844. now elles, now otherwise; i. e. and so you may; I defy you.
847. Sidingborne, Sittingbourne, about forty miles from London, and beyond Rochester, which is mentioned in the Monk's Prologue, B. 3116.
The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.
For a discussion of the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 447.
A very similar story occurs in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. i. (p. 89, Pauli's edition), where the hero of the story is named Florent, and is said to have been a grandson of the Roman Emperor Claudius.
It also occurs in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish MS. of the fourteenth century. The Irish text was printed, together with a translation by Dr. Whitley Stokes, in The Academy, Apr. 23, 1892, p. 399. Dr. Stokes claims for the Tale a Celtic origin. See also The Academy, Apr. 30, 1892.
Chaucer's Tale has been modernised by Dryden. This later version contains many spirited lines, but lacks the grace of the original. It is interesting as a commentary, and is worth comparison.
This Tale has been well edited, with notes, in Mätzner's Altenglische Sprachproben, i. 338.
857. The author of the spurious Pilgrim's Tale, which, it is said, William Thynne wished to insert in his edition of Chaucer, has plagiarised from the opening lines of the Wife of Bath's Tale in the coolest manner. I quote some of his lines, for comparison, from Thynne's Animadversions, &c., ed. Furnivall, Appendix I., p. 79, ll. 85-98:—
'The cronikis old from kynge Arthur