"_Rap and rend for._"--In Dryden's Prologue to _The Disappointment, or the
Mother in Fashion_, we find these lines:
"Our women batten well on their good nature
All they can rap and rend for the dear creature."
"All they can rap and run for" is the more frequent colloquial version of
this quaint phrase.
In Chaucer's "Chanones Yeman's Tale" it stands thus:
"But wasten all that ye may rape and renne."
And to this last word Tyrwhit, in his Glossary, gives "rend?" with a mark
of interrogation, as doubtful of the meaning.
Johnson gives it "rap and rend," and quotes a line of Hudibras:
"All they could rap and rend and pilfer:"
and adds, "more properly, _rap and ran_; [ræpan] Sax., to bind, and _rana_,
Icelandic, to plunder."
The question is, are we to accept this phrase in the sense it is commonly
used, _to seize and plunder_; or have later and better philologists mended
the version?
The context in Chaucer does not seem to warrant the interpretation given by
Tyrwhit. The narrator is warning his hearers against the rogueries of
alchemy:
"If that your eyen cannot seen aright,
Loketh that youre mind lacke not his sight.
For tho' ye loke never so brode and stare,
Ye shul not win a mite on that chaffare,
But wasten all that ye may rape and renne.
Withdraw the fire, lest it to faste brenne;
Medleth no more with that art, I mene;
For if ye don, your thrift is gon ful clene."