_moiste_, soft--not 'as hard as old boots.' So, in H. 60, _moysty ale_ is
new ale. [44]
460. _chirche-dore._ The priest married the couple at the church-porch, and
immediately afterwards proceeded to the altar to celebrate mass, at which
the newly-married persons communicated. As Todd remarks--'The custom was,
that the parties did not enter the church till that part of the office,
where the minister now goes up to the altar [or rather, is directed to go
up], and repeats the psalm.' See Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. 1871, ii. 366,
note 1; Anglia, vi. 106; Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. pt. 2. 172;
Brand's Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 134. And see D. 6.
461. _Withouten_ = besides. _other companye_, other lovers. This expression
(copied from Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 12985--'autre companie') makes it quite
certain that the character of the Wife of Bath is copied, in some respects,
from that of _La Vieille_ in the Roman de la Rose, as further appears in
the Wife's Prologue.
462. _as nouthe_, as now, i. e. at present. The form _nouthe_ is not
uncommon; it occurs in P. Plowman, Allit. Poems, Sir Gawain and the Grene
Knight, &c. A. S. _n[=u] ð[=a]_, now then.
465. _Boloigne._ Cf. 'I will have you swear by our dear Lady of Boulogne';
Gammer Gurton's Needle, Act 2, sc. 2. An image of the virgin, at Boulogne,
was sought by pilgrims. See Heylin's Survey of France, p. 163, ed. 1656
(quoted in the above, ed. Hazlitt).
466. _In Galice_ (Galicia), at the shrine of St. James of Compostella, a
famous resort of pilgrims in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As the
legend goes, the body of St. James the Apostle was supposed to have been
carried in a ship without a rudder to Galicia, and preserved at
Compostella. See Piers Plowman, A. iv. 106, 110, and note to B. Prol. 47;
also Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, pp. 172, 177.
_Coloigne._ At Cologne, where the bones of the Three Kings or Wise Men of
the East, _Gaspar_, _Melchior_ and _Balthazar_, are said to be preserved.
See Coryat's Crudities; Chambers, Book of Days, ii. 751.