Notes to the Canterbury Tales.

'Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,

Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,

Thropes and bernes, shepenes, and dairies,

This maketh that ther ben no faeries.'

Note that he actually seems to have read dairies and faeries as riming dissyllabic words! In which case the last of these four lines would have but four accents! But the rime merely concerns the two final syllables of those quadrisyllabic words. The riming of the two former syllables is unessential, and for the purpose of rime, accidental and otiose.

MS. Pt. admits and before boures; and MS. Hl. admits and before toures and dairies (which does not alter the character of the lines). With these exceptions, all the seven MSS. omit all the five and's inserted by Tyrwhitt; and, in fact, they are all of them superfluous.

For the benefit of those who are but little acquainted with this peculiarity of Middle English metre, I cite four consecutive lines of a similar character from Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, ll. 1239-1242:—

'Drogh | the brydyl from his horses hede,

Let | hym goon, and took no maner hede,

Thorgh | the gardyn that enclosed was,

Hym | to pasture on the grene gras.'

There are plenty more of the same kind in the same poem; e. g. 1068, 1081, 1082, 1089, 1103, 1107, 1116, 1120, 1122, 1123, 1140, 1141, 1151, &c., &c., all printed in Specimens of English from 1394-1579, ed. Skeat, pp. 28-34. For similar lines in Hoccleve, see the same, p. 16, st. 604, l. 6; st. 605, l. 2; p. 20, st. 622, l. 2; p. 21, st. 624, l. 4.

shipnes, stables, or cow-houses; see A. 2000. 'Shippen, Shuppen, a cow-house'; E. D. S. Gloss. B. 1. 'Shippen, an ox-house'; id. B. 6. 'Shuppen, a cow-house'; id. B. 7; 'Shippen, a cow-house'; id. B. 15.

875. undermeles, for undern-meles, undern-times. For the time of undern, see note to E. 260. Meel (pl. meles) is the A. S. mǣl, a time. The time referred to, in this particular instance, seems to be the middle of the afternoon; or simply 'afternoons,' as opposed to 'mornings.' For this sense, cf. 'Undermele, Postmeridies,' in the Prompt. Parv. Nares, s. v. under-meal, gives other instances; but he fails to realise the changeable sense of the word; and is quite wrong in saying (s. v. undertime) that the last-named word is unconnected with undern. He also wrongly dissociates undern from arndern and orndern.

876. 'All religious persons were bound, if possible, to recite the divine office ... at the proper hour, in the choir; but secular priests, not living in common, and friars, being by their rule obliged to walk about within their limitation, to beg their maintenance, were allowed to say it privately,... as they walked.'—Bell. Cf. B. 1281.

880. incubus. Milton (P. R. ii. 152) speaks of Belial as being, after Asmodai, 'the fleshliest incubus.' Mr. Jerram's note on the line says: 'Some of the ejected angels were believed not to have fallen into hell, but to have remained in the middle of the region of air (P. R. ii. 117), where in various shapes they tempt men to sin. It was said that they hoped to counteract the effects of Christ's coming by engendering with some virgin a semi-demon, who should be a power of evil. In this way Merlin, and even Luther, were reported to have been begotten.' See the Romance of Merlin, ed. Wheatley, ch. i. pp. 9, 10; and the poem of Merlin in the Percy Folio MS.

881. Tyrwhitt and others adopt the reading no dishonour, as in the old black-letter editions; and MS. Cm. has the reading non. At first sight, this looks right, but a little reflection will incline us rather to adopt the reading of nearly all the MSS., as given in the present text. For to say that the friar was an incubus, and yet did women no dishonour, is contradictory. The meaning is, possibly, that the friar brought upon women dishonour, and nothing more; whereas the incubus never failed to cause conception. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 257) adopts the reading here given, but interprets it thus:—'The dishonour of a woman is, in the eyes of the Wife of Bath, to be reckoned not as a crime, but as a peccadillo.' (See the whole passage.) The subject will hardly bear further discussion; but it is impossible to ignore the repeated charges of immorality brought against the friars by Wyclif and others. Wyclif says—'thei slen wommen that withstonden hem in this synne'; Works, ed. Matthew, p. 6.

884. fro river, i. e. he was returning from hawking at the river-side. See B. 1927, and the note.

887. maugree hir heed, lit. 'in spite of her head,' i. e. in spite of all she could do, without her consent. Cf. A. 1169, 2618; also I. 974, where we find:—'if the womman, maugree hir heed, hath been afforced.' Mätzner remarks that, in some cases, we find a part of the head referred to, instead of the whole head. Hence the expressions: maugre his nose, Rob. of Gloucester, 2090 (p. 94, ed. Hearne); maugree thyne yen, Ch. C. T., D. 315; maugree hir eyen two, id., A. 1796; maugree my chekes, Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, C. 54; m. here chekis, P. Plowman, B. iv. 50; &c.

909. lere, learn; as in B. 181, 630, C. 325, 578, &c. But the right sense is 'teach.' See l. 921.

twelf-month, &c. 'There seems to have been some mysterious importance attached to this particular time of grace,' &c.—Bell. I think not. The solution is simply, that it takes an extra day to make the date agree. If we fix any date, as Nov. 21, 1890, the space of a year afterwards only brings us to Nov. 20, 1891; if we want to keep to the same day of the month, we must make the space include 'a year and a day.' This is what any one would naturally do; and that is all. Cf. A. 1850, and the note. 'Year and Day, is a time that determines a right in many cases;... So is the Year and Day given in case of Appeal, in case of Descent after Entry or Claim,' &c.; Cowell, Intrepreter of Words and Terms. See l. 916 below; and cf. Eight days, i. e. a week, in the New Eng. Dictionary.

'To som woman it is plesaunce

That to another is grevaunce'; &c.

929-30. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9977-94. For y-plesed, Tyrwhitt and Wright read y-preised, contrary to the seven best MSS.; which gives an imperfect rime. preysed rimes with reysed (D. 706).

940. galle, sore place. 'Galle, soore yn man or beeste'; Prompt. Parv. 'Let the galled jade wince'; Hamlet, iii. 2. 253.

clawe means 'to scratch'; and to clawe upon the galle is to scratch or rub a sore. This may be taken in two ways; hence the difficulty about the reading in l. 941, where E. Cm. have kike, i. e. kick, whilst Hn. Hl. have like, and Cp. Pt. Ln. have loke or he seith us soth. The last of these three variations gives no sense, and is certainly wrong; but either of the other readings will serve. I take them in order.

(1) kike, kick. Here the sense is:—'if any one scratch us on a sore place (and so hurt us), we shall kick, because he tells us the truth (too plainly).' This goes well with the context, as it answers to the repreve us of our vyce in l. 937.

(2) like, like (it), be pleased. Here the sense is:—'if any one stroke us on a sore place (and so soothe the itching), we shall be pleased, because he tells us the truth (or what we think to be the truth).' But I feel inclined to reject this reading, because it gives so forced a sense to the words—for he seith us sooth. There is, however, no difficulty about the use of claw in the sense of 'to rub lightly, so as to soothe irritation'; for which see examples in the New English Dictionary. It is particularly used in the phrase to claw one's back, i. e. to soothe, flatter; but the word galle suggests a place where friction would rather hurt than soothe.

949. rake-stele, the handle of a rake. The word stele is still in use provincially. 'Stale, any stick, or handle, such as the stick of a mop or a fork'; South Warwickshire; E. D. S. Gl. C. 6. 'Stale [stae·ul], s. handle; as, mop-stale, pick-stale, broom-stale'; Elworthy's West Somerset Words. And see Steal in Ray's Glossary; Stele in Nares; Steale in Halliwell; &c. Cf. A. 3785; P. Plowman, C. xxii. 279. Golding translates Ovid's hastile (Metam. vii. 676) by 'Iaueling-steale.' The e is 'open'; cf. A. S. stela; hence the rime with hele (A. S. helan) is perfect.

950. 'Car fame ne puet riens celer'; Rom. de la Rose, 19420. See also the same, 16549-70.

952. Ovyde; see Metamorph. xi. 174-193. But Chaucer seems to have purposely altered the story, since Ovid attributes the betrayal of the secret to Midas' barber, not his wife; and again, Ovid says that the barber dug a hole, and whispered it into the pit. Chaucer's version is an improved one. Cf. Troil. iii. 1389.

968. Dryden is plainer, and less polite:—'But she must burst or blab.' Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 16568-9.

972. bitore, bittern; bumbleth, makes a bellowing noise, which is also expressed by bumping or booming. Note that MS. Cm. has bumbith. Owing to the loud booming note of the male bittern, it is called in A. S. rāre-dumle or rāre-dumbla, from rārian, to roar; see Wright's Glossaries. In provincial English, it is called a butter-bump, or a bumble; or, from its frequenting moist places, a bog-bumper, a bog-drum, or a bull o' the bog; see Swainson's Provincial Names of British Birds, E. D. S., p. 146. It was formerly thought that the cry was produced by the bird plunging its bill into mud and then blowing, as in the present passage; others thought that it put its bill into a reed, a view taken by Dryden, as he here has the line:—'And, as a bittern bumps within a reed.' Sir T. Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, bk. iii. c. 27, controverts these notions, and attributes the note to the conformation of the bird's organs of voice. 'The same contradiction of the common notion is given, from personal experience, by the Rev. S. Fovargue, in his New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, pp. 19-21'; note to Sir T. Browne, ed. S. Wilkin. The same editor further refers us to papers by Dr. Latham and Mr. Yarrell in the Linnaean Transactions, vols. iv, xv, and xvi. See Prof. Newton's Dict. of Birds.

981. There is not much 'remnant' of the tale; Ovid adds that some reeds grew out of the pit, which, when breathed upon by the South wind, uttered the words which had been buried.

992. This reminds us of Chaucer's own vision of Alcestis and her nineteen attendant ladies in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women.

'In a forest, there under a tree

He sigh where sat a creature,

A lothly womannish figure,

That, for to speke of flesshe and boon,

So foul yet sigh he never noon.'

'And, as he rode over a more,

Hee see a lady where she sate

Betwixt an oake and a greene hollen [holly];

She was cladd in red scarlett....

Her nose was crooked and turnd outward,

Her mouth stood foule a-wry;

A worse formed lady than shee was

Neuer man saw with his eye.'

1004. can, know; but the form is singular, to agree with folk. Cf. the proverb—'older and wiser'—in Hazlitt's Collection; and see A. 2448.

calle, caul; a close-fitting netted cap or head-dress, often richly ornamented; see Fairholt, Costume in England, s. v. Caul.

1021. pistell, (1) an epistle, as in E. 1154; hence (2), a short lesson, as here.

1024. holde his day, kept his time, come back at the specified time. hight, promised.

1028. 'Queen Guenever is here represented sitting as judge in a Court of Love, similar to those in fashion in later ages.... Fontenelle (in the third volume of his works, Paris, 1742) has given a description of one of the fantastic suits tried in these courts.... The best source of information on these strange follies is a book entitled Erotica, seu Amatoria, Andreæ Capellarii Regis, &c., written about A.D. 1170, and published at Dorpmund in 1610.'—Bell.

'That alle women levest wolde

Be soverein of mannes love,' &c.

—'a woman will have her will,

And this is all her cheef desire.'

1074. It is curious to note how Chaucer seems to have felt that romance-writers were constrained to describe feasts, a duty which he usually evades. Cf. A. 2197, B. 419, 1120, E. 1710, F. 278. In fact, the original business of the minstrel was to praise his lord's bounty, especially on grand occasions.

'But as an oule fleeth by nighte

Out of all other briddes sighte,

Right so this knight, on daies brode,' &c.

1085. walweth, rolls from side to side, turns about restlessly; cf. Leg. Good Wom. 1166; Troil. i. 699; Rom. Rose, 2562.

1109. Gentilesse. See my notes (in vol. i. 431, 553) on R. R. 2190, and Gentilesse. Compare Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 6 and met. 6; Roman de la Rose, ed. Méon, 6603-6616, and 18807-19096; and see B. 2831.

'Rade volte risurge per li rami

L'umana probitate: e questo vuole

Quei che la dâ, perchè da lui si chiami.'

'Rarely into the branches of the tree

Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains

He who bestows it, that as His free gift

It may be called.'

Marsh notes that similar sentiments occur in the Canzone prefixed to the fourth Trattato in Dante's Convito.

1135. The general sense is—'if gentle conduct were naturally implanted in a particular family, none of that family could ever behave badly.' Cf. ll. 1150, 1151.

'Were virtue by descent, a noble name

Could never villanise his father's fame.'

Dryden's paraphrase.

1140. Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 7. 43, mentions 'the mountaigne that highte Caucasus.' This is probably where he got the name from. Cf. Shakespeare's 'frosty Caucasus'; Rich. II. i. 3. 295. The whole passage is imitated from another place in Boethius, where Chaucer's translation has:—'Certes, yif that honour of poeple were a natural yift to dignitees, it ne mighte never cesen ... to don his office, right as fyr in every contree ne stinteth nat to eschaufen and to ben hoot'; bk. iii. pr. 4. 44-8. In l. 1139, Dryden merely alters in to to.

1142. lye, i. e. blaze. 'Hevene y-leyed wose syth,' whoever sees heaven in a blaze; Relig. Antiq. i. 266. The sb. lye, a flame, occurs in P. Pl. C. xx. 172. Cf. A. S. lȳg, līg, flame.

'For vilany makith vilayn;

And by his dedis a cherl is seyn.'

1165. 'Incunabula Tulli Hostilii agreste tugurium cepit: ejusdem adolescentia in pecore pascendo fuit occupata: validior aetas imperium Romanum rexit, et duplicavit: senectus excellentissimis ornamentis decorata in altissimo majestatis fastigio fulsit.'—Valerius Maximus, lib. iii. c. 4 (De Humili Loco Natis). Cf. Livy, i. 22; Dionysius Halicarnasseus, iii; Ælian, xiv. 36.

1184. Ll. 1183-1190 are imitated from the following; 'Honesta, inquit [Epicurus], res est laeta paupertas. Illa uero non est paupertas, si laeta est. Cui enim cum paupertate bene conuenit, diues est. Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.'—Seneca, Epist. ii. § 4. This passage is quoted by John of Salisbury, Policraticus, l. vii. c. 13.

Othere clerkes also includes Epicurus, whose sentiments Seneca here expresses; see Diogenes Laertius, x. 11. MS. E. here quotes the words 'honesta res est laeta paupertas' in the margin, and refers to 'Seneca, in epistola.' It also has:—'Pauper est qui eget, eo quod non habet; sed qui non habet, nec appetit habere, ille diues est; de quo intelligitur id Apocalypsis tertio [Rev. iii. 17]—dicis quia diues sum.' With l. 1187 cf. Rom. de la Rose, 18766:—'Et convoitise fait povrece.'

1191. All the editions adopt the reading is sinne, as in all the MSS. except E. and Cm. (the two best); see footnote, p. 354. But surely this is nonsense, and exactly contradicts l. 1183.

1192. In the margin of MS. E. are quoted two lines from Juvenal, Sat. x. 21,22:—'Cantabit uacuus coram latrone uiator; Et nocte ad lumen trepidabit arundinis umbram.' The latter of these lines should come first, and the usual readings are motae (not nocte), lunam, and trepidabis. However, it is only the other (and favourite) line that is here alluded to. The same line is quoted in Piers Plowman, B. xiv. 305; and is alluded to in Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 5. 129-130. In Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, ii. 364, is the remark:—'For it is said comounli, that a wey-goer, whan he is voide, singith sure bi the theef.'

1195. In the margin of E. is written:—'Secundus philosophus: Paupertas est odibile bonum, sanitatis mater, curarum remocio, sapientie reparatrix, possessio sine calumpnia.' This is the very passage quoted, even more fully, in Piers Plowman, B. xiv. 275 (C. xvii. 117). Tyrwhitt's note is—'In this commendation of Poverty, our author seems plainly to have had in view the following passage of a fabulous conference between the emperor Adrian and Secundus the philosopher, reported by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, lib. x. cap. 71. "Quid est paupertas? Odibile bonum, sanitatis mater, remotio curarum, sapientie repertrix, negotium sine damno, possessio absque calumnia, sine sollicitudine felicitas." What Vincent has there published seems to have been extracted from a larger collection of Gnomae under the name of Secundus, which are still extant in Greek and Latin. See Fabricius, Bib. Gr., l. vi. c. x, and MS. Harl. 399.' Thus l. 1195 is a translation of Paupertas est odibile bonum, so that the proposal by Dr. Morris (Aldine edition of Chaucer, vol. i. p. vi) to adopt the reading hatel from MSS. Cp. Pt. Ln. instead of hateful, is founded on a mistake. The expression is contradictory, but it is so intentionally. 'Poverty is a gift which its possessors hate' is, of course, the meaning. Dryden well explains it:—

'Want is a bitter and a hateful good,

Because its virtues are not understood.'

1199. elenge, miserable, hard to bear. Elenge is also spelt alenge, alinge, alange; see Alange in the New English Dictionary, though the proper form is rather alenge. It is a derivative of the intensive A. S. prefix ǣ and lenge, a secondary form of lang, long; so that A. S. ǣlenge meant protracted, tedious, wearisome, as in Alfred's tr. of Boethius, xxxix. 4. But it was confused with the M. E. elend, strange, foreign, and so acquired the sense of 'strange' as well as 'trying' or 'miserable.' See Elynge in the Gl. to P. Plowman, and the note to P. Pl. C. i. 204; also Mätzner's note to the Land of Cokayne, l. 15.

1200. This line translates 'possessio absque calumnia.' The E. challenge is, in fact, derived from calumnia, through Old French.

1202. Understand him: 'maketh (him) know his God and himself'; see Dryden's paraphrase. Against this line, in the margin of MS. E., is written:—'Unde et Crates ille Thebanus, proiecto in mari non paruo auri pondere, Abite (inquit) pessime male cupiditates! Ego uos mergam, ne ipse mergar a uobis.' Probably Chaucer once intended to introduce this story into the text. It relates, apparently, to Crates of Thebes, the Cynic philosopher, who flourished about B. C. 320.

1203. spectacle, i. e. an optic glass, a kind of telescope. In the modern sense, the word was used in the plural, as at present. From Lydgate's London Lickpenny, st. 7, we learn that 'spectacles to reede' was, in his time, one of the cries of London. Cf. prospectyves, i. e. perspective glasses, in F. 234. Chaucer is here thinking of a passage in Le Roman de la Rose, where the E. version (l. 5551) has:—

'For infortune makith anoon

To knowe thy freendis fro thy foon.'

This, again, is from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 8. 22-33. Compare Chaucer's poem on Fortune, ll. 9, 32, 34, and my notes upon these lines; vol. i. pp. 383, 544.

1215. For also, Tyrwhitt reads also so, against all authority, as he admits. The text is right as it stands. Eld-e is dissyllabic, the final e being preserved by the cæsura; and also means no more than 'so.' I suspect this is quoted from some French proverb. Dryden alters 'filth' to 'ugliness.'

1234. 'I care not which of the two it shall be.' Cf. Gower, Conf. Amantis, i. 103:—

'Chese for us bothe, I you praie,

And what as ever that ye saie,

Right as ye wolle, so wol I.

My lord, she saide, grauntmercy.

For of this word that ye now sain,

That ye have made me soverein,

My destinè is overpassed'; &c.

1260. toverbyde, to over-bide, to outlive. Tyrwhitt substitutes to overlive, from the black-letter editions. Gra-ce is dissyllabic.

1276. auctoritees; a direct reference to l. 1208 above. This goes far to show that the Friar's Tale was written immediately after the Wife's Tale. The Friar says, quite truly, that the Wife's Tale contains passages not unlike 'school-matter,' or disquisitions in the schools. Such a passage is that in ll. 1109-1212. Tyrwhitt shews that auctoritas was the usual word applied to a text of scripture; Bell adds, that it was applied, as now, to any authority for a statement. We might very well translate auctoritees by 'quotations.'

1284. mandements, 'citations, or summonses, addressed to those accused of breaches of the canons, to appear and answer in the archdeacon's court'; Bell. Hence the name somnour, i. e. a server of summonses.

1285. tounes ende (whence the name Townsend); we should now say, 'at the entry to every town'; cf. l. 1537. The Somnour was often opposed with violence, and was a very unpopular character.

1294. The limiters had to cultivate the art of flattery, because they lived by begging from house to house.

^*_*^* After this line all the MSS. (except Hl.) wrongly insert lines 1307, 1308 (on p. 359). Perhaps the poet himself introduced these lines here at first, and afterwards perceived how much better they came in after l. 1306. It is not an important matter.

1296. MS. Hl. has:—'Our host answerd and sayd the sompnour this'; which cannot be right.

1300. erchedeken. As to the duties of the archdeacon, here described, compare A. 655, 658. He enforced discipline by threats of excommunication, and inflicted fines for various offences. Compare Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 166.

1305. I. e. he punished church-reeves if they did ill, and all cases in which wills or contracts had been wantonly violated. 'Lakke of sacraments' refers, chiefly, to the neglect of the precept to communicate at Easter; also to neglect of baptism, and, possibly, of matrimony, as that was also a 'sacrament' in the church of our fathers.

1315. 'The neglect to pay tithes and Easter offerings came under the archdeacon's jurisdiction, as the bishop's diocesan officer. The friar does not scruple to make an invidious use of this subject at the expense of the parochial clergy, because, being obliged by his rule to gain his livelihood by begging, he had no interest in tithes.'—Bell.

1317. Alluding to the shape of the bishop's crosier. In P. Plowman, C. xi. 92, the crosier is described as having a hook at one end, by which he draws men back to a good life, and a spike at the other, which he uses against hardened offenders. On the crosier, see Rock, Church of Our Fathers, ii. 181. The bishop dealt with such offenders as were contumacious to the archdeacon.

1327. wood were, should be, were to be as mad as a hare. See 'As mad as a March hare' in Hazlitt's Proverbs.

1329. The mendicant orders were subject only to their own general or superior, not to the bishops. In the piece called Jack Upland (§ 11), Jack asks the friars—'Why be ye not vnder your bishops visitations, and leegemen to our king?'—British Poets, ed. Chalmers, 1810; i. 567.

1332. Peter, by saint Peter. 'The summoner's repartee is founded upon the law by which houses of ill-fame were exempted from ecclesiastical interference, and licensed.'—Bell. 'Stewes, are those places which were permitted in England to women of professed incontinency.... But king Henry VIII., about the year 1546, prohibited them for ever.'—Cowel's Interpreter. Cock Lane, Smithfield, contained such houses; see my notes to P. Plowman, C. vii. 366, 367.

1343. approwours, agents, men who looked after his profits. From the O. Fr. approuer, apprower, to cause to profit, to enrich; from the O. Fr. sb. prou, profit, whence also E. prowess. Miswritten as approver in the seventeenth century, though distinct from approve (from approbare). See the New Eng. Dictionary. Tyrwhitt has the spelling approvers.

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.

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!

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.

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.

'Their loues they on the tenter-hookes did racke,

Rost, boyl'd, bak'd, too too much white, claret, sacke,

Nothing they thought too heavy nor too hot,

Canne followed Canne, and pot succeeded pot.'

John Taylor; Pennilesse Pilgrimage.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

1576. Twelve pence was a considerable sum in those days; being equivalent to something like fifteen shillings of our present money.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.