3. Louke: The precise meaning of the word is unknown, but it
is doubtless included in the cant term “pal”.
4. The Cook’s Tale is unfinished in all the manuscripts; but in
some, of minor authority, the Cook is made to break off his
tale, because “it is so foul,” and to tell the story of Gamelyn, on
which Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” is founded. The story is
not Chaucer’s, and is different in metre, and inferior in
composition to the Tales. It is supposed that Chaucer expunged
the Cook’s Tale for the same reason that made him on his death-
bed lament that he had written so much “ribaldry.”