I find in the Tauchnitz Dutch Dictionary—'Bikkel, cockal. Bikkelen, to play at cockals.' Here cockal is the old name for a game with four hucklebones (Halliwell), and is further made to mean the hucklebone itself. But there is nothing to connect bicched with Du. bickel, and the sense is very different. From the article on Bicched in the New Eng. Dict., it appears that the sense is 'cursed, execrable,' and is an epithet applied to other things besides dice. It is evidently an opprobrious word, and seems to be derived from the sb. bitch, opprobriously used. There is even a quotation in which the verb bitch means to bungle or spoil a business. We may explain it by 'cursed bones.'
662. pryme, about nine o'clock; see notes to A. 3906, B. 2015. Here it means the canonical hour for prayer so called, to announce which bells were rung.
664. A hand-bell was carried before a corpse at a funeral by the sexton. See Rock, Church of Our Fathers, ii. 471; Grindal's Works, p. 136; Myre's Instructions for Parish Priests, l. 1964.
666. That oon of them, the one of them; the old phrase for 'one of them.' knave, boy.
667. Go bet, lit. go better, i. e. go quicker; a term of encouragement to dogs in the chase. So in the Legend of Good Women, 1213 (Dido, l. 290), we have—
'The herd of hertes founden is anoon,
With "hey! go bet! prik thou! lat goon, lat goon!"'
In Skelton's Elynour Rummyng, l. 332, we have—'And bad Elynour go bet.' Halliwell says—'Go bet, an old hunting cry, often introduced in a more general sense. See Songs and Carols, xv; Shak. Soc. Pap. i. 58; Chaucer, C. T. 12601 [the present passage]; Dido, 288 [290]; Tyrwhitt's notes, p. 278; Ritson's Anc. Pop. Poetry, p. 46. The phrase is mentioned by [Juliana] Berners in the Boke of St. Alban's, and seems nearly equivalent to go along.' It is strange that no editor has perceived the exact sense of this very simple phrase. Cf. 'Keep bet our good,' i. e. take better care of my property; Shipmannes Tale, B. 1622.
679. this pestilence, during this plague. Alluding to the Great Plagues that took place in the reign of Edward III. There were four such, viz. in 1348-9, 1361-2, 1369, and 1375-6. As Chaucer probably had the story from an Italian source, the allusion must be to the first and worst of these, the effects of which spread nearly all over Europe, and which was severely felt at Florence, as we learn from the description left by Boccaccio. See my note to Piers Plowman, B. v. 13.
684. my dame, my mother; as in H. 317; Piers Plowman, B. v. 37.