'Thing which he said his owne mouth.'
3625. ronges, rungs, rounds, steps; stalkes, upright pieces. To
climb by the rungs and the stalks means to employ the hands as well as the feet. A rung was also called a stayre (stair); and stalke is the diminutive of stele, a handle, which was another name for the upright part of a ladder. In Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, C. 513, the author complains that some people cannot tell the difference between a stele and a stayre; and, in fact, the Glossary does not point it out. In the Ancren Riwle, p. 354, we find mention of the two ladder-stales that are upright to the heaven, between which stales the tinds (or rungs) are fastened. This makes the sense perfectly clear.
3637. a furlong-way, a few minutes; exactly, two minutes and a half, at the rate of three miles an hour.
3638. 'Now say a Paternoster, and keep silence.' Accordingly, the carpenter 'says his devotion.' 'Clom!' is a word imposing silence, like 'mum!' So in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 266, we find: 'Yef ye me wylleth y-here, habbeth amang you clom and reste'; i. e. if you wish to hear me, keep among you silence and rest.
3645. corfew-tyme, probably 8 P.M. The original time for ringing the curfew-bell, as a signal for putting out fires and lights, was eight o'clock. The custom has been kept up in some places till the present day; the hour for it is sometimes 8 P.M., and sometimes 9 P.M. In olden times, mention is usually made of the former of these hours; see Brand, Pop. Antiq. ii. 220; Prompt. Parv. p. 110. People invariably went to bed very early; see l. 3633.
3655. The service of lauds followed that of nocturns; the latter originally began at midnight, but usually somewhat later. The time indicated seems to have been just before daybreak. 'These nocturns should begin at such a time as to be ended just as morning's twilight broke, so that the next of her services, the lauds, or matutinae laudes, might come on immediately after.'—Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 2. 6. From l. 3731, we learn, however, that the night was still 'as dark as pitch.' Perhaps the time was between two and three o'clock, as Wright suggests.
3668. the grange, lit. granary; but the term was applied to a farm-house and granary on an estate belonging to a feudal manor or (as here) to a religious house. As the estate often lay at some distance from the abbey, it might be necessary for the carpenter, who went to cut down trees, to stay at the grange for the night. Cf. note to P. Pl. C. xx. 71; and Prompt. Parv. (s. v. grawnge).
3675. at cockkes crowe; cf. l. 3687. The expression in l. 3674 must refer to Monday: the 'cock-crow' refers to Tuesday morning, when it was still pitch-dark (l. 3731). The time denoted by the 'first cock-crow' is very vague; see the Chapter on Cock-crowing in Brand's Pop. Antiquities. The 'second cock-crow' seems to be about 3 A.M., as in Romeo and Juliet, iv. 4. 4; and the 'first cock-crow,' shortly after midnight, as in K. Lear, iii. 4. 121, 1 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 20. An early mention of the first cock occurs in Ypomedon, 783, in Weber's Met. Romances, ii. 309:—'And at the fryst cokke roos he.' The clearest
statement is in Tusser's Husbandrie, sect. 74 (E. D. S. p. 165), where he says that cocks crow 'At midnight, at three, and an hower ere day,' which he afterwards explains by 'past five.'