33. To take precedence over all in going to the evening service of the Church, or to festival meetings, to which it was the fashion to carry rich cloaks or mantles against the home- coming.
34. The things the cook could make: “marchand tart”, some now unknown ingredient used in cookery; “galingale,” sweet or long rooted cyprus; “mortrewes”, a rich soup made by stamping flesh in a mortar; “Blanc manger”, not what is now called blancmange; one part of it was the brawn of a capon.
35. Lodemanage: pilotage, from Anglo-Saxon “ladman,” a leader, guide, or pilot; hence “lodestar,” “lodestone.”
36. The authors mentioned here were the chief medical text- books of the middle ages. The names of Galen and Hippocrates were then usually spelt “Gallien” and “Hypocras” or “Ypocras”.
37. The west of England, especially around Bath, was the seat of the cloth-manufacture, as were Ypres and Ghent (Gaunt) in Flanders.
38. Chaucer here satirises the fashion of the time, which piled bulky and heavy waddings on ladies’ heads.
39. Moist; here used in the sense of “new”, as in Latin, “mustum” signifies new wine; and elsewhere Chaucer speaks of “moisty ale”, as opposed to “old”.
40. In Galice at Saint James: at the shrine of St Jago of Compostella in Spain.
41. Gat-toothed: Buck-toothed; goat-toothed, to signify her wantonness; or gap-toothed — with gaps between her teeth.
42. An endowment to sing masses for the soul of the donor.