Note 559 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)

Chaucer, who puts several home touches not known to Boccaccio or Statius into his account of the funeral of Arcite in the “Knight’s Tale,” speaks of the lyche-wake as well as of the wake-pleyes,—the latter, of course, funeral games. Pennant, by the way, in his Second Tour in Scotland (Pinkerton, III. 288), speaking of Islay and its antiquities, says “the late-wakes or funerals ... were attended with sports and dramatic entertainments.... The subject of the drama was historical and preserved by memory.” (No italics in the original.)