[129] The text has ‘Heit, Scot, heit, brok, what spare ye for the stones?’ and it is singular that ‘hayt’ is still the word used by waggoners in Norfolk to make their horses go on; while Scot remains one of the commonest names for a horse in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Reeve’s horse in the Prologue is called Scot also. Brock means a badger, hence applied to a grey horse. The carter presently calls this horse ‘myn oughne lyard (grey) boy.’
[130] The value of twelve pence may be estimated by the relative value of food and labour. Bell says, “Twelve pence would have bought two dozen hens, or three gallons of red wine, or hired a dozen common labourers for twelve days,” but surely he means a dozen labourers for one day, or one labourer for twelve days.
[131] There was then no means of conveyance for people who could not walk except horseback.
[132] A libel, a copy of the information or indictment. A libel is still the expression in the ecclesiastical courts.—Bell. The abuses, we see, have led to another interpretation of the word libel—as libellous.
[133] This singular (to us) term as applied to Christ, was of course borrowed from the popular notion of warfare, when each knight, inspired by some fair inciter, was the more valiant for her sake. The term is both picturesque and forcible as an appeal to the common understanding, in which the Friars were naturally adepts.
[134] Tyrwhitt.
[135] The Summoner’s Tale (omitted) follows here.
[136] Students then entered the university at a far younger age than at the present day, almost indeed when boys now enter the public schools, so that the Clerk of Oxford may have been but a boy, which would account for his diffident demeanour: yet his education and knowledge might warrant mine host’s fear of his being too learned for them.
[137] Table: a board upon trestles.
[138] These are the lines on which the supposition is based that Petrarch and Chaucer had met.