1. If, as Mr. Furnivall supposes, the time of the telling of the Canterbury
Tales be taken to be longer than one day, we may suppose the Man of Lawes
Tale to begin the stories told on the _second_ morning of the journey,
April 18. Otherwise, we must suppose all the stories in Group A to precede
it, which is not impossible, if we suppose the pilgrims to have started
early in the morning.
_Hoste._ This is one of the words which are sometimes dissyllabic, and
sometimes monosyllabic; it is here a dissyllable, as in l. 39. See note to
line 1883 below.
_sey_, i. e. saw. The forms of 'saw' vary in the MSS. In this line we find
_saugh_, _sauh_, _segh_, _sauhe_, _sawh_, none of which are Chaucer's own,
but due to the scribes. The true form is determined by the rime, as in the
Clerkes Tale, E. 667, where most of the MSS. have _say_. A still better
spelling is _sey_, which may be found in the House of Fame, 1151, where it
rimes with _lay_. The A. S. form is _s[=e]ah_.
2. _The ark_, &c. In Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. ch. 7
(vol. iii. 194), is the proposition headed--'to knowe the arch of the day,
that some folk callen the day artificial, from the sonne arysing til hit go
to reste.' Thus, while the 'day natural' is twenty-four hours, the 'day
artificial' is the time during which the sun is above the horizon. The
'arc' of this day merely means the extent or duration of it, as reckoned
along the circular rim of an astrolabe; or, when measured along the horizon
(as here), it means the arc extending from the point of sunrise to that of
sunset. _ronne_, run, performed, completed.
3. _The fourthe part._ The true explanation of this passage, which Tyrwhitt
failed to discover, is due to Mr. A. E. Brae, who first published it in
May, 1851, and reprinted it at p. 68 of his edition of Chaucer's Treatise
on the Astrolabe. His conclusions were based upon actual calculation, and
will be mentioned in due order. In re-editing the 'Astrolabe,' I took the
opportunity of roughly checking his calculations by other methods, and am
satisfied that he is quite correct, and that the day meant is not the 28th
of April, as in the Ellesmere MS., nor the 13th of April, as in the
Harleian MS., but the 18th, as in the Hengwrt [133] MS. and most others. It
is easily seen that _xviii_ may be corrupted into _xxviii_ by prefixing
_x_, or into _xiii_ by the omission of _v_; this may account for the
variations.
The key to the whole matter is given by a passage in Chaucer's 'Astrolabe,'
pt. ii. ch. 29, where it is clear that Chaucer (who, however, merely
translates from Messahala) actually confuses the hour-angle with the
azimuthal arc; that is, he considered it correct to find the hour of the
day by noting _the point of the horizon_ over which the sun appears to
stand, and supposing this point to advance, with a _uniform_, not a
_variable_, motion. The host's method of proceeding was this. Wanting to
know the hour, he observed how far the sun had moved southward along the
horizon since it rose, and saw that it had gone more than half-way from the
point of sunrise to the exact southern point. Now the 18th of April in
Chaucer's time answers to the 26th of April at present. On April 26, 1874,
the sun rose at 4h. 43m., and set at 7h. 12m., giving a day of about 14h.
30m., the fourth part of which is at 8h. 20m., or, with sufficient
exactness, at _half-past eight_. This would leave a whole hour and a half
to signify Chaucer's 'half an houre and more,' shewing that further
explanation is still necessary. The fact is, however, that the host
reckoned, as has been said, in another way, viz. by observing the sun's
position _with reference to the horizon_. On April 18 the sun was in the
6th degree of Taurus at that date, as we again learn from Chaucer's
treatise. Set this 6th degree of Taurus on the East horizon on a globe, and
it is found to be 22 degrees to the North of the East point, or 112 degrees
from the South. The half of this is at 56 degrees from the South; and the
sun would seem to stand above this 56th degree, as may be seen even upon a
globe, at about a quarter past nine; but Mr. Brae has made the calculation,
and shews that it was at _twenty minutes past nine_. This makes Chaucer's
'half an houre and more' to stand for _half an hour and ten minutes_; an
extremely neat result. But this we can check again by help of the host's
_other_ observation. He _also_ took note, that the lengths of a shadow and
its object were equal, whence the sun's altitude must have been 45 degrees.
Even a globe will shew that the sun's altitude, when in the 6th degree of
Taurus, and at 10 o'clock in the morning, is somewhere about 45 or 46
degrees. But Mr. Brae has calculated it exactly, and his result is, that
the sun attained its altitude of 45 degrees at _two minutes to ten_
exactly. This is even a closer approximation than we might expect, and
leaves no doubt about the right date being the _eighteenth_ of April. For
fuller particulars, see Chaucer on the Astrolabe, ed. Brae, p. 69; and ed.
Skeat (E.E.T.S.), preface, p. 1.
5. _eightetethe_, eighteenth. Mr. Wright prints _eightetene_, with the
remark that 'this is the reading in which the MSS. seem mostly to agree.'
This is right in substance, but not critically exact. No such word as
_eightetene_ appears here in the MSS., which denote the number by an
abbreviation, as stated in the footnote. The Hengwrt MS. has _xviijthe_,
and the Old English for _eighteenth_ must have have been [134]
_eightetethe_, the ordinal, not the cardinal number. This form is easily
inferred from the numerous examples in which _-teenth_ is represented by
_-tethe_; see _feowertethe_, _fiftethe_, &c. in Stratmann's Old English
Dictionary; we find the very form _eightetethe_ in Rob. of Glouc., ed.
Wright, 6490; and _eighteteothe_ in St. Swithin, l. 5, as printed in Poems
and Lives of Saints, ed. Furnivall, 1858, p. 43. _Eighte_ is of two
syllables, from A. S. _eahta_, cognate with Lat. _octo_. _Eightetethe_ has
four syllables; see A. 3223, and the note.