235. Skeat equates #scumes# with Icel. skūmi, twilight, and translates,
‘like twilight-shadows (they) mislead (us),’ which is fanciful. #Scumes#
may be miswriting for _scunnes_, which would represent OE. #scēones#,
#scȳness#, suggestion, temptation, as in ‘deofol þonne þurh þa attor
berendan næddran mid hire þære yfelan scéonesse . . . beswác þone
ærestan wifmon,’ BH 3/17. The sense would be, as temptation they
mislead. But more probably the place is corrupt, and the original may
simply have had, as cwen us forteoþ, with an allusion to Eve’s bad
counsel.
237. Björkman, 14, thinks that this proverb was originally Scandinavian,
and it adds point to understand #cold# in the meaning, disastrous, of
the Icelandic version. Comp. ‘Wommennes counseils been ful ofte colde,’
Chaucer, C. T., B 4446. ‘Mulier cum sola cogitat, male cogitat,’ Syrus
87/335.
240, 241. Skeat’s version, ‘I do not say this because a good woman is
not a good thing,’ shows that he takes #for þan þat# together, which is
contrary to the metrical stress on #þan# and gives no sufficient sense:
#for þan#, is, therefore, i.e. in spite of all the hard things I have
said about women: #hit# is an anticipatory object, which is expanded in
the object clause, #þat . . . wymmon#. The scribe deleted _n_ before
#ys#, Skeat restores it; T also has #is#, for which Skeat substitutes
[n]is, quoting, ‘Hic ne sige nout byþan | þat moni ne ben gentile man,’
T 665. I think that what the scribe wrote should be retained. It is
clear that the relation between a negative principal clause and its
dependent object clause was often in ME. very loose and illogical. Comp.
‘For sco was traist and duted noght, | þat godds wil ne suld be wroght,’
CM 12321; ‘Ne doð ham no þing swo wo | . . . | swo ꝥ hi niten, ꝥ here
þine | ne sal habben ende,’ Poema Morale, MS. D. 140 (see 46/290); ‘ihc
nas na wurdra[;] þenne ich nes weldinde,’ L 3466; also 100/104. ‘Ðat ne
forȝeit ðu naure · þat ðu godd ne heriȝe,’ 93/149, means, That forget
thou never that thou honour God; what is more natural than to leave out
the negative, if the contrary meaning is required? Our text may be
paraphrased, Whatever I have said about women in general, I do not say
it with reference to the proposition that a good woman is a good thing.
For the sentiment comp. ‘Femina raro bona, sed que bona digna corona,’
Prov. Hein. 65; ‘Femina pauca bona est; si forte inveneris ullam, | De
celo cecidit, tessella caractere miro,’ Fecunda Ratis 153/919.
242. #þe mon þe#, for the man who. #icouere#, &c. win her from his
rivals.