1817. travers, curtain, drawn across to form a screen; as in Troil. iii. 674. Ill spelt trauas in the Prompt. Parv., but explained by transversum, which is the Low Latin form. See Way's note; he quotes—"i. trauers du satin vermaille," so that they were sometimes made of crimson satin. In the Kingis Quair, st. 90, we find the form trauerse; in st. 82 it is spelt travesse, and is there applied to a screen which happened to be nearly transparent, as was not the case in our text. See vol. ii. pp. 478, 506.
1819. A note in Bell's Chaucer gives a translation of the form of blessing the nuptial bed to be found in old service-books.
1825. houndfish, dog-fish. I suppose this is the spotted dog-fish, Scyllium catulus, or Scyllium canicula. Randle Holme has: 'Dog fish, or Sea dog fish. It is by the Dutch termed a Flackhund and a Hundfisch; the skin is hard and redish, beset with hard and sharp scales, sharp, and rough and black; the Belly is more white and softer.' Bk. ii. ch. xiv. See Gloss. to the Babees Book; Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 201.
1840. In the Pers. Tale, Chaucer says just the contrary; see I. 859.
1849. shaketh. Cf. 'The slake skin trembleth upon myn empted body'; Ch. tr. of Boethius, bk. i. met. 1. 12.
1862. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 19931-2.
1879. a penner. 'The penner was a case containing the pens, ink, and other apparatus of writing, which the clerk carried about with him, as the Eastern students do at the present day. As such articles belonged only to clergy and scholars, we understand why the squire Damyan was obliged to borrow one for his use. An early vocabulary entitled Nominale mentions, among the Nomina rerum pertinentium clerico, 'Hoc pennare, a pener.'—Wright. See Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 682. 15; also 601. 34.
1881. compleynt. See specimens in Chaucer's Compleints of Mars, of Venus, and of Anelida; also the Compleint to his Lady. And cf. F. 943-948.
1883. heng, i. e. which hung; the relative is omitted.