The semicolon after dye shows that this is not a misprint, but that the editor saw no connection between the first verse and the second. In the same volume (p. 133) we have the verse,
“He was a grete tenement man, and ryche of londe and lede,”
and to lede Mr. Hazlitt appends this note: “Lede, in early English, is found in various significations, but here stands as the plural of lad, a servant.” In what conceivable sense is it the plural of lad? And does lad necessarily mean a servant? The Promptorium has ladde glossed by garcio, but the meaning servant, as in the parallel cases of παις, puer, garçon, and boy, was a derivative one, and of later origin. The word means simply man (in the generic sense) and in the plural people. So in the “Squyr of Low Degre,”
“I will forsake both land and lede,”
and in the “Smyth and his Dame,”
“That hath both land and lyth.”
The word was not “used in various significations.” Even so lately as “Flodden Ffeild” we find,
“He was a noble leed of high degree.”
Connected with land it was a commonplace in German as well as in English. So in the Tristan of Godfrey of Strasburg,
“Er Bevalch sin liut und fin lant
An sines marschalkes hant.”