Ipse licet venias, Musis comitatus, Homere!
'Though thou came thyself, Homer, with all the Muses, thou mightst sit at the door, shut out!', T. Wright, Political Songs (1839), p. 209.
446. hadde he, 'had she'. For he (OE. hēo) = 'she' cp. l. 408.
450. 'Now ask of me whatsoever it may be'. The plots of mediaeval romances often depend on the unlimited promises of an unwary king, whose honour compels him to keep his word. So in the story of Tristram, an Irish noble disguised as a minstrel wins Ysolde from King Mark by this same device, but is himself cheated of his prize by Tristram's skill in music.
458. 'An ill-matched pair you two would be!'
479. The halting verse may be completed by adding sum tyme before his, with the Harley and Ashmole MSS.
483. ybilt of the MS. and editors cannot well be a pp. meaning 'housed'. I prefer to take bilt as sb. = bild, build 'a building'; and to suppose that y has been miswritten for ȳ, the contraction for yn.
495. gan hold, 'held'; a good example of the ME. use of gan + infinitive with the sense of the simple preterite.
515. An unhappy suggestion home for the second come has sometimes been accepted. But a careful Southern poet could not rime home (OE. hām) and some (OE. sŭm). See note to VI 224.
518. For mi lordes loue Sir Orfeo, 'for my lord Sir Orfeo's love'. Logically the genitive inflexion should be added to both of two substantives in apposition, as in OE. on Herodes dagum cyninges 'in the days of King Herod'. But in ME. the first substantive usually has the inflexion, and the second is uninflected; cp. V 207 kyngeȝ hous Arthor 'the house of King Arthur'; and notes to I 44, VI 23.