Duellius, qui primus Romae nauali certamine triumphauit, Biliam uirginem duxit uxorem, tantae pudicitiae, ut illo quoque seculo pro exemplo fuerit: quo impudicitia monstrum erat, non uitium. Is iam senex et trementi corpore, in quodam iurgio audiuit exprobrari sibi os foetidum, et tristis se domum contulit. Cumque uxori questus esset, quare nunquam se monuisset, ut huic uitio mederetur: Fecissem, inquit, illa, nisi putassem omnibus uiris sic os olere. Laudanda in utroque pudica et nobilis foemina, et si ignorauit uitium uiri, et si patienter tulit, et quod maritus infelicitatem corporis sui, non uxoris fastidio, sed maledicto sensit inimici’; p. 50. This Duellius or Duillius, Edition: current; Page: [399] or Duilius, was the famous conqueror of the Carthaginians, in honour of whom the Columna rostrata was erected, to celebrate his naval victory, the first of that character ever gained by the Romans, bc 260. See Florus, Epitome, lib. ii. c. 2.

Hoccleve has this story in his De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, p. 134. He turns Bilia into Ulye, because he got the story from Jacobus de Cessolis, who calls her Ylia.

1456. Jerome says:—‘Rhodogune filia Darii, post mortem uiri, nutricem quae illi secundas nuptias suadebat, occidit’; p. 50. According to Erasmus, Rhodogune is mentioned in the Imagines (Εἰκόνες) of Flavius Philostratus.

Again (at p. 50) Jerome says:—‘Valeria, Messalarum soror, amisso Seruio uiro, nulli uolebat nubere. Quae interrogata cur hoc faceret, ait sibi semper maritum Seruium uiuere.’

1457. Notwithstanding the length of Dorigene’s complaint, Chaucer seems to have contemplated adding more examples to the list. For in the margin of E. is the note:—‘Mem. Strato regulus. Vidi et omnes pene Barbares (sic); cap. xxvio. primi [libri]. Item, Cornelia, &c. Imitentur ergo nupte Theanam, Cleobiliam, Gorgun., Thymodiam, Claudias atque Cornelias; in fine primi libri.’ All these names are in Jerome, who says: ‘Imitentur ergo nuptae Theano, Cleobulinam, Gorguntem, Timocliam, Claudias atque Cornelias’; &c.

1470. as wis, as (it is) certain; cf. Ancren Riwle, p. 38; Ormulum, l. 2279, &c. Stratmann (ed. Bradley) gives the example also wis so he god is, as surely as he is God. Of course the i is short, as wis rimes with this. Cf. A. S. ge-wis, ge-wiss, Icel. viss, adj., certain, sure. And see wisly, i. e. certainly, in l. 1475.

1472. Referring to the proverb—‘Let sleeping dogs lie’; or to one with the same sense. Cf. Troil. iii. 764.

1483. tel is here the right form of the imperative; see l. 1591. So in D. 1298.

1493–8. Of our seven MSS., only E. contains these six lines. They are omitted in most modern editions, except Gilman’s. But they occur, as Tyrwhitt pointed out, in the second edition printed by Caxton. In l. 1496, Caxton has him for hir; which, perhaps, is better.

1502. quikkest, most lively, i. e. most frequented.

1503. boun, all ready, prepared; as she was boun implies that she had already set out, and was on her way. Preserved in mod. E., in the form bound, in such phrases as ‘the ship is bound for New York.’ See Bound, pp., in the New E. Dictionary. Cf. l. 1505.

1525. For which, for which reason, wherefore.

1529–1531. The phrases him were lever and I have lever are here seen to have been both in use at the same time. See, again, ll. 1599, 1600 below.

1532. Than I departe, than that I may part. So in all seven MSS. T. altered I to to.

1541. ‘But let every woman beware of her promise.’

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1544. withouten drede, without doubt; as in B. 196. So also out of drede, E. 634; it is no drede, F. 1612.

1575. dayes, days of respite, time to pay in by instalments.

1580. To goon a-begged, to go a begging. Here begged is for beggeth, a sb. formed from the verb to beg. The spelling gon a-beggeth actually occurs twice in the Ilchester MS. of P. Plowman, C. ix. 138, 246. In the latter case, we even find gon abribeth and abeggeth, i. e. go a-robbing and a-begging. So in Rob. of Gloucester, l. 7710—‘As he rod an-honteth,’ as he rode a-hunting; and l. 9113—‘he wende an-honteth,’ he went a-hunting. This suffix -eth answers to the A. S. -aþ or -oþ. ‘On fēawum stōwum wīciaþ Finnas, on huntoþe on wintra, and on sumera on fiscaþe’; the Fins live in a few places, by hunting in winter, and by fishing in summer; Ælfred’s tr. of Orosius, 1. 1. In M. E. -eth was changed to -ed by confusion with the common suffix of the pp. See also the notes to C. 406, D. 354; and to P. Plowm. C. ix. 138.

1602. apparence, an illusion caused by magic.

1604–5. Corruptly given in MS. Hl. (note by Wright).

1614. I. e. ‘as if you had just made your first appearance in the world.’ An idiomatic allusion to the creeping of an insect out of the earth for the first time. It is obvious that there was nothing offensive in the phrase.

1622. as thinketh yow, as it seems to you. ‘The same question is stated in the conclusion to Boccace’s Tale; Philocopo, lib. v.—“Dubitasi ora qual di costoro fusse maggior liberalità,” &c. The Queen determines in favour of the husband.’—T. The questions discussed in the medieval Courts of Love were usually of a similar character.

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NOTES TO GROUP G.

The Second Nonnes Tale.

For general remarks on this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 485. Chaucer chiefly follows the Legenda Aurea; see note to l. 84 below, and to l. 25. It further appears that he consulted another Latin life of St. Cecilia, derived from Simeon Metaphrastes; as well as the Lives of Valerian and Tiburtius, in the Acta Sanctorum (April 14). See note to l. 369.

Prologue. This consists of twelve stanzas, and is at once divisible into three parts.

(1) The first four stanzas, the idea of which is taken from Jehan de Vignay’s Introduction to his French translation of the Legenda Aurea. This Introduction is reprinted at length, from the Paris edition of 1513, in the Originals and Analogues published by the Chaucer Society, pt. ii. p. 190.

(2) The Invocation to the Virgin, in stanzas 5-11; see note to ll. 29, 36.

(3) An Envoy to the reader, in stanza 12; see note to l. 78.

Line 1. Jehan de Vignay attributes the idea of this line to St. Bernard. He says—‘Et pour ce que oysiuete est tant blasmee que sainct Bernard dit qu’elle est mere de truffes [mother of trifles], marrastre de vertus: . . et fait estaindre vertu et nourrir orgueil,’ &c. Chaucer says again, in his Persones Tale (de Accidia), I. 710:—‘And how that ignoraunce be moder of alle harme, certes, necligence is the norice.’

2. ydelnesse, idleness; considered as a branch of Sloth, which was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. See The Persones Tale, De Accidia.

3. Chaucer took this idea from the Romaunt of the Rose; see ll. 528–594 of the English version, where a lover is described as knocking at the wicket of a garden, which was opened by a beautiful maiden named Idleness. He afterwards repeated it in the Knightes Tale, A. 1940; and again in the Persones Tale (de Accidia), I. 714: ‘Thanne comth ydelnesse, that is the yate [gate] of alle harmes. . . the hevene is yeven to hem that wol labouren, and nat to ydel folk.’

4. To eschue, to eschew; the gerund. The sentence really begins with l. 6, after which take the words to eschue; then take ll. 1-3, followed by the rest of l. 4 and by l. 5.

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7. Jehan de Vignay’s Introduction begins thus: ‘Monseigneur sainct Hierosme dit ceste auctorite—“Fays tousiours aucune chose de bien, que le dyable ne te trouue oyseux.” ’ That is, he refers us to St. Jerome for the idea. A like reference is given in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 206. We are reminded, too, of the familiar lines by Dr. Watts—

‘For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.’

8. Cf. Persones Tale (de Accidia), I. 714:—‘An ydel man is lyk to a place that hath no walles; the develes may entre on every syde.’

10. ‘Ydelnesse is the develis panter [net], to tempte men to synne’; Wyclif, Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 200.

14. Cf. Pers. Tale (de Accidia), I. 689:—‘Agayns this roten-herted sinne of accidie and slouthe sholde men exercise hemself to doon gode werkes’; &c. ‘Laborare est orare’ was the famous motto of St. Bernard.

15. though men dradden never, even if men never feared.

17. roten, rotten; Wright reads rote of, i. e. root of. Yet his MS. has roten; observe its occurrence in the note to l. 14 above.

19. ‘And (men also) see that Sloth holds her in a leash, (for her) to do nothing but sleep, and eat and drink, and devour all that others obtain by toil.’ The reading hir refers to Idleness, which, as I have before explained, was a branch of Sloth, and was personified by a female. See notes to ll. 2 and 3 above. Tyrwhitt has hem, which is not in any of our seven MSS.

21. Compare Piers Plowman, B. prol. 21, 22—

‘In settyng and in sowyng · swonken ful harde,

And wonnen that wastours · with glotonye destruyeth.’

25. After the legende, following the Legend; i. e. the Legenda Aurea. A very small portion is wholly Chaucer’s own. He has merely added a line here and there, such as ll. 488–497, 505–511, 535, 536. At l. 346 he begins to be less literal; see notes to 380, 395, 443.

27. St. Cecilia and St. Dorothea are both depicted with garlands. Mrs. Jameson tells us how to distinguish them in her Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed. 591. She also says, at p. 35—‘The wreath of roses on the brow of St. Cecilia, the roses or fruits borne by St. Dorothea, are explained by the legends.’ And again, at p. 36—‘White and red roses expressed love and innocence, or love and wisdom, as in the garland with which the angels crown St. Cecilia.’ Red was the symbol of love, divine fervour, &c.; white, of light, purity, innocence, virginity. See ll. 220, 244, 279. The legend of St. Dorothea forms the subject of Massinger’s Virgin Martyr.

29. virgin-es must be a trisyllable here; such words are often shortened to a dissyllable. The word thou is addressed to the Virgin Mary. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Inuocatio ad Mariam.’

30. Speaking of St. Bernard, Mrs. Jameson says—‘One of his most Edition: current; Page: [403] celebrated works, the Missus est, was composed in her honour [i. e. in honour of the Virgin] as Mother of the Redeemer; and in eighty Sermons on texts from the Song of Solomon, he set forth her divine perfection as the Selected and Espoused, the type of the Church on earth’; Legends of the Monastic Orders, 2nd ed. p. 144. Cf. note to l. 58.

See a further illustration of the great favour shewn by the Virgin to St. Bernard at p. 142 of the same volume; and, at p. 145, the description of a painting by Murillo, quoted from Stirling’s Spanish Painters, p. 914. See also Dante, Paradiso, xxxi. 102.

32. comfort of us wrecches, comfort of us miserable sinners; see note to l. 58.

do me endyte, cause me to indite.

34. of the feend, over the Fiend. Tyrwhitt reads over for of, but it is unneccessary. Accent victórie on the o.

36. Lines 36–51 are a free translation of a passage in Dante’s Paradiso, Canto xxxiii. ll. 1-21; and are quoted in the notes to Cary’s translation. I am persuaded that ll. 36–56 (three stanzas) were added at a later period. Being taken from Dante, they could hardly have been written very early; whereas the Life of St. Cecile seems to have been quite a juvenile performance. And this explains why the phrase ‘Me, flemed wrecche’ in l. 58 is so far removed from the parallel expression, viz. ‘us wrecches,’ in l. 32. Cf. note to l. 58.

l. 36. | ‘Vergine madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
l. 39. | Umile ed alta più che creatura,
| Termine fisso d’eterno consiglio,
| Tu se’ colei che l’ umana natura
l. 40, 41. | Nobilitastì si, che il suo Fattore
l. 41, 42. | Non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
l. 43. | Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’ amore,
l. 44. | Per lo cui caldo nell’ eterna pace
| Cosi è germinato questo fiore.
| Qui sei a noi meridiana face
| Di caritade, e giuso, intra i mortali,
| Sé’ di speranza fontana vivace.
| Donna, se’ tanto grande, e tanto vali,
| Che qual vuol grazia, e a te non ricorre,
| Sua disianza vuol volar senz’ ali.
ll. 53, 54. | La tua benignità non pur soccorre
ll. 53, 54. | A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate
ll. 55, 56. | Liberamente al dimandar precorre.
l. 51. | In te misericordia, in te pietate,
l. 50. | In te magnificenza, in te s’aduna
| Quatunque in creatura è di bontate.’

The numbers at the side denote the corresponding lines.

40. nobledest, didst ennoble; Dante’s ‘nobilitasti.’

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42. The translation is inexact. Dante says—‘that its Maker (i. e. the Maker of human nature) did not disdain to become His own creature,’ i. e. born of that very human nature which He had Himself created. Cf. l. 49.

45. ‘Who is Lord and Guide of the threefold space’; i. e. of the three abodes of things created, viz. the earth, the sea, and the heavens.

46. out of relees, without release, i. e. without relaxation, without ceasing. Out of means without, as is clear from Prol. 487; Kn. Tale, A. 1141; and relees means acquittance (O. Fr. relais); see Cler. Tale, E. 153, &c. There has been some doubt about the meaning of this phrase, but there need be none; especially when it is remembered that to release is another form of to relax, so that relees=relaxation, i. e. slackening. The idea is the same as that so admirably expressed in the Prolog im Himmel to Goethe’s Faust.

50. Assembled is in thee, there is united in thee; cf. Dante—‘in te s’aduna.’ This stanza closely resembles the fourth stanza of the Prioresses Prologue, B. 1664–1670.

52. sonne. By all means let the reader remember that sonne was probably still feminine in English in Chaucer’s time, as it is in German, Dutch, and Icelandic to this day. It will be found, however, that Chaucer commonly identifies the sun with Phœbus, making it masculine; see Prol. 8, Kn. Tale, A. 1493. Still, there is a remarkable example of the old use in the first rubric of Part ii. of Chaucer’s Astrolabe—‘To fynde the degree in which the sonne is day by day, after hir cours a-boute.’ So again, in Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 243.

56. hir lyves leche, the physician of their lives (or life).

58. flemed wrecche, banished exile. The proper sense of A. S. wræcca is an exile, a stranger; and thence, a miserable being. The phrase ‘fleming of wrecches,’ i. e. banishment of the miserable, occurs in Chaucer’s Troilus, iii. 933. And see note to l. 36 above.

Lounsbury (Studies, ii. 389) compares this line with l. 62 below, and suggests that Chaucer may have been influenced here by an expression in St. Bernard’s Works (cf. l. 30): Respice ergo, beatissima Virgo, ad nos proscriptos in exsilio filios Euae’; Tractatus ad Laudem Gloriosae Virginis; in the Works, vol. i. p. 1148, in Migne’s Patrologia, vol. 182. This suggestion greatly strengthens the probability, that ll. 36–56 form a later insertion.

galle, bitterness. There is probably an allusion to the name Mary, and to the Hebrew mar, fem. mârâh, bitter. Cf. Exod. xv. 23; Acts viii. 23; Ruth i. 20. Cf. Chaucer’s A B C, l. 50.

59. womman Cananee, a translation of mulier Chananaea in the Vulgate version of Matt. xv. 22. Wyclif calls her ‘a womman of Canane.’

60. Compare Wyclif’s version—‘for whelpis eten of the crummes that fallen doun fro the bord of her lordis’; Matt. xv. 27.

62. sone of Eve, son of Eve, i. e. the author himself. This, as Tyrwhitt remarks (Introd. Discourse, note 30), is a clear proof that Edition: current; Page: [405] the Tale was never properly revised to suit it for the collection. The expression is unsuitable for the supposed narrator, the Second Nun.

64. See James, ii. 17.

67. ful of grace; alluding to the phrase ‘Aue gratia plena’ in Luke, i. 28.

68. advócat, accented on the penultimate.

69. Ther-as, where that. Osanne, Hosanna, i. e. ‘Save, we pray,’ from Ps. cxviii. 25. See Concise Dict. of the Bible.

70. The Virgin Mary was said to have been the daughter of Joachim and Anna; see the Protevangelion of James, and the Legenda Aurea, cap. cxxi—‘De natiuitate beatae Mariae uirginis.’ Cf. D. 1613.

75. haven of refut, haven of refuge. See the same term similarly applied in B. 852, above. Cf. Chaucer’s A. B. C., l. 14.

78. reden, read. This is still clearer proof that the story was not originally meant to be narrated. Cf. note to l. 62.

82. him, i. e. Jacobus Januensis. at the, &c., out of reverence for the saint.

83. hir legende, her (St. Cecilia’s) legend as told in the Aurea Legenda. But cf. note to l. 349.

85. The five stanzas in ll. 85–119 really belong to the Legend itself, and are in the original Latin. Throughout the notes to the rest of this Tale I usually follow the 2nd edition of the Legenda Aurea, cap. clxix, as edited by Dr. Th. Grässe; Leipsic, 1850.

87. Several of the Legends of the Saints begin with ridiculous etymologies. Thus the Legend of St. Valentine (Aur. Leg. cap. xlii) begins with the explanation that Valentinus means ualorem tenens, or else ualens tyro. So here, as to the etymology of Caecilia, we are generously offered five solutions, all of them being wrong. As it is hopeless to understand them without consulting the original, I shall quote as much of it as is necessary, arranged in a less confused order. The true etymology is, of course, that Caecilia is the feminine of Caecilius, a name borne by members of the Caecilia gens, which claimed descent from Caeculus, an ancient Italian hero, son of Vulcan, who is said to have founded Praeneste. Caeculus, probably a nickname, can hardly be other than a mere diminutive of caecus, blind. The legendary etymologies are right, accordingly, only so far as they relate to caecus. Beyond that, they are strange indeed.

The following are the etymologies, with their reasons.

(1) Caecilia=coeli lilia (sic), i. e. hevenes lilie. Reasons:—‘Fuit enim coeleste lilium per uirginitatis pudorem; uel dicitur lilium, quia habuit candorem munditiae, uirorem conscientiae, odorem bonae famae.’ See ll. 87–91. Thus grene (=greenness) translates uirorem.

(2) Caecilia=caecis uia, i. e. the wey to blinde, a path for the blind. Reason:—‘Fuit enim caecis uia per exempli informationem.’ See ll. 92, 93.

(3) Caecilia is from caelum and lya. ‘Fuit enim . . coelum (sic) per iugem contemplationem, lya per assiduam operationem.’ Here lya is Edition: current; Page: [406] the same as Lia, which is the Latin spelling of Leah in the Book of Genesis. It was usual to consider Leah as the type of activity, or the Active Life, and Rachel as the type of the Contemplative Life. See Hampole’s Prose Treatises, ed. Perry (E. E. T. S.), p. 29, where the comparison is attributed to St. Gregory. ‘Lya is als mekill at say as trauyliose, and betakyns actyfe lyfe.’

(4) Caecilia, ‘quasi caecitate carens.’ This is on the celebrated principle of ‘lucus a non lucendo.’ Reason:—‘fuit caecitate carens per sapientiae splendorem.’ See ll. 99–101.

(5) ‘Vel dicitur a coelo et leos, i. e. populus.’ Finally, recourse is had to Greek, viz. Gk. λεώς, the Attic form of λαός. Reason:—‘fuit et coelum populi, quia in ipsa tamquam in coelo spirituali populus ad imitandum intuetur coelum, solem, lunam, et stellas, i. e. sapientiae perspicacitatem, fidei magnanimitatem et uirtutum uarietatem.’ See ll. 102–112.

113–118. Chaucer has somewhat varied the order; this last stanza belongs in the Latin to derivation (3), though it may serve also for derivation (5). It is probably for this reason that he has reserved it. The Latin is—‘Vel dicitur coelum, quia, sicut dicit Ysidorus, coelum philosophi uolubile, rotundum et ardens esse dixerunt. Sic et ipsa fuit uolubilis per operationem sollicitam, rotunda per perseuerantiam, ardens per caritatem succensam.’ For the swiftness and roundness of heaven, see note to B. 295. The epithet burning is due to quite another matter, not explained in that note. The nine astronomical spheres there mentioned did not suffice for the wants of theology. Hence a tenth sphere was imagined, external to the ninth; but this was supposed to be fixed, whereas the ninth sphere (or primum mobile) had a swift diurnal movement of revolution (note to B. 295), and thus supplied the two former epithets. The outermost sphere was called the empyraeum (from Gk. ἔμπυρος, burning, which from ἐν, in, and πυ̑ρ, fire) where the pure element of fire subsisted alone; and it was supposed to be the abode of saints and angels. Milton, in his Paradise Lost, uses the word empyrean six times, ii. 771, iii. 57, vi. 833, vii. 73, 633, x. 321; and the word empyreal eleven times.

120. For some account of St. Caecilia, see vol. iii. p. 489. Compare also the Life of St. Cecilia as printed in the South-English Legendary, ed. Horstmann (E. E. T. S), p. 490.

133. an heyre, a hair shirt. The usual expression; see I. 1052; and P. Plowman, B. v. 66. Lat. text—‘cilicio erat induta.’

134. the organs; Lat. ‘cantantibus organis.’ We should now say ‘the organ’; but in old authors the plural form is commonly employed. Sometimes the word organ seems to refer to a single pipe only, and the whole instrument was called ‘the organs’ or ‘a pair of organs,’ where pair means a set, as in the phrase ‘a peire of bedes’; Ch. Prol. 159. In the Nonne Preestes Tale, B. 4041, Chaucer uses orgon as a plural, equivalent to the Lat. organa. On the early meaning of organum, see Chappell’s Hist. of Music, i. 327.

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St. Cecilia is commonly considered the patroness of music; see Dryden’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s day, and Alexander’s Feast, ll. 132–141. But the connexion of her name with music is not very ancient, as Mrs. Jameson explains. The reason for this connexion seems to me clear enough, viz. the simple fact that the word organis occurs in this very passage. Besides, St. Cecilia is here represented as singing herself—‘in corde soli domino decantabat dicens’; see l. 135. The South-E. Legendary (see n. to l. 120) says she sang a verse of the Psalter.

145. conseil, a secret; Lat. ‘mysterium.’ And so in l. 192, and in P. Plowm. B. v. 168; see note to C. 819 above. and, if.

150. here, her, is a dissyllable in Chaucer whenever it ends a line, which it does six times; see e. g. B. 460; Kn. Tale, 1199 (A. 2057). This is quite correct, because the A. S. form hire is dissyllabic also.

159. me gye, rule me, keep me; lit. guide me.

173. Chaucer has here mistranslated the Latin. It is not said that the Via Appia (which led out of Rome through the Porta Capena to Aricia, Tres Tabernae, Appii Forum, and so on towards Capua and Brundusium) was situated three miles from Rome; but that Valerian is to go along the Appian Way as far as to the third milestone. ‘Vade igitur in tertium milliarium ab urbe uia quae Appia nuncupatur.’ See the South-E. Legendary, l. 37.

177. Urban. St. Urban’s day is May 25. This is Urban I., pope, who succeeded Calixtus, ad 222. Besides the notice of him in this Tale, his legend is given separately in the Legenda Aurea, cap. lxxvii. He was beheaded May 25, 230, and succeeded by Pontianus.

178. secree nedes, secret necessary reasons; Lat. ‘secreta mandata.’

181. purged yow, viz. by the rite of baptism.

186. seintes buriels, burial-places of the saints; Lat. ‘sepulchra martirum.’ It is worth observing, perhaps, that the form buriels is properly singular, not plural; cf. A. S. byrigels, a sepulchre, and see the examples in Stratmann. In P. Plowman, B. xix. 142, the Jews are represented as guarding Christ’s body because it had been foretold that He should rise from the tomb—

‘þat þat blessed body · of burieles shulde rise.’

The mistake of supposing s to be the mark of a plural was easily made, and the singular form buriel was evolved. This mistake occurs as early as in Wyclif’s Bible, IV Kings xxiii. 17; see Way’s note in Prompt. Parv. p. 37, note 1. Consequently, it is most likely that Chaucer has made the same mistake here. The South-E. Legendary (see note to l. 120) says that Urban dwelt ‘among puttes and burieles.’

There is here a most interesting allusion to the celebrated catacombs of Rome; see Chambers, Book of Days, i. 101, 102.

lotinge, lying hid. In MS. E., the Latin word latitantem is written above, as a gloss. This was taken from the Latin text, which has—‘intra sepulchra martirum latitantem.’ Stratmann gives six examples Edition: current; Page: [408] of the use of lotien or lutien, to lie hid. It occurs once in P. Plowman, B. xvii. 102.

201. An old man; i.e. an angel in the form of an old man, viz. St. Paul. Cf. note to l. 207.

202. with lettre of gold; Lat. ‘tenens librum aureis litteris scriptum.’ L. 203 is not in the original.

205. ‘When he (Valerian) saw him (the old man); and he (the old man) lifted up him (Valerian); and then he (Valerian) began thus to read in his (the old man’s) book.’ This is very ambiguous in Chaucer, but the Latin is clear. ‘Quem uidens Ualerianus prae nimio timore quasi mortuus cecidit, et a sene leuatus sic legit.’

207. Oo lord, one lord. Tyrwhitt prints On, ‘to guard against the mistake which the editions generally have fallen into, of considering o, in this passage, as the sign of the vocative case.’ For the same reason, I have printed Oo, as in MS. Pt., in preference to the single O, as in most MSS. Even one of the scribes has fallen into the trap, and has written against this passage—‘Et lamentat.’ See MS. Cp., in the Six-text edition. The fact is, obviously, that ll. 207–209 are a close translation of Eph. iv. 5, 6. Hence the old man was St. Paul.

208. Cristendom, baptism; Lat. ‘baptisma.’ See l. 217.

216. We must read the before oldë, not this or that, because e in the must be elided; otherwise the line will not scan.

223–224. that oon, the one; sometimes written the ton or the toon. That other, the one; sometimes written the tother. ‘The ton’ is obsolete; but ‘the tother’ may still be heard. That is the neuter of the A. S. def. article se, sēo, þæt; cf. Germ der, die, das.

As to the signification of the red and white flowers, see note to l. 27 above.

Compare Act v. sc. 1 of Massinger’s Virgin Martyr, where an angel brings flowers from St. Dorothea, who is in paradise, to Theophilus. See note to l. 248 below.

232. for, because; Lat. ‘quia.’

236. Afterwards repeated, very nearly, in Kn. Tale, l. 338 (A. 1196).

243. savour undernom, perceived the scent; Lat. ‘sensisset odorem.’

246. Cf. the South-E. Legendary (see note to l. 120), l. 89.

‘Brother, he seyde, how goth this? This tyme of the yere So swote smul ne smelde I neuere, me thinkth, as I do here.’

248. rose. We should have expected roses. Perhaps this is due to the peculiar form of the Latin text, which has—‘roseus hic odor et liliorum.’

Compare the words of Theophilus in the Virgin Martyr, v. 1:—

‘What flowers are these?’ &c.

270. Ll. 270–283 are certainly genuine, and the passage is in the Latin text. It is also in the French version, but it does not appear in the Early English version of the story printed by Mr. Furnivall from MS. Ashmole 43, nor in the English version printed by Caxton in 1483; Edition: current; Page: [409] nor in the version in the South-E. Legendary. Tyrwhitt’s supposition is no doubt correct, viz. that this passage ‘appears evidently to have been at first a marginal observation and to have crept into the [Latin] text by the blunder of some copyist.’ He truly observes that these fourteen lines ‘interrupt the narrative awkwardly, and to little purpose.’

271. Ambrose. ‘Huic miraculo de coronis rosarum Ambrosius attestatur in praefatione, sic dicens,’ &c. I cannot find anything of the kind in the indices to the works of St. Ambrose.

In the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry, a story is given beginning with the words—‘Beatus Ambrosius narrat,’ to this effect. St. Ambrose tells of a virgin going to martyrdom, who was asked by a pagan whither she was going. She answered: ‘to see my friend, who has invited me to his wedding-feast.’ The pagan, deriding her, said: ‘Tell your friend to send me some of his roses.’ Shortly after her death, a beautiful youth brought to the pagan a basket full of full-blown roses, saying, ‘The friend of the woman, who just now passed by, sends you some of the roses you desired,’ and then disappeared. The pagan was converted and himself suffered martyrdom. This is the story of St. Dorothea, whose day is Feb. 6; for which Alban Butler refers us to Aldhelm, De Laude Virginitatis, c. 25.

276. eek hir chambre, even hir marriage-chamber, i.e. even marriage. weyve, waive, abandon. Lat. ‘ipsum mundum est cum thalamis exsecrata.’ weyve occurs again in some MSS. of Chaucer’s Truth, l. 20.

277. shrifte, confession. Lat. ‘testis est Valeriani coniugis et Tiburtii prouocata confessio, quos, Domine, angelica manu odoriferis floribus coronasti.’ For Valerians, all the MSS. have Cecilies. Whether the mistake is Chaucer’s or his scribes’, I cannot say; but it is so obviously a mere slip, that we need not hesitate to correct it. The French text is even clearer than the Latin; it has—‘et de cest tesmoing Valerien son mary et Tiburcien son frere.’ Besides, the express mention of ‘these men’ in l. 281 is enough, in my opinion, to shew that the slip was not Chaucer’s own; or, at any rate, was a mere oversight.

282. ‘The world hath known (by their example) how much, in all truth, it is worth to love such devotion to chastity.’ Lat. ‘mundus agnouit, quantum ualeat deuotio castitatis;—haec Ambrosius.’ This is quoted as St. Ambrose’s opinion. The parenthesis ends here.

288. beste, i. e. void of understanding, as a beast of the field is. Lat. ‘pecus est.’

315. And we. Tyrwhitt remarks that we should have been us. But a glance at the Latin text shews what was in Chaucer’s mind; he is here merely anticipating the we in l. 318. Lat. ‘et nos in illius flammis pariter inuoluemur, et dum quaerimus diuinitatem latentem in coelis, incurremus furorem exurentem in terris.’ The sentence is awkward; but we was intended. The idiom has overridden the grammar. Cf. the South-E. Legendary (see note to l. 120), l. 121:—

‘Forberne he scholde, and we also, yif we with him were.’

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319. Cecile. This is one of the clearest instances to shew that Chaucer followed the Latin and not the French version. Lat. ‘Cui Caecilia’; Fr. ‘et Valerien dist.’ Mr. Furnivall has noted this and other instances, and there is no doubt about the matter.

320. skilfully, reasonably; the usual meaning at this date. See l. 327.

325–332. Not in the South-E. Legendary.

327. ‘And all that has been created by a reasonable Intelligence.’

329. Hath sowled, hath endued with a soul, hath quickened; Lat. ‘animauit.’

335. o god, one God. We must suppose this teaching to be included in the mention of Christ in l. 295; otherwise there is no allusion to it in the words of Cecilia. The doctrine had been taught to Valerian however; see ll. 207, 208.

There are continual allusions, in the Lives of the Saints, to the difficulty of this doctrine.

338. Chaucer is not quite exact. The Latin says that three things reside in a man’s wisdom, the said wisdom being but one. ‘Sicut in una hominis sapientia tria sunt, ingenium, memoria et intellectus.’ The notion resembles that in a favourite passage from Isidore quoted in Piers Plowman, B. xv. 39, to the effect that the soul (anima) has different names according to its functions. Compare the curious illustrations of the doctrine of the Trinity in the same, B. xvi. 220–224, xvii. 137–249. The illustration in the text is, as Mr. Jephson points out, by no means a good one.

341. The word Three stands alone in the first foot. See note to l. 353.

343. come, coming, i. e. incarnation; Lat. ‘aduentu.’ Tyrwhitt reads sonde, i. e. sending, message; but incorrectly.

345. withholde, detained, constrained to dwell; Lat. ‘tentus’; Fr. ‘tenu.’

346. Hitherto Chaucer’s translation is, on the whole, very close. Here he omits a whole sentence, and begins to abbreviate the story and alter it to suit himself. See his hint in l. 360.

349. Here begins, practically, the second part of the story, in which the second Latin text is more freely consulted; see vol. iii. p. 488.

351. That, who. In MS. E. the word is glossed by—‘qui, scilicet Vrbanus.’ It is remarkable that the relative who (as a simple relative, without so suffixed) is hardly to be found in English of this date, in the nominative case. The A. S. hwā is only used interrogatively. See March, Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 179.

353. goddes knight, God’s servant, or rather, God’s soldier; see l. 383, and the note. In the A. S. version of the Gospels, Christ’s disciples are called ‘leorning-cnihtas.’ In the Ormulum and in Wyclif cniht or kniȝt sometimes means a servant, but more commonly a soldier. Priests are called ‘goddes knyghtes’ in Piers Plowman, B. xi. 304. In scanning this line, either lerninge is of three syllables (which I doubt) or else the first syllable in Parfit forms a foot by itself; see note to l. 341 above.

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361. In the South-E. Legendary, their crime is specified; they had buried two Christian martyrs.

362. Almache; Lat. ‘Almachius praefectus.’ The reigning emperor was Alexander Severus (ad 222–235).

363. apposed, questioned, examined; written opposed in most MSS., but corrected by Tyrwhitt. Ed. 1532 also has aposed. A similar confusion occurs in the Freres Tale, D. 1597, where only two MSS., viz. Pt. and Ln., have the spelling appose, as against five others which read opposen. In MSS. of Piers the Plowman, we find appose, to question, B. iii. 5; apposed, i. 47; apposeden, vii. 138. See Appose in the New E. Dict.; where it is shewn that appose was, at first, a mere variant of oppose, but came to be regarded as a correct form with a special sense; though, strictly speaking, it was a corruption.

365. sacrifyse, sacrifice to the idol. This was the usual test to which Christians were subjected; see note to l. 395. Compare Dan. iii. 14, 18. So in the Virgin Martyr, iv. 2:—

‘Bow but thy knee to Jupiter, and offer

Any slight sacrifice; or do but swear

By Caesar’s fortune, and—be free!’

367. thise martirs; note that this is an accusative case.

369. corniculere, a sort of officer. The note in Bell’s edition, that the French version has prevost here, is wrong. The word prevost (Lat. praefectus) is applied to Almachius. Maximus was only a subordinate officer, and is called in the Early Eng. version (MS. Ashmole 43) the ‘gailer.’ The expression ‘Maximo Corniculario’ occurs only in the Lives of Valerian and Tiburtius, in the Acta Sanctorum (April 14); and we thus gather that Chaucer consulted this source also. This was noticed by Dr. Kölbing, in the Englische Studien, i. 215; and I subsequently noticed it myself, independently.

Riddle’s Lat. Dict. gives—‘Cornicularius, -i. m. a soldier who was presented with a corniculum, and by means of it promoted to a higher rank; hence, an assistant of an officer, Suetonius, Domit. 17; then also in the civil service, an assistant of a magistrate, a clerk, registrar, secretary; Cod. Just.’

‘Corniculum, -i. n. (dimin. of cornu). 1. A little horn, Pliny; also, a small funnel of horn, Columella. An ornament in the shape of a horn worn on the helmet, with which officers presented meritorious soldiers; Livy, 10. 44.’

Ducange gives several examples, shewing that the word commonly meant a secretary, clerk, or registrar. Tyrwhitt refers us to Pitiscus, Lex. Ant. Rom. s. v. Cornicularius.

373. ‘He got leave for himself from the executioners.’ tormentoures, executioners; Lat. ‘carnifices.’ See l. 527. Cf. tormentor in Matt. xviii. 34; see Wright’s Bible Word-book.

380. preestes, priests. The original says that pope Urban came himself.

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383. knightes, soldiers; as in l. 353. Lat. ‘Eia milites Christi, abicite opera tenebrarum, et induimini arma lucis.’ See Rom. xiii. 12.

386. Tyrwhitt notes a slight defect in the use of y-doon in l. 386, followed by doon in l. 387. The first six lines in this stanza are not in the original, but are imitated from 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.

395. ‘This was the criterion. The Christians were brought to the image of Jupiter or of the Emperor, and commanded to join in the sacrifice, by eating part of it, or to throw a few grains of incense into the censer, in token of worship; if they refused, they were put to death. See Pliny’s celebrated letter to Trajan. Those who complied were termed sacrificati and thurificati by the canons, and were excluded from the communion for seven or ten years, or even till their death, according to the circumstances of their lapse.—See Bingham’s Antiquities, b. xvi. 4. 5.’—Note in Bell’s edition of Chaucer. Cf. note to l. 365.

This stanza is represented in the original (in spite of the hint in l. 394) by only a few words. ‘Quarto igitur milliario ab urbe sancti ad statuam Iovis ducuntur, et dum sacrificare nollent, pariter decollantur.’

405. to-bete, beat severely; dide him so to-bete, caused (men) to beat him so severely, caused him to be so severely beaten. I have no hesitation in adopting the reading of ed. 1532 here. To-bete is just the right word, and occurs in MSS. Cp. Pt. Ln.; and, though these MSS. are not the best ones, it is clear that to-bete is the original reading, or it would not appear. To scan the line, slur over -ius in Almachius, and accent dide.

406. whippe of leed, i. e. a whip furnished with leaden plummets. Lat. ‘eum plumbatis tamdiu caedi fecit,’ &c.; French text—‘il le fist tant batre de plombees,’ &c.; Caxton—‘he dyd do bete hym with plomettes of leed.’

413. encense, offer incense to; see note to l. 395.

414. they. Over this word is written in MS. E.—‘scilicet Ministres.’ The Latin original says that Cecilia converted as many as 400 persons upon this occasion. Hence the expression o voys (one voice) in l. 420.

417. withouten difference, i. e. without difference in might, majesty, or glory.

430. lewedly, ignorantly. The ‘two answers’ relate to her rank and her religion, subjects which had no real connexion.

434. Lat. ‘de conscientia bona et fide non ficta’; cf. 1 Tim. i. 5.

437. to drede, to be feared; the gerund, and right according to the old idiom. We still say—‘he is to blame,’ ‘this house to let.’ March in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 198, says—‘The gerund after the copula expresses what must, may, or should be done. Ex. Mannes sunu is tō syllanne, the Son of Man must be delivered up, Matt. xvii. 22’; &c.

439. ‘For it nis bote a bladre i-blowe ful of a wreche wynde;

Be it with a litel prikke i-priked, a-wey it shrinketh al’;—

South-E. Legendary, l. 194.

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442. bigonne, didst begin; the right form, for which Tyrwhitt has begonnest. For the Mid. Eng. biginnen we commonly find onginnan in Anglo-Saxon, and the past tense runs thus—ongann, ongunne, ongann; pl. ongunnon. The form in Middle English is—bigan, bigunne (or bigonne), bigan; pl. bigunnen (or bigonne). The very form here used occurs in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 71. The suffix -st does not appear in strong verbs; cf. Thou sawe, B. 848; thou bar, G. 48.

The whole of ll. 443–467 varies considerably from the original, the corresponding passage of which is as follows: ‘Cui Almachius: “ab iniuriis caepisti, et in iniuriis perseueras.” Caecilia respondit: “iniuria non dicitur quod uerbis fallentibus irrogatur; unde aut iniuriam doce, si falsa locuta sum, aut te ipsum corripe calumniam inferentem, sed nos scientes sanctum Dei nomen omnino negare non possumus; melius est enim feliciter mori quam infeliciter uiuere.” Cui Almachius: “ad quid cum tanta superbia loqueris?” Et illa: “non est superbia, sed constantia.” Cui Almachius: “infelix, ignoras,” ’ &c. (l. 468). However, Chaucer has adopted an idea from this in ll. 473, 475.

463. To scan this, remember that Iuge has two syllables; and accent confus on the first syllable.

485. Lat. ‘es igitur minister mortis, non uitae.’

487. Do wey, do away with; Lat. ‘depone.’ The phrase occurs again in the Milleres Tale, A. 3287.

489–497. These lines are wholly Chaucer’s own.

490. To scan the line, elide e in suffre, and read phílosóphre.

492. spekest; to be read as spek’st.

498. utter yen, outer eyes, bodily eyes. In MS. E. it is glossed by ‘exterioribus oculis.’ The Latin has—‘nescio ubi oculos amiseris; nam quos tu Deos dicis, omnes nos saxa esse uidemus; mitte igitur manum et tangendo disce, quod oculis non uales uidere.’

503. taste, test, try; Lat. ‘tangendo disce.’ The word is now restricted to one of the five senses; it could once have been used also of the sense of feeling, at the least. Bottom even ventures on the strange expression—‘I trust to taste of truest Thisbe’s sight’; Mid. Nt. Dream, v. 1. 280; such is the reading in the first folio.

505–511. This stanza is all Chaucer’s own.

515. bath of flambes rede; Lat. ‘in bulliente balneo.’

516–522. The Latin merely has—‘Quae quasi in loco frigido permansit, nec modicum saltem sudoris persensit.’

533. Lat. ‘eam semiuiuam cruentus carnifex dereliquit.’

534. is went, though only in the (excellent) Cambridge MS., is the right reading; the rest have he wente, sometimes misspelt he went. In the first place, is went is a common phrase in Chaucer; cf. German er ist gegangen, and Eng. he is gone. But secondly, the false rime detects the blunder at once; Chaucer does not rime the weak past tense wentë with a past participle like yhent. This was obvious to me at the first glance, but the matter was made sure by consulting Mr. Cromie’s excellent ‘Ryme-Index.’ This at once gives the examples is went, Edition: current; Page: [414] riming with pp. to-rent, E. 1012 (Clerkes Tale); is went, riming with instrument, F. 567 (Sq. Tale); is went, riming with innocent, B. 1730, and ben went, riming with pavement, B. 1869 (Prioresses Tale). Besides this, there are two more examples, viz. be they went, riming with sacrement, E. 1701; and that he be went, riming with sent, A. 3665. On the other hand, we find wente, sente, hente, and to-rente, all (weak) past tenses, and all riming together, in the Monkes Tale, B. 3446. The student should particularly observe an instance like this. The rules of rime in Chaucer are, on the whole, so carefully observed that, when once they are learnt, a false rime jars upon the ear with such discord as to be unpleasantly remarkable, and should be at once detected.

535–536. These two lines are not in the original.

539. ‘She began to preach to them whom she had fostered,’ i. e. converted. To foster is here to nurse, to bring up, to educate in the faith; see l. 122 above. The Latin text has—‘omnes quos ad fidem conuerterat, Urbano episcopo commendauit.’ Tyrwhitt makes nonsense of this line by placing the comma after hem instead of after fostred, and other editors have followed him. In MSS. E. and Hn. the metrical pause is rightly marked as occurring after fostred. The story here closely resembles the end of the Prioresses Tale, B. 1801–1855.

545. do werche, cause to be constructed.

549. Lat. ‘inter episcopos sepeliuit.’

550. ‘It is now a church in Rome, and gives a title to a cardinal’; note in Bell’s edition. In a poem called the Stacyons of Rome, ed. Furnivall, l. 832, we are told that 100 years’ pardon may be obtained by going to St. Cecilia’s church. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in a note on this line, says—‘The Church of St. Cecilia, at the end of the Trastevere, near the Quay of Ripa Grande, was built on the site of the saint’s own house in 230; rebuilt by pope Paschal I. in 821, and dedicated to God and Sts. Mary, Peter, Paul, and Cecilia; and altered to its present form in 1599 and 1725. In the former of these years, 1599, the body of the saint was found on the spot, with a contemporary inscription identifying her: the celebrated statue by Stefano Maderno, now in the church, represents her in the attitude she was discovered lying in.’

553. After this line the Latin adds—‘Passa est autem circa annos domini cc et xxiii, tempore Alexandri imperatoris. Alibi autem legitur, quod passa sit tempore Marci Aurelii, qui imperauit circa annos domini xxcc.’ The confusion of names here is easily explained. Marcus Aurelius died in 180; but Marcus Aurelius Alexander Severus (for such was his title in full) reigned from 222 to 235. The true date is generally considered to be 230, falling within his reign, as it should do.

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue.

554. the lyf of seint Cecyle, i. e. the Second Nun’s Tale. This notice is important, because it inseparably links the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale to the preceding one.

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555. fyve myle, five miles. Tyrwhitt says that it is five miles ‘from some place, which we are now unable to determine with certainty.’ He adds that he is in doubt whether the pilgrims are here supposed to be riding from or towards Canterbury; but afterwards thinks that ‘the manner in which the Yeman expresses himself in ver. 16091, 2 [i. e. ll. 623, 624] seems to shew that he was riding to Canterbury.’

It is really very easy to explain the matter, and to tell all about it. It is perfectly clear that these two lines express the fact that they were riding to Canterbury. It is even probable that every one of the extant Tales refers to the outward journey: for Chaucer would naturally write his first set of Tales before beginning a second, and the extant Tales are insufficient to make even the first set complete. Consequently, we have only to reckon backwards from Boughton (see l. 556) for a five-mile distance along the old Canterbury road, and we shall find the name of the place intended.

The answer to this is—Ospringe. The matter is settled by the discovery that Ospringe was, as a matter of fact, one of the halting places for the night of travellers from London to Canterbury. Dean Stanley, in his Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 237, quotes from a paper in the Archæologia, xxxv. 461, by Mr. E. A. Bond, to shew that queen Isabella, wife of Edw. II., rested in London on June 6, 1358; at Dartford on the 7th; at Rochester on the 8th; at Ospringe on the 9th; and at Canterbury on the 10th and 11th; and returned, on the 12th, to Ospringe again. See this, more at length, in Dr. Furnivall’s Temporary Preface to the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer Soc.), pp. 13, 14.

Dr. Furnivall quotes again from M. Douet-d’Arcq, concerning a journey made by king John of France from London to Dover, by way of Canterbury, in 1360. On June 30, 1360, king John left London and came to Eltham. On July 1, he slept at Dartford; on July 2, at Rochester; on July 3, he dined at Sittingbourne (noted as being thirty-nine miles and three-quarters from London), and slept at Ospringe; and on July 4, came to Canterbury (noted as being fifty-four miles and a half from London).

These extracts clearly shew (1) that the whole journey was usually made to occupy three or four days; (2) that the usual resting-places were (at least) Dartford, Rochester, and Ospringe; and (3) that Sittingbourne was considered as being about fifteen miles from Canterbury.

Now, in passing from Sittingbourne to Canterbury, we find that the distance is divided into three very nearly equal parts by the situations of Ospringe and Boughton, giving five miles for each portion. The distance from Ospringe to Canterbury, only ten miles, left very little to be done on the last day; but pilgrims liked arriving at Canterbury in good time. Chaucer says, as plainly as possible, that the pilgrims really did rest all night on the road, at a place which can only be Ospringe; see ll. 588, 589.

Mr. Furnivall also notes (Temp. Pref. p. 29), that Lydgate, in his Edition: current; Page: [416] Storie of Thebes (in Speght’s Chaucer, 1602, fol. 353 back, col. 2) makes the pilgrims, on their homeward-journey, return from Canterbury to Ospringe to dinner.

556. Boghton-under-Blee. Here Blee is the same as the blee in Group H, l. 3, which see. It is now called Blean Forest, and the village is called Boughton-under-Blean, in order to distinguish it from other villages of the same name. I find, in a map, Boughton Aluph between Canterbury and Ashford, Boughton Malherb between Ashford and Maidstone, and Boughton Monchelsea between Maidstone and Staplehurst.

557. A man, i.e. the Canon. This is an additional pilgrim, not described in the Prologue, and therefore described here in ll. 566–581, 600–655, &c.

‘The name of Canon, as applied to an officer in the Church, is derived from the Gk. κανών (kanôn) signifying a rule or measure, and also the roll or catalogue of the Church, in which the names of the Ecclesiastics were registered; hence the clergy so registered were denominated Canonici or Canons. Before the Reformation, they were divided into two classes, Regular and Secular. The Secular were so called, because they canonized in saeculo, abroad in the world. Regular Canons were such as lived under a rule, that is, a code of laws published by the founder of that order. They were a less strict sort of religious than the monks, but lived together under one roof, had a common dormitory and refectory, and were obliged to observe the statutes of their order. The chief rule for these [regular] canons is that of St. Augustine, who was made bishop of Hippo in the year 395. . . . Their habit was a long black cassock with a white rochet over it, and over that a black coat and hood; from whence they were called Black Canons Regular of St. Augustine.’—Hook’s Church Dictionary. And see Canon in the New E. Dictionary.

There were several other orders, such as the Gilbertine Canons of Sempringham in Lincolnshire, the Praemonstratenses or White Canons, &c. See also the description of them in Cutts’s Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 19; and see Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 79, 84. At the latter reference, Dr. Rock says:—‘Some families of canons regular still require their members, whenever they go out of the house, to wear over their cassock a linen surplice, and above that a large, full, black canon’s cope.’

I should imagine, from the description of the Canon’s house in l. 657, and from the general tenor of the Tale, that Chaucer’s Canon was but a secular one. Still, their rule seems to have been less strict than that of the monks.

558. I have omitted to note that E. has wered a, where all the other MSS. read hadde a whyt.

561. priked myles three, ridden hard for three miles. The Canon and his yeoman may be supposed to have ridden rather fast for the first two miles; and then, finding they could not otherwise overtake Edition: current; Page: [417] the pilgrims, they took to the best pace they could force out of their horses for three miles more.

562. yeman, yeoman, attendant, servant. His face was all discoloured with blowing his master’s fire (ll. 664–667), and he seems to have been the more honest man of the two. He is the teller of the Tale, and begins by describing himself; l. 720.

565. ‘He was all spotted with foam, so that he looked like a magpie.’ The word He (like his in l. 566) refers to the Canon, whose clothing was black (l. 557); and the white spots of foam upon it gave him this appearance. The horse is denoted by it (l. 563), the word hors being neuter in the Oldest English. Most MSS. read he for it in l. 563, but there is nothing gained by it. Flecked, in the sense of ‘spotted,’ is still in use; see N. and Q. 7 S. i. 507, ii. 96.

566. male tweyfold, a double budget or leathern bag; see Prol. l. 694.

571. Chaucer tells us that the Pardoner’s hood, on the contrary, was not fastened to his cloak; see Prol. 680. Dr. Rock, in The Church of our Fathers, ii. 44, says:—‘Sometimes the hood of the cope was not only sewed to it, but stitched all round, and not allowed to hang with the lower part free; in such instances, the hood was necessarily left on the cope and folded with it.’

575. ‘Rather faster than at a trot or a foot-pace.’ Said ironically. Cf. Prol. 825.

577. clote-leef, the leaf of a burdock. Cotgrave has—‘Lampourde, f. the Cloot or great Burre.’ Also—‘Glouteron, m. The Clote, Burre Docke, or great Burre.’ And again—‘Bardane, f. the Clote, burre-dock, or great Burre.’

In the Prompt. Parv. we find—‘Clote, herbe; Lappa bardana, lappa rotunda.’ In Wyclif’s Version of the Bible, Hosea ix. 6, x. 8, we find clote or cloote where the Vulgate version has lappa. The Glossary to Cockayne’s ‘Leechdoms’ explains A.S. clāte as Arctium lappa, with numerous references. The A. S. clāte is related to G. Klette, a bur, a burdock; O. H. G. chletta; Mid. Du. kladde.

It is clear that clote originally meant the bur itself, just as the name of bur-dock has reference to the same. The clote is, accordingly, the Arctium lappa, or Common Burdock, obtaining its name from the clotes (i.e. burs or knobs) upon it; and one of the large leaves of this plant would be very suitable for the purpose indicated.

We may safely dismiss the suggestion in Halliwell’s Dictionary, founded on a passage in Gerarde’s Herball, p. 674 D, that the Clote here means the yellow water-lily. We know from Cockayne’s ‘Leechdoms’ that the name clāte sēo þe swimman wille (i.e. swimming clote) was sometimes used for that flower (Nuphar lutea), either on account of its large round leaves or its globose flowers; but in the present passage we have only to remember the Canon’s haste to feel assured, that he might much more easily have caught up a burdock-leaf from the road-side than have searched in a ditch for a water-lily.

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578. For sweet, to prevent sweat, to keep off the heat. See note to Sir Thopas, B. 2052.

580. It is probable that stillatorie (now shortened to still) is really a shortened form of distillatorie. Both forms occur in the Book of Quintessence, p. 10, l. 24, p. 13, l. 10.

581. Were ful, that might be full, that might chance to be full. Were is the subjunctive, and the relative is omitted.

588. now, &c.; lately, in the time of early morning.

589. This shews that the pilgrims had rested all night on the road; see note to l. 555 above.

597. oght, in any way, at all. Cf. Kn. Ta., A. 3045; and Prioresses Tale, B. 1792.

599. ye, yea. There is a difference between ye, yea, and yis, yes. The former merely assents, or answers a simple question in the affirmative. The latter is much more forcible, is used when the question involves a negative, and is often followed by an oath. See note to Specimens of Eng. 1394–1579, ed. Skeat, sect. xvii. (D), l. 22; and note to ȝis in the Glossary to my edition of William of Palerne. See an example of ȝus (yes) after a negative in Piers the Plowman, B. v. 125. Similarly, nay is the weaker, no the stronger form of negation.

602. A note in Bell’s edition makes a difficulty of the scansion of this line. It is perfectly easy. The caesura (carefully marked in MS. E. as occurring after knewe) preserves the final e in knewe from elision.

And yé | him knéw | e, ás | wel ás | do I ∥

Tyrwhitt reads also for the former as; which is legitimate, because as and also are merely different spellings of the same word.

It is true that the final e in wondre, and again that in werke, are both elided, under similar circumstances, in the two lines next following; but the cases are not quite identical. The e in knewe, representing not merely the plural, but also the subjunctive mood, is essential to the conditional form of the sentence, and is of much higher value than the others. If this argument be not allowed, Tyrwhitt’s suggestion may be adopted. Or we may read knewen.

608. rit, contracted from rideth; see A. 974, 981. See also slit for slideth in l. 682 below.

611. leye in balaunce, place in the balance, weigh against it.

620. can, knows, knows how to exercise.

622. The Yeoman puts in a word for himself—‘and moreover, I am of some assistance to him.’

625. up-so-doun, i.e. upside doun, according to our modern phrase. Chaucer’s phrase is very common; see Pricke of Conscience, ed. Morris, l. 7230; P. Plowman, B. xx. 53; Gower, Conf. Amantis, i. 218, &c.

628. benedicite, pronounced ben’cite, in three syllables, as in B. 1170, 1974. See note to B. 1170.

632. worship, dignity, honour; here, respectable appearance.

633. oversloppe, upper garment. So in Icelandic, yfirsloppr means Edition: current; Page: [419] an outer gown; as, ‘prestar skrýddir yfirsloppum,’ i.e. priests clad in over-slops, Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 473. The word slop is preserved in the somewhat vulgar ‘slop-shop,’ i.e. shop for second-hand clothes.

635. baudy, dirty. to-tore, torn in half. So in Piers Plowman, B. v. 197, Avarice is described as wearing a ‘tabard’ which is ‘al to-torn and baudy.’

639. The second person sing. imperative seldom exhibits a final e; but it is sometimes found in weak verbs, tellen being one of them. The readings are—Telle, E. Cp. Pt. Hl.; Tel, Ln. Cm. Elsewhere, we find tel, as in D. 1298.

641. for, &c.; because he shall never thrive. The Yeoman blurts out the truth, and is then afraid he has said too much. In l. 644, he gives an evasive and politer reason, declaring that his lord is ‘too wise’; see l. 648.

645. That that, that which. In the margin of MS. E. is written—‘Omne quod est nimium, &c.’; which is probably short for—‘Omne quod est nimium uertitur in uitium.’ We also find—‘Omne nimium nocet.’ The corresponding English proverb is—‘Too much of one thing is not good’ (Heywood); on which Ray remarks—‘Assez y a si trop n’y a; French. Ne quid nimis; Terentius. Μηδὲν ἄγαν. This is an apothegm of one of the seven wise men; some attribute it to Thales, some to Solon. Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines; Horat. Sat. i. 1. 106. L’abbondanza delle cose ingenera fastidio; Ital. Cada dia olla, amargo el caldo; Spanish.’ We also find in Hazlitt’s English Proverbs—‘Too much cunning undoes.’—‘Too much is stark nought.’—‘Too much of a good thing.’—‘Too much spoileth, too little is nothing.’ See also the collection of similar proverbs in Ida v. Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, i. 37, 38.

648. Cf. Butler’s description of Hudibras:—

‘We grant, although he had much wit,

He was very shy of using it.

652. Ther-of no fors, never mind about that.

655. The adj. sly here appears in the indefinite form, and rimes with hertely; correctly. Lounsbury (Studies, i. 388) admits the fact, but immediately proceeds to rate Chaucer for using the form dry-e (dissyllabic) as an indefinite form! The attack, being founded on an error, ignominiously fails. It so happens that sly is, etymologically, a monosyllable, whilst drye is etymologically dissyllabic; see sleh and druye in Stratmann.

658. A blind lane is one that has no opening at the farther end; a cul de sac.

659. theves by kinde, thieves by natural disposition.

662. The sothe, the truth. The reader should carefully note the full pronunciation of the final e in sothe. If he should omit to sound it, he will be put to shame when he comes to the end of the next line, ending with tó thee. A very similar instance is that of tyme, riming with bý me, G. 1204 below. The case is the more remarkable because Edition: current; Page: [420] the A. S. sōð, truth, is a monosyllable; but the truth is that the definite adjective the sothe (A. S. þæt sōðe) may very well have supplied its place, the adjective being more freely used than the substantive in this instance. Chaucer has sothe at the end of a line in other places, where it rimes with the dissyllabic bothe; G. 168; Troil. iv. 1035.

We may remark that the sothe is written and pronounced instead of the sooth (as shewn by the metre) in the Story of Genesis and Exodus, ed. Morris, l. 74:—

‘He [they] witen the sothe, that is sen.’

665. Peter! by St. Peter; as in B. 1404, D. 446. The full form of the phrase—‘bi seynt Peter of Rome’—occurs in Piers the Plowman, B. vi. 3. The shorter exclamation—‘Peter!’ also occurs in the same, B. v. 544; see my note on that line. harde grace, disfavour, ill-favour; a mild imprecation. In l. 1189, it expresses a mild malediction.

669. multiplye. This was the technical term employed by alchemists to denote their supposed power of transmuting the baser metals into gold; they thought to multiply gold by turning as much base metal as a piece of it would buy into gold itself; see l. 677. Some such pun seems here intended; yet it is proper to remember that the term originally referred solely to the supposed fact, that the strength of an elixir could be multiplied by repeated operations. See the article ‘De Multiplicatione,’ in Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 301, 818; cf. 131. Cf. Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, ii. 1:—

‘For look, how oft I iterate the work,

So many times I add unto his virtue’; &c.

686. To scan the line, accent yeman on the latter syllable, as in ll. 684, 701.

687. To scan the line, pronounce ever nearly as e’er, and remember that hadde is of two syllables. The MSS. agree here.

688. Catoun, Cato. Dionysius Cato is the name commonly assigned to the author of a Latin work in four books, entitled Dionysii Catonis Disticha de Moribus ad Filium. The work may be referred to the fourth century. It was extremely popular, not only in Latin, but in French and English versions. Chaucer here quotes from Lib. i. Distich. 17:—

‘Ne cures si quis tacito sermone loquatur;

Conscius ipse sibi de se putat omnia dici.’

See other quotations from Cato in the Nonne Preestes Tale, B. 4130; Merch. Ta., E. 1377; and see my note to Piers Plowman, B. vi. 316.

It is worth noticing that Catoun follows the form of the Lat. Catonem, the accusative case. Such is the usual rule.

694. dere abye, pay dearly for it. abye (lit. to buy off) was corrupted at a later date to abide, as in Shak. Jul. Caesar, iii. 1. 94.

703. game, amusement. In l. 708, it is used ironically. Cf. ernest, i.e. a serious matter, in l. 710. Cf. The Alchemist, ii. 1:—

‘Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,’ &c.

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The Chanouns Yemannes Tale.

720. This Tale is divided, in MS. E., into two parts. Pars prima is not really a tale at all, but a description of alchemy and its professors. The real tale, founded on the same subject, is contained in Pars Secunda, beginning at l. 972. The rubric means—‘Here the Canon’s Yeoman begins his tale.’ The word tale is not to be taken as a nominative case.

I may observe that I frequently refer below to the Theatrum Chemicum, printed in 1659, in five volumes. Also to Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum (quite a different work).

721. neer, nearer; this explains near in Macbeth, ii. 3. 146.

724. Ther, where; observe the use. In l. 727, we have wher.

726. hose, an old hose, instead of a hood. A pair of hose meant what we should now call a pair of tight-fitting drawers, which also covered the feet.

730. ‘And, in return for all my labour, I am cajoled.’ To ‘blere one’s eye’ is to cajole, to deceive, to hoodwink. See Piers the Plowman, B. prol. 74, and the note.

731. which, what sort of a; Lat. qualis. On multiplye, see note to l. 669.

739. ‘I consider his prosperity as done with.’

743. Iupartye, jeopardy, hazard. Tyrwhitt remarks that the derivation is not from jeu perdu, as some have guessed, but from jeu parti. He adds—‘A jeu parti is properly a game, in which the chances are exactly even; see Froissart, v. i. c. 234—“Ils n’estoient pas à jeu parti contre les François’; and v. ii. c. 9—“si nous les voyons à jeu parti.” From hence it signifies anything uncertain or hazardous. In the old French poetry, the discussion of a problem, where much might be said on both sides, was called a Jeu parti. See Poésies du Roy de Navarre, Chanson xlviii., and Gloss. in v. See also Ducange, in v. Jocus Partitus.’ Ducange has—‘Jocus partitus dicebatur, cum alicui facultas concedebatur, alterum e duobus propositis eligendi.’ Hence was formed not only jeopardy, but even the verb to jeopard, used in the A. V., Judges v. 18; 2 Macc. xi. 7.

746. In the margin of MS. E. is written—‘Solacium miseriorum (sic), &c.’ In Marlowe’s Faustus, ii. 1. 42, the proverb is quoted in the form ‘Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.’ Dr. Wagner says: ‘The purport of this line may have been originally derived from Seneca, De Consol. ad Polybium, xii. 2: est autem hoc ipsum solatii loco, inter multos dolorem suum diuidere; qui quia dispensatur inter plures, exigua debet apud te parte subsidere.’ Cf. Milton, P. R. i. 398. The idea is that conveyed in the fable of the Fox who had lost his tail, and wished to persuade the other foxes to cut theirs off likewise. See Troil. i. 708.

752. ‘The technical terms which we use are so learned and fine.’ See this well illustrated in Jonson’s Alchemist, ii. 1:—‘What else are all your terms,’ &c.

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764. lampe; so in the MSS. It is clearly put for lambe, a corruption of O. Fr. lame, Lat. lamina. Were there any MS. authority, it would be better to read lame at once. Cotgrave has—‘Lame; f. a thin plate of any metall; also, a blade.’ &c. Nares has—‘Lamm, s. a plate, from Lat. lamina. “But he strake Phalantus just upon the gorget, so as he batred the lamms thereof, and make his head almost touch the back of his horse”; Pembr. Arcadia, lib. iii. p. 269.’ Lame in old French also means, the flat slab covering a tomb; see Godefroy. So here, after the ingredients have all been placed in a pot, they are covered over with a plate of glass laid flat upon the top.

It is strange that no editor has made any attempt to explain this word. It obviously does not mean lamp! For the insertion of the p, cf. solempne for solemne, and nempne for nemne; also flambe for flame; see the Glossary.

766. enluting. To enlute is to close with lute. Webster has—‘Lute, n. (Lat. lutum, mud, clay). A composition of clay or other tenacious substance, used for stopping the juncture of vessels so closely as to prevent the escape or entrance of air, or to protect them when exposed to heat.’

The process is minutely described in a MS. by Sir George Erskine, of Innertiel (temp. James I.), printed by Mr. J. Small in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. xi. 1874–75, p. 193, as follows:—‘Thairfoir when all the matter which must be in, is gathered together into the pot, tak a good lute maid of potters clay, and mix it with bolus and rust of iron tempered with whitts of eggs and chopt hair, and mingle and worke thame weill togither, and lute ȝoure pott ane inch thick thairwith, and mak a stopple of potters earth weill brunt, to shut close in the hole that is in the top of the cover of the pott, and lute the pott and the cover very close togither, so as no ayre may brek furth, and when any craks cum into it, in the drying of the lute, dawbe them up againe; and when the lute is perfectly drie in the sunne, then take a course linen or canvas, and soke it weill in the whitts of eggs mixt with iron rust, and spred this cloth round about the luting, and then wet it weill again with whitts of eggs and upon the luting’; &c.

768. The alchemists were naturally very careful about the heat of the fire. So in The Alchemist, ii. 1:—

‘Look well to the register,

And let your heat still lessen by degrees.

And again, in iii. 2:—

‘We must now increase

Our fire to ignis ardens,’ &c.

770. matires sublyming, sublimation of materials. To ‘sublimate’ is to render vaporous, to cause matter to pass into a state of vapour by the application of heat. ‘Philosophi considerantes eorum materiam, quae est in vase suo, et calorem sentit, evaporatur in speciem fumi, et Edition: current; Page: [423] ascendit in capite vasis: et vocant sublimationem’; Theatrum Chemicum, 1659, vol. ii. p. 125.

‘Subtle. How do you sublime him [mercury]?

Face. With the calce of egg-shells,

White marble, talc.’ The Alchemist, ii. 1.

771. amalgaming. To ‘amalgamate’ is to compound or mix intimately, especially used of mixing quicksilver with other metals. The term is still in use; thus ‘an amalgam of tin’ means a mixture of tin and quicksilver.

calcening. To ‘calcine’ is to reduce a metal to an oxide, by the action of heat. What is now called an oxide was formerly called ‘a metallic calx’; hence the name. The term is here applied to quicksilver or mercury. For example—‘When mercury is heated, and at the same time exposed to atmospheric air, it is found that the volume of the air is diminished, and the weight of the mercury increased, and that it becomes, during the operation, a red crystalline body, which is the binoxide of mercury, formed by the metal combining with the oxygen of the air’; English Cyclopaedia, Div. Arts and Sciences, s. v. Oxygen. ‘The alchemists used to keep mercury at a boiling heat for a month or longer in a matrass, or a flask with a tolerably long neck, having free communication with the air. It thus slowly absorbed oxygen, becoming converted into binoxide, and was called by them mercurius precipitatus per se. It is now however generally prepared by calcination from mercuric nitrate’; id., s. v. Mercury.

772. Mercurie crude, crude Mercury. See note to l. 820. See the description of Mercury in Ashmole’s Theat. Chem. p. 272. The alchemists pretended that their quicksilver, which they called the Green Lion, was something different from quicksilver as ordinarily found. See treatise on ‘The Greene Lyon,’ in Ashmole’s Theat. Chem. p. 280.

774. Note the accents—‘súblyméd Mercúrie.’

778. Here the ‘ascension of spirits’ refers to the rising of gases or vapours from certain substances; and the ‘matters that lie all fix adown’ are the materials that lie at the bottom in a fixed (i. e. in a solid) state. There were four substances in particular which were technically termed ‘spirits’; viz. sulphur, sal ammoniac, quicksilver, and arsenic, or (as some said) orpiment. See Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 81, 129; ii. 430; iii. 276.

782. Here a=in; being short for an, a variant of on, used in the old sense of ‘in.’ The expression signifies, literally, in the way to (or of) twenty devils; see note to A. 3713.

790. bole armoniak. The latter word should rather be Armeniak, i. e. Armenian, but we have armoniak again below, in l. 798; see note to that line.

‘Bole, a kind of fine, compact, or earthy clay, often highly coloured with iron, and varying in shades of colour from white to yellowish, Edition: current; Page: [424] reddish, blueish, and brownish. Fr. bol, Lat. bolus, Gk. βω̑λος, a clod or lump of earth’; Webster’s Dict., ed. Goodrich and Porter. Cotgrave has—‘Bol, m. the astringent and medicinable red earth or minerall called Bolearmenie . . . Bol Oriental, et Bol Armenien Oriental, Oriental Bolearmenie; the best and truest kind of Bolearmenie, ministred with good effect against all poisons, and in pestilent diseases; and more red than the ordinary one, which should rather be tearmed Sinopian red earth than Bolearmeny.’ And see Bole in the New E. Dict.

Mr. Paget Toynbee has lately shewn (in The Academy, Sept. 16, 1893) that verdegrees is from the O. Fr. verd de Grece, lit. ‘green of Greece.’ Cotgrave has the curious form verderis, which probably represents the Latin viride aeris, the green of brass. This term (viride aeris) is the common one in the old Latin treatises on alchemy. See the chapter in Albertus Magnus—‘Quomodo viride aeris fit, et quomodo rubificatur, et super omnia valet ad artem istam’; Theatrum Chemicum, ii. 436. It is the bibasic acetate of copper.

792, 794. Perhaps Chaucer had read the following lines:

‘Par alambics et descensoires,

Cucurbites, distillatoires.’

Les Remonstrances de Nature, par J. de Meung, ll. 39, 40.

794. Cucurbites, vessels supposed to bear some resemblance to a gourd, whence the name (Lat. cucurbita, a gourd). ‘Cucurbita est uas quod debet stare in aqua, usque ad juncturam firmatum in caldario, ut non moueatur’; Theatrum Chemicum, ii. 452.

795. dere y-nough a leek, dear enough at the price of a leek. Cf. Clerkes Tale, E. 999.

797. Watres rubifying, reddening waters. This is well illustrated by a long passage in The Boke of Quinte Essence, ed. Furnivall, p. 13, where instructions are given for extracting the quintessence out of the four elements. After various processes, we are directed to put the vessel into ‘the fier of flawme right strong, and the reed water schal ascende’; and again—‘thanne yn the stillatorie, to the fier of bath, cleer water schall asende; and in the botum shall remayne the reed water, that is, the element of fier.’ A long and unintelligible passage about ‘rubrificatio’ and ‘aqua spiritualis rubea’ occurs in the Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 41. See also ‘modus rubrificandi’ and the recipe for ‘aqua rubea’; id. iii. 110.

798. Arsenic was by some considered as one of the ‘four spirits’; see note to l. 778. For a long passage ‘de arsenico,’ see Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 177; also p. 110, and ii. 238. Sal armoniacum was another of them (see l. 824) and is constantly mentioned in the old treatises; see ‘praeparatio salis Armoniaci secundum Rasim’; Theat. Chem. iii. 179; also pp. 89, 94, 102; ii. 445. In vol. ii. p. 138 of the same work, it is twice called ‘sal armeniacum.’ See the account of sal ammoniac in Thomson, Hist. of Chemistry, i. 124. Brimstoon was also a ‘spirit’ (see l. 824); it is only another name for sulphur.

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800. egrimoine, common agrimony, Ægrimonia officinalis; valerian, Valeriana officinalis; lunarie, a kind of fern called in English moon-wort, Botrychium lunaria. The belief in the virtue of herbs was very strong; cf. Spenser, (F. Q. i. 2. 10). The root of valerian yields valerianic acid. The following quotation is from the English Encyclopaedia, s. v. Botrychium:—

‘In former times the ferns had a great reputation in medicine, not so much on account of their obvious as their supposed virtues. The lunate shape of the pinnæ of this fern (B. lunaria) gave it its common name, and was the origin of much of the superstitious veneration with which it was regarded. When used it was gathered by the light of the moon. Gerarde says—“it is singular [i. e. sovereign] to heal green and fresh wounds. It hath been used among the alchymists and witches to do wonders withall.” ’

In Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum, p. 348, is a full description of ‘lunayrie,’ with an engraving of it. It is there also called asterion, and we are told that its root is black, its stalk red, and its leaves round; and moreover, that the leaves wax and wane with the moon, and on each of them is a mark of the breadth of a penny. See also pp. 315, 318 of the same work.

805. albificacioun, i. e. the rendering the water of a white colour, as distinguishing from the reddening of it, mentioned in l. 797. In a long chapter printed in the Theatrum Chemicum (iii. 634–648) much is said about red and white colours. Compare the Alchemist, ii. 1:—

‘Mammon. Of white oil?

Subtle. No, sir, of red.’

No doubt, too, water is here used in the sense of the Lat. aqua, to denote any substance that is in a liquid state.

808. Cered pokets. Tyrwhitt reads Sered pokettes, and includes this phrase in his short ‘List of Phrases not understood’; and indeed, it has never been explained. But there is little difficulty about it. Poket is the diminutive of poke, a bag, and means a little bag. Cered (Lat. ceratus) means waxed. Thus Cotgrave has—‘Ciré, m. -ée, f. waxed, seared; dressed, covered, closed, or mingled, with wax.’ In many MSS. the word is spelt sered, but this makes no difference, since Cotgrave has ‘seared’ in this very place. So we find both ‘cere-cloth’ and ‘sear-cloth.’ It is obvious that bags or cases prepared or closed with wax would be useful for many of the alchemist’s purposes; see Theat. Chem. iii. 13.

sal peter, Lat. sal petrae, or rock-salt, also called nitre, is nitrate of potassa. A recipe for preparing it is given in Theat. Chem. iii. 195.

vitriole, i. e. sulphuric acid. See ‘vitrioli praeparatio’; Theat. Chem. iii. 95.

810. Sal tartre, salt of tartar, i. e. carbonate of potash; so called from its having been formerly prepared from cream of tartar.

sal preparat, common salt prepared in a certain manner. See the Edition: current; Page: [426] section—‘quod ualeat sal commune, et quomodo praeparetur’; Theat. Chem. ii. 433, 435.

812. maad, i. e. prepared, mixed. oile of tartre, oil of tartar, cream of tartar; see Prol. 630. See the section—‘quomodo praeparatur tartarum, ut oleum fiat ex illo, quo calces soluuntur’; Theat. Chem. ii. 436; and again—‘ad faciendum oleum de Tartaro’; id. iii. 303. To scan l. 813, remember to pronounce tartre as in French, and to accent alum on the latter syllable.

Of tártr’ | alúm | glas bérm | wort ánd | argofle ∥

813. argoile, crude cream of tartar deposited as a hard crust on winecasks. Called argoil in Anglo-French; Liber Albus, i. 225, 231.

814. resalgar, realgar, red orpiment, or the red sulphuret of arsenic; symbol (As S2); found native in some parts of Europe, and of a brilliant red colour. Resalgar is adapted from the old Latin name, risigallum. The word is explained by Thynne in his Animadversions, ed. Furnivall, p. 36—‘This resalgar is that whiche by some is called Ratesbane, a kynde of poysone named Arsenicke.’

enbibing, imbibition; see this term used in The Alchemist, ii. 1. It means absorption; cf. Theat. Chem. iii. 132, l. 27.

816. citrinacioun. This also is explained by Thynne, who says (p. 38)—‘Citrinatione is bothe a coolor [colour] and parte of the philophers stoone.’ He then proceeds to quote from a Tractatus Avicennae, cap. 7, and from Arnoldus de Nova Villa, lib. i. cap. 5. It was supposed that when the materials for making the philosopher’s stone had been brought into a state very favourable to the ultimate success of the experiment, they would assume the colour of a citron; or, as Thynne says, Arnold speaks of ‘this citrinatione, perfecte digestione, or the coolor provinge the philosophers stoone broughte almoste to the heighte of his perfectione’; see Citrinacio in Ducange. So in the Alchemist, iii. 2:—

‘How’s the moon now? eight, nine, ten days hence

He will be silver potate; then three days

Before he citronise. Some fifteen days,

The magisterium will be perfected.’

817. fermentacioun, fermentation. This term is also noticed by Thynne (p. 33), who says—‘fermentacione ys a peculier terme of Alchymye, deduced from the bakers fermente or levyne’; &c. See Theat. Chem. ii. 115, 175.

820. foure spirites. Chaucer enumerates these below. I have already mentioned them in the note to l. 778; see also note to l. 798. Tyrwhitt refers us to Gower’s Confessio Amantis, bk. iv., where we find a passage very much to the point. See Pauli’s edition, ii. 84.

Gower enumerates the seven bodies and the four spirits; and further explains that gold and silver are the two ‘extremities,’ and the other metals agree with one or other of them more or less, so as to be capable of transmutation into one of them. For this purpose, the Edition: current; Page: [427] alchemist must go through the processes of distillation, congelation, solution, descension, sublimation, calcination, and fixation, after which he will obtain the perfect elixir of the philosopher’s stone. He adds that there are really three philosopher’s stones, one vegetable, capable of healing diseases; another animal, capable of assisting each of the five senses of man; and the third mineral, capable of transforming the baser metals into silver and gold.

It is easy to see how the various metals were made to answer to the seven planets. Gold, the chief of metals and yellow, of course answered to the sun; and similarly silver, to the paler moon. Mercury, the swiftest planet, must be the shifty quicksilver; Saturn, the slowest, of cold and dull influence, must be lead. The etymology of copper suggested the connexion with the Cyprian Venus. This left but two metals, iron and tin, to be adjusted; iron was suggestive of Mars, the god of war, leaving tin to Jupiter. The notion of thus naming the metals is attributed to Geber; see Thomson, Hist. of Chemistry, i. 117. In the Book of Quinte Essence, ed. Furnivall, p. 8, we find: ‘a plate of venus or Iubiter,’ i. e. of copper or tin.

Quicksilver, be it observed, is still called mercury; and nitrate of silver is still lunar caustic. Gold and silver are constantly termed sol and luna in the old treatises on alchemy. See further allusions in Chaucer’s House of Fame, 1431–1487, as pointed out in the notes to ll. 1431, 1450, 1457, 1487 of that poem.

834. ‘Whosoever pleases to utter (i. e. display) his folly.’

838. Ascaunce, possibly, perhaps; lit. ‘just as if.’ See note to D. 1745.

846. Al conne he, whether he know. The use of al at the beginning of a sentence containing a supposition is common in Chaucer; see Prol. 734. Cf. al be, Prol. 297; Kn. Tale, 313 (A. 1171). And see l. 861 below.

848. bothe two, both learned and unlearned alike.

853. limaille, filings, fine scrapings. ‘Take fyn gold and make it into smal lymail’; Book of Quinte Essence, p. 8.

861. ‘To raise a fiend, though he look never so rough,’ i. e. forbidding, cross.

874. it is to seken euer, it is always to seek, i. e. never found. In Skelton’s Why Come Ye Nat to Court, l. 314, the phrase ‘they are to seke’ means ‘they are at a loss’; this latter is the commoner use.

875. temps, tense. The editors explain it by ‘time.’ If Chaucer had meant time, it is reasonable to suppose that he would have said so. Surely it is better to take ‘that futur temps’ in the special sense of ‘that future tense.’ The allusion is to the phrase ‘to seken’ in the last line, which is not an infinitive mood but a gerund, and often used as a future tense, as Chaucer very well knew. Compare the A. S. version of Matt. xi. 3—‘eart þū þe to cumenne eart’—with the Lat. ‘Tu es qui uenturus es.’

878. bitter swete, i. e. a fatal, though alluring, pursuit. An example Edition: current; Page: [428] of oxymoron; cf. ‘insaniens sapientia,’ Horat. Carm. i. 34; ‘strenua inertia,’ Epist. i. xi. 28. Cf. the plant-name bittersweet (Solanum dulcamara).

879. nadde they but, if they only should have (or, were to have). Nadde is for ne hadde, past tense subjunctive.

880. inne, within; A. S. innan; see l. 881. a-night, for on night, in the night. Perhaps it should be nighte (with final e), and lighte in l. 881.

881. bak, cloth; any rough sort of covering for the back. So in most MSS.; altered in E. to brat, but unnecessarily. That the word bak was used in the sense of garment is quite certain; see William of Palerne, ed. Skeat, l. 2096; Piers the Plowman, B. x. 362; and the same, A. xi. 184.

Pronounce the words And a rapidly, in the time of one syllable.

907. to-brek’th, bursts in pieces. go, gone. This must have been a very common result; the old directions about ‘luting’ and hermetically sealing the vessels employed are so strict, that every care seems to have been (unwittingly) taken to secure an explosion; see note to l. 766 above. So in the Alchemist, iv. 3:—

‘Face. O, sir, we are defeated! all the works

Are flown in fumo, every glass is burst’: &c.

921. chit, short for chideth; so also halt for holdeth.

922. Som seyde, i. e. one said; note that som is here singular, as in Kn. Tale, 2173 (A. 3031). Hence the use of the thridde, i. e. the third, in l. 925.

923. Lungs was a nickname for a fire-blower to an alchemist. See Lungs in Nares’ Glossary.

929. so theech, for so thee ich, so may I thrive. See Pard. Tale, C. 947.

933. eft-sone, for the future; lit. soon afterwards.

934. ‘I am quite sure that the pot was cracked.’

938. mullok, rubbish. This is a common provincial E. word; see (in the E. Dial. Society’s Publications) Ray’s Glossary, p. 57; and the Glossaries for Wilts., Hants., Lancashire, &c.

962. The reading shyneth is of course the right one. In the margin of MS. E. is written ‘Non teneas aurum,’ &c. This proves that Tyrwhitt’s note is quite correct. He says—‘This is taken from the Parabolae of Alanus de Insulis, who died in 1294; see Leyser, Hist. Poetarum Medii Ævi, p. 1074.

“Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum,

Nec pulchrum pomum quodlibet esse bonum.” ’

Shakespeare has—‘All that glisters is not gold’; Merch. of Venice, ii. 7. 65. Hazlitt’s English Proverbs has—‘All is not gold that glisters (Heywood). See Chaucer, Chan. Yeom. Prol.; Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Collier, p. 102; Udall’s Royster Doyster, 1566, where we read: All things that shineth is not by and by pure golde (Act v. sc. 1). Fronti Edition: current; Page: [429] nulla fides, Juvenal, Sat. ii. 8. The French say, Tout ce qui luict n’est pas or. Non é oro tutto quel che luce; Ital. No es todo or lo que reluce; Span.’ So in German—‘Est ist nicht Alles Gold was glänzt’; and again—‘Rothe Aepfel sind auch faul.’ See Ida v. Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, i. 53, 107. Cf. Chaucer’s House of Fame, i. 272.

972. Pars secunda. This is where the Tale begins. Even now, the Yeoman has some more to say by way of preface, and only makes a real start at l. 1012.

975. Alisaundre, Alexandria. and other three, and three more as well.

999. I mente, I intended; as in l. 1051 below. ‘But my intention was to correct that which is amiss.’

The reading I-ment, as a past participle, adopted by Mr. Wright, is incorrect, as shewn by Mr. Cromie’s Ryme-Index. Cf. Nonne Pr. Tale, 604 (B. 4614); Sq. Tale, F. 108. See note to G. 534 above.

1005. by yow, with reference to you canons. See By in Wright’s Bible Word-book.

1012. annueleer. So called, as Tyrwhitt explains, ‘from their being employed solely in singing annuals or anniversary masses for the dead, without any cure of souls. See the Stat. 36 Edw. III. c. viii, where the Chappelleins Parochiels are distinguished from others chantanz annuales, et a cure des almes nient entendantz. They were both to receive yearly stipends, but the former was allowed to take six marks, the latter only five. Compare Stat. 2 Hen. V. St. 2. c. 2, where the stipend of the Chapellein Parochiel is raised to eight marks, and that of the Chapellein annueler (he is so named in the statute) to seven.’ See also the note at p. 505 of Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew (E. E. T. S.); and Monumenta Franciscana, p. 605.

1015. That is, to the lady of the house where he lodged.

1018. spending-silver, money to spend, ready money. The phrase occurs in Piers the Plowman, B. xi. 278.

1024. a certeyn, a certain sum, a stated sum. Cf. l. 776.

1027. at my day, on the day agreed upon, on the third day.

1029. Another day, another time, on the next occasion.

1030. him took, handed over to him; so in ll. 1034, 1112.

1055. ‘In some measure to requite your kindness.’ See note to Sq. Tale, F. 471, and cf. l. 1151.

1059. seen at yë, see evidently; lit. see at eye.

1066. ‘Proffered service stinketh’ is among Heywood’s Proverbs. Ray remarks on it—‘Merx ultronea putet, apud Hieronymum. Erasmus saith, Quin uulgo etiam in ore est, ultro delatum obsequium plerumque ingratum esse. So that it seems this proverb is in use among the Dutch too. In French, Merchandise offerte est à demi vendue. Ware that is proffered is sold for half the worth, or at half the price.’ The German is—‘Angebotene Hülfe hat keinen Lohn’; see Ida v. Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, i. 86.

1096. Algates, at any rate. Observe the context.

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1103. that we it hadde, that we might have it. Hadde is here the subjunctive. Perhaps have would be better, but it lacks authority.

1126. mortifye, mortify; a technical term. See note to l. 1431.

1151. ‘To blind the priest with.’ See note to l. 1055.

1171. For torned, read terved, i. e. flayed, skinned; MS. E. has terued (so it may be read). See l. 1274.

1185. Seint Gyles, saint Giles; a corrupted form of Ægidius. His day is Sept. 1; see Chambers’ Book of Days, ii. 296; Legenda Aurea, cap. cxxx.; or Caxton’s Golden Legende.

1204–1205. The rime is given by týmë (two syllables, from A. S. tīma) riming with by me.

On referring to Prof. Child’s Observations on the Language of Gower, I find seven references given for this rime, as occurring in the edition by Dr. Pauli. The references are—i. 227, 309, 370; ii. 41, 114, 277; iii. 369. Dr. Pauli prints byme as one word!

1210. The last foot contains the words—or a pannë.

1238–1239. MS. E. omits these two lines: the other MSS. retain them.

1244. halwes is in the genitive plural. ‘And the blessing of all the saints may ye have, Sir Canon!’

1245. ‘And may I have their malison,’ i.e. their curse.

1274. For torne, read terve, i. e. flay; as in MS. E. Cf. l. 1171.

1283. ‘Why do you wish it to be better than well?’ Answering nearly to—‘what would you have better?’

1292. A rather lax line. Is ther is to be pronounced rapidly, in the time of one syllable, and her-inne is of three syllables.

1299. Pronounce simple as simpl’; tong-e is dissyllabic.

1313. his ape, his dupe. See Prol. 706, B. 1630. The simile is evidently taken from the fact that showmen used to carry apes about with them much as organ-boys do at the present day, the apes being secured by a string. Thus, ‘to make a man one’s ape’ is to lead him about at will. The word apewarde occurs in Piers the Plowman, B. v. 540. To lead apes means to lead about a train of dupes.

1319. heyne, wretch. This word has never before been properly explained. It is not in Tyrwhitt’s Glossary. Dr. Morris considers it as another form of hyne, a peasant, or hind, but leaves the phonetic difference of vowel unaccounted for; the words are clearly distinct. It occurs in Skelton’s Bowge of Courte, l. 327:—

‘It is great scorne to see suche an hayne

As thou arte, one that cam but yesterdaye,

With vs olde seruauntes suche maysters to playe.’

Here Mr. Dyce also explains it by hind, or servant, whereas the context requires the opposite meaning of a despised master. Halliwell gives—‘Heyne, a miser, a worthless person’; but without a reference. It means ‘miser’ in Udall’s translation of Erasmus’ Apophthegmes (1564), where it occurs thrice. Thus, in bk. i. § 106, we find: ‘Soch Edition: current; Page: [431] a niggard or hayn, that he coulde not finde in his harte . . to departe with an halfpeny.’ In the same, § 22, we find: ‘haines and niggardes of their purse’; and, for a third example, see note to Parl. Foules, 610 (vol. i. p. 523). The word seems to be Scandinavian; cf. Icel. hegna, Dan. hegne, to hedge in, Swed. hägna, to fence, guard, protect; whence Lowl. Sc. hain, to hedge in, to preserve, to spare, to save money, to be penurious (Jamieson).

1320. ‘This priest being meanwhile unaware of his false practice.’ See l. 1324.

1342. Alluding to the proverb—‘As fain as a fowl [i. e. bird] of a fair morrow’; given by Hazlitt in the form—‘As glad as fowl of a fair day.’ See Piers the Plowman, B. x. 153; Kn. Tale, 1579 (A. 2437).

1348. To stonde in grace; cf. Prol. 88; also A. 1173.

1354. By our; pronounced By’r, as spelt in Shakespeare, Mid. Nt. Dr. iii. 1. 14.

1362. nere, for ne were; meaning ‘were it not for.’

1381. sy, saw. The scribes also use the form sey or seigh, as in Kn. Tale, 208 (A. 1066); Franklin’s Tale, F. 850, in both of which places it rimes with heigh (high). Of these spellings sey (riming with hey) is to be preferred in most cases. See note to Group B, l. 1.

1388. This line begins with a large capital C in the Ellesmere MS., shewing that the Tale itself is at an end, and the rest is the Yeoman’s application of it.

1389. ‘There is strife between men and gold to that degree, that there is scarcely any (gold) left.’

1408. Alluding to the proverb—‘Burnt bairns fear fire.’ This occurs among the Proverbs of Hendyng, in the form—‘Brend child fur dredeth.’ So in the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1820—‘Brent child of fyr hath muche drede.’ The German is—‘Ein gebranntes Kind fürchtet das Feuer’; see Ida v. Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, i. 531.

1410. Alluding to the proverb—‘Better late than never’; in French ‘Il vaut mieux tard que jamais.’ The German is—‘Besser spät als nie’; see Ida v. Düringsfeld’s Sprichwörter, i. 204.

1411. In Hazlitt’s Proverbs—‘Never is a long term.’

1413. Bayard was a colloquial name for a horse; see Piers Plowman, B. iv. 53, 124; vi. 196; and ‘As bold as blind Bayard’ was a common proverb. See also Troil. i. 218; Gower, Conf. Amant. iii. 44; Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 139, 186. ‘Bot al blustyrne forth unblest as Bayard the blynd’; Awdelay’s Poems, p. 48.

1416. ‘As to turn aside from an obstacle in the road.’

1419. Compare this with the Man of Lawes Tale, B. 552.

1422. rape and renne, seize and clutch. The phrase, as it stands, is meaningless; rapen is to hurry, and rennen is to run, both verbs being intransitive. But it took the place of the older phrase repen and rinen (Ancren Riwle, p. 128), from A. S. hrepian and hrīnan, to handle and touch. The Ancren Riwle gives the form arepen and arechen, with the various readings repen and rinen, ropen and rimen. Ihre quotes the Edition: current; Page: [432] English ‘rap and ran, per fas et nefas ad se pertrahere.’ Mr. Wedgwood notices rap and ran, to get by hook or crook, to seize whatever one can lay hands on, but misses the etymology. Palsgrave has—‘I rap or rende, je rapine.’ Coles (Eng. Dict. ed. 1684) has ‘rap an[d] ren, snatch and catch.’ ‘All they could rap and rend and pilfer’; Butler, Hudibras, pt. ii. c. 2. 789. (First ed., rap and run.) The phrase is still in use in the (corrupted) form to rape and rend, or (in Cleveland) to rap and ree.

Briefly, rape, properly to hurry (Icel. hrapa), is a false substitute for A. S. hrepian, allied to G. raffen; whilst renne, to run, is a false substitute for A. S. hrīnan, to touch, lay hold of.

1428. Arnoldus de Villa Nova was a French physician, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist; born about ad 1235, died ad 1314. Tyrwhitt refers us to Fabricius, Bibl. Med. Æt., in v. Arnaldus Villanovanus. In a tract printed in Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 285, we have a reference to the same saying—‘Et hoc est illud quod magni philosophi scripserunt, quod lapis noster fit ex Mercurio et sulphure praeparatis et separatis, et de hoc opere et substantia dicit Magister Arnoldus in tractatu suo parabolice, nisi granum frumenti in terra cadens mortuum fuerit, &c. Intelligens pro grano mortuo in terra, Mercurium mortuum cum sale petrae et vitriolo Romano, et cum sulphure; et ibi mortificatur, et ibi sublimatur cum igne, et sic multum fructus adfert, et hic est lapis major omnibus, quem philosophi quaesi-verunt, et inventum absconderunt.’ The whole process is described, but it is quite unintelligible to me. It is clear that two circumstances stand very much in the way of our being able to follow out such processes; these are (1) that the same substance was frequently denoted by six or seven different names; and (2) that one name (such as sulphur) denoted five or six different things (such as sulphuric acid, orpiment, sulphuret of arsenic, &c.).

1429. Rosarie, i.e. Rosarium Philosophorum, the name of a treatise on alchemy by Arnoldus de Villa Nova; Theat. Chem. iv. 514.

1431. The word mortification seems to have been loosely used to denote any change due to chemical action. Phillips explained Mortify by—‘Among chymists, to change the outward form or shape of a mixt body; as when quicksilver, or any other metal, is dissolved in an acid menstruum.’

1432. ‘Unless it be with the knowledge (i. e. aid) of his brother.’ The ‘brother’ of Mercury was sulphur or brimstone (see l. 1439). The dictum itself is, I suppose, as worthless as it is obscure.

1434. Hermes, i. e. Hermes Trismegistus, fabled to have been the inventor of alchemy. Several books written by the New Platonists in the fourth century were ascribed to him. Tyrwhitt notes that a treatise under his name may be found in the Theatrum Chemicum, vol. iv. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, lib. i. c. 10; and Smith’s Classical Dictionary. The name is preserved in the phrase ‘to seal hermetically.’

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Mr. Furnivall printed, for the Early Eng. Text Society, a tract called The Book of Quinte Essence, ‘a treatice in Englisch breuely drawe out of the book of quintis essenciis in latyn, that Hermys the prophete and kyng of Egipt, after the flood of Noe, fadir of philosophris, hadde by reuelacioun of an aungil of god to him sende.’

1438. dragoun, dragon. Here, of course, it means mercury, or some compound containing it. In certain processes, the solid residuum was also called draco or draco qui comedit caudam suam. This draco and the cauda draconis are frequently mentioned in the old treatises; see Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 29, 36, &c. The terms may have been derived from astrology, since ‘dragon’s head’ and ‘dragon’s tail’ were common terms in that science. Chaucer mentions the latter in his Astrolabe, ii. 4. 23. And see ‘Draco’ in Theat. Chem. ii. 456.

1440. sol and luna, gold and silver. The alchemists called sol (gold) the father, and luna (silver) the mother of the elixir or philosopher’s stone. See Theat. Chem. iii. 9, 24, 25; iv. 528. Similarly, sulphur was said to be the father of minerals, and mercury the mother. Id. iii. 7.

1447. secree, secret of secrets. Tyrwhitt notes—‘Chaucer refers to a treatise entitled Secreta Secretorum, which was supposed to contain the sum of Aristotle’s instructions to Alexander. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. ii. p. 167. It was very popular in the middle ages. Ægidius de Columnâ, a famous divine and bishop, about the latter end of the 13th century, built upon it his book De Regimine Principum, of which our Occleve made a free translation in English verse, and addressed it to Henry V. while Prince of Wales. A part of Lydgate’s translation of the Secreta Secretorum is printed in Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, p. 397. He did not translate more than about half of it, being prevented by death. See MS. Harl. 2251, and Tanner, Bibl. Brit. s. v. Lydgate. The greatest part of the viith Book of Gower’s Confessio Amantis [see note to l. 820] is taken from this supposed work of Aristotle.’ In the Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 14, I find an allusion to the philosopher’s stone ending with these words—‘Et Aristoteles ad Alexandrum Regem dicit in libro de secretis secretorum, capitulo penultimo: O Alexander, accipe lapidem mineralem, vegetabilem, et animalem, et separa elementa.’ See Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, sect. 19; iii. 19 (ed. 1871), or ii. 230 (ed. 1840).

1450. Tyrwhitt says—‘The book alluded to is printed in the Theatrum Chemicum, vol. v. p. 219 [p. 191, ed. 1660], under this title, Senioris Zadith fil. Hamuelis Tabula Chemica. The story which follows of Plato and his disciples is there told, p. 249 [p. 224, ed. 1660], with some variations, of Solomon. “Dixit Salomon rex, Recipe lapidem qui dicitur Thitarios (sic) . . . Dixit sapiens, Assigna mihi illum . . . Dixit, Est corpus magnesiae. . . . Dixit, Quid est magnesia? . . . Respondit, Magnesia est aqua, composita,” &c.’ The name of Plato Edition: current; Page: [434] occurs thrice only a few lines below, which explains Chaucer’s mistake. We find ‘Titan Magnesia’ in Ashmole’s Theat. Chem. p. 275; cf. pp. 42, 447. The Gk. τίτανος means lime, gypsum, white earth, chalk, &c.

1457. ignotum per ignotius, lit. an unknown thing through a thing more unknown; i. e. an explanation of a hard matter by means of a term that is harder still.

1460. The theory that all things were made of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, was the foundation on which all alchemy was built; and it was the obstinacy with which this idea was held that rendered progress in science almost impossible. The words were used in the widest sense; thus air meant any vapour or gas; water, any liquid; earth, any solid sediment; and fire, any amount of heat. Hence also the theory of the four complexions of men; for even man was likewise composed of the four elements, under the influence of the planets and stars. See Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. vii; Theat. Chem. iii. 82; iv. 533, 537; and the note to A. 420, at p. 40 above.

1461. rote represents the Lat. radix. In the Theat. Chem., ii. 463, we read that the philosopher’s stone ‘est radix, de quo omnes sapientes tractauerunt.’

1469. ‘Except where it pleases His Deity to inspire mankind, and again, to forbid whomsoever it pleases Him.’

1479. terme of his lyve, during the whole term of his life.

1481. bote of his bale, a remedy for his evil, help out of his trouble.

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NOTES TO GROUP H.

The Manciple’s Prologue.

1. Wite ye, know ye. The singular is I woot, A. S. ic wāt, Mœso-Goth. ik wait; the plural is we witen or we wite, A. S. we witon, Mœso-Goth. weis witum. See l. 82, where the right form occurs. But it is certain that Chaucer also uses the construction ye woot, as in A. 829, &c.; which, strictly speaking, was ungrammatical.

2. Bob-up-and-doun. This place is here described as being ‘under the Blee,’ i. e. under Blean Forest. It is also between Boughton-under-Blean (see Group G, l. 556) and Canterbury. This situation suits very well with Harbledown, and it has generally been supposed that Harbledown is here intended. Harbledown is spelt Herbaldoun in the account of Queen Isabella’s journey to Canterbury (see Furnivall’s Temporary Preface, p. 31; p. 124, l. 18; p. 127, l. 21), and Helbadonne in the account of King John’s journey (id. p. 131, l. 1). However, Mr. J. M. Cowper, in a letter to The Athenæum, Dec. 26, 1868, p. 886, says that there still exists a place called Up-and-down Field, in the parish of Thannington, which would suit the position equally well, and he believes it to be the place really meant. If so, the old road must have taken a somewhat different direction from the present one, and there are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case. This letter is reprinted in Furnivall’s Temporary Preface (Ch. Soc.), p. 32.

The break here between the Canon’s Yeoman’s and the Manciple’s Tales answers to the break between the first and second parts of Lydgate’s Storie of Thebes. At the end of Part I, Lydgate mentions the descent down the hill (i. e. Boughton hill), and at the beginning of Part II, he says that the pilgrims, on their return from Canterbury, had ‘passed the thorp of Boughton-on-the-blee.’

5. Dun is in the myre, a proverbial saying originally used in an old rural sport. Dun means a dun horse, or, like Bayard, a horse in general. The game is described in Brand’s Popular Antiquities, 4to. ii. 289; and in Gifford’s notes to Ben Jonson, vol. vii. p. 283. The latter explanation is quoted by Nares, whom see. Briefly, the game was of this kind. A large log of wood is brought into the midst of a kitchen or large room. The cry is raised that ‘Dun is in the mire,’ Edition: current; Page: [436] i. e. that the cart-horse is stuck in the mud. Two of the company attempt to drag it along; if they fail, another comes to help, and so on, till Dun is extricated.

There are frequent allusions to it; see Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, p. 86; Skelton, Garland of Laurell, l. 1433; Towneley Mysteries, p. 310; Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 41; Beaumont and Fletcher’s Woman-hater, iv. 3; Hudibras, pt. iii. c. iii. l. 110.

In the present passage it means—‘we are all at a standstill’; or ‘let us make an effort to move on.’ Mr. Hazlitt, in his Proverbial Phrases, quotes a line—‘And all gooth bacward, and don is in the myr.’

12. Do him come forth, make him come forward. Cf. Group B, 1888, 1889.

14. a botel hay, a bottle of hay; similarly, we have a barel ale, Monk’s Prol. B. 3083. And see l. 24 below. A bottle of hay was a small bundle of hay, less than a truss, as explained in my note to The Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 2. 45. ‘Nec vendant [foenum] per botellum’; Liber Albus, p. 721.

16. by the morwe, in the morning. There is no need to explain away the phrase, or to say that it means in the afternoon, as Tyrwhitt does. The Canon’s Yeoman’s tale is the first told on the third day, and the Manciple’s is only the second. The Cook seems to have taken too much to drink over night, and to have had something more before starting. The fresh air has kept him awake for a while at first, but he is now very drowsy indeed.

Tyrwhitt well remarks that there is no allusion here to the unfinished Cook’s Tale in Group A. This seems to shew that the Manciple’s Prologue was written before the Cook’s Tale was begun. Note that the Cook is here excused; l. 29.

23. ‘I know not why, but I would rather go to sleep than have the best gallon of wine in Cheapside.’ me were lever slepe, lit. it would be dearer to me to sleep.

24. Than constitutes the first foot; beste is dissyllabic.

29. as now, for the present; a common phrase.

33. not wel disposed, indisposed in health.

42. fan, the fan or vane or board of the quintain. The quintain, as is well known, consisted of a cross-bar turning on a pivot at the top of a post. At one end of the cross-bar was the fan or board, sometimes painted to look like a shield, and at the other was a club or bag of sand. The jouster at the fan had to strike the shield, and at the same time to avoid the stroke given by the swinging bag. The Cook was hardly in a condition for this; his eye and hand were alike unsteady, and his figure did not suggest that he possessed the requisite agility. See Quintain in Nares, and Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. iii. c. 1; As You Like It, i. 2. 263, on which see Mr. Wright’s note (Clar. Press Series); Stow, Survey of London, ed. Thoms, pp. 36, 215.

44. wyn ape, ape-wine, or ape’s wine. Tyrwhitt rightly considers this the same as the vin de singe in the Calendrier des Bergers, sign. Edition: current; Page: [437] l. ii. b., where the author speaks of the different effects produced by wine upon different men, according to their temperaments. ‘The Cholerick, he says, a vin de lyon; cest a dire, quant a bien beu, veult tanser, noyser, et battre. The Sanguine a vin de singe; quant a plus beu, tant est plus joyeux. In the same manner, the Phlegmatic is said to have vin de mouton, and the Melancholick vin de porceau.’

Tyrwhitt adds—‘I find the same four animals applied to illustrate the effects of wine in a little Rabbinical tradition, which I shall transcribe here from Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepig. Veteris Testamenti, vol. i. p. 275. “Vineas plantanti Noacho Satanam se junxisse memorant, qui, dum Noa vites plantaret, mactaverit apud illas ovem, leonem, simiam, et suem: Quod principio potûs vini homo sit instar ovis, vinum sumptum efficiat ex homine leonem, largius haustum mutet eum in saltantem simiam, ad ebrietatem infusum transformet illum in pollutam et prostratam suem.” See also Gesta Romanorum, c. 159, where a story of the same purport is quoted from Josephus, in libro de casu rerum naturalium.’ Wine of ape occurs in a detailed proverb, in Le Roux de Lincy, Prov. Franç. 1842, p. 157. The most ancient source is the Talmudical Parable, given in Rabbinische Blumenlese, Leipzig, 1844, p. 192, by Leopold Dukes (N. and Q. S. i. xii. 123).

In Bernardus de Cura Rei Familiaris, ed. Lumby, p. 13, a drunken man is thus described:—

‘And qhuilis a nape, to mak mowis as a fule,

Bot as a sow, quhen he fallis in a pule.’

And Lydgate, in his Troy-book, L. 1, back, col. 2, says of one:—‘And with a strawe playeth lyke an ape.’

Warton (Hist. E. P. ed. 1871, i. 283) gives a slight sketch of chapter 159 in the Gesta, referring to Tyrwhitt’s note, and explaining it in the words—‘when a man begins to drink, he is meek and ignorant as the lamb, then becomes bold as the lion, his courage is soon transformed into the foolishness of the ape, and at last he wallows in the mire like a sow.’

In Colyn Blowboll’s Testament, l. 280 (pr. in Hazlitt’s Early Pop. Poetry, i. 104–5) we find:—

‘Such as wilbe drongen (sic) as an ape . . .

And in such caas often tymes they be

That one may make them play with strawes thre.’

Barclay, in his Ship of Fools, ed. Jamieson, i. 96, speaking of drunken men, says—

‘Some sowe-dronke, swaloyng mete without mesure.’

And again—

‘Some are Ape-dronke, full of lawghter and of toyes.’

The following interesting explanation by Lacroix is much to the same effect:—

‘In Germany and in France it was the custom at the public entries Edition: current; Page: [438] of kings, princes, and persons of rank, to offer them the wines made in the district, and commonly sold in the town. At Langres, for instance, these wines were put into four pewter vessels called cimaises, which are still to be seen. They were called the lion, monkey, sheep, and pig wines—symbolic names, which expressed the different degrees or phases of drunkenness which they were supposed to be capable of producing: the lion, courage; the monkey, cunning; the sheep, good temper; the pig, bestiality.’—P. Lacroix; Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages, 1874, p. 508.

Massinger has: ‘Nay, if you are lion-drunk, I will make one’; The Bondman, A. iii. sc. 3.

A note in Bell’s edition quotes an illustrative passage from a song in Lyly’s play of Mother Bombie, printed in the Songs from the Dramatists, ed. Bell, p. 56:—

‘O the dear blood of grapes

Turns us to antic shapes,

Now to show tricks like apes,

Now lion-like to soar’; &c.

The idea here intended is precisely that expressed by Barclay. The Cook, being very dull and ill-humoured, is ironically termed ape-drunk, as if he were ‘full of lawghter and of toyes,’ and ready to play even with a straw. The satire was too much for the Cook, who became excited, and fell from his horse in his attempts to oppose the Manciple.

50. chiváchee, feat of horsemanship, exploit. See Prol. 85 for the serious use of the word, where in chivachye means on an (equestrian) expedition. Cf.

‘Bot oute sal ride a chivauchè’;

Ritson’s Ancient Songs, vol. i. p. 46.

51. ‘Alas! he did not stick to his ladle!’ He should have been in a kitchen, basting meat, not out of doors, on the back of a horse.

57. dominacioun, dominion. See note to F. 352. Cf. ‘the righteous shall have domination over them in the morning’; Ps. xlix. 14, Prayerbook Version. See Chaucer’s Minor Poems, xv. 16 (vol. i. p. 394).

62. fneseth, blows, puffs; of which the reading sneseth is a poor corruption, though occurring in all the modern editions. To fnese does not mean to sneeze, but to breathe hard; though sneeze is its modern form.

I have no doubt that the word neesings in Job xli. 18, meaning not ‘sneezings’ but ‘hard breathings,’ is due to the word fnesynge, by which Wyclif translates the Latin sternutatio. In Jer. viii. 16, Wyclif represents the snorting of horses by fnesting. Cf. A. S. fnæst, a puff, a blast, fnæstiað, the windpipe; fnēosung, a hard breathing. Grimm’s law helps us to a further illustration; for, as the English f is a Greek p, a cognate word is at once seen in the common Greek verb πνέω, I breathe or blow. For further examples, see fnast in Stratmann.

pose, a cold in the head. Fully described in Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 4—‘Of the Pose.’ See A. 4152.

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72. To reclaim a hawk is to bring it back to the hawker’s hand; this was generally effected by holding out a lure, or something tempting to eat. For young hawks, the lure was an artificial bird made of feathers and leather; see note in Dyce’s Skelton, ii. 147. Here the Host means that some day the Cook will hold out a bait to, or lay a snare for, the Manciple, and get him into his power; for example, he might examine the details of the Manciple’s accounts with an inconvenient precision, and perhaps the amounts charged, if tested, would not appear to be strictly honest. The Manciple replies in all good humour, that such a proceeding might certainly bring him into trouble. See Prol. 570–586. Cf. Strutt, Sports, bk. i. c. 2. § 9.

76. Read mauncipl’, and pronounce were a rapidly.

83. ‘Yea, of an excellent vintage.’

90. pouped, blown; see Nonne Prestes Tale, 578. Here ‘blown upon this horn’ is a jocular phrase for ‘taken a drink out of this gourd.’

The Maunciples Tale.

This story, of Eastern origin, is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bk. ii. ll. 534–550, whence Chaucer evidently took it. Gower, also following Ovid, gives the story very briefly; see his Conf. Amantis, ed. Pauli, i. 305. Compare the tale of the three cocks, Gesta Romanorum, cap. 68; also the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, l. 2201 (Metrical Rom. vol. iii. p. 86). Somewhat similar in idea is a tale in the Knight de la Tour, c. 16. See further in vol. iii. p. 501.

109. Phitoun, the Python, shot by Apollo; see Ovid, Met. i. 438–444; Dryden, trans. of Ovid’s Met., i. 587.

116. Amphioun, Amphion; see note to E. 1716. Cf. Horace, De Arte Poetica, l. 394.

133.

‘Nam fuit haec quondam niveis argentea pennis

Ales, ut aequaret totas sine labe columbas.’

Ovid, Met. ii. 536.

Gower has:—‘Wel more white than any swan.’

139. Ovid gives her name, Coronis of Larissa.

148. As indicated by a side-note in Hn., this passage is taken directly from the Liber Aureolus de Nuptiis of Theophrastus, as cited by St. Jerome near the end of the first Book of his treatise against Jovinian. Cf. note to D. 221.

The passage from Theophrastus is:—‘Verum quid prodest etiam diligens custodia: cum uxor seruari impudica non possit, pudica non debeat? Infida enim custos est castitatis necessitas: et illa uere pudica dicenda est, cui licuit peccare si uoluit. Pulchra cito adamatur, foeda facile concupiscit. Difficile custoditur, quod plures amant.’—Hieron. Opus Epistolarum (Basil. 1534); ii. 51.

161. Cf. Horace, Epist. I. x. 24—‘Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,’ &c. And this is the very passage which Chaucer had Edition: current; Page: [440] in view, as it is quoted and commented on in Le Roman de la Rose, 14221–8, &c. Jean de Meun adds the comment:—

‘Que vaut ce? Toute créature

Vuet retorner à sa nature.

Jà nel’ erra por violence

De force, ne de convenance.’

This passage in Le Roman is preceded by the illustration of the caged bird, and followed by that of the cat; see ll. 163, 175. Further, Jean de Meun took the illustration of the caged bird from Boethius; see next note.

163. From Boethius; see the note to F. 607. It reappears in Le Roman de la Rose, 14145–62; beginning—

‘Li oisillons du vert boscage,

Quant il est pris et mis en cage,’ &c.

Compare Sq. Ta., F. 611–617. It is interesting to see how Chaucer has repeated the passage, and yet so greatly varied the form of it. We find, however, that silk and milk rime together in both cases.

175. Not from Boethius, but from Le Roman de la Rose, 14241, &c.:—

‘Qui prendroit, biau filz, ung chaton

Qui onques rate ne raton

Véu n’auroit, puis fust noris

Sans jà véoir ras ne soris,

Lonc tens par ententive cure

De délicieuse pasture,

Et puis véist soris venir,

N’est riens qui le péust tenir,

Se l’en le lessoit eschaper,

Qu’il ne l’alast tantost haper.’

183. This is taken from a different part of Le Roman altogether, and is founded on a different argument, viz. the perversity of women’s choice, as noticed in ll. 198–200 below. See Le Rom. de la Rose, 7799–7804:—

‘Le vaillant homme arriere boute

Et prent le pire de la route:

Là norrit ses amors, et couve

Tout autresinc cum fait la louve,

Cui sa folie tant empire,

Qu’el prent des lous tretout le pire.’

vileins kinde, nature of a villain, a villainous or base disposition. Practically, vileins has here the force of an adjective, and came to be so regarded, as shewn by the formation from it of the adv. vileinsly, which occurs in I. 154, and elsewhere. Similarly, the gen. case wonders became the adj. wonders, which was gradually turned into wondrous; see Wondrous in my Etym. Dictionary.

This adj. vileyns, with the sense of ‘villainous,’ is unnoticed in Edition: current; Page: [441] Halliwell and Stratmann. Yet Chaucer uses it often, as the reader may see for himself. See D. 1158, 1268, I. 556, 631, 652, 715, 802, 854, 914; and hence vileinsly, adv., I. 154, 279, Rom. Rose, 1498.

193. newefangel, eager of novelty; see note to F. 618.

195. souneth in-to, accords with; see notes to A. 307, B. 3157, C. 54, and F. 517.

204. lemman, short for leef man, lit. dear man. The context shews that it was considered a ‘knavish’ word at this period.

207–8. Repeated from Prol. 741–2; see note to A. 741.

215. The line, as it stands, is deficient in the first foot, and is not pleasing. Tyrwhitt reads any for a. This improves it; but I do not know where he found any. The old editions of 1550 and 1561 have a, like the MSS.

220. wenche, like lemman, was a ‘knavish’ word; see E. 2202.

223. titlelees, title-less, glossed in Hn. by the words sine titulo. It means ‘usurping,’ as applied to one who has no title or claim to a throne except force. Obviously written before 1399!

224. Here out-law-e is trisyllabic, and the final e is preserved by the caesura. But in l. 231 the accent is thrown back, and it is dissyllabic, as in modern English. Tyrwhitt puts any for a, against all authority.

227. This well-known story of Alexander occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, c. 146: and this circumstance gave it vogue. In Swan’s translation, the tale begins thus:—‘Augustine tells us in his book, De Civitate Dei, that Diomedes, in a piratical galley, for a long time infested the sea, plundering and sinking many ships. Being captured by command of Alexander, before whom he was brought, the king inquired how he dared to molest the seas. “How darest thou,” replied he, “molest the earth? Because I am master only of a single galley, I am termed a robber; but you, who oppress the world with huge squadrons, are called a king and a conquerour.” ’ John of Salisbury repeats the story in his Policraticus, lib. iii. c. 14. Cf. Higden, Polychron. iii. 422.

239. volage, giddy, thoughtless; cf. E. volatile. See the E. version of the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1284 (vol. i. p. 147).

243. It was already understood that cuckoo was, as Shakespeare says, ‘a word of fear’; see Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2. 920. In the Parl. of Foules, 358, we find: ‘the cukkow ever unkinde’; vol. i. p. 348.

252. blered is thyn ye, thine eye is bleared or dimmed, i. e. thou art deceived or cajoled. See A. 4049.

262. wryen, to turn aside hastily; see A. 3283.

271. scorpioun, scorpion. Alluding to the notion that the scorpion, though its sting was deadly, had a flattering tongue, and could beguile. See notes to B. 404, E. 2059.

278. rakel, rash, hasty; afterwards altered to rake-hell, by a curious popular etymology; and then shortened to rake, as in the phrase ‘a dissolute rake.’ See rake (2) in my Etym. Dictionary. Cf. l. 283.

279. trouble, adj., troubled, clouded, obscured. Tyrwhitt explains Edition: current; Page: [442] it by ‘dark, gloomy,’ with reference to its occurrence in E. 465 above. And see Pers. Tale, I. 537.

Compare the Friar’s sermon, on the subject of Ire, in D. 2005–2088, and the description of the same in the Pers. Tale, I. 535–561.

290. fordoon, destroyed. For and (as in E. Cm.) Hn. Cp. Pt. Ln. have or.

In place of this line, Hl. has the following extraordinary variation:—

‘Fordoon, or dun hath brought hem in the myre.’

This shews that the scribe remembered the fifth line in the Manciple’s Prologue, and thought fit to re-introduce it here, where it is wholly out of place. This is one of the many signs of the untrustworthiness of this grossly over-rated MS.

294. songe, didst sing; A. S. sunge.

301. See the Parl. of Foules, l. 363, and the note (vol. i. pp. 520–1).

306. slong, slung, threw violently; needlessly altered by Tyrwhitt to flong. So in the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, l. 1316:—‘Amidde the pit he hit slong.’ As s and f are often confused, I give some alliterative examples from the Geste Historyale of the Destruction of Troy (E. E. T. S.):—

‘Sesit his sité, slong it to ground’; 4215.

‘Slogh hym full sleghly, and slange hym to ground’; 13745.

‘But the citie to sese, and slyng it to ground’; 8851.

307. which, to whom; i. e. ‘to whom I commit him.’

314. Daun, Dan, i. e. lord, sir; see note to B. 3119.

Salomon, Solomon; the reference is to Prov. xxi. 23; cf. Ps. xxxiv. 13.

317. Sayings similar to those quoted below are common; but Dr. E. Köppel has shewn (in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, ed. L. Herrig, vol. lxxxvi, p. 44) that Chaucer had particularly in mind a treatise by Albertano of Brescia, entitled De arte loquendi et tacendi. He refers us to a new edition by Thor Sundby, in a work entitled Brunetto Latinos levnet og skrifter, Kopenhagen, 1869.

We may further compare a passage in Le Roman de la Rose, 7069, which professes to follow Ptolemy’s Almagest. And we find similar pieces of advice in Middle English, with such titles as ‘How the Good Wife taught her Daughter,’ and ‘How the Wise man taught his Son’; but these are probably later than the time of Chaucer.

325. The corresponding passage in Albertano’s treatise is the following, p. xcviii:—‘Paucos vel neminem tacendo, multos loquendo circumventos vidimus, quod pulchre voluit, qui ait: Nil tacuisse nocet, nocet esse saepe locutum.’ This hexameter is quoted from Dionysius Cato, Distich. lib. i. dist. 12, slightly altered. Cato has: ‘Nam nulli tacuisse nocet, nocet esse locutum.’ Cf. the common proverb—‘a fool’s bolt is soon shot,’ which appears in the Proverbs of Alfred, l. 421. As to Cato, see note to G. 688.

329. The corresponding passage in Albertano is:—‘Causa igitur finalis tui dicti sit aut pro Dei servitio aut pro humano commodo, aut pro utroque’; p. cx.

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332. In Albertano’s treatise, p. xcvi, we find:—‘Catho dixit: Virtutem primam esse puta compescere linguam.’ From Dion. Cato, Distich. lib. i. dist. 3. Chaucer quotes it again in Troilus, iii. 294. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 7073–4.

335. Cf. Albertano, p. cxv:—‘In quantitate insuper modum requiras non multa dicendo; nam in multiloquio non deest peccatum.’ This refers to Prov. x. 19:—‘In multiloquio non deerit peccatum.’

340. Cf. Ps. lvii. 4:—‘and their tongue a sharp sword.’

344. See Prov. vi. 17, where ‘a lying tongue’ is said to be one of the seven things which ‘are an abomination unto’ the Lord. See also Prov. x. 31, xvii. 20, xxvi. 28, &c.

345. Cf. Ps. x. 7, xii. 3, lii. 2, lxiv. 3-8, cxx. 3, &c. The reference to Seneca is, probably, to his treatise De Ira, from which two stories in the Sompnours Tale are taken; or it may be to the Sentences of Publilius Syrus, which are frequently quoted in the Tale of Melibeus under the name of ‘Senek.’

350. Evidently an allusion to some Flemish proverb, equivalent to our ‘least said, soonest mended,’ which Hazlitt gives in the form—‘Little said, soon amended.’ In Bell’s edition, the suggested form of the proverb is—‘of little meddling comes great ease,’ which comes nearer to the text. Chaucer has already given us a Flemish proverb in A. 4357.

355. ‘Et semel emissum fugit irreuocabile uerbum’; Horace, Epist. I. xviii. 71. Chaucer found this line of Horace in Albertano’s treatise (p. xcviii); or in Le Roman, 16746–8.

357. Cf. Albertano’s treatise, p. cvi:—‘Consilium vel secretum tuum absconditum quasi in carcere tuo est reclusum; revelatum vero te in carcere suo tenet ligatum.’

359. This is clearly, as Tyrwhitt suggests, from Dionysius Cato, Distich. lib. i. dist. 12:—‘Rumores fuge, ne incipias novus auctor haberi.’

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NOTES TO GROUP I.

The Parson’s Prologue.

1. maunciple, manciple; see the last Tale. But there is no real connexion between this Group and Group H. It is most likely that the word maunciple was only inserted provisionally.

When the Manciple had told his Tale, it was still only morning; see H. 16, and the note. The Pilgrims, however, had not far to go. Perhaps we may suppose that they halted on the road, having a shorter day’s work before them than on previous occasions, and then other Tales might have been introduced; so that the time wore away till the afternoon came. It is clear, from l. 16, that the Parson’s Tale was intended, when the final reversion should be made, to be the last on the outward journey. Whatever difficulties exist in the arrangement of the Tales may fairly be considered as due to the fact, that the final revision was never made.

4. nyne and twenty. In my Preface to Chaucer’s Astrolabe (E. E. T. S.), p. lxiii, I have explained this passage fully. In that treatise, part ii. sections 41–43, Chaucer explains the method of taking altitudes. He here says that the sun was 29° high, and in ll. 6-9 he says that his height was to his shadow in the proportion of 6 to 11. This comes to the same thing, since the angle whose tangent is 6/11 is very nearly 29°. Chaucer would know this, as I have shewn, by simple inspection of an astrolabe, without calculation.

5. Foure, four p.m. Many MSS. have Ten, but the necessity of the correction is undoubted. This was proved by Mr. Brae, in his edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe, pp. 71–74. We have merely to remember that ten p.m. would be after sunset, to see that some alteration must be made. Now the altitude of the sun was 29°, and the day of the year was about April 20; and these data require that the time of day should be about 4 p.m. Tyrwhitt notes that some MSS. actually have the reading Foure, and this gives us authority for the change. Mr. Brae suggests that the reading Ten was very likely a gloss upon Foure; since four o’clock is the tenth hour of the day, reckoning from 6 a.m. The whole matter is thus accounted for.

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10. the mones exaltacioun, the moon’s exaltation. I have discussed this passage in my Preface to Chaucer’s Astrolabe, (E. E. T. S.), p. lxiii. Of course Chaucer uses exaltation here (as in other passages) in its ordinary astrological sense. The ‘exaltation’ of a planet is that sign in which it was believed to exert its greatest influence; and, in accordance with this, the old tables call Taurus the ‘exaltation of the Moon,’ and Libra the ‘exaltation of Saturn.’ These results, founded on no reasons, had to be remembered by sheer effort of memory, if remembered at all. I have no doubt, accordingly, that Chaucer (or his scribes) has made a mistake here, and that the reading should be ‘Saturnes,’ as proposed by Tyrwhitt. The sentence then means—‘Therewith Saturn’s exaltation, I mean Libra, kept on continually ascending above the horizon.’ This would be quite right, as the sign of Libra was actually ascending at the time supposed. The phrase ‘I mene Libra’ may be paralleled by the phrase ‘I mene Venus’; Kn. Tale, 1358 (A. 2216); see also Group B. 1860, 2141. alwey, continually, is common in Chaucer; see Clerkes Tale, E. 458, 810. gan ascende, did ascend, is the opposite to gan descende; Clerkes Tale, E. 392. It is somewhat remarkable that the astrologers also divided each sign into three equal parts of ten degrees each, called ‘faces’; mentioned in Chaucer’s Astrolabe, ii. 4. 39, and in the Squieres Tale, F. 50. According to this arbitrary scheme, the first 10 degrees of Libra were called the ‘face of the moon,’ or ‘mones face.’ This suggests that Chaucer may, at the moment, have confused face with exaltation, thus giving us, as the portion of the zodiac intended, the first ten degrees of Libra.

I doubt if the phrase is worth further discussion. For further information, see my Preface to Chaucer’s Astrolabe (as above); and, for an ingenious (but impossible and unconvincing) theory, offered in explanation of the whole passage, see Mr. Brae’s edition of the same, p. 74. Most unfortunately, more than one attempt has been made to fix the date of the Canterbury Tales, by adopting as the true reading the phrase ‘In mene Libra,’ and then pretending that the moon itself (not its exaltation) was ‘in the middle of Libra.’ But this reading is evolved out of a mistake in MS. Hl., which (after all) has not In mene, but In mena (!); neither does In mene mean ‘in the middle.’ All calculations founded on this rotten basis are necessarily worthless.

16. This means that the Parson’s Tale was meant to be the last one on the outward journey. Unfortunately, there lack a great many more tales than one, as the matter really stands.

26. ‘Unpack your wallet, and let us see what is in it.’ In other words, tell us a story, and let us see what it is like.

32. See 1 Tim. i. 4, iv. 7; 2 Tim. iv. 4.

42. Southren. Nearly all alliterative poems are in the Northern or West-Midland dialect, as opposed to the East-Midland dialect of Chaucer, which approaches the Southern dialect. Still, it is the Parson himself, not Chaucer, who says he is a Southerner; though Edition: current; Page: [446] perhaps the poet meant, naturally enough, to tell us that he was himself resident in Kent (probably at Greenwich). The dialect of Kent was Southern. Many Southern forms occur in Gower.

43. rum, ram, ruf are of course nonsense words, chosen to represent alliteration, because they all alike begin with r. In most alliterative poetry, the number of words in a line beginning with a common letter is, as Chaucer suggests, three.

The word geste here means no more than ‘tell a story,’ without reference to the form of the story. It is, however, worth noting that one very long alliterative poem on the siege of Troy, edited by Panton and Donaldson (Early English Text Society), bears the title of ‘Gest Hystoriale.’ The number of distinctively Northern words in it is very considerable.

I think that this line has been forced by some out of its true meaning, and made to convey a sneer against alliterative poetry which was by no means intended. Neither Chaucer himself nor his amiable parson would have spoken slightingly of other men’s labours. The introduction of the words rum, ram, ruf conveys no more than a perfectly good-humoured allusion. That this is the true view is clear from the very next line, where the Parson declares that ‘he holds rime but little better.’

The most interesting question is—why should Chaucer allude to alliterative poetry at all? The answer is, in my view, that he distinctly wished to recognise the curious work of his contemporary William, whose Vision of Piers the Plowman had, by this time, passed, as it were, into a second edition, having been extremely popular in London, and especially amongst the lower classes. The author was not a Southerner, but his poem had come to London, together with himself, before ad 1377.

In his play entitled The Old Wives’ Tale, Peele introduces a character named Huanebango who imitates the spluttering hexameters used by Stanyhurst in his translation of a part of Vergil’s Æneid, and afterwards says:—‘I’ll now set my countenance, and to her in prose; it may be, this rim-ram-ruf is too rude an encounter.’ He evidently borrowed the expression from Chaucer.

I may further observe that Chaucer did not invent these nonsense words himself; he probably borrowed them from some French source. For, in Sigart’s Walloon Dictionary, we find these entries following.

‘Rim ni ram (ça n’a ni), cela n’a ni rime ni raison.

Rim-ram, protocole, formulaire: C’est toudi l’même rim-ram, c’est toujours la même chanson.’

Again, in the Dispute between the Soul and the Body (Vernon MS.), printed in Wright’s edition of Walter Mapes, p. 340, col. 2, we find:—

‘For to bere thi word so wyde,

And maken of the rym and raf.’

51. Alluding to Rev. xxi. 2. There is also here a direct reference to the opening sentences of the Persones Tale; see I. 79, 80.

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57. textuel, literally exact in giving the text. The next line means ‘I only gather (and give you) the general meaning.’ Most quotations at this period were very inexact, and Chaucer was no more exact than others.

67. hadde the wordes. Tyrwhitt says—‘This is a French phrase. It is applied to the Speaker of the Commons in Rot. Parl. 51 Edw. III. n. 87: “Mons. Thomas de Hungerford, Chivaler, qi avoit les paroles pur les Communes d’Angleterre en cest Parlement,” &c.’ It means—was the spokesman.

The Persones Tale.

A considerable portion of this Tale (chiefly after § 23) is borrowed from a French Treatise by Frère Lorens, entitled ‘La Somme des Vices et des Vertus,’ the very treatise of which the Ayenbite of Inwyt is a translation. This treatise, says Dr. Morris, ‘was composed in the year 1279 for the use of Philip the Second of France, by Frère Lorens (or Laurentius Gallus, as he is designated in Latin), of the order of Friars Preachers’ or Dominicans. There are two MS. copies of this treatise in the British Museum, viz. MS. Cotton, Cleopatra, A.v., and the Royal MS. 19 C. ii.

The printed text (circa 1495) is scarce; but numerous quotations from the Cotton MS. are given by Dr. W. Eilers, in Essays on Chaucer, Part V., pp. 501–610, published by the Chaucer Society. I occasionally give extracts from these quotations below, and I simply denote them by the symbol ‘Fr.’ I also use ‘Ayenb.’ to denote the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris (E. E. T. S.). An interesting review, by Dr. Koch, of this essay by Eilers, will be found in Anglia, vol. v. pt. ii. p. 130.

The ‘sections’ (marked §) into which the Tale is divided are the same as in Tyrwhitt’s edition, though he does not number them. Still, it renders reference to that edition an easy matter.

The clauses or ‘lines,’ or short subdivisions, are the same as in the Six-text edition. Each ‘line’ ends with a slanting stroke, as in the Tale of Melibee, and they are numbered ‘by fives’ in the margin.

Text. The ‘text’ at the head of the Tale is taken from the Vulgate version of Jer. vi. 16. The usual reading for viis is semitis.

I have only partially succeeded in finding the numerous quotations. For some of the references I am indebted to the Rev. E. Marshall.

75. A note in Bell’s Chaucer suggests that we should read—‘that wole that no man,’ &c.; inserting wole that. But the old edd. agree with the MSS.; and the text is right as it stands. That no man wole periss[Editor: illegible character]=that wishes no one to perish. For this common use of wole, see the very next phrase, which means—‘but desires that we may all come.’ The reference is to 2 Pet. iii. 9, where Wyclif’s later version has a similar turn of expression, viz. ‘and wole not that ony men perische, but that alle turne ayen to penaunce.’

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77. A translation of Jer. vi. 16 above; it is nearest to Wyclif’s earlier version: ‘Stondeth up-on weies, and seeth, and asketh of the olde pathis, what is the goode weie; and goth in it, and yee shul fynde refreshinge to youre soules.’

79. espirituels, the pl. (French) adj. in s, following its sb.; see B. 2038, F. 1278.

80. Alluding to ll. 50, 51 of the Prologue to this Tale.

82. whennes it is cleped Penitence; our author entirely forgets this clause in the sequel, and takes no more notice of the point here noted.

84. ‘Poenitentia est et mala praeterita plangere, et plangenda iterum non committere’; S. Ambrosii Opera, Appendix, Sermo xxv; ed. Migne (Cursus Patrologicus), vol. 17, col. 655.

The quotations, chiefly from the Latin fathers, in this Persones Tale, are so numerous, and often so brief and inexact, that I am not able to give the references in more than a few instances. I have, however, succeeded in finding some of them, such as the one above.

85. In the works of St. Ambrose, the following sentence occurs just above the one cited in the last note: ‘Poenitentia vero est dolor cordis, et amaritudo animae pro malis quae quisque commisit.’

89. St. Isidore of Seville is here intended (born ad 570, died ad 636). Cf. 551 below, (p. 603). I find no passage which precisely answers to this quotation, but I think the following is intended: ‘Nam qui plangit peccatum, et iterum admittit peccatum, quasi si quis lavet laterem crudum, quem quanto magis eluerit, tanto amplius lutum facit.’—S. Isidorus, Sententiarum lib. ii. c. 13; ed. Migne, vol. 83, col. 613. Here Isidore does not call the sinner a ‘japer,’ but says that he is as foolish as a man who washes an unburnt brick; for such a process only produces more mud.

92. St. Gregory the Great, the first pope of that name, is here meant; and the following is probably the passage referred to: ‘Ut intelligas in anima gravissimo iniquitatis pondere obrutum . . . ut ad sublimia levari jam non valeat, quoniam iniquitatis eam [mentem] gravitudo coarctat.’—S. Gregorius, in Septem Psalmos Poenitentiales Expositio; Ps. xxvii. v. 8; ed. Migne, vol. 79, col. 572.

93. and forlete sinne, and forsake sin before they die. This expression has already occurred at the end of the Phisiciens Tale; see C. 286.

94. Note the glosses in the footnotes; thus tak means tene, i. e. ‘keep to’; and siker is certum, i. e. ‘sure.’

96. It is quite hopeless to make any sense of this passage. It is perfectly clear that, as Koch suggests (see Anglia, V. pt. ii. p. 135), a considerable portion of the text is here lost. And no doubt it happened in the usual way, viz. by the omission of a clause included between some repeated words, such as that a man. Our author must have described, first of all, three actions of Penitence; and afterwards, three defautes (or defects) in doing penance. All that we have left is a notice of the first action (left unexplained), and a partial Edition: current; Page: [449] explanation of the three ‘defautes.’ I suggest, therefore, a lacuna after that a man; and I take it that the original text had: ‘The firste accion of Penitence is that a man [do so and so. The second action is, that he do so and so. The third is, that he do so and so. Moreover, ye shall understand that there are three defautes in doing penance. The first is, if that a man] be baptized after that he hath sinned.’ Some MSS. read that if a man or if a man before be baptized. I do not see that this helps us, because I do not think that this is where the fault really lies.

97. The quotation here meant is the following: ‘Omnis enim, qui iam arbiter voluntatis suae constitutus est, cum accedit ad sacramentum fidelium, nisi eum poeniteat vitae veteris, novam non potest inchoare’: Homil. l.; in Opp. Basil. 1569, tom. x. col. 552 C.

100. ‘Est enim poenitentia bonorum et humilium fidelium poena quotidiana’; S. Aug. Opp. Basil. 1569, tom. ii. col. 507 A; Epist. cviii.

102. spyces, species, kinds; of frequent occurrence in this Tale.

103. The ‘slaughter of children’ here referred to is probably the accidental overlying of them by nurses, which was accounted a deadly sin, as being the result of negligence. This Chaucer expressly states below; see 575 (p. 604).

105. naked, i. e. thinly clad, in little more than a shirt-like garment.

108. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xvii. 29:—

‘Cordis contricio cometh of sorwe in herte,

And oris confessio, that cometh of shrifte of mouthe,

And operis satisfactio, that for synnes payeth

And for alle synnes soueraynliche quiteth:

Cordis contricio, oris confessio, operis satisfactio.’

I find ‘confessio’ and ‘cordis contritio’ mentioned near together in the Latin version of St. Chrysostom’s 20th homily on Genesis, cap. iv; ed. Migne, vol. liii. col. 170.

115. Not the words of Christ, but of St. John the Baptist; Matt. iii. 8.

116. See Matt. vii. 20.

119. ‘Et in timore Domini declinatur a malo’; Prov. xvi. 6.

125. ‘Iniquos odio habui, et legem tuam dilexi’; Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 113.

126. Cf. Daniel iv. 10–27.

127. The reference is probably to Prov. xxviii. 13.

128. In this Penitence, i. e. in this ‘spice’ or particular portion of Penitence; for he is here speaking of Contrition only.

130. St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The reference may be to the following passage: ‘Tertius gradus est dolor, sed et ipse trina connexione ligatus. Vere post cognitionem et poenitentiam dolor renovatus est, et in meditatione mea ignis incanduit, quia Creatorem offendi, Dominunt non timui, sprevi benefactorem.’—S. Bernardus, Sermo xl. § 5; ed. Migne, vol. 183, col. 649.

134. I find nothing like this in Job; the nearest passage seems to be Edition: current; Page: [450] in ch. xxxiii. vv. 26–28, where the idea of forgiveness after confession is referred to.

135. Ezechie, king Hezekiah; see Isaiah, xxxviii. 15 (Vulgate).

136. From Rev. ii. 5.

138. Referring to 2 Pet. ii. 22.

141. From Ezek. xx. 43.

142. Really from John viii. 34; but cf. 2 Pet. ii. 19.

143. Here, again, the reference is wrong. The text intended is, probably, Job xlii. 6, where the Vulgate has:—‘Idcirco ipse me reprehendo, et ago poenitentiam in favilla et cinere.’ Cf. Ps. xxxviii. 6.

144. The allusions to Seneca are numerous, and sentences from other authors are frequently attributed to him.

150. ‘Vis ut tibi seruiat cum quo factus es, et non uis seruire ei a quo factus es? Ergo cum uis ut seruiat tibi seruus tuus homo, et tu non uis seruire Deo, facis Deo quod tu pati non uis.’—S. Aug. Opp. Basil. 1569, tom. ix. col. 929 D; De Decem Chordis, cap. x.

151. Take reward of, have regard to.

154. vileynsly; an adv. formed from the adj. vileyns, base. See 652 below; &c.

156. See Prov. xi. 22. groyn, snout. ‘Groyne of a swyne, Rostrum porcinum’; Prompt. Parv. Cotgrave has:—‘Groin de porceau, the snowt of a Hog.’ Florio’s Ital. Dict. has:—‘Grugno, the snout of a hog.’ The Low Lat. form is grunnus; we find—‘Grunnus, Anglice a gruyn, or a wrot’; Wright-Wülcker’s Gloss. col. 587, l. 23. The A. S. word is wrōt; whence M. E. wroten, vb., as below.

159. This quotation is also given, in Latin, in Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, l. 4671:—‘Siue comedam, siue bibam, siue aliquid aliud faciam, semper michi uidetur illa tuba resonare in auribus meis, Surgite, mortui, uenite ad iudicium.’ It occurs still earlier, in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 37. It is not really from Jerome, but occurs in the Regula Monachorum, in S. Hieron. Opp. tom. v. App.; Paris, 1706. Cf. Lyndesay’s Monarchè, book iv. l. 5606.

162. From Rom. xiv. 10.

164. essoyne, excuse; a common legal term; A.F. essoigne, essoyne; See Essoin in my Etym. Dict., 2nd ed., Addenda.

166. ‘Nulla ibi dissimilatio, ubi reddenda ratio etiam de verbo otioso’; S. Bernardus, Sermo ad Prelatos in Concilio, § 5; ed. Migne, vol. 184, col. 1098.

168. This gives the general sense of Prov. i. 28.

169. ‘O angustiae! Hinc erunt peccata accusantia; inde terrons iustitia; subtus patens horridum chaos inferni; desuper iratus iudex; intus urens conscientia; foris ardens mundus. Iustus uix saluabitur; peccator sic deprehensus in quam partem se premet? Constrictus ubi latebo? quomodo parebo? Latere erit impossibile; apparere intolerabile.’—S. Anselmi Meditatio Secunda; ed. Migne, vol. 158, col. 724. Cf. St. Bernard, Tractatus de Interiore Domo, cap. 22, § 46; Ancren Riwle, p. 304.

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174. This passage from Jerome is probably founded upon Ps. xcvii. 3, 4.

176. From Job x. 20–22.

181. Referring to the quotation above; see 177.

182. I.e. Job calls it ‘dark,’ because he that is in hell is deprived of natural light. Of course material is here the adjective.

183. shal turne him al to peyne, shall all become painful to him; him is here a dative. In Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, ll. 6823, 6829, we find the above quotation from Job x. 20–22; and, soon after (l. 6879), a quotation from St. Augustine which seems to be here imitated:—‘Demones igne scintillante uidebunt.’

186. defautes, wants, deprivations; agayn, as compared with.

189. Not from Jeremiah, but from 1 Sam. ii. 30; cf. Mal. ii. 9.

190. fortroden of, trodden down by; see fortreden in Stratmann; A. S. fortredan.

191. This singular quotation is said, in Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, l. 8592, to be from the book of Job. The reference is to Job xx. 25, where the Vulgate has: ‘uadent et uenient super eum horribiles.’ The word demones is supplied in Hampole before horribiles. Even Wycliffe’s version has: ‘orrible fendis schulen go, and schulen come on hym.’ A. V. ‘terrors are upon him.’

defouled, trodden down. In Ps. cxxxviii. 11, Wycliffe has—‘schulen defoule me’; Vulgate, ‘conculcabunt me.’

193. Chaucer extends this quotation by the insertion of the explanatory words about ‘the riche folk’; see Ps. lxxvi. 5. oneden to, united to, entirely gave up (their hearts) to. The pp. oned, united, occurs in D. 1968. See Prompt. Parv. p. 365.

195. From Deut. xxxii. 24, 33. Cf. Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, l. 6755.

198. From Isaiah xiv. 11.

201. From Micah vii. 6.

204. The reference is to the Vulgate version of Ps. x. 6 (answering to Ps. xi. 6 in the A.V.): ‘Qui autem diligit iniquitatem, odit animam suam.’ Cf. Prov. xxix. 24.

207. The ‘five wits’ are the five senses. Cf. P. Plowman, B. xiv. 53:—

‘Bi so that thow be sobre of syghte and of tonge,

In etynge and in handlynge, and in alle thi fyue wittis.’

208. grintinge, gnashing; cf. Matt. xiii. 42, xxv. 30.

209. nosethirles, nostrils. This seems to be taken from Jerome; for Hampole, in his Pricke of Conscience, l. 6677, says:—

‘Of this Saynt Ierom, the haly man,

Says thus, als I here shewe yhow can:

Ibi est ignis inextinguibilis, et fetor intollerabilis.’

Isaye, Isaiah. The reference is to the Vulgate version of Isaiah, xxiv. 9:—‘amara erit potio bibentibus illam.’ But I may remark, Edition: current; Page: [452] that the corresponding passage in Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience refers us, at l. 6770, to Job xx. 16; and that the word ‘gall’ occurs in Job xx. 14.

210. The reference is to the last verse in Isaiah.

211. Alluding to Job x. 22, already cited above; see note to 176. The Vulgate has:—‘ubi umbra mortis.’

214. ‘Fit ergo miseris mors sine morte, finis sine fine, defectus sine defectu, quia et mors uiuit, et finis semper incipit, et deficere defectus nescit’;—S. Gregorius, Moralium lib. ix. c. 66; ed. Migne, vol. 75, col. 915.

216. From Rev. ix. 6. Cf. Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, ll. 6723, 7387.

217. Referring to the words ‘et nullus ordo,’ in Job x. 22; see 177 above.

218. This seems to have been the usual explanation of the passage. See the curious application of this text to the friars in Piers Plowman, B. xx. 268.

220. Referring to Ps. cvii. 34.

221. St. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea (born in 329, died in 379). The passage alluded to is from his Homilies on the Psalms; on Ps. xxviii. 7; § 6.

223. The same text as that translated above (177) by ‘grisly drede that ever shal laste.’ ‘Sempiternus horror inhabitat’; Job x. 22.

225. This probably refers to the words ‘In inferno nulla est redemptio,’ founded on Job vii. 9; see P. Plowm. C. xxi. 153.

227. From Prov. xi. 7.

229–230. I cannot trace these references Cf. Eccl. i. 18.

236. From Ezek. xviii. 24.

248. This seems to be the refrain of a Balade. It is interesting to notice that Chaucer again quotes it, as a line of verse, in his poem on Fortune; see Minor Poems, x. 7 (vol. i. p. 383).

252. to paye with his dette, to pay his debt with.

253–4. This is evidently the same passage from St. Bernard as that referred to in Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience, l. 5653:—‘Sicut non peribit capillus de capite, ita non erit momentum de toto tempore, de quo sane non conqueratur.’

258. mowes, grimaces. ‘Mowe, or skorne’; Prompt. Parv. p. 346. Cf. Troil. iv. 7.

273. This probably refers to Ps. lxix, which is frequently interpreted to refer to the sufferings of Christ; see vv. 7, 9, 18–21.

281. From Isaiah liii. 5.

284. From the Vulgate version of John xix. 19.

286. From Matt. i. 21.

287. From Acts iv. 12.

288. Nazarenus, an inhabitant of Nazareth.

There is a further reference to passages in which the promised Messiah is described as a nētser, i. e. a ‘shoot’ or ‘sprout,’ of Jesse. Genesius explains nētser as meaning ‘a branch,’ Isaiah xiv. 19, lx. 21; Edition: current; Page: [453] and, metaphorically, ‘a Branch of Jesse,’ Isaiah xi. 1. This sense of ‘branch’ or ‘sprout’ shews the origin of the explanation of the word as ‘flourishing.’

289. From Rev. iii. 20.

300. and nat repente, and (for him) not to repent; used substantively, as equivalent to ‘non-repentance.’ So also repenten him, to repent, is equivalent to ‘repentance.’

303. ‘Scio enim Deum inimicum omni criminoso’; S. Aug. De Vera Poenitentia, cap. ix; Opp. Basil. 1569, tom. iv. col. 1044 C.

307. Ps. xcvii. 10 (xcvi. 10, in the Vulgate).

309. From Ps. xxxii. 5. The words that is to seyn are superfluous.

313. sone of ire, i. e. a child of wrath; Eph. ii. 3.

315. a sory song, i. e. a mournful song.

316. The subject of this second Chapter, viz. Confession, is interrupted, in §§ 23–84, by a long description of the Seven Deadly Sins. The subject is resumed in § 85, at p. 634. As to Confession, compare the Ancren Riwle, p. 299, and Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 24.

317. And whether it oghte nedes be doon or noon. Here again, as in 83 above, Chaucer forgets this clause, and pays no more heed to the matter.

320. Before avaunte, understand he moot; i. e. and (he must) not boast of his good works. Compare Ancren Riwle, p. 317; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 255.

322. From Rom. v. 12.

326–330. Compare Wycliffe’s later version of Gen. iii. 1-7.

337–340. This agrees rather closely with the Ninth of the Articles of Religion.

341. refreyded, chilled, cooled. Words of Anglo-French origin have ey or ei in place of the Central French oi. Cotgrave has:—‘Refroidir, to coole, to take away the heat of, to slacken, to calme.’ Cotgrave also has:—‘Malefice, a mischiefe; . . . also, a charme (wherby hurt is done); mischievous witchery.’ It is the same word as the Span. malhecho, mischief, and Shakespeare’s mallecho; Hamlet, iii. 2. 146.

342. From Gal. v. 17.

343. Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 25–27.

344. From Rom. vii. 24.

345. This passage refers to St. Jerome’s 22nd Epistle to Eustochium, De Virginitate, § 7 (ed. Migne, vol. 22. col. 398). A long extract from this letter is given in Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, under Sept. 30.

348. From James i. 14.

349. From 1 John i. 8.

351. The sense shews that suggestion is really meant; but it only appears in MSS. Selden and Lansdowne; all the rest have subieccion or subieccioun, which I have therefore retained in the text. The fact is, that the words were confused in medieval Latin. Ducange gives subjectio, as used for suggestio. However, we find the words ‘by wikked suggestion’ just below, in l. 355.

bely, i. e. bellows; so in all the seven MSS. It is precisely the same Edition: current; Page: [454] word as the mod. E. belly, notwithstanding the present difference in sense. The old sense was simply ‘bag’; applied either to an inflated bag for blowing, or to the abdomen. The pl. form belies was also used in the double sense, viz. (1) a pair of bellows, and (2) bellies; in fact, a pair of bellows is still called blow-bellis in some parts of Shropshire; see Blow-bellows and Blow-bellys in Miss Jackson’s Shropshire Glossary. And see the full explanations of Bellows and Belly in the New Eng. Dict.

355. ‘Perhaps there may be some such passage in the Rabbinical histories of Moses, which the learned Gaulmin published in the last century (Paris, 1629, 8vo.), and which, among other traditions, contain that alluded to by St. Jude, Epist. 9.’—Tyrwhitt. An apocryphal book, called the Assumption of Moses, is mentioned by Origen.

358. Wycliffe protested against this attempted distinction between ‘venial’ and ‘deadly’ sin; see his Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 452. See also Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 43.

362. Hazlitt gives this proverb in the form—‘Many littles make a mickle’; from Camden’s Remains. He adds several parallels from Ray’s Proverbs. Another similar proverb is: ‘A little leak will sink a great ship’; cf. 363.

363. crevace, crevice. thurrok, the holde of a ship. ‘Thurrok of a schyppe, Sentina’; Prompt. Parv. The following remarkable passage occurs in The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. Blunt (E. E. T. S.), pt. ii. pp. 108, 109:—‘Noe [Noah] ioyed that hys Shyppe shulde be so pycked [pitched] wyth-in and wyth-out, that there shulde [be?] no thorrocke [bilge-water?] that myghte syee [leak, ooze in] or droppe in therto. Ye shall vnderstonde that there ys a place in the bottome of a shyppe wherein ys gatheryd all the fylthe that cometh in-to the shyppe, other by lekynge or by syinge in-to yt by the bourdes, when the shyppe is olde, or when yt is not wel pycked, or by eny other wyse. And that place stynketh ryghte fowle; and yt ys called in some contre [county] of thys londe a thorrocke. Other calle yt an hamron, and some calle yt the bulcke of the shyppe. And thys is the thorrocke that this Lesson spekyth of. For the shyppe of Noe was soo well pycked, that there gatheryd no soche fylthe therin.’ It is cognate with Du. durk, Mid. Du. durck; Hexham’s Du. Dict. has:—‘Durck van het schip daer al het water ende vuyligheyt in loopt, The Bottom or Sink of a ship where all the water and filth runs in.’ Sewel’s Du. Dict. has:—‘Durk (vuyl scheepswater), The foul water at the bottom of a ship.’ This shews that the word meant (1) the lower part of the hold; and (2) the bilge-water that collects there. Probably a still older sense is simply ‘hull’; for we find A. S. þurruc, as a gloss to ‘Cumba, uel caupolus’; Wright-Wülcker’s Gloss. 181. 35. And Ducange has:—‘Cumba, cymba, navis, seu potius navis species . . . Glossar. Arabico-Latinum; Lembus, navicula brevis, dicta et caupulus, et cumba, et lintris . . . . Ugutio: Cumba et cimba, ima pars navis et vicinior aquis.’

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This image is doubtless borrowed from St. Gregory; see Sweet’s ed. of Ælfred’s translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, cap. lvii.

378. tale, relate, narrate; cf. A. 772; Will. of Palerne, 160; Gower, C. A. iii. 329. A. S. talian. Tyrwhitt reads talke.

384. I find, in Caxton’s Golden Legende, the expression—‘yf they had done ony venyal synne, hit was anone putte awey by the loue of charyte, lyke as a drope of water in a fornays.’—Of the Commemoracion of Al Soules. See my note to P. Pl. C. vii. 338.

386. Confiteor, I confess. In the Ancren Riwle, p. 137, the editor’s translation has:—‘Wherefore every anchoress saith to every priest Confiteor first of all, and confesseth herself first of all, and often.’

387. Here begins the famous and very common subject of the Seven Deadly Sins, largely borrowed from the treatise by Frère Lorens mentioned above (p. 447). I give occasional quotations from the French text, marked ‘Fr.,’ with references to the pages of Essays on Chaucer, Part V (Chaucer Society).

I here repeat, from my note on P. Plowman, C. vii. 3, some of the references to passages in which the Seven Sins appear. See, for instance, Ælfric’s Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 219; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 119, 225; The Ancren Riwle, ed. Morton, pp. 198–204; Religious Pieces, ed. Perry (E. E. T. S.), pp. 11, 12; the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 16; Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 215; Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, ed. Furnivall, p. 62; Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 33; Dunbar’s Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins; Spenser, F. Q. bk. i. c. 4; &c. See also Sins in Nares’ Glossary.

The Seven Sins, in Chaucer’s order, are:—

1. Superbia, Pride (p. 591); its ‘remedy’ is Humilitas, Humility.

2. Inuidia, Envy (p. 598); remedy, Caritas, Love.

3. Ira, Ire, Wrath (p. 601); remedy, Patientia, Patience.

4. Accidia, Sloth (p. 612); remedy, Fortitudo, Strength.

5. Auaricia, Avarice (p. 617); remedy, Misericordia, Pity.

6. Gula, Gluttony (p. 623); remedy, Abstinentia, Abstinence.

7. Luxuria, Lechery (p. 625); remedy, Castitas, Chastity.

springers, origins, sources. I adopted this reading from Hl., because none of the other MSS. make sense. They have spryngen of or springen of (Hn. sprynge of), which can only mean ‘arise from,’ thus exactly contradicting the sense intended. Thynne has springe of; but Wright, Morris, and Bell all have springers of, as they follow the Harl. MS. I know no other example of this rare word; and it is difficult to see why the commoner form springes would not have served the purpose. Tyrwhitt gets over the difficulty by transposing the words, as in the Selden MS., thus reading—‘and of hem springen alle,’ &c. But the other MSS. do not countenance this arrangement.

388. Pride is usually accounted as the chief of all sins, and the source of the rest; cf. Ecclus. x. 13; P. Plowman, C. vii. 3 (B. v. 63), and the note; Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 16.

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There is a long passage in St. Gregory’s Moralium lib. xxxi. c. 45 (ed. Migne, vol. 76. col. 621), to which I suppose that later writers were much indebted. It is explicitly referred to, for instance, by John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 1. I quote some passages from it further on, in suitable places. It begins thus:—

‘Radix quippe cuncti mali Superbia est. Primae autem ejus soboles, septem nimirum principalia vitia, de hac virulenta radice proferuntur, scilicet inanis gloria, invidia, ira, tristitia, avaritia, ventris ingluvies, luxuria; . . . sed habet contra nos haec singula exercitum suum.’

389. hise braunches, its branches. In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 17, they are called boghes, boughs; and the ‘twigs’ are called little boghes.

De Superbia.

390. In Essays on Chaucer, p. 510, Dr. Eilers gives a detailed and careful comparison of the English with the French text from which it is partly derived. The result, through no fault of his, is more bewildering than useful; for the numerous alterations in the arrangement of the parts of the subject are altogether too tedious to explain. The reader will gain the best idea of the state of the case, if I here quote Dr. Eilers’ summary of his comparison of the two texts, as to their treatment of ‘Pride.’ Similar numberless alterations of detail occur in the treatment of the other ‘Sins.’ (Fr.=French text).

‘From the above [comparison] it will appear that a well-ordered scheme underlies the French text. Orguel is divided into 7 branches, and each of these again into a similar number of reinselez (branchettes). Let us examine the English text (Chaucer’s) more closely. After first pointing out (substantially in agreement with Fr.) the impossibility of naming all the parts (twigges) into which Pride may be divided, 16 twigges are enumerated, but without that logical coherence apparent in Fr. Next follow short definitions of the twigs, in which, however, the 11th twig (Strif) is omitted from the list, and is added instead at the end, under janglinge, which had never been mentioned before. These 16 twigs correspond partly to the branches, partly to the reinselez of Fr., whilst some of them are not found in Fr. at all, or at least not under the same heading.

‘The definitions correspond only in their general sense with Fr. [Here instances are given.]

‘Throughout this part there is in Ch. much confusion of particulars. The definition of “swelling of herte” is incorrect. “Arrogaunce” and “Presumpcion,” which in Fr. are identical, appear in Ch. as distinct conceptions. On the other hand, the definitions of some of the words resemble each other closely. . . . The next section, on “a privee spece of Pryde” (§ 25), has nothing corresponding to it in Fr.; &c. . . . In the section “whennes Pride sourdeth and springeth” (§ 29), Ch. is in tolerably exact accordance with Fr. . . . The correspondence in this Edition: current; Page: [457] first Deadly Sin is confined to isolated expressions, points of arrangement common to both,’ &c.

On account, then, of the complicated differences in the treatment of details, I do not think it advisable to give the full and exact results. I confine myself to passages in which the Fr. throws real light on the English text, and to the points of chief interest only.

I think it worth while to continue here the quotation from Gregory commenced in the note to l. 388 above:—‘Nam de inani gloria inobedientia, jactantia, hypocrisis, contentiones, pertinaciae, discordiae, et novitatum praesumptiones oriuntur.’ Here is the outline of the division of Pride into branches. He gives similar ‘branches’ of Inuidia, Ira, and the rest.

In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 17, the first bough of Pride has three twigs, as in Fr.; in fact, it follows Fr. very closely, and gives a very good idea of its general contents and treatment.

In the Ancren Riwle, p. 199, ‘the Lion of Pride’ has 9 whelps, such as Vain Glory, Indignation, Hypocrisy, Presumption, &c.

392. Inobedient, disobedient. Cf. P. Plowman, C. vii. 19; Ayenb. (i. e. Ayenbite of Inwyt), p. 20, ll. 7. 8.

393. Avauntour, boaster; P. Pl. C. vii. 35; Ayenb. p. 22, ll.5-15.

394. Ipocrite, hypocrite. Cf. P. Pl. C. vii. 36–40; Ayenb. p. 25 (Sixth Bough).

395. Despitous, scornful; cf. Ayenb. p. 20, ll. 4, 5. even-cristene, fellow-Christian; cf. Swed. jämn-christen, from jämn, even; Icel. jafnkristinn. Euene-cristene occurs in P. Plowm. B. ii. 94, v. 440; also spelt emcristene in the same, C. xx. 226, &c.

398. The definition does not well suit ‘Swellinge of herte.’ It better defines ‘the envious man’; see Ayenb. p. 27, l. 15. And see p. 599, l. 492, below. At the same time, it is not so much out of place as the critics say it is, and is paralleled by the lines in P. Plowman, C. vii. 17, where Pride says that he was—

‘nouht abaissed to agulte

God and alle good men, so gret was myn herte.’

399. This is parallel to P. Plowm. C. vii. 41–58.

401. This corresponds to Ayenb. p. 29, l. 19. ‘The zixte is, to werri zoþnesse be his wytinde.’ Fr. ‘guerroier verité a son escient.’

402. Contumax, contumacious; as in P. Plowm. C. xiv. 85.

403. Surquidrie, presumption; O. F. surquiderie. It occurs in the Ancren Riwle, p. 56 (note h); Gawain and the Grene Knight, l. 2457; Barbour’s Bruce, xi. 11, xvi. 327; &c.

406. See E. 1200, and the note. Cf. Ayenb. p. 58, l. 13:—‘that byeth[Editor: illegible character]ase the cleper of the melle, thet ne may him naght hyealde stille.’ Fr. ‘vaines paroles, qui sont come li batels du moulin.’

407. There is nothing in Fr. corresponding to this passage. waiteth, i. e. watches his opportunity of being first saluted, or of taking a higher seat at table. above him, before him, as in a procession.

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kisse pax, to kiss the pax. The pax was a small flat piece of wood or metal, quite distinct from the pyx, with which it is often confounded. See the full explanation in Nares. See also Bingham, Antiq. of the Christian Church; and Rock, Church of our Fathers.

goon to offring; see A. 450, and the note.

411. leefsel, a shady arbour, such as may still be seen before an ale-house-door, or a cottage-door, in some country villages. The word has already occurred it A. 4061, and has been explained in the note to that line. It is quite distinct from the ivy-bush which was so commonly suspended in place of, or in addition to, the sign which denoted an ale-house; see the chapter on Ale-house Signs in Brand’s Pop. Antiquities. Perhaps we may assume that the descriptive epithet gaye is here of some force; the arbour in front of an inn-door would, usually, be either larger or more conspicuous than that in front of an ordinary cottage.

412. This ‘outrageous array of clothing’ answers to the ‘plente des beles robes’ in Fr.; cf. Ayenb. p. 24, last line but one.

413. Alluding to Luke xvi. 19. Really from S. Gregorii Homiliarum in Evangelia lib. ii. homil. xl. § 3: ‘Quodsi uidelicet culpa non esset, nequaquam sermo Dei tam uigilanter exprimeret quod diues . . . bysso et purpura indutus fuisset.’ See Migne’s ed. vol. 76. col. 1305.

414. From S. Gregorii Homiliarum in Evangelia lib. ii. homil. 40. § 3: ‘Nemo quippe uestimenta praecipua nisi ad inanem gloriam quaerit, uidelicet, ut honorabilior caeteris esse uideatur.’ Cf. lib. i. homil. vi. § 3 (on the text, Matt. xi. 2-10), where St. Gregory inveighs against such as—‘solis exterioribus dediti, praesentis uitae mollitiem et delectationem quaerunt . . . Nemo ergo existimet in fluxu atque studio uestium peccatum deesse;’ (ed. Migne, vol. 76. col. 1097). He proceeds to refer to 1 Pet. iii. 5, 1 Tim. ii. 9.

415. costlewe, costly. ‘Costelewe, costfull, costuous, Sumptuosus’; Prompt. Parv.; see Way’s note. This form answers to the Icel. kostligr; and the only difference between the suffixes -lewe and -ly is that the former is Norse, and represents Icel. -ligr, whilst the latter represents the A. S. -lic. See Chokelew in the New Eng. Dict., and cf. drunken-lewe, drunken-like, sik-lewe, sickly.

416. Wyclif (Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 124) is similarly severe against proud array.

417. degyse, fashionable; O. F. desguisè, also spelt desguisiè (Godefroy). Chaucer found this word in Le Roman de la Rose, l. 827; see vol. i. p. 128.

endentinge, notching, or the use of indented lines. Indentee (better endentee) is still a term in heraldry, to signify that an edge or dividing line is notched or serrated, as shewn in any heraldic work. Several of the terms in this clause have, in heraldry, a special sense, and Chaucer seems to be thinking, in particular, of such coats-of-arms as were sometimes made of variously coloured cloths, cut into the requisite shapes.

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barringe, cutting into stripes, or decoration with bars. A bar, in heraldry, is a horizontal stripe like the fess, but narrower.

oundinge, waving; decoration by the use of waved lines. Oundee or oundy (also onde, ondy) is the heraldic name for a waved line or edge. Criseyde’s hair was ounded, i. e. waved; Troilus, iv. 736.

palinge, decoration with a ‘pale’ or upright stripe. A pale, in heraldry, is a broad upright stripe, occupying the third part of the field. Cf. note to HF. 1840 (vol. iii. p. 282).

windinge, twisting; decoration with curved lines. Many heraldic charges, such as a lion, had to be cut out in the cloth, by ‘winding’ the scissors about, along the outline required.

bendinge, decoration with bends. A bend, in heraldry, is a slanting stripe or band. The bend dexter is drawn from the dexter chief to the sinister base of the shield; the bend sinister (once a mark of bastardy) slopes the other way.

418. pounsoninge, punching, perforation. Strictly, the use of a puncheon or perforating implement. ‘Punchon, stimulus, punctorium’; Prompt. Parv.

chisels, i. e. cutting instruments; we may note that, etymologically, chisels and scissors (M. E. cisoures) are closely related words.

dagginge, slitting, snipping, cutting into strips or narrow flapping ends. There is a special allusion to the custom of dagging, i.e. jagging, or foliating the edges of robes (especially of the sleeves), so common in the reigns of Edw. III. and Rich. II. See fig. 91 in Fairholt’s Costume in England (1885), i. 124. See P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 143; Rich. the Redeless, iii. 193.

419. The length of the trains of gowns is a common subject of satire. See, in particular, Sir David Lyndesay’s Minor Poems (E. E. T. S.), pp. 574–5.

421. bete, remedy, amend, better, relieve; cf. A. 2253.

422. cutted, cut short; see Leg. G. Women, 973, and note.

sloppes, garments; here, evidently, jackets of a short length. ‘Sloppe, garment, Mutatorium’; Prompt. Parv.; Icel. sloppr, a robe, gown. There is a parallel passage in the Knight of La Tour-Landry, cap. xlvii (p. 63). Cf. oversloppe, G. 633.

hainselins (also spelt hanselins, anslets), the same as sloppes, i. e. jackets. Tyrwhitt unluckily says that ‘it appears from the context to mean a sort of breeches,’ whereas it was the shortness of the hainselin that enabled the breeches to be seen; and his error has been copied by others. This most unusual word answers to the rare O. F. hamselin, hamcellim, or hainselin, a sort of robe. Godefroy says—‘sorte de robe longue’; whereas it was certainly ‘courte.’ His examples include the mention of ‘un hainselin de vert brun’ in 1416, ‘hamselin’ in 1403, and an extract from Christine de Pisan:—

‘N’orent pas gonele a pointes,

Mais hamcellins a grans manches

Estroit serrez sus les hanches.’

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I suppose the last line means ‘tightly gathered in above the hips.’ Cotgrave has: ‘sus, above.’ The word is probably of Frankish origin; from O. H. G. *hemithilīn, M. H. G. hemdelīn, dimin. of O. H. G. hemithi, a shirt (G. Hema). See Fig. 93 and Fig. 136 in Fairholt’s Costume, i. 126, 180.

425. degysinge, mode of dress. This alludes to the singular habit of wearing parti-coloured dresses; see the remarks in Fairholt’s Costume, i. 114, 115.

427. fyr of seint Anthony, St. Anthony’s fire; a popular name for erysipelas, which this saint was supposed to cure.

429. honestetee, decency; as in B. 3908. In 431, it seems to mean ‘neatness’; and so in 436.

432. aornement, the O. F. form of ‘adornment’; see Adornment in the New E. Dict., in which the oldest quotation for this form is from Caxton. The expression ‘in thinges that apertenen to rydinge’ answers to ‘his uaire ridinges’ in Ayenb. p. 24, l. 3 from bottom; Fr. ‘beles chevauchures.’

434. From Zech. x. 5.

435. This curiously expresses the view taken by the lower orders in England, who regarded the riders, mostly Normans, as belonging to the class of their oppressors. Hence the curious song against the Retinues of the Rich, in Wright’s Political Songs, pp. 237–240.

437. greet meinee, a large household; ‘the uayre mayné,’ Ayenb. p. 24, l. 31; Fr. ‘bele maisnie.’

440. As ‘thilke that holden hostelries,’ i. e. innkeepers, are here represented as upholding the cheating ways of the ‘hostilers,’ the latter must here be used (like mod. E. ostler) in the sense of the servants attached to the inn. In A. 241, hostiler may mean the innkeeper himself; but ostler goes well with tappestere, i. e. barmaid.

442. From Ps. lv. 15.

445. wilde fyr, fire caused by kindling some inflammable spirit, just as our modern ‘Christmas pudding’ or ‘mince pie’ is surrounded with the flames of burning brandy. It seems to have been called ‘wild fire’ as being not easily extinguishable, like the ‘Greek fire’ of the middle ages; see Ancren Riwle, p. 402, and Warton’s note, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. 1871, ii. 154. In A. 4172, and E. 2252, it is used, metaphorically, to denote ‘erysipelas.’

446. vessel, a collective noun, like mod. E. ‘plate.’ As to minstrelsy at feasts, see E. 1178, F. 268, &c.

448. sourden of, arise from, have their source in; F. sourdre.

450–5. Here the E. text is tolerably close to the Fr. original; cf. Ayenb. p. 24. The ‘goodes’ are Li bien de nature, being such as are (1) devers le cors, viz. sainteté (good health), biauté, force, proesce, noblesce, bone langue, bone voiz; and (2) devers l’ame, viz. cler sens, soutil engin, bone memoire, les vertuz natureles. Again, there are Li bien de fortune, viz. hautesces, honors, richesces, delices, prosperitez. Lastly, there are Li bien de grace, viz. vertus, bones ævres.

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459. Alluding to Gal. v. 17; see Wyclif’s version.

460. causeth . . . meschaunce, often brings many a man into peril and misfortune. The idiom is curious; but all the MSS. agree here, and Thynne’s edition has the same. Tyrwhitt has ‘causeth ful oft to many man peril,’ &c. This is easier, but lacks authority.

467. Chaucer found this quotation from Seneca in the Latin treatise which is the original of ‘Melibeus’ (p. 124 of Sundby’s edition), though the passage does not occur in his version of that tale. It is made up of two clauses, taken, respectively, from Seneca, De Clementia, i. 3. 3, and the same, i. 19. 2. ‘Nullum clementia magis decet quam regem’; et iterum, ‘Iracundissimae et parui corporis sunt apes, rex tamen earum sine aculeo est.’ Cf. Pliny, Nat. History, bk. xi. c. 17; Batman upon Bartholomè, bk. xviii. c. 12; Hoccleve, de Regimine Principum, p. 121; Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, i. v. 155.

At the same time, it is remarkable that Chaucer’s words resemble even more closely a passage from Cicero which is quoted on the preceding page of the same book:—‘Nam Tullius dixit: Nihil est laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro viro dignius placabilitate atque clementia’; De Officiis, i. 25.

470. Here there is a slight change in the order; the ‘goods of grace’ are discussed before those of ‘fortune’; see 454, 455.

473. Cf. the Clerkes Tale, E. 1000.

475. In the Fr. treatise, all the Sins come first, and then the Remedies are discussed afterwards. The alteration in this respect is an improvement.

476. mekenesse; called ‘Mildenesse’ in Ayenb. p. 130, and ‘umilite’ in Fr. The resemblance of this § 29 to the Fr. text is very slight.

483. to stonde gladly to, willingly to abide by.

De Inuidia.

484. See Ayenb. 26; Myrc’s Instructions to Parish Priests, p. 37; P. Plowm. C. vii. 63 (B. v. 76); Ancren Riwle, p. 200; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 128. In form and general contents, this chapter on Envy is a condensation of the corresponding chapter in the Fr. text, but there are several deviations.

philosophre; I do not know who is meant. However, St. Gregory (see the note to 388) says: ‘De inuidia, odium, susurratio, detractio, exsultatio in aduersis proximi, afflictio autem in prosperis nascitur.’

Augustin. The quotation seems rather to follow the words of St. Gregory just quoted. I find, in St. Augustine, only one of the clauses, viz. ‘Inuidia est enim odium felicitatis alienae’; S. Aug. in Psalm. civ. 25 (cv. 25 in the Vulgate); ed. Migne, vol. 37, col. 1399. This is the very quotation which has already done duty in the Phisicien’s Tale; see C. 115, and the note. Cf. P. Plowm. B. v. 112, 113.

485. platly, &c.; Fr. ‘il est contraires au saint esperit.’ Cf. Ayenb. p. 28, l. 7 from bottom.

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486. two; Dr. Eilers remarks—‘Clearly three follow.’ But we can easily count them as two; (1) hardness of heart; (2) warring against truth, or against grace given to one’s neighbour.

487. Fr. ‘guerroier verité a son escient’; and again, ‘guerroier la grace du saint esperit en autrui.’ See Ayenb. p. 29, ll. 2, 3, 18, 19.

490. Compare P. Pl. C. vii. 93.

491–492. See 484 above, and the note.

493. bakbyting; cf. Ancren Riwle, p. 86; P. Plowm. B. v. 89. Fr. text, ‘detraction.’

493–494. Fr. ‘quant on dist bien d’autrui devant lui, toz jors il i trueve e i met un mes’; where mes is the mod. F. mais, Chaucer’s ‘but.’

495. Fr. ‘il pervertist e torne tout a la pior partie.’

496. Fr. ‘il estaint e met a nient touz les biens que li hons fait.’

499. Fr. ‘grondiller e murmurer.’

500. Fr. ‘s’il [Dieu] li envoie adversitez, povretez, chier tens, pluie, seccheresce, s’il done a l’un et toult a l’autre.’ Cf. P. Pl. B. vi. 317.

502. See John xii. 4. enoynte, anointed, is the past tense; the pp. is enoynt, A. 2961; cf. anoint, A. 199.

504. See Luke vii. 39.

505. bereth him, &c., lays to his charge. Cf. D. 226, 380.

508. Compare the Fr. text:—‘murmure contre Dieu et chante la pater-nostre au singe, certes mais la chancon au diable.’

515. This section, on the Remedy against Envy, is very much abridged from the Fr. original, and the points of contact are few. Cf. Ayenb. p. 144; Myrc, p. 52.

526. From Matt. v. 44.

De Ira.

532. ‘The first part of this chapter is, in arrangement as in substance, a condensation of the corresponding chapter in Fr. The working out of the subject is interwoven with ideas, which are nowhere to be found in Fr. . . . the verbal coincidences are very numerous.’—Essays on Chaucer, p. 533. See Ayenb. p. 29; Myrc, p. 38; Wyclif, Works, iii. 134.

535. ‘Nam et ipsam iram nihil aliud esse, quam ulciscendi libidinem, veteres definierunt’; S. August. De Civitate Dei, lib. xiv. c. 15. § 2. Cf. Cicero, Tuscul. Disput. lib. iii. c. 5; lib. iv. c. 9.

536. Cf. Horace, Epist. I. 2. 62:—‘Ira furor breuis est.’

537. trouble, i. e. troubled, agitated; F. trouble, adj. Cf. H. 279.

540. From Ps. iv. 5 (Vulgate).

551. ‘Juniperus, . . . Graece dicta, . . . quod conceptum diu teneat ignem: adeo ut si prunae ex eius cinere fuerint opertae, usque ad annum perueniant; πυ̑ρ enim apud Graecos ignis dicitur’; S. Isidorus, Etymologiarum lib. xvii. c. 7; ed. Migne, vol. 82, col. 615. This is one of Isidore’s delicious ‘etymologies.’ This remarkable story is founded on the imaginary fact that juniper is derived from the Gk. πυ̑ρ, fire!

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562. hate, &c. This expression is from St. Augustine:—‘Quid est odium? ira inueterata. Ira inuerata si facta est, iam odium dicitur’; Sermo lviii. c. 7; ed. Migne, vol. 38, col. 397.

565. six thinges; evidently an error for three. The three are: (1) hate; (2) backbiting; (3) deceitful counsel. The error may easily have arisen from misreading iij as uj. Most of the MSS. have ‘.vj.’; but ‘.ui.’ and ‘.uj.’ were also in use. See 1 John iii. 15.

566. Probably due to an imperfect remembrance of Prov. xxv. 18:—‘Iaculum, et gladius, et sagitta acuta, homo qui loquitur contra proximum suum falsum testimonium.’ Cf. xii. 18, xxx. 14.

568. From Prov. xxviii. 15; cf. iii. 27.

shepe, hire, is a rare word; hence the addition, either by Chaucer or by a scribe, of the words or the hyre, by way of a gloss. The writer of the Ayenbite writes ss for sh; and we there find the word ssepe, in the sense of ‘hire’ or ‘pay,’ no less than five times; at pp. 33, 40, 86, 113, 146, also the pl. ssepes, wages, at p. 39. Cf. A. S. scipe, pay, in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, xxxi. 55 (vol. ii. p. 222). See note to Anelida, 193.

569. From Prov. xxv. 21.

572. in his defendaunt, in his (own) defence; it looks like an imitation of the French phrase en se defendant.

575. Note the double use of homicide; it here translates homicidium; just above, it translates homicida.

580. Fr. ‘Mais especiaument nous apelons ci blaspheme, quant on mesdit de Dieu e de ses sainz, on des sacramenz de sainte eglise.’

582. From Ps. cxlv. 9.

587. The French treatise includes seven forms of swearing (parjuremens) under the head of Ire.

588. See Exod. xx. 7; Matt. v. 34. Cf. C. 642.

591. Fr. ‘Il resont plus cruel que li Iuys qui le crucifierent. Il ne briserent nul des os, mais cist le depiecent plus menu c’on ne fait pourcel en la boucherie.’ Cf. Pard. Tale, C. 475, 651, and the notes.

592. See the parallel passage in the Pard. Tale, C. 635, and the note. From Jer. iv. 2; on which St. Jerome remarks: ‘Animaduertendum est quod iusiurandum tres habet comites.’

593. See Pard. Tale, C. 649, and the note. The wounde is a translation of the Lat. plaga in Ecclus. xxiii. 12 (Vulgate):—‘non discedet a domo illius plaga.’

597. From Acts iv. 12.

598. From Phil. ii. 10.

601. This section (§ 37) is rather closer than usual to the French text, but is amplified.

603. Fr. ‘comme font les devines et les sorcieres et les charmeresses. Et touz ceus qui en tiex choses croient . . . pecchent morteument; car toutes teles choses sont contre la foi, et por ce les deffent sainte eglise.’

bacins ful of water. These were sometimes used, instead of looking-glasses, Edition: current; Page: [464] for divination; Brand, Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, iii. 169. This kind of divination was called catoptromancy.

bright swerd, used, instead of a magic mirror, in catoptromancy; see Brand.

in a cercle. Circles were almost invariably drawn upon the ground by sorcerers, within which the invoked spirit was supposed to be confined; see Brand, iii. 56, 59.

in a fyr, as in pyromancy. ‘Amphiaraus was the first that had knowledge in Pyromancie, and gathered signs by speculation of fire’; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. vii. c. 56. Cf. P. Plowman, A. xi. 158.

‘Magic may be practised after diuers sorts; . . . for it worketh by the means of (1) Water, hydromantia; (2) Globes or Balls, sphaeromantia; (3) Aire, aeromantia; (4) Starres, astrologia; (5) Fire-lights, pyromantia; (6) Basons, lecanomantia; and (7) Axes, axinomantia’; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. xxx. c. 2.

shulder-boon. See Pard. Tale, C. 351, and the note. Brand, in his Pop. Antiq., has a chapter on Divination by the Speal [rather Spaule], or Blade-bone. In Miss Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 179, we are referred to Tylor, Prim. Culture, i. 124; Folk-Lore Record, i. 176; Henderson, Folk-Lore, p. 175.

605. divynailes, divinations. ‘Devinailles, f. Divinations, predictions’; Cotgrave.

flight of briddes. This form of divination, so well known to the Romans, is still kept in remembrance by the use of the words augury and auspice. Divinations by beasts were common and various; the commonest method was by inspecting the entrails of a beast when sacrificed. See Brand’s chapter on Omens, as e. g. by the howling of dogs, by cats, birds, animals crossing one’s path, &c.

sort, lot; as by the Virgilian lots, Bible lots, &c.; see Brand, Pop. Antiq. iii. 336; Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, bk. v. c. 24, § 7; Gay, Shepherd’s Week, Pastoral 4.

geomancie, divination by dots made with a pointed stick in dust, &c. See the note on A. 2043, above. Divination by dreams needs no remark.

chirkinge, creaking. Strange noises have often caused superstitious terrors; a familiar instance is that of the death-watch. They are also sometimes regarded, with less evil effect, and perhaps, occasionally, with some truth, as weather-omens.

See Gay’s Trivia, bk. i. l. 157; and the well-known Signs of Rain, by Dr. Jennings.

gnawynge of rattes. See Brand, Popular Antiq. iii. 188.

607. Charmes. See examples in Brand, Pop. Antiquities, of Rural Charms, Characts, and Amulets. It is curious to note Chaucer’s qualified belief in them.

609. Cf. Fr. ‘unes menconges aidans, . . . unes nuisans, . . . por faire domage a autrui.’

611. Som lesinge, &c.; ‘some (kind of) lying arises, because a man Edition: current; Page: [465] wants to sustain (the credit of) his word.’ Dr. Eilers marks he with the note—‘grammatical error.’ But it is quite right; he is used indefinitely, as frequently. It is just a little too bad to charge this as an error on the author.

612. The mention of flattery seems out of place. But, as Dr. Eilers says, we may well suppose that ‘the English author, once having had recourse to the “pecchiez de male langue,” exhausted its whole contents, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, but certainly with no regard to the subject of anger.’ If we turn to the Ayenbite, p. 57, we shall find that the sins of the tongue, including flattery, are there given at the end of the section on Gluttony, where their appearance is even more surprising. The fact is, that the grouping of all sins under the Seven Deadly Sins is extremely artificial, and there is no particular place for the insertion of flattery or of certain other sins. Moreover, in 618 below, Chaucer naively gives his reason for the arrangement which he has adopted.

613. Fr. ‘Li losengier sont les norrices au diable, qui ses enfans alaitent et endorment en leur pecchies . . . par lor biau chanter.’ The same expression occurs in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 60, l. 7.

614. Salomon. Chaucer gives the general sense of Prov. xxviii. 23.

615. Fr. ‘les apele l’escripture enchanteors, car il enchantent tant l’ome que il les croit plus que soi meismes.’ The Ayenbite has ‘charmeres’; p. 60, l. 25.

616. Following Tyrwhitt, I have supplied the words between square brackets, which are wanting in all the seven MSS. and in Thynne’s edition. Tyrwhitt supplies ‘god; and thise flatereres betrayen.’ But he does not tell us where (if anywhere) he found these words.

617. The Fr. text has the very expression ‘quant il chantent touz jors Placebo.’ The Ayenbite adds an explanation (p. 60, l. 7 from bottom): viz. they all sing Placebo, that is to say, ‘my lord saith truth,’ or ‘my lord doth well’; and turn to good all that the master doth or saith, whether it be good or bad. See my note to P. Plowman, C. iv. 467.

Note the name Placebo in the Marchauntes Tale; see E. 1476.

619. Fr. ‘Apres vienent les maudicons . . . E saint Pol dist que tieus genz ne poent le regne Dieu avoir.’ This refers to 1 Cor. vi. 10, where the Vulgate has: ‘neque maledici (A. V. ‘revilers’) . . . regnum Dei possidebunt.’ So in Ayenb. p. 66, l. 22.

620. Not in the Fr. text. This is an old proverb, which Southey quotes, in a Greek form, as a motto prefixed to his Curse of Kehama. His English version of it is:—‘curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.’

623. gospel. See Matt. v. 22, 44.

624. Fr. ‘on reproche à l’ome ou ses pecchiez, ou ses folies, ou sa povrete, ou ses povres parenz, ou aucune defaute qu’il a en lui.’ Cf. Ayenb. p. 66, l. 27.

mesel, leper; so meselrie, leprosy, in 625.

625. maheym, maim, i. e. mutilation or bodily imperfection. Our Edition: current; Page: [466] maim is a contracted form of this M. E. maheym. In P. Plowman, B. xvii. 189, one MS. has y-mayheymed, where others have y-maymed. In Britton, i. 98, the Anglo-French form is maheyng; in the Liber Albus, p. 281, it is mahaym.

627. From Matt. xii. 34.

629. From Prov. xv. 4.

deslavee, lit. ‘unwashed,’ foul; from O. F. ‘deslaver, v. a. salir, souiller; fig., souiller, ternir la reputation de quelqu’un’; Godefroy. The pp. deslave properly means: ‘non lavé, crasseux, sale.’ Chaucer seems to confuse this with the transitive sense of the active verb; and he evidently had in mind the above verse from the Proverbs, where the Vulgate has ‘Lingua placabilis, lignum uitae; quae autem immoderata est, conteret spiritum.’ Hence deslavee here means ‘unbridled.’

630. From 2 Tim. ii. 24.

631. From Prov. xxvii. 15; the Vulgate has ‘Tecta perstillantia.’ Cf. Prov. xix. 13; and note to D. 278.

633. From Prov. xvii. 1. Below, see Col. iii. 18.

636. See Ayenb., p. 187. The toad was considered poisonous, and wine was an antidote. Hence the antipathy.

639. See 2 Sam. xvii. 1.

640. fals livinge, false liver, evil liver.

642–3. This passage resembles the Fr. text.

649. From Ecclesiastes, v. 3.

651. deffendeth, forbids; see Eph. v. 4.

654. The word Mansuetude is borrowed from the Fr. text.

657. Jerome seems to be quoting 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 5.

660. Compare Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 7. ll. 91, 92 (vol. ii. p. 48).

661. Mat. v. 9. Cf. Frank. Tale, F. 773, and the note. The ‘wise man’ is Dionysius Cato, who says:—‘Quem superare potes, interdum uince ferendo,’ sometimes altered to ‘superare nequis, patienter,’ &c.; Distich. i. 38.

664. From Prov. xxix. 9.

670. This example somewhat resembles a story in Seneca, De Ira, lib. i. c. 15:—‘Socrates seruo ait: Caederem te, nisi irascerer’; &c.

De Accidia.

677. The description of Sloth answers to the description in the Fr. text chiefly as regards the general outline. The particular points of contact are few. Cf. Ayenb. of Inwyt, pp. 31–34.

678. This remark, from Augustine, properly applies to the sin of Envy; see note to 484 above; p. 461.

679. Salomon; with reference to Eccl. ix. 10.

680. See Jer. xlviii. 10; for ‘necligently,’ the Vulg. has ‘fraudulenter’; A. V. ‘deceitfully.’

687. Referring, probably, to Rev. iii. 16.

688. Cf. Prov. xx. 4; xxi. 25.

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693. wanhope, despair; as in the parallel passage in the Ayenb. p. 34, l. 12. Cf. P. Plowman, C. viii. 59, 81, and note.

694. ‘Quidam enim in peccata prolapsi desperatione plus pereunt’; S. Aug. De Natura et Gratia, cap. 35; ed. Migne, xliv. 266. A similar passage occurs in his Sermo xx. § 3; ed. Migne, xxxviii. 140.

698. The words recreant and creant are, curiously enough, used in almost exactly the same sense; perhaps creant was merely an abbreviated form. To ‘say creant’ and to ‘yield oneself recreant’ meant, ‘to own oneself beaten’; the original sense being, apparently, ‘to entrust oneself to the enemy’ or confide in him, in the hope of obtaining mercy; see the explanation of se recredere in Ducange, and recreant and recroire in Godefroy. The E. phrase is well illustrated by P. Plowman, B. xii. 193, xviii. 100; see creant in the New E. Dict.

700–703. Alluding to Luke xv. 7; xv. 24; xxiii. 42, 43

705. From Matt. vii. 7, John xvi. 24; compare Wyclif’s version.

707. by the morwe, early in the morning; cf. D. 755, H. 16; and D. 1080.

709. From Prov. viii. 17.

712. From the Vulgate, Eccl. vii. 19 (18):—‘qui timet Deum, nihil negligit.’

714. Cf. G. 3, and note; also Ayenb. p. 31, ll. 20–22.

715. thurrok, the sink in which all evil things collect; see note to 363, above, p. 454.

716. Cf. Matt. xi. 12. The reference to ‘David’ is to Ps. lxxiii. 5 (lxxii. 5 in the Vulgate):—‘In labore hominum non sunt, et cum hominibus non flagellabuntur.’ See the comment on this verse in Hampole’s Psalter, ed. Bramley; which concludes with:—‘for with men whaym God drawes to heven thai sal nought be swongen, but with fendes in hell.’

718. latrede, tardy (very rare); A. S. læt-rǣde, slow of counsel, deliberate (see Toller).

dich, ditch. In the Fr. text, the image is that of a prisoner, who, when the door is open, is too lazy to mount the steps; so in Ayenb. p. 32, l. 2. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xiv. 236, 237.

719. Cf. Ayenb. p. 32, l. 21:—‘thou sselt libbe long’; also P. Pl. C. xii. 180; Prov. of Hendyng, l. 304.

723. This is something like the Fr. text; see Ayenb. p. 33, l. 14. But the Fr. text does not quote St. Bernard. The passage in St. Bernard seems to be one in his Vitis Mystica, cap. xix. § 66; ed. Migne, vol. clxxxiv. coll. 674, 675: ‘Aliquando affligitur hoc uitio anima bonorum, . . . ut nec orare, nec legere, nec meditari, nec opus manuum libeat exercere.’

725. tristicia. The Fr. text has tristesce, translated by ‘zorȝe’ in the Ayenbite, p. 34, l. 8; see 2 Cor. vii. 10.

728. Fr. text—‘La vertu de proesce’; Ayenb.—‘uirtue’ and ‘prouesse,’ p. 163, l. 22. Fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues; P. Plowman, C. xxii. 289.

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731. The ‘speces,’ or kinds, are here five, viz. magnanimity, faith, surety, magnificence, and constancy. These are taken from the Fr. text, which gives six kinds, viz. magnanimite, fiance, seurte, pacience, magnificence, constaunce. Patience is omitted, as having occurred above; see 659.

De Auaricia.

739. In this section we again find several hints taken from the Fr. text, especially in the arrangement of the subdivisions; cf. Ayenb. pp. 34–45. The text of St. Paul is quoted in the original, and in the Ayenb. p. 34; see note to C. 334, and cf. 1 Tim. vi. 10.

741. ‘Amor mundi, amor huius saeculi, cupiditas dicitur’; S. Augustini enarratio in Psalmum xxxi, part ii. § 5; ed. Migne, vol. 36, col. 260.

748. ‘Auarus, quod est idolorum seruitus’; Eph. v. 5.

749. mawmet, idol. It was unjustly supposed that Mahometans worshipped the prophet; whence Mahomet, corrupted to mawmet, came to mean an idol in general. See Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 174, for illustrations.

751. ‘Non habebis deos alienos coram me. Non facies tibi sculptile’; Exod. xx. 3, 4. The addition of the second clause, taken from the second commandment, is remarkable. It was quite common to omit the second commandment altogether; cf. note to C. 641. Cf. Ayenb. pp. 5, 6.

752. tailages, &c. The Fr. text has:—‘par tailles, par corvees, par emprunz, par mauvaises coustumes,’ &c.; cf. ‘be tailes, be coruees, be lones, be kueade wones’; Ayenb. p. 38. Cowel explains tallage as ‘a tribute, toll, or tax.’ It was, in fact, an exaction for which a tally, or acknowledgement (upon a notched stick) was given; see note to P. Plowman, B. iv. 57; and cf. Chaucer’s Prologue, 570; P. Plowman, C. xxii. 37.

Dr. Murray explains cariage in this passage as meaning ‘an obsolete service of carrying, or a payment in lieu of the same, due by a tenant to his landlord or feudal superior, or imposed by authority.’

amerciments, arbitrary fines inflicted ‘at the mercy’ of an affeeror. If the affeeror had no mercy, they became, as is here said, mere extortions.

754. The reference is given to Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, lib. ix.; but is wrong. It should be to lib. xix. c. 15:—‘Prima ergo seruitutis caussa peccatum est.’

755. See Gen. ix. 18–27. The reference to Gen. v. is a mistake, perhaps due to the fact that Ham is first mentioned in that chapter, at the end of it. See 766 below.

759. This is from Seneca, Epist. 47, which begins:—‘Libenter ex his, qui a te ueniunt, cognoui, familiariter te cum seruis tuis uiuere; hoc prudentiam tuam, hoc eruditionem decet. Serui sunt? immo homines. Serui sunt? immo contubernales.’

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760. contubernial with, dweliing together with, intimate with. Chaucer found the word in Seneca; see the last note.

761–3. The general sense of this passage is from Seneca, Epist. 47 (note to 759). Thus the words ‘that they rather love thee than drede’ answer to ‘Colant [serui] potius te, quam timeant.’

766. See Gen. ix. 26, and note to 755.

767–8. Cf. Ayenb. p. 39, ll. 6-9; P. Pl. B. vi. 28. The Fr. Text has:—‘ces gran prelaz qui acrochent . . . par trop grans procuracions . . . ce sont li lou qui manguent les berbiz.’ It does not mention St. Austin.

783. So in Fr. text; see Ayenb. p. 41, near the bottom. See also the parallel passage in Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 64.

788. Damasie; Damasus I., pope from 336 to 384. His day is December 11. St. Jerome (Epist. 61, c. 3) tells us that a Roman senator, envious of the pomp sometimes observed in church ceremonies, said to pope Damasus, ‘Make me bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian tomorrow.’ (Alban Butler.)

793. See Pard. Tale, C. 590; Ayenb. p. 45, l. 13.

797. Cf. ‘ualse notaryes’; Ayenb. p. 40, l. 8; and see ‘Susannah’ in the Apocrypha, as told in Dan. xiii., in the Vulgate version.

799. Corporel, bodily theft; see Ayenb. p. 37, l. 3.

801. Sacrilege; see Ayenb. p. 40, l. 26. chirche-hawes, church-yards; Fr. ‘mostiers, ou sainz leus, cymetieres’; Ayenb. (p. 41)—‘cherches, other holi stedes, cherchtounes.’

802. See Ayenb. p. 41, ll. 7-20. The concluding portion of this section resembles the Fr. text more closely than usual.

Dr. Eilers proposes to insert the words rentes and before rightes, because the Fr. text has ‘les rentes . . . e les autres droitures’; and it is remarkable that Tyrwhitt also inserts these words. But they neither appear in any of the seven MSS., nor in Thynne’s edition.

804. misericorde answers to ‘merci’ in Ayenb. p. 185, l. 26.

811. largesse, bounty; so also in Ayenb. p. 188, l. 4.

813. fool-largesse, foolish prodigality, such as is satirised in P. Plowm. C. viii. 82–101.

De Gula.

818. This section has very little in common with the Fr. Text; cf. Ayenb. p. 50. It is also much shorter than the original.

819–20. Adam; mentioned also in Fr. text; see Ayenb. p. 50, l. 8 from bottom. See Pard. Tale, C. 505, and the note; also C. 529, and the note. From Phil. iii. 18, 19.

822. See Pard. Tale, C. 549, 558.

828. The mention of St. Gregory is copied from the Fr. text; see Ayenb. p. 51, l. 18. The passage meant is the following: ‘Sciendum praeterea est quia quinque nos modis gulae uitium tentat. Aliquando namque indigentiae tempora praeuenit; aliquando uero tempus non praeuenit, sed cibos lautiores quaerit; aliquando quaelibet qua Edition: current; Page: [470] sumenda sint praeparari accuratius expetit; aliquando autem et qualitati ciborum et tempori congruit, sed in ipsa quantitate sumendi mensuram moderatae refectionis excedit.’—S. Gregorii Moralium Lib. xxx. cap. xviii. § 60; ed. Migne, vol. 76, col. 556.

829. curiositee; Fr. ‘curieusete’; Ayenb. ‘bysihede,’ p. 55, l. 8 from bottom.

831. The remedy against Gluttony, in the Fr. text, is ‘La vertu de Sobrete,’ answering to ‘the uirtue of Temperance’ in the Ayenb. p. 245. The Fr. text treats this at great length; but Chaucer only says a few words. He mentions, however, ‘Attemperaunce’ and ‘Mesure’; cf. Fr. ‘atemprance’ and ‘mesure.’

De Luxuria.

836. This section contains a considerable amount of the matter found in the Fr. text, but the comparison between the texts is difficult, owing to the frequent changes in the arrangement of the material. Dr. Eilers says (p. 566):—‘This chapter of the Eng. text, though twice as comprehensive as the French, contains more in quantity that corresponds with the Fr. than that diverges from it, and exceeds all the previous chapters in the degree of correspondence.’ For details, see Dr. Eilers’ essay, and cf. Ayenb. pp. 46–49.

After ‘departe,’ MS. Hl. supplies a reference to Eph. v. 18.

837–8. See Exod. xx. 14; Lev. xix. 20; Deut. xxii. 21; Lev. xxi. 9.

839. thonder-leyt, thunder-bolt, lit. thunder-flash; A. S. līget, līgetu, a flash; cf. note to Boethius, bk. i. met. 4. 8. See Gen. xix. 24.

841. stank, pool; ‘stagno’ in the Vulgate (Rev. xxi. 8).

842–5. See Matt. xix. 5; Eph. v. 25; Exod. xx. 17; Matt. v. 28.

852. that other, the second. The former is mentioned above, in 830. The ‘five fingers’ are, in Fr., called fol regart, fous atouchemenz, foles paroles, fous baisiers, le fait; all ‘si come dist saint Gregoire.’ Cf. Ayenb. p. 46.

853. basilicok, basilisk; Fr. Text, ‘basilicoc.’ The fabulous basilisk, or cockatrice, which had a head like a cock and a body like a serpent, was supposed to slay men by its mere glance. In the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, 4837–57, we read how Alexander induced a basilisk to commit suicide by gazing in a mirror. Cf. Ayenb. p. 28, l. 12.

854. See Prov. vi. 26–9; vii. 26; Ecclus. xii. 13, 14; xiii. 1; xxvi. 7.

858. roser, rose-bush; as in Havelok, 2919.

busshes, as in Tyrwhitt, must be the right reading; but I can find no authority for it. The MSS. all have beautees, i. e. beauties, or some equivalent form. Thynne (ed. 1550) has benches, which is also found in some MSS.; but it does not help us.

859. Compare this with the March. Tale, E. 1840; and see Ayenb. p. 48, l. 25.

861. ‘Si egeris patienter, coniunx mutabitur in sororem’; Hieron. c. Iouinianum, lib. i. (ed. 1524, t. ii. p. 25).

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867. ‘St. Paul gives them the kingdom due to sinners.’ In fact, St. Paul denies them the kingdom due to saints; which comes to the same thing. See Gal. v. 19–21; and see 884 below. Cf. Rev. xxi. 8.

869. the hundred fruit, i. e. fruit brought forth a hundred-fold. Cf. ‘dabant fructum, aliud centesimum,’ &c.; Matt. xiii. 8. It was usual to liken virginity, widowhood, and matrimony, respectively, to the bringing forth of fruit a hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold; see P. Plowman, C. xix. 84–90, and note to l. 84; Hali Meidenhad, ed. Cockayne, p. 22; Ayenb. p. 234. ‘Centesimus et sexagesimus et tricesimus fructus . . . multum differt in numero. Triginta referuntur ad nuptias . . . Sexaginta uero ad uiduas . . . Porro centesimus numerus . . . exprimit uirginitatis coronam’; Hieronymus contra Iouinianum, lib. i; ed. 1524, ii. 18. The Fr. text has: ‘Ceus qui gardent virginite ont le centiesme fruit.’ But Chaucer, being well acquainted with Jerome’s treatise, recognised at once the Latin source; for in MS. Hl. we find the note, ‘secundum Ieronimum contra Iouinianum.’

879. ‘Him shall God destroy’; 1 Cor. iii. 17.

880. douted, feared. See Gen. xxxix. 8, 9.

884. ‘Huanne me brecth the sacrement of spoushod, hit y-ualth otherhuyl desertesoun of eyr, and ualse mariages’; Ayenb. p. 48.

887. gladly, readily; hence, fittingly.

889. ‘Iam amplius noli peccare’; John viii. 11.

895. as by the dignitee, i.e. on account of the dignity of their office; see note to 900.

‘Satanas transfigurat se,’ &c.; 2 Cor. xi. 14.

897–8. From 1 Sam. ii. 12 (in the Vulgate, Liber primus Regum). Belial signifies worthlessness; and hence, lawlessness, or evil. But in the Vulgate version of Judges, xix. 22, the word Belial is explained to mean ‘absque iugo’; which in O. French would become ‘sans ioug.’ Chaucer seems to have met with this explanation, and perhaps misread it as ‘sans iuge’; i.e. ‘without Iuge.’

900. misterie, i. e. office, duty. As in 895 above, misterie is here short for ministerie, i. e. ministry, office, duty; in fact, the Selden and Lansdowne MSS. actually have the spelling mynysterie. MS. Cm., by a singular error, adds mynystre again, and has the reading: ‘kunne not mynystre the mysterie.’ Tyrwhitt has wrongly introduced the extra mynystre. Wright copied him; Bell copied Wright; and Morris copied Bell; so that these editions vary from the Harl. MS., which omits it! The question is easily settled. ‘The Book’ means the Bible; and the Vulgate version (1 Sam. ii. 12, 13) has ‘nescientes . . . officium sacerdotum ad populum.’ Hence conne means ‘know.’

904. ‘Adulter est, inquit [Xystus, in sententiis] in suam uxorem amator ardentior,’ &c.; S. Hieron. c. Iouinian. lib. i. (near the end)

906. There is no such passage in the E. version of the book of Tobit; but it occurs in the Vulgate, Tob. vi. 17; and see Ayenb. p. 223.

908. godsibbes, i. e. his godmother or his goddaughter. Already, in the Laws of Cnut (Eccles. § vii), we find that a man is forbidden to Edition: current; Page: [472] marry his godmother; and this rule was formerly stringent. Cf. Ayenb. p. 48.

915. This section has much in common with the Fr. text. ‘We meet,’ says Dr. Eilers, ‘with whole sentences in entire agreement.’ See Ayenb. pp. 202–238.

916. two maneres, two ways; cf. the two ‘states,’ in Ayenb. p. 220.

918–19. Eph. v. 32; Gen. ii. 24; John ii. 1.

922. Eph. v. 25, again quoted in 929; 1 Cor. xi. 3.

927. desray, disorder, ‘dissarray’; A. F. desrei, O. F. desroi; see derai in Stratmann.

930. MS. Hl. adds cap. iij. after Peter; hence the reference is to 1 Pet. iii. 1.

933. Perhaps the reference is to Rev. xvii. 4, xviii. 16.

934. Gregorie; see note to 414 above, p. 458.

939. three thinges, three reasons; so in Ayenb. p. 222, l. 14.

944. widewe; cf. Ayenb. p. 225, l. 9.

947. boyste, box; Mat. xxvi. 7; John xii. 3.

948. lyf, life; i. e. she lives like them; Fr. semblant as angels du ciel,’ i. e. like the angels of heaven. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xix. 89–100; Ayenb. p. 227, l. 13.

951. See the parallel passage; Ayenb. p. 204, at the bottom.

954. leyt, flame; the candle being stuck close to the wall.

955. Daniel; so in E. Cm.; but the other five MSS. have Dauid, i.e. David. It appears that David is the correct reading, since the names of Sampson, David, and Solomon occur both in the Fr. text, and in Ayenb. p. 204.

956–7. Probably Chaucer omitted the ten commandments, because he was getting tired of the work. He mentions them because they are treated of at length in the French treatise; see Ayenb. pp. 5-11. Hence his ‘leaving them to divines’ is a mere excuse. Cf. Kn. Tale, A. 1323; and see note to 1043 below (p. 474).

We may also see, in this expression, a clear proof that this Treatise was originally made by Chaucer in his own person. On assigning this Tale to the Parson, he should have struck out this tell-tale clause; for surely the Parson was ‘a divine.’

De Confessione. Instead of this Title, most MSS., including E., have—‘Sequitur secunda Pars Penitencie.’ But this is unsuitable, as it has already appeared, viz. at p. 586. I have therefore taken, from MSS. Pt. and Christchurch, the alternative title—‘De Confessione.’ See p. 639.

958. This chapter, on Confession, answers to a similar chapter in the Fr. text, though the material has been re-arranged. See Ayenb. pp. 172–180; Ancren Riwle, pp. 299, 317. The reference to the ‘firste chaptire’ is to paragraph 107, on p. 572.

959. fyve wittes, five senses, also called ‘the vif wittes of the bodie’ in Ayenb. p. 177. And cf. P. Plowman, C. ii. 15, and the note.

960. that that, that which, what it is that.

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961. This corresponds to Ayenb. p. 175, l. 23, and lines following, to p. 176, l. 12; but the order varies.

971. eschew, reluctant; lit. ‘shy.’ See E. 1812, and the note. Tyrwhitt reads slow, which is ingenious, but wrong.

979. engreggen, aggravate; Fr. ‘les circumstances qui poent engreger le pecche.’ Godefroy, s. v. engregier, quotes this very passage, from two other MS. which read, respectively, ‘qui pueent engregier le pechie,’ and ‘qui engrigent les pechies.’

981. namely by the two, especially by the (former) two; penitence and shrift. the thridde, the third; i. e. satisfaction, reparation.

982. foure, four; Fr. ‘six.’ See Ayenb. p. 172, l. 6.

983. Ezekias, Hezekiah; Fr. text, ‘Ezechias’; all the MSS. have Ezekiel (wrongly); see Isaiah, xxxviii. 15. The Ayenb. has ‘ezechie’; p. 172, l. 9 from bottom.

986–8. See Luke xviii. 13; 1 Pet. v. 6.

994, 996. See Matt. xxvi. 75; Luke vii. 37.

998. hastily, without delay; Ayenb. ‘hasteliche,’ p. 173, l. 10; Fr. ‘hastivement.’ And see Ayenb. p. 173, l. 25 for the rest of the sentence.

1005. countrewaite, watch against, be on his guard against: see Tale of Melibeus, B. 2508.

1006. parcel, part; departe, divide; see Ayenb. p. 175.

1008. Cf. Somn. Tale, D. 2095–8.

1013. nayte, deny; Icel. neita; Tyrwhitt has nay. So, in Boeth. bk. i. met. 1. l. 16, where the original has negat, MS. Addit. has naieth; but the Camb. MS. has nayteth.

1020. This passage from St. Augustine is alluded to in the Ancren Riwle, p. 337:—‘Qui causa humilitatis mentitur fit quod prius ipse non fuit, id est, peccator.’ See S. August. Sermo clxxxi. § 4 (ed. Migne, vol. 38, col. 981): ‘Propter humilitatem dicis te peccatorem. . . Testis ergo falsus es contra te.’

1025. Cf. Ayenb. p. 178, l. 13; Ancren Riwle, p. 323.

1027. ones a yere, viz. at Easter. In the Ancren Riwle, p. 413, fifteen times are mentioned. See P. Plowman, C. xxi. 472, xxii. 3, and the note to the latter passage. renovellen, are renewed; i. e. in spring-time.

De Satisfaccione.

1030. In Religious Pieces, ed. Perry (E. E. T. S.), p. 9, the seven ‘works of mercy’ are (1) feeding the hungry; (2) giving drink to the thirsty; (3) clothing the naked; (4) sheltering the homeless; (5) visiting the sick; (6) visiting prisoners; (7) burying the dead poor.

1031. Cf. P. Plowman, C. ii. 20 (B. i. 20), and the note.

1034. Compare Ayenb. p. 192, l. 5.

1036. From Matt. v. 14–16. Chaucer’s translation is smoother than Wyclif’s.

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1040–2. Compare Ayenbite, p. 99.

1043. Here again Chaucer really speaks in his own person; cf. note to 957 above. The reason for his mentioning the ‘exposition’ of the prayer is, that a long exposition, which he wished to avoid, is given in the Fr. text (see Ayenb. pp. 99–118).

1045. Epitomised from the Fr. text; see Ayenb. p. 207.

1048. wakinge, watching; see Matt. xxvi. 41.

1049. Cf. Ayenb. p. 53, where iolyuete answers to ioliuete in the Fr. text, and to Iolitee in Chaucer.

1051. On eating, see P. Plowman, C. ix. 273 (B. vi. 263). in untyme, at a wrong season; see P. Plowm. B. ix. 186.

1052. Observe that, in 1038, Chaucer says that bodily pain stands in (1) prayers; (2) watching; (3) fasting; and (4) virtuous teachings. He speaks of prayers in 1039–1047; of watching in 1048–9; of fasting in 1050–1. He now takes up ‘teaching,’ by which he means, in the first place, bodily ‘discipline’; and the words ‘or techinge by word or by writinge or in ensample’ are, practically, parenthetical. The word discipline is due to the Fr. text; cf. Ayenb. p. 250, l. 2: ‘ase ine uestinges, ine wakiinges, ine dissiplines,’ &c.

heyres, hair-shirts; see P. Plowman, C. vii. 6, and the note.

haubergeons, habergeons, shirts of mail. It is surprising to find, in the Romance of Tristan, ed. Michel, ii. 36, that the heroine (Yseult) is described as wearing a ‘byrnie’ or shirt of mail next her skin:—‘Vest une brunie à sa char nue.’ Michel quotes from Le Voyage de Charlemagne à Constantinople, l. 635:—‘Il lur a cumaundet que aient vestu brunies.’

1054. Tyrwhitt puts a comma after herte, and none after God, and other editors follow him. But the text (Col. iii. 12) has: ‘Induite uos ergo, sicut electi Dei, . . . uiscera misericordiae, benignitatem, . . . patientiam.’ Hence ‘in herte of misericorde’ simply translates ‘uiscera misericordiae.’

1055–6. Not in the Fr. text. Cf. P. Plowm. C. viii. 61, and the note.

1057. The Fr. text mentions five things; the fifth is a wicked love of sin; see Ayenb. p. 179.

1059. Fr. ‘au regart de la peine d’enfer.’

1067. surquidrie, too great confidence; see 403 above, and the note.

1069. From S. Gregorii Moralium lib. xxxiv. cap. xix. § 36 (ed. Migne, vol. 76, col. 738):—‘Ad districti ergo iudicis iustitiam pertinet, ut nunquam careant supplicio, quorum mens in hac uita nunquam uoluit carere peccato.’

1073. There is here a sad oversight. For ‘the seconde wanhope,’ we should read ‘the same wanhope.’ The second kind of despair is discussed in 1074. All the MSS. have this mistake.

1080. poverte espirituel; this refers to the ‘poor in spirit’; Matt. v. 3. lowenesse, i. e. meekness; Matt. v. 5. hunger; Matt. v. 6. travaille; Matt. v. 4, 10, 11. lyf; Rom. viii. 13. This concluding passage may be compared with the concluding passage of the Ayenbite, p. 261.

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1081. This final paragraph is variously headed in the MSS. E. has: ‘Here taketh the makere of this book his leue.’ So also Cm. So also Pt., preceded by ‘Explicit fabula Rectoris.’ Hl. has: ‘Preces de Chauceres.’ The words ‘this litel tretis’ refer, of course, to the Persones Tale as originally written, so that some part of this concluding address was certainly added afterwards. The interpolation (due to Chaucer himself, if we may trust the evidence) probably extends (as Tyrwhitt suggested) from the words and namely in 1085 to the words salvacioun of my soule in 1090. This accounts for the unusual length of the sentence in 1084–1092. The addition was made at the time of revision, when Chaucer had made up his mind that the Persones Tale was to be the last; and he took the opportunity of writing the conclusion of the work before it was, in reality, completed. This accounts for the whole matter.

1083. Alluding to Rom. xv. 4.

1085. I revoke in my retracciouns, I recall by retracting what I may have said amiss. There is no need to lay an undue stress on this expression, as if the author had been compelled to denounce and retract most of his works. We may fairly understand the expression ‘thilke that sownen into sinne’ as applicable to all the works, and not to the Tales alone. Whilst thanking God for his devotional works, it was not out of place for him to ‘recall’ his more secular ones; for this expression seems to mean no more than that he could not claim that they were written in God’s service. To ‘revoke’ cannot here mean ‘to withdraw,’ because the poems named were not withdrawn, nor was there any way in which such a result could have been brought about. Cf. vol. iii. p. 503.

1086. The book of the xix. Ladies is, of course, the Legend of Good Women. For xix., most MSS. have ‘xxv.’; MS. Harl. 1758 has ‘25’; MS. Ln. has ‘xv.’; and MS. Hl. has ‘29’; but we know, from the Poem itself, that ‘xix.’ is correct. Numbers, as the various readings shew, easily went wrong; see note to 565 above.

‘The book of seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Briddes’ is all one title; the poem itself is well known.

1087. ‘The book of the Lion’ is now lost; most likely, as Tyrwhitt suggests, it was a translation from, or adaptation of, Le Dit du Lione, a poem by G. de Machault, composed in the year 1342. It is printed among Machault’s poems. Lydgate, in his Prologue to the Falls of Princes, ascribes this work to Chaucer in the words:—

‘And of the Lyon a boke he did wryte.’

But it is probable that Lydgate is merely quoting from the present passage, and knew no more of the matter than we do.

I may here note that Tyrwhitt expresses his astonishment that Chaucer does not expressly ‘revoke’ his translation of the Romaunt of the Rose; but it is sufficiently indicated by the words ‘and namely [i. e. especially] of my translacions’; see 1085.

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1088. Boece, i. e. his translation of Boethius. Legendes, i. e. the Legend of St. Cecilia and the Legend of the boy-saint in the Prioresses Tale. Omelies, homilies; such as the Parson’s Tale and the Tale of Melibeus. moralitee and devocioun; such as Chaucer’s A B C, and his Balades on Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse, and Lack of Steadfastness; also the Monkes Tale, which is expressly called ‘a Tragedie.’ The Pardoneres Tale, moreover, is called ‘an honest thing’; and even of the Nonnes Prestes Tale we are bidden, at the end, to ‘take the moralitee.’

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NOTES TO THE TALE OF GAMELYN.

1. Litheth, hearken ye; cf. l. 169. This is the imperative plural; so also lesteneth, herkeneth. See remarks on the dialect in vol. iii. p. 400. For the explanation of the harder words, see the Glossary. Compare: ‘Now list and lithe, you gentlemen’; Percy Folio MS., ii. 218; ‘Now lithe and listen, gentlemen,’ id. iii. 77.

3. Iohan of Boundys. It is not clear what is meant by Boundys, which is repeated in l. 226; nor is there any clear indication of the supposed locality of the story. Lodge, in his novel (see vol. iii. p. 404), ingeniously substitutes Bourdeaux, and calls the knight ‘Sir John of Bourdeaux.’1 In Shakespeare, he becomes Sir Roland de Bois.

The reading righte (for right) is demanded by grammar, the article being in the definite form; and the same reading is equally demanded by the metre. Where the final e is thus necessary to the grammar and metre alike, there is little difficulty in restoring the correct reading. Compare the good-e knight in ll. 11, 25, 33.

4. ‘He was sufficiently instructed by right bringing up, and knew much about sport.’ Nurture is the old phrase for a ‘genteel education.’ Thus we find ‘The boke of Nurture, or Schoole of good maners: for men, seruants, and children,’ written by Hugh Rhodes, and printed in 1577; and John Russell’s ‘Boke of Nurture,’ in MS. Harl. 4011. See the Babees Book, ed. F. J. Furnivall, 1868; where much information as to the behaviour of our forefathers is given. By game is meant what is now called sport; ‘The Master of the Game’ is the name of an old treatise on hunting; see Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 149. Cf. As You Like It, ii. 7. 97: ‘Yet am I inland bred, And know some nurture.’

5. Thre sones, three sons. They are here named Johan, Ote, and Gamelyn; Lodge calls them Saladyne, Fernandine, and Rosader; in Shakespeare, they are Oliver, Jaques, and Orlando. The characters of the three are much the same in all three versions of the story.

6. sone he began, he soon began, viz. to evince his disposition.

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12. his day, his term of life, his lifetime. So in Hamlet, v. 1. 315, the ‘dog will have his day.’ Hence after his day is, practically, after his death.

14. ‘This appears to mean, that the knight had himself acquired his land, and held it in fee simple (verrey purchas), not entailed nor settled; and that, consequently, he had a right to divide it among his children as he pleased. The housbond in this case means a man who was kept at home looking after his domestic business and his estates, and who could not be wyde-wher,’ i.e. often far from home; note by Mr. Jephson. See ll. 58–61 below, which prove that the knight had partly inherited his land, and partly won it by military service. Cf. Chaucer, Prol. 256, 319. In the Freres Tale (D. 1449) we find:—

‘And here I ryde about my purchasing,

To wite wher men wolde yeve me any-thing;

My purchas is theffect of al my rente.’

I cannot think that Dr. Morris is right in explaining purchasing by ‘prosecution’; see Purchas in the Glossary.

16. hadde, might have; the subjunctive mood.

20. on lyve, in life; now written a-live or alive. Lyve is the dat. case, governed by on, which constantly has the sense of ‘in’ in A.S. and M.E.

23. ther, where. The reader should note this common idiom, or he will miss the structure of the sentence. Cf. ll. 33, 52, 66, &c.

31. ne dismay you nought, do not dismay yourself; i.e. be not dismayed or dispirited.

32. ‘God can bring good out of the evil that is now wrought.’ Boot, advantage, remedy, or profit, is continually contrasted with bale or evil; the alliteration of the words rendered them suitable for proverbial phrases. One of the commonest is ‘When bale is hext, then boot is next,’ i.e. when evil is highest (at its height), then the remedy is nighest. This is one of the Proverbs of Hendyng; see Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, part ii. p. 40. So, in l. 34, Boote of bale means ‘remedy of evil,’ good out of evil. See note to l. 631.

34. it is no nay, there is no denying it, it cannot be denied. So in Chaucer, C. T. 8693, 9015 (E. 817, 1139).

39. that on, that other, the one, the other. Sometimes corruptly written the ton, the tother; and hence the vulgar English the tother.

43. Such was their intention, but it was partly overruled; for we see, from l. 45, that the second son duly received his share.

48. whan he good cowde, when he knew what was good, i.e. when he was old enough to know right from wrong; or, as we now say, when he came to years of discretion. Observe that the division of land here proposed was not final; for the good knight, being still alive, altered it; see l. 54.

53. ‘Saint Martin was a Hungarian by birth, and served in the army under Constantius and Julian. He is represented in pictures as Edition: current; Page: [479] a Roman knight on horseback, with his sword dividing his cloak into two pieces, one of which he gives to a beggar. He was a strenuous opponent of the Arians, and died at Tours, where his relics were preserved and honoured.’—Jephson. St. Martin’s day, commonly called Martinmas, is Nov. 11. The knight swears by St. Martin in his character of soldier. Cf. l. 225.

57. plowes, ploughlands; see the Glossary.

62. The knight’s intention was, evidently, that Gamelyn’s share should be the best. In Lodge’s novel, Sir John gives to the eldest ‘fourteen ploughlands, with all my mannor-houses and my richest plate’; to the second, ‘twelve ploughlands’; but to the youngest, says he, ‘I give my horse, my armour, and my launce, with sixteene ploughlands; for, if the inwarde thoughts be discovered by outward shadows, Rosader wil exceed you all in bountie and honour.’

64. ‘That my bequest may stand,’ i.e. remain good.

67. stoon-stille, as still as a stone. So Chaucer has ‘as stille as stoon’; Clerkes Tale, E. 121. See ll. 263, 423.

76. ‘And afterwards he paid for it in his fair skin.’ We should now say, his recompense fell upon his own head.

78. of good wil, readily, of their own accord. ‘They of their own accord feared him as being the strongest.’ So also ‘of thine own good will,’ Shak. Rich. II. iv. 1. 177; ‘by her good will,’ Venus and Adonis, 479. But the nearest parallel passage is in Octouian Imperator, l. 561, pr. in Weber’s Metrical Romances, iii. 180. It is there said of some sailors who were chased by a lioness, that they ran away very hastily ‘with good wylle.’ Cf. in wille, i.e. anxious, in l. 173.

82. To handle his beard, i.e. to feel, by his beard, that he was of full age. Lodge has a parallel passage, but gives a more literal sense to the expression ‘hondlen his berd,’ which merely signifies that he was growing up. ‘With that, casting up his hand, he felt haire on his face, and perceiving his beard to bud, for choler he began to blush, and swore to himselfe he would be no more subject to such slaverie.’ Cf. As You Like It, iii. 2. 218, 396.

90. ‘Is our meat prepared,’ i.e. is our dinner ready? Our perhaps means my, being used in a lordly style. See the next note.

92. Observe the use of the familiar thou, in place of the usual respectful ye. This accounts for the elder brother’s astonishment, as expressed in the next line.

100. ‘Brother by name, and brother in that only.’

101. that rape was of rees, who was hasty in his fit of passion. Mr. Jephson’s explanation ‘deprived of reason for anger’ is incorrect. Rape is hasty; see the Glossary. Rees is the modern E. race, A. S. rǣs, applied to any sudden course, whether bodily or mental; cf. l. 547. So in Gower, ed. Pauli, i. 335, we find:—

‘Do thou no-thinge in suche a rees,’

i.e. do nothing in such a sudden fit; referring to Pyramus, who rashly slew himself upon the hasty false assumption that Thisbe was dead.

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102. gadeling, fellow; a term of reproach. But observe that the sarcasm lies in the similarity of the sound of the word to Gamelyn. Hence Gamelyn’s indignant reply. In P. Plowman, C. xi. 297, gadelynges are ranked with false folk, deceivers, and liars.

103. ‘Thou shalt be glad to get mere food and clothing.’

109. ner, nigher, the old comparative form; afterwards written near, and wrongly extended to near-er, with a double comparative suffix. Cf. l. 135, 352.

a-foote, on foot; not a foot, the length of a foot, as that would have no final e.

115. schal algate, must in any case.

116. This is obscure; it may mean ‘unless thou art the one (to do it)’; i.e. to give me the beating. In other words, Gamelyn dares his brother to use the rod himself, not to delegate such an office to another. But his brother was much too wary to take such advice; he preferred to depute the business to his men.

121. over-al, all about, all round, everywhere.

122. stood, i.e. which stood. The omission of the relative is common.

125. good woon, good store; plentifully.

129. for his eye, for awe of him. His is not the possessive pronoun here, but the genitive of the personal pronoun.

130. by halves, lit. by sides; i.e. some to one side, some to the other. drowe by halves=sidled away.

131. ‘May ye prosper ill!’ Cf. Chaucer, Pard. Tale, C. 947.

136. ‘I will teach thee some play with the buckler.’ An allusion to the ‘sword and buckler play,’ described in Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, bk. iii. ch. 6. § 22. Not unlike our modern ‘single-stick,’ but with the addition of a buckler in the left hand. Strutt gives a picture from a Bodleian MS., dated 1344, in which clubs or bludgeons are substituted for swords; and, no doubt, the swords used in sport were commonly of wood. Gamelyn is speaking jocosely; he had no buckler, but he had a wooden ‘pestel,’ which did very well for a sword.

137. ‘by Saint Richard was a favourite oath1 with the outlaws of Robin Hood’s stamp, probably because of his Saxon extraction’; Jephson. Mr. Jephson adds the following quotation from the English Martyrologe, 1608: ‘Saint Richard, King and Confessor, was sonne to Lotharius, King of Kent, who, for the love of Christ, taking upon him a long peregrination, went to Rome for devotion to that sea [see], and, on his way homeward, died at Lucca, about the year of Christ 750, where his body is kept until this day, with great veneration, in the oratory and chappell of St. Frigidian, and adorned with an epitaph both in verse and prose.’ But this is altogether beside the mark; for Mr. Jephson certainly refers to the wrong saint. There were four St. Richards, commemorated, respectively, on Feb. 7, April 3, June 9, and August 21; see Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. The day of Edition: current; Page: [481] the Saxon king is Feb. 7; but he could hardly have been so fresh in the memory of Englishmen as the more noted St. Richard, bishop of Chichester, who died in 1253, and was canonized in 1262; his day being April 3. There is a special fitness in the allusion to this latter saint, because he was a pattern of brotherly love, and Johan is here deprecating Gamelyn’s anger. Alban Butler says of him: ‘The unfortunate situation of his eldest brother’s affairs gave him an occasion of exercising his benevolent disposition. Richard condescended to become his brother’s servant, undertook the management of his farms, and by his industry and generosity effectually retrieved his brother’s before distressed circumstances.’ His name still appears in our Prayer-books.

141. I mot nede is used for ‘I must needs’; see examples in Mätzner, Alteng. Sprachproben, i. 302 (182). Mot is the present tense; whereas moste (mod. E. must) is the past tense, and was once grammatically incorrect as a form of the present tense.

150. of thing, of a thing; as in Sir Tristram, 406.

154. ‘And mind that thou blame me, unless I soon grant it.’

156. ‘If we are to be at one,’ i. e. to be reconciled. Cf. l. 166.

158. ‘Thou must cause me to possess it, if we are not to quarrel.’

160. We should now say—‘All that your father left you, and more too, if you would like to have it.’ The offer is meant to be very liberal.

164. ‘As he well knew (how to do).’

167. ‘In no respect he knew with what sort of a false treason his brother kissed him.’ Whiche is cognate with the Latin qualis, and has here the same sense.

171. ‘There was a wrestling-match proclaimed there, hard by.’

172. ‘And, as prizes for it, there were exhibited a ram and a ring.’ In Lodge’s novel, ‘a day of wrastling and tournament’ is appointed by Torimond, king of France. In Chaucer’s Prologue, A. 548, we find: ‘At wrastling he wolde have alwey the ram.’ On this Tyrwhitt has the following note: ‘This was the usual prize at wrestling-matches. See C. T. l. 13671 [Sir Thopas, st. 5], and Gamelyn, ll. 184, 280. Mathew Paris mentions a wrestling-match at Westminster, ad 1222, at which a ram was the prize.’ In Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. ii. ch. 2. § 14, two men are represented as wrestling for a live cock. Strutt also quotes a passage from ‘A mery Geste of Robin Hode,’ which gives an account of a wrestling, at which the following prizes were ‘set up’ (the same phrase being used as here), viz. a white bull, a courser with saddle and bridle, a pair of gloves, a red gold ring, and a pipe of wine!

199. ‘Why dost thou thus behave?’ i. e. make this lamentation. Cf. As You Like It, i. 2. 133–140.

204. ‘Unless God be surety for them,’ i. e. ensure their recovery. The story supposes that the two sons are not slain, but greatly disabled; as Shakespeare says, ‘there is little hope of life’ in them.

206. with the nones, on the occasion that, provided that. For the Edition: current; Page: [482] nones, for the occasion, stands for for then ones, for the once; so here with the nones=with then ones, with the once. Then is the dat. case of the article, being a weakened form of A. S. ðām. Cf. l. 456.

207. wilt thow wel doon, if thou wishest to do a kind deed.

214. drede not of, fear not for.

217. ‘How he dared adventure himself, to prove his strength upon him that was so doughty a champion.’

224. whyl he couthe go, whilst he was able to go about.

230. a moche schrewe thou were, thou wast a great doer of mischief. Gamelyn retorts that he is now a more, i. e. a still greater doer of mischief. Moche is often used of size. In Havelok, l. 982, more than the meste=bigger than the biggest.

236. gonne goon, did go. Gonne is a mere auxiliary verb.

237. ‘The champion tried various sleights upon Gamelyn, who was prepared for them.’

240. faste aboute, busily employed, trying your best. Cf. l. 785.

248. Spoken ironically, ‘shall it be counted as a throw, or as none?’

249. whether, &c., whichever it be accounted.

253. of him, &c., he stood in no awe of him. Instead of our modern expression ‘he stood in awe of him,’ the M.E. expression is, usually, ‘he stood awe of him,’ suppressing in. It probably arose out of the very construction here used, viz. ‘awe of him stood to him,’ i. e. arose in him. However that may be, the idiom is common. Thus, in Barbour’s Bruce, iii. 62:—

‘Quhen that the lord of Lorne saw

His men stand off him ane sik awe.’

In Havelok, l. 277:—

‘Al Engelond of him stod awe,

Al Engelond was of him adrad.’

So also, ‘he stode of him non eye’; Rob. of Brunne, tr. of Langtoft, p. 8, l. 24. So also in Wallace, v. 929, vi. 878.

255. ‘Who was not at all well pleased.’

256. ‘He is an evil master.’ The reading oure alther mayster (in Cp.) means—‘he is master of us all.’

257. ‘It is full yore ago’; it is very long ago.

262. wil no-more, desires no more, has had enough.

270. ‘This fair is done.’ A proverb, meaning that the things of the fair are sold, and there is no more business to be done.

271. ‘As I hope to do well, I have not yet sold up the half of my ware’; i. e. I have more to offer. The wrestler, in spite of his pain, utters the grim joke that Gamelyn sells his ware too dearly.

272. halvendel is for A.S. healfne dǣl or þone healfan dǣl, the accusative case. The word of is to be understood after it. See Zupitza’s Notes to Guy of Warwick, l. 5916.

273. See note to l. 334.

276. lakkest, dispraisest, decriest. In P. Plowman, B. v. 130, we Edition: current; Page: [483] find ‘to blame mennes ware’; and, only two lines below, the equivalent phrase ‘to lakke his chaffare.’

277. ‘By Saint James in Galicia.’ In Chaucer’s Prologue, the Wife of Bath had been ‘in Galice at Seint Jame.’ The shrine of St. James, at Compostella in Galicia, was much frequented by pilgrims. See my note to Prol. 466, at p. 44 above. It is remarkable that the whole of this line is quoted from A Poem on the Times of Edw. II., l. 475; see Political Songs, ed. Wright, p. 345. It occurs again below, l. 764.

278. ‘Yet it is too cheap, that which thou hast bought.’ The franklin tells the defeated wrestler that it is not for him to call Gamelyn’s ware dear, for he has, in fact, been let off much too cheaply. Our modern cheap is short for good cheap, i. e. bought in good market. To buy in a good cheap was shortened to to buy good cheap, and finally became to buy cheap.

281. have, have, receive, take.

285. rowte, company. We are to suppose that a crowd of Gamelyn’s admirers accompanied him home. In Lodge’s novel, the elder brother ‘sawe wher Rosader returned with the garland on his head, as having won the prize, accompanied with a crue of boon companions; greeved at this, he stepped in and shut the gate.’

297. See note to l. 334.

302. though thou haddest swore, though thou hadst sworn (the contrary). This curious phrase occurs also in Chaucer, Kn. Tale, A. 1089, where ‘although we hadde it sworn’ is equivalent to ‘though we had sworn (the contrary).’

312. ‘That desired either to walk or to ride in.’ Go, when opposed to ride, means to go on foot, to walk.

318. and ye wil doon after me, if ye will act according to my advice; spoken parenthetically.

321. oure catour, caterer for us. oure aller purs, the purse of us all. Cf. footnotes to l. 256.

324. largely, liberally; the usual old meaning.

328. no cheste, no strife, no quarrelling.

334. so, &c., ‘as I hope to enjoy the use of my eye’; lit. ‘as I may use my eye.’ This phrase occurs also in Havelok, 2545: ‘So mote ich brouke mi rith eie,’ as I hope to have the use of my right eye. And again in the same, l. 1743, with the substitution of ‘finger or toe’ for ‘right eye’; and in l. 311, with the substitution of ‘mi blake swire,’ i. e. my black neck; cf. ll. 273, 297 above. See also ll. 407, 489, 567. Even Chaucer has: ‘So mote I brouke wel myn eyen tweye,’ as I hope to make good use of my two eyes; Nonne Prestes Tale, 479 (B. 4490).

338. bitaughte is used in two senses; they commended Gamelyn to God’s protection, and bade him good day.

345. mangerye, feast, lit. an eating. It occurs in P. Plowman, C. xiii. 46; Wyclif, Works, ed. Arnold, i. 4. In Sir Amadace, st. 55, a wedding-feast is called a maungery, and lasted 40 days; Early Eng. Metrical Romances, ed. Robson, p. 49. Cf. ll. 434, 464.

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349, 350. These lines are anticipatory; they give a brief summary of the next part of the story.

352. ful neer, much nearer. See note to l. 109.

366. Iohan was pronounced like modern E. Jawn, and rimes with noon, pronounced as nawn (with aw as in awe). So also in Chaucer, Man of Lawes Tale, B. 1019.

367. ‘By my faith’; cf. l. 555. Chaucer has ‘by my fey’; Kn. Tale, 268 (A. 1126).

368. ‘If thou thinkest the same as thou sayst, may God requite it thee!’

372. Tho, when. threwe, didst throw; observe the absence of -st in the suffix of the second person of the past tense of strong verbs.

373. moot, meeting, assembly, concourse of people; in allusion to the crew of companions whom Gamelyn introduced. Moreover, the word moot was especially used of an assembly of men in council, like our modern meeting. But it is, perhaps, simpler to take it in the sense of public disputation, dispute; cf. St. Katherine, l. 1314, and cf. M.E. motien, to dispute publicly. Indeed, as the rimes are often imperfect, the original word may have been mood, i. e. anger.

376. It was not uncommon, to prevent a person from being forsworn, that the terms of an oath should be literally fulfilled; cf. Merch. Ven. iv. 1. 326. In his novel, Lodge avoids all improbability by a much simpler device. He makes the eldest brother surprise the youngest in his sleep. ‘On a morning very early he cald up certain of his servants, and went with them to the chamber of Rosader, which being open, he entered with his crue, and surprized his brother when he was asleepe, and bound him with fetters,’ &c.

382. Here, as in l. 420, all the MSS. have honde. The final e probably represents the dative or instrumental case, and the correct reading is fote and honde, as in MSS. Pt. and Ln. in both passages.

386. wood, mad. It was common to bind and starve madmen, and to treat them cruelly. Even Malvolio was to be put ‘in a dark room and bound’; Tw. Nt. iii. 4. 147. Cf. As You Like It, iii. 2. 421.

392. a party is an adverb, meaning ‘partly,’ or ‘in some measure.’ Cf. P. Plowman, B. xv. 17; Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 2334.

394. or, ere, before; not ‘or.’ be, been.

398. ‘Spence, or (according to the original French form of the word) despense, was the closet or room in convents and large houses where the victuals, wine, and plate were locked up; and the person who had the charge of it was called the spencer, or the despencer. Hence originated two common family names.’—Wright. The spence, however, like the spencer, owed its name to the O.F. verb despendre, to spend; as explained in my Etym. Dict. s.v. spend. See the Glossary. Lodge retains the name of Adam Spencer; whence Adam in Shakespeare.

411. ‘Upon such an agreement.’

413. ‘All as I may prosper’; as I hope to thrive.

414. After wil supply lose; see the footnote. ‘I will hold covenant with thee, if thou wilt loose me.’

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430. wher I go, whether shall I go. Wher is a contracted form of whether, like or for other. Girde of, strike off.

433. that this, &c., that this is a thing not to be denied, a sure thing.

438. hem, them, i. e. the fetters (understood); cf. l. 498.

441. borwe the, be surety for thee, go bail for thee.

444. do an other, act in another way, try another course. There is no authority for inserting thing after other.

445. Lodge says: ‘and at the ende of the hall shall you see stand a couple of good pollaxes, one for you and another for me.’

449. ‘If we must in any case absolve them of their sin.’ Said jocosely; he was going to absolve them after a good chastisement.

451. St. Charity was the daughter of St. Sophia, who christened her three daughters Fides, Spes, and Caritas; see Butler’s Lives of the Saints (Aug. 1). Cf. Percy Folio MS., i. 28; l. 26.

453. Lodge says: ‘When I give you a wincke,’ &c.

456. for the nones, for the occasion; see note to l. 206.

460. leste and meste, least and greatest.

461. halle, of the hall; A. S. healle, gen. case of heal, a hall. Here, and in l. 496, we may take halle-dore as a compound word, but halle is still a genitive form.

471. ther that, where that; as commonly.

481. ‘Who beggeth for thee (to come) out of prison, or who may be surety for thee; but ever may it be well with them that cause thee much sorrow.’

485. ‘All that may be surety for thee, may evil befall them’; lit. ‘may it befall them evilly.’

489. so, &c., ‘as I hope to make use of my bones,’ lit. bone.

503. ‘Gamelyn sprinkles holy water with an oaken sprig.’ Said jocosely; Gamelyn flourishes his staff like one who sprinkles holy water. A spire is properly a springing shoot, hence a sprig or sapling. Cf. Troil. ii. 1335. See the Glossary.

509. Mr. Jephson here remarks as follows:—‘The hatred of churchmen, of holy water, and of everything connected with the church, observable in all the ballads of this class, is probably owing to the fact, that William the Conqueror and his immediate successors systematically removed the Saxon bishops and abbots, and intruded Normans in their stead into all the valuable preferments in England. But there were also other grounds for the odium in which these foreign prelates were held. Sharing in the duties of the common law judges, they participated in the aversion with which the functionaries of the law were naturally regarded by outlaws and robbers,’ &c. He also quotes, from the Lytel Geste of Robin Hood, the following:—

‘These bysshopes and these archebysshoppes,

Ye shall them beete and bynde;

The high sheryfe of Notynghame,

Hym holde ye in your mynde.’

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It may be added that Lodge entirely omits here all mention of abbot, prior, monk, or canon. Times had changed.

514. ‘Pay a liberal allowance,’ i. e. deal your blows bountifully.

515. so ever, &c., ‘as sure as ever I hear mass.’ Cf. l. 595.

520. telle largely, count fully.

523. the croune, i. e. the crown of each man’s head; alluding to the tonsure. It means, do not spoil the tonsure on their crowns, but break their legs and arms.

531. cold reed, cold counsel, unprofitable counsel. So in Chaucer, Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4446; see the note. So Shakespeare has ‘colder tidings’; Rich. III, iv. 4. 536. Cf. l. 759 below.

532. ‘It had been better for us.’ Cf. l. 621.

533. This is ironical, and refers, as Mr. Jephson rightly says, to the laying on of hands, whereby Gamelyn made his victims deacons and priests after a new fashion of his own.

543. here love, love of them; here awe, awe of them. Here=A.S. hira, gen. pl. of hē, he. Hence here also means ‘their,’ as in l. 569.

558. ther . . inne, wherein (Gamelyn was).

567. ‘As I hope to have the use of my chin.’ See note to l. 334.

578. ‘I will repay thee for thy words, when I see my opportunity.’

583. It ben, they are; lit. it are. A common idiom in Middle English. See P. Plowman, C. vi. 59, ix. 217, xvi. 309; and compare it am I, as in Chaucer, Man of Lawes Tale, B. 1109.

588. ‘Make their beds in the fen,’ i. e. lie down in the fen or mud.

596. Spoken ironically. Adam offers them some refreshment. They reply, that his wine is not good, being too strong; indeed, so strong that it will not only, like ordinary wine, steal away a man’s brains, but even take them out of his head altogether, so that they lie scattered in his hood. In other words, Adam’s staff breaks their heads, and lets the brains out.

606. ‘It is better for us to be there at large.’

609. Lodge says that they ‘tooke their way towards the forest of Arden.’

610. ‘Then the sheriff found the nest, but no egg (in it).’ So also in William of Palerne, l. 83: ‘Than fond he nest and no neiȝ · for nouȝt nas ther leued’; i. e. for nothing was left there. No neiȝ=non eiȝ, no egg.

616. and loke how he fare, and let us see how he may fare.

618. Here Adam merely expresses disgust of his new mode of life. In Lodge’s novel, he begins to faint, being old. Cf. l. 817.

621. lever me were, it would be preferable for me.

631. ‘After misery comes help.’ So in the Proverbs of Hendyng, as said above, in note to l. 32. Trench, in his book On Proverbs, quotes a Hebrew proverb:—When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes.

642. ‘Whoso looked aright,’ i. e. if one were to look carefully.

651. i.e. I only curse (or blame) myself if I yield.

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652. ‘Though ye fetched five more, ye would then be only twelve in number.’ He means that he would fight twelve of them.

660. In Lodge’s novel, the chief is ‘Gerismond the lawfull King of France, banished by Torismond, who with a lustie crue of Outlawes lived in that Forrest.’ But the present text evidently refers to an English outlaw, such as Robin Hood.

666. ‘I will adventure myself as far as the door.’ Spoken proverbially, there being no door in the wood. He means that he will venture within sight of the chief. hadde mete, might have food.

689. ‘His peace was made’; i. e. his pardon had been obtained.

698. ‘And caused his brother to be indicted.’

700. wolves-heed, wolf’s head. ‘This was the ancient Saxon formula of outlawry, and seems to have been literally equivalent to setting the man’s head at the same estimate as a wolf’s head. In the laws of Edward the Confessor [§ 6], it is said of a person who has fled justice, ‘Si postea repertus fuerit et teneri possit, vivus regi reddatur, vel caput ipsius si se defenderit; lupinum enim caput geret a die utlagacionis sue, quod ab Anglis wluesheued nominatur. Et hec sententia communis est de omnibus utlagis.’—Wright. See Thorpe, Ancient Laws, &c., i. 445.

701. of his men, i. e. (some) of his men.

703. ‘How the wind was turned’; i. e. which way the wind blew, as we now say.

704. ‘When a man’s lands were seized by force or unjustly, the peasantry on the estates were exposed to be plundered and ill-treated by the followers of the intruder.’—Wright.

707. ‘The messengers of ill tidings, however innocent themselves, often experienced all the first anger of the person to whom they carried them, in the ages of feudal power. Hence the bearer of ill news generally began by deprecating the wrath of the person addressed.’—Wright. This was not, however, peculiar to those times. Cf. Sophocles, Antigone, 228; 2 Hen. IV. i. 1. 100; Rich. III. iv. 4. 510; Macb. v. 5. 39.

709. ‘I. e. has obtained government of the bailiwick. In former times . . . the high sheriff was the officer personally responsible for the peace of his bailiwick, which he maintained by calling out the posse comitatus to assist him.’—Jephson.

710. doth thee crye, causes thee to be proclaimed.

713. ‘Greet well my husbands (i. e. servants) and their wives.’ The A.S. wīf was a neuter substantive, and remained unchanged in the plural, like sheep and deer in modern English. We find wif as a pl. form also in Layamon, l. 1507. The present is a very late example.

714. ‘I will go to (attend) the next assizes; see note to l. 715. If schire refers to the shire or county, the result is much the same. In venturing into the shire of which his brother was sheriff, Gamelyn was boldly putting himself into his brother’s power.

715. nexte schire, may mean ‘next (succeeding) assizes’; for schire Edition: current; Page: [488] may be used in the sense of A. S. scīr-gemōt; and the Lat. comitatus meant curia as well as ‘county.’ See, for example, the last quotation in the note to l. 871.

718. ‘Put down his hood,’ lowered his hood, so as to show his face.

724. leet take Gamelyn, caused (men) to take Gamelyn; we now say ‘caused Gamelyn to be taken,’ changing the verb from active to passive. The active use of the verb is universal in such phrases in Middle English, as is still common in German. ‘Er liess Gamelyn nehmen.’ Cf. l. 733.

727. Ote is not a common name; we find mention of ‘Sir Otes de Lile’ in Libius Disconius, l. 1103, in the Percy Folio MS., ii. 455. Otes is equivalent to ‘Otho’; see Le Livere de Reis de Angletere, ed. Glover, p. 268, l. 6; and p. 272. The form Otoun or Oton is equivalent to Lat. acc. Othonem.

732. wonder sory, wonderfully sorry. nothing light, in no degree light-hearted.

738. ‘May evil befall such another brother (as thou art)’; cf. l. 485.

744. ‘I offer to bail him,’ lit. I bid for him for bail; mainprise being a sb., and him a dative case. Mr. Jephson says—‘I demand that he be granted to me on mainprise, or bail, till the assize for general gaol-delivery.’

752. ‘Cause (men) to deliver him at once, and to hand him over to me.’

761. sitte means ‘may sit’; cf. l. 749.

779. cors, curse. He was never cursed by those with whom he had dealings. This can only refer to the poor whom he never oppressed. The author quietly ignores the strong language of the churchmen whom he stripped of everything. This is precisely the tone adopted in the Robin Hood ballads.

782. nom, catch, take; a new form of the infinitive mood. It arose from the pt. t. cam, by analogy of comen from cam. See Mätzner, Alteng. Sprachproben, i. 261, l. 80.

785. fast aboute, busily employed. See l. 240.

786. to hyre the quest, to suborn the jury. See l. 801.

790. seet, should sit. The A.S. for sat is sæt, but for should sit (3rd pers. sing. of the pt. t. subj.) is sǣte. The latter became the M.E. seete; hence seet, by loss of the final e. It rimes with beheet (A.S. behēt).

806. spet, short for speedeth; cf. stant for standeth, &c.

834. of, in. So in Shakespeare, Jul. Cæsar, ii. 1. 157—‘We shall find of him A shrewd contriver.’

840. the quest is oute, the verdict is (already) delivered.

852. the barre, the bar in front of the justice’s seat; see ll. 860, 867.

864. ‘It seemed a very long time to him.’

871. sisours, jury-men. I copy the following from my note on P. Plowman, B. ii. 62. ‘The exact signification of sisour does not seem quite certain, and perhaps it has not always the same meaning. The Edition: current; Page: [489] Low-Latin name was assissores or assisiarii, interpreted by Ducange to mean “qui a principe vel a domino feudi delegati assisias tenent”; whence Halliwell’s explanation of sisour as a person deputed to hold assizes. Compare—

“Þys fals men, þat beyn sysours,

Þat for hate a trew man wyl endyte,

And a þefe for syluer quyte.”

Robert of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, 1335.’

Mr. Furnivall’s note says—‘Sysour, an inquest-man at assizes. The sisour was really a juror, though differing greatly in functions and in position from what jurymen subsequently became; see Forsyth’s Hist. of Trial by Jury.’ In the tale of Gamelyn, however, it is pretty clear that ‘the twelve sisours that weren of the quest’ were simply the twelve gentlemen of the jury, who were hired to give false judgment (l. 786). Blount, in his Law Dictionary, says of assisors, that ‘in Scotland (according to Skene) they are the same with our jurors.’ The following stanza from A Poem of the Times of Edw. II., ll. 469–474 (printed in Political Songs, ed. Wright, p. 344), throws some light on the text:—

‘And thise assisours, that comen to shire and to hundred,

Damneth men for silver, and that nis no wonder.

For whan the riche justise wol do wrong for mede,

Thanne thinketh hem thei muwen the bet, for thei han more nede

To winne.

Ac so is al this world ablent, that no man douteth sinne.’

880. ‘To swing about with the ropes, and to be dried in the wind.’

881. ‘Sorrow may he have who cares for it.’ Not an uncommon phrase. In P. Plowman, B. vi. 122, it appears as ‘þe deuel haue þat reccheth,’ i. e. the devil take him who regrets it.

885. This seems to mean, ‘he was hanged by the neck, and not by the purse.’ That is, he was really hanged, and not merely made to suffer in his purse by paying a fine; cf. Ch. Prol. 657.

889. of the best assise, in the truest manner; cf. l. 544.

900. ‘Buried under the earth.’

901. ‘No man can escape it.’

Edition: current; Page: [490]

ADDENDA.

Note: to vol. i. p. ix. I am informed that it appears, from a charter in the British Museum, that one Galfridus de Chaucere is a witness to a grant of land to Hatfield Broad Oak Priory, co. Essex, about ad 1300. This shews that the poet was not the first of his surname to bear the name of Geoffrey.

Rom. Rose, 923. Turke bowes, Turkish bows. The form Turke can hardly be right, as the adjective is required. The original copy probably had ‘Turkis,’ with the is written as a contraction; this would easily be misread as ‘Turke,’ i. e. as if the contraction stood for e. The French text has ars turquois, as the reader can see.

Cotgrave gives: ‘Arc turquois, the Turkish long-bow.’ But the Turkish long-bow was short, as compared with the English. Strutt speaks of his seeing the Turkish ambassador shoot; this was in the year 1800. ‘The bow he used was much shorter than those belonging to the English archers; and his arrows were of the bolt kind, with round heads made of wood’; Sports and Pastimes, bk. ii. c. i. § 17. Cf. ‘with bowes turkoys,’ Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, ii. 458.

III. (Book of the Duchesse), 1318, 1319. The lines are:—

A long castel with walles whyte,

By seynt Iohan! on a riche hil.

There can be no doubt that (as has been suggested by the Bishop of Oxford) these apparently otiose lines contain punning allusions to the whole subject of the poem. Long-castell (put for Lon-castell, or the castle on the Lune) was another name for Lancaster; compare the modern Lonsdale as a name for the valley of the Lune, and see Barbour’s Bruce, xvii. 285, 582. Whyte alludes to Blanche. Thus the former line expresses Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.

In the second line, the riche hil refers to Richmond in Yorkshire; and the whole line expresses John, Earl of Richmond. John of Gaunt had been created Earl of Richmond (vol. i. p. xviii).

Boethius. For some corrections, see vol. ii. p. lxxix.

Troilus. For some corrections and additions, see vol. ii. pp. lxxix, lxxx.

For an Additional Note to Bk. iii. 674, see vol. ii. p. 506.

Legend of Good Women. For an Additional Note to ll. 1896–8, see vol. iii. p. lvi.

Edition: current; Page: [491]

Vol. III. pp. 421, 422. Sources of the Prioresses Tale. It is tolerably clear that Chaucer really got the former part of this story from one of the Miracles of our Lady, by Gautier de Coinci or Coincy1. And I have now little doubt that he adapted the latter part of it from another story in the same collection (and therefore in the same MS.), by the same author. It so happens that the latter story is printed in Bartsch and Horning’s collection in ‘La Langue et la Littérature Françaises’; Paris, 1887; col. 367. It is there entitled ‘De Clerico Sancte Virgini devoto, in cuius iam mortui ore flos inuentus est.’ It is rather a stupid and pointless story, to the following effect. There was a wicked cleric at Chartres, who gave himself up to all kinds of debauchery; but he had one merit. He never passed an image of Our Lady without kneeling down and saying a prayer. Some enemies killed him; and it was at once resolved to bury him in a ditch, as an outcast; and this was done. But Our Lady appeared to one of the chief clergy, and commanded that he should be buried again, in the holiest spot in the cemetery. When the body was recovered, it was found that the tongue of the corpse remained uncorrupted, being as red as a rose, and a miraculous flower was blossoming in his mouth. He was reburied in holy ground, with many tears from the pious. It was also observed that his tongue still slowly moved, as if endeavouring to sing the Virgin’s praises.

This is rather a clumsy assumption; for the tongue might have been trying to swear. Hence Chaucer gives it a real voice; and substitutes a small grain in place of the flower; probably because there was a well-known legend about the three grains found by Seth under Adam’s tongue (above, p. 180, note to l. 1852). Chaucer’s tale is really made up, with great skill, from a combination of these two poems by Gautier de Coinci; and it is highly remarkable that, in the Vernon MS., there is a version of the story which says that five roses were found in the child’s head; one in his mouth, two in his eyes, and two in his ears. In the Legend of Alphonsus of Lincoln (see vol. iii. p. 421), the child has a precious stone in place of a tongue; but this legend was composed in 1459, and was probably copied from Chaucer. I think it highly probable that Chaucer combined the two ‘Miracles’ himself; though of course some one else may have done it before him. In any case, it is worth while pointing out that we must combine the two stories by de Coinci, before we obtain the whole of Chaucer’s poem.

Vol. III. pp. 502, 503. The statement that the French treatise by Frère Lorens, entitled La Somme des Vices et des Vertus, ‘has never been printed,’ is incorrect. However, the book is scarce. Mr. Bradley tells me that there is a copy of it in the British Museum, printed by Anthoine Verard ‘sus le pont notre dame,’ Paris. It is undated, but it is said to have been printed in 1495.

Edition: current; Page: [492]

Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales, and especially the Prologue, are so full of allusions and expressions that either require or invite illustrations, that no commentary upon them can be considered exhaustive. Consequently, those points only have, for the most part, been considered where the expressions used are for any reason difficult, obscure, or likely to be misunderstood; for it frequently happens that, by a change in meaning, the modern form or use of a word suggests a wrong impression.

A considerable number of words and phrases which occur in Chaucer have already been explained by me in the Notes to Piers the Plowman. Hence, in many cases, additional illustrations and references can easily be had by consulting the ‘Index to the Explanations in the Notes’ printed in P. Plowman, vol. iv. pp. 464–491.

The ‘Index of Books referred to in the Notes’ to the same, vol. iv. pp. 492–502, gives a long list of books, most of which are useful for the illustration of Chaucer also. I add here a few additional notes, taken almost at random, for two of which I am indebted to Professor Earle.

A. 30. Zupitza (Notes to Guy of Warwick, 855, p. 361) further illustrates this line. ‘There can be no doubt that the pp. goon is to be supplied.’ He quotes ‘to reste eode þa sunne,’ Layamon, 28328; ‘until the son was gon to rest,’ Iwaine, 3612, ed. Ritson (Met. Romances, i. 151); also from J. Grimm, Mythology, p. 702, who treats of the M. H. G. phrase ze reste gān.

A. 179. It is shown (vol. v. p. 22) that the simile about the fish out of water occurs in the Life of St. Anthony. Chaucer clearly took it from Jehan de Meung (or Jean de Meun); but the French poet probably took it from the Life of St. Anthony in the Legenda Aurea. We find it even in Caxton’s Golden Legende:—‘for lyke as fysshes that haue ben longe in the water whan they come in-to drye londe they muste dye, in lyke wyse the monkes that goon out of theyr cloystre or selles, yf they conuerse longe wyth seculiers they must nedes lose theyr holynesse and leue theyr good lyf.’

A. 387. With the beste, ‘as well as possible,’ but originally ‘among the best.’ So in Zupitza, notes to Guy of Warwick, l. 1496. He quotes Mätzner’s Grammatik, II. 2. 434; King Horn, 1326, knight with the beste; &c. Cf. with the furste, King Horn, 1119.

A. 467. She coude muche of wandring by the weye; i. e. she knew much which she had learnt through being so great a traveller.—J. Earle.

I have explained it above, p. 44, by—‘She knew much about travelling.’ The original will bear either interpretation; all depends upon the meaning of the word of.

Edition: current; Page: [493]

A. 655. See Freeman, vol. v. p. 497, and his quotation from John of Salisbury, Ep. 146 (Giles, i. 260):—‘Erat, ut memini, genus hominum, qui in ecclesia Dei archidiaconorum censentur nomine, quibus vestra discretio omnem salutis viam querebatur esse praeclusam. Nam, ut dicere consuevistis, diligunt munera, sequuntur retributiones, ad injurias proni sunt, calumniis gaudent, peccata populi comedunt et bibunt, quibus vivitur ex rapto, ut non sit hospes ab hospite tutus.’—J. Earle. [From Freeman’s Hist. of the Norman Conquest, ed. 1867–79.]

Cf. the Somnours Tale; especially D. 1315, 1317, and the notes.

A. 1155. For par amour, see all the instances referred to in the Glossary. The fact that it sometimes means ‘with all affection,’ or ‘affectionately,’ is well illustrated by a passage in the Coventry Mysteries, p. 50, where it is put into the mouth of Abraham, when addressing Isaac. ‘Thu art my suete childe, and par amoure Ful wele in herte do I the loue.’

A. 1452. Seven yeer is an old proverbial expression for a long time; see Seven-year in Halliwell; P. Plowman, C. vii. 214, xi. 73; Zupitza’s notes to Guy of Warwick (l. 8667); &c. The curious thing is that Chaucer understood himself literally: ‘It fel that in the seventhe yeer, in May’; A. 1462.

A. 2749. Some further illustration of the word expulsive as a technical term may be found in old treatises. Thus Brunetto Latini, in his Livres dou Tresor, livre i. part iii. chap. 103, says that the four virtues which sustain life are the appetitive (due to the element of fire), the retentive (due to earth), the digestive (due to air), and the expulsive (due to water). Hence we have an appetite for food; we retain it; we digest it; and expel it. ‘L’aigue est froide et moiste, et fait la vertu expulsive, ce est qu’ele chace fuer la viande quant ele est cuite.’ Sir Thos. Elyot, Castel of Helth, 1539, p. 10, says there are three Powers, animal, spiritual, and natural. Of these, it is the natural power which ‘appetiteth, retayneth, digesteth, expelleth’; whereas it is the ‘power animall’ that ‘ordeyneth, discerneth, and composeth; that moueth by voluntarye mocyon,’ &c. Of the four ‘operations,’ he says that ‘expulsion [is] by colde and moyste.’ The whole of this sort of jargon is full of inconsistencies.

A. 3287. Do wey, i. e. take away. So also go wey occurs for ‘go away.’ See these phrases plentifully illustrated in Zupitza’s notes to Guy of Warwick, l. 3097.

B. 124. After all, this line is probably merely a reproduction from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 10438:—

‘Tu n’a pas geté ambesas.’

B. 1983. The phrase in toune is, as I have said, practically otiose, and means nothing, being merely introduced as a tag. So again in londe, in l. 2077. For further illustrations see Zupitza’s notes to Guy of Warwick, l. 5841.

Edition: current; Page: [494]

B. 3917. A correspondent kindly reminds me that the story of Cyrus in Vincent of Beauvais came originally from Herodotus, who tells it, not of Cyrus, but of Polycrates of Samos; see Herodotus, bk. iii. capp. 124, 125. In Herodotus, the vision is seen by the daughter.

C. 406. In the long note at pp. 272–274, I have shewn that the sense is ‘though their souls go a-gathering blackberries,’ i. e. wander wherever they please. Mr. E. M. Spence suggests for comparison the well-known words of Falstaff (1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 448):—‘Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries?’

C. 570. In the Accounts of Henry, Earl of Derby, on his return from Prussia in 1391, the following item occurs for March:—‘Et per manus eiusdem pro ij barrellis ferreres [vessels for carrying wine on horseback] vini de Lepe, viz. lj stope per ipsum emptis ibidem, ij nobles’; printed for the Camden Society, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, p. 95. Miss Toulmin Smith quotes from Henderson’s History of Wines, 1824, the note that Lepe wine is ‘a strong white wine of Spain,’ and that Lepe is ‘a small town on the sea-coast, between Ayamont and Palos, long celebrated for figs, raisins, and wine.’ Its position was favourable, as it is in the part of Andalucia nearest to England. See Lepe in Pinero’s Spanish Dictionary, ed. 1740.

D. 110. The word fore occurs also, but with the Southern spelling vore, in P. Plowman, C. vii. 118; on which see my note.

D. 325. At line 180 above (see the note), the Wife is plainly alluding to one of the passages in Le Roman de la Rose in which the Almageste is mentioned; and I have no doubt that she here refers to the other (l. 18772). For though the passage quoted by Jean de Meun, as from the Almagest, is really quite different, there is a general reference, in the context, to the idea of contentment:—

‘Car soffisance fait richece,’ &c.

And just below:—

‘Cil qui nous escrit l’Almageste.’

F. 226. Many examples are given in Godefroy of the use of Fr. maistre with the adjectival sense of ‘principal’ or ‘chief.’ Thus we find la mestre yglise, la mestre tor, la maistre rue, la maistre cité, la maistre tente. See Maister in the Glossarial Index.

F. 233. Tyrwhitt remarks that a ‘treatise on Perspective, under his name [i. e. of Aristotle], is mentioned by Vincent of Beauvais, in the thirteenth century (Speculum Historiale, lib. iii. c. 84):—“Extat etiam liber, qui dicitur Perspectiva Aristotelis.” ’ See the word Aristotle in Tyrwhitt’s Glossary to Chaucer.

Edition: current; Page: [495] Edition: current; Page: [516]

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD

BY VIVIAN RIDLER

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

1

The scribe is usually right. I only remember observing one MS. in which the scribe is reckless; see vol. i. p. 47.

1

To which add, as a twenty-third, the three stanzas on Gentilesse quoted in Scogan’s poem (no. 33).

1

Now known to be Lydgate’s; see vol. i. p. 35, note 3.

2

I have lately made a curious discovery as to the Testament of Love. The first paragraph begins with a large capital M; the second with a large capital A; and so on. By putting together all the letters thus pointed out, we at once have an acrostic, forming a complete sentence. The sentence is—MARGARET OF VIRTW, HAVE MERCI ON TSKNVI. Of course the last word is expressed as an anagram, which I decipher as KITSVN, i. e. Kitsun, the author’s name. The whole piece is clearly addressed to a lady named Margaret, and contains frequent reference to the virtues of pearls, which were supposed to possess healing powers. Even if ‘Kitsun’ is not the right reading, we learn something; for it is quite clear that TSKNVI cannot possibly represent the name of Chaucer. See The Academy, March 11, 1893; p. 222.

3

No. 38 is not noticed in the Index, on its reappearance at p. 555.

1

Originally (I understand)1845. I have only a copy with a reprinted title-page and an altered date.

2

It should be—‘and of some of those other pieces’; for the ‘Account’ does not profess to be exhaustive.

1

See the pieces numbered 1-68, in vol. i. pp. 31–45. But four pieces are in prose, viz. Boethius, Astrolabe, Testament of Love, and Jack Upland. Of course Tyrwhitt rejected Jack Upland. He admitted, however, rather more than 26, the number in the edition of 1845.

1

The false rime of now with rescowe in st. 46 may be got over, it is suggested, by a change in the readings. On the other hand, I now observe a fatal rhyme in st. 17, where upon and ron rime with mon, a man. When such a form as mon (for man) can be found in Chaucer, we may reconsider his claim to this poem. Meanwhile, I would note the curious word grede in st. 27. It does not occur in Chaucer, but is frequent in The Owl and the Nightingale.

1

Exception may be taken to the riming of mene (l. 20) with open e, and grene with close e.

2

Hoccleve’s Poems; ed. Furnivall, p. 49; cf. p. 56.

1

See the admirable remarks on this subject in Lounsbury’s Studies in Chaucer, i. 305–28. Much that I wish to say is there said for me, in a way which I cannot improve.

1

MS. Lansdowne (the worst of the seven) has Alle, and Gyngelinge; Cm. has Gyngelyn; Hl. has Euery man; and that is all.

2

The phrase wel a ten (F. 383) is not precisely parallel.

3

Thus, the Parson calls his Tale ‘a mery’ one (I. 46). Tyrwhitt has ‘a litel tale.’

1

Ielousye cannot rime with me.

2

The latter line answers to A. 2018; lines 2012–7 being wholly omitted.

1

Which, by the way, makes come monosyllabic.

1

Dryden had some reason; for whenever (as often) the editors omitted some essential word, the line could not possibly be right.

1

The explanation of these rules depends upon Middle-English grammar and pronunciation; for which see the Introduction to vol. vi.

1

A word like taverne is ta-vér-ne, in three syllables, if the accent be on the second syllable; but when it is on the first, it becomes táv-ern’, and is only dissyllabic.

1

Many of them were discovered by Dr. Köppell.

1

Many of them were discovered by Dr. Köppell.

1

‘Thou were nought skoymus to take the maydenes womb’ is the reading given in The Prymer, ed. H. Littlehales, p. 22.

1

The black-letter editions have mare; and Tyrwhitt follows them. I take this to be a mere guess.

1

Spelt Xeuxis in one MS., and Zensis in another, in the same passage; see Anglo-Latin Satirists, ed. Wright, ii. 303.

1

This seems to be a mistake; the MSS. and old editions have simply ‘god you see.’

1

The words vel e contrario are in the margin of E., but not in the printed edition.

1

The reading Burdeuxs actually occurs in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ii. 3. 26. See Boundys in the Glossary; and see vol. iii. p. 400.

1

No quotation is given to support this assertion.

1

Unluckily misprinted Poincy (vol. iii. p. 422).

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