ll. 2350-72 is expanded from five lines in the Latin text, 576-580:--
'Stamina barbarica suspendit candida tela: purpureasque notas filis intexuit albis'; &c.
Observe that, in l. 2360, the stuff is called 'a _stamin_.'
2359. _By that_, by the time that.
2360. _A stamin large_, a large piece of stamine. _Stamin_ or _stamine_ is usually explained as a kind of woollen cloth. Cotgrave gives: '_Estamine_, the stuffe tamine.' Godefroy gives both _estamin_, masc. and _estamine_, fem. explained by 'tissu léger de laine ou de coton.' Palsgrave has:--'Stamell, fyne worstede, _estamine_'; and--'Stamyne, _estamine_.' The Prompt. Parv. has:--'Stamyn, clothe, _stamina_.' _Stamin_ was used as a material for shirts, and was worn by way of penance; Fosbrooke explains it as 'a shirt made of woollen and linen, used instead of a penitentiary hair-shirt.' '_Stamin_ habbe whoso wule,' whoso will may have a stamin; Ancren Riwle, p. 418. Chaucer uses it thus near the end of the Persones Tale (I 1052); 'Also in weringe of heyres or of _stamin_ or of haubergeons on hir naked flesh for Cristes sake, and swiche manere penances.'
MSS. C. T. A. have _stamyn_, which seems the better form; the rest (like the printed editions) have _stames_, which may be an error for _stamel_, O.F. _estamel_, used in the same sense as O.F. _estamine_. Else it may answer to O.F. _estame_, 'laine peignée, tricot de laine' in Godefroy. The fact that Ovid's word is _stamina_ is in favour of the spelling _stamin_. (Bell remarks that 'the printed copies read _flames_, which is nonsense.' He seems to have misread _stames_ (with long _s_) as _flames_. The editions of 1532, 1550, and 1561 certainly have _stames_.)
2373-82. Abridged from Met. vi. 581-605. Ovid mentions the triennial festival to Bacchus.
2379. _Compleint_ is a much better reading than the _constreynte_ of the old editions.
2383. _No charge_, of no consequence; Squi. Ta., F 359.
2383-93. All Chaucer's own. The last line is characteristic: 'unless it happens to be the case that he cannot get another,' i.e. a new love. For _non other_, old editions have _another_!
2385. Here _deserved_ is the usual Chaucerian form of the pt. tense. Prof. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 403) calls this a false form. But cf. _wyped_, _lipsed_ (in _-ed_, not _-ede_); Prol. to C. T., 133, 264.
VIII. THE LEGEND OF PHYLLIS.
Gower tells the same story in his Confessio Amantis, bk. iv. (ed. Pauli,