144. Cylenius, Mercury; as in l. 113. Chevauche, equestrian journey, ride. Used ludicrously to mean a feat of horsemanship in l. 50 of the Manciple's Prologue. The closely related word chivachye, in Prologue to C. T. 85, means a military (equestrian) expedition. In the present case it simply means 'swift course,' with reference to the rapid movement of Mercury, which completes its orbit in about 88 days. Thus the line means—'Mercury, advancing in his swift course.'
145. Fro Venus valance. This is the most difficult expression in the poem, but I explain it by reading fallance, which of course is only a guess. I must now give my reasons, as every preceding commentator has given up the passage as hopeless.
The readings of the MSS. all point back to a form valance (as in Ar.) or valauns (as in Tn.); whence the other readings, such as Valaunses, valanus (for valauns), balance, balaunce, are all deduced, by easy corruptions. But, as no assignable sense has been found for valance, I can only suppose that it is an error for falance or fallance. I know of no instance of its use in English, but Godefroy gives examples of fallance and falence in O. French, though the usual spelling is faillance. The change from faillance or fallance to vallance or valance would easily be made by scribes, from the alliterative influence of the initial letter of the preceding word Venus. Moreover, we have v for f in E. vixen (for fixen), and in Southern English generally. Even in a Chaucer MS., the curious spelling vigour or vigur for figure occurs over and over again; viz. in the Cambridge MS. (Dd. 3. 53) of Chaucer's 'Astrolabe.'
The sense of fallance or faillance is failure, defection. Cotgrave gives us: 'Faillance, f. a defection, failing, decaying.' The numerous examples in Godefroy shew that it was once a common word. It represents a Lat. fem. *fallentia.
I hold it to be the exact literal translation into French of the Lat. technical (astrological) term detrimentum. In my edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe (E. E. T. S.), p. lxvii., I explained that every planet had either one or two mansions, and one or two detrimenta. The detrimentum is the sign of the Zodiac opposite to the planet's mansion. The mansions of Venus were Taurus and Libra (see note to l. 54); and her detrimenta were Scorpio and Aries. The latter is here intended; so that, after all, this apparently mysterious term 'Venus valance' is nothing but another name for the sign Aries, which, from other considerations, must necessarily be here intended.
If the correction of valance to fallance be disallowed, I should plead that valance might be short for avalance (mod. E. avalanche, literally descent), just as every reader of our old literature knows that vale is a common form instead of avale, to descend or lower, being the verb
from which avalance is derived. This valance (= avalance) is a fair translation of the Lat. occasus, which was an alternative name for the sign called detrimentum; see my edition of the Astrolabe, as above. The result would then be just the same as before, and would bring us back to the sign of Aries again.
But we know that Aries is meant, from purely astronomical considerations. For the planet Mercury is always so near the sun that it can never have a greater elongation, or angular distance, from it than 29°, which is just a little less than the length of a sign, which was 30°. But, the sun being (as said) in the 1st degree of Taurus on the 12th of April, it is quite certain that Mercury was either in Taurus or in Aries. Again, as there was no mention of Mercury being in Taurus when Mars and Venus were there and were undisturbed (see note to l. 114), we can only infer that Mercury was then in Aries.
Moreover, he continued his swift course, always approaching and tending to overtake the slower bodies that preceded him, viz. the Sun, Mars, and Venus. At last, he got so near that he was able to 'see' or get a glimpse of his mansion Gemini, which was not so very far ahead of him. This I take to mean that he was swiftly approaching the end of Aries.
We can now tell the exact position of all the bodies on the 14th of April, two days after the sun had burst into Taurus, where he had found Mars and Venus at no great distance apart. By that time, Venus was in the second degree of Gemini, Mars was left behind in Taurus, the sun was in the third degree of Taurus, and Mercury near the end of Aries, sufficiently near to Venus to salute and cheer her with a kindly and favourable aspect.