4041. merier, sweeter, pleasanter. In Todd's Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 284, there is a long passage illustrative of mery in the sense of 'pleasant.' Cf. l. 4156. orgon is put for orgons or organs. It is plain from gon in the next line, that Chaucer meant to use this word as a plural from the Lat. organa. Organ was used until lately only in the plural, like bellows, gallows, &c. 'Which is either sung or said or on the organs played.'—Becon's Acts of Christ, p. 534. It was sometimes called a pair of organs. See note to P. Plowman, C. xxi. 7.
4044. Cf. Parl. of Foules, 350:—
'The cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.'
Orloge (of an abbey) occurs in Religious Pieces, ed. Perry, p. 56; and see Stratmann.
4045. 'The cock knew each ascension of the equinoctial, and crew at each; that is, he crew every hour, as 15° of the equinoctial make an hour. Chaucer adds [l. 4044] that he knew the hour better than the abbey-clock. This tells us, clearly, that we are to reckon clock-hours, and not the unequal hours of the solar or 'artificial' day. Hence the prime, mentioned in l. 4387, was at a clock-hour, at 6, 7, 8, or 9, suppose. The day meant is May 3, because the sun [l. 4384] had passed the 21st degree of Taurus (see fig. 1 of Astrolabe).... The date, May 3, is playfully denoted by saying [l. 4379] that March was complete, and also (since March began) thirty-two days more had passed. The words "since March began" are parenthetical; and we are, in fact, told that the whole of March, the whole of April, and two days of May were done with. March was then considered the first month in the year, though the year began with the 25th, not with the 1st; and Chaucer alludes to the idea that the Creation itself took place in March. The day, then, was May 3, with the sun past 21 degrees of Taurus. The hour must be had from the sun's altitude, rightly said (l. 4389) to be Fourty degrees and oon. I use a globe, and find that the sun would attain the altitude 41° nearly at 9 o'clock. It follows that prime in l. 4387 signifies the end of the first quarter of the day, reckoned from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.'—Skeat's Astrolabe, (E.E.T.S.), p. lxi. This rough test, by means of a globe, is perhaps sufficient; but Mr. Brae proved it to be right by calculation. Taking the sun's altitude at 41½°, he 'had the satisfaction to find a resulting hour, for prime, of 9 o'clock A.M. almost to the minute.' It is interesting to find that Thynne explains this passage very well in his Animadversions on Speght's Chaucer; ed. Furnivall, p. 62, note 1.
The notion that the Creation took place on the 18th of March is alluded to in the Hexameron of St. Basil (see the A. S. version, ed. Norman, p. 8, note j), and in Ælfric's Homilies, ed. Thorpe, i. 100.
4047. Fifteen degrees of the equinoctial = an exact hour. See note to l. 4045 above. Skelton imitates this passage in his Phillyp Sparowe, l. 495.
4050. And batailed. Lansd. MS. reads Enbateled, indented like a battlement, embattled. Batailed has the same sense.
4051. as the Ieet, like the jet. Beads used for the repetition of prayers were frequently formed of jet. See note to Prol. A. 159.