[11]. The comune errour: 'Commouet gentes publicus error.' The people who do not understand an eclipse, are excited by it; they bring out basins, and beat them with a loud din, to frighten away the spirit that is preying on the moon. Chaucer calls them Corybantes, but these were the priests of Cybele. Still, they celebrated her rites to the sound of noisy music; and he may have been thinking of a passage in Ovid, Fasti, iv. 207-14. C. adds a gloss: 'i. vulgaris error, quo putatur luna incantari.'
[12]. thikke strokes, frequent strokes. The word resembles thilke in C., because lk is not unfrequently written for kk in the fifteenth century, to the confusion of some editors; see my paper on Ghost-words, in the Philol. Soc. Trans. 1886, p. 370.
[18]. by quakinge flodes: 'frementi ... fluctu.'
[23]. alle thinges: 'Cuncta, quae rara prouehit aetas.'
[24]. troubly errour: 'nubilus error.'
Prose 6. [9]. laven it, to exhaust the subject: 'cui uix exhausti quidquam satis sit.' As to lave, see note to Bk. iii. Met. 12-16.
[13]. Ydre, Hydra; see note below to Met. 7. The form is due to hydrae (MS. hydre) in the Latin text.
Ne ther ... ende: 'nec ullus fuerit modus.' Manere is not the sense of modus here; it rather means ende or 'limit.'
[14]. but-yif: 'nisi quis eas uiuacissimo mentis igne coërceat.'
[24, 5]. But althogh: 'Quòd si te musici carminis oblectamenta delectant, hanc oportet paullisper differas uoluptatem, dum nexas sibi ordine contexo rationes.' This is said, because this 'Prose' is of unusual length. For sibi, another reading is tibi; hence Chaucer's 'weve to thee resouns.'