253. 'So, when Ethelbert married Bertha, daughter of the Christian King
Charibert, she brought with her, to the court of her husband, a Gallican
bishop named Leudhard, who was permitted to celebrate mass in the ancient
British Church of St. Martin, at Canterbury.'--Note in Bell's Chaucer.
255. _ynowe_, being plural, takes a final _e_; we then read _th'ende_, as
explained in note to l. 145. The pl. _ino[gh]he_ occurs in the Ormulum.
263. _alle and some_, collectively and individually; one and all. See Cler.
Tale, E. 941, &c.
273-87. Not in the original; perhaps added in revision.
277. The word _alle_, being plural, is dissyllabic. _Thing_ is often a
plural form, being an A. S. neuter noun. The words _over_, _ever_, _never_
are, in Chaucer, generally monosyllables, or nearly so; just as _o'er_,
_e'er_, _ne'er_ are treated as monosyllables by our poets in general. Hence
the scansion is--'Ov'r al | lë thing |,' &c.
289. The word _at_ is inserted from the Cambridge MS.; all the other six
MSS. omit it, which makes the passage one of extreme difficulty. Tyrwhitt
reads 'Or Ylion brent, or Thebes the citee.' Of course he means _brende_,
past tense, not _brent_, the past participle; and his conjecture amounts to
inserting _or_ before Thebes. It is better to insert _at_, as in MS. Cm.;
see Gilman's edition. The sense is--'When Pyrrhus broke the wall, before
Ilium burnt, (nor) at the city of Thebes, nor at Rome,' &c. _Nat_ (l. 290)
= _Ne at_, as in Hl. _Ylion_, in medieval romance, meant 'the citadel' of
Troy; see my note to l. 936 of the Legend of Good Women. Tyrwhitt well
observes that 'Thebes the citee' is a French phrase. He quotes 'dedans
Renes _la cite_,' Froissart, v. i. c. 225.
295-315. Not in the original, and clearly a later addition. They include an
allusion to Boethius (see next note).
295. In the margin of the Ellesmere MS. is written--'Vnde Ptholomeus, libro
i. cap. 8. Primi motus celi duo sunt, quorum vnus est qui mouet totum
semper ab Oriente in Occidentem vno modo super orbes, &c. Item aliter vero
motus est qui mouet orbem stellarum currencium [149] contra motum primum,
videlicet, ab Occidente in Orientem super alios duos polos.' The old
astronomy imagined nine spheres revolving round the central stationary
earth; of the seven innermost, each carried with it one of the seven
planets, viz. the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the
eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars, had a slow motion from west to
east, round the axis of the zodiac (_super alios duos polos_), to account
for the precession of the equinoxes; whilst the ninth or outermost sphere,
called the _primum mobile_, or the sphere of first motion, had a diurnal
revolution from east to west, carrying everything with it. This exactly
corresponds with Chaucer's language. He addresses the outermost sphere or
_primum mobile_ (which is the _ninth_ if reckoning from within, but the
_first_ from without), and accuses it of carrying with it everything in its
irresistible westward motion; a motion contrary to that of the 'natural'
motion, viz. that in which the sun advances along the signs of the zodiac.
The result was that the evil influence of the planet Mars prevented the
marriage. It is clear that Chaucer was thinking of certain passages in
Boethius, as will appear from consulting his own translation of Boethius,
ed. Morris, pp. 21, 22, 106, and 110. I quote a few lines to shew this:--
'O þou maker of þe whele þat bereþ þe sterres, whiche þat art fastned to þi
perdurable chayere, and turnest þe heuene wiþ a rauyssyng _sweighe_, and
constreinest þe sterres to suffren þi lawe'; pp. 21, 22.
'þe regioun of þe fire þat eschaufiþ by þe swifte _moeuyng of þe
firmament_'; p. 110.