Part 25

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. _loveth_ _a_ 5; contracted _stant_ _a_ 74. 3 pl. _schewen_ _a_ 136, _halsen_ _a_ 148, _be_ (in rime) _a_ 92. pres. p. _growende_ _a_ 80. strong pp. _schape_ (in rime) _a_ 130, beside _schapen_ _a_ 169. PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. nom. _sche_ _a_ 32; pl. _thei_ _a_ 148; _here_ _a_ 144; _hem_ _a_ 112.

Unaccented final _-e_ is treated as in Chaucer, having its full value in the verse when it represents an inflexion or final vowel in Old English or Old French, e.g.

_And for he scholdė slepė softė_ _a_ 93 _An apė, which at thilkė throwė_ _b_ 5

#Sounds#: _e_ appears as in Kentish for OE. _y_: _hell_ 'hill' _a_ 65, 79, 86; _keste_ 'kissed' _a_ 178; note the rimes _unschette_: _lette_ _a_ 71-2; _pet_ 'pit': _let_ _b_ 9-10; and less decisive _pet_: _knet_ (OE. _knyttan_) _b_ 29-30, 53-4; _dreie_: _beie_ _b_ 23-4.

#Spelling#: _ie_ represents close _ẹ̄_: _flietende_ _a_ 157, _hier_ _b_ 34; _diemed_ _b_ 216.

#Syntax#: The elaborate machinery of sentence connexion deserves special attention; and many turns of phrase are explained by Gower's fluency in French.

* * * * *

_a_ 1. Gower follows Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, Bk. xi. Chaucer tells the story of Ceix and Alcyone in his _Death of Blanche the Duchess_, ll. 62 ff. This is presumably the early work to which the Man of Law refers:

_I kan right now no thrifty tale seyn But Chaucer, thogh he kan but lewedly On metres and on rymyng craftily, Hath seyd hem, in swich Englissh as he kan, Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man; And if he have noght seyd hem, leve brother, In o book, he hath seyd hem in another; For he hath toold of loveris up and doun Mo than Ovide made of mencioun In his ~Epistelles~, that been ful olde. What sholde I tellen hem, syn they ben tolde? In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcione_, &c.

(Link to _Man of Law's Tale_, ll. 46 ff.)

Gower's rendering is the more poetical.

_a_ 2. _Trocinie._ Ovid's _Trachinia tellus_, so called from the city of Trachis, north-west of Thermopylae.

_a_ 23. _As he which wolde go_: otiose, or at best meaning no more than 'desiring to go'. Cp. _b_ 25 _As he which hadde_ = 'having' simply; and similarly _b_ 37, 203. It is an imitation of a contemporary French idiom _comme celui qui_.

_a_ 26. _and_: the displacement of the conjunction from its natural position at the beginning of the clause is characteristic of Gower's verse. Cp. l. 152 _Upon the morwe and up sche sterte_ = 'and in the morning she got up', and _a_ 45, 49, _b_ 121, 124, 135, 160, 182. See notes to ll. 32, 78 f.

_a_ 32. Editors put a comma after _wepende_, and no stop after _seileth_: but it is Alceoun who weeps. The displacement of _and_ is exemplified in the notes to l. 26 and ll. 78 f.

_a_ 37. 'One had not to look for grief'; a regular formula of understatement, meaning 'her grief was great'.

_a_ 53. _Hire reyny cope_, &c.: the rainbow, which was the sign or manifestation of Iris.

_a_ 59 ff.

_Prope Cimmerios longo spelunca recessu, Mons cavus, ignavi domus et penetralia Somni._

(_Metamorphoses_ xi. 592-3.)

Much of the poetry of Gower's description is due to Ovid.

_a_ 78 f. Editors put no stop after _may_ and a comma after _hell_. Hence _The New English Dictionary_ quotes this passage as an isolated instance of _noise_, transitive, meaning 'disturb with noise'. But _noise_ is intransitive, _hell_ is governed by _aboute round_, and the position of _bot_ is abnormal as in l. 105. Cp. notes to ll. 26, 32, and render 'But all round about the hill'.

_a_ 105. For the word order see notes to ll. 26, 32, 78 f.

_a_ 117. _The lif_, 'the man', cp. IV _a_ 43.

_a_ 118. _Ithecus_: for Icelos. According to Ovid 'Icelos' was the name by which he was known to the gods, but men called him 'Phobetor'.

_a_ 123. _Panthasas_: Ovid's _Phantasos_.

_a_ 152. See note to l. 26.

_a_ 197. The halcyon, usually identified with the kingfisher, was supposed to build a floating nest on the sea in midwinter, and to have power to calm the winds and waves at that season, bringing 'halcyon weather'.

_b_ 2. _I finde._ Matthew Paris in his _Chronica Maiora_ (ed. Luard, Rolls Series, vol. ii, pp. 413 ff.) gives a similar story, which, he says, King Richard the First often told to rebuke ingratitude. In this version, Vitalis of Venice falls into a pit dug as a trap for wild beasts. The rescued animals are a lion and a serpent; the rescuer is nameless, and the gem given to him by the serpent has not the magic virtue of returning whenever sold. Nearer to Gower is the story told in Nigel Wireker's _Speculum Stultorum_, a late twelfth-century satire in Latin verse, which, from the name of its principal character Burnellus the Ass, who is ambitious to have a longer tail, is sometimes called _Burnellus_; cp. Chaucer, _Nun's Priest's Tale_, l. 492:

_I have wel rad in Daun Burnel the Asse Among his vers_, &c.

The poem is printed in T. Wright's _Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century_ (Rolls Series, 1872), vol. i. At the end the Ass returns disappointed to his master Bernardus (= Bardus). Bernardus, when gathering wood, hears Dryanus (= Adrian), a rich citizen of Cremona, call from a pit for help. The rescued animals are a lion, a serpent, and an ape. The gem given by the serpent in token of gratitude always returns to Bernardus, who, with more honesty than Gower's poor man shows, takes it back to the buyer. The fame of the marvellous stone reaches the king; his inquiries bring to light the whole story; and Dryanus is ordered to give half his goods to Bernardus.

Gower probably worked on a later modification of Nigel's story.

_b_ 86. _blessed_, 'crossed (himself)'.

_b_ 89. _Betwen him and his asse_, i.e. pulling together with the ass. The ass is, of course, the distinguished Burnellus.

_b_ 116. _his ape_: for _this ape_ (?).

_b_ 191. _Justinian_, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (d. 565), was best known for his codification of the Roman Law, and so is named here as the type of a lawgiver.

XIII

#Dialect#: South-Western, with some Midland forms.

#Inflexions#:

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. _bloweþ_ _a_ 7, _casteþ_ _a_ 8. 3 pl. _buþ_ _a_ 10, _habbeþ_ _a_ 15. pres. p. _slyttyng_, _frotyng_ _b_ 59. strong pp. _yknowe_ _a_ 12, _ysode_ _a_ 30. NOUN: Note the plural in _-(e)n_, _tren_ 'trees' _a_ 44, 51, 53; _chyldern_ _b_ 16 is a double plural. PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. _hy_ _a_ 17; _here_ _a_ 61; _ham_ _a_ 23. Note the unstressed 3 sg. and 3 pl. form _a_, e.g. at _a_ 13, 27.

#Sounds#: There is no instance of _v_ for initial _f_, which is evidenced in the spelling of early South-Western writers like Robert of Gloucester (about 1300), or of _z_ for initial _s_, which is less commonly shown in spelling. _u_ for OE. _y_ occurs in _hulles_ 'hills' _a_ 18 (beside _bysynes_ _b_ 24, where Modern English has _u_ in spelling but _i_ in pronunciation; and _lift_ (OE. _lyft_) _b_ 39, where Modern English has the South-Eastern form _left_).

* * * * *

_a_ 2-3. _Mayster... Minerua... hys_: Trevisa appears to have understood 'Minerva' as the name of a god.

_a_ 6-49. Higden took all this passage from Book i of the twelfth-century Annals of Alfred of Beverley (ed. Hearne, pp. 6-7). The _Polychronicon_ is a patchwork of quotations from earlier writers.

_a_ 7. _Pectoun._ Higden has _ad Peccum_, and Alfred of Beverley _in monte qui vocatur Pec_, i.e. The Peak of Derbyshire. _cc_ and _ct_ are not distinguishable in some hands of the time, and Trevisa has made _Peccum_ into _Pectoun_.

_a_ 14. _Cherdhol._ Hearne's text of Alfred of Beverley has _Cherole_; Henry of Huntingdon (about 1150), who gives the same four marvels in his _Historia Anglorum_, has _Chederhole_; and on this evidence the place has been identified with Cheddar in Somerset, where there are famous caves.

_a_ 22. _an egle hys nest_: cp. _b_ 23 _a child hys brouch_. This construction has two origins: (1) It is a periphrasis for the genitive, especially in the case of masculine and neuter proper names which had no regular genitive in English; (2) It is an error arising from false manuscript division of the genitive suffix _-es_, _-is_, from its stem.

_a_ 36. <_þat_> here and in l. 52 is inserted on the evidence of the other MSS. Syntactically its omission is defensible, for the suppressed relative is a common source of difficulty in Middle English; see the notes to V 4-6, 278-9; X 146; XIV _c_ 54; XVII 66.

_a_ 50. _Wynburney._ Wimborne in Dorset. Here St. Cuthburga founded a nunnery, which is mentioned in one of Aldhelm's letters as early as A.D. 705. The information that it is 'not far from Bath', which is hardly accurate, was added by Higden to the account of the marvel he found in the _Topographia Hibernica_ of Giraldus Cambrensis (vol. v, p. 86 of the Rolls Series edition of his works).

_a_ 54-64. Higden took this passage from Giraldus, _Itinerarium Cambriae_, Bk. ii, c. 11 (vol. vi, p. 139 of the Rolls edition).

_a_ 60-1. _be at here aboue_, 'be over them', 'have the upper hand'.

_a_ 63. _Pimbilmere_: the English name for Lake Bala.

_b_ 6-7. _þe Flemmynges._ The first settlement of Flemings in Pembrokeshire took place early in the twelfth century, and in 1154, Henry II, embarrassed alike by the turbulence of the Welsh, and of the new host of Flemish mercenaries who had come in under Stephen, encouraged a further settlement. They formed a colony still distinguishable from the surrounding Welsh population.

_b_ 11-12. The threefold division of the English according to their Continental origin dates back to Bede's _Ecclesiastical History_. But the areas settled by Bede's three tribes do not correspond to Southern, Northern, and Midland. The Jutes occupied Kent, whence the South-Eastern dialect; the Saxons occupied the rest of the South, whence the South-Western dialect; and the Angles settled in the Midlands and the North; so that the Midland and Northern dialects are both Anglian, and derive from the same Continental tribe or tribal group.

_b_ 26. _þe furste moreyn_: the Black Death of 1349. There were fresh outbreaks of plague in 1362, 1369, 1376.

_b_ 26-42. The bracketed passage is an addition by Trevisa himself, and is of primary importance for the history of English and of English education. See the valuable article by W. H. Stevenson in _An English Miscellany Presented to Dr. Furnivall_, pp. 421 ff.

_b_ 27-8. _Iohan Cornwal, a mayster of gramere._ A 'master of grammar' was a licensed teacher of grammar. Mr. Stevenson points out that in 1347-8 John of Cornwall received payment from Merton College, Oxford, for teaching the boys of the founder's kin. His countryman Trevisa probably had personal knowledge of his methods of teaching.

_b_ 39-40. _and a scholle passe þe se_, 'if they should cross the sea'.

_b_ 47-8. The bracketed words are introduced by Trevisa.

_b_ 50 f. _and ys gret wondur_: _and_ is superfluous and should perhaps be deleted.

_b_ 58-65. Though still often quoted as a fourteenth-century witness to the pronunciation of Northern English (e.g. by K. Luick, _Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache_, 1914, pp. 40 f.), this passage, as Higden acknowledges, comes from the Prologue to Book iii of William of Malmesbury's _Gesta Pontificum_, completed in the year 1125: see the Rolls Series edition, p. 209.

XIV

_a_ 2. _Bannokburn._ Minot's subject is not so much the defeat of the English at Bannockburn in 1314, as the English victory at Halidon Hill on 19 July 1333, which he regards as a vengeance for Bannockburn.

_a_ 7. _Saint Iohnes toune_: Perth, so called from its church of St. John the Baptist. It was occupied by the English in 1332 after the defeat of the Scots at Dupplin Moor.

_a_ 13. _Striflin_, 'Stirling'.

_a_ 15. Hall suggests that this refers to Scotch raids on the North of England undertaken to distract Edward III from the siege of Berwick.

_a_ 19 f. _Rughfute riueling... Berebag_: nicknames for the Scots, the first because they wore brogues (_riuelings_) of rough hide; the second because, to allow of greater mobility, each man carried his own bag of provisions instead of relying on a baggage train.

_a_ 22. _Brig_ = _Burghes_ l. 25, 'Bruges'. At this time Scots, English, and French had all close connexions with the Netherlands. Observe that John Crab, who aided the Scots in the defence of Berwick (note to X 15), was a Fleming.

_a_ 35. _at Berwik._ Berwick fell as a result of the battle of Halidon Hill which the Scots fought with the object of raising the siege. For an earlier siege of Berwick, in 1319, see No. X.

_a_ 36. _get_, 'watch', 'be on the look out' (ON. _gǽta_).

_b_ 5-6. Calais was at this time a convenient base for piracy in the Channel.

_b_ 19. _A bare_: Edward III, whom Minot often refers to as 'the boar'.

_b_ 24-6. In preparation for the long siege Edward III had built a regular camp beside Calais.

_b_ 32. _Sir Philip._ Philip de Valois, Philip VI of France (1293-1350). His son, John Duke of Normandy (1319-64), who succeeded him in 1350, is of good memory as a lover of fine books. Two are mentioned in the notes to XI _a_ 25 ff. and XI _b_ 234. A splendid copy of the _Miracles de Notre Dame_, preserved until recently in the Seminary Library at Soissons, seems also to have been captured with his baggage at Poitiers, for it was bought back from the English by King Charles V. Another famous book produced by his command was the translation of Livy by Bersuire, with magnificent illuminations. The spirit of the collector was not damped by his captivity in England from 1356-60, for his account books show that he continued to employ binders and miniaturists, to encourage original composition, and to buy books, especially books of romance. See _Notes et Documents relatifs à Jean, Roi de France_, &c., ed. by Henry of Orleans, Duc d'Aumale (Philobiblon Soc., London 1855-6).

_b_ 40. _þe Cardinales._ Pope Clement VI had sent cardinals Annibale Ceccano bishop of Frascati, and Etienne Aubert, who became Pope Innocent VI in 1352, to arrange a peace between France and England. But the English were suspicious of the Papal court at Avignon, and accused the cardinals of favouring the French cause.

_b_ 82. _Sir Iohn de Viene._ Jean de Vienne, seigneur de Pagny (d. 1351), a famous captain in the French wars.

_c_ 5 f. 'They (friends) are so slippery when put to the test, so eager to have , and so unwilling to give up .'

_c_ 14. _And_, 'if'.

_c_ 47. King John of France was captured at Poitiers in 1356 and held in England as a prisoner until the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360. See note to XIV _b_ 32.

_c_ 54. Note the omission of the relative: 'which recked not a cleat for all France', and cp. ll. 43-4, XIII _a_ 36 (note).

_c_ 59. _his helm_, 'its helm'—the bar by which the rudder was moved.

_c_ 61. 'The King sailed and rowed aright'; on _him_, see note to XV _g_ 24.

_c_ 83. _An ympe_: Richard II.

_c_ 90. _sarri_: not in the dictionaries in this sense, is probably OFr. _serré_, _sarré_, in the developed meaning 'active', 'vigorous', seen in the adv. _sarréement_.

_c_ 103-4. 'If we are disloyal and inactive, so that what is rarely seen is straightway forgotten.'

_c_ 108. 'Who was the fountain of all courage.'

_c_ 111. _los_, 'fame'.

_d_ 1. SCHEP: here means 'shepherd', 'pastor', a name taken by Ball as appropriate to a priest.

_Seynte Marie prest of Ȝork_, 'priest of St. Mary's of York' (cp. note to I 44), a great Benedictine abbey founded soon after the Conquest; see Dugdale, _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. iii, pp. 529 ff. _Marie_ does not take the _s_ inflexion, because it has already the Latin genitive form, cp. _Mary-ȝet_ X 163.

_d_ 2. _Iohan Nameles_, 'John Nobody', for _nameless_ has the sense 'obscure', 'lowly'.

_d_ 6. _Hobbe þe Robbere._ _Hob_ is a familiar form for _Robert_, and it has been suggested that _Hobbe þe Robbere_ may refer to Robert Hales, the Treasurer of England, who was executed by the rebels in 1381. But _Robert_ was a conventional name for a robber, presumably owing to the similarity of sound. Already in the twelfth century, Mainerus, the Canterbury scribe of the magnificent Bible now in the library of Sainte-Geneviève at Paris, plays upon it in an etymological account of his family: _Secundus_ (sc. _frater meus_) _dicebatur Robertus, quia a re nomen habuit: spoliator enim diu fuit et praedo_. From the fourteenth century lawless men were called _Roberts men_. In _Piers Plowman_ Passus v (A- and B-texts) there is a confession of 'Robert the Robber'; and the literary fame of the prince of highwaymen, 'Robin Hood', belongs to this period.

_d_ 14. _do wel and bettre_: note this further evidence of the popularity of _Piers Plowman_, with its visions of _Dowel_, _Dobet_, and _Dobest_.

XV

_a_ 8. _Þe clot him clingge!_ 'May the clay cling to him!' i.e. 'Would he were dead!'

_a_ 12. _Þider_: MS. _Yider_, and conversely MS. _Þiif_ 23 for _Yiif_ 'if'. _y_ and _þ_ are endlessly confused by scribes.

_b_ 1. _Lenten ys come... to toune._ In the Old English _Metrical Calendar_ phrases like _cymeð... us to tune Martius reðe_, 'fierce March comes to town', are regular. The meaning is 'to the dwellings of men', 'to the world'.

_b_ 3. _Þat_: construe with _Lenten_.

_b_ 7. _him þreteþ_, 'chides', 'wrangles' (ON. _þrǽta_?). See the thirteenth-century debate of _The Thrush and the Nightingale_ (_Reliquiae Antiquae_, vol. i, pp. 241 ff.), of which the opening lines are closely related to this poem.

_b_ 11. _Ant wlyteþ on huere wynter wele_, 'and look at their winter happiness (?)'. This conflicts with _huere wynter wo_ above; and the explanation that the birds have forgotten the hardships of the past winter and recall only its pleasures is forced. Holthausen's emendation _wynne wele_ 'wealth of joys' (cp. l. 35) is good.

_b_ 20. _Miles_: a crux. It has been suggested without much probability that _miles_ means 'animals' from Welsh _mīl_.

_b_ 28. _Deawes donkeþ þe dounes._ Of the suggestions made to improve the halting metre the best is _þise_ for _þe_. The poet is thinking of the sparkle of dew in the morning sun; cp. _Sir Gawayne_ 519 f.:

_When þe donkande dewe dropeȝ of þe leueȝ To bide a blysful blusch of þe bryȝt sunne._

_b_ 29-30. 'Animals with their cries (_rounes_) unmeaning to us (_derne_), whereby they converse (_domes for te deme_).' For the weakened sense of _deme_ (_domes_) see note to V 115.

_c_ 30. _Wery so water in wore_: the restless lover (l. 21) has tossed all night like the troubled waters in a _wore_; cp. _I wake so water in wore_ in another lyric of the same MS. It has been suggested that _wore_ = Old High German _wuor_ 'weir'; but the rimes in both passages show that the stem is OE. _wār_, not _wōr_.

_d_ 2. _the holy londe_: because Ireland was _par excellence_ 'the Land of the Saints'.

_f._ I am obliged to Professor Carleton Brown for the information that this poem is found, with two additional stanzas, in MS. 18. 7. 21 of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and that the full text will be published shortly in his _Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century_.

_f_ 4. _bere_ (OE. _bȳr_) riming with _fere_ (OE. _(ge)fēra_) indicates a South-Eastern composition.

_g_ 1. _Scere Þorsday_: Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday.

_g_ 1-2. _aros_: _Iudas_: the alternative form _aras_ may have given the rime in the original, but it is not justifiable to accept this as certain and so to assume an early date of composition for the poem. Morsbach, _ME. Grammatik_, § 135, n. 4, quotes a number of parallel rimes with proper names, and the best explanation is that _o_ in _aros_ still represented a sound intermediate between _ā_ and _ǭ_, and so served as an approximate rime to _ā̆_ in proper names.

_g_ 6. _cunesmen_: as _c_ and _t_ are hard to distinguish in some ME. hands, and are often confused by copyists, this reading is more likely than _tunesmen_ of the editors—Wright-Halliwell, Mätzner, Child, Cook (and _N. E. D._ s.v. _townsman_). For (1) _tunesman_ is a technical, not a poetical word. (2) In a poem remarkable for its terseness, _tunesmen_ reduces a whole line to inanity, unless the poet thinks of Judas quite precisely as a citizen of a town other than Jerusalem; and in the absence of any Biblical tradition it is unlikely that a writer who calls Pilate _þe riche Ieu_ would gratuitously assume that Judas was not a citizen of Jerusalem, where his sister lived. (3) Christ's words are throughout vaguely prophetic, and as Judas forthwith _imette wid is soster_—one of his kin—_cunesmen_ gives a pregnant sense. [I find the MS. actually has _cunesmen_, but leave the note, lest _tunesmen_ might appear to be better established.]

_g_ 8. The repetition of ll. 8, 25, 30 is indicated in the MS. by 'ii' at the end of each of these lines, which is the regular sign for _bis_.

_g_ 16. 'He tore his hair until it was bathed in blood.' The MS. has _top_, not _cop_.

_g_ 24. _In him com ur Lord gon._ In the MS. _c'ist_ = _Crist_ has been erased after _Lord_. Note (1) the reflexive use of _him_, which is very common in OE. and ME. with verbs of motion, e.g. _Up him stod_ 27, 29; _Þau Pilatus him com_ 30; _Als I me rode_ XV _a_ 4; _The Kyng him rod_ XIV _c_ 61; cp. the extended use _ar þe coc him crowe_ 33, and notes to II 289, V 86: (2) the use of the infinitive (_gon_) following, and usually defining the sense of, a verb of motion, where Modern English always, and ME. commonly (e.g. _ȝede karoland_ I 117; _com daunceing_ II 298), uses the pres. p.: 'Our Lord came walking in'.

_g_ 27. _am I þat?_ 'Is it I?', the interrogative form of _ich hit am_ or _ich am hit_. The editors who have proposed to complete the line by adding _wrech_, have missed the sense. The original rime was _þet_: _spec_, cp. note to I 240.

_g_ 30. _cnistes_: for _cniste_ = _cnihte_ representing the OE. gen. pl. _cnihta_. On the forms _meist_ 6, _heiste_ 18, _eiste_ 20, _bitaiste_ 21, _iboust_ 26, _miste_ 29, _cnistes_ 30, _fiste_ 31, all with _st_ for OE. _ht_, see Appendix § 6 end.

_h_ 17-18. Difficult. Perhaps 'The master smith lengthens a little piece [sc. of hot iron], and hammers a smaller piece, twines the two together, and strikes [with his hammer] a treble note'.

_h_ 21-2. _cloþemerys... brenwaterys_: not in the dictionaries, but both apparently nonce names for the smiths: they 'clothe horses' (for by the end of the fourteenth century a charger carried a good deal of armour and harness), and 'burn water' (when they temper the red-hot metal).

_i_ 4. _Þat_: dat. rel. 'to whom'; cp. VI 64. But _lowte_ is sometimes transitive 'to reverence'.

_i_ 6. This line, at first sight irrelevant, supplies both rime and doctrine. See in Chaucer's Preface to his _Tale of Melibeus_ the passage ending:

_I meene of Marke, Mathew, Luc and John— Bot doutelees hir sentence is all oon._

An erased _t_ after _Awangelys_ in the MS. shows that the scribe wavered between _Awangelys_ 'Gospels' and _Awangelystes_.

_i_ 7. _Sent Geretrude_: Abbess of Nivelle (d. 659), commemorated on March 17. She is appropriately invoked, for one or more rats make her emblem.