an to drive asunder, scatter. Verbs of this kind occur in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, in Chaucer and elsewhere. The part. is often preceded by all, in the sense of the German ganz, quite, with which some ignorantly join the to as all-to ruffled in Comus, 380, instead of all to-ruffled. In Golding's Ovid (p. 15) we meet "With rugged head as white as down, and garments all to-torn;" in Judges ix. 53, "and all to-brake his skull." See also Faerie Queene, iv. 7, 8; v. 8, 4, 43, 44; 9, 10.
[394] After all the commentators have written, this line is still nearly unintelligible to us. It may relate to the supposed origin of the fairies. For orphan, Warburton conjectured ouphen, from ouph.
[395] The Anglo-Saxon
i
an ea
