1162. Tubal; an error for Jubal; see Gen. iv. 21. But the error is Chaucer's own, and is common. See Higden's Polychronicon, lib. iii. c. 11, ed. Lumby, iii. 202; Higden cites the following from Isidorus, lib. ii. c. 24:—'Quamvis Tubal de stirpe Cayn ante diluvium legatur fuisse musicæ inventor, ... tamen apud Græcos Pythagoras legitur ex malleorum sonitu et chordarum extensione musicam reperisse.' In Genesis, it is Jubal who 'was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ'; and Tubal-cain who was 'an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.' The notion of the discovery of music by the former from the observation of the sounds struck upon the anvil of the latter is borrowed from the usual fable about Pythagoras. This fable is also given by Higden, who copies it from Macrobius. It will be found in the Commentary by Macrobius on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. ii. c. 1; and is to the effect that Pythagoras, observing some smiths at work, found that the tones struck upon their anvils varied according to the weights of the hammers used by them; and, by weighing these hammers, he discovered the relations to each other of the various notes in the gamut. The story is open to the objection that the facts are not so; the sound varies according to variations in the anvil or the thing struck, not according to the variation in the striking implement. However, Pythagoras is further said to have made experiments with stretched strings of varying length; which would have given him right results. See Mrs. Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, sect. 16 and 17.
1169. Aurora. The note in Tyrwhitt's Glossary, s. v. Aurora, runs thus:—'The title of a Latin metrical version of several parts of the Bible by Petrus de Riga, Canon of Rheims, in the twelfth century. Leyser, in his Hist. Poet. Med. Ævi, pp. 692-736, has given large extracts from this work, and among others the passage which Chaucer seems to have had in his eye (p. 728):—
'Aure Jubal varios ferramenti notat ictus.
Pondera librat in his. Consona quæque facit.
Hoc inventa modo prius est ars musica, quamvis
Pythagoram dicant hanc docuisse prius.'
Warton speaks of 'Petrus de Riga, canon of Rheims, whose Aurora, or the History of the Bible allegorised, in Latin verses ... was never printed entire.'—Hist. E. Poet. 1871, iii. 136.
1175. A song in six lines; compare the eleven-line song above, at l. 475. Lines 1175-6 rime with lines 1179-80.
1198. Koch scans: Ánd | bounté | withoút' | mercý ||. This is no better than the reading in the text.