4. _Sewe,_ follow. In a Ballad by King James the First of Scotland, printed
at p. 54 of my edition of the Kingis Quair, the first five lines are a
fairly close imitation of the opening lines of the present poem, and prove
that King James followed a MS. which had the reading _sewe_.
'Sen throu vertew encressis dignite,
And vertew flour and rut [_root_] is of noblay,
Of ony weill or quhat estat thou be,
His steppis _sew_, and dreid thee non effray:
Exil al vice, and folow trewth alway.'
Observe how his first, third, and fourth lines answer to Chaucer's fifth,
second, and fourth lines respectively.