1213. _Weping and wayling_; an expression caught from l. 1212, and linking
this Prologue to the foregoing Tale. Yet in fourteen MSS. the Merchant's
Tale is separated from the Clerk's; Trial Forewords, by F. J. Furnivall
(Chaucer Soc.), p. 28.
1221-2. _What_, why. _at al_, in every respect; like Lat. _omnino_.
1227. This theme is enlarged upon in Lenvoy de Chaucer à Bukton, a late
minor poem (vol. i. 398).
1230. _Seint Thomas._ Whenever this Apostle is mentioned, he is nearly
always said to be _of India_, to distinguish him, it may be, from Saint
Thomas of Canterbury. See D. 1980, and the note. Some account of the shrine
of St. Thomas, of the manner of his death, and of miracles wrought by him,
is given in Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 18. Colonel Yule tells us that the
body of St. Thomas lay at Mailapúr, a suburb of Madras. The legend of St.
Thomas's preaching in India is of very high antiquity. St. Jerome speaks of
the Divine Word being everywhere present in His fulness 'cum Thomâ in
India, cum Petro Romae,' &c.; Sci. Hieronomi Epist. lix., ad Marcellam.
Gregory of Tours (A. D. 544-595) speaks of the place _in India_ where the
body of St. Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa in the year 394.
See the whole of Colonel Yule's long note upon the subject; and the account
of Saint Thomas in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.