464. halke, corner; Can. Yem. Ta. G 311.
482. shepherd-e, is trisyllabic; cf. herd-e, in Prol. 603.
490. daungerous, stingy; contrasted with riche (l. 492).
501. It is impossible to make sense without reading nolde for wolde. The Fr. text clearly shews that nolde is meant:—'Que n'en preisse pas ... Que ge n'entrasse.' The scribe stumbled over the double negative.
505. G. has:—'Thassemble, god kepe it fro care Of briddis, whiche therynne ware'; and Th. has the same reading. It cannot be right,
because care and were give a false rime. Even the scribe has seen this, and has altered were to ware, to give a rime to the eye. Perhaps such a rime may have passed in Northern English, but certainly not in Midland. I have no hesitation in restoring the reading, which must have been 'God it kepe and were,' or something very near it. It is obvious that were is the original word in this passage, because it is the precise etymological equivalent of garisse in the French text; and it is further obvious that the reason for expelling it from the text, was to avoid the apparent repetition of were in the rime; a repetition which the scribe too hastily assumed to be a defect, though examples of it are familiar to the student of Chaucer; cf. Prol. 17, 18. Chaucer has were, to defend, riming with spere, Cant. Ta. A 2550; and were (were) also riming with spere, Ho. Fame, 1047. He would therefore have had no hesitation in riming these words together; and we cannot doubt that he here did so. Cf. ll. 515, 516 below.
516. where would mean 'by which'; read o-where, i. e. anywhere.
520. The spelling angwishis is a false spelling of anguissous, i. e. full of anguish. For this form, see Pers. Tale, I 304.
535. Read oft; F. text, 'par maintes fois.'
562. orfrays, gold embroidered work, cloth-of-gold; cf. ll. 869, 1076. 'The golden bands fastened to, or embroidered on chasubles, copes, and vestments ... Fringes or laces appended to the garments, as well as the embroidered work upon them, were so termed'; Fairholt, Costume in England. See Way's note on Orfrey in the Prompt. Parvulorum. Cotgrave has: 'Orfrais, m. Broad welts, or gards of gold or silver imbroidery laid on Copes, and other Church-vestments'; &c. There is a long note upon it, with quotations, in Thynne's Animadversions on Speght's Chaucer, ed. Furnivall, pp. 33-35; he says it is 'frised or perled cloothe of gold,' or 'a weued clothe of gold.' Here it seems to mean a gold-embroidered band, worn as a chaplet.