Front matter (continued 11)

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.

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 due to popular etymology, as will presently appear. Cotgrave has 'Pie engrouée, a Wariangle, or a small Woodpecker'; but a wariangle is really a Shrike; indeed Cotgrave also has: 'Arneat, the ravenous birde called a Shrike, Nynmurder, Wariangle'; which is correct. In the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, l. 1706, the word wayryngle occurs as a term of abuse, signifying 'a little villain'; this is probably the same word, and answers to a dimin. form of A. S. wearg (Icel. vargr, O. H. G. warg, warc), a felon, with the suffix -incel, as seen in A. S. rāp-incel, a little rope, hūs-incel, a little house. Bradley cites, as parallel forms, the O. H. G. warchengil (see below), and the M. L. G. wargingel, which are probably formed in a similar way. The epithet 'little felon' or 'little murderer' agrees with other names for the shrike, viz. 'butcher-bird,' 'murdering-bird,' 'nine-murder,' nine-killer,' so called because it impales beetles and small birds on thorns, for the purpose of pulling them to pieces. This is why I take venim to mean 'spite' rather than 'poison' in this passage.

Schmeller, in his Bavarian Dict., ii. 999, says that the Lanius excubitor is called, in O. H. G. glosses, Warchengel (Graff, i. 349); also Wargengel, Würgengel, and Würger.

1413. north contree. This is a sly joke, because, in the old Teutonic mythology, hell was supposed to be in the north. Wright refers us, for this belief, to his St. Patrick's Purgatory. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 111, about Lucifer's sitting in the north; cf. Isaiah, xiv. 13, 14; Milton, P. L. v. 755-760; Myrour of our Lady, ed. Blunt, p. 189. In the Icelandic Gylfaginning, we find—'niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr,' i. e. downwards and northwards lies the way to hell. Cf. l. 1448.

1428. laborous is right; offyc-e is trisyllabic.

1436. A proverbial expression; still in use in Lancashire and elsewhere; see N. and Q., 7 S. x. 446, 498. Cf. 'a taker and a bribing [robbing] feloe, and one for whom nothing was to hotte nor to heauie.' Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes; Cicero, § 50.

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·yə, sei·yə), where (ə) represents the obscure vowel, or the a in China.

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. πνεῦμα Πύθωνος, Acts, xvi. 16.

1518. in a chayer rede, lecture about this matter as in a professorial chair, lecture like a professor; cf. l. 1638. The fiend is satirical.

1519. Referring to Vergil's Æneid, bk. vi, and Dante's Inferno.

1528. This much resembles A. 1132, q.v.

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.

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.

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. 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 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.

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); 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:—

1747. Goddes here translated the French expression de Dieu, meaning 'sent from God.' Tyrwhitt says that the true meaning of de Dieu 'is explained by M. de la Monnoye in a note upon the Contes de D. B. Periers, t. ii. p. 107. Belle serrure de Dieu: Expression du petit peuple, qui raporte pieusement tout à Dieu. Rien n'est plus commun dans la bouche des bonnes vieilles, que ces espèces d'Hébraïsmes: Il m'en conte un bel écu de Dieu; Il ne me reste que ce pauvre enfant de Dieu. Donnez-moi une bénite aumône de Dieu. See goddes halfpeny in l. 1749. (The explanation by Speght, and in Cowel's Interpreter, s. v. kichell, seems to be, as Tyrwhitt says, an invention.)

kechil, a little cake. The form kechell occurs in the Ormulum, l. 8662; answering to the early A. S. coecil, occurring as a gloss to tortum in the Epinal Glossary, 993; different from A. S. cīcel (for cȳcel), given as cicel in Bosworth's Dictionary. The cognate M. H. G. word is küechelīn (Schade), O. H. G. chuochelīn, double dimin. from O. H. G. kuocho (G. Kuchen), a cake; see Kuchen in Kluge. The E. cake is a related word, but with a difference in vowel-gradation.

trip, 'a morsel.' 'Les tripes d'un fagot, the smallest sticks in a faggot'; Cotgrave.

1749. masse-peny, a penny for saying a mass. Jack Upland, § 19, says:—'Freer, whan thou receiuest a peny for to say a masse, whether sellest thou Gods body for that peny, or thy prayer, or els thy travell?'

1751. 'dagon, a slip, or piece. It is found in Chaucer, Berners, and Steevens' Supp. to Dugdale, ii. ap. 370, applied in each instance to a blanket'; Halliwell. Cf. M. E. dagge, a strip of cloth.

1755. hostes man, servant to the guests at the convent. Hoste seems here to mean 'guest,' which is one of the meanings of O. F. hoste (see 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 a child dying in infancy, of whose translation to paradise the friar pretends that he had seen a vision'; Bell.

1872. burel (Pt. Hl. borel) folk, lay folk, the laity. 'The term seems to have arisen from the material of their clothing, which was not used by the clergy'; Wright. Cf. borel, in D. 356; borel men, i. e. laymen, in B. 3145; and borel clerkes, lay clerks, learned laymen, in P. Plowman, B. x. 286.

1877. See Luke, xvi. 19, 20.

1880. In the margin of E., 'Melius est animam saginare quam corpus.' Jean de Meun, in his Testament, 346, says of misers: 'Amegrient leurs ames, plus que leurs cors n'engressent.'

1881. See 1 Tim. vi. 8.

1885. See Exod. xxxiv. 28.

1890. See 1 Kings, xix. 8.

1894. See Levit. x. 9.

1906. mendinants, mendicant friars. Tyrwhitt has mendiants, but, in his notes, admits that mendinants is the right reading, as he found the word to be 'constantly so spelled in the Stat. 12 Rich. II. capp. 7, 8, 9, 10.' The same spelling occurs repeatedly in P. Plowman; see note to P. Pl. C. xvi. 3. See Mendiener, to beg, in Godefroy's O. Fr. Dictionary.

1911. 'The thridde deceyt of thise ordris is that thei passen othere in preyeris, bothe for tyme thei preyen and for multitude of hem'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 317.

1915-7. See note to C. 505; p. 278.

1923. See Matt. v. 3. by freres, (1922), concerning friars. Certainly, there is no 'text' to this effect; but the friar trusted to find it in a maner glose, in some kind of comment on the text.

1926. An allusion to possessioners; see note to l. 1722.

1929. Iovinian. I think this is the same Jovinian as is mentioned in D. 675; for Chaucer frequently quotes the treatise by Jerome against this heretic. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 30, refers in a footnote to 'Jovinian, the enemy of fasts and of celibacy, who was persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerome.' The other Jovinian was a fabulous Roman emperor, who was awhile deposed, like Nebuchadnezzar, for his pride and luxury, as related in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 59 (or chapter 23 in the English version).

walkinge as a swan, i. e. with slow and stately gait. Jerome (Contra Iovin. i. 40) calls Jovinian 'iste formosus monachus, crassus, nitidus, et quasi sponsus semper incedens.'

1931. 'All as full of wine as a bottle in the buttery.'

1932. For gret, ed. 1550 has lytle; but, as Tyrwhitt remarks, the expression is ironical.

1933. Davit is put for David, for the rime. MSS. E. Hn. Ln. have Dauit; Cm. dauith; Cp. Hl. dauid; Pt. davyd.

1934. Lo but is the reading of MS. E. But the right reading is probably buf, not but. The readings are; E. but; Hn. Cm. Ln. buf; Cp. buff; Pt. boþ (wrongly); Hl. boef; ed. 1550, bouffe. This gives the line in the following form:—

Here the interjectional 'buf!' is probably intended to represent the sound of eructation. We find baw! as an interjection of strong contempt in P. Plowman, C. xiii. 74, xxii. 398.

Ps. xlv (xliv in the Vulgate) begins, in Latin, with the words Cor meum eructauit uerbum bonum; and the Somnour here takes eructauit in the most literal sense.

1935. fore, path, course; such is certainly the right reading, as in D. 110, on which see the note.

1937. See James, i. 22.

1938. at a sours, at a soaring, in her rise, in her upward swoop. The same word as source of a river; from F. source, O. F. sorse, the fem. pp. of the verb which arose from Lat. surgere. Most likely, this is the origin of the later souse, v., in the sense 'to swoop downward'; see Pope, Epilogue to Satires, Dial. ii. 15; Sh. K. John, v. 2. 150; Spenser, F. Q. i. 5. 8. See my note on the House of Fame, l. 544. In the Book of St. Alban's, fol. d 1, back, we find: 'Iff your hawke nym the fowle a-lofte, ye shall say, she toke it at the mount or at the souce'; where the r is dropped.

1939. their, for the eir, the air; see footnote.

1943. Seint Yve; see the note to B. 1417 (p. 172), with which this line entirely coincides.

1944. 'If thou wert not our brother, thou wouldst not fare well'; see l. 1951.

1947. welden, wield, have the full use of.

1963-5. These lines are quoted by the friar as (supposed) ejaculations by Thomas.

1968. In the margin of MS. E., 'Omnis virtus unita fortior est seipsa dispersa.' Compare the fable in Æsop about the difficulty of breaking a bundle of sticks; and see Boeth. bk. iii. pr. 11. 37-40.

1973. See Luke, x. 7. In the margin of MS. E., 'Dignus est operarius mercede, &c.'

1980. 'In the life of Thomas of India.' For this construction, see note to F. 209. St. Thomas the apostle is often so called, because he is said to have preached in India; and perhaps the tradition is true; see my note on P. Plowman, C. xxii. 165, and especially the remarks in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 292. Cf. note to E. 1230 (p. 353).

The mention of the 'building up of churches' refers to a well-known legend of St. Thomas, who built churches with the money given to him by King Gondoforus for the purpose of building a palace.

The story is prettily told in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.

Cf. 'Seyn Tomas of Ynde'; Amis and Amiloun, 758, in Weber, Met. Rom. ii. 401. So also in The Assumption of our Lady, 775; in King Horn, ed. Lumby, p. 96; Political and other Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 112, l. 19, p. 123, l. 278, p. 139, l. 735.

How intent the friars were on building fine churches and convents for their own use, appears from Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 5, 14; Pierce the Plowman's Crede, 191; Jack Upland, § 10, and § 33; Skelton's Colin Clout, 936; &c.

1986. 'As will be best for thee.' Tyrwhitt has the for thy; but thy is right. I find in the New E. Dict., s. v. Best, 8 b, a quotation from Sir E. Sandys, Europae Speculum (1637), 247: 'I have also, to my best, avoyded that rashnesse.' Cf. 'for your beste,' in B. 2427.

1989. 'Be not as a lion in thy house, nor frantick among thy servants'; Ecclus. iv. 30. In the margin of MS. E. is the Vulgate version (Ecclus. iv. 35):—'Noli esse sicut leo in domo tua, euertens domesticos tuos, et opprimens subiectos tibi.'

1993. hir, her; so in all the MSS. but Pt., which has yre. Tyrwhitt has wrongly taken ire as the reading, and Wright and Bell follow him, without giving any notice that MS. Hl. reads hir! But it makes all the difference; hir means 'thy wife'; cf. ll. 1994-2004, all of which lines are robbed of their meaning by this insidious and uncalled-for alteration. Even ed. 1550 and ed. 1561 have her.

It is easily seen how the error crept in, viz. from confusion with the friar's sermon against ire; but that does not really begin till we come to l. 2005.

As this passage has been so grossly misunderstood, I annex an outline of the sense intended. 'Beware of thy wife; she is like the snake in the grass; remember how many men have lost their lives through their wives. But your wife is a meek one; then why strive? No serpent is so venomous as a provoked woman.' The fact is, that this passage is imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 16779, &c., where the author bids us beware of women, as being like Vergil's 'snake in the grass.' See next note. With ll. 2001-3 cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9832-6.

1995. Cf. 'latet anguis in herba'; Vergil, Ecl. iii. 95. See F. 512, 513. But Chaucer took this at second-hand, viz. from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16793; and combined it with another passage from the same, 9832-6, which, in its turn, is copied from Ovid, Ars Amat. ii. 376:—'Nec breuis ignaro uipera laesa pede Femina quam,' &c.

2002. tret, short for tredeth, treads. Cm. has trat. Cf. hit, hideth, F. 512; rit, rideth, A. 974; &c.

2003. Cf. 'furens quid foemina possit'; Vergil, Æn. v. 6.

2005. Here begins the sermon against ire. See the Persones Tale, I. 533. oon, &c., 'one of the chief of the seven Deadly Sins'; all of which are described in the Persones Tale; see I. 387.

After l. 2004, MS. Hl. has two spurious lines, for which see the footnote. It is probable, however, that they are reminiscences of two genuine lines; for they occur in Le Rom. de la Rose, 16536-8. There are two more such after l. 2012, where the sense of grate is not obvious.

2007. himself, i. e. the sinner. See Pers. Tale, I. 557.

2009. homicyde; see this, in full, in the Pers. Tale, I. 564-579.

2010. 'Ire comth of pryde'; I. 534.

2017. 'Potestat, a chief magistrate'; Halliwell. 'Podestà, a potestate, a mayor'; Florio. See Malory, Morte Arth. bk. v. c. 8.

2018. Senek, Seneca. The story is given in Seneca's De Ira, i. 16, beginning:—'Cn. Piso fuit memoria nostra, uir a multis uitiis integer, sed prauus,' &c. It ends:—'Constituti sunt in eodem loco perituri tres, ob unius innocentiam.' This Piso was a governor of Syria under Tiberius. Precisely the same story is told, of the emperor Heraclius, in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. cxl. Warton gravely describes it in the words—'The emperor Eraclius reconciles (!) two knights.'

2030-1. Wright says these two lines are not in Tyrwhitt, but he is mistaken. His note was meant to refer to the spurious lines (in MS. Hl.) after l. 2037; the former of which is repeated from l. 2030.

2043. 'This story is also in Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 14. It differs a little from one in Herodotus, lib. iii.' [capp. 34, 35].—Tyrwhitt. Seneca's story begins:—'Cambysen regem nimis deditum uino Praexaspes unus ex carissimis monebat.'

2048. Here MS. Hl. inserts two more spurious lines, for the fourth time; see the footnote.

2061. MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Ln. Dd. all insert ful, which is necessary to the rhythm. MSS. Pt. Hl. omit it, and actually read dronk-e (!), with an impossible final e. Tyrwhitt has dranke, omitting ful, and even Wright, Bell, and Morris have dronk-e, with the same omission. Owing to the carelessness of scribes, who often added an idle final e, such forms as dranke, dronke are not very astonishing. But it would be very curious to know how these editors scanned this line.

2075. Placebo. 'The allusion is to an anthem in the Romish church, from Ps. cxvi. 9, which in the Vulgate [Ps. cxiv. 9] stands thus: Placebo Domino in regione uiuorum. Hence the complacent brother in the Marchant's Tale is called Placebo.'—Tyrwhitt. Being used in the office for the dead, this anthem was familiar to every one; and 'to sing Placebo' came to mean 'to be complaisant'; as in Bacon, Essay 20. See Pers. Tale, I. 617; and see my notes to P. Plowman, C. iv. 467 (B. iii. 307), B. xv. 122.

2079. This story is also from Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 21. Cf. Herodotus, i. 189, 202; v. 52. In these authorities, the river is called the Gyndes; and in Alfred's translation of Orosius, bk. ii. c. 4, it is the Gandes. 'Sir John Maundeville (Travels, cap. 5) tells this story of the Euphrates.'—Wright.

2085. he, i. e. Solomon; see Prov. xxii. 24, 25.

2090. as Iust as is a squire, as exact (i. e. upright) as a square. He means that he will deal out exact justice, and not condone the sick man's anger without appointing him a penance for it. A squire is a measuring-square, or T-square, as explained in my Dictionary; it is used for measuring right angles with exactitude. For the use of the word, see Shak. L. L. L. v. 2. 474; Spenser, F. Q. ii. 1. 58; Minshew's Dict.; Romaunt of the Rose, 7064; Floris and Blancheflur, ed. Lumby, 325. Cotgrave gives: 'A l'esquierre, justly, directly, evenly, straightly; by line and levell, to a haire.' Godefroy, s. v. esquarre, refers us to the O. F. translation of 1 Kings, v. 17; 'e que tuz fussent taillie a esquire.' Lydgate has: 'By compas cast, and squared out by squyers'; Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. F 5, back, col. 1.

2095. 'Thei [the friars] cryen faste that thei haf more power in confessioun then other curatis; for thei may schryve alle that comen to hem, bot curatis may no ferther then her owne parischens'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 374. Cf. Rom. Rose, 6390-8 (vol. i. 238).

2098. So in I. 1008: 'but-if it lyke to thee of thyn humilitee.'

2105. 'The pavements were made of encaustic tiles, and therefore must have been rather expensive.'—Wright. See my note to Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, l. 194; and Our English Home, p. 20.

2107. 'For the sake of Him who harried hell'; see note to A. 3512; p. 107.

2116. Elie, Elias, Elijah. Elisee, Eliseus, Elisha. There was great strife among the four orders of friars as to the priority of their order. The Carmelites, who took their name from mount Carmel (see 1 Kings, xviii. 19, 20), actually pretended that their order was founded by the prophet Elijah when he retired to mount Carmel to escape the wrath of Ahab; and by this unsurpassable fiction secured to themselves the credit of priority to the rest. It is therefore clear that the friar of Chaucer's story was a Carmelite, as no other friar would have alluded to this story. See Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 353; Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 382.

2119. for seinte charitee; a common expression. It occurs in the Tale of Gamelin, 513; with which Chaucer was familiar. Cf. B. 4510.

2126. your brother. This alludes to the letters of fraternity, which friars were accustomed to grant, under the conventual seal, to such laymen as had given them benefactions or were likely to leave them money in their wills. The benefactors received in return a brotherly participation in such spiritual benefits as the friars could confer. Thus, in Jack Upland, §§ 28, 29, we find:—'Why be ye [friars] so hardie to grant, by letters of fraternitie, to men and women, that they shall haue part and merite of all your good deeds, and ye weten neuer whether God be apayed with your deeds because of your sin?... What betokeneth that yee haue ordeined that, whan such one as ye haue made your brother or sister, and hath a letter of your seale, that letter mought be brought in your holy chapter, and there be rad, or els yee will not pray for him?' See Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 377, 420; ed. Matthew, p. 4. Such lay brethren were usually dressed for burial in a friar's habit; see Milton, P. L. iii. 479; Rock, Church of our Fathers, i. 487. A benefactor could even thus belong to all the orders of friars at once; cf. P. Plowman, C. x. 343 (B. vii. 192). This gives point to the question in l. 1955 above.

2156. His meynee, i. e. the menials of the sick man.

2159. His companion was in the nearest inn; see l. 1779.

2162. court, the house of the lord of the manor. 'The larger country-houses consisted generally of an enclosed court, from which circumstance this name was usually given to the manorial residence, and it has been preserved to modern times, as a common term for gentlemen's seats.'—Wright. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 344. It was also called a place; see note to B. 1910; p. 184.

2164. 'Of ech sich privat seete, by licence of the pope, ben maad, some chapeleyns of houshold, summe chapeleyns of honour,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 511. 'Frere, what charity is this, to be confessors of lords and ladies,' &c.; Jack Upland, § 37. And see Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 333; P. Plowman, B. v. 136-142, xx. 341-345.

2185. maister. The hypocrite here declines to be called 'master,' though he had allowed the good wife to call him so twice without reproof; see ll. 1800, 1836; and cf. l. 1781. At the same time, he declares that he had gained the title of Master in the schools. As he was the prior or principal of his convent (see ll. 2260, 2265, 2276) he may have been 'capped,' or have received the degree of Master of Divinity. 'Also capped freris, that ben calde maystres of dyvynite, have her chaumber and servise as lordis or kynges.... And what cursidenesse in this ... to gete hym a cappe of maysterdome, by preyer of lordis and grete giftis,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 376. An LL.D. of Edinburgh is 'capped,' or has a doctor's cap momentarily laid upon his head, when he receives his degree; as I know by experience.

See also Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, ll. 498, 574.

2187. See Matt. xxiii. 7, 8.

2196. See Matt. v. 13.

2205. 'How does it seem to me?' Read think'th.

2209. 'I consider him to be in a kind of frenzy'; cf. 2240, 2292.

2219. Shewe here means 'to propose' or 'propound.'

2235. See Chaucer's own explanation of the method of propagation of a sound, in the Hous of Fame, 782-821. He seems to have taken it from Boethius, De Musica, i. 14; see vol. iii. p. 260.

2238. my cherl, i. e. my serf; as being his dependant. It probably implies vassalage.

2244. Cf. A. 100. Although the squire was not above winning 'a new gown,' he was probably a young man of (future) equal rank with the lord of the manor. In fact, his scornful boldness proves it.

2247. goune-cloth. 'In the middle ages, the most common rewards, and even those given by the feudal landholders to their dependants and retainers, were articles of apparel, especially the gown or outward robe.... Money was comparatively very scarce in the middle ages; and as the household retainers were lodged and fed, clothing was almost the only article they wanted.'—Wright.

2259. 'The regular number of monks or friars in a convent had been fixed at twelve, with [i. e. besides] their superior; in imitation, it is said, of the number of twelve apostles and their divine master. The larger religious houses were considered as consisting of a certain number of convents. Thus Thorn, speaking of the abbot of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, says:—Anno Domini m.c.xlvi, iste Hugo reparavit antiquum numerum monachorum istius monasterii, et erant lx. monachi professi praeter abbatem, hoc est, quinque conuentus in universo.—Decem Scriptores, col. 1807.'—Wright. That is, this house consisted of sixty-one members, the abbot and five convents of twelve each. The smaller (single) convents were also called cells, and the principal, the prior; see A. 172, and note that, in A. 167, the Monk is said, not to be an abbot, but to be fit to be an abbot. The expression 'his covent,' in l. 2261, shews that the friar confessor was the prior or head of his cell.

2279. 'Yif a frere be a maister, or a riche frere in-mong hise bretheren, he shal be loutid and worshipid more then Cristis lawe techith,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 306.

2281. This implies that the squire, with the rest, had heard the friar preach in church that morning, and had been greatly bored by the sermon.

2289. I supply the word as, which is plainly wanted. MS. Hl. supplies elles, but I believe as to be right. The way in which the second as came to be dropped in this line, is very curious. It arose from misunderstanding the spelling of Ptolemy.

The occurrence of an unpronounceable P at the beginning of Ptolomee made the scribes think something must be omitted. Hence several of them introduced a stroke through the p, which stood as an abbreviation for 'ro,' and this turned it into Protholomee, which looked right, but made the second as superfluous. Thus MSS. Cp. Hl. both have 'protholome,' with the mark of abbreviation; in MSS. E. Hn. Dd. it is expanded into 'Protholomee' at length. We again find the scribes in the same difficulty in D. 324. A still stranger spelling is plotolomee, for which see vol. iii. p. 359, l. 18. Cf. the note on Ptolemy in the same volume, at p. 354.

NOTES TO GROUP E.

The Clerkes Prologue.

1. clerk. See the description of him, Prol. A. 285.

3. were newe spoused, who should be (i. e. is) newly wedded; see Rom. de la Rose, (F. version), 1004; in vol. i. p. 136.

6. See Eccles. iii. 1; 'To every thing there is a season,' &c.

7. as beth, pray be. The word as, nearly equivalent to 'I pray,' is sometimes used thus with the imperative mood. Since as is short for al-so, it means literally even so, just so. Cp. as keep, A. 2302; as sende, A. 2317; as doth, F. 458; 'as beth not wroth with me,' Troil. and Cress. v. 145; 'as go we seen,' i. e. pray let us go to see, id. 523; see also A. 3777. See Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 2. 505.

10. A French proverb. 'Ki en jeu entre jeu consente,' i. e. approves of; Le Roux de Lincy, Proverbes Français, ii. 85.

18. Heigh style, lofty, learned, somewhat pedantic style; see l. 41.

22. yerde, control, governance; lit. yard, rod; so we say 'under the rod.' Cf. B. 1287, and the note at p. 169.

27. Padowe, Padua, in the N. E. of Italy. Petrarch resided at Arqua, two miles from Padua. He died July 18, 1374. See vol. iii. p. 454; vol. i. p. xxv.

33. of poetrye, with his poetry. Of is similarly used in l. 34.

34. Linian; 'the canonist Giovanni di Lignano, once illustrious, now forgotten, though several works of his remain. He was made Professor of Canon Law at Bologna in 1363, and died at Bologna in 1383'; Morley's English Writers, v. 339. Tyrwhitt first pointed out the person here alluded to, and says—'there is some account of him in Panzirolus, de Cl. Leg. Intrepret. l. iii. c. xxv:—Joannes, a Lignano, agri Mediolanensis vico, oriundus, et ob id Lignanus dictus,' &c. One of his works, entitled Tractatus de Bello, is extant in MS. Reg. 13 B. ix [Brit. Mus.]. He composed it at Bologna in the year 1360. He was not however a mere lawyer. Chaucer speaks of him as excelling in philosophy, and so does his epitaph in Panzirolus. The only specimen of his philosophy that I have met with is in MS. Harl. 1006. It is an astrological work, entitled Conclusiones Judicii composite per Domnum Johannem de Lyniano super coronacione Domni Urbani Pape VI. A.D. 1387,' &c. Lignano is here said to be near Milan, and to have been the lawyer's birthplace. In l. 38, Chaucer speaks of his death, showing that Chaucer wrote this prologue later than 1383.

43. proheme, proem, introduction. Petrarch's treatise (taken from Boccaccio's Decamerone, Day x. Novel 10) is entitled 'De obedientia ac fide uxoria Mythologia.' It is preceded by a letter to Boccaccio, but this is not here alluded to. What Chaucer means is the first section of the tale itself, which begins thus:—'Est ad Italiae latus occiduum Vesulus, ex Apennini iugis mons unus altissimus.... Padi ortu nobilissimus, qui eius a latere fonte lapsus exiguo orientem contra solem fertur, mirisque mox tumidus incrementis.... Liguriam gurgite uiolentus intersecat; dehinc Aemiliam, atque Flaminiam, Venetiamque discriminans ... in Adriaticum mare descendit.' Pemond, Piedmont. Saluces, Saluzzo, S. of Turin. Vesulus, Monte Viso. See the description of the route from Mont Dauphin to Saluzzo, by the Col de Viso, in Murray's Guide to Switzerland and Piedmont. Cf. Vergil, Aen. x. 708.

51. To Emelward, towards Aemilia. Tyrwhitt says—'One of the regions of Italy was called Aemilia, from the via Aemilia, which crossed it from Placentia [Piacenza] to Rimini. Placentia stood upon the Po. Pitiscus, Lex. Ant. Rom. in v. Via Aemilia. Petrarch's description ... is a little different.' See note above. Ferrare, Ferrara, on the Po, not far from its mouth. Venyse, rather the Venetian territory than Venice itself.

54. 'It seems to me a thing irrelevant, excepting that he wishes to impart his information.'

56. this, contraction for this is (see footnote); common.

The Clerkes Tale.

57. In many places this story is translated from Petrarch almost word for word; and as Tyrwhitt remarks, it would be endless to cite illustrative passages from the original Latin; see further in vol. iii. p. 453. The first stanza is praised by Professor Lowell, in his Study Windows, p. 208, where he says—'What a sweep of vision is here!' Chaucer is not quite so close a translator here as usual; the passage in Petrarch being—'Inter caetera ad radicem Vesuli, terra Salutiarum, uicis et castellis satis frequens, Marchionum arbitrio nobilium quorundum regitur uirorum.'

82. leet he slyde, he allowed to pass unattended to, neglected. So we find 'Let the world slide'; Induction to Taming of the Shrew, l. 5; and 'The state of vertue never slides'; The Sturdy Rock (in Percy's Reliques). See March's Student's Manual of Eng. Lang. p. 125, where the expression is noted as still current in America. Petrarch has—'alia pene cuncta negligeret.' With ll. 83-140, cf. Shakesp. Sonnets, i-xvii.

86. flockmele, in a flock or troop; Pet. has 'cateruatim.' 'Treuly theder came flockemele the multitude of tho blessyd sowlys':—Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber, c. 55; p. 107. Palsgrave's French Dict. has—'Flockmeale, par troupeaux'; fol. 440, back. Cf. E. piece-meal; we also find wukemalum, week by week, Ormulum, 536; lim-mele, limb from limb, Layamon, 25618; hipyllmelum, by heaps, Wycl. Bible, Wisdom xviii. 25: Koch, Eng. Gramm. ii. 292.

99. 'Although I have no more to do with this matter than others have who are here present.' Observe that the Marquis is addressed as ye, not thou, the former being a title of respect.

103-105. These three lines are not in the original.

106. We should have expected to find here us lyketh ye, i. e. you are pleasing to us; but we really have an instance of a double dative, so that us lyketh yow is equivalent to 'it pleases us with respect to you.' The nominative case is ye, the dative and accusative yow or you. Yow leste, it may please you, in l. 111, is the usual idiom.

107. and ever han doon, and (both you and your doings) have ever brought it about. Such is the usual force of doon; cf. ll. 253, 1098.

115. Cf. Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, i. 266-8.—M.

118-119. Expanded from—'uolant enim dies rapidi.'

121. still as stoon; Latin text, 'tacita.' Cf. F. 171.

129. we wol chese yow, we will choose for you.

147. Ther, where. This line is Chaucer's own.

157. Bountee, goodness. streen, race, stock. Petrarch has—'Quicquid in homine boni est, non ab alio quam a Deo est.'

168. As, as if. This line, in Petrarch, comes after l. 173. Lines 174, 175 are Chaucer's own.

172. as ever, &c., as ever I may thrive, as I hope to thrive.

190-196. Expanded from—'Et ipse nihilominus eam ipsam nuptiarum curam domesticis suis imposuit, edixitque diem.'

197-203. Expanded from—'Fuit haud procul a palatio uillula paucorum atque inopum incolarum.'

211-217. Sometimes Chaucer translates literally, and sometimes he merely paraphrases, as here. Lines 215-217 are all his own.

220. rype and sad corage, a mature and staid disposition. Petrarch has—'sed uirilis senilisque animus uirgineo latebat in pectore.'

223. spinning; i. e. she spun whilst keeping the sheep; see a picture of St. Geneviève in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. Line 224 is Chaucer's.

227. shredde and seeth, sliced and sod (or boiled). Lat. 'domum rediens oluscula et dapes fortunae congruas praeparabat, durumque cubiculum sternebat,' &c.

229. on lofte, aloft. She kept up her father's life, i. e. sustained him. His death is recorded in l. 1134.

234. For this line the Latin has only the word transiens.

237. in sad wyse, soberly; Lat. 'senili grauitate.'

242. Here the people means the common people; Lat. 'uulgi oculis.' In the next line he is emphatic, meaning that his eyes were quicker to perceive than theirs.

253. hath don make, hath caused to be made. Lat. 'Ipse interim et anulos aureos et coronas et balteos conquirebat.' Chaucer inserts asure, the colour of fidelity; see F. 644, and note. For balteos he substitutes the English phrase broches and ringes; cf. P. Plowm. B. prol. 75.

257. Scan—Bý | a maýd | e lýk | to hír | statúrë. ||

259. Here Chaucer apparently omits a sentence, namely:—'Uenerat expectatus dies, et cum nullus sponsae rumor audiretur, admiratio omnium uehementer excreuerat.' But he has, in fact, given us this above, in ll. 246-8.

260. undern (lit. the intervening or middle period) has two meanings in the Teutonic tongues; (1) mid-forenoon, i. e. originally 9 A. M.; and (2) mid-afternoon, originally 3 P. M. In this passage it is clearly the former that is meant; indeed in l. 981, where it occurs again, the original has 'proximae lucis hora tertia,' i. e. 9 A. M. In this passage, the original has hora prandii, meaning luncheon-time, which in Chaucer's time would often be 9 A. M.; see note to B. 1396, at p. 171; and cf. Ælfric's Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 77. See note to Piers Pl. B. vi. 147; and see Undern in the Glossary.

But it may be noted here, that the sense of undern is variable. Sometimes it meant the period from 9 to 12, or the middle of that period, i. e. about 10.30 or 11. Sometimes, the period from 3 to 6 P. M., or the middle of it, i. e. about 4.30 or 4. In modern E. dialects, it means about 4 P. M. See B. 4412, D. 875.

260-294. Expanded and improved from the following short passage: 'Hora iam prandii aderat, iamque apparatu ingenti domus tota feruebat. Tum Gualtherus, aduentanti ueluti sponsae obuiam profecturus, domo egreditur, prosequente uirorum et matronarum nobilium caterua. Griseldis omnium quae erga se pararentur ignara, peractis quae agenda domi erant, aquam e longinquo fonte conuectans paternum limen intrabat: ut, expedita curis aliis, ad uisendam domini sui sponsam cum puellis comitibus properaret.'

322. governeth, arrange, dispose of. Observe the use of the plural imperative, as a mark of respect. When the marquis addresses Griseldis as ye, it is a mark of extreme condescension on his part; the Latin text has tu and te.

337-343. Expanded from—'insolito tanti hospitis aduentu stupidam inuenere; quam iis uerbis Gualtherus aggreditur.'

350. yow avyse, consider the matter; really a delicate way of expressing refusal. Compare the legal formula le roy s'avisera for expressing the royal refusal to a proposed measure.

364. For to be deed, even if I were to be dead, were to die; Lat. 'et si me mori iusseris, quod moleste feram.'

375-376. These characteristic lines are Chaucer's own. So are ll. 382, 383.

381. corone, nuptial garland; Lat. 'corona.' See Brand's Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, ii. 123.

388. snow-whyt; Lat. 'niueo.' Perhaps Spenser took a hint from this; F. Q. i. 1. 4. In the Leg. of Good Women, l. 1198, Chaucer calls a horse paper-whyt.

393. Repeated, slightly altered, from l. 341.

409. thewes, mental qualities. So also in E. 1542; Gower, Conf. Amant. lib. vii. sect. 1 (ed. Pauli, iii. 85); Spenser, F. Q. i. 9. 3; i. 10. 4; ii. 1. 33, &c. 'The common signification of the word thews in our old writers, is manners, or qualities of mind and disposition.... By thews Shakespeare means unquestionably brawn, nerves, muscular vigour (Jul. Caes. i. 3; 2 Hen. IV, iii. 2; Hamlet, i. 3). And to this sense, and this only, the word has now settled down; the other sense, which was formerly so familiar in our literature, is quite gone out and forgotten. [With respect to theawe = sinew, in Layamon, l. 6361] Sir F. Madden remarks (iii. 471):—"This is the only instance in the poem of the word being applied to bodily qualities, nor has any other passage of an earlier date than the sixteenth century been found in which it is so used." It may be conjectured that it had only been a provincial word in this sense, till Shakespeare adopted it'; Craik's English of Shakespeare; note on Jul. Caesar, i. 3. 81.

412. embrace, hold fast; 'omnium animos nexu sibi magni amoris astrinxerat.' Compare Tennyson's Lord of Burleigh with ll. 394-413.

413. Nearly identical with Troil. i. 1078.

421. royally; alluding to the royal virtues of Griseldis.

429. Not only the context, but the Latin text, justifies the reading homlinesse. Feet is fact, i. e. act. The Latin is—'Neque uero solers sponsa muliebria tantum haec domestica, sed, ubi res posceret, publica etiam obibat officia.' Lines 432-434 are Chaucer's own.

444. 'Although it would have been liefer to her to have borne a male child'; i. e. she would rather, &c. The Latin has—'quamuis filium maluisset.'

449-462. Expanded from—'Cepit (ut fit) interim Gualtherum, cum iam ablactata esset infantula (mirabilis quaedam quàm laudabilis, [aliter, an mirabile quidem magis quam laudabile,] doctiores iudicent) cupiditas satis expertam charae fidem coniugis experiendi altius [aliter, ulterius], et iterum atque iterum retentandi.'

452. tempte, make trial of, prove; see ll. 1152, 1153 below. sadnesse, constancy, equanimity.

483. Note Walter's use of the word thee here, and of thy twice in the next stanza, instead of the usual ye. It is a slight, but significant sign of insult, offered under pretence of reporting the opinion of others. In l. 492 we have your again.

504. thing, possession. Lat. 'de rebus tuis igitur fac ut libet.'

516. a furlong wey or two, the distance of one or two furlongs, a short distance, a little. The line simply means—'a little after.'

525. stalked him; marched himself in, as we should say. This use of him is remarkable, but not uncommon.

533-539. Lat. 'Iussus sum hanc infantulam accipere, atque eam—Hîc sermone abrupto, quasi crudele ministerium silentio exprimens, subticuit.' Compare 'Quos ego—'; Vergil, Aen. i. 135.

540-546. Lat. 'Suspecta uiri fama; suspecta facies; suspecta hora; suspecta erat oratio; quibus etsi clare occisum iri dulcem filiam intelligeret, nec lachrymulam tamen ullam, nec suspirium dedit.' Mr. Wright quotes this otherwise, putting dulce for dulcem, and stopping at intelligeret.

547-567. Chaucer expands the Latin, and transposes some of the matter. Lines 561-563 precede ll. 547-560 in the original, which merely has—'in nutrice quidem, nedum in matre durissimum; sed tranquilla fronte puellulam accipiens aliquantulum respexit & simul exosculans benedixit, ac signum sanctae crucis impressit, porrexitque satelliti.'

570. After That in this line, we ought, in strict grammar, to have ye burie in the next line, instead of the imperative burieth. But the phrase is idiomatic, and as all the seven best MSS. agree in this reading, it is best to retain it. Tyrwhitt alters That but to But if.

579. Somwhat, in some degree. But Petrarch says differently—'uehementer paterna animum pietas mouit.'

582-591. Lat. 'Iussit satelliti obuolutam pannis, cistae iniectam, ac iumento impositam, quiete omni quanta posset diligentia Bononiam deferret ad sororem suam, quae illic comiti de Panico nupta erat,' &c.

586. 'But, under penalty of having his head cut off'; lit. of cutting off his head.

589. Boloigne, Bologna, E. by S. from Modena, and a long way from Saluzzo. Panik answers to the de Panico in note to l. 582; Boccaccio has Panago. I observe in the map the river Panaro flowing between Modena and Bologna; perhaps there is some connexion between the names. Tyrwhitt has Pavie (Pavia) in his text, but corrects it in the notes.

602. in oon, in one and the same state: ever in oon, always alike, continually; so also in l. 677. Cf. Kn. Ta. 913 (A. 1771).

607. This must mean—'no accidental sign of any calamity.'

612. A knave child, a male child, boy; as in Barbour's Bruce, xiii. 693; English Gilds, ed. T. Smith, p. 30.

615. merië; three syllables; cf. A. 1386, B. 4156. Ll. 621-623 are Chaucer's own.

625. sikly berth, hardly bear, dislike. Lat. 'populum aegre ferre,' &c.

643. Lat. 'ne te inopinus et subitus dolor turbet.'

645-651. Expanded from—'Dixi (ait) et repeto, nihil possum seu uelle, seu nolle, nisi quae tu; neque uero in ijs filiis quicquam habeo, praeter laborem.'

663. plesancë, three syllables; stabl', one syllable.

666. 'The pain of death is not to be compared to the pleasure of your love.' Lat. 'nec mors ipsa nostro fuerit par amori.' Cf. ll. 817, 1091.

687. ever lenger, &c., i. e. ever the longer (he thinks of it) the more he wonders. In the more, the word the is for A. S. þý.

700. And he; cf. And ye, l. 105.

701-707. Expanded from—'sed sunt qui, ubi semel inceperint, non desinant; immo incumbant, haereantque proposito.'

704. a stake; cf. Macb. v. 7. 1; Jul. Caesar, iv. 1. 48.

714. more penible, more painstaking; Lat. 'obsequentior.'

719. 'She made it clear that no wife should of herself, on account of any worldly anxiety, have any will, in practice, different from that of her husband.'

722. sclaundre, ill fame, ill report concerning Walter. See l. 730.

738. message, a messenger; Lat. 'nuncios Romam misit.' So in Old English we find prisoun or prison for prisoner; Piers Pl. B. vii. 30.

772. anon, immediately. It was not uncommon in olden times for girls to be married at twelve years of age. The Wife of Bath was first married at that age; see D. 4.

797. Lat. 'magna omnis fortuna seruitus magna est; non mihi licet, quod cuilibet liceret agricolae.'

850. were agrees with the word clothes following; cf. it ben, Piers Plowm. B. vi. 56. She did not really bring her husband even the dower of her old clothes, as they had been taken from her. Lines 851-861 are all Chaucer's own, and shew his delicacy of touch.

866. Lat. 'neque omnino alia mihi dos fuit, quam fides et nuditas.'

871. Probably suggested by Job, i. 21. So l. 902 is from Job, iii. 3.

880-882. These lines are Chaucer's own; l. 880 is characteristic of him. The phrase in l. 880 seems to have been proverbial. Cf. 'I walke as werme, withoute wede'; Coventry Mysteries, p. 28. But Chaucer got it from Le Roman de la Rose, 445; see his translation, l. 454; vol. i. p. 112.

888-889. The latter part of l. 888, and l. 889, are Chaucer's own.

903. lyves, alive; a lyves creature, a creature alive, a living being. Lyves is an adverb, formed like nedes, from the genitive case of the substantive. There are other instances of its use.

i. e. if I let him go away alive. And again lyues = alive, in Piers Pl. B. xix. 154. Nearly repeated from Troil. iv. 251-2.

910. After this line, Chaucer has omitted the circumstance of Janicola's preserving his daughter's old clothing; 'tunicam eius hispidam, et attritam senio, abditam paruae domus in parte seruauerat.' See l. 913.

911. Agayns, towards, so as to meet. To go agayns, in M. E., is to go to meet. So also to come agayns, to ride agayns (or agayn). See Agayn in Glossary to Spec. of Eng. (Morris and Skeat); and Barbour's Bruce, xiv. 420. Ll. 915-917 are Chaucer's own.

916. 'For the cloth was poor, and many days older now than on the day of her marriage.'

932. 'Men speak of Job, and particularly of his humility.' Cf. Job, xl. 4, xlii. 1-6.

934. Namely of men, especially of men, where men is emphatic. The whole of this stanza (932-938) is Chaucer's.

938. but, except, unless; falle, fallen, happened; of-newe, newly, an adverbial expression. It means then, 'unless it has happened very lately.' In other words, 'If there is an example of a man surpassing a woman in humility, it must have happened very lately; for I have never heard of it.'

939. Pars Sexta. This indication of a new part comes in a fitting place, and is taken from Tyrwhitt, who may have found it in a MS. But there is no break here in the Latin original, nor in any of the MSS. of Chaucer which I have consulted. erl of Panik; Lat. 'Panicius comes.'

940. more and lesse, greater or smaller; i. e. everybody. So also in the Frank. Tale, 'riveres more and lesse'; F. 1054. So also moche and lyte, great and small, Prol. 494; moste and leste, greatest and least, A. 2198. Spenser has, F. Q. vi. 6. 12,—

941. alle and some, i. e. all and one, one and all. See Morris's Eng. Accidence, sect. 218, p. 142.

960. wommen; some MSS. have womman, as in Tyrwhitt. But MS. E. is right. Petrarch uses the word foeminas, not foeminam.

965. yvel biseye, ill provided; lit. ill beseen. The word yvel is pronounced here almost as a monosyllable (as it were yv'l), as is so commonly the case with ever; indeed generally, words ending with el and er are often thus clipped. A remarkable instance occurs in the Milleres Tale (A. 3715), where we not only have a similar ending, but the word ever in the same line—

See also yvel apayed in line 1052 below. The converse to yvel biseye, is richely biseye, richly provided or adorned, in l. 984 below.

981. Lat. 'Proximae lucis hora tertia comes superuenerat'; see note to l. 260.

995-1008. These two stanzas are Chaucer's own, and are so good that they must have been a later addition; Prof. Ten Brink suggests the date 1387 (Eng. Lit. ii. 123, Eng. version). In MS. E. the word Auctor is inserted in the margin, and l. 995 begins with a large capital letter. At the beginning of l. 1009 is a paragraph-mark, shewing where the translation begins again. unsad, unsettled. Cf. Shakesp. Cor. i. 1. 186, Jul. Caesar, i. 1. 55; Scott, Lady of the Lake, v. 30.

999. 'Ever full of tittle-tattle, which would be dear enough at a halfpenny.' See n. to l. 1200. Iane, a small coin of Genoa (Janua); see Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 1925. The first stanza (995-1001) is supposed to be uttered by the sober and discreet part of the population; see l. 1002.

1031. lyketh thee, pleases thee. The marquis addresses her as thou, because all suppose her to be a menial.

1039. mo, lit. more; but also used in the sense of others, or, as here, another. The modern phrase would be, 'as you did somebody else.' The extreme delicacy of the hint is admirable. This use of mo is common in Chaucer; see the Glossary. So also, in Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, we have, at p. 47, l. 51—

i. e. I sigh for unrest, and mourn as other men do. And on the next page, p. 48, l. 22, we have

i. e. 'The moody moan as others do; I wot I am one of them.' In l. 240 of How the Good Wife taught her Daughter, pr. with Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, we find—'And slanderit folk vald euir haue ma,' i. e. would ever have others like themselves. Somewhat similar is the expression oþer mo, where we should now say others as well; Piers Plowman, C. v. 10, xxii. 54. A somewhat similar use of mo occurs in Tudor English. 'It fortuned Diogenes to ... make one among the moo at a dyner.'—Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes (1564), bk. i. § 91. So also:—'that he also, emong the mo [i. e. the rest] might haue his pleasure'; id. bk. ii. § 13. Tyrwhitt's suggestion that Chaucer has licentiously turned me into mo for the mere sake of getting a rime, in which he has hitherto been followed by nearly every editor, is only to be repudiated. It may well have been with the very purpose of guarding against this error that, in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., the original Latin text is here quoted in the margin—'unum bona fide te precor ac moneo: ne hanc illis aculeis agites, quibus alteram agitasti.' Chaucer, who throughout surpasses his original in delicacy of treatment, did not permit himself to be outdone here; and Boccaccio also has the word altra. The use of me would have been a direct charge of unkindness, spoiling the whole story. See l. 1045 and l. 449.

1049. gan his herte dresse, addressed his heart, i. e. prepared it, schooled it. The M. E. dresse is our modern direct; both being from Lat. dirigere.

1053. Here we may once more note the use of the word thy, the more so as it is used with a quite different tone. We sometimes find it used, as here, between equals, as a term of endearment; it is, accordingly, very significant. See l. 1056.

1066. that other, the other, the boy.

1071. non, any, either. The use of it is due to the preceding nat.

1079. Professor Morley, in his English Writers, v. 342, aptly remarks here—'And when Chaucer has told all, and dwelt with an exquisite pathos of natural emotion all his own upon the patient mother's piteous and tender kissing of her recovered children—for there is nothing in Boccaccio, and but half a sentence in Petrarch, answering to these four beautiful stanzas (1079-1106)—he rounds all, as Petrarch had done, with simple sense, which gives religious meaning to the tale, then closes with a lighter strain of satire which protects Griselda herself from the mocker.'

1098. 'Hath caused you (to be) kept.' For the same idiom, see Kn. Tale, A. 1913; Man of Law's Tale, B. 171, and the note. Cf. 'Wher I have beforn ordeyned and do mad [caused to be made] my tombe.' Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 278.

1133. His wyves fader, i. e. Janicola. This circumstance should have been mentioned before l. 1128, as in the original.

1140. For of (Ellesmere MS.) the other MSS. read in.

1141. auctour, author, i. e. Petrarch, whom Chaucer follows down to l. 1162. Ll. 1138-1141 are Chaucer's own, and may be compared with his poem on the Golden Age (vol. i. 380).

1144. importable, intolerable; Lat.—'huius uxoris patientiam, quae mihi uix imitabilis uidetur.' Of course ll. 1147-8 are Chaucer's.

1151. 'Receive all with submission.' Fr. en gré, gratefully, in good part. sent, sendeth; present tense, as in Piers Plowman, C. xxii. 434. The past tense is sente, which would not rime.

1152. 'For it is very reasonable that He should prove (or test) that which He created.'

1153. boghte, (hath) redeemed. See St. James, i. 13.

1162. Here Petrarch ends his narrative, and here, beyond all doubt, Chaucer's translation originally ended also. From this point to the end is the work of a later period, and in his best manner, though unsuited to the coy Clerk. He easily links on his addition by the simple expression lordinges, herkneth; and in l. 1170, he alludes to the Wife of Bath, of whom probably he had never thought when first translating the story.

We can thus understand the stanza in the footnote, on p. 424. It is genuine, but was rejected at the time of adding ll. 1163-1212. It was afterwards expanded into The Monkes Prologue, with the substitution of the patient Prudence for the patient Griselda; see B. 3083-6.

1177. Here the metre changes; the stanzas are of six lines; and all six stanzas are linked together. There are but three rimes throughout; -ence in the first and third lines of every stanza, -aille in the second, fourth, and sixth, (requiring eighteen rimes in all), and -inde in the fifth line. It is a fine example even from a metrical point of view alone.

1188. Chichevache, for chiche vache, i. e. lean cow. The allusion is to an old fable, of French origin, which describes a monstrous cow named Chiche Vache as feeding entirely upon patient wives, and being very lean in consequence of the scarcity of her diet. A later form of the fable adds a second beast, named Bicorne (two-horned), who, by adopting the wiser course of feeding upon patient husbands, was always fat and in good case. Mr. Wright says—'M. Achille Jubinal, in the notes to his Mystères inédits du xv Siècle, tom. i. p. 390, has printed a French poetical description of Chichevache from a MS. of the fourteenth century. In the French miracle of St. Geneviève, of the fifteenth century (Jubinal, ib. p. 281), a man says satirically to the saint,

A poem by Lydgate on Bycorne and Chichevache is printed in Mr. Halliwell's Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, p. 129 (Percy Society); see Morley's English Writers, vi. 107, and his Shorter English Poems, p. 55. In his Étude sur G. Chaucer, p. 221, M. Sandras refers us, for information about Chicheface, lit. 'thin face' or 'ugly face' (of which Chiche vache was a perversion), to the Histoire Littéraire de France, vol. xxiii. Dr. Murray refers us to Montaiglon, Poésie franç. 15^e et 16^e siècles (1855), ii. 191. The passage in Chaucer means, 'Beware of being too patient, lest Chichevache swallow you down.'

1189. Folweth Ekko, imitate Echo, who always replies.

1196. The forms chamail, kamail, a camel, occur in the A. F. Romance of King Horn, ed. Brede and Stengel, l. 4177. For the M. E. camayl, see Rich. Cuer de Lion, 2323; Cursor Mundi, 3304 (Trin. MS.).

1200. 'Always talk (or rattle) on, like a mill' (that is always going round and making a noise). 'Janglinge is whan men speken to muche biforn folk, and clappen as a mille, and taken no kepe what they seye'; Ch. Persones Tale, De Superbia (I. 406). Palsgrave's French Dict. has—'I clappe, I make a noyse as the clapper of a mill, Ie clacque.'

Cf. 'As fast as millwheels strike'; Tempest, i. 2. 281.

1204. aventaille, the lower half of the moveable part of a helmet which admitted air; called by Spenser the ventail, F. Q. iv. 6. 19; v. 8. 12; and by Shakespeare the beaver, Hamlet, i. 2. 230. It is explained, in Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, that the moveable part of the helmet in front was made in two parts, which turned on hinges at the sides of the head. The upper part is the visor, to admit of vision, the lower the ventail, to admit of breathing. Both parts could be removed from the face, but only by lifting them upwards, and throwing them back. If the visor alone were lifted, only the upper part of the face was exposed; but if the ventail were lifted, the visor also went with it, and the whole of the face was seen. Compare Fairfax's Tasso, vii. 7:—

So also in Hamlet. With reference to the present passage, Mr. Jephson says that and eek his aventaille is a perfect example of bathos. I fail to see why; the weapon that pierced a ventail would pass into the head, and inflict a death-wound. The passage is playful, but not silly.

1206. couche, cower. Hence the phrase—'to play couch-quail'; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 348.

1211. 'As light as a leaf on a linden-tree' was an old proverb. See Piers Pl. B. i. 154.

The Marchauntes Prologue.

1213. Weping and wayling; an expression caught from l. 1212, and linking this Prologue to the foregoing Tale. Yet in fourteen MSS. the Merchant's Tale is separated from the Clerk's; Trial Forewords, by F. J. Furnivall (Chaucer Soc.), p. 28.

1221-2. What, why. at al, in every respect; like Lat. omnino.

1227. This theme is enlarged upon in Lenvoy de Chaucer à Bukton, a late minor poem (vol. i. 398).

1230. Seint Thomas. Whenever this Apostle is mentioned, he is nearly always said to be of India, to distinguish him, it may be, from Saint Thomas of Canterbury. See D. 1980, and the note. Some account of the shrine of St. Thomas, of the manner of his death, and of miracles wrought by him, is given in Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 18. Colonel Yule tells us that the body of St. Thomas lay at Mailapúr, a suburb of Madras. The legend of St. Thomas's preaching in India is of very high antiquity. St. Jerome speaks of the Divine Word being everywhere present in His fulness 'cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae,' &c.; Sci. Hieronomi Epist. lix., ad Marcellam. Gregory of Tours (A. D. 544-595) speaks of the place in India where the body of St. Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa in the year 394. See the whole of Colonel Yule's long note upon the subject; and the account of Saint Thomas in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.

The Marchantes Tale.

For remarks on the sources of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 458. The modern version by Pope may be compared, though it was a juvenile performance. Cf. Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 28.

This Tale frequently adopts passages from the Tale of Melibeus, which was doubtless written several years before it. See also the article by Dr. Köppel in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. 86, p. 39.

1246. Pavye, Pavia. I suppose that Chaucer had no special reason for locating the tale in Lombardy.

1248-52. For sixty, some MSS. have lx.; the scribes of MSS. Hl. and Ln. wrongly have fourty, which looks as if they took lx. to mean xl. I see no point in turning the former sixty (in 1248) into fourty, as Wright does, on the pretence that the first twenty years of his life did not count. Sixty was considered a great age (l. 1401).

1251. seculeer, secular; as distinguished from the monks and friars. Chaucer probably speaks ironically, meaning that these holy orders were as bad as the rest. See l. 1322.

1267-1392. The whole of this passage presents the arguments that prevailed with January; as shewn by the words For which (i. e. wherefore) in l. 1393. That is to say, Chaucer here purposely keeps reasons against marriage out of sight, reserving them for ll. 1521-1565, 1659-1681. Hence the opinion in l. 1269, that a man should marry when old, is not Chaucer's opinion at all.

1270. 'The fruit of his treasure,' i. e. purchased with his own wealth. A queer reason, and not Chaucer's. Cf. l. 1276.

1277. sit wel, is very fit. Palsgrave has: 'It sytteth, it becometh, il siet.'

1284. For blisful, MS. Hl. wrongly has busily.

1294. Theofraste, Theophrastus. The allusion is to the Liber Aureolus Theophrasti de Nuptiis, partly preserved by St. Jerome, who quotes a long extract from it in his tractate Contra Iovinianum, lib. i. John of Salisbury quotes the same passage, almost word for word, in his Polycraticus, lib. viii. c. 11. The point discussed is:—'an uir sapiens ducat uxorem.' Amongst other things, he has a passage answering to ll. 1296-1304 below. 'Quod si propter dispensationem domus ... ducuntur uxores: multo melius seruus fidelis dispensat, obediens auctoritati domini, et dispensationi eius obtemperans quàm uxor.... Assidere autem aegrotanti magis possunt amici et uernulae beneficiis obligati, quàm illa quae nobis imputat lachrymas suas, et haereditatis spe uendit illuuiem.' Cf. Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 366.

1305-6. These two lines occur in E. Cm., and are doubtless correct. The MSS. vary considerably; see Six-Text, Pref. p. 70.

N.B. The words in italics are added in a later hand.

Neither of these lines will scan. MSS. Harl. 7335 and Bodley 686 nearly agree with this, but read be wel y-war for be war.

So also MS. Harl. 1758, Laud 600 and 739, Lichfield, &c. The black-letter editions of 1550 and 1561 have a much better version of the same, for they omit that and is in the former (too long) line, and insert sore before rewe in the latter (too short) one.

So also (according to Tyrwhitt) the Haistwell MS. and MS. Royal 17. D. xv; and, according to Furnivall, MS. Chr. Ch. C. 6.

In six MSS., according to Tyrwhitt, they are omitted; and on this account he omits them, on the plea that they 'form the opening of a new argument,... and consequently would have been cancelled, if he [Chaucer] had lived to publish his work.' But the sense is quite complete in the form in which I give them, from the two best MSS.

1311. Against this line is written, in the margin of MS. E.—'Uxor est diligenda quia donum Dei est: Iesus filius Sirac: domus et diuicie dantur a parentibus, a Domino autem proprie uxor bona uel prudens.' But the reference is wrong; the quotation is not from Ecclesiasticus (or Jesus the son of Sirach), but from Prov. xix. 14. The Vulgate has uxor prudens, omitting bona uel. The whole quotation is from Albertano of Brescia's Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1315. Compare B. 1199, and I. 1068.

1318. This parenthetical line is Chaucer's very own.

1319. 'Sacramentum hoc magnum est'; Eph. v. 32. Marriage, in the Romish Church, is one of the seven sacraments.

1323-35. All from Albertano of Brescia's Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1326. Hl. has body-naked; but all the rest (like the old editions) have bely-naked, which is the usual expression; see examples in Halliwell.

1328. In the margin of E.—'Faciamus ei adiutorium,' &c. From Gen. ii. 18, 24.

1335-6. From Le Roman de la Rose, 16640-4.

1337. Seint-e is feminine; ben'cite is trisyllabic.

1358-61. Of course these lines are genuine; they occur in nearly every MS. but E. and Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3. The scribe of E. slipped from reed in 1357 to rede in 1362; a common mistake. Dr. Furnivall objects that wyse in 1359 is made to rime with wyse in 1360, and rede in 1361 with rede in 1362; the riming words being used in the same sense. This is not the case. The first wyse is plural; the second is singular, and used generally. The first rede means 'advise'; the second, 'read.' To leave them out would give a rime of reed (monosyllable) with rede (dissyllable).

1362. The examples of Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther are quoted, in the same order and in similar terms, in the Tale of Melibeus; see B. 2288-2291, and the Notes.

1373, 4. Mardochee, Mordecai; in the Vulgate, Mardochaeus. Assuere, Ahasuerus; in the Vulgate, Assuerus; see l. 1745.

1376. In the margin of MS. Hn. is written:—'Seneca: sicut nichil est superius benigna coniuge, ita nichil est crudelius infesta muliere.' This is from Albertano of Brescia, Lib. Consolationis, cap. v. (p. 18). Sundby gives the reference, not to Seneca, but to Fulgentius, Mythologiarum, L. i. c. 27.

1377. bit, biddeth, bids. The passage referred to is in Dionysius Cato, lib. iii. dist. 25, and is given in the margin of MSS. E. Hn. and Dd.,

Quoted, at second-hand, from Albertano (Köppel).

1380. In the margin of MS. E.—'Bona mulier fidelis custos est, et bona domus.' From Albertano, as above.

1381-2. 'Ubi non est mulier, ingemiscit egens'; Ecclus. xxxvi. 27. Albertano quotes this, but alters egens to eger; hence Chaucer has 'the syke man'; see Köppel's article, p. 42.

1384. See Eph. v. 25, 28, 29, 31.

1385. thou lovest, thou wilt love; the present for the future; in the second instance. There is no real difficulty here, though Tyrwhitt makes one, and alters the text to love thou.

1401. 'On the brink of my grave.' Cf. Ps. xxx. 3, 9; &c.

1407-16. 'Uxorem accipias potius puellam quam uiduam'; from Albertano. See Köppel's article, p. 42.

1412. mo, more in number; T. has more (badly).

1418. 'I like fish when old, preferring a full grown pike to a pikerel; and I like flesh young, preferring veal to beef.'

1424. Wades boot, Wade's boat. Wade was a famous hero of antiquity, to whom Chaucer again alludes in Troil. iii. 614. In the Traveller's Song, l. 22, we find:—'Witta wēold Swǣfum, Wada Hælsingum,' i. e. Witta ruled over the Swabians, Wada over the Hælsings.' Wade is again mentioned in the alliterative Morte Arthure, l. 964. In a translation of Guido delle Colonne, in MS. Laud K. 76, in the Bodleian library, the romance of Wade is mentioned in conjunction with those of Havelok and Horn, both of which are well known; see the whole passage, as cited in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, in a note to Section III. In Sir Beves of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, 2605, we have an allusion to his fight with a fire-drake or fiery dragon. And in Sir T. Malory's Morte Arthur, bk. vii. c. 9, we find:—'were thou as wyghte as euer was Wade or Launcelot.' Speght knew the story, but has not recorded it; his note is:—'Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his straunge exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I pass it over.' On which Tyrwhitt remarks—'Tantamne rem tam negligenter? Mr. Speght probably did not foresee, that posterity would be as much obliged to him for a little of this fabulous matter concerning Wade and his bote, as for the gravest of his annotations.' Tyrwhitt also refers us, for a mention of Wade, to Camden's Britannia, 907, and to Charlton's History of Whitby, p. 40. M. Michel endeavoured to collect the particulars concerning Wade, and published them in a brochure, entitled Wade: Lettre à M. Henri Ternaux-Compans, &c. sur une Tradition Angloise du Moyen Age; Paris, 1837; 8vo. But it does not tell us much more that is helpful, except in furnishing a reference to the Wilkina Saga, capp. 18-20.

After all, the most light is given us by the following sentence in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. Vigfusson and Powell, i. 168, with reference to the Lay of Weyland. 'Weyland is trapped by Nidad, king of the Niars, hamstrung, and forced to work for him in his forge on the isle of Seastead in lake Wolfmere. He contrives to slay his tyrant's sons, beguile his daughter [named Bodwild], and by the aid of a pair of wings which he has fashioned to soar away from his prison-house, rejoicing in his revenge.... That the King's daughter had a son by Weyland, the famous Wade (the memory of whose magic boat Wingelock lingered in N. England till the Reformation), we know from Wilkina Saga.'

I entirely differ from M. Michel's extraordinary conclusion about the boat—'Nous avons quelques raisons de croire que ce bateau n'étoit pas d'une course aussi rapide: en effet, dans l'Edda il est dit qu'Odin avoit un valet et une servante nommés Ganglate et Ganglœt, mots qu'on dit signifier marchant lentement.' Of course Ganglati and Ganglöt (as they should be written) mean 'slow-goer,' but this has nothing to do with Guingelot, which is merely a French spelling of some such form as Wingelok. It is obvious that the sole use of a magic boat is to transport its possessor from place to place in a few minutes, like the magic wings of Wade's own father. This is all we need to know, to see the point of the allusion. Old widows, says Chaucer in effect, know too much of the craft of Wade's boat; they can fly from place to place in a minute, and, if charged with any misdemeanour, will swear they were a mile away from the place at the time alleged. Mr. Pickwick, on the other hand, being only a man, failed to set up the plea of an alibi, and suffered accordingly.