Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

And in a ballad printed in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, folio 340, back, we have—

'So wel fortuned is their chaunce

The dice to turne[n] vppe-so-doune,

With sise and sincke they can auaunce.'

The phrase was already used proverbially before Chaucer's time. In the metrical Life of St. Brandan, ed. T. Wright, p. 23, we find, 'hi caste an ambes as,' they cast double aces, i. e. they wholly failed. See Ambs-ace in the New E. Dict. Dr. Morris notes that the phrase 'aums ace' occurs in Hazlitt's O. E. Plays, ii. 35, with the editorial remark—'not mentioned elsewhere' (!).

126. At Cristemasse, even at Christmas, when the severest weather comes. In olden times, severe cold must have tried the poor even more than it does now.

'Muche myrthe is in may · amonge wilde bestes,

And so forth whil somer lasteþ · heore solace dureþ;

And muche myrthe amonge riche men is · þat han meoble [property]

ynow and heele [health].