171. _Al crampissheth_, she draws all together, contracts convulsively;
formed from _cramp_. I know of but four other examples of the use of this
word.
In Lydgate's Flour of Curtesie, st. 7, printed in Chaucer's Works, ed.
1561, fol. 248, we have the lines:--
'I gan complayne min inwarde deedly smert
That aye so sore _crampeshe at_ min herte.'
As this gives no sense, it is clear that _crampeshe at_ is an error for
_crampisheth_ or _crampished_, which Lydgate probably adopted from the
present passage.
Again, in Lydgate's Life of St. Edmund, in MS. Harl. 2278, fol. 101 (ed.
Horstmann, p. 430, l. 930), are the lines:--
'By pouert spoiled, which made hem sore smerte,
Which, as they thouhte, _craumpysshed_ at here herte.'
Skelton has _encraumpysshed_, Garland of Laurell, 16; and Dyce's note gives
an example of _craumpishing_ from Lydgate's Wars of Troy, bk. iv. c. 33,
sig. Xv. col. 4, ed. 1555.
Once more, Lydgate, in his Fall of Princes, bk. i. c. 9 (pr. by Wayland,
leaf 18, col. 2), has the line--
'Deth _crampishing_ into their hert gan crepe.'