448. a solein tale, ‘a strange tale.’ This word ‘solein’ (or ‘soulein’), which English etymologists in search for the origin of ‘sullen’ report as hardly to be found in French, occurs repeatedly in the Mirour de l’omme in the sense of ‘alone,’ ‘lonely.’ For the meaning here assigned to it we may compare the modern use of the word ‘singular,’ which in Gower’s French meant ‘lonely.’ There is no authority for Pauli’s reading ‘solempne,’ and it gives neither sense nor metre.
451 ff. The tale of Iphis is from Ovid, Metam. ix. 666-797, abbreviated and altered with advantage.
453 ff. The authority of the MSS. is strongly in favour of ‘grete: lete’ in these lines, and this reading is certainly right. We must take ‘lete’ as the past participle of the strong verb ‘leten’ (from ‘lǣtan’), meaning ‘leave,’ ‘omit,’ and ‘grete’ as accommodated to the rhyme. The negative construction following rather suggests ‘let,’ meaning ‘hindered’ as ii. 128 ff., but the rhyme ‘let: gret’ would be an impossible one. See note on i. 3365 and cp. l. 1153.
585. And stonde, i.e. ‘And I stonde’: cp. i. 1895, &c., and below, l. 697.
624. on miself along, so below l. 952, ‘It is noght on mi will along,’ and Chaucer, Troilus, ii. 1001,
‘On me is nought along thyn yvel fare.’
The use of ‘on’ for ‘of’ in this phrase is still known in some dialects.
647 ff. For the Ring of Forgetfulness here spoken of see Petrus Comestor, Exodus vi., where it is related that Moses in command of the Egyptians captured the chief city of the Ethiopians by the help of Tarbis, daughter of their king, and married her in recompense of her services. Then, wishing to return to Egypt and being detained by his wife, ‘tanquam vir peritus astrorum duas imagines sculpsit in gemmis huius efficaciae, ut altera memoriam, altera oblivionem conferret. Cumque paribus anulis eas inseruisset, alterum, scilicet oblivionis anulum, uxori praebuit, alterum ipse tulit; ut sic pari amore sic paribus anulis insignirentur. Coepit ergo mulier amoris viri oblivisci, et tandem libere in Aegyptum regressus est’ (Migne, Patrol. vol. 198, p. 1144). Cp. Godfr. Viterb., Pantheon, v. (p. 115).
731 ff. Partly from Ovid, Her. Ep. ii. and Rem. Am. 591-604; but there was probably some other source, for our author would not find anything in Ovid about the transformation into a tree. Many of the details seem to be of his own invention, and he is probably responsible for the variation which makes the visit of Demophon to Thrace take place on the way to Troy instead of on the return. Chaucer’s form of the story in the Legend of Good Women is quite different.
733. F is here followed in punctuation.