'I'll be as faithful to thee
As Chaunticleer to Madame Partelot.'
The Ancient Drama, iii. p. 158.
In Le Roman de Renart, the hen is called _Pinte_ or _Pintain_.
4064. _in hold_; in possession. Cf. 'He hath my heart _in holde_'; Greene's
George a Greene, ed. Dyce, p. 256. [251]
4065. _loken in every lith_, locked in every limb.
4069. _my lief is faren in londe_, my beloved is gone away. Probably the
refrain of a popular song of the time.
4079. _herte dere._ This expression corresponds to 'dear heart,' or 'deary
heart,' which still survives in some parts of the country.
4083. _take it nat agrief_ = _take it not in grief_, i. e. take it not
amiss, be not offended.
4084. _me mette_, I dreamed; literally _it dreamed to me_.
4086. _my swevene recche_ (or _rede_) _aright_, bring my dream to a good
issue; literally 'interpret my dream favourably.'
4090. _Was lyk._ The relative _that_ is often omitted by Chaucer before a
relative clause, as, again, in l. 4365.
4098. _Avoy_ (Elles.); _Away_ (Harl.). From O. F. _avoi_, interj. fie! It
occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, 7284, 16634.
4113. See the Chapter on Dreams in Brand's Pop. Antiquities.
4114. _fume_, the effects arising from gluttony and drunkenness. 'Anxious
black melancholy _fumes_.'--Burton's Anat. of Mel. p. 438, ed. 1845. 'All
vapours arising out of the stomach,' especially those caused by gluttony
and drunkenness. 'For when the head is heated it scorcheth the blood, and
from thence proceed melancholy _fumes_ that trouble the mind.'--Ibid. p.
269.
4118. _rede colera_ ... red cholera caused by too much bile and _blood_
(sometimes called _red humour_). Burton speaks of a kind of melancholy of
which the signs are these--'the veins of their eyes red, as well as their
faces.' The following quotation explains the matter. 'Ther be foure
humours, Bloud, Fleame, Cholar, and Melancholy.... First, working heate
turneth what is colde and moyst into the kind of Fleme, and then what is
hot and moyst, into the kinde of Bloud; and then what is hot and drye into
the kinde of Cholera; and then what is colde and drye into the kinde of
Melancholia.... By meddling of other humours, Bloud chaungeth kinde and
colour: for by meddling of _Cholar_, it seemeth _red_, and by Melancholy it
seemeth _black_, and by Fleame it seemeth watrie, and fomie.'--Batman upon
Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 6. So also--'in bloud it needeth that there be _red
Cholera_'; lib. iv. c. 10; &c.
The following explains the belief as to dreams caused by _cholera_. Men in
which red _Cholera_ is excesssive 'dreame of fire, and of lyghtening, and
of dreadful burning of the ayre'; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. iv. c. 10.
Those in which _Melancholia_ is excessive dream 'dredfull darke dreames,
and very ill to see'; id. c. 11. And again: 'He that is Sanguine hath glad
and liking dreames, the melancholious dremeth of sorrow, the Cholarike, of
_firy_ things, and the Flematike, of Raine, Snow,' &c.; id. lib. vi. c. 27.
4123. _the humour of malencolye._ 'The name (melancholy) is imposed from
the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause, as Bruel
observes, [Greek: melancholia] _quasi_ [Greek: melainacholê], from black
choler.' Fracastorius, in his second book of Intellect, calls those
melancholy [252] 'whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black
choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most
things or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations
of the understanding.'--Burton's Anat. of Melancholy, p. 108, ed. 1805.