'The sailing firr, the _cipres_, deth to pleyne'--
i. e. the cypress suitable for lamenting a death. Vergil calls the cypress
'atra,' Æn. iii. 64, and 'feralis,' vi. 216; and as it is so frequently a
symbol of mourning, it may be said to _bode war_.
2078. In Sir Degrevant (ed. Halliwell, p. 191) we have just this
expression--
'Here endyth the furst fit.
Howe say ye? will ye any more of hit?'
2085. _love-drury_, courtship. All the six MSS. have this reading.
According to Wright, the Harl. MS. has 'Of ladys loue and drewery,' which
Tyrwhitt adopts; but it turns out that Wright's reading is _copied from
Tyrwhitt_; the MS. really has--'And of ladys loue drewery,' like the rest.
2088. The romance or lay of Horn appears in two forms in English. In King
Horn, ed. Lumby, Early Eng. Text Soc., 1866, printed also in Mätzner's
Altenglische Sprachproben, i. 207, the form of the poem is in short rimed
couplets. But Chaucer no doubt refers to the other form with the title
_Horn Childe_ and Maiden Rimnild, _in a metre similar to Sir Thopas_,
printed in Ritson's Metrical Romances, iii. 282. The Norman-French text was
printed by F. Michel for the Bannatyne Club, with the English versions, in
a volume entitled--Horn et Riemenhild; Recueil de ce qui reste des poëmes
relatifs à leurs aventures, &c. Paris, 1845. See Mr. Lumby's preface and
the remarks in Mätzner.
It is not quite clear why Chaucer should mention the romance of Sir Ypotis
here, as it has little in common with the rest. There are four MS. copies
of it in the British Museum, and three at Oxford. 'It professes to be a
tale of holy writ, and the work of St. John the Evangelist. The scene is
Rome. A child, named Ypotis, appears before the Emperor Adrian, saying that
he is come to teach men God's law; whereupon the Emperor proceeds to
interrogate him as to what is God's Law, and then of many other matters,
not in any captious spirit, but with the utmost reverence and faith....
There is a little tract in prose on the same legend from the press of
Wynkyn de Worde'; J. W. Hales, in Hazlitt's edition of Warton's Hist. of
Eng. Poetry, ii. 183. It was printed in 1881, from the Vernon MS. at
Oxford, in Horstmann's Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, pp. 341-8. It is
hard to believe that, by Ypotys, Chaucer meant (as some say) Ypomadoun.
[199]
The romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton (i. e. Southampton) was printed from
the Auchinleck MS. for the Maitland Club in 1838, 4to. Another copy is in
MS. Ff. 2. 38, in the Cambridge University Library. It has lately been
edited, from six MS. copies and an old printed text, by Prof. Kölbing, for
the Early Eng. Text Society. There is an allusion in it to the _Romans_,
meaning the French original. It appears in prose also, in various forms.
See Warton's Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 142, where there is
also an account of Sir Guy, in several forms; but a still fuller account of
Sir Guy is given in the Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, ii. 509.
This Folio MS. itself contains three poems on the latter subject, viz. Guy
and Amarant, Guy and Colbrande, and Guy and Phillis. 'Sir Guy of Warwick'
has been edited for the Early Eng. Text Society by Prof. Zupitza.
By _Libeux_ is meant Lybeaus Disconus, printed by Ritson in his Metrical
Romances, vol. ii. from the Cotton MS. Caligula A. 2. A later copy, with
the title Libius Disconius, is in the Percy Folio MS. ii. 404, where a good
account of the romance may be found. The best edition is that by Dr. Max
Kulaza, entitled Libeaus Desconus; Leipzig, 1890. The French original was
discovered in 1855, in a MS. belonging to the Duc d'Aumale. Its title is Li
Biaus Desconneus, which signifies The Fair Unknown.
_Pleyndamour_ evidently means _plein d'amour_, full of love, and we may
suspect that the original romance was in French; but there is now no trace
of any romance of that name, though a Sir Playne de Amours is mentioned in
Sir T. Malory's Morte Darthur, bk. ix. c. 7. Spenser probably borrowed
hence his _Sir Blandamour_, F. Q. iv. 1. 32.
2092. After examining carefully the rimes in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Mr. Bradshaw finds that this is the _sole_ instance in which a word which
ought etymologically to end in -_yë_ is rimed with a word ending in -_y_
without a following final e. A reason for the exception is easily found;
for Chaucer has here adopted the swing of the ballad metre, and hence
ventures to deprive _chiualryë_ of its final _e_, and to call it
_chivalry'_ so that it may rime with _Gy_, after the manner of the
ballad-writers; cf. Squyre of Lowe Degre, 79, 80. So again _chivalryë_,
_druryë_ become _chivalry_, _drury_; ll. 2084, 2085. We even find _plas_
for _plac-e_, 1971; and _gras_ for _grac-e_, 2021.
2094. _glood_, glided. So in all the MSS. except E., which has the poor
reading _rood_, rode. For the expression in l. 2095, compare--
'But whenne he was horsede on a stede,
He sprange als any sparke one [_read_ of] glede';
Sir Isumbras, ed. Halliwell, p. 107.
'Lybeaus was redy boun,
And lepte out of the arsoun [_bow of the saddle_]
As sperk thogh out of glede';
Lybeaus Disconus, in Ritson, ii. 27.
[200]
'Then sir Lybius with ffierce hart,
Out of his saddle swythe he start
As sparcle doth out of fyer';
Percy Folio MS. ii. 440.
2106. The first few lines of the romance of Sir Perceval of Galles (ed.
Halliwell, p. 1) will at once explain Chaucer's allusion. It begins--
'Lef, lythes to me
Two wordes or thre
Of one that was faire and fre
And felle in his fighte;
His right name was _Percyvelle_,
He was fostered in the felle,
_He dranke water of the welle_,
And [gh]itt was he wyghte!'
Both Sir Thopas and Sir Perceval were water-drinkers, but it did not impair
their vigour.