57. “O admirabile:” Psalm viii 1; “O Lord our God, how
excellent is thy name.”
58. “Benedictus”: The first word of the Song of Zacharias
(Luke i. 68); “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel”
59. In The Knight’s Tale we have exemplifications of the
custom of gathering and wearing flowers and branches on May
Day; where Emily, “doing observance to May,” goes into the
garden at sunrise and gathers flowers, “party white and red, to
make a sotel garland for her head”; and again, where Arcite
rides to the fields “to make him a garland of the greves; were it
of woodbine, or of hawthorn leaves”