3927. Pypen, play the bag-pipe; see A. 565. The Reeve is clearly trying to make his description suit the Miller in the company, whom it is his express object to tease. Hence he says he could wrestle well (cf. A. 548) and could play the bag-pipe.
nettes bete, mend nets; he knew how to net.
3928. turne coppes, turn cups, make wooden cups in a turning-lathe; not a very difficult operation. It is curious that Tyrwhitt gave up trying to explain this simple phrase. In Riley's Memorials of London, p. 666, we find that, in 1418, when the English were besieging Rouen, it was enacted that 'the turners should have 4s. for every hundred of 2,500 cups, in all 100s.': so that a wooden cup could be turned at the cost of a halfpenny.
3929. Printed pavade by Tyrwhitt, pauade by Thynne (ed. 1532), but panade in Wright. Levins' Manipulus Vocabulorum (1570) has: 'A pauade, pugio'; but this is probably copied from Thynne. The exact form is not found in O. F., but Godefroy's O. F. Dict. gives: 'Penart, pennart, penard, panart, pannart, coutelas, espèce de grand couteau à deux tranchants ou taillants, sorte de poignard'; with seven examples, one of which shows that it could be hung at the belt: 'Un grant pennart qu'il avoit pendu a sa sainture.' Ducange gives the Low Lat. form penardus, and wrongly connects it with F. poignard, from which it is clearly distinct; but he also gives the form pennatum with the sense of 'pruning-knife,' and Torriano gives an Ital. pennato with the same sense. Cf. Lat. bi-pennis. It was a two-edged cutlass, worn in addition to his sword; and see below. It is also printed pauade in Lydgate's Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. N 5, back.
3931. popper, thruster, i. e. dagger; from the verb pop, to thrust in; cf. poke. Ioly probably means 'neat' or 'small.' This was the Miller's third weapon of offence, of which he had three sizes, viz. a sword, a cutlass, and a little dagger like a misericorde, used for piercing between the joints of armour. No wonder that no one durst touch him 'for peril.' The poppere answers to the boydekin of l. 3960, q.v. And besides these, he carried a knife. 'Poppe, to stryke'; Cathol. Angl. p. 286.
3933. thwitel, knife; from A.S. thwītan, to cut; now ill-spelt whittle. The portraits of Chaucer show a knife hanging from his breast; accordingly, in Greene's Description of Chaucer, we find this line: 'A whittle by his belt he bare'; see Greene's Works, ed. Dyce, 1883, p. 320. Note that Sheffield was already celebrated for its cutlery; so in the Witch of Edmonton, Act ii. sc. 2, Somerton speaks of 'the new pair of Sheffield knives.'
3934. camuse (Hl. camois), low and concave; cf. l. 3974 below. F. camus, 'flat-nosed'; Cotgrave. Ital. camuso, 'one with a flat nose'; Florio. See Camois in the New E. Dict., where it is thus explained: 'Of the nose: low and concave. Of persons: pug-nosed.' To the examples there given, add the following from Holland's tr. of Pliny, i. 229; 'As for the male goats, they are held for the best which are most camoise or snout-nosed.' Hexham's Du. Dict., s. v. Neuse, has the curious entry: 'een Camuys ende opwaerts gaende Neuse [lit. a camus and upwards-going Nose], Camell-nosed.'
3936. market-beter, a frequenter of markets, who swaggered about, and was apt to be quarrelsome and in the way of others. See Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 511, 520; and cf. F. battre le pavé, 'aller et venir sans but, sans occupation'; Littré. And cf. E. 'policeman's beat.' Cotgrave has: 'Bateur de pavez, a pavement-beater; ... one that walks much abroad, and riots it wheresoever he walks.' The following passage from the Complaint of the Ploughman (in Wright's Polit. Poems, i. 330) makes it clear—