Note 20 — INTRODUCTION
Reading edition
I see in song, in sedgeyng tale Of Erceldoun and of Kendale, Non þam says as þai þam wroght, And in þer sayng it semes noght. Þat may þou here in Sir Tristrem— Ouer gestes it has þe steem, Ouer alle þat is or was, If men it sayd as made Thomas: But I here it no man so say, Þat of som copple som is away. (Chronicle, Prologue, ll. 93 ff.)
Robert blames the vanity of the reciters more than their memories, on the excellence of which Petrarch remarks in his account of the minstrels: Sunt homines non magni ingenii, magnae vero memoriae, magnaeque diligentiae (to Boccaccio, Rerum Senilium, Bk. v, ep. ii).