6. Europa was the daughter of Agenores, king of Phrygia. She was carried away to Crete by Jupiter, disguised as a lovely and tame bull, on whose back Europa mounted as she was sporting with her maidens by the sea-shore. The story is beautifully told in Horace, Odes, iii. 27.
7. See “The Assembly of Fowls,” which was supposed to happen on St. Valentine’s day.
8. The tidife: The titmouse, or any other small bird, which sometimes brings up the cuckoo’s young when its own have been destroyed. See note 44 to “The Assembly of Fowls.”
9. Ethic: the “Ethics” of Aristotle.
10. “For as to me is lever none nor lother, I n’am withholden yet with neither n’other.” i.e For as neither is more liked or disliked by me, I am not bound by, holden to, either the one or the other.
11. All of another tun i.e. wine of another tun — a quite different matter.
12. Compare the description of the arbour in “The Flower and the Leaf.”
13. Flowrons: florets; little flowers on the disk of the main flower; French “fleuron.”
14. Mr Bell thinks that Chaucer here praises the complaisance of Marcia, the wife of Cato, in complying with his will when he made her over to his friend Hortensius. It would be in better keeping with the spirit of the poet’s praise, to believe that we should read “Porcia Catoun” — Porcia the daughter of Cato, who was married to Brutus, and whose perfect wifehood has been celebrated in The Franklin’s Tale. See note 25 to the Franklin’s Tale.
15. Isoude: See note 21 to “The Assembly of Fowls”.