NOTES. The two first of the three operations of flax-dressing described in lines 526– 529, p. 15, One of hem knockyd lyne, A-nothyr swyngelyd good and fyne The thyrde did rele and spynne, must correspond to the preliminary breaking of the plant, and then the scutching or beating to separate the coarse tow or hards from the tare or fine hemp. Except so far as the swingle served as a heckle, the further heckling of the flax, to render the fibre finer and cleaner, was dispensed with, though heckles (iron combs) must have been in use when the poem was written inasmuch as hekele, hekelare, hekelyn, and hekelynge, are in the Promptorium, ab. 1440 A.D. Under Hatchell, Randle Holme gives a drawing of a heckle. The lines through the h's in the MS. are not, I believe, marks of contraction. There are no insettings of the third lines, or spaces on changes of subject, in the MS. For reference to two analogous stories to that of the Poem, I am indebted to Mr Thomas Wright. The first is that of Constant Duhamel in the third volume of Barbazan, and the second that of the Prioress and her three Suitors in the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, published by the Percy Society, ed. Halliwell. In the Barbazan tale "the wife is violently solicited by three suitors, the priest, the provost, and the forester, who on her refusal persecute her husband. To stop their attacks she gives them appointments at her house immediately after one another, so that when one is there and stripped for the bath, another comes, and, pretending it is her husband, she conceals them one after another in a large tub full of feathers, out of which they can see all that is going on in the room. She then sends successively for their three wives to come and bathe with her, the bath being still in the same room, and as each is stripped naked in the bath, she introduces her own husband, who dishonours them one after another, one à l'enverse, with rather aggravating circumstances, and all in view of their three husbands. Finally the latter are turned out of the house naked, or rather well feathered, then hunted by the whole town and their dogs, well bitten and beaten." (If any one wants to see a justification of the former half of the proverb quoted by Roberd of Brunne, Frenche men synne yn lecherye And Englys men yn enuye, let him read the astounding revelation made of the state of the early French mind by the tales in the 3rd and 4th vols. of Barbazan's Fabliaux, ed. 1808.) The second story, told by Lydgate, is as follows:-A prioress is wooed by “a young knyght, a parson of a paryche, and a burges of a borrow." She promises herself to the first if he will lie for a night in a chapel sewn up in a sheet like a corpse; to the second, if he will perform the funeral service over the knight, and bury him; to the third, if he will dress up like a devil, and frighten both parson and knight. This the burges Sir John does well, but is himself terrified at the corpse getting up: all three run away from one another: the knight falls on a stake, and into a snare set for bucks, and breaks his fore top in falling from the tree; the merchant gets tossed by a bull; the parson breaks his head and jumps into a bramble bush; and the prioress gets rid of them all, but not before she has made the "burges" or "marchaunt" pay her twenty marks not to tell his wife and the country generally of his tricks.-Minor Poems, p. 107-117, ed. 1840. GLOSSARY. Meyne, 403, household. Onredde, 308; AS. unrét, unrót, uncheerful, sorrowful, or unréd, imprudent. Opre, 205, second. Putry, 61, adultery; O. Fr. puterie, whoring. Rawte, 503, reached, gave. Rewe, 186, have pity. Rocke, 503, 508; Du. een Rocke, Spinrock, A Distaffe, or a Spinrock; Rocken, To Winde Flaxe or Wool upon a Rock (Hexham). Dan. rok, O.N. rokkr, G. rocken: a distaff held in the hand from which the thread was spun by twirling a ball below. What, shall a woman with a rokke drive thee away?'” Digby Mysteries, p. 11 (Halliwell). "An Instrument us'd in some Parts for the spinning of Flax and Hemp." Phillips; for reeling and spinning (1. 529). Rought, 198, AS. rohte, p. of récan, to reck, care for. Ryde, 524, light, small, AS. geryd, levis, æquus. Lye. Ry e, 642, Du. rijf, rife, or abundant. Scales, 401; ? husks, bark, or rind, see shoves*, in Swyngylle, below. Schent, 258, destroyed; AS. scendan. Stounde, 4, short time, Strycke, 514, "Strike of Flax, is as much as is heckled at one Handful." Phillips. Swyngylle, 216, "Swingle-Staff, a Stick to beat Flax with," Phil. ; ÁS. swingele, a whip, lash. "To swingle, to beat; a Term among Flax-dressers." Phillips. Though Randle Holme, Bk. III., ch. viii. No. xxxiii., gives the Swingle-Tree of a Coach-Pole (these are made of wood, and are fastened by Iron hooks, stables (sic) chains and pinns to the Coach-pole, to the which Horses are fastened by their Harnish when there is more then two to draw the Coach), yet at Chap. vi., § iv., p. 285, col. 1, he says, "He beareth Sable, a Swingle Hand erected, Surmounting of a Swingle Foot, Or. This is Wooden Instrument made like a Fauchion, with an hole cut in the top of it, to hold it by: It is used for the clearing of Hemp and Flax from the large broken Stalks or * Shoves, by the help of the said Swingle Foot, which it is hung upon, which said Stalks being first broken, bruised, and cut into shivers by a Brake. a S. 3, such erected in Fesse O. born by Flaxlowe. S. 3, such in Pale A., born by Swingler." (A drawing is given by Holme, No. 4, on the plate opposite p. 285.) Swingowing is the beating off the bruised inward stalk of the Hemp or Flax, from the outward pill, Take, 161, deliver. Tolle, 62, entice (H. H. Gibbs). Vade, 1 125, 419, fade; Du. vadden (Hexham). Wone, 275, store, quantity. Yougeth, 20, youth, bachelor's freedom. The use of the flat vade (1. 419, p. 12) within 2 lines of the sharp fade (1. 417), corresponds with the flat 'stowde,' 1. 400, p. 12, riming with 'owte,' 1. 401, badde with hatte, 1. 265-6. Cost, brest, 1. 142-3, are careless rimes too. 'The Rev. J. R. Lumby first told me of the proverb 'As white as a nun's hen,' the nuns being famous, no doubt, for delicate poultry. John Heywood has in his Proverbes, 1562 (first printed, 1546), p. 43 of the Spencer Society's reprint, 1867, She tooke thenterteinment of the yong men The proverb is quoted by Wilson in his Arte of Rhetorique, 1553 (Hazlitt's 2 For honde. |