Ne tristes en aversités.'
Chaucer's three strees (i. e. straws) is Jean de Meun's prune.
723. By the ferses twelve I understand all the pieces except the king, which could not be taken. The guess in Bell's Chaucer says 'all the pieces except the pawns'; but as a player only has seven pieces beside the pawns and king, we must then say that the knight exaggerates. My own reckoning is thus: pawns, eight; queen, bishop, rook, knight, four; total, twelve. The fact that each player has two of three of these, viz. of the bishop, rook, and knight, arose from the conversion of chaturaṅga, in which each of four persons had a king, bishop, knight, rook [to keep to modern names] and four pawns, into chess, in which each of two persons had two kings (afterwards king and queen), two bishops, knights, and rooks, and eight pawns. The bishop, knight, and rook, were thus duplicated, and so count but one apiece, which
makes three (sorts of) pieces; and the queen is a fourth, for the king cannot be taken. The case of the pawns was different, for each pawn had an individuality of its own, no two being made alike (except in inferior sets). Caxton's Game of the Chesse shews this clearly; he describes each of the eight pawns separately, and gives a different figure to each. According to him, the pawns were (beginning from the King's Rook's Pawn) the Labourer, Smyth, Clerke (or Notary), Marchaunt, Physicien, Tauerner, Garde, and Ribauld. They denoted 'all sorts and conditions of men'; and this is why our common saying of 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief' enumerates eight conditions[[288]].
As the word fers originally meant counsellor or monitor of the king, it could be applied to any of the pieces. There was a special reason for its application to each of the pawns; for a pawn, on arriving at its last square, could not be exchanged (as now) for any piece at pleasure, but only for a queen, i. e. the fers par excellence. For, as Caxton says again, 'he [the pawn] may not goo on neyther side till he hath been in the fardest ligne of theschequer, & that he hath taken the nature of the draughtes of the quene, & than he is a fiers, and than may he goo on al sides cornerwyse fro poynt to poynt onely as the quene'; &c.
726. These stock examples all come together in the Rom. de la Rose; viz. Jason and Medee, at l. 13433; Philis and Demophon, at l. 13415; 'Dido, roine de Cartage,' at l. 13379. The story of Echo and Narcissus is told fully, in an earlier passage (see ll. 1469-1545 of the English version, at p. 154); also that of 'Dalida' and 'Sanson' in a later passage, at l. 16879. See also the Legends of Dido, Medea, and Phillis in the Legend of Good Women; and the story of Sampson in the Monkes Tale, B 3205:—
'Ne Narcissus, the faire,' &c.; Kn. Tale, 1083 (A 1941).
'And dye he moste, he seyde, as dide Ekko
For Narcisus'; C. T. 11263 (Frank. Tale, F 951).
779. M. Sandras points out the resemblance to a passage in G. de Machault's Remède de Fortune:—