1303. 'God knows all'; implying, 'I can contradict you, if I choose to speak.'
1321. port-hors, for porte-hors, lit. 'carry-abroad,' the F. equivalent of Lat. portiforium, a breviary. Also spelt portous, portess, &c. 'The Portous, or Breviary, contained whatever was to be said by all beneficed clerks, and those in holy orders, either in choir, or privately by themselves, as they recited their daily canonical hours; no musical notation was put into these books.'—Rock, Church of our Fathers, v. iii. pt. 2, p. 212. Dan John had just been saying 'his things' out of it (l. 1281). The music was omitted to save space. See P. Plowman, B. xv. 122, and my note on the line.
1327. for to goon, i. e. even though going to hell were the penalty of my keeping secret what you tell me.
1329. 'This I do, not for kinship, but out of true love.'
1335. a legende, a story of martyrdom, like that of a saint's life.
1338. St. Martin of Tours, whose day is Nov. 11.
1341. St. Denis of France, St. Dionysius, bishop of Paris, martyred A.D. 272, whose day is Oct. 9. Near his place of martyrdom was built a chapel, which was first succeeded by a church, and then by the famous abbey of St. Denis, in which King Dagobert and his successors were interred. The French adopted St. Denis as their patron saint; see Chambers, Book of Days, ii. 427; Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, Oct. 9.
1353. sit, is becoming, befits; see E. 460, 1277.
1384. Geniloun, Genilon or Ganelon, the traitor who betrayed Charlemagne's army at Roncesvalles. For this deed he was torn to death by wild horses, according to the romance-writers. See La Chanson de Roland, l. 3735. Cf. note to B. 3579, and Book of the Duchesse, 1121, and my note upon it.
1396. chilindre, a kind of portable sun-dial, lit. cylinder. A thirteenth-century Latin treatise on the use of the chilindre was edited by Mr. E. Brock for the Chaucer Society, and I here copy his clear description of the instrument. 'The Chilindre (cylindrus) or cylinder is one of the manifold forms of the sun-dial, very simple in its construction, but rude and inaccurate as a time-shower. According to the following treatise, it consists of a wooden cylinder, with a central bore from top to bottom, and with a hollow space in the top, into which a moveable rotary lid with a little knob at the top is fitted. This lid is also bored in the centre, and a string passed through the whole instrument. Upon this string the chilindre hangs [perpendicularly] when in use. The style or gnomon works on a pin fixed in the lid. When the instrument is in use, the style projects at a right angle to the surface of the cylindrical body, through a notch in the side of the lid, but can, at pleasure, be turned down and slipt into the central bore, which is made a little wider at the top to receive it. The body of the chilindre is marked with a table of the points of the shadow, a table of degrees for finding the sun's altitude, and spaces corresponding to