'My mother was afrayde there had ben theves in her house, and she kryed out haroll alarome (F. elle sescria harol alarme)'; Palsgrave, s. v. crye, p. 501. See Haro in Littré, hara in Schade. Cf. l. 3825; and the note in Dyce's Skelton, ii. 274.
3291. I. e. St. Thomas of Canterbury.
3299. 'A clerk would have employed his time ill.'
3308. Defective in the first foot; scan: Crist | es, &c. Tyrwhitt inserts Of before Cristes, and coolly observes, in his Notes, that it is 'added from conjecture only.' He might have said, that it makes bad grammar. And it is from such manipulated lines as this that the public forms its judgement of Chaucer's verse! Is it nothing that all the authorities begin the line alike?
3316. shode, not 'hair,' as in Tyrwhitt, but 'parting of the hair.'
3318. 'It was the fashion to wear shoes with the upper leather cut into a variety of beautiful designs, resembling the tracery of window-heads, through which the bright colour of the green, blue, or scarlet stocking beneath was shewn to great advantage';—Rock, Church of our Fathers, ii. 239, with illustrations at p. 240. Poules windowes, windows like those in St. Paul's Cathedral; hence, designs resembling them. Wright conjectures that there may even be a reference to the rose-window of old St. Paul's; and he says that examples of such shoes still exist, in the museum of Mr. C. Roach Smith. Good illustrations of these beautifully cut shoes are given in Fairholt's Costume, pp. 64, 65, who also notes that 'in Dugdale's view of old St. Paul's ... the rose-window in the transept is strictly analogous in design.' The Latin name for such shoes was calcei fenestrati, which see in Ducange. Rock also quotes the phrase corium fenestratum from Pope Innocent III. Observe the mention of his scarlet hose in the next line. Cf. note to Rom. of the Rose, 843, in vol. i. p. 423.
3321. wachet, a shade of blue. Tyrwhitt wrongly connects it with the town of Watchet, in Somersetshire. But it is French. Littré, s. v. vaciet, gives: 'Couleur d'hyacinthe ou vaciet,' colour of the hyacinth, or bilberry (Lat. uaccinium). Roquefort defines vaciet as a shrub which bears a dark fruit fit for dyeing violet; it is applied, he
says, both to the fruit and the dye; and he calls it Vaccinium hysginum. Phillips says watchet is 'a kind of blew colour.' Todd's Johnson cites from Milton's Hist. of Muscovia, c. 5, 'watchet or sky-coloured cloth'; and the line, 'Who stares, in Germany, at watchet eyes,' tr. of Juvenal, Sat. xiii, wrongly attributed to Dryden. See examples in Nares from Browne, Lyly, Drayton, and Taylor: and, in Richardson, from Beaumont and Fletcher, Hackluyt, Spenser, and Ben Jonson. Cotgrave explains F. pers as 'watchet, blunket, skie-coloured,' and couleur perse as 'skie-colour, azure-colour, a blunket, or light blue.' See Blunket in the New E. Dict., and my article in Philolog. Soc. Trans. Nov. 6, 1885, p. 329. Webster has 'watchet stockings,' The Malcontent, A. iii. sc. 1. Lydgate has 'watchet blewe'; see Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. (1840), ii. 280.
3322. poyntes, tagged laces, as in Shakespeare. MS. Hl. has here a totally different line, involving the word gores (cf. l. 3237 above), viz. 'Schapen with goores in the newe get,' i. e. in the new fashion.
3329. Tyrwhitt says:—'The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing, as that of Stratford for its French'; see l. 125. He probably meant this satirically; but it may mean the very opposite, or something nearly so. The Stratford-at-Bow French was excellent of its kind, but unlike that of France (see note to l. 125); and probably the Oxford dancing was, likewise, of no mean quality after its kind, having twenty 'maneres.'