195. Poileys, Apulian. Apulia was called Poille or Poile in Old French, and even in Middle English; the phrase 'king of Poile' occurs in the Seven Sages (ed. Weber), l. 2019. It was celebrated for
its horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from MS. James vi. 142 (Bodleian Library), a passage in which Richard, archbishop of Armagh, in the fourteenth century, has the words—'nec mulus Hispaniae, nec dextrarius Apuliae, nec repedo Æthiopiae, nec elephantus Asiae, nec camelus Syriae.' Chaucer ascribes strength and size to the horses of Lombardy, and high breeding to those of Apulia.
200. goon, i. e. move, go about, have motion.
201. of Fairye, of fairy origin, magical. I do not subscribe to Warton's opinion (Obs. on Faerie Queene, p. 86) that this necessarily means that it was 'the work of the devil.' Cf. the same expression in Piers Pl. B. prol. 6.
203. Compare the Latin proverb—'quot homines, tot sententiae.' See Hazlitt's Eng. Proverbs, pp. 340, 437. A good epigram on this proverb is given in Camden's Remaines concerning Britaine, ed. 1657, sig. Gg.
'So many heads, so many wits—fie, fie!
Is't not a shame for Proverbs thus to lie?
My selfe, though my acquaintance be but small,
Know many heads that have no wit at all.'
207. the Pegasee, Pegasus. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Hl. is written 'i. equs Pegaseus,' meaning 'id est, equus Pegaseus'; shewing that Chaucer was thinking of the adjective Pegaseus rather than of the sb. Pegasus, the name of the celebrated winged horse of Bellerophon and of the Muses. Cf. Lydgate's Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 92.