Bibliography
Skeat. Chaucer, text and notes, seven volumes (Clarendon Press, 1894).
W. P. Ker. English Literature: Medieval. “Home University Library” (Williams & Norgate, 1913).
Ten Brink. History of English Literature, vol. ii, pp. 33-199. Translated by W. Clarke Robinson, Ph.D. (George Bell & Sons, 1901).
Ten Brink. Language and Metre of Chaucer, translated by M. Bentinck Smith (Macmillan & Co., 1901).
Lounsbury. Studies in Chaucer, his Life and Writings (James R. Osgood McIlvaine & Co., 1892).
G. C. Coulton. Chaucer and his England (Methuen, 2nd ed. 1909).
Dryden. Preface to the Fables. Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, vol. ii, pp. 246-273 (Clarendon Press, 1900).
Transactions of the Chaucer Society (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.).
A. W. Ward. Chaucer. “English Men of Letters.”
Cambridge History of Literature, vol. ii (Cambridge University Press, 1908).
Schofield. English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer (Macmillan & Co., 1906).
G. E. & W. H. Hadow. Oxford Treasury of English Literature, vol. i (Clarendon Press, 1905).
GERMAN AND FRENCH WORKS
Ten Brink. Chaucer Studien (Trübner, 1870).
Legouis. Geoffroy Chaucer (Bloud et Cie., 1910) (Eng. tr. Lailavoix. Dent, 1912).
Spurgeon. Chaucer devant la critique (Hachette et Cie., 1911).
Footnotes
1 So that I gained but little.
2 chidden by.
3 faults.
4 There are but three histories to which any man will listen,
Of France, and of Britain and of Rome the Great.
5 And had the corpse (i. e. Antony’s) embalmed.
6 And forth she fetched this dead corpse, and shut it in the shrine.
7 sterte, sprang.
8 God knows.
9 contradicted.
10 knows.
11 or else something similar.
12 fools.
13 I had the thing I did not want.
14 How he pays folk what he owes them.
15 No pike ever so wallowed in a galantine
As I wallow and am entangled in love.
16 Francis Petrarch, the laureat poet,
This clerk was called, whose rhetoric sweet
Illumined all Italy with poetry.
17 Till fully dazed is thy look.
18 The box in which dead bodies are put.
19 Suitable for pipes.
20 Evergreen oak.
21 Tall fir.
22 Cypress which mourns for death, i. e. is often found in churchyards.
23 Yew-tree, of which bows are made.
24 Aspen, suitable for making arrows.
25 With cheerfulness.
26 Here is no home.
27 Keep to the highway, and let thy spirit lead thee.
28 And there is no fear but that truth shall deliver (thee).
29 scarcely.
30 thus.
31 head.
32 death.
The passage is taken from Richard Rolle of Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience (Morris and Skeat, Specimens of Early English, Part II, p. 108).
33 For a comparison of the French with the English romances see Professor Ker’s volume on Medieval Literature in this series, pp. 66-74.
34 like me.
35 obtained aught.
36 He was pale as a stone ball, in a palsy he seemed,
And clothed in rough cloth, I do not know how to describe it;
In an under-jacket and short coat, and a knife by his side;
The sleeves were like those of a friar’s habit.
Piers Plowman, V. 78-81.
37 A pity.
38 meadow.
39 i. e. companion to another.
40 of the most graceful shape.
41 plowed.
42 Thou art hard to carry.
43 ignorant.
44 tellers of tales or gestes.
45 trumpet.
46 journeys.
47 delay.
48 before he uttered a sound.
49 many an hymn for your holy-days.
50 will make fire dim.
51 curled locks.
52 embroidered.
53 playing the flute.
54 fine flour.
55 complexion.
56 worthless.
57 The translations are taken from Chaucer’s Originals and Analogues, published by the Chaucer Society.
58 This unusual list of the seven sciences is that given by Trivet.
59 barbarous nation.
60 died.
61 commands.
62 no matter if I am lost.
63 grieve us but a little.
64 sprinkled.
65 All our joy ends in woe.
66 maid.
67 have pity on.
68 rueful being.
69 my love has gone away.
70 eyes.
71 Have the Greeks thus soon made you thin?
72 Carving-tools.
73 Slumberest thou as if in a lethargy.
74 Friends cannot always be together.
75 I am glad (lit. it is dear to me).
76 And without doubt, to ease your heart.
77 almost died for fear.
78 the most timid person.
79 pain.
80 mine.
81 be wroth with.
82 cherish.
83 sighed.
84 i. e. I must act cautiously.
85 jeopardy.
86 No matter for the jangling of wicked tongues.
87 blame.
88 i. e. my name will be in everyone’s mouth.
89 penitent.
90 lap.
91 bless.
92 do reverence, bow.
93 wreak, avenge.
94 chain.
95 toil.
96 desires.
97 seems good to her.
98 glitters.
99 i. e. as my brains tell me.
100 simply by nature.
101 i. e. an unpropitious conjunction of planets.
102 i. e. change of disposition.
103 Wallacia.
104 Possibly this refers to the sea of sand and pebbles mentioned by Sir John Mandeville in his Travels. To go bareheaded was considered a great hardship.
105 Probably the dangerous gulf of Quarnaro in the Adriatic.
106 hear tell.
107 Where there was likely to be foolish behaviour.
108 Let them be bread of pure wheat-flour,
And let us wives be called barley-bread.
109 burned.
110 With scrips cramful of lies
Intermixed with news.
111 bel ami, fair friend.
112 jests.
113 ribaldry.
114 learn.
115 take trouble to speak loudly.
116 i. e. I have all my sermon by heart.
117 Wherewith to colour my sermon.
118 If their souls go blackberrying, i. e. I do not care where they go.
119 i. e. curate of the parish.
120 practised folly.
121 kill.
122 bees.
123 And made guesses according to their fancy.
124 The horse of Sinon the Greek.
125 plot.
126 whispered.
127 ignorant.
128 staff.
129 ducks.
130 kill.
131 flew.
132 Groweth seed and bloweth mead
And springeth the wood now—
Sing cuckoo.
133 goes.
134 steady pace.
135 maid.
136 together.
137 fall quickly from the linden tree.
138 What need is there to tell of their array?
139 i. e. Let us pay no attention to their greetings.
140 fell to hunting.
141 hot-foot.
142 notes on the horn.
143 roused itself.
144 together.
145 thrust.
146 grave.
147 size.
148 Or looked well.
149 Why should I be tedious.
150 condition.
151 bright.
152 That steamed like a furnace of lead.
153 condition.
154 slim.
155 girdle.
156 apron.
157 strings of her white cap.
158 matched her collar.
159 enticing eye.
160 her eyebrows were fine.
161 And they were arched, and black as any sloe.
162 A kind of early pear.
163 studded with brass.
164 puppet.
165 brisk.
166 a sweet drink.
167 mead.
168 To have more flowers than the seven stars in the sky.
169 This refers to the common practice of paying a poor and often illiterate priest to take charge of a parish while the vicar went to London and earned a handsome and easy livelihood by saying masses for the repose of the souls of those who had left rich relatives.
170 He was loth to excommunicate those whose tithe was in arrears.
171 i. e. sow tares in our wheat.
172 chorister.
173 know.
174 God grant that we may meet.
175 Was eaten by the lion ere he could escape.
176 slain.
177 drowning.
178 doctors.
179 temperament.
180 gluttony.
181 dreamers.
182 fiend.
183 died and rose.
184 wholly.
185 servants.
186 fairs.
187 market.
188 breaketh down my barn door.
189 I scarcely dare look round, on account of him.
190 tipped.
191 guild-hall.
192 daïs.
193 suitable.
194 Service held on the vigils of Saints’ Days.
195 The name Langland is used for convenience sake, to denote the author, or authors of Piers Plowman.
196 his own labour.
197 unstable.
198 chatter.
199 dear at a Jane, i. e. a small Genoese coin.
200 Your judgment is false, your constancy proves evil.
201 i. e. one who farms taxes.
202 pierced and cut into points.
203 in secret and openly.
204 birth.
205 do not care a farthing.
206 fetched.
207 known.
208 known.
209 Entered were into religion, i. e. were placed in a monastery.
210 Simple is my mind, and little my learning.
211 repay.
212 revengeful cruelty.
213 isle.
214 twigs.
215 stanza.
216 precious.
217 neck.
218 gore.
219 perfect.
220 grey stones.
221 bees.
222 float.
223 tree-tops.
224 buds.
225 drops clear as beryl.
226 flower of all rhetoricians.
227 poets.
228 proved.