968. Dryden is plainer, and less polite:--'But she must burst or blab.' Cf.
Rom. de la Rose, 16568-9.
972. _bitore_, bittern; _bumbleth_, makes a bellowing noise, which is also
expressed by _bumping_ or _booming_. Note that MS. Cm. has [318] _bumbith_.
Owing to the loud booming note of the male bittern, it is called in A. S.
_r[=a]re-dumle_ or _r[=a]re-dumbla_, from _r[=a]rian_, to roar; see
Wright's Glossaries. In provincial English, it is called a _butter-bump_,
or a _bumble_; or, from its frequenting moist places, a _bog-bumper_, a
_bog-drum_, or a _bull o' the bog_; see Swainson's Provincial Names of
British Birds, E. D. S., p. 146. It was formerly thought that the cry was
produced by the bird plunging its bill into mud and then blowing, as in the
present passage; others thought that it put its bill into a reed, a view
taken by Dryden, as he here has the line:--'And, as a bittern _bumps within
a reed_.' Sir T. Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, bk. iii. c. 27, controverts
these notions, and attributes the note to the conformation of the bird's
organs of voice. 'The same contradiction of the common notion is given,
from personal experience, by the Rev. S. Fovargue, in his New Catalogue of
Vulgar Errors, pp. 19-21'; note to Sir T. Browne, ed. S. Wilkin. The same
editor further refers us to papers by Dr. Latham and Mr. Yarrell in the
Linnaean Transactions, vols. iv, xv, and xvi. See Prof. Newton's Dict. of
Birds.
981. There is not much 'remnant' of the tale; Ovid adds that some reeds
grew out of the pit, which, when breathed upon by the South wind, uttered
the words which had been buried.
992. This reminds us of Chaucer's own vision of Alcestis and her nineteen
attendant ladies in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women.