'Malyn, tersorium,' Cath. Anglicum; i. e. Malin, like Malkin, also meant a dishclout. Malin has now become Molly.
4244. cake. In Wright's Glossaries, ed. Wülker, col. 788, l. 36, we find, 'Hic panis subverucius, a meleres cake'; on which Wright remarks: 'Perhaps this name alludes to the common report that the miller always stole the flour from his customers to make his cakes, which were baked on the sly.'
4253. toty, in the seven MSS.; totty in ed. 1532. It means 'dizzy, reeling'; and Halliwell, s. v. Totty, quotes from MS. Rawl. C. 86: 'So toty was the brayn of his hede.' Cf. 'And some also so toty in theyr heade'; Lydgate, Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. L 1, back. Spenser has the word twice, as tottie or totty, and evidently copied it from this very passage, which he read in a black-letter edition; see his Shep. Kal., February, 55, and F. Q. vii. 7. 39. Cf. E. totter.
4257. a twenty devel way, with extremely ill-luck. See note to l. 3713.
4264. Compare B. 1417.
4272. linage; her grandfather was a priest; see note to l. 3943.
4278. poke, bag; cf. the proverb, 'To buy a pig in a poke.'
'Than on the grounde together rounde
With many a sadde stroke
They roule and rumble, they turne and tumble,