4115. _in his hond_, in his possession, in his hold.
4126. 'Or enlarge it by argument'; prove by logic that it is the size you
wish it to be.
4127. _Cutberd_, St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, died in 686. Being a
Northumberland man, John swears by a Northumberland saint.
4130. Evidently a proverb: 'a man must take (one) of two things, either
such as he finds or such as he brings'; i. e. must put up with what he can
get.
4134. Another proverb. Repeated in D. 415, with _lure_ for _tulle_. From
the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, liv. v. c. 10: 'Veteri [125]
celebratur proverbio: Quia vacuae manus temeraria petitio est.' MS. Cm. has
the rimes _folle_, _tolle_. For _tulle_, a commoner spelling is _tille_, to
draw, hence to allure, entice. Hence E. _till_ (for money), orig. meaning a
'drawer'; and the _tiller_ of a rudder, by which it is drawn aside. See
_tullen_ in Stratmann, and _tollen_ in Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 7. 11 (in vol.
ii. p. 45).
4140. _chalons_, blankets. The same word as mod. E. _shalloon_, 'a slight
woollen stuff'; Ogilvie's Dict. 'The blanket was sometimes made of a
texture originally imported from Chalons in France, but afterwards
extensively manufactured in England by the Chaloners'; Our Eng. Home, p.
108. 'Qwyltes ne _chalouns_'; Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 350.
4152. _quakke_, asthma, or difficulty of breathing that causes a croaking
noise. Halliwell gives: '_Quack_, to be noisy, _West_. The term is applied
to any croaking noise.' Also: '_Quackle_, to choke, or suffocate, _East_.'
_Pose_, a cold in the head; A. S. _gepos_.
4155. '_To wet one's whistle_' is still in use for to drink deeply. '_I
wete my whystell_, as good drinkers do'; Palsgrave, p. 780. In Walton's
Complete Angler, Part i. ch. 5, we find: 'Let's drink the other cup to _wet
our whistles_.'
4172. _wilde fyr_, erysipelas (to torment them); see Halliwell. Cf. E.
2252. The entry--'_Erysipela_ (_sic_), wilde fyr' occurs in Ælfric's
Vocabulary. So in Le Rom. de la Rose:--'que Mal-Feu l'arde'; 7438, 8319.
4174. _flour_, choice, best of a thing; _il ending_, evil death, bad end.
'They shall have the best (i. e. here, the worst) of a bad end.' Rather a
wish than a prophecy.
4181. Sidenote in MS. Hl.--'Qui in vno grauatur in alio debet releuari.' A
Law Maxim.
4194. _upright_, upon her back. 'To slepe on the backe, _vpryght_, is
vtterly to be abhorred'; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 245. Palsgrave, s.
v. _Throwe_, has: 'I throwe a man _on his backe_ or _upright_, so that his
face is upwarde, _Ie renuerse_.' And see Nares. Cf. 'Now dounward groffe
[on your belly], and now _upright_'; Rom. Rose, 2561. _Bolt-upright_ occurs
in l. 4266; where _bolt_ is 'like a bolt,' hence 'straight,' or exactly.
See _Bolt_, adv., in the New E. Dictionary. And compare B. 1506.
4208. _daf_, fool; from E. _daf-t_. _cokenay_, a milk-sop, poor creature.
The orig. sense of _coken-ay_ is 'cocks' egg,' from a singular piece of
folk-lore which credited cocks with laying such eggs as happen to be
imperfect. 'The small yolkless eggs which hens sometimes lay are called
"cocks' eggs," generally in the firm persuasion that the name states a
fact'; Shropshire Folklore, by C. S. Burne, p. 229. The idea is old, and
may be found gravely stated as a fact in Bartolomæus De Proprietatibus
Rerum (14th century). See _Cockney_ in the New E. Dictionary.
4210. _Unhardy is unsely_, the cowardly man has no luck. 'Audentes [126]
fortuna iuuat'; Vergil, Aen. x. 284. So also our 'Nothing venture, nothing
have,' and 'Faint heart never won fair lady'; which see in Hazlitt's
Proverbs. For _seel_, luck, see l. 4239. See Troil. iv. 602, and the note.
4220. Pronounce _ben'cite_ in three syllables; as usual.
4233. _The thridde cok_; apparently, between 5 and 6 A.M.; see note to line
3675 above. It was near dawn; see l. 4249.
4236. _Malin_, another form of _Malkin_, which is a pet-name for _Matilda_.
See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 181, where my statement that _Malkin_
occurs in the present passage refers to Tyrwhitt's edition, which
substitutes _Malkin_ for the _Malin_ or _Malyn_ of the MSS. and of ed.
1532. Cf. B. 30.
'_Malyn_, tersorium,' Cath. Anglicum; i. e. _Malin_, like _Malkin_, also
meant a dishclout. _Malin_ has now become _Molly_.
4244. _cake._ In Wright's Glossaries, ed. Wülker, col. 788, l. 36, we find,
'_Hic panis subverucius_, a meleres cake'; on which Wright remarks:
'Perhaps this name alludes to the common report that the miller always
stole the flour from his customers to make his cakes, which were baked on
the sly.'
4253. _toty_, in the seven MSS.; _totty_ in ed. 1532. It means 'dizzy,
reeling'; and Halliwell, s. v. _Totty_, quotes from MS. Rawl. C. 86: 'So
_toty_ was the brayn of his hede.' Cf. 'And some also so _toty_ in theyr
heade'; Lydgate, Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. L 1, back. Spenser has the
word twice, as _tottie_ or _totty_, and evidently copied it from this very
passage, which he read in a black-letter edition; see his Shep. Kal.,
_February_, 55, and F. Q. vii. 7. 39. Cf. E. _totter_.
4257. _a twenty devel way_, with extremely ill-luck. See note to l. 3713.
4264. Compare B. 1417.
4272. _linage_; her grandfather was a priest; see note to l. 3943.