1401. 'On the brink of my grave.' Cf. Ps. xxx. 3, 9; &c.
1407-16. 'Uxorem accipias potius puellam quam uiduam'; from Albertano. See Köppel's article, p. 42.
1412. mo, more in number; T. has more (badly).
1418. 'I like fish when old, preferring a full grown pike to a pikerel; and I like flesh young, preferring veal to beef.'
1424. Wades boot, Wade's boat. Wade was a famous hero of antiquity, to whom Chaucer again alludes in Troil. iii. 614. In the Traveller's Song, l. 22, we find:—'Witta wēold Swǣfum, Wada Hælsingum,' i. e. Witta ruled over the Swabians, Wada over the Hælsings.' Wade is again mentioned in the alliterative Morte Arthure, l. 964. In a translation of Guido delle Colonne, in MS. Laud K. 76, in the Bodleian library, the romance of Wade is mentioned in conjunction with those of Havelok and Horn, both of which are well known; see the whole passage, as cited in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, in a note to Section III. In Sir Beves of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, 2605, we have an allusion to his fight with a fire-drake or fiery dragon. And in Sir T. Malory's Morte Arthur, bk. vii. c. 9, we find:—'were thou as wyghte as euer was Wade or Launcelot.' Speght knew the story, but has not recorded it; his note is:—'Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his straunge exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I pass it over.' On which Tyrwhitt remarks—'Tantamne rem tam negligenter? Mr. Speght probably did not foresee, that posterity would be as much obliged to him for a little of this fabulous matter concerning Wade and his bote, as for the gravest of his annotations.' Tyrwhitt also refers us, for a mention of Wade, to Camden's Britannia, 907, and to Charlton's History of Whitby, p. 40. M. Michel endeavoured to collect the particulars concerning Wade, and published them in a brochure, entitled Wade: Lettre à M. Henri Ternaux-Compans, &c. sur une Tradition Angloise du Moyen Age; Paris, 1837; 8vo. But it does not tell us much more that is helpful, except in furnishing a reference to the Wilkina Saga, capp. 18-20.
After all, the most light is given us by the following sentence in the
Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. Vigfusson and Powell, i. 168, with reference to the Lay of Weyland. 'Weyland is trapped by Nidad, king of the Niars, hamstrung, and forced to work for him in his forge on the isle of Seastead in lake Wolfmere. He contrives to slay his tyrant's sons, beguile his daughter [named Bodwild], and by the aid of a pair of wings which he has fashioned to soar away from his prison-house, rejoicing in his revenge.... That the King's daughter had a son by Weyland, the famous Wade (the memory of whose magic boat Wingelock lingered in N. England till the Reformation), we know from Wilkina Saga.'
I entirely differ from M. Michel's extraordinary conclusion about the boat—'Nous avons quelques raisons de croire que ce bateau n'étoit pas d'une course aussi rapide: en effet, dans l'Edda il est dit qu'Odin avoit un valet et une servante nommés Ganglate et Ganglœt, mots qu'on dit signifier marchant lentement.' Of course Ganglati and Ganglöt (as they should be written) mean 'slow-goer,' but this has nothing to do with Guingelot, which is merely a French spelling of some such form as Wingelok. It is obvious that the sole use of a magic boat is to transport its possessor from place to place in a few minutes, like the magic wings of Wade's own father. This is all we need to know, to see the point of the allusion. Old widows, says Chaucer in effect, know too much of the craft of Wade's boat; they can fly from place to place in a minute, and, if charged with any misdemeanour, will swear they were a mile away from the place at the time alleged. Mr. Pickwick, on the other hand, being only a man, failed to set up the plea of an alibi, and suffered accordingly.
1425. broken harm. This is one of the phrases which Tyrwhitt includes in his list as being 'not understood'; nor is it easy. But if we take it in connexion with the context, I think it can be explained. Harm is 'mischief, injury'; broken is 'fragmentary,' as in 'broken meat,' and the like; so that broken harm refers to slight disconnected acts of mischief, or what we should now call 'petty annoyances,' or 'small worries.' Thus the sense is that 'widows know so much about ways of creating small annoyances, that I should never live in peace with one.' Taken all together, ll. 1424-6 simply imply that 'old widows are so full of tricks for deceiving me, and can inflict at pleasure such small but constant annoyances, that I,' &c.
1447. Take him, let him take; see the Exhortation in the Marriage-Service in the Book of Common Prayer; cf. Pers. Tale, I. 939, 940, 861.