i. 103:--

'Chese for us bothe, I you praie, And what as ever that ye saie, Right as ye wolle, so wol I. My lord, she saide, grauntmercy. For of this word that ye now sain, That ye have made me soverein, My destinè is overpassed'; &c.

1260. _toverbyde_, to over-bide, to outlive. Tyrwhitt substitutes _to overlive_, from the black-letter editions. _Gra-ce_ is dissyllabic.

1261. _shorte_, shorten; see D. 365.

THE FRIAR'S PROLOGUE.

1276. _auctoritees_; a direct reference to l. 1208 above. This goes far to show that the Friar's Tale was written immediately after the Wife's Tale. The Friar says, quite truly, that the Wife's Tale contains passages not unlike 'school-matter,' or disquisitions in the schools. Such a passage is that in ll. 1109-1212. Tyrwhitt shews that _auctoritas_ was the usual word applied to a text of scripture; Bell adds, that it was applied, as now, to _any_ authority for a statement. We might very well translate _auctoritees_ by 'quotations.' [323]

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

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

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

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

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

THE FRERES TALE.

With respect to the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 450.

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

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

1307-8. These two lines occur here in MS. Hl. only; see note to 1294 above.

1309. Usury was prohibited by the Canon Law; cf. P. Plowman, C. vii. 239.

1314. 'No fine could save the accused from punishment.'

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

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

1321. For the character of a Somnour, see A. 623.

1323. _espiaille_, set of spies; see note to B. 2509, p. 213. [324]

1324. _taughte_, informed; the final _e_ is _not_ elided.

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

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

1331. _terme_, i. e. during the term.

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

1343. _approwours_, agents, men who looked after his profits. From the O. Fr. _approuer_, _apprower_, to cause to profit, to enrich; from the O. Fr. sb. _prou_, profit, whence also E. _prowess_. Miswritten as _approver_ in the seventeenth century, though distinct from _approve_ (from _approbare_). See the New Eng. Dictionary. Tyrwhitt has the spelling _approvers_.

1347. _Cristes curs_, i. e. excommunication.

1349. _atte nale_, put for _atten ale_, lit. at the ale, where _ale_ is put for 'ale-house.' _Atten_ is for A. S. _æt tham_, where _tham_ is the dat. neut. of the def. article. The expression is common; as in 'fouhten _atten ale_,' fought at the ale-house, P. Plowman, C. i. 43; 'with ydel tales _atte nale_,' id. C. viii. 19. 'Thou hast not so much charity in thee as to goe to the Ale with a Christian'; Two Gent. of Verona, ii. v. 61. So also _atte noke_, for _atten oke_, at the oak; see note to P. Pl. C. vii. 207.

1350. See John, xii. 6; and cf. the Legend of Judas Iscariot, printed (from MS. Harl. 2277) in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall, 1862; p. 107.

1352. _duetee_ (Cp. _dewete_) is trisyllabic; see l. 1391. It is a coined word, having no Latin equivalent. The spelling _duete_ occurs, in Anglo-French, in the Liber Albus, p. 211, l. 23.

1356. _Sir Robert_; the title of _Sir_ was usually given to one of the secular clergy; cf. note to B. 4000, p. 248.

1364. _hir_, her; so in E. Hn., but other MSS. have _thee_. The reading given is the better. The Somnour fined the man, but let the woman go; and then said that he let her go out of friendship for the man. This is intelligible; but the reading _thee_ gives no sense to the words _for thy sake_.

1365. 'You need not take any more trouble in this matter.'

1367. _bryberý-es_ (four syllables), i. e. modes of robbery. So in MSS. Hn. Cm. Cp. MSS. Hl. Pt. Ln. have _bribours_, which will not scan, unless (as in Hl.) we also read _Certeinly_, giving a line defective in the first foot. Tyrwhitt inserts _many_ before _mo_, to fill up the line. [325]

1369. _dogge for the bowe_, a dog used to accompany an archer, to follow up a stricken deer; see the next line. The docility of such a dog is alluded to in E. 2014.

1373. 'And, because such acquaintance brought him in the chief part of all his income.'

1377. _ribybe._ In l. 1573, she is called 'an old _rebekke_.' So in Skelton's Elinour Rummyng, l. 492:--'There came an old _rybybe_.' And Ben Jonson speaks of 'some good _ribibe_ ... you would hang now for a witch'; The Devil is an Ass, i. 1. 16. But probably Skelton and Ben Jonson merely took the word from Chaucer. A _ribybe_ was, properly, a two-stringed Moorish fiddle; see note to A. 3331. Gifford's note on the passage in Ben Jonson, says:--'_Ribibe_, together with its synonym _rebeck_, is merely a cant term for an old woman. A ribibe, the reader knows, is a rude kind of a fiddle, and the allusion is, probably, to the inharmonious nature of its sounds.' Halliwell suggests some (improbable) confusion between _vetula_ and _vitula_.

I suspect that this old joke, for such it clearly is, arose in a very different way, viz. from a pun upon _rebekke_, a fiddle, and _Rebekke_, a married woman, from the mention of _Rebecca_ in the marriage-service. For Chaucer himself notices the latter in E. 1704, which see. Observe that the form _rebekke_, as applied to the fiddle, is a corrupt one, though it is found in other languages. See _rebebe_ in Godefroy's O. F. Dictionary, and _rebec_ in Littré.

1378. _Cause_ and _wolde_ are dissyllabic; and _brybe_, to rob, is a verb. But the editors ignore such elementary facts. The old editions insert _haue a_ before _brybe_; and the modern editions insert _han a_; which, as Wright observes, is not to be found in the MSS!

1381. See A. 103, 104, 108; and, for _courtepy_, A. 290.

1382. _hadde upon_, had on; cf. D. 559, 1018.

1384. 'Well overtaken, well met.' So in Partonope of Blois, 6390: 'Syr, _wele atake_!' Cf. G. 556.

1394. _for the name_, because of the disgrace attaching to the very name. The Friar is severe.

1405. _sworn-e_, a plural form; the word _sworn_ being here used adjectivally. See note to A. 1132, p. 66.

1408. _venim_, spite. _wariangles_, shrikes. According to C. Swainson (Provincial Names of British Birds), this is the Red-backed Shrike (_Lanius collurio_), called in Yorkshire the Weirangle or Wariangle. Some make it the Great Grey Shrike (_Lanius excubitor_). Thus Ray, in his Provincial Words, ed. 1674, p. 83, gives _warringle_ as a name for the Great Butcher-bird in the Peak of Derbyshire. 'This Bird,' says Willughby, 'in the North of England is called _Wierangle_, a name, it seems, common to us with the Germans, who (as Gesner witnesseth) about Strasburg, Frankfort, and elsewhere, call it _Werkangel_ or _Warkangel_, perchance (saith he) as it were _Wurchangel_, which literally rendered signifies "a suffocating angel."' So also, the mod. G. name is _Würgengel_, as if from _würgen_ and _Engel_. But this is a form [326] due to popular etymology, as will presently appear. Cotgrave has '_Pie engrouée_, a Wariangle, or a small Woodpecker'; but a wariangle is really a Shrike; indeed Cotgrave also has: '_Arneat_, the ravenous birde called a Shrike, Nynmurder, Wariangle'; which is correct. In the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, l. 1706, the word _wayryngle_ occurs as a term of abuse, signifying 'a little villain'; this is probably the same word, and answers to a dimin. form of A. S. _wearg_ (Icel. _vargr_, O. H. G. _warg_, _warc_), a felon, with the suffix _-incel_, as seen in A. S. _r[=a]p-incel_, a little rope, _h[=u]s-incel_, a little house. Bradley cites, as parallel forms, the O. H. G. _warchengil_ (see below), and the M. L. G. _wargingel_, which are probably formed in a similar way. The epithet 'little felon' or 'little murderer' agrees with other names for the shrike, viz. 'butcher-bird,' 'murdering-bird,' 'nine-murder,' nine-killer,' so called because it impales beetles and small birds on thorns, for the purpose of pulling them to pieces. This is why I take _venim_ to mean 'spite' rather than 'poison' in this passage.

Schmeller, in his Bavarian Dict., ii. 999, says that the _Lanius excubitor_ is called, in O. H. G. glosses, _Warchengel_ (Graff, i. 349); also _Wargengel_, _Würgengel_, and _Würger_.

1413. _north contree._ This is a sly joke, because, in the old Teutonic mythology, hell was supposed to be in the _north_. Wright refers us, for this belief, to his St. Patrick's Purgatory. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 111, about Lucifer's sitting _in the north_; cf. Isaiah, xiv. 13, 14; Milton, P. L. v. 755-760; Myrour of our Lady, ed. Blunt, p. 189. In the Icelandic Gylfaginning, we find--'niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr,' i. e. downwards and northwards lies the way to hell. Cf. l. 1448.

1428. _laborous_ is right; _offyc-e_ is trisyllabic.

1436. A proverbial expression; still in use in Lancashire and elsewhere; see N. and Q., 7 S. x. 446, 498. Cf. 'a taker and a bribing [robbing] feloe, and one for whom nothing was _to hotte nor to heauie_.' Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes; Cicero, § 50.

'Their loues they on the tenter-hookes did racke, Rost, boyl'd, bak'd, too too much white, claret, sacke, Nothing they thought _too heavy nor too hot_, Canne followed Canne, and pot succeeded pot.' John Taylor; Pennilesse Pilgrimage.

Of course the sense is--'too hot to hold.' Tyrwhitt quotes a similar phrase from Froissart, v. i. c. 229, 'ne laissoient riens a prendre, s'il n'estoit _trop chaud_, trop froid, ou _trop pesant_.'

1439. 'Were it not for my extortion, I could not live.'

1451. 'What I can thus acquire is the substance of all my income.' See note to A. 256; and _Feck_ in the New Eng. Dictionary.

1456. Read _ben'cite_; and observe the rime: _prey-e_, _sey ye_. Pronounce: (prei·y[*e], sei·y[*e]), where ([*e]) represents the obscure vowel, or the _a_ in _China_. [327]

1459. Such questions were eagerly discussed in the middle ages; see l. 1461-5.

1463. _make yow seme_, make it seem to you. Tyrwhitt has _wene_ (for _seme_), which occurs in MS. Cp. only.

1467. _iogelour_, juggler; for their tricks, see F. 1143. Wright says:--'The _jogelour_ (_joculator_) was originally the minstrel, and at an earlier period was an important member of society. He always combined mimicry and mountebank performances with poetry and music. In Chaucer's time he had so far degenerated as to have become a mere mountebank, and as it appears, to have merited the energetic epithet here applied to him.' Cf. my note to P. Plowman, C. xvi. 207.

1472. Read _abl' is_. MS. Hl. has:--'As most abíl is our-e pray to take.' Cf. F. _habile_, for which Cotgrave gives one meaning as 'apt unto anything he undertakes.'

1476. _pryme_, 9 A.M., a late time with early risers. See note to B. 4045, p. 250.

1483-91. Cf. Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 62-71; Job, i. 12; ii. 6.

1502. I suspect this to be an allusion to a story similar to that entitled 'A Lay of St. Dunstan' in the Ingoldsby Legends.

1503. This probably alludes to some of the legends about the apostles. Thus, in The Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 36, l. 72, some fiends are represented as doing the will of St. James the Greater; and in the same, p. 368, l. 50, a fiend says of St. Bartholomew:--'He mai do with us al that he wole, for bi-neothe him we beoth.' Cf. Acts, xix. 15.

1508. 'The adoption of the bodies of the deceased by evil spirits in their wanderings upon earth, was an important part of the medieval superstitions of this country, and enters largely into a variety of legendary stories found in the old chroniclers.'--Wright. Bell quotes from Hamlet, ii. 2:--'The spirit that I have seen May be the devil,' &c.

1509. _renably_, reasonably. The A. F. form of 'reasonable' was _resnable_ (as in the Life of Edw. the Confessor, l. 1602); and, by the law that _s_ became silent before _l_, _m_, and _n_ (as in _isle_, _blasmer_, _disner_, E. _isle_, _blame_, _dine_), this became _renable_. See note to P. Plowman, C. i. 176.

1510. _Phitonissa_; this is another spelling of _pythonissa_, which is the word used, in the Vulgate version of 1 Chron. x. 13, with reference to the witch of Endor. In 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, the phrase is _mulier pythonem habens_. The witch of Endor is also called _phitonesse_ in Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. iv, ed. Pauli, ii. 66; Barbour's Bruce, iv. 753; Skelton's Philip Sparowe, l. 1345; Lydgate's Falls of Princes, bk. ii. leaf xl, ed. Wayland; Gawain Douglas, prol. to the Æneid, ed. Small, ii. 10, l. 2; and in Sir D. Lyndesay's Monarchè, bk. iv. l. 5842. And see Hous of Fame, 1261. Cf. [Greek: pneuma Puthônos], Acts, xvi. 16.

1518. _in a chayer rede_, lecture about this matter as in a professorial chair, lecture like a professor; cf. l. 1638. The fiend is satirical.

1519. Referring to Vergil's Æneid, bk. vi, and Dante's Inferno.

1528. This much resembles A. 1132, q.v. [328]

1541. _for which_, for which reason; _stood_, stood still, was stuck fast.

1543. In Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 15, '_Heit_ or _Heck_' is mentioned as being 'a well-known interjection used by the country people to their horses.' Brand adds that 'the name of _Brok_ is still, too, in frequent use amongst farmers' draught oxen.' In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 9, is the exclamation '_hyte!_' The word for '_stop!_' was '_ho!_' like the modern _whoa!_ This explains a line in Gascoigne's Dan Bartholmew of Bathe, ed. Hazlitt, i. 136:--'His thought sayd _haight_, his sillie speache cryed _ho_.' Bell notes that '_Hayt_ is still the word used by waggoners in Norfolk, to make their horses go on'; and adds--'_Brok_ means a badger, hence applied to a gray horse, _myne owene lyard boy_ (l. 1563). _Scot_ is a common name for farm-horses in East-Anglia; as in A. 616.' In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 9, names of oxen are _Malle_, _Stott_ (doubtless miswritten for _Scott_), _Lemyng_, _Morelle_, and _White-horne_. The Craven Glossary says _hyte_ is used to turn horses to the left; whilst the Ger. _hott!_ or _hottot!_ is used to turn them to the right. In Shropshire, _'ait_ or _'eet_, said to horses, means 'go from me'; see _Waggoners' Words_ in Miss Jackson's Shropsh. Wordbook.

1548. MS. Hl. has--'her schal we _se play_.' Tyrwhitt has _pray_, which gives a false rime, for it should be _prey-e_; see l. 1455, and the note to l. 1456. The six MSS. all have _a pley_.

1559. _thakketh_ (pronounced _thakk'th_) _his hors_, pats, or strokes his horses; to encourage them. From A. S. _þaccian_, to stroke (a horse), Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, p. 303, l. 10. So also in A. 3304. (Not to _thwack_, or _whack_.)

1560. I adopt the reading of MSS. E. and Hn. MSS. Cm. Pt. Ln. have:--'And they bigunne to drawe and to stoupe,' which throws an awkward accent on the former _to_. MS. Hl. has:--'And thay bygon to drawen and to stowpe.' But I take _to-stoupe_ to be a compound verb, with the sense 'stoop forward'; though I can find no other example of its use. Being uncommon, it would easily have been resolved into two words, and this would necessitate the introduction of _to_ before _drawen_. _Bigonne_ usually takes _to_ after it, but not always; cf. 'Iapen tho bigan,' B. 1883.

1563. _twight_, pulled, lit. 'twitched.' '_Liard_, a common appellative for a horse, from its _grey_ colour, as _bayard_ was from _bay_ (see A. 4115). See P. Plowman, C. xx. 64 [and my note on the same]. Bp. Douglas, in his _Virgil_, usually puts _liart_ for _albus_, _incanus_, &c.'--T. Other names of horses are, _Favel_ for a chestnut, _Dun_ for a dun horse, _Ferrand_ for an iron-gray, and _Morel_, i. e. mulberry-coloured, for a roan.

1564. I give the reading of MSS. Hn. Cp. Pt. Ln., and of the black-letter editions. MS. Hl. has 'I pray god saue thy body and seint loy'; for which Cm. has 'the body,' as if 'the' were the original reading, and 'body' a supplied word. I take _se-ynt_ to be dissyllabic, as in A. 120, 509, 697, D. 604. As to _seint Loy_, the patron-saint of goldsmiths, farriers, smiths, and carters, see note to A. 120. [329]

1568. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 10335-6: 'car ge fesoie Une chose, et autre pensoie.'

1570. _upon cariage_, by way of quitting my claim to this cart and team; a satirical reflection on his failure to win anything by the previous occurrence. _Cariage_ was a technical term for a service of carrying, or a payment in lieu of it, due from a tenant to his landlord or feudal superior; see the New Eng. Dictionary, s. v. _Carriage_, I. 4. The landlord used to claim the use of the tenant's horses and carts for his own service, without payment for the use of them; and the tenant could only get off by paying _cariage_. This difficult use of the word is exemplified by two other passages in Chaucer, one of which is in the Cant. Tales, I. 752; q.v. The other is in his Boethius, bk. i. pr. 4, l. 50, where he says:--'The poeple of the provinces ben harmed outher by privee ravynes, or by comune tributes or _cariages_,' where the Lat. text has _uectigalibus_.

1573. _rebekke_, old woman; lit. Rebecca; see note to l. 1377 above.

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

1580. _winne thy cost_, earn your expenses.

1582. _viritrate_, a term of contempt for an old woman. Cf. 'thou olde _trot_,' addressed to an old woman; Thersites, in Hazlitt's Old Plays, i. 415. Jamieson gives _trat_, an old woman; with three examples from G. Douglas. Levins (1570) has: 'Tratte, _anus_.'

1591. _wisly_, certainly. _I ne may_, I cannot (come).

1593. _go_, walk; as usual, when used with _ryde_.

1595. _axe a libel_, apply to have a written declaration of the complaint against me, i. e. a copy of the indictment.

1596. _procutour_, proctor, to appear on my behalf. Only MS. Hl. has the full form _procuratour_; the rest have _procutour_ or _procatour_, as suitable for the metre. These forms are interesting, as furnishing the intermediate step between _procurator_ and _proctor_. So, in the Prompt. Parv., we find 'proketowre, _Procurator_,' and 'prokecye, _Procuracia_'; whence, by loss of _e_, _proctor_ and _proxy_. _there_ is dissyllabic, as in A. 3165, and frequently.

1613. _Seinte Anne_, saint Anna, whose day is July 26. In Luke, ii. 36, is mentioned 'Anna the prophetess.' At the commencement of the apocryphal gospel of Mary, we are told that the virgin's 'father's name was Joachim, and her mother's Anna.' This is the saint Anna here alluded to. See B. 641; G. 70; and Cursor Mundi, l. 10147. Hence it became a common practice to give a girl the name of Mary Ann, which combined the name of the virgin with that of her mother.

1617. _I payde_, and which I paid.

1618. _lixt_, liest; a common form; see P. Plowman, C. vii. 138 (B. v. 163); Plowman's Crede, 542.

1630. _stot_, properly a stallion (as in A. 615), or a bullock; also applied, as in the Cleveland Glossary, to an old ox. Here it clearly means 'old cow,' as a term of abuse. [330]

1635. _by right_; because the old woman really meant it; cf. l. 1568.

1644. _leve_, grant. Tyrwhitt wrongly has _lene_, lend. The difference between these two words, which are constantly confused (being written _leue_, _lene_, often indistinguishably) is explained in my note to P. Plowman, B. v. 263. _Leue_ (grant, permit) is usually followed by a dependent clause; but _lene_ (lend, grant, give) by an accusative case.

1647. I supply _and_ to fill up the line. This _and_ appears in all the modern editions, but _without authority, and without any notice that the MSS. omit it_. Yet it neither appears in any one of our seven MSS. nor in MSS. Dd., Ii., or Mm. Neither does it appear in the black-letter editions. Indeed MS. E. marks the scansion thus: After the text of Crist | Poul | and John; as if the word 'Poul' occupied a whole foot of the verse. And I can readily believe that the line was meant to be so scanned.

1657. See Ps. x. 9. _sit_, short for _sitteth_.

1661. See 1 Cor. x. 13. _over_, above, beyond.

1662. For Christ as a 'knight,' see P. Plowman, C. xxi. 11; Ancren Riwle, p. 390.

1663. For _Somnours_, several MSS. have _Somnour_. MS. Cm. is defective; MS. Dd. supports the reading which I have given. It is immaterial, as _thise Somnours_ includes the particular Somnour who was one of the party.

THE SOMPNOUR'S PROLOGUE.

1676. The words of St. Paul, 2 Cor. xii. 4, have suggested numerous accounts of revelations made to saints regarding heaven and hell. In Bede's Eccl. History, bk. iii. c. 19, we are told how St. Furseus saw a vision of hell; so also did St. Guthlac, as related in his life, cap. 5. A long vision of purgatory is recounted in the Revelation to the Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber; and another in the account of St. Patrick's Purgatory, in the Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann. Long descriptions of hell are common, as in the Cursor Mundi, l. 23195, and Hampole's Pricke of Conscience, l. 6464. But the particular story to which Chaucer here alludes is, probably, not elsewhere extant.

1688. Possibly Chaucer was thinking of the wings of Lucifer, greater than any sails, as described in Dante's Inferno, xxxiv. 48; whence also Milton speaks of Satan's 'sail-broad vans,' P. L. ii. 927. A _carrik_ or _carrack_ is a large trading-ship, and we have here the earliest known example of the use of the word in English; see _Carrack_ in the New Eng. Dictionary.

1690-1. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 7577-8; in vol. i. p. 257.

1695. Line 2119 of the House of Fame is: 'Twenty thousand in a route'; here we have the same line with the addition of _freres_. [331] Both lines are cast in the same mould, both being deficient in the first foot. Thus the scansion is: Twen | ty thou | sand, &c. In order to conceal this fact, Tyrwhitt reads: '_A_ twenty thousand,' &c., against all authority; but Wright, Bell, Morris, and Gilman all allow the line to stand as Chaucer wrote it, and as it is here given. The black-letter editions do the same. It is a very small matter that all the copies except E. have _on_ for _in_; as the words are equivalent, I keep _in_ (as in E.), because _in_ is the reading in the Hous of Fame.

THE SOMNOURS TALE.

For further remarks about this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 452.

It is principally directed against the Frere; see the description of him in the Prologue, A. 208.

1710. Holderness is an extremely flat district; it lies at the S. E. angle of Yorkshire, between Hull, Driffield, Bridlington and Spurn Point; see the Holderness Glossary, E. D. S. 1877. We find that Chaucer makes no attempt here, as in the Reeve's Tale, to imitate the Yorkshire dialect.

1712. _to preche._ The friars were popular preachers of the middle ages. They were to live by begging, and were therefore often called the Mendicant Orders; see l. 1912, and the notes to A. 208, 209. The friar of our story was a _Carmelite_; see note to l. 2116.

1717. _trentals._ A _trental_ (from Low Lat. _trentale_, O. F. _trentel_) was an office of thirty masses, to be said on so many consecutive days, for the benefit of souls in purgatory. It also meant, as here, the sum paid for the same to the priest or friar. See Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 299, 374; ed. Matthew (E. E. T. S.) pp. 211, 516; and the poem entitled St. Gregory's Trental, in Religious, Political, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 83.

1722. _possessioners._ This term seems to have been applied (1) to the regular orders of monks who possessed landed property, and (2) to the beneficed clergy. I think there is here particular reference to the latter, as indicated by the occurrence of _preest_ in l. 1727, _curat_ in 1816, and _viker_ and _persone_ in l. 2008. The friars, on the contrary, were supposed to have no endowments, but to subsist entirely upon alms; they contrived, however, to evade this restriction, and in Pierce the Plowman's Crede, there is a description of a Dominican convent built with considerable splendour. I take the expression 'Thanked be god' in l. 1723 to be a parenthentical remark made by the Somnour who tells the story, as it is hardly consistent with the views of the friars. As to the perpetual jealousies between the friars and the possessioners, see P. Plowman, B. v. 144.

1728. It was usual (as said in note to l. 1717) to sing the thirty masses on thirty consecutive days, as Chaucer here remarks. But the friar says they are better when 'hastily y-songe'; and it would appear [332] that the friars used occasionally to sing all the thirty masses in one day, and so save a soul from twenty-nine days of purgatory; cf. ll. 1729, 1732. In English Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 8, we have an example of this. The wardens are there directed to summon the Minorite Friars to say the dirge, 'and _on the morwe_ to seie a _trent_ of masses atte same freres.'

In Jack Upland, § 13, we find: 'Why make ye [freres] men beleeue that your golden trentall sung of you, to take therefore ten shillings, or at least fiue shillings, woll bring souls out of hell, or out of purgatorie?'

1730. _oules._ The M. E. forms _oule_, _owel_, _owul_, as well as A. S. _awul_, _awel_, are various spellings of E. _awl_, which see in the New Eng. Dict. Hence _oules_ means _awls_ or piercing instruments. In the Life of St. Katherine, l. 2178, the tormentors torture the saint with 'eawles of irne,' i. e. iron awls. In Horstmann's South-English Legendary (E. E. T. S.), St. Blase is tormented with 'oules kene,' which tore his flesh as when men comb wool (p. 487, l. 84); hence he became the patron saint of wool-combers. Similar tortures were applied by fiends in the medieval descriptions of hell. See Ancren Riwle, p. 212; St. Brandan, ed. Wright, pp. 22, 48.

'There are the furies tossing damnèd souls On burning forks.' Marlowe, Faustus, Act v. sc. 4.

1734. _qui cum patre._ 'This is part of the formula with which prayers and sermons are still sometimes concluded in the Church of England.'--Bell. In a sermon for Ascension Day, in Morris's O. E. Homilies, ii. 115, we have at the end an allusion, in English, to Christ, after which follows:--'qui cum patre et spiritu sancto uiuit et regnat per omnia secula seculorum.' Such was the usual formula.

1740. The friars often begged in pairs; in this way, each was a check upon the other as regarded the things thus obtained. In Jack Upland, § 23, we find the friars are asked:--'What betokeneth that ye goe tweine and tweine togither?' Langland tells us how he met two friars; see P. Plowman, C. xi. 8.

1741. _tables_, writing tablets. In Horman's Vulgaria, leaf 81, we read:--'Tables be made of leues of yuery, boxe, cyprus, and other stouffe, daubed with waxe to wrytte on.' And again, in the same:--'Poyntellis of yron, and poyntyllis of syluer, bras, boon, or stoone.' This is a survival of the use of the Roman waxed tablet and _stilus_.

1743. Jack Upland (§ 20) asks the friar:--'Why writest thou hir names in thy tables that yeueth thee mony?' The usual reason was, that the donors might be prayed for; see l. 1745. Cf. l. 1752.

1745. _Ascaunces_, as if, as though, as if to promise. In G. 838, q.v., it means 'you might suppose that,' or 'possibly.' In Troilus, i. 205, it means 'as if to say'; Boccaccio's Italian has _quasi dicesse_. It also occurs in Troilus, i. 292; Lydgate, Fall of Princes, fol. 136 b (Tyrwhitt); [333] Tale of Beryn, 1797; Palladius on Husbandry, vi. 39; Sidney's Arcadia, ed. 1622, p. 162; and in Gascoigne's Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 113, where the marginal note has 'as who should say.' See the New Eng. Dictionary, where the etymology is said to be unknown.

I have since found that it is a hybrid compound. The first part of it is E. _as_, used superflously and tautologically; the latter part of it is the O. F. _quanses_, 'as if,' first given in a dictionary by Godefroy in 1889, with six examples, and three other spellings, viz. _qanses_, _quainses_, and _queinsi_. Godefroy refers us to Romania, xviii. 152, and to Foerster's edition of _Cliges_, note to l. 4553. Kilian gives Mid. Du. '_quantsuys_, quasi'; borrowed from O. French, without any prefix.

1746. Nothing came amiss to the friars. They begged for 'corn, monee, chese,' &c.; see Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 304. And in Skelton's Colin Clout, l. 842, we read of the friars:--

'Some to gather chese; Loth they are to lese Eyther corne or malte; Somtyme meale and salte, Somtyme a bacon-flycke,' &c.

1747. _Goddes_ here translated the French expression _de Dieu_, meaning 'sent from God.' Tyrwhitt says that the true meaning of _de Dieu_ 'is explained by M. de la Monnoye in a note upon the _Contes de D. B. Periers_, t. ii. p. 107. _Belle serrure de Dieu_: Expression du petit peuple, qui raporte pieusement tout à Dieu. Rien n'est plus commun dans la bouche des bonnes vieilles, que ces espèces d'Hébraïsmes: _Il m'en conte un bel écu de Dieu; Il ne me reste que ce pauvre enfant de Dieu. Donnez-moi une bénite aumône de Dieu._ See _goddes halfpeny_ in l. 1749. (The explanation by Speght, and in Cowel's Interpreter, s. v. _kichell_, seems to be, as Tyrwhitt says, an invention.)

_kechil_, a little cake. The form _kechell_ occurs in the Ormulum, l. 8662; answering to the early A. S. _coecil_, occurring as a gloss to _tortum_ in the Epinal Glossary, 993; different from A. S. _c[=i]cel_ (for _c[=y]cel_), given as _cicel_ in Bosworth's Dictionary. The cognate M. H. G. word is _küechel[=i]n_ (Schade), O. H. G. _chuochel[=i]n_, double dimin. from O. H. G. _kuocho_ (G. _Kuchen_), a cake; see _Kuchen_ in Kluge. The E. _cake_ is a related word, but with a difference in vowel-gradation.

_trip_, 'a morsel.' 'Les _tripes_ d'un fagot, the smallest sticks in a faggot'; Cotgrave.

1749. _masse-peny_, a penny for saying a mass. Jack Upland, § 19, says:--'Freer, whan thou receiuest a peny for to say a masse, whether sellest thou Gods body for that peny, or thy prayer, or els thy travell?'

1751. '_dagon_, a slip, or piece. It is found in Chaucer, Berners, and Steevens' Supp. to Dugdale, ii. ap. 370, applied in each instance to a blanket'; Halliwell. Cf. M. E. _dagge_, a strip of cloth.

1755. _hostes man_, servant to the guests at the convent. _Hoste_ seems here to mean 'guest,' which is one of the meanings of O. F. _hoste_ (see [334] Cotgrave). This sense is rare in M. E., but it occurs in the Romance of Merlin, ed. Wheatley, iii. 684, last line but one. Because he 'bare the bag,' this attendant on the friars was nicknamed Iscariot; cf. John, xii. 6. 'Thei leden with hem a Scarioth, stolen fro is eldris by thefte, to robbe pore men bi beggynge'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 49.

1768. _the gode man_, the goodman, or master of the house. MS. Hl. has _housbond-man_, and MSS. Cp. Ln. _bonde man_; all with the same sense. _place_, house; cf. note to B. 1910; p. 184.

1770. _Deus hic_, God be here; 'the ordinary formula of benediction on entering a house'; Wright.

1775. A fine realistic touch; the friar made himself quite at home.

1778. _go walked_, gone on a walk. For _go walked_, as in all the seven MSS., Tyrwhitt substitutes _y-walked_, suppressing this characteristic idiom. See note to C. 406; p. 272.

1792. _glose_, gloss, interpretation, as distinguished from the text.

1794. Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 6. In the margin of E., 'Litera occidit, &c.'

1804. Kissing was an ordinary form of salutation.

1810. It was usual, I believe, to use a form of deprecation of this sort in reply to praise. The sense is--'but I am aware that I have defects, and may God amend them.'

1816. _curats_, parish clergy; cf. note to l. 1722.

1820. Cf. 'thou shalt catch men'; Luke, v. 10; 'fishers of men,' Matt. iv. 19; Rom. Rose, (E. version), 7492.

1824. 'For (the sake of the) holy Trinity.' _Seint-e_ is feminine.

1825. _pissemyre_, ant. Cf. 'as angry as a wasp,' in Heywood's Proverbs.

1832. _Ie vous dy_, I tell you. A common phrase; see King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 79; Rom. of the Rose, 7408 (in vol. i. p. 254).

1834. _ire_ (Lat. _ira_) is one of the seven deadly sins; hence the friar's sermon against it, in ll. 2005-2088.

1842. 'But I hope no animal is ever killed on my account.' A strong hint that he always expected some special provision to be made for him.

1845. Cf. John, iv. 34; Job, xxiii. 12.

1853. _toun_, village; or, precincts of this farm-house.

1857. Visions of saints being carried to heaven are not uncommon. Bede relates one, of Saint Earcongota; Eccl. Hist. bk. iii. c. 8.

1859. _fermerer_, the friar who had charge of the infirmary. Put for _enfermerer_, from O. Fr. _enfermerier_ (Godefroy). So also _fermorie_, an infirmary, in P. Pl. B. xiii. 108.

1862. _maken hir Iubilee_, keep their jubilee; i. e. having served fifty years in the convent, they have obtained certain privileges, one of which was to go about alone; see note to l. 1740. Tyrwhitt refers us to Ducange, s. v. _Sempectæ_.

1864. _trikling_, so E. Hn.; Cm. _trynkelynge_ (probably by error); rest _trilling_. Cf. B. 1864.

1866. 'Nothing but a thanksgiving would have been appropriate for [335] a child dying in infancy, of whose translation to paradise the friar pretends that he had seen a vision'; Bell.

1872. _burel_ (Pt. Hl. _borel_) _folk_, lay folk, the laity. 'The term seems to have arisen from the material of their clothing, which was not used by the clergy'; Wright. Cf. _borel_, in D. 356; _borel men_, i. e. laymen, in B. 3145; and _borel clerkes_, lay clerks, learned laymen, in P. Plowman, B. x. 286.

1877. See Luke, xvi. 19, 20.

1880. In the margin of E., 'Melius est animam saginare quam corpus.' Jean de Meun, in his Testament, 346, says of misers: 'Amegrient leurs ames, plus que leurs cors n'engressent.'

1881. See 1 Tim. vi. 8.

1885. See Exod. xxxiv. 28.

1890. See 1 Kings, xix. 8.

1894. See Levit. x. 9.

1906. _mendinants_, mendicant friars. Tyrwhitt has _mendiants_, but, in his notes, admits that _mendinants_ is the right reading, as he found the word to be 'constantly so spelled in the Stat. 12 Rich. II. capp. 7, 8, 9, 10.' The same spelling occurs repeatedly in P. Plowman; see note to P. Pl. C. xvi. 3. See _Mendiener_, to beg, in Godefroy's O. Fr. Dictionary.

1911. 'The thridde deceyt of thise ordris is that thei passen othere in preyeris, bothe for tyme thei preyen and for multitude of hem'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 317.

1915-7. See note to C. 505; p. 278.

1923. See Matt. v. 3. _by freres_, (1922), concerning friars. Certainly, there is no 'text' to this effect; but the friar trusted to find it _in a maner glose_, in some kind of comment on the text.

1926. An allusion to _possessioners_; see note to l. 1722.

1929. _Iovinian._ I think this is the same Jovinian as is mentioned in D. 675; for Chaucer frequently quotes the treatise by Jerome against this heretic. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 30, refers in a footnote to 'Jovinian, _the enemy of fasts and of celibacy_, who was persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerome.' The other Jovinian was a fabulous Roman emperor, who was awhile deposed, like Nebuchadnezzar, for his pride and luxury, as related in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 59 (or