1373. 'And, because such acquaintance brought him in the chief part of all his income.'
1377. ribybe. In l. 1573, she is called 'an old rebekke.' So in Skelton's Elinour Rummyng, l. 492:—'There came an old rybybe.' And Ben Jonson speaks of 'some good ribibe ... you would hang now for a witch'; The Devil is an Ass, i. 1. 16. But probably Skelton and Ben Jonson merely took the word from Chaucer. A ribybe was, properly, a two-stringed Moorish fiddle; see note to A. 3331. Gifford's note on the passage in Ben Jonson, says:—'Ribibe, together with its synonym rebeck, is merely a cant term for an old woman. A ribibe, the reader knows, is a rude kind of a fiddle, and the allusion is, probably, to the inharmonious nature of its sounds.' Halliwell suggests some (improbable) confusion between vetula and vitula.
I suspect that this old joke, for such it clearly is, arose in a very different way, viz. from a pun upon rebekke, a fiddle, and Rebekke, a married woman, from the mention of Rebecca in the marriage-service. For Chaucer himself notices the latter in E. 1704, which see. Observe that the form rebekke, as applied to the fiddle, is a corrupt one, though it is found in other languages. See rebebe in Godefroy's O. F. Dictionary, and rebec in Littré.
1378. Cause and wolde are dissyllabic; and brybe, to rob, is a verb. But the editors ignore such elementary facts. The old editions insert haue a before brybe; and the modern editions insert han a; which, as Wright observes, is not to be found in the MSS!
1381. See A. 103, 104, 108; and, for courtepy, A. 290.
1382. hadde upon, had on; cf. D. 559, 1018.
1384. 'Well overtaken, well met.' So in Partonope of Blois, 6390: 'Syr, wele atake!' Cf. G. 556.
1394. for the name, because of the disgrace attaching to the very name. The Friar is severe.
1405. sworn-e, a plural form; the word sworn being here used adjectivally. See note to A. 1132, p. 66.
1408. venim, spite. wariangles, shrikes. According to C. Swainson (Provincial Names of British Birds), this is the Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio), called in Yorkshire the Weirangle or Wariangle. Some make it the Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor). Thus Ray, in his Provincial Words, ed. 1674, p. 83, gives warringle as a name for the Great Butcher-bird in the Peak of Derbyshire. 'This Bird,' says Willughby, 'in the North of England is called Wierangle, a name, it seems, common to us with the Germans, who (as Gesner witnesseth) about Strasburg, Frankfort, and elsewhere, call it Werkangel or Warkangel, perchance (saith he) as it were Wurchangel, which literally rendered signifies "a suffocating angel."' So also, the mod. G. name is Würgengel, as if from würgen and Engel. But this is a form