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

by Geoffrey Chaucer

'S'ele rest lede, el vuet à tous plaire;

... vuet tous ceus qui la voient.'

269. See in Hazlitt's Proverbs: 'Joan's as good as my lady in the dark.'

271. 'It is a hard matter to control a thing that no one would willingly keep.' Simply translated from Theophrastus (see note to l. 235), who has—'Molestum est possidere, quod nemo habere dignetur.'

272. helde, a variant form of holde, hold, keep; from A. S. healdan. As Chaucer usually has holde (see D. 1144), helde is probably used for the sake of the rime. Note that it is the only example of a rime in -elde in the whole of the Canterbury Tales; indeed, the only other example is in Troil. ii. 337-8. We find the same rime in King Horn, l. 911:—

'Mi rengne thu schalt welde,

And to spuse helde

Reynild mi doghter.'

275. Again from Theophrastus (near the beginning):—'Non est ergo uxor ducenda sapienti. Primum enim impediri studia philosophiae,' &c.

277. welked, withered; see C. 738, and Stratmann.