2001. See Chaucer's Legend of Hypermnestra.
2003. 'Discordia, contake'; Glossary in Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 7.
2004. chirking is used of grating and creaking sounds; and sometimes, of the cry of birds. The Lansd. MS. has schrikeinge (shrieking). See House of Fame, iii. 853 (or 1943). In Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 29, the music of the spheres is attributed to the 'cherkyng of the mouing of the circles, and of the roundnes of heauen.' In Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. i. met. 6, it is an adj., and translates stridens. Cf. D. 1804, I. 605.
2007. This line contains an allusion to the death of Sisera, Judges iv. But Dr. Koch has pointed out (Essays on Chaucer, Chaucer Soc. iv. 371) that we have here some proof that Chaucer may have altered his first draft of the poem without taking sufficient heed to what he was about. The original line may have stood—
'The sleer of her husband saw I there'—
or something of that kind; for the reason that no suicide has ever yet been known to drive a nail into his own head. That a wife might do so to her husband is Chaucer's own statement; for, in the Cant. Tales, D. 765-770, we find—
'Of latter date, of wives hath he red,
That somme han slayn hir housbondes in hir bed ...
And somme han drive nayles in hir brayn,
Whyl that they slepte, and thus they han hem slayn.'