83. The engine: The machines for casting stones, which in
Chaucer time served the purpose of great artillery; they were
called “mangonells,” “springolds,” &c.; and resembled in
construction the “ballistae” and “catapultae” of the ancients.
84. Or it a furlong way was old: before it was older than the
space of time during which one might walk a furlong; a measure
of time often employed by Chaucer.
85. Shipmen and pilgrimes: sailors and pilgrims, who seem to
have in Chaucer’s time amply warranted the proverbial
imputation against “travellers’ tales.”
86. Pardoners: of whom Chaucer, in the Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales, has given us no flattering typical portrait
87. Lath: barn; still used in Lincolnshire and some parts of the
north. The meaning is, that the poet need not tell what tidings
he wanted to hear, since everything of the kind must some day
come out — as sooner or later every sheaf in the barn must be
brought forth (to be threshed).
88. A somewhat similar heaping-up of people is de scribed in
Spenser’s account of the procession of Lucifera (“The Faerie
Queen,” book i. canto iv.), where, as the royal dame passes to
her coach,
“The heaps of people, thronging in the hall,
Do ride each other, upon her to gaze.”