1483-91. Cf. Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6. 62-71; Job, i. 12; ii. 6.
1502. I suspect this to be an allusion to a story similar to that entitled 'A Lay of St. Dunstan' in the Ingoldsby Legends.
1503. This probably alludes to some of the legends about the apostles. Thus, in The Lives of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 36, l. 72, some fiends are represented as doing the will of St. James the Greater; and in the same, p. 368, l. 50, a fiend says of St. Bartholomew:—'He mai do with us al that he wole, for bi-neothe him we beoth.' Cf. Acts, xix. 15.
1508. 'The adoption of the bodies of the deceased by evil spirits in their wanderings upon earth, was an important part of the medieval superstitions of this country, and enters largely into a variety of legendary stories found in the old chroniclers.'—Wright. Bell quotes from Hamlet, ii. 2:—'The spirit that I have seen May be the devil,' &c.
1509. renably, reasonably. The A. F. form of 'reasonable' was resnable (as in the Life of Edw. the Confessor, l. 1602); and, by the law that s became silent before l, m, and n (as in isle, blasmer, disner, E. isle, blame, dine), this became renable. See note to P. Plowman, C. i. 176.
1510. Phitonissa; this is another spelling of pythonissa, which is the word used, in the Vulgate version of 1 Chron. x. 13, with reference to the witch of Endor. In 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, the phrase is mulier pythonem habens. The witch of Endor is also called phitonesse in Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. iv, ed. Pauli, ii. 66; Barbour's Bruce, iv. 753; Skelton's Philip Sparowe, l. 1345; Lydgate's Falls of Princes, bk. ii. leaf xl, ed. Wayland; Gawain Douglas, prol. to the Æneid, ed. Small, ii. 10, l. 2; and in Sir D. Lyndesay's Monarchè, bk. iv. l. 5842. And see Hous of Fame, 1261. Cf. πνεῦμα Πύθωνος, Acts, xvi. 16.
1518. in a chayer rede, lecture about this matter as in a professorial chair, lecture like a professor; cf. l. 1638. The fiend is satirical.
1519. Referring to Vergil's Æneid, bk. vi, and Dante's Inferno.
1528. This much resembles A. 1132, q.v.