THE NONNE PRESTES TALE.

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I. stope. Lansd. MS. reads stoupe, as if it signified bent, stooped; but the verb stoop is a weak verb. Stope is the past participle of the (formerly) strong verb steppen, to step, advance. Stope 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.

8. by housbondrye, by economy.

12. 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 ensconced 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.

'At his beds feete feeden his stalled teme,

His swine beneath, his pullen ore the beame.'

Hall's Satires, bk. v. sat. I; v. I. p. 56, ed. 1599.

15. No deyntee (Elles. &c.); Noon deynteth (Harl.).

19. hertes suffisaunce, a satisfied or contented mind, literally heart's satisfaction. Cf. our phrase 'to your heart's content.'

...

22. wyn. whyt nor reed. The white wine 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 Homė, p. 83; Piers Pl. prol. 1. 228.

25. Seynd bacoun, singed or broiled bacon.

an ey or tweye, an egg or two.

26. 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 (A. D. 1351). In Stat. 37 Edward III (A. D. 1363), the deye is mentioned among others of a certain rank, not having goods or chattels of 40s. value. The deye was mostly 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.

29. 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 1. 514.

31. orgon. This 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.

34. Cf. Parl. of Foules, 350:

The cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.'

35, 36. 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 [1. 34] 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 artificial day. Hence the prime, mentioned in 1. 377, was at a clock-hour, at 6, 7, 8, or 9, suppose. The day meant is certainly May 3, because the sun had passed the 21st degree of Taurus (see fig. 1 of Astrolabe)... The date May 3 is playfully denoted by saying 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 Ist; 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 (1. 379) 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 this passage signifies the end of the first quarter of the day, reckoning from 6 a m. to 6 p.m.'Skeat's Astrolabe, 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 4110, 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.

37. Fifteen degrees of the equinoctial = an exact hour. See note to 1. 35 above.

40. and batailed. Lansd. MS. reads enbateled, indented like a battle

ment.

41. as the Ieet, like the jet. were frequently formed of jct.

Beads used for the repetition of prayers
See note to Prol. 159, p. 140.

50. damoysele Pertelote.

Cf. our 'Dame Partlet.'

'I'll be as faithful to thee

As Chaunticleer to Madame Partelot.'

The Ancient Drama, iii. p. 158.

54. in hold; in possession. Cf. 'He hath my heart in holde;' Greene's George a Greene, ed. Dyce, p. 256.

55. loken in every lith, locked in every limb.

59. my lief is faren on londe, my beloved is gone away. Probably the refrain of a popular song of the time.

69. herte deere. This expression corresponds to 'dear heart,' or 'deary heart,' which still survives in some parts of the country.

73. take it agrief=take it in grief, i. e. to take it amiss, to be offended. 74. me mette, I dreamed; literally it dreamed to me.

76. my swevene rede aright, bring my dream to a good issue; literally 'interpret my dream favourably.'

80. Was lyk. The relative that is often omitted by Chaucer before a relative clause.

88. Avoy (Elles.); Away (Harl.).

103. See the Chapter on Dreams in Brand's Pop. Antiquities.

104. 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.

108. 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.'

6

113. the humour of melancolye. The name (melancholy) is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause, as Bruel observes, μελανχολία quasi μελαιναχύλη, 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.'-Burton's Anat. of Melancholy, p. 108, ed. 1805.

'I

118. That cause many a man in sleep to be very distressed.' 120. Catoun. Cato de Moribus, 1. ii. dist. 32; somnia ne cures. 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, 1. vii. c. 9, he introduces his quotation of the first verse of dist. 20 (1. iii.) in this manner:-"Ait vel Cato vel alius, nam autor incertus est.' Tyrwhitt.

121. do no fors of=take no notice of, pay no heed to.

143. '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, fumi'ory, &c., which cleanse the blood.'-Burton's Anat. of Mel. pp. 432, 433. See also p. 438, ed. 1845.

144. ellebor. Two kinds of hellebore are mentioned by old writers; 'white hellebore, called sneezing powder, a strong purger upward' (Burton's Anat. of Mel. p. 439), and ‘black hellebore, that most renowned plant, a famous purger of melancholy.'—Ibid. p. 442, ed. 1845.

150. graunt mercy, great thanks; this in later authors is corrupted into grammercy or gramercy.

156. so mot I thee, so may I thrive, (or prosper).

164. Oon of the gretteste auctours. 'Cicero, De Divin. 1. 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. But Warton thinks that Chaucer took it rather from Valerius Maximus, who has the same story; i. 7.

184. 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 1. 285 of Prologue). Thus oxes and oxe are equivalent. 190. took of this no keep, took no heed of this, paid no attention to it. 201. sooth to sayn, to say (tell) the truth.

222. gapinge. The phrase gaping upright occurs elsewhere (see Knightes Tale, 1. 1150), 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, 1. 530.

225. 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.

227. outsterte (Elles.); upsterte (Harl.).

264. And preyde him his viage for to lette, And prayed him to abandon

his journey.

265. to abyde, to stay where he was.

269. my thinges, my business-matters.

200.

'Kenelm succeeded his father Kenulph on the throne of the ns in 821 [Haydn, Book of Dates, says 819] at the age of seven was murdered by order of his aunt, Quenedreda. He was y made a saint, and his legend will be found in Capgrave, olden 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 1. 297] 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:

'In Clent cow-pasture, under a thorn,

Of head bereft, lies Kenelm, king born.'

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 version of it is :—

'Low in a Mead of Kine, under a thorn,

Of Head bereft, li'th poor Kenelm King-born.'

Clent is near the boundary between Staffordshire and Worcestershire. Neither of these accounts mention Kenelm's dream, but it is given in his Life, as printed in Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall (Phil. Soc. 1862), p. 51. St. Kenelm dreamt that he saw a noble tree with wax-lights 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.

297. For traisoun, i. e. for fear of treason.

304. Cipioun. The Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, as annotated by Macrobius, was a favourite work during the middle ages.

318. See the Monkes Tale, B. 3917, and the note; in CH. II., p. 193. 321. Lo heer Andromacha. Andromache's dream is not to be found in Homer. It is related 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. 331. as for conclusioun, in conclusion.

334. telle... no store, set no store by them; reckon them of no value; count them as useless.

336. nevere a del, never a whit, not in the slightest degrec. 340. This line is repeated from the Compleynt of Mars, 1. 61. 343-346. By way of quiet retaliation for Partlet's sarcasm, he cites a Latin proverbial saying, in 1. 344, 'Mulier est hominis confusio,' which he turns into a pretended compliment by the false translation in 11. 345, 346.'--Marsh. Tyrwhitt quotes it from Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Hist. x. 71.