557. nose-thirles, lit. nose-holes; mod. E. nostrils.
559. forneys. 'Why, asks Mr. Earle, should Chaucer so readily fall on the simile of a furnace? What, in the uses of the time, made it come so ready to hand? The weald of Kent was then, like our "black country" now, a great smelting district, its wood answering to our coal; and Chaucer was Knight of the Shire, or M.P. for Kent.'—Temporary Preface to the Six-text edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, p. 99.
560. Ianglere, loud talker.
goliardeys, a ribald jester, one who gained his living by following rich men's tables, and telling tales and making sport for the guests. Tyrwhitt says, 'This jovial sect seems to have been so called from Golias, the real or assumed name of a man of wit, towards the end of the twelfth century, who wrote the Apocalypsis Goliæ, and other pieces in burlesque Latin rhymes, some which have been falsely [?] attributed to Walter Map.' But it would appear that Golias is the sole invention of Walter Map, the probable author of the 'Golias' poems. See Morley's Eng. Writers, 1888, iii. 167, where we read that the Apocalypse of Golias and the confession of Golias 'have by constant tradition been ascribed to him [Walter Map]; never to any other writer.' Golias is a medieval spelling of the Goliath of scripture, and occurs in Chaucer, Man of Lawes Tale, B. 934. In several authors of the thirteenth century, quoted by Du Cange, the goliardi are classed with the joculatores et buffones, and it is very likely that the word goliardus was, originally, quite independent of Golias, which was only connected with it by way of jest. The word goliardus seems rather to have meant, originally, 'glutton,' and to be connected with gula, the throat; but it was quite a common term, in the thirteenth century, for certain men of some education but of bad repute, who composed or recited satirical
parodies and coarse verses and epigrams for the amusement of the rich. See T. Wright's Introduction to the poems of Walter Map (Camden Soc.); P. Plowman, ed. Skeat, note to B. prol. 139; Wright's History of Caricature, ch. X; and the account in Godefroy's O. French Dict., s. v. Goliard.
561. that, i. e. his 'Iangling,' his noisy talk.
harlotrye means scurrility; Wyclif (Eph. v. 4) so translates Lat. scurrilitas.
562. 'Besides the usual payment in money for grinding corn, millers are always allowed what is called "toll," amounting to 4 lbs. out of every sack of flour.'—Bell. But it can hardly be doubted that, in old times, the toll was wholly in corn, not in money at all. It amounted, in fact, to the twentieth or twenty-fourth part of the corn ground, according to the strength of the water-course; see Strutt, Manners and Customs, ii. 82, and Nares, s. v. Toll-dish. At Berwick, the miller's share was reckoned as 'the thirteenth part for grain, and the twenty-fourth part for malt.' Eng. Gilds, p. 342. When the miller 'tolled thrice,' he took thrice the legal allowance. Cf. A. 3939, 3940.
563. a thombe of gold. An explanation of this proverb is given on the authority of Mr. Constable, the Royal Academician, by Mr. Yarrell in his History of British Fishes, who, when speaking of the Bullhead or Miller's Thumb, explains that a miller's thumb acquires a peculiar shape by continually feeling samples of corn whilst it is being ground; and that such a thumb is called golden, with reference to the profit that is the reward of the experienced miller's skill.
'When millers toll not with a golden thumbe.'