1451. 'What I can thus acquire is the substance of all my income.' See note
to A. 256; and _Feck_ in the New Eng. Dictionary.
1456. Read _ben'cite_; and observe the rime: _prey-e_, _sey ye_. Pronounce:
(prei·y[*e], sei·y[*e]), where ([*e]) represents the obscure vowel, or the
_a_ in _China_. [327]
1459. Such questions were eagerly discussed in the middle ages; see l.
1461-5.
1463. _make yow seme_, make it seem to you. Tyrwhitt has _wene_ (for
_seme_), which occurs in MS. Cp. only.
1467. _iogelour_, juggler; for their tricks, see F. 1143. Wright
says:--'The _jogelour_ (_joculator_) was originally the minstrel, and at an
earlier period was an important member of society. He always combined
mimicry and mountebank performances with poetry and music. In Chaucer's
time he had so far degenerated as to have become a mere mountebank, and as
it appears, to have merited the energetic epithet here applied to him.' Cf.
my note to P. Plowman, C. xvi. 207.
1472. Read _abl' is_. MS. Hl. has:--'As most abíl is our-e pray to take.'
Cf. F. _habile_, for which Cotgrave gives one meaning as 'apt unto anything
he undertakes.'
1476. _pryme_, 9 A.M., a late time with early risers. See note to B. 4045,
p. 250.
1483-91. Cf. Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 62-71; Job, i. 12; ii. 6.
1502. I suspect this to be an allusion to a story similar to that entitled
'A Lay of St. Dunstan' in the Ingoldsby Legends.
1503. This probably alludes to some of the legends about the apostles.
Thus, in The Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 36, l. 72, some fiends are
represented as doing the will of St. James the Greater; and in the same, p.
368, l. 50, a fiend says of St. Bartholomew:--'He mai do with us al that he
wole, for bi-neothe him we beoth.' Cf. Acts, xix. 15.
1508. 'The adoption of the bodies of the deceased by evil spirits in their
wanderings upon earth, was an important part of the medieval superstitions
of this country, and enters largely into a variety of legendary stories
found in the old chroniclers.'--Wright. Bell quotes from Hamlet, ii.
2:--'The spirit that I have seen May be the devil,' &c.
1509. _renably_, reasonably. The A. F. form of 'reasonable' was _resnable_
(as in the Life of Edw. the Confessor, l. 1602); and, by the law that _s_
became silent before _l_, _m_, and _n_ (as in _isle_, _blasmer_, _disner_,
E. _isle_, _blame_, _dine_), this became _renable_. See note to P. Plowman,
C. i. 176.
1510. _Phitonissa_; this is another spelling of _pythonissa_, which is the
word used, in the Vulgate version of 1 Chron. x. 13, with reference to the
witch of Endor. In 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, the phrase is _mulier pythonem
habens_. The witch of Endor is also called _phitonesse_ in Gower, Conf.
Amant. bk. iv, ed. Pauli, ii. 66; Barbour's Bruce, iv. 753; Skelton's
Philip Sparowe, l. 1345; Lydgate's Falls of Princes, bk. ii. leaf xl, ed.
Wayland; Gawain Douglas, prol. to the Æneid, ed. Small, ii. 10, l. 2; and
in Sir D. Lyndesay's Monarchè, bk. iv. l. 5842. And see Hous of Fame, 1261.
Cf. [Greek: pneuma Puthônos], Acts, xvi. 16.
1518. _in a chayer rede_, lecture about this matter as in a professorial
chair, lecture like a professor; cf. l. 1638. The fiend is satirical.
1519. Referring to Vergil's Æneid, bk. vi, and Dante's Inferno.