Note 20 — THE WIFE OF BATH.
Reading edition
It would seem from Chaucer that the youth was a native of Bath, and had returned there when he had completed his education at Oxford:
He some time was a clerk of Oxenford, And had left school, and went at home to board, With my gossib, duelling in our town: God have her soul, her name was Alisoun.
"My gossib" is my godmother, and the wife of Bath, whose christian name was also Alisoun, had been named after her. Pope, by turning "my gossip" into "a gossip," has done away with the special relationship, and employed the word in its modern sense of a lover of tittle-tattle.