4172. wilde fyr, erysipelas (to torment them); see Halliwell. Cf. E. 2252. The entry—'Erysipela (sic), wilde fyr' occurs in Ælfric's Vocabulary. So in Le Rom. de la Rose:—'que Mal-Feu l'arde'; 7438, 8319.
4174. flour, choice, best of a thing; il ending, evil death, bad end. 'They shall have the best (i. e. here, the worst) of a bad end.' Rather a wish than a prophecy.
4181. Sidenote in MS. Hl.—'Qui in vno grauatur in alio debet releuari.' A Law Maxim.
4194. upright, upon her back. 'To slepe on the backe, vpryght, is vtterly to be abhorred'; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 245. Palsgrave, s. v. Throwe, has: 'I throwe a man on his backe or upright, so that his face is upwarde, Ie renuerse.' And see Nares. Cf. 'Now dounward groffe [on your belly], and now upright'; Rom. Rose, 2561. Bolt-upright occurs in l. 4266; where bolt is 'like a bolt,' hence 'straight,' or exactly. See Bolt, adv., in the New E. Dictionary. And compare B. 1506.
4208. daf, fool; from E. daf-t. cokenay, a milk-sop, poor creature. The orig. sense of coken-ay is 'cocks' egg,' from a singular piece of folk-lore which credited cocks with laying such eggs as happen to be imperfect. 'The small yolkless eggs which hens sometimes lay are called "cocks' eggs," generally in the firm persuasion that the name states a fact'; Shropshire Folklore, by C. S. Burne, p. 229. The idea is old, and may be found gravely stated as a fact in Bartolomæus De Proprietatibus Rerum (14th century). See Cockney in the New E. Dictionary.
4210. Unhardy is unsely, the cowardly man has no luck. 'Audentes
fortuna iuuat'; Vergil, Aen. x. 284. So also our 'Nothing venture, nothing have,' and 'Faint heart never won fair lady'; which see in Hazlitt's Proverbs. For seel, luck, see l. 4239. See Troil. iv. 602, and the note.
4220. Pronounce ben'cite in three syllables; as usual.
4233. The thridde cok; apparently, between 5 and 6 A.M.; see note to line 3675 above. It was near dawn; see l. 4249.
4236. Malin, another form of Malkin, which is a pet-name for Matilda. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 181, where my statement that Malkin occurs in the present passage refers to Tyrwhitt's edition, which substitutes Malkin for the Malin or Malyn of the MSS. and of ed. 1532. Cf. B. 30.