[357]. 'These are the causes why, if I am not to lie'; &c. See note to l. 217.
[358]. Lavender, laundress, washerwoman; (Bell's interpretation of 'gutter' is utter nonsense). See Laundress in my Etym. Dict., where I refer to the present passage. Laundress is formed by adding -ess to launder or laundre, the contracted form of lavender as here used. In Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, xvi. 273, 292, the word for 'washerwoman' is spelt lauender, laynder, and landar. Palsgrave's Eng. and Fr. Dict. gives—'Laundre, that wassheth clothes; lauendiere'; and Cotgrave explains the Fr. lauandiere by the Eng. launderesse. Chaucer's presentation to us of Envy as the person who washes all the dirty linen in the court, is particularly happy. As a matter of fact, he is here quoting Dante, but he has substituted lavender (perhaps in an ill sense, though I do not feel sure of this) for the meretrice of the original. The passage referred to is in the Inferno, xiii. 64:—
'La meretrice, che mai dall' ospizio
Di Cesare non torse gli occhi putti,
Morte comune, e delle corti vizio,
Infiammò contre me gli animi tutti.'
Cary's translation has:—
'The harlot, who ne'er turned her gloating eyes
From Cæsar's household, common vice and pest
Of courts, 'gainst me inflamed the minds of all.'