60. #crucethus#, torture house: the first element is L. _cruciatus_.
Comp. ‘Heo deden heo in quarterne[;] in ane quale-huse,’ L 3769; ‘þis
meiden wes bicluset | þe hwile in cwarterne | ⁊ i cwalmhuse,’ SK 600.
62. #him . . . þe limes#, his limbs. Emphatic is ‘þ{a}t his ribbes him
to brake,’ KH 1077. #lof ⁊ grim#: the passage is corrupt: grī may be
gri{n} or gri{m}; lof can only be for loþ, as Thorpe suggests in his
translation, ‘loathly and grim,’ as if two adjectives for the name of
the contrivance. Possibly grine has dropped out after grī; the words are
associated in ‘Forðon he me alysde of laðum grine’ = ‘Quoniam ipse
liberavit me de laqueo,’ Paris Psalter, xc. 3. But more probably the
scribe has heard indistinctly an unfamiliar word such as, wæron loþ
engins. It is true that engine, device, machine does not appear in
English till 1300, but it is found in Anglo-Norman books in the last
half of the twelfth century, and it must have come to England with the
castle.
63. #rachenteges#, chains, fetters; but the gloss #collario# racentege
(Napier, 2062) is noteworthy in the present connexion. #ð . . . onne#,
one of which.
64. This may mean, ‘That was adjusted in this way, namely it is
fastened,’ &c., but it is not clear. Perhaps _it_ has been lost before
_is_. The contrivance must have resembled that described in Reade’s It
is Never too Late to Mend, ch. xi.