corny, strong of the corn or malt; cf. l. 456. Skelton calls it 'newe ale in cornys'; Magnificence, 782; or 'in cornes,' Elynour Rummyng, 378. Baret's Alvearie, s. v. Ale, has: 'new ale in cornes, ceruisia cum recrementis.' It would seem that ale was thought the better for having dregs of malt in it.
318. bel amy, good friend; a common form of address in old French. We also find biaus douz amis, sweet good friend; as in—
'Charlot, Charlot, biaus doux amis';
Rutebuef; La Disputoison de Charlot et du Barbier, l. 57.
Belamy occurs in an Early Eng. Life of St. Cecilia, MS. Ashmole 43, l. 161; and six other examples are given in the New Eng. Dictionary. Similar forms are beau filtz, dear son, Piers Plowman, B. vii. 162; beau pere, good father; beau sire, good sir. Cf. beldame.
321. ale-stake, inn-sign. Speght interprets this by 'may-pole.' He was probably thinking of the ale-pole, such as was sometimes set up before an inn as a sign; see the picture of one in Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards, Plate II. But the ale-stakes of the fourteenth century were differently placed; instead of being perpendicular, they projected horizontally from the inn, just like the bar which supports a painted sign at the present day. At the end of the ale-stake a large garland was commonly suspended, as mentioned by Chaucer himself (Prol. 667), or sometimes a bunch of ivy, box, or evergreen, called a 'bush'; whence the proverb 'good wine needs no bush,' i. e. nothing to indicate where it is sold; see Hist. Signboards, pp. 2, 4, 6, 233. The clearest information about ale-stakes is obtained from a notice of them in the Liber Albus, ed. Riley, where an ordinance of the time of Richard II. is printed, the translation of which runs as follows: 'Also, it was ordained that whereas the ale-stakes, projecting in front of the taverns in Chepe and elsewhere in the said city, extend too far over the king's highways, to the impeding of riders and others, and, by reason of their excessive weight, to the great deterioration of the houses to which they
are fixed,... it was ordained,... that no one in future should have a stake bearing either his sign or leaves [i. e. a bush] extending or lying over the king's highway, of greater length than 7 feet at most,' &c. And, at p. 292 of the same work, note 2, Mr. Riley rightly defines an ale-stake to be 'the pole projecting from the house, and supporting a bunch of leaves.'
The word ale-stake occurs in Chatterton's poem of Ælla, stanza 30, where it is used in a manner which shews that the supposed 'Rowley' did not know what it was like. See my note on this; Essay on the Rowley Poems, p. xix; and cf. note to A. 667.
322. of a cake; we should now say, a bit of bread; the modern sense of 'cake' is a little misleading. The old cakes were mostly made of dough, whence the proverb 'my cake is dough,' i. e. is not properly baked; Taming of the Shrew, v. 1. 145. Shakespeare also speaks of 'cakes and ale,' Tw. Nt. ii. 3. 124. The picture of the 'Simnel Cakes' in Chambers' Book of Days, i. 336, illustrates Chaucer's use of the word in the Prologue, l. 668.
324. The Pardoner was so ready to tell some 'mirth or japes' that the more decent folks in the company try to repress him. It is a curious comment on the popular estimate of his character. He has, moreover, to refresh himself, and to think awhile before he can recollect 'some honest (i. e. decent) thing.'