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. [255]

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. [256]

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 [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, B.C. 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 [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 _g[=o]d-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. '_Brazil-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 Camo[e]s (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 [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. _war[=i]s_, 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.).

* * * * *

[260]

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.'

[261]

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_.[26] 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_.'

[262]

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 [263] 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, l. 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 l. 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. [264]

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 haïne.' 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 [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. [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 _Hippocrates' 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 [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 A. D. 778. The Ulster annals give at [A. D.] 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, A. D. 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 A. D. 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, A. D. 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, [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 [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 [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._ [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 _spade-bone_ 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,' [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-blackberrying'; 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 [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 [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 [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 [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 (A. D. 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 ki_n_ges blod; his dame [_mother_] was a to_m_bystere'; 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 waes _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 [277] translation 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 [278] "stories" carefully.' The Harleian MS. has the inferior reading _story_; but the reference is particular, not vague. Peter Comestor (died A. D. 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 _A[gh]enbyer_. 'See now how dere he [Christ] boughte man, that he made after his owne ymage, and how dere he _a[gh]enboght_ 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 nostras 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. [279]

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 [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. [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 [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 '[Greek: stilbôn, -ontos, ho] _the planet Mercury_, Arist. Mund. 2. 9; cf. Cic. Nat. D. 2. 20.' The original sense of the word was 'shining,' from the verb [Greek: stilbein], 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. [283]

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 B. C., 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: '[gh]it 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. [284]

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. Maundeville, 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. [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_ ([Greek: kuboi]) not _tali_ ([Greek: astragaloi]); 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, [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; Myre'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 [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 oldë_ (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 fuller[27]:--_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. [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 [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 A.D. 980, died A.D. 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 [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 | r_ie_ 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.

* * * * *

[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 [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 [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 [Greek: agônothetês] _praemium_, inuitat ad cursum, tenet in manu [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 [Greek: brabeion]. '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. _f[=o]r_, a course, way; from _faran_ (pt. t. _f[=o]r_), 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 p_ar_fit 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. _h[=a]tan_. 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 barley-bread, 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 [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. [296]

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 [Greek: megalê suntaxis tês astronomias]. This work was also called, for brevity, [Greek: megalê], and afterwards [Greek: megistê] (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 it 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. [297]

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 [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. [299]

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 [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, ... [301] 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 an 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. [302]

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, [303] 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 A. D. 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 [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 A. D. 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. _[=u]tian_, verb, a derivative of _[=u]t_, 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 [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. [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^o. 24^o.' Here 'Amphoris_m_o' 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][28], erit mulier impudica. Idem erit, si Capricornum habuerit [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. [308]

'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. [309]

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 B.C. 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 phoenix; 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 [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). I. 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 [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 Amphiarãum, 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, A. D. 23. See Ben Jonson's [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 ista 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:--[Greek: hama de kithôni ekduomenôi, sunekduetai kai tên aidô gunê]. [313]

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 [314] 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 [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. 1. '_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. _m[=æ]l_, 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 [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.

[317]

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 [318] _bumbith_. Owing to the loud booming note of the male bittern, it is called in A. S. _r[=a]re-dumle_ or _r[=a]re-dumbla_, from _r[=a]rian_, 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 _bog-drum_, 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. [319]

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 A.D. 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 dâ, 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.'

[320] 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. _l[=y]g_, _l[=i]g_, 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, [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 _[=æ]_ and _lenge_, a secondary form of _lang_, long; so that A. S. _[=æ]lenge_ 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., [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 B. C. 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.' [323]

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.

*** 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. [324]

1324. _taughte_, informed; the final _e_ is _not_ elided.

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. [325]

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 [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. _r[=a]p-incel_, a little rope, _h[=u]s-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 heavy 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·y[*e], sei·y[*e]), where ([*e]) represents the obscure vowel, or the _a_ in _China_. [327]

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. [Greek: pneuma Puthônos], 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. [328]

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. [329]

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. _lixt_, 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. [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_. [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 [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); [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. _c[=i]cel_ (for _c[=y]cel_), given as _cicel_ in Bosworth's Dictionary. The cognate M. H. G. word is _küechel[=i]n_ (Schade), O. H. G. _chuochel[=i]n_, 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 [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 [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

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