19. me refiere, ‘refer myself,’ i.e. ‘make appeal.’ The rhyme requires correction of the reading ‘refiers.’
XXXVIII. 1. Cp. Mir. 12463 ff., where the ‘piere dyamant tresfine’ is said to disdain a setting of gold because drawn irresistibly to iron. The loadstone and the diamond became identified with one another because of the supposed hardness of both (‘adamant’).
XXXIX. 3. For this use of ‘et,’ cp. xviii. 7.
9. asseine: rather a favourite word with our author in various meanings, cp. x. l. 10, ‘jeo mon coer asseine,’ ‘I direct (the affections of) my heart’; xiv. l. 17, ‘la fierté de son corage asseine,’ ‘strike down the pride of her heart’; and here, where ‘Qui vo persone ... asseine’ means ‘he who addresses himself to your person.’
18. pluis: this form, which occurs also iv. l. 15, ‘De pluis en pluis,’ seems to be only a variation of spelling, for it rhymes here and elsewhere with -us, -uz: see Introduction, p. xxviii f.
XL. 7. Ne puiss hoster, &c. Cp. xvii. l. 27, ‘Ne puis lesser mais jeo l’ameray’: ‘hoster’ means properly ‘take away,’ hence ‘refrain (myself).’
me pleigne: so MS. The Roxb. ed. gives ‘ma pleine.’
11. serretz. The future tense (if it be future) need give us no anxiety, in view of the looseness about tenses which is habitual with our author: cp. xliv. l. 6, Mir. 416. In any case ‘serietz,’ which Dr. Stengel substitutes, is not a correct form.
22. chaunçon: MS. cha̅n̅con.
XLI. Here the address is from the lady to her lover, and so it is also in the three succeeding balades and in xlvi. Notice that the second person singular is used in xli.-xliii. where the language is that of hostile contempt.