[P. 24]. “To the God speed.” This, by the context, might be taken as meaning that he came to a fortunate issue. But it was, and is, in use as given to a person setting forth on a journey, etc. Hence, here, and especially at p. 481, it seems to mean that he came at the commencement, when one receives or gives this salutation. As is recorded in an instance at Windsor, “R. S. probably gave the God speed at the assembly, and God’s name so frayed the witches that they fled, and so frayed the devil that he was conquered in a hand-to-hand fight.”
——— “At shrift.” This was laid down by Roman Catholic priests, though it was, and is, a rule with them that no confessor can reveal a confession, even before a court of law!
[P. 41]. “But bargained to.” The sense requires “[not] to observe”. Probably a slip of the printer, possibly through the “but”, and the concurrence of two t’s.
[P. 42]. “La volta.” A fact strangely overlooked (as is David’s dancing) by the damners of dancing.
——— “Socke the corps.” The same in p. 124 explains that this is sewing the body in its winding-sheet or sheets. The phrase is Kentish.
[P. 45]. “Young maister”, i.e., their new master, they having just come under the devil’s sway.
[P. 48]. “Of fiftie.” In Scot, as in others, we find uses of “of” which are to us strange. Here is a clearer example than usual of its synonymity with our “by”. Cf. also p. 76, and Auth. Ver., 1 Cor. xv, 5-8.
[P. 50]. “The veines have passage.” For as little, others—as Paracelsus, by R. Browning, etc.—have been credited—to the discomfiture of Harvey—with the knowledge of the circulation of the blood. Even Shakespeare is so credited by some whose knowledge will assert positively that the moon is not made of green cheese.
[P. 60]. “Their not fasting on fridaies.” Scot’s Protestantism here went beyond the ordained Protestantism of his age, as did that of B. Jonson’s Cob.
[P. 78]. “Clime up and take it.” Not the nest, but his own belongings. A good example of the pronoun not referring to its grammatical antecedent, but to the antecedent which was most in the mind of the narrator.