_a_ 8. _Þe clot him clingge!_ 'May the clay cling to him!' i.e. 'Would
he were dead!'
_a_ 12. _Þider_: MS. _Yider_, and conversely MS. _Þiif_ 23 for _Yiif_
'if'. _y_ and _þ_ are endlessly confused by scribes.
_b_ 1. _Lenten ys come... to toune._ In the Old English _Metrical
Calendar_ phrases like _cymeð... us to tune Martius reðe_, 'fierce March
comes to town', are regular. The meaning is 'to the dwellings of men',
'to the world'.
_b_ 3. _Þat_: construe with _Lenten_.
_b_ 7. _him þreteþ_, 'chides', 'wrangles' (ON. _þrǽta_?). See the
thirteenth-century debate of _The Thrush and the Nightingale_
(_Reliquiae Antiquae_, vol. i, pp. 241 ff.), of which the opening lines
are closely related to this poem.
_b_ 11. _Ant wlyteþ on huere wynter wele_, 'and look at their winter
happiness (?)'. This conflicts with _huere wynter wo_ above; and the
explanation that the birds have forgotten the hardships of the past
winter and recall only its pleasures is forced. Holthausen's emendation
_wynne wele_ 'wealth of joys' (cp. l. 35) is good.
_b_ 20. _Miles_: a crux. It has been suggested without much probability
that _miles_ means 'animals' from Welsh _mīl_.
_b_ 28. _Deawes donkeþ þe dounes._ Of the suggestions made to improve
the halting metre the best is _þise_ for _þe_. The poet is thinking of
the sparkle of dew in the morning sun; cp. _Sir Gawayne_ 519 f.:
_When þe donkande dewe dropeȝ of þe leueȝ
To bide a blysful blusch of þe bryȝt sunne._
_b_ 29-30. 'Animals with their cries (_rounes_) unmeaning to us
(_derne_), whereby they converse (_domes for te deme_).' For the
weakened sense of _deme_ (_domes_) see note to V 115.
_c_ 30. _Wery so water in wore_: the restless lover (l. 21) has tossed
all night like the troubled waters in a _wore_; cp. _I wake so water in
wore_ in another lyric of the same MS. It has been suggested that _wore_
= Old High German _wuor_ 'weir'; but the rimes in both passages show
that the stem is OE. _wār_, not _wōr_.
_d_ 2. _the holy londe_: because Ireland was _par excellence_ 'the Land
of the Saints'.
_f._ I am obliged to Professor Carleton Brown for the information that
this poem is found, with two additional stanzas, in MS. 18. 7. 21 of the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and that the full text will be published
shortly in his _Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century_.
_f_ 4. _bere_ (OE. _bȳr_) riming with _fere_ (OE. _(ge)fēra_)
indicates a South-Eastern composition.
_g_ 1. _Scere Þorsday_: Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday.
_g_ 1-2. _aros_: _Iudas_: the alternative form _aras_ may have given the
rime in the original, but it is not justifiable to accept this as
certain and so to assume an early date of composition for the poem.
Morsbach, _ME. Grammatik_, § 135, n. 4, quotes a number of parallel
rimes with proper names, and the best explanation is that _o_ in _aros_
still represented a sound intermediate between _ā_ and _ǭ_, and
so served as an approximate rime to _ā̆_ in proper names.
_g_ 6. _cunesmen_: as _c_ and _t_ are hard to distinguish in some ME.
hands, and are often confused by copyists, this reading is more likely
than _tunesmen_ of the editors—Wright-Halliwell, Mätzner, Child, Cook
(and _N. E. D._ s.v. _townsman_). For (1) _tunesman_ is a technical, not
a poetical word. (2) In a poem remarkable for its terseness, _tunesmen_
reduces a whole line to inanity, unless the poet thinks of Judas quite
precisely as a citizen of a town other than Jerusalem; and in the
absence of any Biblical tradition it is unlikely that a writer who calls
Pilate _þe riche Ieu_ would gratuitously assume that Judas was not a
citizen of Jerusalem, where his sister lived. (3) Christ's words are
throughout vaguely prophetic, and as Judas forthwith _imette wid is
soster_—one of his kin—_cunesmen_ gives a pregnant sense. [I find the
MS. actually has _cunesmen_, but leave the note, lest _tunesmen_ might
appear to be better established.]
_g_ 8. The repetition of ll. 8, 25, 30 is indicated in the MS. by 'ii'
at the end of each of these lines, which is the regular sign for _bis_.
_g_ 16. 'He tore his hair until it was bathed in blood.' The MS. has
_top_, not _cop_.
_g_ 24. _In him com ur Lord gon._ In the MS. _c'ist_ = _Crist_ has been
erased after _Lord_. Note (1) the reflexive use of _him_, which is very
common in OE. and ME. with verbs of motion, e.g. _Up him stod_ 27, 29;
_Þau Pilatus him com_ 30; _Als I me rode_ XV _a_ 4; _The Kyng him rod_
XIV _c_ 61; cp. the extended use _ar þe coc him crowe_ 33, and notes to
II 289, V 86: (2) the use of the infinitive (_gon_) following, and
usually defining the sense of, a verb of motion, where Modern English
always, and ME. commonly (e.g. _ȝede karoland_ I 117; _com daunceing_
II 298), uses the pres. p.: 'Our Lord came walking in'.
_g_ 27. _am I þat?_ 'Is it I?', the interrogative form of _ich hit am_
or _ich am hit_. The editors who have proposed to complete the line by
adding _wrech_, have missed the sense. The original rime was _þet_:
_spec_, cp. note to I 240.
_g_ 30. _cnistes_: for _cniste_ = _cnihte_ representing the OE. gen. pl.
_cnihta_. On the forms _meist_ 6, _heiste_ 18, _eiste_ 20, _bitaiste_
21, _iboust_ 26, _miste_ 29, _cnistes_ 30, _fiste_ 31, all with _st_ for
OE. _ht_, see Appendix § 6 end.
_h_ 17-18. Difficult. Perhaps 'The master smith lengthens a little
piece [sc. of hot iron], and hammers a smaller piece, twines the two
together, and strikes [with his hammer] a treble note'.
_h_ 21-2. _cloþemerys... brenwaterys_: not in the dictionaries, but both
apparently nonce names for the smiths: they 'clothe horses' (for by the
end of the fourteenth century a charger carried a good deal of armour
and harness), and 'burn water' (when they temper the red-hot metal).
_i_ 4. _Þat_: dat. rel. 'to whom'; cp. VI 64. But _lowte_ is sometimes
transitive 'to reverence'.
_i_ 6. This line, at first sight irrelevant, supplies both rime and
doctrine. See in Chaucer's Preface to his _Tale of Melibeus_ the passage
ending:
_I meene of Marke, Mathew, Luc and John—
Bot doutelees hir sentence is all oon._
An erased _t_ after _Awangelys_ in the MS. shows that the scribe wavered
between _Awangelys_ 'Gospels' and _Awangelystes_.
_i_ 7. _Sent Geretrude_: Abbess of Nivelle (d. 659), commemorated on
March 17. She is appropriately invoked, for one or more rats make her
emblem.
_i_ 11. _Sent Kasi._ I cannot trace this saint, or his acts against the
rats. But parallels are not wanting. St. Ivor, an Irish saint, banished
rats from his neighbourhood _per imprecationem_ because they gnawed his
books; and the charm-harassed life of an Irish rat was still proverbial
in Shakespeare's day: 'I was never so berhymed' says Rosalind (_As You
Like It_, III. ii) 'since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat'. In
the South of France the citizens of Autun trusted more to the processes
of the law, and brought a suit against the rats which ended in a victory
for the defendants because the plaintiffs were unable to guarantee them
safe conduct to the court (see Chambers, _Book of Days_, under Jan. 17).
Even in such little things the Normans showed their practical genius:—A
friend chancing to meet St. Lanfranc by the way inquired the cause of
the strange noises that came from a bag he was carrying: 'We are
terribly plagued with mice and rats', explained the good man, 'and so,
to put down their ravages, I am bringing along a cat' (_Mures et rati
valde nobis sunt infesti, et idcirco nunc affero catum ad comprimendum
furorem illorum_). _Acta Sanctorum_ for May 28, p. 824.