163. _Another Nonne._ It was not common for Prioresses to have female
chaplains; but Littré gives _chapelaine_, fem., as an old title of dignity
in a nunnery. Moreover, it is an office still held in most Benedictine
convents, as is fully explained in a letter written by a modern
Nun-Chaplain, and printed in Anglia, iv. 238. See also N. and Q. 7 S. vi.
485; The Academy, Aug. 23, 1890, p. 152.
164. The mention of _three priests_ presents some difficulty. To make up
the twenty-nine mentioned in l. 24, we only want _one_ priest, and it is
afterwards assumed that there was but _one_ priest, viz. the Nonnes Preest,
who tells the tale of the Cock and Fox. Chaucer also, in all other cases,
supposes that there was but _one_ representative of each class.
The most likely solution is that Chaucer wrote a character of the Second
Nun, beginning--
'Another Nonne with hir hadde she
That was hir chapeleyne'--
and that, for some reason, he afterwards suppressed the description. The
line left imperfect, as above, may have been filled up, to stop a gap,
either by himself (temporarily), or indeed by some one else.
If we are to keep the text (which stands alike in all MSS.), we must take
'_wel_ nyne and twenty' to mean '_at least_ nine and twenty.'
The letter from the Nun-Chaplain mentioned in the last note shews that an
Abbess might have as many as _five_ priests, as well as a chaplain. See
Essays on Chaucer (Ch. Soc.), p. 183. The difficulty is, merely, how to
reconcile this line with l. 24.