96. Most MSS. read so sore, giving no sense. Ten Brink has—'For sooth to seyne, I bere the hevy soore'; following MS. Sh. It is simpler to correct so to the, as suggested by Harl. 7578, which has—'For soith [error for sothly] for to saye I bere the sore.'
101. Set, short for setteth, like bit for biddeth, Cant. Tales, Prol. 187, &c. Ten Brink quotes from the Sompnoures Tale (D 1982)—'With which the devel set your herte a-fyre,' where set = sets, present tense.
105. Ten Brink inserts ne, though it is not in the MSS. His note is: 'Ne is a necessary complement to but = "only," as but properly means "except"; and a collation of the best MSS. of the Cant. Tales shows that Chaucer never omitted the negative in this case. (The same observation was made already by Prof. Child in his excellent paper on the language of Chaucer and Gower; see Ellis, Early Eng. Pronunciation, p. 374.) Me ne forms but one syllable, pronounced meen [i. e. as mod. E. main]. In the same manner I ne = iin [pron. as mod. E. een] occurs, Cant. Tales, Prol. 764 (from MS. Harl. 7334)—
"I ne saugh this yeer so mery a companye";
and in the Man of Lawes Tale (Group B, 1139)—
"I ne seye but for this ende this sentence."
Compare Middle High German in (= ich ne), e.g. in kan dir nicht, Walter v. d. Vogelweide, ed. Lachmann, 101. 33. In early French and Provençal me, te, se, &c., when preceded by a vowel, often became m, t, s, &c.; in Italian we have cen for ce ne, &c.' Cf. They n' wer-e in The Former Age, l. 5; and Book of the Duch. 244 (note).
110. See Anelida, 182; and the note.
119. Observe that this last line is a repetition of l. 2.