Ne hadde Peris but a pese lof,
Thei preyede hym beleve,
And with a bene batte
He hadde betwene,
And hitte hunger therwith
Amydde hise lippes,
And blodde in it the bodyward
A bolle ful of growel,
Ne hadde the fisician ferst
Defendite him watir,
To abate the barly bred,
And the benis y-grounde,
Thei hadde be ded be this day,
And dolven al warm.
Faitours for fer, etc.
4194. _Thei corven here coppes, | and courtepies made._ Whitaker, who
translates it, "They _carved wooden cups_, and made themselves short
cloaks." It ought to be, "They cut their copes to make courtpies (a kind of
short cloaks) of them."
4242. Paul Epist. ad Galat. vi, 2.
4251. Scimus enim qui dixit, mihi vindicta, et ego retribuam. Paul. ad Heb.
x, 30; conf. Paul. ad Rom. xii, 19.
4256. Luke xvi, 9.
4272. Propter frigus piger arare noluit. Prov. xx, 4.
4306. Labores manuum tuarum quia manducabis, beatus es et bene tibi erit.
Psal. cxxvii, 2.
4336. _His mawe is alongid._ MS. Trin. Coll. 2.
4336. Whitaker's text inserts here the following passage, which is curious
as containing the same word, _latchdrawers_, that occurs in Edward's
statute, quoted before in the note to l. 88:--
Thenk that Dives for hus delicat lyf
To the devel wente,
And Lazar the lene beggere
That longed after cromes,
And yut had he hem nat,
For ich Hunger culde hym,
And suthe ich sauh hym sute,
As he a syre were,
At alle manere ese
In Abrahame lappe.
An yf you be of power,
Peers, ich the rede,
Alle that greden at thy gate
For Godes love after fede,
Parte wit hem of thy payn,
Of potage and of souel,
Lene hem som of thy loof,
Thauh thu the lesse chewe.
And thauh lyers and latchedrawers,
And lolleres knocke,
Let hem abyde tyl the bord be drawe,
Ac bere hem none cromes,
Tyl al thyn nedy neihebores
Have none y-maked.
4339. _Phisik ... hise furred hodes ... his cloke of Calabre._ Whitaker
cites, in illustration of the dress of the physician, the costume still
worn by the Doctors of Medicine in the universities. Chaucer gives the
following description of the dress of the "Doctour of Phisike":--
In sangwin and in pers he clad was al,
Lyned with taffata, and with sendal.
(Cant. T. Prolog. 441.)
_Calabre_ appears to have been a kind of fur: a document in Rymer, quoted
by Ducange, speaks of an _indumentum foderatum cum Calabre_.
4390. _ripe chiries manye._ This passage, joined with the mention of
cherry-time in l. 2794, shows that cherries were a common fruit in the
fourteenth century. "Mr. Gough, in his British Topography, says that
cherries were first brought in by the Romans, but were afterwards lost and
brought in again in the time of Henry VIII, by Richard Harris, the king's
fruiterer; but this is certainly a mistake. When in the New Forest in
Hampshire in the summer of 1808, I saw a great many cherry-trees,
apparently, of much more considerable age than the time of Henry VIII. The
_very old_ trees were universally of the kind called _merries_." H. E.