3195. artow, art thou. Sathanas, Satan. The Hebrew sâiân means simply an adversary, as in 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 22; c. A remarkable application of it to the evil spirit is in Luke x. 18. Milton also indentifies Lucifer with Satan; Par. Lost, vii. 131; x. 425; but they are sometimes distinguished, and made the names of two different spirits. See, for example, Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 270–283.
3196. Read misérie, after which follows the metrical pause.
3197. Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium begins with a chapter ‘De Adam et Eua.’ It contains the passage—‘Et ex agro, qui postea Damascenus, . . . ductus in Paradisum deliciarum.’ Lydgate, in his Fall of Princes (fol. a 5), has—
The notion of the creation of Adam in a field whereupon afterwards stood Damascus, occurs in Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, where we find (ed. 1526, fol. vii)—‘Quasi quereret aliquis, Remansit homo in loco vbi factus est, in agro scilicet damasceno? Non. Vbi ergo translatus est? In paradisum.’ See also Maundeville’s Travels, cap. xv; Genesis and Exodus, ed. Morris, l. 207; and note in Mätzner’s Altenglische Sprachproben, ii. 185.
3199. Cf. ‘Formatus est homo . . de spurcissimo spermate’; Innocent III., De Miseria Conditionis Humanae, i. 1 (Köppel).
3200. So Boccaccio—‘O caeca rerum cupiditas! Hii, quibus rerum cinnium, dante Deo, erat imperium, ’ c. Cf. Gen. i. 29; ii. 16.
3205. The story of Sampson is also in Boccaccio, lib. i. c. 17 (not 19, as Tyrwhitt says). But Chaucer seems mostly to have followed the account in Judges, xiii-xvi. The word annunciat, referring to the announcement of Samson’s birth by the angel (Judges xiii. 3), may have been suggested by Boccaccio, whose account begins—‘ Praenunciante per angelum Deo, ex Manue Israhelita quodam et pulcherrima eius vxore Sanson progenitus est.’ thangel in l. 3206= the angel.
3207. consecrat, consecrated. A good example of the use of the ending - at; cf. situate for situated. —M. Shakespeare has consecrate; Com. of. Err. ii. 2. 134.
3208. whyl he mighte see, as long as he preserved his eyesight.
3210. To speke of strengthe, with regard to strength; to speke of is a kind of preposition.—M. Cf. Milton’s Samson Agonistes, 126–150.
3211. wyves. Samson told the secret of his riddle to his wife, Judges xiv. 17; and of his strength to Delilah, id. xvi. 17.
3215. al to-rente, completely rent in twain. The prefix to - has two powers in Old English. Sometimes it is the preposition to in composition, as in towards, or M. E. to-flight (G. zuflucht ), a refuge. But more commonly it is a prefix signifying in twain, spelt zer - in German, and dis - in Mœso-Gothic and Latin. Thus to-rente =rent in twain; to-brast =burst in twain, c. The intensive adverb al, utterly, was used not merely (as is commonly supposed) before verbs beginning with to -, but in other cases also. Thus, in William of Palerne, l. 872, we find—‘He was al a-wondred, ’ where al precedes the intensive prefix a -=A. S. of. Again, in the same poem, l. 661, we have—‘ al bi-weped for wo,’ where al now precedes the prefix bi -. In Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Skeat, x. 596, is the expression—
Where al to-fruschit means utterly broken in pieces. Perhaps the clearest example of the complete separability of al from to is seen in l. 3884 of William of Palerne;—
‘ Al to-tare his atir· þat he to-tere miȝt’;
i. e. he entirely tore apart his attire, as much of it as he could tear apart. But at a later period of English, when the prefix to - was less understood, a new and mistaken notion arose of regarding al to as a separable prefix, with the sense of all to pieces. I have observed no instance of this use earlier than the reign of Henry VIII. Thus Surrey, Sonnet 9, has ‘ al-to shaken’ for shaken to pieces. Latimer has—‘they love and al-to love (i. e. entirely love) him’; Serm. p. 289. For other examples, see Al-to in the Bible Word-book; and my notes in Notes and Queries, 3 Ser. xii. 464, 535; also All, § C. 15, in the New E. Dict.
3220. Samson’s wife was given to a friend; Judges, xiv. 20. She was afterwards burnt by her own people; Judges, xv. 6.
3224. on every tayl; one brand being fastened to the tails of two foxes; Judg. xv. 4.
3225. cornes. The Vulgate has segetes and fruges; also uineas for vynes, and cliueta for oliveres. The plural form cornes is not uncommon in Early English. Cf. ‘Quen thair corns war in don,’ i. e. when their harvests were gathered in; Spec. of Eng. pt. ii. ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 70, l. 39. And again, ‘alle men-sleeris and brenneris of houses and cornes [misprinted corves ] ben cursed opynly in parische chirches’; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 329.
3234. wang-toth, molar tooth. This expression is taken from the Vulgate, which has—‘Aperuit itaque Dominus molarem dentem in maxilla asini’; where the A. V. has only—‘an hollow place that was in the jaw’; Judg. xv. 19.
3236. Judicum, i. e. Liber Judicum, the Book of Judges. Cf. note to B. 93, at p. 141.
3237. Gazan, a corruption of Gazam, the acc. case, in Judg. xvi. 1, Vulgate version.
3244. ne hadde been, there would not have been. Since hadde is here the subjunctive mood, it is dissyllabic. Read— worldë n’ haddë.
3245. sicer, from the Lat. sicera, Greek σίκερα, strong drink, is the word which we now spell cider; see Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, i. 363, note. It is used here because found in the Vulgate version of Judges xiii. 7; ‘caue ne uinum bibas, nec siceram. ’ I slightly amend the spelling of the MSS., which have ciser, siser, sythir, cyder. Wyclif has sither, cyther, sidir, sydur.
3249. twenty winter, twenty years; Judg. xvi. 31. The English used to reckon formerly by winters instead of years; as may be seen in a great many passages in the A. S. Chronicle.
3253. Dalida; from Gk. Δαλιδά, in the Septuagint. The Vulgate has Dalila; but Chaucer (or his scribes) naturally adopted a form which seemed to have a nearer resemblance to an accusative case, such being, at that time, the usual practice; cf. Briseide (from Briseida ), Criseyde and Anelida. Lydgate also uses the form Dalida.
3259. in this array, in this (defenceless) condition.
3264. querne, hand-mill. The Vulgate has—‘et clausum in carcere molere fecerunt’; Judg. xvi. 21. But Boccaccio says—‘ad molas manuarias coegere.’ The word occurs in the House of Fame, 1798; and in Wyclif’s Bible, Exod. xi. 5; Mat. xxiv. 41. In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 181, the story of Samson is alluded to, and it is said of him that he ‘uil [ fell ] into þe honden of his yuo [ foes ], þet him deden grinde ate querne ssamuolliche,’ i. e. who made him grind at the mill shamefully (in a shameful manner). Lydgate copies Chaucer rather closely, in his Fall of Princes, fol. e 7:—
3269. Thende, the end. Caytif means (1) a captive, (2) a wretch. It is therefore used here very justly.
3274. two pilers, better than the reading the pilers of MS. E.; because two are expressly mentioned; Judg. xvi. 29.
3282. So Boccaccio—‘Sic aduersa credulitas, sic amantis pietas, sic mulieris egit inclyta fides. Vt quem non poterant homines, non uincula, non ferrum uincere, a mulieribus latrunculis uinceretur.’ Lydgate has the expressions—
and again:—
3285. There is little about Hercules in Boccaccio; but Chaucer’s favourite author, Ovid, has his story in the Metamorphoses, book ix, and Heroides, epist. 9. Tyrwhitt, however, has shewn that Chaucer more immediately copies a passage in Boethius, de Cons. Phil. lib. iv. met. 7, which is as follows:—
But it is still more interesting to see Chaucer’s own version of this passage, which is as follows (ed. Morris, p. 147; cf. vol. ii. p. 125):—
‘Hercules is celebrable for his harde trauaile; he dawntede þe proude Centauris, half hors, half man; and he rafte þe despoylynge fro þe cruel lyoun; þat is to seyne, he slouȝ þe lyoun and rafte hym hys skyn. He smot þe birds þat hyȝten arpijs in þe palude of lyrne wiþ certeyne arwes. He rauyssede applis fro þe wakyng dragoun, hys hand was þe more heuy for þe goldene metal. He drouȝ Cerberus þe hound of helle by his treble cheyne; he, ouer-comer, as it is seid, haþ put an vnmeke lorde fodre to his cruel hors; þis is to sein, þat hercules slouȝ diomedes and made his hors to etyn hym. And he, hercules, slouȝ Idra þe serpent brende þe venym; and achelaus þe flode, defoulede in his forhede, dreinte his shamefast visage in his strondes; þis is to seyn, þat achelaus couþe transfigure hymself into dyuerse lykenesse, as he fauȝt wiþ ercules, at þe laste he turnide hym in-to a bole [ bull ]; and hercules brak of oon of hys hornes, achelaus for shame hidde hym in hys ryuer. And he, hercules, caste adoun Antheus þe geaunt in þe strondes of libye; kacus apaisede þe wraþþes of euander; þis is to sein, þat hercules slouȝ þe monstre kacus apaisede wiþ þat deeþ þe wraþþe of euander. And þe bristlede boor markede wiþ scomes [ scums, foam ] þe sholdres of hercules, þe whiche sholdres þe heye cercle of heuene sholde þreste [ was to rest upon ]. And þe laste of his labours was, þat he sustenede þe heuene upon his nekke unbowed; he deseruede eftsones þe heuene, to ben þe pris of his laste trauayle.’
And in his House of Fame, book iii. (l. 1413), he mentions—
3288. Hercules’ first labour was the slaying of the Nemean lion, whose skin he often afterwards wore.
3289. Centauros; this is the very form used by Boethius, else we might have expected Centaurus or Centaures. After the destruction of the Erymanthian boar, Hercules slew Pholus the centaur; and (by accident) Chiron. His slaughter of the centaur Nessus ultimately brought about his own death; cf. l. 3318.
3290. Arpies, harpies. The sixth labour was the destruction of the Stymphalian birds, who ate human flesh.
3291. The eleventh labour was the fetching of the golden apples, guarded by the dragon Ladon, from the garden of the Hesperides.
3292. The twelfth labour was the bringing of Cerberus from the lower world.
3293. Busirus. Here Chaucer has confused two stories. One is, that Busiris, a king of Egypt, used to sacrifice all foreigners who came to Egypt, till the arrival of Hercules, who slew him. The other is ‘the eighth labour,’ when Hercules killed Diomedes, a king in Thrace, who fed his mares with human flesh, till Hercules slew him and gave his body to be eaten by the mares, as Chaucer himself says in his translation. The confusion was easy, because the story of Busiris is mentioned elsewhere by Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 6, in a passage which Chaucer thus translates (see vol. ii. p. 43):—‘I have herd told of Busirides, þat was wont to sleen his gestes [ guests ] þat herberweden [ lodged ] in his hous; and he was sleyn him-self of Ercules þat was his gest.’ Lydgate tells the story of Busiris correctly.
3295. serpent, i.e. the Lernean hydra, whom Chaucer, in the passage from Boethius, calls ‘Idra [ or Ydra] the serpent.’
3296. Achelois, seems to be used here as a genitive form from a nominative Achelo; in his translation of Boethius we find Achelous and Achelaus. The spelling of names by old authors is often vague. The line means—he broke one of the two horns of Achelous. The river-god Achelous, in his fight with Hercules, took the form of a bull, whereupon the hero broke off one of his horns.
3297. The adventures with Cacus and Antaeus are well known.
3299. The fourth labour was the destruction of the Erymanthian boar.
3300. longe, for a long time; in the margin of MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24, is written the gloss diu.
3307. The allusion is to the ‘pillars’ of Hercules. The expression ‘both ends of the world’ refers to the extreme points of the continents of Europe and Africa, world standing here for continent. The story is that Hercules erected two pillars, Calpe and Abyla, on the two sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. The words ‘seith Trophee’ seem to refer to an author named Trophaeus. In Lydgate’s prologue to his Fall of Princes, st. 41, he says of Chaucer that—
This seems to say that Trophe was the Italian name of a Book (or otherwise, the name of a book in Italian), whence Chaucer drew his story of Troilus. But the notion must be due to some mistake, since that work was taken from the ‘Filostrato’ of Boccaccio. The only trace of the name of Trophaeus as an author is in a marginal note—possibly Chaucer’s own—which appears in both the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., viz. ‘Ille vates Chaldeorum Tropheus.’ See, however, vol. ii. p. lv, where I shew that, in this passage at any rate, Trophee really refers to Guido delle Colonne, who treats of the deeds of Hercules in the first book of his Historia Troiana, and makes particular mention of the famous columns (as to which Ovid and Boethius are alike silent).
3311. thise clerkes, meaning probably Ovid and Boccaccio. See Ovid’s Heroides, epist. ix., entitled Deianira Herculi, and Metamorph. lib. ix.; Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, lib. i. cap. xviii., and De Mulieribus Claris, cap. xxii. See also the Trachineae of Sophocles, which Chaucer of course never read.
3315. wered, worn; so in A. 75, and B. 3320, wered is the form of the past tense. Instances of verbs with weak preterites in Chaucer, but strong ones in modern English, are rare indeed; but there are several instances of the contrary, e. g. wep, slep, wesh, wex, now wept, slept, washed, waxed. Wore is due to analogy with bore; cf. could for coud.
3317. Both Ovid and Boccaccio represent Deianira as ignorant of the fatal effects which the shirt would produce. See Ovid, Metam. ix. 133. Had Chaucer written later, he might have included Gower among the clerks, as the latter gives the story of Hercules and Deianira in his Conf. Amantis, lib. ii. (ed. Pauli, i. 236), following Ovid. Thus he says—
3326. For long upbraidings of Fortune, see The Boke of the Duchesse, 617; Rom. Rose, 5407; Boethius, bk. i. met. 5; c.
3335. Nabugodonosor; generally spelt Nabuchodonosor in copies of the Vulgate, of which this other spelling is a mere variation. Gower has the same spelling as Chaucer, and relates the story near the end of book i. of the Conf. Amantis (ed. Pauli, i. 136). Both no doubt took it directly from Daniel i-iv.
3338. The vessel is here an imitation of the French idiom; F. vaisselle means the plate, as Mr. Jephson well observes. Cf. l. 3494.
3349. In the word statue the second syllable is rapidly slurred over, like that in glorie in l. 3340. See the same effect in the Kn. Tale, ll. 117, 1097 (A. 975, 1955).
3356. tweye, two; a strange error for three, whose names are familiar; viz. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
3373. Balthasar; so spelt by Boccaccio, who relates the story very briefly, De Cas. Virorum Illust., lib. ii. cap. 19. So also, by Peter Comestor, in his Historia Scholastica; and by Gower, Conf. Amant., lib. v (ed. Pauli, ii. 365). The Vulgate generally has Baltassar; Daniel, cap. v.
3379. and ther he lay; cf. l. 3275 above.
3384. The word tho is supplied for the metre. The scribes have considered vesselles ( sic ) as a trisyllable; but see ll. 3391, 3416, 3418.
3388. Of, for. Cf. ‘thank God of al,’ i. e. for all; in Chaucer’s Balade of Truth.—M. See note in vol. i. pp. 552–3.
3422. Tyrwhitt has trusteth, in the plural, but thou is used throughout. Elsewhere Chaucer also has ‘ on whom we truste, ’ Prol. A. 501; ‘ truste on fortune,’ B. 3326; cf. ‘syker on to trosten,’ P. Pl. Crede, l. 350.
3427. Dárius, so accented. degree, rank, position.
3429–36. I have no doubt that this stanza was a later addition.
3436. proverbe. The allusion is, in the first place, to Boethius, de Cons. Phil., bk. iii. pr. 5—‘Sed quem felicitas amicum fecit, infortunium faciet inimicum’; which Chaucer translates—‘Certes, swiche folk as weleful fortune maketh freendes, contrarious fortune maketh hem enemys’; see vol. ii. p. 63. Cf. Prov. xix. 4—‘Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour,’ c. So also—‘If thou be brought low, he [i. e. thy friend] will be against thee, and will hide himself from thy face’; Ecclus. vi. 12. In Hazlitt’s Collection of English Proverbs, p. 235, we find—
See also note to l. 120 above; and, not to multiply instances, note st. 19 of Goldsmith’s Hermit:—
3437. Cenobia. The story of Zenobia is told by Trebellius Pollio, who flourished under Constantine, in cap. xxix. of his work entitled Triginta Tyranni; but Chaucer no doubt followed later accounts, one of which was clearly that given by Boccaccio in his De Mulieribus Claris, cap. xcviii. Boccaccio relates her story again in his De Casibus Virorum, lib. viii. c. 6; in an edition of which, printed in 1544, I find references to the biography of Aurelian by Flavius Vopiscus, to the history of Orosius, lib. vii. cap. 23, and to Baptista Fulgosius, lib. iv. cap. 3. See, in particular, chap. xi. of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where the story of Zenobia is given at length. Palmyra is described by Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 21. Zenobia’s ambition tempted her to endeavour to make herself a Queen of the East, instead of remaining merely Queen of Palmyra; but she was defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian, ad 273, and carried to Rome, where she graced his triumph, ad 274. She survived this reverse of fortune for some years.
Palimerie. Such is the spelling in the best MSS.; but MS. Hl. reads—‘of Palmire the queene.’ It is remarkable that MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 19 has the reading—‘Cenobia, of Belmary quene,’ which suggests confusion with Belmarie, in the Prol. A. 57; but see the note to that line. It occupied the site of the ancient Tadmor, or ‘city of palmtrees,’ in an oasis of the Great Syrian desert. It has been in ruins since about ad 1400.
3441. In the second ne in, the e is slurred over; cf. nin, Sq. Ta., F. 35.
3442. Perse. This (like l. 3438) is Chaucer’s mistake. Boccaccio says expressly that she was of the race of the Ptolemies of Egypt; but further on he remarks—‘Sic cum Persis et Armenis principibus, vt illos urbanitate et facetia superaret.’ This may account for the confusion.
3446. Boccaccio says (de Mul. Clar.)—‘Dicunt autem hanc a pueritia sua spretis omnino muliebribus officiis, cum iam corpusculum eduxisset in robur, syluas nemora incoluisse plurimum, accinctam pharetra, ceruis caprisque cursu atque sagittis fuisse infestam. Inde cum in acriores deuenisset uires, ursus amplecti ausam, pardos, leonesque insequi, obuios expectare, capere occidere, ac in praedam trahere.’ This accounts for the word office, and may shew how closely Chaucer has followed his original.
3496. lafte not, forbore not; see A. 492.
3497. She was acquainted with Egyptian literature, and studied Greek under the philosopher Longinus, author of a celebrated treatise on ‘The Sublime.’
3502. housbonde. Her husband was Odenathus, or Odenatus, the ruler of Palmyra, upon whom the emperor Gallienus had bestowed the title of Augustus. He was murdered by some of his relations, and some have even insinuated that Zenobia consented to the crime. Most scribes spell the name Onedake, by metathesis for Odenake ( Odenate ), like the spelling Adriane for Ariadne.
3507. doon hem flee, cause them (her and her husband) to flee.
3510. Sapor I. reigned over Persia ad 240–273. He defeated the emperor Valerian, whom he kept in captivity for the rest of his life. After conquering Syria and taking Caesarea, he was defeated by Odenatus and Zenobia, who founded a new empire at Palmyra. See Gibbon, Decline, c., chap. x.
3511. proces, succession of events. fil, fell, befell.
3512. title, pronounced nearly as title in French, the e being elided before had.
3515. Petrark. Tyrwhitt suggests that perhaps Boccaccio’s book had fallen into Chaucer’s hands under the name of Petrarch. We may, however, suppose that Chaucer had read the account in a borrowed book, and did not certainly know whether Petrarch or Boccaccio was the author. Instances of similar mistakes are common enough in Early English. Modern readers are apt to forget that, in the olden times, much information had to be carried in the memory, and there was seldom much facility for verification or for a second perusal of a story.
3519. cruelly. The Harl. MS. has the poor reading trewely, miswritten for crewely.
3525. Claudius II., emperor of Rome, ad 268–270. He succeeded Gallienus, as Chaucer says, and was succeeded by Aurelian.
3535. Boccaccio calls them Heremianus and Timolaus, so that Hermanno (as in the MSS.) should probably be Heremanno. Professor Robertson Smith tells me that the right names are Herennianus and Timoleon. The line cannot well be scanned as it stands.
3550. char, chariot. Boccaccio describes this ‘currum, quem sibi ex auro gemmisque praeciocissimum Zenobia fabricari fecerat.’
3556. charged, heavily laden. She was so laden with chains of massive gold, and covered with pearls and gems, that she could scarcely support the weight; so says Boccaccio. Gibbon says the same.
3562. vitremyte. I have no doubt this reading (as in Tyrwhitt) is correct. All the six MSS. in the Six-text agree in it. The old printed editions have were autremyte, a mere corruption of were a u [ i ] tremyte; and the Harl. MS. has wyntermyte, which I take to be an attempt to make sense of a part of the word, just as we have turned écrevisse into cray-fish. What the word means, is another question; it is perhaps the greatest ‘crux’ in Chaucer. As the word occurs nowhere else, the solution I offer is a mere guess. I suppose it to be a coined word, formed on the Latin vitream mitram, expressing, literally, a glass head-dress, in complete contrast to a strong helmet. My reasons for supposing this are as follows.
(1) With regard to mitra. In Low-Latin, its commonest meaning is a woman’s head-dress. But it was especially and widely used as a term of mockery, both in Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. The mitra was the cap which criminals were made to wear as a sign of degradation; see Carpenter’s Supp. to Ducange, s. v. Mitra; Vocabulario degli Accad. della Crusca, s. v. Mitera; and any large Spanish Dict. s. v. Mitra. Even Cotgrave has—‘ Mitré, mitred; hooded with a miter, wearing a miter; set on a pillory or scaffold, with a miter of paper on his head.’ The chief difficulty in this derivation is the loss of the r, but Godefroy has a quotation (s. v. mite, 2), which would suit the sense—‘ mites de toile costonnees, et par dessus ung grand chappel de fer ou de cuir bouilli.’
(2) With regard to vitream. This may refer to a proverb, probably rather English than foreign, to which I have never yet seen a reference. But its existence is clear. To give a man ‘a glazen hood’ meant, in Old English, to mock, delude, cajole. It appears in Piers the Plowman, B. xx. 171, where a story is told of a man who, fearing to die, consulted the physicians, and gave them large sums of money, for which they gave him in return ‘a glasen houve,’ i. e. a hood of glass, a thing that was no defence at all Still clearer is the allusion to the same proverb in Chaucer himself, in a passage explained by no previous editor, in Troil. and Cres. v. 469, where Fortune is said to have an intention of deluding Troilus; or, as the poet says,
‘Fortune his howve entended bet to glase, ’
i. e. literally, Fortune intended to glaze his hood still better for him, i. e. to make a still greater fool of him. In the Aldine edition, howue is printed howen in this passage, but howue occurs elsewhere; Tyrwhitt has hove, a common variation of howue. If this note is unsatisfactory, I may yet claim to have explained in it at least one long-standing difficulty; viz. this line in Troilus. Tyrwhitt long ago explained that, in Chaucer, the phrases to set a man’s hood, and to set a man’s cap, have a like meaning, viz. to delude him. Chaucer uses verre for glass in another passage of a similar character, viz. in Troil. and Cres. ii. 867, where we read—
3564. a distaf. This is from Boccaccio’s other account, in the De Casibus Virorum. ‘Haec nuper imperatoribus admiranda, nunc uenit miseranda plebeis. Haec nunc galeata concionari militibus assueta, nunc uelata cogitur muliercularum audire fabellas. Haec nuper Orienti praesidens sceptra gestabat, nunc Romae subiacens, colum, sicut ceterae, baiulat.’ Zenobia survived her disgrace for some years, living at Rome as a private person on a small estate which was granted to her, and which, says Trebellius Pollio, ‘hodie Zenobia dicitur.’
3565. See vol. iii. p. 429, for the order in which the parts of the Monk’s Tale are arranged. I follow here the arrangement in the Harleian MS. Peter, king of Castile, born in 1334, is generally known as Pedro the Cruel. He reigned over Castile and Leon from 1350 to 1362, and his conduct was marked by numerous acts of unprincipled atrocity. After a destructive civil war, he fell into the hands of his brother, Don Enrique (Henry). A personal struggle took place between the brothers, in the course of which Enrique stabbed Pedro to the heart; March 23, 1369. See the ballad by Sir Walter Scott, entitled the Death of Don Pedro, in Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads, commencing—
It is remarkable that Pedro was very popular with his own party, despite his crimes, and Chaucer takes his part because our Black Prince fought on the side of Pedro against Enrique at the battle of Najera, April 3, 1367; and because John of Gaunt married Constance, daughter of Pedro, about Michaelmas, 1371.
3573. See the description of Du Gueschlin’s arms as given below. The ‘field’ was argent, and the black eagle appears as if caught by a rod covered with birdlime, because the bend dexter across the shield seems to restrain him from flying away. The first three lines of the stanza refer to Bertrand Du Gueschlin, who ‘brew,’ i. e. contrived Pedro’s murder, viz. by luring him to Enrique’s tent. But the last three lines refer to another knight who, according to Chaucer, took a still more active part in the matter, being a worker in it. This second person was a certain Sir Oliver Mauny, whose name Chaucer conceals under the synonym of wicked nest, standing for O. Fr. mau ni, where mau is O. Fr. for mal, bad or wicked, and ni is O. Fr. for nid, Lat. nidus, a nest. Observe too, that Chaucer uses the word need, not deed. There may be an excellent reason for this; for, in the course of the struggle between the brothers, Enrique was at first thrown, ‘when (says Lockhart) one of Henry’s followers, seizing Don Pedro by the leg, turned him over, and his master, thus at length gaining the upper hand, instantly stabbed the king to the heart. Froissart calls this man the Vicomte de Roquebetyn, and others the Bastard of Anisse.’ I have no doubt that Chaucer means to tell us that the helper in Enrique’s need was no other than Mauny. He goes on to say that this Mauny was not like Charles the Great’s Oliver, an honourable peer, but an Oliver of Armorica, a man like Charles’s Ganelon, the well-known traitor, of whom Chaucer elsewhere says (Book of the Duchess, l. 1121)—
This passage has long been a puzzle, but was first cleared up in an excellent letter by Mr. Furnivall in Notes and Queries, which I here subjoin; I may give myself the credit, however, of identifying ‘wicked nest’ with O. Fr. mau ni.
‘The first two lines [of the stanza] describe the arms of Bertrand du Guesclin, which were, a black double-headed eagle displayed on a silver shield, with a red band across the whole, from left to right [in heraldic language, a bend dexter, gules]—“the lymrod coloured as the glede” or live coal—as may be seen in Anselme’s Histoire Généalogique de France, and a MS. Généalogies de France in the British Museum. Next, if we turn to Mr. D. F. Jamison’s excellent Life and Times of Bertrand du Guesclin, we not only find on its cover Bertrand’s arms as above described, but also at vol. ii. pp. 92–4, an account of the plot and murder to which Chaucer alludes, and an identification of his traitorous or “Genylon” Oliver, with Sir Oliver de Mauny of Brittany (or Armorica), Bertrand’s cousin [or, according to Froissart, cap. 245, his nephew].
‘After the battle of Monteil, on March 14, 1369, Pedro was besieged in the castle of Monteil near the borders of La Mancha, by his brother Enrique; who was helped by Du Guesclin and many French knights. Finding escape impossible, Pedro sent Men Rodriguez secretly to Du Guesclin with an offer of many towns and 200,000 gold doubloons if he would desert Enrique and reinstate Pedro. Du Guesclin refused the offer, and “the next day related to his friends and kinsmen in the camp, and especially to his cousin, Sir Oliver de Mauny, what had taken place.” He asked them if he should tell Enrique; they all said yes: so he told the king. Thereupon Enrique promised Bertrand the same reward that Pedro had offered him, but asked him also to assure Men Rodriguez of Pedro’s safety if he would come to his (Du Guesclin’s) lodge. Relying on Bertrand’s assurance, Pedro came to him on March 23; Enrique entered the lodge directly afterwards, and after a struggle, stabbed Pedro, and seized his kingdom.
‘We see then that Chaucer was justified in asserting that Du Guesclin and Sir Oliver Mauny “brew this cursednesse”; and his assertion has some historical importance; for as his patron and friend, John of Gaunt, married one of Pedro’s daughters [named Constance] as his second wife [Michaelmas, 1371], Chaucer almost certainly had the account of Pedro’s death from his daughter, or one of her attendants, and is thus a witness for the truth of the narrative of the Spanish chronicler Ayala, given above, against the French writers, Froissart, Cuvelier, c., who make the Bégue de Villaines the man who inveigled Pedro. This connexion of Chaucer with John of Gaunt and his second wife must excuse the poet in our eyes for calling so bad a king as Pedro the Cruel “worthy” and “the glorie of Spayne, whom Fortune heeld so hy in magestee.”
‘In the Corpus MS. these knights are called in a side-note Bertheu n Clayky n (which was one of the many curious ways in which Du Guesclin’s name was spelt) and Olyu er Mawny; in MS. Harl. 1758 they are called Barthilmewe Claykeynne and Olyuer Mawyn; and in MS. Lansdowne 851 they are called Betelmewe Claykyn and Oliuer Mawnye. Mauni or Mauny was a well-known Armorican or Breton family. Chaucer’s epithet of “Genilon” for Oliver de Mauny is specially happy, because Genelon was the Breton knight who betrayed to their death the great Roland and the flower of Charlemagne’s knights to the Moors at Roncesvalles. Charles’s or Charlemagne’s great paladin, Oliver, is too well known to need more than a bare mention.’—F. J. Furnivall, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, viii. 449.
3581. In a note to Chaucer’s Prologue, A. 51, Tyrwhitt says—‘Alexandria in Egypt was won, and immediately afterwards abandoned, in 1365, by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. The same Prince, soon after his accession to the throne in 1352, had taken Satalie, the antient Attalia; and in another expedition about 1367 he made himself master of the town of Layas in Armenia. Compare 11 Mémoire sur les Ouvrages de Guillaume de Machaut, Acad. des Ins. tom. xx. pp. 426, 432, 439; and Mémoire sur la Vie de Philippe de Maizières, tom. xvii. p. 493.’ He was assassinated in 1369, Cf. note to A. 51.
3589. ‘Bernabo Visconti, duke of Milan, was deposed by his nephew and thrown into prison, where he died in 1385.’—Tyrwhitt. This date of Dec. 18, 1385 is that of the latest circumstance incidentally referred to in the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer had been sent to treat with Visconti in 1378, so that he knew him personally. See Froissart, bk. ii. ch. 158; Engl. Cyclopaedia, s. v. Visconti; Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 109. And see vol. i. p. xxxii.
3597. ‘Chaucer himself has referred us to Dante for the original of this tragedy: see Inferno, canto xxxiii.’—Tyrwhitt. An account of Count Ugolino is given in a note to Cary’s Dante, from Villani, lib. vii. capp. 120–127. This account is different from Dante’s, and represents him as very treacherous. He made himself master of Pisa in July 1288, but in the following March was seized by the Pisans, who threw him, with his two sons, and two of his grandsons, into a prison, where they perished of hunger in a few days. Chaucer says three sons, the eldest being five years of age. Dante says four sons.
3606. Roger; i. e. the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, who was Ugolino’s enemy.
3616. This line is imperfect at the caesura; accent but. Tyrwhitt actually turns herde into hered, to make it dissyllabic; but such an ‘emendation’ is not legitimate. The Harl. MS. has—‘He herd it wel, but he saugh it nought’; where Mr. Jephson inserts ne before saugh without any comment. Perhaps read—he [ne] spak.
3621. Dante does not mention the ages; but he says that the son named Gaddo died on the fourth day, and the other three on the fifth and sixth days. Observe that Chaucer’s tender lines, ll. 3623–8, are his own.
3624. Morsel breed, morsel of bread; cf. barel ale for barrel of ale, B. 3083.—M.
3636. ‘I may lay the blame of all my woe upon thy false wheel.’ Cf. B. 3860.
3640. two; there were now but two survivors, the youngest, according to Chaucer, being dead.
3651. Dant; i. e. Dante Alighieri, the great poet of Italy, born in 1265, died Sept. 14, 1321. Chaucer mentions him again in his House of Fame, book i., as the author of the Inferno, in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, l. 360, and in the Wyf of Bathes Tale, D. 1126.
3655. Swetonius; this refers to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius; but it would be a mistake to suppose that Chaucer has followed his account very closely. Our poet seems to have had a habit of mentioning authorities whom he did not immediately follow, by which he seems to have meant no more than that they were good authorities upon the subject. Here, for instance, he merely means that we can find in Suetonius a good account of Nero, which will give us all minor details. But in reality he draws the story more immediately from other sources, especially from Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum, lib. vii. cap. 4, from the Roman de la Rose, and from Boethius, de Cons. Philos. lib. ii. met. 6, and lib. iii. met. 4. The English Romaunt of the Rose does not contain the passage about Nero, but it is interesting to refer to Chaucer’s translation of Boethius. Vincent of Beauvais has an account of Nero, in his Speculum Historiale, lib. ix. capp. 1-7, in which he chiefly follows Suetonius. See also Orosius, lib. vii. 7, and Eutropius, lib. vii.
3657. South; the MSS. have North, but it is fair to make the correction, as Chaucer certainly knew the sense of Septemtrioun, and the expression is merely borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, ed. Méon, l. 6271, where we read,
And, in his Boethius, after saying that Nero ruled from East to West, he adds—‘And eke þis Nero gouernede by Ceptre alle þe peoples þat ben vndir þe colde sterres þat hyȝten þe seuene triones; þis is to seyn, he gouernede alle þe poeples þat ben vndir þe parties of þe norþe. And eke Nero gouerned alle þe poeples þat þe violent wynde Nothus scorchíþ, and bakiþ þe brennynge sandes by his drie hete; þat is to seyne, alle þe poeples in þe souþe ’; ed. Morris, p. 55 (cf. vol. ii. p. 45).
3663. From Suetonius; cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 285.
3665. This is from Suetonius, who says—‘Piscatus est rete aurato, purpura coccoque funibus nexis’; cap. xxx. So also Orosius, vii. 7; Eutropius, vii. 9.
3669. This passage follows Boethius, bk. ii. met. 6, very closely, as is evident by comparing it with Chaucer’s translation (see vol. ii. p. 44). ‘He leet brenne the citee of Rome, and made sleen the senatoures. And he, cruel, whylom slew his brother. And he was maked moist with the blood of his moder; that is to seyn, he leet sleen and slitten the body of his moder, to seen wher he was conceived; and he loked on every halve upon her colde dede body; ne no tere ne wette his face; but he was so hard-herted that he mighte ben domesman, or Iuge, of hir dede beautee. . . . Allas, it is a grevous fortune, as ofte as wikked swerd is ioigned to cruel venim; that is to seyn, venimous crueltee to lordshippe.’ Thus Chaucer himself explains domesman (l. 3680) by Iuge, i.e. judge. In the same line ded-è is dissyllabic.
3685. a maister; i. e. Seneca, mentioned below by name. In the year 65, Nero, wishing to be rid of his old master, sent him an order to destroy himself. Seneca opened a vein, but the blood would not flow freely; whereupon, to expedite its flow, he entered into a warm bath, and thence was taken into a vapour stove, where he was suffocated. ‘Nero constreynede Senek, his familier and his mayster, to chesen on what deeth he wolde deyen’; Chaucer’s Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 5. 34 (vol. ii. 63).
3692. ‘It was long before tyranny or any other vice durst attack him’; literally, ‘durst let dogs loose against him.’ To uncouple is to release dogs from the leash that fastened them together; see P. Pl. B. pr. 206. Compare—
‘At the uncoupling of his houndes.’
3720. ‘Where he expected to find some who would aid him.’ Suetonius says—‘ipse cum paucis hospitia singulorum adiit. Verum clausis omnium foribus, respondente nullo, in cubiculum rediit,’ c.; cap. xlvii. He afterwards escaped to the villa of his freedman Phaon, four miles from Rome, where he at length gave himself a mortal wound in the extremity of his despair. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 6459–76.
3736. girden of, to strike off; cf. ‘ gurdeth of gyles hed,’ P. Pl. B. ii. 201. A gird is also a sharp striking taunt or quip.—M.
3746. Oloferne. The story of Holofernes is to be found in the apocryphal book of Judith.
3750. For lesinge, for fear of losing, lest men should lose.
3752. ‘He had decreed to destroy all the gods of the land, that all nations should worship Nabuchodonosor only,’ c.; Judith, iii. 8.
3756. Eliachim. Tyrwhitt remarks that the name of the high priest was Joacim; Judith, iv. 6. But this is merely the form of the name in our English version. The Vulgate version has the equivalent form Eliachim; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 4.
3761. upright, i. e. on his back, with his face upwards. See Knightes Tale, l. 1150 (A. 2008), and the note to A. 4194.
3765. Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria ( bc 175–164). Paraphrased from 2 Maccabees, ix. 7, 28, 10, 8, 7, 3-7, 9-12, 28.
3821. There is a whole cycle of Alexander romances, in Latin, French, and English, so that his story is common enough. There is a good life of him by Plutarch, but in Chaucer’s time the principal authority for an account of him was Quintus Curtius. See Ten Brink, Hist. Eng. Lit., bk. ii. sect. 8.
3826. ‘They were glad to send to him (to sue) for peace.’
3843. write, should write, pt. subj.; hence the change of vowel from indic. wroot. —M. The i is short.
3845. ‘So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died’; 1 Mac. i. 7. Machabee, i. e. the first book of the Maccabees.
3850. Quintus Curtius says that Alexander was poisoned by Antipater; and this account is adopted in the romances. Cf. Barbour’s Bruce, i. 533.
3851. ‘Fortune hath turned thy six (the highest and most fortunate throw at dice) into an ace (the lowest).’ Cf. note to B. 124.
3860. ‘Which two (fortune and poison) I accuse of all this woe.’
3862. For humble bed Tyrwhitt, Wright, and Bell print humblehede, as in some MSS. But this word is an objectionable hybrid compound, and I think it remains to be shewn that the word belongs to our language. In the Knightes Tale, Chaucer has humblesse, and in the Persones Tale, humilitee. Until better authority for humblehede can be adduced, I am content with the reading of the four best MSS., including the Harleian, which Wright silently alters.
3863. Julius. For this story Chaucer refers us below to Lucan, Suetonius, and Valerius; see note to l. 3909. There is also an interesting life of him by Plutarch. Boccaccio mentions him but incidentally.
3866. tributárie; observe the rime with aduersárie. Fortune in l. 3868 is a trisyllable; so also in l. 3876.
3870. ‘Against Pompey, thy father-in-law.’ Rather, ‘son-in-law’; for Caesar gave Pompey his daughter Julia in marriage.
3875. puttest; to be read as putt’st; and thórient as in l. 3883.
3878. Pompeius. Boccaccio gives his life at length, as an example of misfortune; De Casibus Virorum, lib. vi. cap. 9. He was killed Sept. 29, bc 48, soon after the battle of Pharsalia in Thessaly (l. 3869).
3881. him, for himself; but in the next line it means ‘to him.’—M.
3885. Chaucer refers to this triumph in the Man of Lawes Tale, B. 400; but see the note. Cf. Shak. Henry V, v. prol. 28.
3887. Chaucer is not alone in making Brutus and Cassius into one person; see note to l. 3892.
3891. cast, contrived, appointed; pp., after hath.
3892. boydekins, lit. bodkins, but with the signification of daggers. It is meant to translate the Lat. pugio, a poniard. In Barbour’s Bruce, i. 545, Caesar is said to have been slain with a weapon which in one edition is called a punsoun, in another a botkin, and in the Edinburgh MS. a pusoune, perhaps an error for punsoune, since Halliwell’s Dictionary gives the form punchion. Hamlet uses bodkin for a dagger; Act iii. sc. 1. l. 76. In the margin of Stowe’s Chronicle, ed. 1614, it is said that Caesar was slain with bodkins; Nares’ Glossary. Nares also quotes—‘The chief woorker of this murder was Brutus Cassius, with 260 of the senate, all having bodkins in their sleeves’; Serp. of Division, prefixed to Gorboduc, 1590.
3906. lay on deying, lay a-dying. In l. 3907, deed =mortally wounded.
3909. recomende, commit. He means that he commits the full telling of the story to Lucan, c. In other words, he refers the reader to those authors. Cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 254, 274.
Lucan (born ad 39, died ad 65) was the author of the Pharsalia, an incomplete poem in ten books, narrating the struggle between Pompey and Caesar. There is an English translation of it by Rowe.
Suetonius Tranquillus (born about ad 70) wrote several works, the principal of which is The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
Valerius. There were two authors of this name, (1) Valerius Flaccus, author of a poem on the Argonautic expedition, and (2) Valerius Maximus, author of De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus Libri ix. Mr. Jephson says that Valerius Flaccus is meant here, I know not why. Surely the reference is to Valerius Maximus, who at least tells some anecdotes of Caesar; lib. iv. c. 5; lib. vii. cap. 6.
3911. word and ende, beginning and end; a substitution for the older formula ord and ende. Tyrwhitt notes that the suggested emendation of ord for word was proposed by Dr. Hickes, in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 70. Hickes would make the same emendation in Troil. and Cres. v. 1669;
‘And of this broche he tolde him ord and ende, ’
where the editions have word. He also cites the expression ord and ende from Cædmon; see Thorpe’s edition, p. 225, l. 30. We also find from orde ōð ende =from beginning to end, in the poem of Elene (Vercelli MS.), ed. Grein, l. 590. Orde and ende occurs also at a later period, in the Ormulum, l. 6775; and still later, in Floriz and Blancheflur, l. 47, ed. Lumby, in the phrase,
Tyrwhitt argues that the true spelling of the phrase had already become corrupted in Chaucer’s time, and such seems to have been the fact, as all the MSS. have word. See Zupitza’s note to Guy of Warwick, l. 7927, where more examples are given; and cf. my note to Troil. ii. 1495. Ord and ende explains our modern odds and ends; see Garnett’s Essays, p. 37. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find a w prefixed to a word where it is not required etymologically, especially before the vowel o. The examples wocks, oaks, won, one, wodur, other, wostus, oast-house, woth, oath, wots, oats, wolde, old, are all given in Halliwell’s Prov. Dictionary.
3917. Cresus; king of Lydia, bc 560–546, defeated by Cyrus at Sardis. Cyrus spared his life, and Croesus actually survived his benefactor. Chaucer, however, brings him to an untimely end. The story of Croesus is in Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum, lib. iii. cap. 20. See also Herodotus, lib. 1; Plutarch’s life of Solon, c. But Boccaccio represents Croesus as surviving his disgraces. Tyrwhitt says that the story seems to have been taken from the Roman de la Rose, ll. 6312–6571 (ed. Méon); where the English Romaunt of the Rose is defective. In Chaucer’s translation of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2, see vol. ii. p. 28, we find this sentence: ‘Wistest thou not how Cresus, the king of Lydiens, of whiche king Cyrus was ful sore agast a litel biforn, that this rewliche [ pitiable ] Cresus was caught of [ by ] Cyrus, and lad to the fyr to ben brent; but that a rayn descendede doun fro hevene, that rescowede him?’ In the House of Fame, bk. i. ll. 104–6, we have an allusion to the ‘avision’ [ vision, dream] of
See also Nonne Pr. Ta. l. 318 (B. 4328). The tragic version of the fate of Croesus is given by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, iii. 17; and I give an extract, as it seems to be the account which is followed in the Roman de la Rose. It must be premised that Vincent makes Croesus to have been taken prisoner by Cyrus three times.
‘Alii historiographi narrant, quod in secunda captione, iussit eum Cyrus rogo superponi et assari, et subito tanta pluuia facta est, vt eius immensitate ignis extingueretur, vnde occasionem repperit euadendi. Cumque postea hoc sibi prospere euenisse gloriaretur, et opum copia nimium se iactaret, dictum.est ei a Solone quodam sapientissimo, non debere quemquam in diuitiis et prosperitate gloriari. Eadem nocte uidit in somnis quod Jupiter eum aqua perfunderet, et sol extergeret. Quod cum filiae suae mane indicasset, illa (vt res se habebat) prudenter absoluit, dicens: quod cruci esset affigendus et aqua perfundendus et sole siccandus. Quod ita demum contigit, nam postea a Cyro crucifixus est.’ Compare the few following lines from the Roman de la Rose, with ll. 3917–22, 3934–8, 3941, and l. 3948:—
3951. The passage here following is repeated from the Monkes Prologue, and copied, as has been said, from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2. It is to be particularly noted that the passage quoted from Boethius in the note to B. 3917 almost immediately precedes the passage quoted in the note to B. 3163.
3956. See note to B. 3972 below.
3957. the knight. See the description of him, Prol. A. 43.
3961. for me, for myself, for my part. Cp. the phrase ‘as for me.’—M.
3970. ‘By the bell of Saint Paul’s church (in London).’
3972. The host alludes to the concluding lines of the Monkes Tale, l. 3956, then repeats the words no remedie from l. 3183, and cites the word biwaille from l. 3952. Compare all these passages.
3982. Piers. We must suppose that the host had by this time learnt the monk’s name. In B. 3120 above, he did not know it.
3984. ‘Were it not for the ringing of your bells’; lit. were there not a clinking of your bells (all the while). ‘Anciently no person seems to have been gallantly equipped on horseback, unless the horse’s bridle or some other part of the furniture was stuck full of small bells. Vincent of Beauvais, who wrote about 1264, censures this piece of pride in the knights-templars; Hist. Spec. lib. xxx. c. 85’; c.—Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry (ed. Hazlitt), ii. 160; i. 264. See also note to Prol. A. 170.
3990. ‘Ubi auditus non est, non effundas sermonem’; Ecclus. xxxii. 6. (Vulgate); the A. V. is different. See above, B. 2237. The common proverb, ‘Keep your breath to cool your broth,’ nearly expresses what Chaucer here intends.
3993. substance is explained by Tyrwhitt to mean ‘the material part of a thing.’ Chaucer’s meaning seems not very different from Shakespeare’s in Love’s La. Lost, v. 2. 871—
3995. ‘For the propriety of this remark, see note to Prol. A. 166’; Tyrwhitt.
4000. Sir; ‘The title of Sir was usually given, by courtesy, to priests, both secular and regular’; Tyrwhitt. Tyrwhitt also remarks that, ‘in the principal modern languages, John, or its equivalent, is a name of contempt or at least of slight. So the Italians use Gianni, from whence Zani [Eng. zany ]; the Spaniards Juan, as Bobo Juan, a foolish John; the French Jean, with various additions.’ The reason (which Tyrwhitt failed to see) is simply that John is one of the commonest of common names. For example, twenty-three popes took that name; and cf. our phrase John Bull, which answers to the French Jean Crapaud, and the Russian Ivan Ivanovitch, ‘the embodiment of the peculiarities of the Russian people’; Wheeler’s Noted Names of Fiction. Ivan Ivanovitch would be John Johnson in English and Evan Evans in Welsh. Hence sir John became the usual contemptuous name for a priest; see abundant examples in the Index to the Parker Society’s publications.
4004. serve has two syllables; hence rek, in the Harl. MS., is perhaps better than rekke of the other MSS. A bene, the value of a bean; in the Milleres Tale a kers (i. e. a blade of grass) occurs in a similar manner (A. 3756); which has been corrupted into ‘not caring a curse ’!
4006. Ye, yea, is a mild form of assent; yis is a stronger form, generally followed, as here, by some form of asseveration. See note to B. 1900 above.
4008. attamed, commenced, begun. The Lat. attaminare and Low Lat. intaminare are equivalent to contaminare, to contaminate, soil, spoil. From Low Lat. intaminare comes F. entamer, to cut into, attack, enter upon, begin. From attaminare comes the M. E. attame or atame, with a similar sense. The metaphor is taken from the notion of cutting into a joint of meat or of broaching or opening a cask. This is well shewn by the use of the word in P. Plowman, B. xvii. 68, where it is said of the Good Samaritan in the parable that he ‘breyde to his boteles, and bothe he atamede, ’ i.e. he went hastily to his bottles, and broached or opened them both. So here, the priest broached, opened, or began his tale.
We may compare Dryden’s modernised version of this tale, entitled ‘The Cock and the Fox.’ See further in vol. iii. pp. 431–3.
4011. stape. Lansd. MS. reads stoupe, as if it signified bent, stooped; but stoop is a weak verb. Stape or stope is the past participle of the strong verb stapen, to step, advance. Stape in age =advanced in years. Roger Ascham has almost the same phrase: ‘And [Varro] beyng depe stept in age, by negligence some wordes do scape and fall from him in those bookes as be not worth the taking up,’ c.—The Schoolmaster, ed. Mayor, p. 189; ed. Arber, p. 152.
4018–9. by housbondrye, by economy; fond hir-self, ‘found herself,’ provided for herself.
4022. Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle. The widow’s house consisted of only two apartments, designated by the terms bower and hall. Whilst the widow and her ‘daughters two’ slept in the bower, Chanticleer and his seven wives roosted on a perch in the hall, and the swine disposed themselves on the floor. The smoke of the fire had to find its way through the crevices of the roof. See Our English Home, pp. 139, 140. Cf. Virgil, Ecl. vii. 50—‘assidua postes fuligine nigri.’ Also—
4025. No deyntee (Elles. c.); Noon deynteth (Harl.).
4029. hertes suffisaunce, a satisfied or contented mind, literally heart’s satisfaction. Cf. our phrase ‘to your heart’s content.’
4032. wyn . . . whyt nor reed. The white line was sometimes called ‘the wine of Osey’ (Alsace); the red wine of Gascony, sometimes called ‘Mountrose,’ was deemed a liquor for a lord. See Our English Home, p. 83; Piers Pl. prol. l. 228.
4035. Seynd bacoun, singed or broiled bacon. an ey or tweye, an egg or two.
4036. deye. The daia (from the Icel. deigja ) is mentioned in Domesday among assistants in husbandry; and the term is again found in 2nd Stat. 25 Edward III ( ad 1351). In Stat. 37 Edward III ( ad 1363), the deye is mentioned among others of a certain rank, not having goods or chattels of 40 s. value. The deye was usually a female, whose duty was to make butter and cheese, attend to the calves and poultry, and other odds and ends of the farm. The dairy (in some parts of England, as in Shropshire, called a dey -house) was the department assigned to her. See Prompt. Parv., p. 116.
4039. In Caxton’s translation of Reynard the Fox, the cock’s name is Chantecleer. In the original, it is Canticleer; from his clear voice in singing. In the same, Reynard’s second son is Rosseel; see l. 4524.
4041. merier, sweeter, pleasanter. In Todd’s Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 284, there is a long passage illustrative of mery in the sense of ‘pleasant.’ Cf. l. 4156. orgon is put for orgons or organs. It is plain from gon in the next line, that Chaucer meant to use this word as a plural from the Lat. organa. Organ was used until lately only in the plural, like bellows, gallows, c. ‘Which is either sung or said or on the organs played.’—Becon’s Acts of Christ, p. 534. It was sometimes called a pair of organs. See note to P. Plowman, C. xxi. 7.
4044. Cf. Parl. of Foules, 350:—
‘The cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.’
Orloge (of an abbey) occurs in Religious Pieces, ed. Perry, p. 56; and see Stratmann.
4045. ‘The cock knew each ascension of the equinoctial, and crew at each; that is, he crew every hour, as 15° of the equinoctial make an hour. Chaucer adds [l. 4044] that he knew the hour better than the abbey-clock. This tells us, clearly, that we are to reckon clock-hours, and not the unequal hours of the solar or ‘artificial’ day. Hence the prime, mentioned in l. 4387, was at a clock-hour, at 6, 7, 8, or 9, suppose. The day meant is May 3, because the sun [l. 4384] had passed the 21st degree of Taurus (see fig. 1 of Astrolabe). . . . The date, May 3, is playfully denoted by saying [l. 4379] that March was complete, and also (since March began) thirty-two days more had passed. The words “since March began” are parenthetical; and we are, in fact, told that the whole of March, the whole of April, and two days of May were done with. March was then considered the first month in the year, though the year began with the 25th, not with the 1st; and Chaucer alludes to the idea that the Creation itself took place in March. The day, then, was May 3, with the sun past 21 degrees of Taurus. The hour must be had from the sun’s altitude, rightly said (l. 4389) to be Fourty degrees and oon. I use a globe, and find that the sun would attain the altitude 41° nearly at 9 o’clock. It follows that prime in l. 4387 signifies the end of the first quarter of the day, reckon-from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. ’—Skeat’s Astrolabe, (E. E. T. S.), p. lxi. This rough test, by means of a globe, is perhaps sufficient; but Mr. Brae proved it to be right by calculation. Taking the sun’s altitude at 41½°, he ‘had the satisfaction to find a resulting hour, for prime, of 9 o’clock a. m. almost to the minute. ’ It is interesting to find that Thynne explains this passage very well in his Animadversions on Speght’s Chaucer; ed. Furnivall, p. 62, note 1.
The notion that the Creation took place on the 18th of March is alluded to in the Hexameron of St. Basil (see the A. S. version, ed. Norman, p. 8, note j ), and in Ælfric’s Homilies, ed. Thorpe, i. 100.
4047. Fifteen degrees of the equinoctial = an exact hour. See note to l. 4045 above. Skelton imitates this passage in his Phillyp Sparowe, l. 495.
4050. And batailed. Lansd. MS. reads Enbateled, indented like a battlement, embattled. Batailed has the same sense.
4051. as the Ieet, like the jet. Beads used for the repetition of prayers were frequently formed of jet. See note to Prol. A. 159.
4060. damoysele Pertelote. Cf. our ‘Dame Partlet.’
In Le Roman de Renart, the hen is called Pinte or Pintain.
4064. in hold; in possession. Cf. ‘He hath my heart in holde ’; Greene’s George a Greene, ed. Dyce, p. 256.
4065. loken in every lith, locked in every limb.
4069. my lief is faren in londe, my beloved is gone away. Probably the refrain of a popular song of the time.
4079. herte dere. This expression corresponds to ‘dear heart,’ or ‘deary heart,’ which still survives in some parts of the country.
4083. take it nat agrief=take it not in grief, i. e. take it not amiss, be not offended.
4084. me mette, I dreamed; literally it dreamed to me.
4086. my swevene recche (or rede ) aright, bring my dream to a good issue; literally ‘interpret my dream favourably.’
4090. Was lyk. The relative that is often omitted by Chaucer before a relative clause, as, again, in l. 4365.
4098. Avoy (Elles.); Away (Harl.). From O. F. avoi, interj. fie! It occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, 7284, 16634.
4113. See the Chapter on Dreams in Brand’s Pop. Antiquities.
4114. fume, the effects arising from gluttony and drunkenness. ‘Anxious black melancholy fumes. ’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. p. 438, ed. 1845. ‘All vapours arising out of the stomach,’ especially those caused by gluttony and drunkenness. ‘For when the head is heated it scorcheth the blood, and from thence proceed melancholy fumes that trouble the mind.’—Ibid. p. 269.
4118. rede colera. . . red cholera caused by too much bile and blood (sometimes called red humour ). Burton speaks of a kind of melancholy of which the signs are these—‘the veins of their eyes red, as well as their faces.’ The following quotation explains the matter. ‘Ther be foure humours, Bloud, Fleame, Cholar, and Melancholy. . . . First, working heate turneth what is colde and moyst into the kind of Fleme, and then what is hot and moyst, into the kinde of Bloud; and then what is hot and drye into the kinde of Cholera; and then what is colde and drye into the kinde of Melancholia. . . . By meddling of other humours, Bloud chaungeth kinde and colour: for by meddling of Cholar, it seemeth red, and by Melancholy it seemeth black, and by Fleame it seemeth watrie, and fomie.’—Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 6. So also—‘in bloud it needeth that there be red Cholera ’; lib. iv. c. 10; c.
The following explains the belief as to dreams caused by cholera. Men in which red Cholera is excesssive ‘dreame of fire, and of lyghtening, and of dreadful burning of the ayre’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 10. Those in which Melancholia is excessive dream ‘dredfull darke dreames, and very ill to see’; id. c. 11. And again: ‘He that is Sanguine hath glad and liking dreames, the melancholious dremeth of sorrow, the Cholarike, of firy things, and the Flematike, of Raine, Snow,’ c.; id. lib. vi. c. 27.
4123. the humour of malencolye. ‘The name (melancholy) is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause, as Bruel observes, μελανχολία quasi μελαιναχόλη, from black choler.’ Fracastorius, in his second book of Intellect, calls those melancholy ‘whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding.’—Bruton’s Anat. of Melancholy, p. 108, ed. 1805.
4128. ‘That cause many a man in sleep to be very distressed.’
4130. Catoun. Dionysius Cato, de Moribus, l. ii. dist. 32: somnia ne cures. ‘I observe by the way, that this distich is quoted by John of Salisbury, Polycrat. l. ii. c. 16, as a precept viri sapientis. In another place, l. vii. c. 9, he introduces his quotation of the first verse of dist. 20 (l. iii.) in this manner:—“ Ait vel Cato vel alius, nam autor incertus est.” ’—Tyrwhitt. Cf. note to G. 688.
4131. do no fors of =take no notice of, pay no heed to. Skelton, i. 118, has ‘makyth so lytyll fors,’ i.e. cares so little for.
4153. ‘Wormwood, centaury, pennyroyal, are likewise magnified and much prescribed, especially in hypochondrian melancholy, daily to be used, sod in whey. And because the spleen and blood are often misaffected in melancholy, I may not omit endive, succory, dandelion, fumitory, c., which cleanse the blood.’—Burton’s Anat. of Mel. pp. 432, 433. See also p. 438, ed. 1845. ‘ Centauria abateth wombe-ache, and cleereth sight, and vnstoppeth the splene and the reines’; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. xvii. c. 47. ‘ Fumus terre [fumitory] cleanseth and purgeth Melancholia, fleme, and cholera’; id. lib. xvii. c. 69. ‘Medicinal herbs were grown in every garden, and were dried or made into decoctions, and kept for use’; Wright, Domestic Manners, p. 279.
4154. ellebor. Two kinds of hellebore are mentioned by old writers; ‘white hellebore, called sneezing powder, a strong purger upward’ (Burton’s Anat. of Mel. pt. 2. § 4. m. 2. subsec. 1.), and ‘ black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy.’—Ibid. subsec. 2.
4155. catapuce, caper-spurge, Euphorbia Lathyris. gaytres (or gaytrys ) beryis, probably the berries of the buck-thorn, Rhamnus catharticus; which (according to Rietz) is still called, in Swedish dialects, the getbärs-trä (goat-berries tree) or getappel (goat-apple). I take gaytre to stand for gayt-tre, i. e. goat-tree; a Northern form, from Icel. geit (gen. geitar ), a goat. The A.S. gāte-trēow, goat-tree, is probably the same tree, though the prov. Eng. gaiter-tree, gatten-tree, or gatteridge-tree is usually applied to the Cornus sanguinea or corneltree, the fruits of which ‘are sometimes mistaken for those of the buck-thorn, but do not possess the active properties of that plant’; Eng. Cyclop., s. v. Cornus. The context shews that the buck-thorn is meant. Langham says of the buck-thorn, that ‘the beries do purge downwards mightily flegme and choller’; Garden of Health, 1633, p. 99 (New E. Dict., s. v. Buckthorn ). This is why Chanticleer was recommended to eat them.
4156. erbe yve, herb ive or herb ivy, usually identified with the ground-pine, Ajuga chamæpitys. mery, pleasant, used ironically; as the leaves are extremely nausecus.
4160. graunt mercy, great thanks; this in later authors is corrupted into grammercy or gramercy.
4166. so mote I thee, as I may thrive (or prosper). Mote =A. S. mōt-e, first p. s. pr. subj.
4174. Oon of the gretteste auctours. ‘Cicero, De Divin. l. i. c. 27, relates this and the following story, but in a different order, and with so many other differences, that one might be led to suspect that he was here quoted at second-hand, if it were not usual with Chaucer, in these stories of familiar life, to throw in a number of natural circumstances, not to be found in his original authors.’—Tyrwhitt. Warton thinks that Chaucer took it rather from Valerius Maximus, who has the same story; i. 7. He has, however, overlooked the statement in l. 4254, which decides for Cicero. I here quote the whole of the former story, as given by Valerius. ‘Duo familiares Arcades iter una facientes, Megaram venerunt; quorum alter ad hospitem se contulit, alter in tabernam meritoriam devertit. Is, qui in hospitio venit, vidit in somnis comitem suam orantem, ut sibi cauponis insidiis circumvento subveniret: posse enim celeri ejus accursu se imminenti periculo subtrahi. Quo viso excitatus, prosiluit, tabernamque, in qua is diversabatur, petere conatus est. Pestifero deinde fato ejus humanissimum propositum tanquam supervacuum damnavit, et lectum ac somnum repetiit. Tunc idem ei saucius oblatus obsecravit, ut qui auxilium vitae suae ferre neglexisset, neci saltem ultionem non negaret. Corpus enim suum à caupone trucidatum, tum maxime plaustro ad portam ferri stercore coöpertum. Tam constantibus familiaris precibus compulsus, protinus ad portam cucurrit, et plaustrum, quod in quiete demonstratum erat, comprehendit, cauponemque ad capitale supplicium perduxit.’ Valerii Maximi, lib. i. c. 7 (De Somniis). Cf. Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 27.
4194. oxes; written oxe in Hl. Cp. Ln; where oxe corresponds to the older English gen. oxan, of an ox— oxe standing for oxen (as in Oxenford, see note on l. 285 of Prologue). Thus oxes and oxe are equivalent.
4200. took of this no keep, took no heed to this, paid no attention to it.
4211. sooth to sayn, to say (tell) the truth.
4232. gapinge. The phrase gaping upright occurs elsewhere (see Knightes Tale, A. 2008), and signifies lying flat on the back with the mouth open. Cf. ‘Dede he sate uprighte,’ i.e. he lay on his back dead. The Sowdone of Babyloyne, l. 530.
4235. Harrow, a cry of distress; a cry for help. ‘Harrow! alas! I swelt here as I go.’—The Ordinary; see vol. iii. p. 150, of the Ancient Drama. See F. haro in Godefroy and Littré; and note to A. 3286.
4237. outsterte (Elles., c.); upsterte (Hn., Harl.)
4242. A common proverb. Skelton, ed. Dyce, i. 50, has ‘I drede mordre wolde come oute.’
4274. And preyde him his viáge for to lette, And prayed him to abandon his journey.
4275. to abyde, to stay where he was.
4279. my thinges, my business-matters.
4300. ‘Kenelm succeeded his father Kenulph on the throne of the Mercians in 821 [Haydn, Book of Dates, says 819] at the age of seven years, and was murdered by order of his aunt, Quenedreda. He was subsequently made a saint, and his legend will be found in Capgrave, or in the Golden Legend.’—Wright.
St. Kenelm’s day is Dec. 13. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says:—[Kenulph] ‘dying in 819, left his son Kenelm, a child only seven years old [see l. 4307] heir to his crown, under the tutelage of his sister Quindride. This ambitious woman committed his person to the care of one Ascobert, whom she had hired to make away with him. The wicked minister decoyed the innocent child into an unfrequented wood, cut off his head, and buried him under a thorn-tree. His corpse is said to have been discovered by a heavenly ray of light which shone over the place, and by the following inscription:—
Milton tells the story in his History of Britain, bk. iv. ed. 1695, p. 218, and refers us to Matthew of Westminster. He adds that the ‘inscription’ was inside a note, which was miraculously dropped by a dove on the altar at Rome. Our great poet’s verson of it is:—
Clent is near the boundary between Staffordshire and Worcestershire.
Neither of these accounts mentions Kenelm’s dream, but it is given in his Life, as printed in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall (Phil. Soc. 1862), p. 51, and in Caxton’s Golden Legend. St. Kenelm dreamt that he saw a noble tree with waxlights upon it, and that he climbed to the top of it; whereupon one of his best friends cut it down, and he was turned into a little bird, and flew up to heaven. The little bird denoted his soul, and the flight to heaven his death.
4307. For traisoun, i. e. for fear of treason.
4314. Cipioun. The Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, as annotated by Macrobius, was a favourite work during the middle ages. See note to l. 31 of the Parl. of Foules.
4328. See the Monkes Tale, B. 3917, and the note, p. 246.
4331. Lo heer Andromacha. Andromache’s dream is not to be found in Homer. It is mentioned in chapter xxiv. of Dares Phrygius, the authority for the history of the Trojan war most popular in the middle ages. See the Troy-book, ed. Panton and Donaldson (E. E. T. S.), l. 8425; or Lydgate’s Siege of Troye, c. 27.
4341. as for conclusioun, in conclusion.
4344. telle . . . no store, set no store by them; reckon them of no value; count them as useless.
4346. never a del, never a whit, not in the slightest degree.
4350. This line is repeated from the Compleynt of Mars, l. 61.
4353–6. ‘By way of quiet retaliation for Partlet’s sarcasm, he cites a Latin proverbial saying, in l. 344, ‘Mulier est hominis confusio,’ which he turns into a pretended compliment by the false translation in ll. 345, 346.’—Marsh. Tyrwhitt quotes it from Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Hist. x. 71. Chaucer has already referred to this saying above; see p. 207, l. 2296. ‘A woman, as saith the philosofre [i. e. Vincent], is the confusion of man, insaciable, c.’; Dialogue of Creatures, cap. cxxi. ‘Est damnum dulce mulier, confusio sponsi’; Adolphi Fabulae, x. 567; pr. in Leyser, Hist. Poet. Med. Aevi, p. 2031. Cf. note to D. 1195.
4365. lay, for that lay. Chaucer omits the relative, as is frequently done in Middle English poetry; see note to l. 4090.
4377. According to Beda, the creation took place at the vernal equinox; see Morley, Eng. Writers, 1888, ii. 146. Cf. note to l. 4045.
4384. See note on l. 4045 above.
4395. Cf. Man of Lawes Tale, B. 421, and note. See Prov. xiv. 13.
4398. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written ‘Petrus Comestor,’ who is probably here referred to.
4402. See the Squieres Tale, F. 287, and the note.
4405. col-fox; explained by Bailey as a ‘coal-black fox’; and he seems to have caught the right idea. Col - here represents M. E. col, coal; and the reference is to the brant-fox, which is explained in the New E. Dict. as borrowed from the G. brand-fuchs, ‘the German name of a variety of the fox, chiefly distinguished by a greater admixture of black in its fur; according to Grimm, it has black feet, ears, and tail.’ Chaucer expressly refers to the black-tipped tail and ears in l. 4094 above. Mr. Bradley cites the G. kohlfuchs and Du. koolvos, similarly formed; but the ordinary dictionaries do not give these names. The old explanation of col-fox as meaning ‘deceitful fox’ is difficult to establish, and is now unnecessary.
4412. undern; see note to E. 260.
4417. Scariot, i. e. Judas Iscariot. Genilon; the traitor who caused the defeat of Charlemagne, and the death of Roland; see Book of the Duchesse, 1121, and the note in vol. i. p. 491.
4418. See Vergil, Æn. ii. 259.
4430. bulte it to the bren, sift the matter; cf. the phrase to boult the bran. See the argument in Troilus, iv. 967; cf. Milton, P. L. ii. 560.
4432. Boece, i. e. Boethius. See note to Kn. Tale, A. 1163.
Bradwardyn. Thomas Bradwardine was Proctor in the University of Oxford in the year 1325, and afterwards became Divinity Professor and Chancellor of the University. His chief work is ‘On the Cause of God’ ( De Causâ Dei ). See Morley’s English Writers, iv. 61.
4446. colde, baneful, fatal. The proverb is Icelandic; ‘köld eru opt kvenna-ráð,’ cold (fatal) are oft women’s counsels; Icel. Dict. s. v. kaldr. It occurs early, in The Proverbs of Alfred, ed. Morris, Text 1, l. 336:—‘Cold red is quene red.’ Cf. B. 2286, and the note.
4450–6. Imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 15397–437.
4461. Phisiologus. ‘He alludes to a book in Latin metre, entitled Physiologus de Naturis xii. Animalium, by one Theobaldus, whose age is not known. The chapter De Sirenis begins thus:—
See The Bestiary, in Dr. Morris’s Old English Miscellany, pp. 18, 207; Philip de Thaun, Le Bestiaire, l. 664; Babees Book, pp. 233, 237; Mätzner’s Sprachproben, i. 55; Gower, C. A. i. 58; and cf. Rom. Rose, Eng. Version, 680 (in vol. i. p. 122).
4467. In Douglas’s Virgil, prol. to Book xi. st. 15, we have—
i. e. if thou turn coward, (and) a recreant craven, and consent to cry cok, thy death is imminent. In a note on this passage, Ruddiman says—‘ Cok is the sound which cocks utter when they are beaten.’ But it is probable that this is only a guess, and that Douglas is merely quoting Chaucer. To cry cok! cok! refers rather to the utterance of rapid cries of alarm, as fowls cry when scared. Brand (Pop. Antiq., ed. Ellis, ii. 58) copies Ruddiman’s explanation of the above passage.
4484. Boethius wrote a treatise De Musica, quoted by Chaucer in the Hous of Fame; see my note to l. 788 of that poem (vol. iii. p. 260).
4490. ‘As I hope to retain the use of my two eyes.’ So Havelok, l. 2545:—
‘So mote ich brouke mi Rith eie!’
And l. 1743:—‘So mote ich brouke finger or to.’
And l. 311:—‘So brouke i euere mi blake swire!’
swire =neck. See also Brouke in the Glossary to Gamelyn.
4502. daun Burnel the Asse. ‘The story alluded to is in a poem of Nigellus Wireker, entitled Burnellus seu Speculum Stultorum, written in the time of Richard I. In the Chester Whitsun Playes, Burnell is used as a nickname for an ass. The original word was probably brunell, from its brown colour; as the fox below is called Russel, from his red colour.’—Tyrwhitt. The Latin story is printed in The Anglo-Latin Satirists of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright, i. 55; see also Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 356. There is an amusing translation of it in Lowland Scotch, printed as ‘The Unicornis Tale’ in Small’s edition of Laing’s Select Remains of Scotch Poetry, ed. 1885, p. 285. It tells how a certain young Gundulfus broke a cock’s leg by throwing a stone at him. On the morning of the day when Gundulfus was to be ordained and to receive a benefice, the cock took his revenge by not crowing till much later than usual; and so Gundulfus was too late for the ceremony, and lost his benefice. Cf. Warton, Hist. E. P., ed. 1871, ii. 352; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 338. As to the name Russel, see note to l. 4039.
4516. See Rom. of the Rose (E. version), 1050. MS. E. alone reads courtes; Hn. Cm. Cp. Pt. have court; Ln. courte; Hl. hous.
4519. Ecclesiaste; not Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiasticus, xii. 10, 11, 16 Cf. Tale of Melibeus, B. 2368.
4525. Tyrwhitt cites the O. F. form gargate, i. e. (throat), from the Roman de Rou. Several examples of it are given by Godefroy.
4537. O Gaufred. ‘He alludes to a passage in the Nova Poetria of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, published not long after the death of Richard I. In this work the author has not only given instructions for composing in the different styles of poetry, but also examples. His specimen of the plaintive style begins thus:—
These lines are sufficient to show the object and the propriety of Chaucer’s ridicule. The whole poem is printed in Leyser’s Hist. Poet. Med. Ævi, pp. 862–978.’—Tyrwhitt. See a description of the poem, with numerous quotations, in Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 400; cf. Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 341.
4538. Richard I. died on April 6, 1199, on Tuesday; but he received his wound on Friday, March 26.
4540. Why ne hadde I = O that I had.
4547. streite swerd = drawn (naked) sword. Cf. Aeneid, ii. 333, 334:—
4548. See Aeneid, ii. 550–553.
4553. Hasdrubal; not Hannibal’s brother, but the King of Carthage when the Romans burnt it, bc 146. Hasdrubal slew himself; and his wife and her two sons burnt themselves in despair; see Orosius, iv. 13. 3, or Ælfred’s translation, ed. Sweet, p. 212. Lydgate has the story in his Fall of Princes, bk. v. capp. 12 and 27.
4573. See note to Ho. Fame, 1277 (in vol. iii. p. 273). ‘ Colle furit’; Morley, Eng. Writers, 1889, iv. 179.
4584. Walsingham relates how, in 1381, Jakke Straw and his men killed many Flemings ‘cum clamore consueto.’ He also speaks of the noise made by the rebels as ‘clamor horrendissimus.’ See Jakke in Tyrwhitt’s Glossary. So also, in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 450, it is said, with respect to the same event—‘In the Vintry was a very great massacre of Flemings.’
4590. houped. See Piers Plowman, B. vi. 174; ‘ houped after Hunger, that herde hym,’ c.
4616. Repeated in D. 1062.
4633. ‘Mes retiengnent le grain et jettent hors la paille’; Test. de Jean de Meun, 2168.
4635. my Lord. A side-note in MS. E. explains this to refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury; doubtless William Courtenay, archbishop from 1381 to 1396. Cf. note to l. 4584, which shews that this Tale is later than 1381; and it was probably earlier than 1396. Note that good men is practically a compound, as in l. 4630. Hence read good, not gōd-e.
4641. Repeated from B. 3135.
4643. Thee wer-e nede, there would be need for thee.
4649. brasil, a wood used for dyeing of a bright red colour; hence the allusion. It is mentioned as being used for dyeing leather in Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 364. ‘ Brasil-wood; this name is now applied in trade to the dye-wood imported from Pernambuco, which is derived from certain species of Cæsalpinia indigenous there. But it originally applied to a dye-wood of the same genus which was imported from India, and which is now known in trade as Sappan. The history of the word is very curious. For when the name was applied to the newly discovered region in S. America, probably, as Barros alleges, because it produced a dye-wood similar in character to the brazil of the East, the trade-name gradually became appropriated to the S. American product, and was taken away from that of the E. Indies. See some further remarks in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, 2nd ed. ii. 368–370.
‘This is alluded to also by Camoẽs (Lusiad, x. 140). Burton’s translation has:—
‘The medieval forms of brazil were many; in Italian, it is generally verzi, verzino, or the like.’—Yule, Hobson-Jobson, p. 86.
Again—‘ Sappan, the wood of Cæsalpinia sappan; the baqqam of the Arabs, and the Brazil-wood of medieval commerce. The tree appears to be indigenous in Malabar, the Deccan, and the Malay peninsula.’—id. p. 600. And in Yule’s edition of Marco Polo, ii. 315, he tells us that ‘it is extensively used by native dyers, chiefly for common and cheap cloths, and for fine mats. The dye is precipitated dark-brown with iron, and red with alum.’
Cf. Way’s note on the word in the Prompt. Parv. p. 47.
Florio explains Ital. verzino as ‘brazell woode, or fernanbucke [Pernambuco] to dye red withall.’
The etymology is disputed, but I think brasil and Ital. verzino are alike due to the Pers. wars, saffron; cf. Arab. warīs, dyed with saffron or wars.
greyn of Portingale. Greyn, mod. E. grain, is the term applied to the dye produced by the coccus insect, often termed, in commerce and the arts, kermes; see Marsh, Lectures on the E. Language, Lect. III. The colour thus produced was ‘fast,’ i. e. would not wash out; hence the phrase to engrain, or to dye in grain, meaning to dye of a fast colour. Various tones of red were thus produced, one of which was crimson, and another carmine, both forms being derivatives of kermes. Of Portingale means ‘imported from Portugal.’ In the Libell of English Policy, cap. ii. (l. 132), it is said that, among ‘the commoditees of Portingale ’ are:—‘oyl, wyn, osey [Alsace wine], wex, and graine. ’
4652. to another, to another of the pilgrims. This is so absurdly indefinite that it can hardly be genuine. Ll. 4637–4649 are in Chaucer’s most characteristic manner, and are obviously genuine; but there, I suspect, we must stop, viz. at the word Portingale. The next three lines form a mere stop-gap, and are either spurious, or were jotted down temporarily, to await the time of revision. The former is more probable.
This Epilogue is only found in three MSS.; (see footnote, p. 289). In Dd., Group G follows, beginning with the Second Nun’s Tale. In the other two MSS., Group H follows, i. e. the Manciple’s Tale; nevertheless, MS. Addit. absurdly puts the Nunne, in place of another. The net result is, that, at this place, the gap is complete; with no hint as to what Tale should follow.
It is worthy of note that this Epilogue is preserved in Thynne and the old black-letter editions, in which it is followed immediately by the Manciple’s Prologue. This arrangement is obviously wrong, because that Prologue is not introduced by the Host (as said in l. 4652).
In l. 4650, Thynne has But for Now; and his last line runs—‘Sayd to a nother man, as ye shal here.’ I adopt his reading of to for unto (as in the MSS.).
For remarks on the spurious Prologues to this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 434. For further remarks on the Tale, see the same, p. 435, where its original is printed in full.
1. The story is told by Livy, lib. iii.; and, of course, his narrative is the source of all the rest. But Tyrwhitt well remarks, in a note to l. 12074 (i.e. C. 140):—‘In the Discourse, c., I forgot to mention the Roman de la Rose as one of the sources of this tale; though, upon examination, I find that our author has drawn more from thence, than from either Gower or Livy.’ It is absurd to argue, as in Bell’s Chaucer, that our poet must necessarily have known Livy ‘in the original,’ and then to draw the conclusion that we must look to Livy only as the true source of the Tale. For it is perfectly obvious that Tyrwhitt is right as regards the Roman de la Rose; and the belief that Chaucer may have read the tale ‘in the original’ does not alter the fact that he trusted much more to the French text. In this very first line, he is merely quoting Le Roman, ll. 5617, 8:—
The story in the French text occupies 70 lines (5613–5682, ed. Méon); the chief points of resemblance are noted below.
Gower has the same story, Conf. Amant. iii. 264–270; but I see no reason why Chaucer should be considered as indebted to him. It is, however, clear that, if Chaucer and Gower be here compared, the latter suffers considerably by the comparison.
Gower gives the names of Icilius, to whom Virginia was betrothed, and of Marcus Claudius. But Chaucer omits the name Marcus, and ignores the existence of Icilius. The French text does the same.
11. This is the ‘noble goddesse Nature’ mentioned in the Parl. of Foules, ll. 368, 379. Cf. note to l. 16.
14. Pigmalion, Pygmalion; alluding to Ovid, Met. x. 247, where it is said of him:—
In the margin of E. Hn. is the note—‘Quere in Methamorphosios’; which supplies the reference; but cf. note to l. 16 below, shewing that Chaucer also had in his mind Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16379. So also the author of the Pearl, l. 750; see Morris, Allit. Poems.
16. In the margin of E. Hn. we find the note:—‘Apelles fecit mirabile opus in tumulo Darii; vide in Alexandri libro .1. o [Hn. has .6. o ]; de Zanze in libro Tullii.’ This note is doubtless the poet’s own; see further, as to Apelles, in the note to D. 498.
Zanzis, Zeuxis. The corruption of the name was easy, owing to the confusion in MSS. between n and u. 1 In the note above, we are referred to Tullius, i.e. Cicero. Dr. Reid kindly tells me that Zeuxis is mentioned, with Apelles, in Cicero’s De Oratore, iii. § 26, and Brutus, § 70; also, with other artists, in Academia, ii. § 146; De Finibus, ii. § 115; and alone, in De Inventione, ii. § 52, where a long story is told of him. Cf. note to Troil. iv. 414.
However, the fact is that Chaucer really derived his knowledge of Zeuxis from Le Roman de la Rose (ed. Méon, l. 16387); for comparison with the context of that line shews numerous points of resemblance to the present passage in our author. Jean de Meun is there speaking of Nature, and of the inability of artists to vie with her, which is precisely Chaucer’s argument here. The passage is too long for quotation, but I may cite such lines as these:—
Here the reference is to the passage in De Oratore, iii. § 26.
A little further on, Nature is made to say (l. 16970):—
20. See just above; and cf. Parl. of Foules, 379—‘Nature, the vicaire of thalmighty lord.’
32–4. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 16443–6.
35. From this line to l. 120, Chaucer has it all his own way. This fine passage is not in Le Roman, nor in Gower.
37. I. e. she had golden hair; cf. Troil. iv. 736, v. 8.
49. Perhaps Chaucer found the wisdom of Pallas in Vergil, Aen. v. 704:—
50. fácound, eloquence; cf. facóunde in Parl. Foules, 558.
54. Souninge in, conducing to; see A. 307, B. 3157, and notes.
58. Bacus, Bacchus, i. e. wine; see next note.
59. youthe, youth; such is the reading in MSS. E. Hn., and edd. 1532 and 1561. MS. Cm. has lost a leaf; the rest have thought, which gives no sense. It is clear that the reading thought arose from misreading the y of youthe as þ ( th ). How easily this may be done appears from Wright’s remark, that the Lansdowne MS. has youthe, whilst, in fact, it has þouht.
Tyrwhitt objects to the reading youthe, and proposes slouthe, wholly without authority. But youthe, meaning ‘youthful vigour,’ is right enough; I see no objection to it at all. Rather, it is simply taken from Ovid, Ars Amat. i. 243:—
Only a few lines above (l. 232), Bacchus occurs, and there is a reference to wine, throughout the context. Cf. the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 4925:—
Cf. note to l. 65.
60. Alluding to a proverbial phrase, occurring in Horace, Sat. ii. 3. 321, viz. ‘oleum adde camino’; and elsewhere.
65. This probably refers to the same passage in Ovid as is mentioned in the note to l. 59. For we there find (l. 229):—
79. See A. 476, and the note. Chaucer is here thinking of the same passage in Le Roman de la Rose. I quote a few lines (3930–46):—
See the English version in vol. i. p. 205, ll. 4285–4300.
82. See the footnote for another reading. The line there given may also be genuine. It is deficient in the first foot.
85. This is like our proverb:—‘Set a thief to catch [ or take] a thief.’ An old poacher makes a good gamekeeper.
98. Cf. Prov. xiii. 24; P. Plowman, B. v. 41.
101. See a similar proverb in P. Plowman, C. x. 265, and my note on the line. The Latin lines quoted in P. Plowman are from Alanus de Insulis, Liber Parabolarum, cap. i. 31; they are printed in Leyser, Hist. Poet. Med. Aevi, 1721, p. 1066, in the following form:—
117. The doctour, i. e. the teacher; viz. St. Augustine. (There is here no reference whatever to the ‘Doctor’ or ‘Phisicien’ who is supposed to tell the tale.) In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. is written ‘Augustinus’; and the matter is put beyond doubt by a passage in the Persones Tale, I. 484:—‘and, after the word of seint Augustin, it [Envye] is sorwe of other mannes wele, and Ioye of othere mennes harm.’ See note to I. 484.
The same idea is exactly reproduced in P. Plowman, B. v. 112, 113. Cf. ‘Inuidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis’; Horace, Epist. i. 2. 57.
135. From Le Roman, l. 5620–3; see vol. iii. p. 436.
140. cherl, dependant. It is remarkable that, throughout the story, MSS. E. Hn. and Cm. have cherl, but the rest have clerk. In ll. 140, 142, 153, 164, the Camb. MS. is deficient; but it at once gives the reading cherl in l. 191, and subsequently.
Either reading might serve; in Le Roman, l. 5614, the dependant is called ‘son serjant’; and in l. 5623, he is called ‘Li ribaus, ’ i. e. the ribald, which Chaucer Englishes by cherl. But when we come to C. 289, the MSS. gives us the choice of ‘fals cherl ’ and ‘cursed theef ’; very few have clerk (like MS. Sloane 1685). Cf. vol. iii. p. 437.
153, 154. The ‘churl’s’ name was Marcus Claudius, and the ‘judge’ was ‘Appius Claudius.’ Chaucer simply follows Jean de Meun, who calls the judge Apius; and speaks of the churl as ‘ Claudius li chalangieres’ in l. 5675.
165. Cf. Le Roman, l. 5623–7; see vol. iii. p. 436.
168–9. From Le Roman, 5636–8, as above.
174. The first foot is defective; read—Thou | shalt have | al, c. al right, complete justice. MS. Cm. has alle.
184. Cf. Le Roman, l. 5628–33.
203. From Le Roman, 5648–54.
207–253. The whole of this fine passage appears to be original. There is no hint of it in Le Roman de la Rose, except as regards l. 225, where Le Roman (l. 5659) has:—‘Car il par amors, sans haine.’ We may compare the farewell speech of Virginius to his daughter in Webster’s play of Appius and Virginia, Act iv. sc. 1.
240. Iepte, Jephtha; in the Vulgate, Jephte. See Judges, xi. 37, 38. MSS. E. Hn. have in the margin—‘fuit illo tempore Jephte Galaandes’ [ error for Galaadites]. This reference by Virginia to the book of Judges is rather startling; but such things are common enough in old authors, especially in our dramatists.
255. Here Chaucer returns to Le Roman, 5660–82. The rendering is pretty close down to l. 276.
280. Agryse of, shudder at; ‘nor in what kind of way the worm of conscience may shudder because of (the man’s) wicked life’; cf. ‘of pitee gan agryse,’ B. 614. When agryse is used with of, it is commonly passive, not intransitive; see examples in Mätzner and in the New E. Dictionary. Cf. been afered, i. e. be scared, in l. 284.
‘Vermis conscientiae tripliciter lacerabit’; Innocent III., De Contemptu Mundi, l. iii. c. 2.
286. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 93:—‘repentant folk, that stinte for to sinne, and forlete [give up] sinne er that sinne forlete hem.’
In the Six-text Edition, pref. col. 58, Dr. Furnivall calls attention to the curious variations in this passage, in the MSS., especially in ll. 289–292, and in 297–300; as well as in ll. 487, 488 in the Pardoneres Tale. I note these variations below, in their due places.
287. wood, mad, frantic, furious; esp. applied to the transient madness of anger. See Kn. Tale, A. 1301, 1329, 1578; also Mids. Nt. Dr. ii. 1. 192. Cf. G. wüthend, raging.
288. Harrow ! also spelt haro; a cry of astonishment; see A. 3286, 3825, B. 4235, c. ‘ Haro, the ancient Norman hue and cry; the exclamation of a person to procure assistance when his person or property was in danger. To cry out haro on any one, to denounce his evil doings’; Halliwell. Spenser has it, F. Q. ii. 6. 43; see Harrow in Nares, and the note above, to A. 3286.
On the oaths used by the Host, see note to l. 651 below.
289. fals cherl is the reading in E. Hn., and is evidently right; see note to l. 140 above. It is supported by several MSS., among which are Harl. 7335, Addit. 25718, Addit. 5140, Sloane 1686, Barlow 20, Hatton 1, Camb. Univ. Lib. Dd. 4. 24 and Mm. 2. 5, and Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 3. A few have fals clerk, viz. Sloane 1685, Arch. Seld. B. 14, Rawl. Poet. 149, Bodley 414. Harl. 7333 has a fals thef, Acursid Iustise; out of which numerous MSS. have developed the reading a cursed theef, a fals Iustice, which rolls the two Claudii into one. It is clearly wrong, but appears in good MSS., viz. in Cp. Pt. Ln. Hl. See vol. iii. pp. 437–8, and the note to l. 291 below.
290. shamful. MSS. Ln. Hl. turn this into schendful, i.e. ignominious, which does not at all alter the sense. It is a matter of small moment, but I may note that of the twenty-five MSS. examined by Dr. Furnivall, only the two above-named MSS. adopt this variation.
291, 292. Here MSS. Cp. Ln. Hl., as noted in the footnote, have two totally different lines; and this curious variation divides the MSS. (at least in the present passage) into two sets. In the first of these we find E. Hn. Harl. 7335, Addit. 25718, Addit. 5140, Sloane 1685 and 1686, Barlow 20, Arch. Seld. B. 14, Rawl. Poet. 149, Hatton 1, Bodley 414, Camb. Dd. 4. 24, and Mm. 2. 5, Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 3. In the second set we find Cp. Ln. Hl., Harl. 1758, Royal 18. C. 2, Laud 739, Camb. Ii. 3. 26, Royal 17. D. 15, and Harl. 7333.
There is no doubt as to the correct reading; for the ‘false cherl’ and ‘false justice’ were two different persons, and it was only because they had been inadvertently rolled into one (see note to l. 289) that it became possible to speak of ‘ his body,’ ‘ his bones,’ and ‘ him. ’ Hence the lines are rightly given in the text which I have adopted.
There is a slight difficulty, however, in the rime, which should be noted. We see that the t in advocats was silent, and that the word was pronounced (ad·vokaa·s), riming with allas (alaa·s), where the raised dot denotes the accent. That this was so, is indicated by the following spellings:—Pt. aduocas, and so also in Harl. 7335, Addit. 5140, Bodl. 414; Rawl. Poet. 149 has advocas; whilst Sloane 1685, Sloane 1686, and Camb. Mm. 2. 5 have aduocase, and Barlow 20, advocase. MS. Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3 has aduocasse. The testimony of ten MSS. may suffice; but it is worth noting that the F. pl. aduocas occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, 5107.
293. ‘Alas! she (Virginia) bought her beauty too dear’; she paid too high a price; it cost her her life.
297–300. These four lines are genuine; but several MSS., including E. Hn. Pt., omit the former pair (297–8), whilst several others omit the latter pair. Ed. 1532 contains both pairs, but alters l. 299.
299. bothe yiftes, both (kinds of) gifts; i. e. gifts of fortune, such as wealth, and of nature, such as beauty. Compare Dr. Johnson’s poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, imitated from the tenth satire of Juvenal.
303. is no fors, it is no matter. It must be supplied, for the sense. Sometimes Chaucer omits it is, and simply writes no fors, as in E. 1092, 2430. We also find I do no fors, I care not, D. 1234; and They yeve no fors, they care not, Romaunt of the Rose, 4826. Palsgrave has—‘I gyue no force, I care nat for a thing, Il ne men chault. ’
306. Ypocras is the usual spelling, in English MSS., of Hippocrates; see Prologue A. 431. So also in the Book of the Duchess, 571, 572:—
In the present passage it does not signify the physician himself, but a beverage named after him. ‘It was composed of wine, with spices and sugar, strained through a cloth. It is said to have taken its name from Hippocates’ sleeve, the term apothecaries gave to a strainer’; Halliwell’s Dict. s. v. Hippocras. In the same work, s. v. Ipocras, are several receipts for making it, the simplest being one copied from Arnold’s Chronicle:—‘Take a quart of red wyne, an ounce of synamon, and half an unce of gynger; a quarter of an ounce of greynes, and long peper, and halfe a pounde of sugar; and brose all this, and than put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore, with the wyne: and lete it hange over a vessel, tyll the wyne be rune thorowe.’ Halliwell adds that—‘Ipocras seems to have been a great favourite with our ancestors, being served up at every entertainment, public or private. It generally made a part of the last course, and was taken immediately after dinner, with wafers or some other light biscuits’; c. See Pegge’s Form of Cury, p. 161; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, pp. 125–128, 267, 378; Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 285; and Nares’s Glossary, s. v. Hippocras.
Galianes. In like manner this word (hitherto unexplained as far as I am aware) must signify drinks named after Galen, whose name is spelt Galien (in Latin, Galienus ) not only in Chaucer, but in other authors. See the quotation above from the Book of the Duchess. Speght guessed the word to mean ‘Galen’s works.’
310. lyk a prelat, like a dignitary of the church, like a bishop or abbot. Mr. Jephson, in Bell’s edition, suggests that the Doctor was in holy orders, and that this is why we are told in the Prologue, l. 438, that ‘his studie was but litel on the bible.’ I see no reason for this guess, which is quite unsupported. Chaucer does not say he is a prelate, but that he is like one; because he had been highly educated, as a member of a ‘learned profession’ should be.
Ronyan is here of three syllables and rimes with man; in l. 320 it is of two syllables, and rimes with anon. It looks as if the Host and Pardoner were not very clear about the saint’s name, only knowing him to swear by. In Pilkington’s Works (Parker Society), we find a mention of ‘St. Tronian’s fast,’ p. 80; and again, of ‘St. Rinian’s fast,’ p. 551, in a passage which is a repetition of the former. The forms Ronyan and Rinian are evidently corruptions of Ronan, a saint whose name is well known to readers of ‘St. Ronan’s Well.’ Of St. Ronan scarcely anything is known. The fullest account that can easily be found is the following:—
‘Ronan, B. and C. Feb. 7.—Beyond the mere mention of his commemoration as S. Ronan, bishop at Kilmaronen, in Levenax, in the body of the Breviary of Aberdeen, there is nothing said about this saint. . . Camerarius (p. 86) makes this Ronanus the same as he who is mentioned by Beda (Hist. Ecc. lib. iii. c. 25). This Ronan died in ad 778. The Ulster annals give at [ ad ] 737 (736)—“Mors Ronain Abbatis Cinngaraid.” Ængus places this saint at the 9th of February,’ c.; Kalendars of Scottish Saints, by Bp. A. P. Forbes, 1872, p. 441. Kilmaronen is Kilmaronock, in the county and parish of Dumbarton. There are traces of St. Ronan in about seven place-names in Scotland, according to the same authority. Under the date of Feb. 7 (February vol. ii. 3 B), the Acta Sanctorum has a few lines about St. Ronan, who, according to some, flourished under King Malduin, ad 664–684; or, according to others, about 603. The notice concludes with the remark—‘Maiorem lucem desideramus.’ Beda says that ‘Ronan, a Scot by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth either in France or Italy,’ was mixed up in the controversy which arose about the keeping of Easter, and was ‘a most zealous defender of the true Easter.’ This controversy took place about ad 652, which does not agree with the date above.
311. Tyrwhitt thinks that Shakespeare remembered this expression of Chaucer, when he describes the Host of the Garter as frequently repeating the phrase ‘said I well’: Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3. 11; ii. 1. 226; ii. 3. 93, 99.
in terme, in learned terms; cf. Prol. A. 323.
312. erme, to grieve. For the explanation of unusual words, the Glossary should, in general, be consulted; the Notes are intended, for the most part, to explain only phrases and allusions, and to give illustrations of the use of words. Such illustrations are, moreover, often omitted when they can easily be found by consulting such a work as Stratmann’s Old English Dictionary. In the present case, for example, Stratmann gives twelve instances of the use of earm or arm as an adjective, meaning wretched; four examples of ermlic, miserable; seven of earming, a miserable creature; and five of earmthe, misery. These twenty-eight additional examples shew that the word was formerly well understood. We may further note that a later instance of ermen or erme, to grieve, occurs in Caxton’s translation of Reynard the Fox, ad 1481; see Arber’s reprint, p. 48, l. 5: ‘Thenne departed he fro the kynge so heuyly that many of them ermed, ’ i.e. then departed he from the king so sorrowfully that many of them mourned, or were greatly grieved.
313. cardiacle, pain about the heart, spasm of the heart; more correctly, cardiake, as the l is excrescent. See Cardiacle and Cardiac in the New E. Dictionary. In Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 32, we have a description of ‘Heart-quaking and the disease Cardiacle.’ We thus learn that ‘there is a double manner of Cardiacle,’ called ‘Diaforetica’ and ‘Tremens.’ Of the latter, ‘sometime melancholy is the cause ’; and the remedies are various ‘confortatives.’ This is why the host wanted some ‘triacle’ or some ale, or something to cheer him up.
314. The Host’s form of oath is amusingly ignorant; he is confusing the two oaths ‘by corpus Domini’ and ‘by Christes bones,’ and evidently regards corpus as a genitive case. Tyrwhitt alters the phrase to ‘By corpus domini,’ which wholly spoils the humour of it.
triacle, a restorative remedy; see Man of Lawes Tale, B. 479.
315. moyste, new. The word retains the sense of the Lat. musteus and mustus. In Group H. 60, we find moysty ale spoken of as differing from old ale. But the most peculiar use of the word is in the Prologue, A. 457, where the Wyf of Bath’s shoes are described as being moyste and newe.
corny, strong of the corn or malt; cf. l. 456. Skelton calls it ‘newe ale in cornys’; Magnificence, 782; or ‘in cornes,’ Elynour Rummyng, 378. Baret’s Alvearie, s.v. Ale, has: ‘new ale in cornes, ceruisia cum recrementis.’ It would seem that ale was thought the better for having dregs of malt in it.
318. bel amy, good friend; a common form of address in old French. We also find biaus douz amis, sweet good friend; as in—
Belamy occurs in an Early Eng. Life of St. Cecilia, MS. Ashmole 43, l. 161; and six other examples are given in the New Eng. Dictionary. Similar forms are beau filtz, dear son, Piers Plowman, B. vii. 162; beau pere, good father; beau sire, good sir. Cf. beldame.
321. ale-stake, inn-sign. Speght interprets this by ‘may-pole.’ He was probably thinking of the ale-pole, such as was sometimes set up before an inn as a sign; see the picture of one in Larwood and Hotten’s History of Signboards, Plate II. But the ale-stakes of the fourteenth century were differently placed; instead of being perpendicular, they projected horizontally from the inn, just like the bar which supports a painted sign at the present day. At the end of the ale-stake a large garland was commonly suspended, as mentioned by Chaucer himself (Prol. 667), or sometimes a bunch of ivy, box, or evergreen, called a ‘bush’; whence the proverb ‘good wine needs no bush, ’ i. e. nothing to indicate where it is sold; see Hist. Signboards, pp. 2, 4, 6, 233. The clearest information about ale-stakes is obtained from a notice of them in the Liber Albus, ed. Riley, where an ordinance of the time of Richard II. is printed, the translation of which runs as follows: ‘Also, it was ordained that whereas the ale-stakes, projecting in front of the taverns in Chepe and elsewhere in the said city, extend too far over the king’s highways, to the impeding of riders and others, and, by reason of their excessive weight, to the great deterioration of the houses to which they are fixed, . . . it was ordained, . . . that no one in future should have a stake bearing either his sign or leaves [i.e. a bush] extending or lying over the king’s highway, of greater length than 7 feet at most, ’ c. And, at p. 292 of the same work, note 2, Mr. Riley rightly defines an ale-stake to be ‘the pole projecting from the house, and supporting a bunch of leaves.’
The word ale-stake occurs in Chatterton’s poem of Ælla, stanza 30, where it is used in a manner which shews that the supposed ‘Rowley’ did not know what it was like. See my note on this; Essay on the Rowley Poems, p. xix; and cf. note to A. 667.
322. of a cake; we should now say, a bit of bread; the modern sense of ‘cake’ is a little misleading. The old cakes were mostly made of dough, whence the proverb ‘my cake is dough,’ i. e. is not properly baked; Taming of the Shrew, v. 1. 145. Shakespeare also speaks of ‘cakes and ale,’ Tw. Nt. ii. 3. 124. The picture of the ‘Simnel Cakes’ in Chambers’ Book of Days, i. 336, illustrates Chaucer’s use of the word in the Prologue, l. 668.
324. The Pardoner was so ready to tell some ‘mirth or japes’ that the more decent folks in the company try to repress him. It is a curious comment on the popular estimate of his character. He has, moreover, to refresh himself, and to think awhile before he can recollect ‘some honest (i. e. decent) thing.’
327, 328. The Harleian MS. has—
Title. The Latin text is copied from l. 334 below; it appears in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS. The A. V. has—‘the love of money is the root of all evil’; 1 Tim. vi. 10. It is well worth notice that the novel by Morlinus, quoted in vol. iii. p. 442, as a source of the Pardoner’s Tale, contains the expression—‘radice malorum cupiditate affecti.’
336. bulles, bulls from the pope, whom he here calls his ‘liege lord’; see Prol. A. 687, and Piers the Plowman, B. Prol. 69. See also Wyclif’s Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 308.
alle and somme, one and all. Cf. Clerkes Tale, E. 941, and the note.
337. patente; defined by Webster as ‘an official document, conferring a right or privilege on some person or party’; c. It was so called because ‘patent’ or open to public inspection. ‘When indulgences came to be sold, the pope made them part of his ordinary revenue; and, according to the usual way in those, and even in much later times, of farming the revenue, he let them out usually to the Dominican friars’; Massingberd, Hist. Eng. Reformation, p. 126.
345. ‘To colour my devotion with.’ For saffron, MS. Harl. reads savore. Tyrwhitt rightly prefers the reading saffron, as ‘more expressive, and less likely to have been a gloss.’ And he adds—‘Saffron was used to give colour as well as flavour.’ For example, in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 275, we read of ‘capons that ben coloured with saffron.’ And in Winter’s Tale, iv. 3. 48, the Clown says—‘I must have saffron to colour the warden-pies.’ Cf. Sir Thopas, B. 1920. As to the position of with, cf. Sq. Ta., F. 471, 641.
346. According to Tyrwhitt, this line is, in some MSS. (including Camb. Dd. 4. 24. and Addit. 5140), replaced by three, viz.—
Here terme is an error for teme, a variant of theme; so that the last two lines merely repeat ll. 333–4.
347. cristal stones, evidently hollow pieces of crystal in which relics were kept; so in the Prologue, A. 700, we have—
‘And in a glas he hadde pigges bones.’
348. cloutes, rags, bits of cloth. ‘The origin of the veneration for relics may be traced to Acts, xix. 12. Hence clouts, or cloths, are among the Pardoner’s stock’; note in Bell’s edition.
349. Reliks. In the Prologue, we read that he had the Virgin Mary’s veil and a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s ship. Below, we have mention of the shoulder-bone of a holy Jew’s sheep, and of a miraculous mitten. See Heywood’s impudent plagiarism from this passage in his description of a Pardoner, as printed in the note to l. 701 of Dr. Morris’s edition of Chaucer’s Prologue. See also a curious list of relics in Chambers’ Book of Days, i. 587; and compare the humorous descriptions of the pardoner and his wares in Sir David Lyndesay’s Satyre of the Three Estates, ll. 2037–2121. Chaucer probably here took several hints from Boccaccio’s Decamerone, Day 6, Nov. 10, wherein Frate Cipolla produces many very remarkable relics to the public gaze. See also the list of relics in Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall (E. E. T. S.), pp. xxxii, 126–9.
350. latoun. The word latten is still in use in Devon and the North of England for plate tin, but as Halliwell remarks, that is not the sense of latoun in our older writers. It was a kind of mixed metal, somewhat resembling brass both in its nature and colour, but still more like pinchbeck. It was used for helmets (Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 2067), lavers (P. Pl. Crede, 196), spoons (Nares), sepulchral memorials (Way in Prompt. Parv.), and other articles. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 350, remarks that the escutcheons on the tomb of the Black Prince are of laton over-gilt, in accordance with the Prince’s instructions; see Nichols’s Royal Wills, p. 67. He adds—‘In our old Church Inventories a cross of laton frequently occurs.’ See Prol. A. 699, and the note. I here copy the description of this metal given in Batman upon Bartholomè; lib. xvi. c. 5. ‘ Of Laton. Laton is called Auricalcum, and hath that name, for, though it be brasse or copper, yet it shineth as gold without, as Isidore saith; for brasse is calco in Greeke. Also laton is hard as brasse or copper; for by medling of copper, of tinne, and of auripigment [orpiment] and with other mettal, it is brought in the fire to the colour of gold, as Isidore saith. Also it hath colour and likenesse of gold, but not the value.’
351. The expression ‘holy Jew’ is remarkable, as the usual feeling in the middle ages was to regard all Jews with abhorrence. It is suggested, in a note to Bell’s edition, that it ‘must be understood of some Jew before the Incarnation.’ Perhaps the Pardoner wished it to be understood that the sheep was once the property of Jacob; this would help to give force to l. 365. Cp. Gen. xxx.
The best comment on the virtues of a sheep’s shoulder-bone is afforded by a passage in the Persones Tale (De Ira), I. 602, where we find—‘Sweringe sodeynly withoute avysement is eek a sinne. But lat us go now to thilke horrible swering of adiuracioun and coniuracioun, as doon thise false enchauntours or nigromanciens in bacins ful of water, or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fyr, or in a shulder-boon of a sheep ’; c. Cf. also a curious passage in Trevisa’s tr. of Higden’s Polychronicon, lib. i. cap. 60, which shews that it was known among the Flemings who had settled in the west of Wales. He tells us that, by help of a bone of a wether’s right shoulder, from which the flesh had been boiled (not roasted) away, they could tell what was being done in far countries, ‘tokens of pees and of werre, the staat of the reeme, sleynge of men, and spousebreche.’ Selden, in his notes to song 5 of Drayton’s Polyolbion, gives a curious instance of such divination, taken from Giraldus, Itin. i. cap. 11; and a writer in the Retrospective Review, Feb. 1854, p. 109, says it is ‘similar to one described by Wm. de Rubruquis as practised among the Tartars.’ And see spadebone in Nares. Cf. Notes and Queries, 1 S. ii. 20.
In Part I. of the Records of the Folk-lore Society is an article by Mr. Thoms on the subject of divination by means of the shoulder-bone of a sheep. He shews that it was still practised in the Scottish Highlands down to the beginning of the present century, and that it is known in Greece. He further cites some passages concerning it from some scarce books; and ends by saying—‘let me refer any reader desirous of knowing more of this wide-spread form of divination to Sir H. Ellis’s edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, iii. 179, ed. 1842, and to much curious information respecting Spatulamancia, as it is called by Hartlieb, and an analogous species of divination ex anserino sterno, to Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, 2nd ed. p. 1067.’
355. The sense is—‘which any snake has bitten or stung.’ The reference is to the poisonous effects of the bite of an adder or venomous snake. The word worm is used by Shakespeare to describe the asp whose bite was fatal to Cleopatra; and it is sometimes used to describe a dragon of the largest size. In Icelandic, the term ‘miðgarðsormr,’ lit. worm of the middle-earth, signifies a great sea-serpent encompassing the entire world.
363. Fastinge. This word is spelt with a final e in all seven MSS.; and as it is emphatic and followed by a slight pause, perhaps the final e should be pronounced. Cp. A. S. fæstende, the older form of the present participle. Otherwise, the first foot consists of but one syllable.
366. For heleth, MS. Hl. has kelith, i. e. cooleth.
379. The final e in sinne must not be elided; it is preserved by the caesura. Besides, e is only elided before h in the case of certain words.
387. assoile, absolve. In Michelet’s Life of Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt, chap. ii, there is a very similar passage concerning Tetzel, the Dominican friar, whose shameless sale of indulgences roused Luther to his famous denunciations of the practice. Tetzel ‘went about from town to town, with great display, pomp, and expense, hawking the commodity [i.e. the indulgences] in the churches, in the public streets, in taverns and ale-houses. He paid over to his employers as little as possible, pocketing the balance, as was subsequently proved against him. The faith of the buyers diminishing, it became necessary to exaggerate to the fullest extent the merit of the specific. . . . The intrepid Tetzel stretched his rhetoric to the very uttermost bounds of amplification. Daringly piling one lie upon another, he set forth, in reckless display, the long list of evils which this panacea could cure. He did not content himself with enumerating known sins; he set his foul imagination to work, and invented crimes, infamous atrocities, strange, unheard of, unthought of; and when he saw his auditors stand aghast at each horrible suggestion, he would calmly repeat the burden of his song:—Well, all this is expiated the moment your money chinks in the pope’s chest.’ This was in the year 1517.
390. An hundred mark. A mark was worth about 13 s. 4 d., and 100 marks about £66 13 s. 4 d. In order to make allowance for the difference in the value of money in that age, we must at least multiply by ten; or we may say in round numbers, that the Pardoner made at least £700 a year. We may contrast this with Chaucer’s own pension of 20 marks, granted him in 1367, and afterwards increased till, in the very last year of his life, he received in all, according to Sir Harris Nicolas, as much as £61 13 s. 4 d. Even then his income did not quite attain to the 100 marks which the Pardoner gained so easily.
397. dowve, a pigeon; lit. a dove. See a similar line in the Milleres Tale, A. 3258.
402. namely, especially, in particular; cf. Kn. Ta. 410 (A. 1068).
406. blakeberied. The line means—‘Though their souls go a-black-berrying’; i. e. wander wherever they like. This is a well-known crux, which all the editors have given up as unintelligible. I have been so fortunate as to obtain the complete solution of it, which was printed in Notes and Queries, 4 S. x. 222, xii. 45, and again in my preface to the C-text of Piers the Plowman, p. lxxxvii. The simple explanation is that, by a grammatical construction which was probably due (as will be shewn) to an error, the verb go could be combined with what was apparently a past participle, in such a manner as to give the participle the force of a verbal substantive. In other words, instead of saying ‘he goes a-hunting,’ our forefathers sometimes said ‘he goes a-hunted.’ The examples of this use are at least seven. The clearest is in Piers Plowman, C. ix. 138, where we read of ‘folk that gon a-begged,’ i. e. folk that go a-begging. In Chaucer, we not only have ‘goon a-begged,’ Frank. Tale, F. 1580, and the instance in the present passage, but yet a third example in the Wyf of Bath’s Tale, Group D. 354, where we have ‘goon a-caterwawed,’ with the sense of ‘to go a-caterwauling’; and it is a fortunate circumstance that in two of these cases the idiomatic forms occur at the end of a line, so that the rime has preserved them from being tampered with. Gower (Conf. Amant. bk. i. ed. Chalmers, pp. 32, 33, or ed. Pauli, i. 110) speaks of a king of Hungary riding out ‘in the month of May,’ adding—
that is, wherein he wished to ride a-Maying. Again (in bk. v, ed. Chalmers, p. 124, col. 2, or ed. Pauli, ii. 132) we read of a drunken priest losing his way:—
‘This prest was dronke, and goth a-strayed ’;
i.e. he goes a-straying, or goes astray.
The explanation of this construction I take to be this; the - ed was not really a sign of the past participle, but a corruption of the ending - eth (A. S. - að ) which is sometimes found at the end of a verbal substantive. Hence it is that, in the passage from Piers Plowman above quoted, one of the best and earliest MSS. actually reads ‘folk that gon a-beggeth.’ And again, in another passage (P. Pl., C. ix. 246) is the phrase ‘gon abrybeth,’ or, in some MSS., ‘gon abrybed,’ i.e. go a-bribing or go a-thieving, since Mid. Eng. briben often means to rob. This form is clearly an imitation of the form a-hunteth in the old phrase gon a-hunteth or riden an honteth, used by Robert of Gloucester (Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 14, l. 387):—
‘As he rod an honteth, and par-auntre [h]is hors spurnde.’
Now this honteth is the dat. case of a substantive, viz. of the A.S. huntað or huntoð. This substantive would easily be mistaken for a part of a verb, and, particularly, for the past participle of a verb; just as many people at this day are quite unable to distinguish between the true verbal substantive and the present participle in - ing. This mistake once established, the ending - ed would be freely used after the verbs go or ride. In D. 1778, we even find go walked, without a.
The result is that the present phrase, hitherto so puzzling, is a mere variation of ‘gon a blake-berying,’ i.e. ‘go a-gathering blackberries,’ a humorous expression for ‘wander wherever they please.’ A not very dissimilar expression occurs in the proverbial saying—‘his wits are gone a-wool-gathering.’
The Pardoner says, in effect, ‘I promise them full absolution; however, when they die and are buried, it matters little to me in what direction their souls go.’
407. Tyrwhitt aptly adduces a parallel passage from the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 5763 (or l. 5129 in the French)—
‘Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife’; Phil. i. 15.
413. In Piers Plowman (B-text), v. 87, it is said of Envy that—
‘Eche a worde that he warpe · was of an addres tonge.’
Cf. Rom. iii. 13; Ps. cxl. 3.
440. for I teche, because I teach, by my teaching.
441. Wilful pouerte signifies voluntary poverty. This is well illustrated by the following lines concerning Christ in Piers Plowman, B. xx. 48, 49:—
Several examples occur in Richardson’s Dictionary in which wilfully has the sense of willingly or voluntarily. Thus—‘If they wylfully would renounce the sayd place and put them in his grace, he wolde vtterlye pardon theyr trespace’; Fabyan’s Chronicle, c. 114. It even means gladly; thus in Wyclif’s Bible, Acts xxi. 17, we find, ‘britherin resseyuyden vs wilfulli. ’ Speaking of palmers, Speght says—‘The pilgrim travelled at his own charge, the palmer professed wilful poverty.’
The word wilful still means willing in Warwickshire; see Eng. Dialect Soc. Gloss. C. 6.
445. The context seems to imply that some of the apostles made baskets. So in Piers Plowman, B. xv. 285, we read of St. Paul—
‘Poule, after his prechyng · panyers he made.’
Yet in Acts xviii. 3 we only read that he wrought as a tent-maker. However, it was St. Paul who set the example of labouring with his hands; and, in imitation of him, we find an early example of basket-making by St. Arsenius, ‘who, before he turned hermit, had been the tutor of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius,’ and who is represented in a fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, by Pietro Laurati, as ‘weaving baskets of palm-leaves’; whilst beside him another hermit is cutting wooden spoons, and another is fishing. See Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed. ii. 757.
Note that baskettes is trisyllabic, as in Palladius on Husbandry, bk. xii. l. 307.
448. The best description of the house-to-house system of begging, as adopted by the mendicant friars, is near the beginning of the Sompnour’s Tale, D. 1738. They went in pairs to the farm-houses, begging a bushel of wheat, or malt, or rye, or a piece of cheese or brawn, or bacon or beef, or even a piece of an old blanket. Nothing seems to have come amiss to them.
450. See Prologue, A. 255; and cf. the description of the poor widow at the beginning of the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4011.
For some account of the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 439. The account which I here quote as the ‘Italian’ text is that contained in Novella lxxxii of the Libro di Novelle.
Observe also the quotations from Pope Innocent given in vol. iii. pp. 444, 445. To which may be added, that Chaucer here frequently quotes from his Persones Tale, which must have been written previously. Compare ll. 475, 482, 504, 529, 558, 590, 631–650, with I. 591, 836, 819, 820, 822, 793, 587–593.
463. In laying the scene in Flanders, Chaucer probably followed an original which is now lost. Andrew Borde, in his amusing Introduction of Knowledge, ch. viii, says:—‘Flaunders is a plentyfull countre of fyshe fleshe wyld fowle. Ther shal a man be clenly serued at his table, well ordred and vsed for meate drynke lodgyng. The countre is playn, somwhat sandy. The people be gentyl, but the men be great drynkers; and many of the women be vertuous and wel dysposyd.’ He describes the Fleming as saying—
464. haunteden, followed- after; cf. note to l. 547. The same expression occurs in The Tale of Beryn, a spurious (but not ill-told) addition to the Canterbury Tales:—
‘ Foly, I haunted it ever, ther myght no man me let’; l. 2319.
473. grisly, terrible, enough to make one shudder. It is exactly the right word. The mention of these oaths reminds us of the admission of my Uncle Toby in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, ch. xi, that ‘our armies swore terribly in Flanders. ’
474. to-tere, tear in pieces, dismember. Cf. to-rente in B. 3215; see note on p. 229. Chaucer elsewhere says—‘For Cristes sake ne swereth nat so sinfully, in dismembringe of Crist, by soule, herte, bones, and body; for certes it semeth, that ye thinke that the cursede Iewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre him more’; Persones Tale ( De Ira ), I. 591. And see ll. 629–659 below.
‘And than Seint Johan seid—“These [who are thus tormented in hell] ben thei that sweren bi Goddes membris, as bi his nayles and other his membris, and thei thus dismembrid God in horrible swerynge bi his limmes’; Vision of Wm. Staunton ( ad 1409), quoted in Wright’s St. Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 146. In the Plowman’s Tale (Chaucer, ed. 1561, fol. xci) we have—
Barclay, in his Ship of Fools (ed. Jamieson, i. 97), says—
And again (ii. 130) he complains of swearers who crucify Christ afresh, swearing by ‘his holy membres,’ by his ‘blode,’ by ‘his face, his herte, or by his croune of thorne,’ c. See also the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 64; Political, c., Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 193; Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 60, 278, 499. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 264, quotes (from an old MS.) the old second commandment in the following form:—
477. tombesteres, female dancers. ‘Sir Perdicas, whom that kinge Alysandre made to been his heire in Grece, was of no ki n ges blod; his dame [ mother ] was a to m bystere’; Testament of Love, Book ii. ed. 1561, fol. ccxcvi b.
Tombestere is the feminine form; the A. S. spelling would be tumbestre; the masc. form is the A. S. tumbere, which is glossed by saltator, i. e. a dancer; the verb is tumbian, to dance, used of Herodias’ daughter in the A. S. version of Mark, vi. 22. The medieval idea of tumbling was, that the lady stood on her hands with her heels in the air; see Strutt, Sports, c. bk. iii. c. 5.
On the feminine termination - ster (formerly - estre, or - stre ) see the remarks in Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language, printed in (the so-called) Smith’s Student’s Manual of the English Language, ed. 1862, pp. 207, 208, with an additional note at p. 217. Marsh’s remarks are, in this case, less clear than usual. He shews that the termination was not always used as a feminine, and that, in fact, its force was early lost. It is, however, merely a question of chronology. That the termination was originally feminine in Anglo-Saxon, is sufficiently proved by the A. S. version of the Gospels. There we find the word witega frequently used in the sense of prophet; but, in one instance, where it is necessary to express the feminine, we find this accomplished by the use of this very termination. ‘And anna wæs witegystre (another MS. witegestre )’; i. e. and Anna was a prophetess, Luke, ii. 36. Similar instances might easily be multiplied; see Dr. Morris’s Hist. Outlines of Eng. Accidence, pp. 89, 90. Thus, wasshestren (pl.) is used as the translation of lotrices; Old Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, ii. 57. But it is also true that, in the fourteenth century, the feminine force of this termination was becoming very weak, so that, whilst in P. Plowman, B. v. 306, we find ‘Beton the brewestere ’ applied to a female brewer, we cannot thence certainly conclude that ‘brewestere’ was always feminine at that period. On the other hand, we may point to one word, spinster, which has remained feminine to this very day.
Dr. Morris remarks that tombestere is a hybrid word; in which I believe that he has been misled by the spelling. It is a pure native word, from the A. S. tumbian, but the scribes have turned it from tumbestere into tombestere, by confusion with the French tomber. Yet even the Fr. tomber was once spelt tumber (Burguy, Roquefort), being, in fact, a word of Germanic origin. An acrobat can still be called a tumbler: we find ‘rope-dancers and tumblers ’ in Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, § 4. Indeed, the Cambridge MS. has here the true spelling tumbesteris, whilst the Corpus, Petworth, and Lansdowne MSS. have the variations tomblisteres and tomblesters. The A. S. masc. form tumbere occurs in Ælfric’s Vocabulary.
As to the source of the suffix - ster, it is really a compound suffix, due to composition of the Aryan suffixes - es and - ter -; cf. Lat. mag-is-ter, min-is-ter, poet-as-ter. The feminine use is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon and to some other Teutonic languages.
478. fruytesteres, female sellers of fruit; see note to last line.
479. wafereres, sellers of confectionery, confectioners. The feminine form wafrestre occurs in Piers Plowman, v. 641. From Beaumont and Fletcher we learn that ‘wafer-women’ were often employed in amorous embassies, as stated in Nares’ Glossary, q.v.
483. holy writ. In the margin of the MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. and Hl. is the note—‘Nolite inebriari vino, in quo est luxuria,’ quoted from the Vulgate version of Eph. v. 18. See vol. iii. p. 444.
487. Cp. Ln. have here two additional spurious lines. Cp. reads—
Of the second line, Dr. Furnivall remarks—‘Besides being a line of only 4 measures, it is foolish—how could Lot in the grave repent him? Both lines [those in italics] interrupt the flow of the story, and weaken the instances brought forward.’ He adds—‘None of our best MSS. have these spurious lines.’
They evidently arose from the stupidity of some scribe, who did not understand that soghte is here the pt. t. subj., meaning ‘were to seek.’ He therefore ‘corrected’ Chaucer’s grammar by writing wol for wel and seche for soghte; and he then had to make up two more lines to hide the alteration.
488. ‘Herod, (as may be seen by any one) who would consult the “stories” carefully.’ The Harleian MS. has the inferior reading story; but the reference is particular, not vague. Peter Comestor (died ad 1198) was the author of an Historia Scholastica, on which account he was called ‘the maister of stories,’ or ‘clerk of the stories,’ as explained in my note to Piers Plowman, B. vii. 73. The use of the plural is due to the fact that the whole Historia Scholastica, which is a sort of epitome of the Bible, with notes and additions, is divided into sections, each of which is also called ‘Historia.’ The account of Herod occurs, of course, in the section entitled Historia Evangelica, cap. lxxii; De decollatione ioannis. Cf. Matt. xiv; Mark vi. And see vol. iii. p. 444.
492. Senek, Seneca. The reference appears to be, as pointed out by Tyrwhitt, to Seneca’s Letters; Epist. lxxxiii: ‘Extende in plures dies illum ebrii habitum: numquid de furore dubitabis? nunc quoque non est minor, sed brevior.’
496. ‘Except that madness, when it has come upon a man of evil nature, lasts longer than does a fit of drunkenness.’ See Shrew in Trench, Select Glossary.
499. ‘First cause of our misfortune’; alluding to the Fall of Adam. See l. 505.
501. boght us agayn, redeemed us; a translation of the Latin redemit. Hence we find Christ called, in Middle English, the Aȝenbyer. ‘See now how dere he [Christ] boughte man, that he made after his owne ymage, and how dere he aȝenboght us, for the grete love that he hadde to us’; Sir J. Maundeville, Prologue to his Voiage (Specimens of Eng. 1298–1393, p. 165). See l. 766 below.
504. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 819.
505. Here, in the margin of MS. E. Hn. Cp. Pt. Hl., is a quotation from ‘Hieronymus contra Jovinianum’ (i.e. from St. Jerome): ‘Quamdiu ieiunauit Adam, in Paradiso fuit; comedit et eiectus est; eiectus, statim duxit uxorem.’ See Hieron. contra Jov. lib. ii. c. 15; ed. Migne, ii. 305.
510. defended, forbidden. Even Milton has it; see P. Lost, xi. 86. See also l. 590 below.
512. ‘O gluttony! it would much behove us to complain of thee!’ See vol. iii. pp. 444, 445. The quotation ‘Noli auidus’ (iii. 445) is from the close of Ecclus. xxxvii.
517. Here Chaucer is thinking of a passage in Jerome, which also occurs in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 6. In such cases, Chaucer consulted Jerome himself, rather than his copyist, as might be shewn. I therefore quote from the former.
‘Propter breuem gulae uoluptatem, terrae lustrantur et maria: et ut mulsum uinum preciosusque cibus fauces notras transeat, totius uitae opera desudamus.’—Hieronymus, contra Iouinianum, lib. ii.; in Epist. Hieron. Basil. 1524, t. ii. p. 76.
At the same time, he had an eye to the passage in Pope Innocent, quoted in vol. iii. p. 445. ‘The shorte throte’ answers to ‘Tam breuis est,’ c.
522. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written the quotation—‘Esca ventri, et venter escis. Deus autem et hunc et illam destruet.’ For illam, the usual reading of the Vulgate is has; see 1 Cor. vi. 13.
526. whyte and rede, white wine and red wine; see note to Piers Plowman, B. prol. 228, and the note to B. 4032 above, p. 249.
527. Again from Jerome (see note to l. 517). ‘Qualis [est] ista refectio post ieiunium, cum pridianis epulis distendimur, et guttur nostrum meditatorium efficitur latrinarum. ’—Hieron. c. Iouin. lib. ii.; in Epist. Hieron. Basil. 1524, t. ii. p. 78.
529. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Ad Philipenses, capitulo tertio.’ See Phil. iii. 18. Cf. Pers. Tale, I. 820.
534. See the quotation in vol. iii. p. 445.
537. ‘How great toil and expense (it is) to provide for thee!’ Chaucer is here addressing man’s appetite for delicacies. Cf. fond, Non. Pr. Tale, B. 4019.
538. See the quotation in vol. iii. p. 445.
There is a somewhat similar passage in John of Salisbury, as follows:—
‘Multiplicantur fercula, cibi alii aliis farciuntur, condiuntur haec illis, et in iniuriam naturae, innatum relinquere, et alienum coguntur afferre saporem. Conficiuntur et salsamenta . . . Coquorum solicitudo fervet arte multiplici,’ c.—Joh. Salisburiensis, Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 6.
539. There is here an allusion to the famous disputes in scholastic philosophy between the Realists and Nominalists. To attempt any explanation of their language is to become lost in subtleties of distinction. It would seem however that the Realists maintained that everything possesses a substance, which is inherent in itself, and distinct from the accidents or outward phenomena which the thing presents. According to them, the form, smell, taste, colour, of anything are merely accidents, and might be changed without affecting the substance itself. See the excellent article on Substance in the Engl. Cyclopaedia; also that on Nominalists. Cf. Wyclif’s Works, ed. Matthew, p. 526.
According to Chaucer, then, or rather, according to Pope Innocent III., (of all people), the cooks who toil to satisfy man’s appetite change the nature of the things cooked so effectually as to confound substance with accident. Translated into plain language, it means that those who partook of the meats so prepared, could not, by means of their taste and smell, form any precise idea as to what they were eating. The art is not lost. Cf. Troil. iv. 1505.
547. haunteth, practises, indulges in; cf. l. 464. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Qui autem in deliciis est, viuens mortuus est.’ This is a quotation from the Vulgate version of 1 Tim. v. 6, but with Qui for quae, and mortuus for mortua.
549. In the margin of MSS. E. and Hn. is written—‘Luxuriosa res vinum, et contumeliosa ebrietas.’ The Vulgate version of Prov. xx. 1 agrees with this nearly, but has tumultuosa for contumeliosa. This is of course the text to which Chaucer refers. And see note to the parallel passage at B. 771–7. The variant contumeliosa occurs in the text as quoted by St. Jerome, Contra Jovinianum, lib. ii. 10 (Köppel).