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 (κύβοι) not tali (ἀστράγαλοι); 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, 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—

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 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:—

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 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 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—

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.

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 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:—

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 awkwardly here, and he has used the principal idea in another place:—

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.

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:—

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 ἀγωνοθέτης praemium, inuitat ad cursum, tenet in manu 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 βραβεῖον. '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. fōr, a course, way; from faran (pt. t. fōr), 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 parfit 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. hātan. 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 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:—

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:—

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:—

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.

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 μεγάλη σύνταξις τῆς ἀστρονομίας. This work was also called, for brevity, μεγάλη, and afterwards μεγίστη (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:—

He refers to l. 19013; but in Méon's edition, these are ll. 18336-7.

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:—

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 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:—

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:—

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.

263. Clearly from Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 8637—

265. Immediately after, we have—

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:—

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 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:—