a 43-4. Apparently 'the nature of love (þat kyend) turns from care the man (þe lyfe) who succeeds in finding love, or who ever knew it in his heart; and brings him to joy and delight.'
a 48. Cp. Form of Perfect Living, ed. Horstmann, vol. i, pp. 39-40: For luf es stalworth als þe dede, þat slaes al lyuand thyng in erth; and hard als hell, þat spares noght till þam þat er dede. In The Commandment of Love Rolle explains: For als dede slas al lyuand thyng in þis worlde, sa perfite lufe slas in a mans sawle all fleschly desyres and erthly couaytise. And als hell spares noght til dede men, bot tormentes al þat commes bartill, alswa a man þat es in þis [sc. the third, called 'Singular'] degré of lufe noght anly he forsakes þe wretched solace of þis lyf, bot alswa he couaytes to sofer pynes for Goddes lufe. (Ibid. p. 63.)
b 4. scho takes erthe: From the Historia Animalium attributed to Aristotle, Bk. ix, c. 21. This is the authority referred to at l. 18, and at l. 33 (Bk. ix, c. 9); but the citations seem to be second hand, as they do not agree closely with the text of the Historia Animalium.
b 21-2. 'For there are many who never can keep the rule of love towards their friends, whether kinsmen or not.' MS. ynesche has been variously interpreted; but it must be corrected to ynence.
b 47. strucyo or storke: the ostrich, not the stork, is meant. Latin struthio has both meanings. On the whole, fourteenth-century translators show a fair knowledge of Latin, but the average of scholarship, even among the clergy, was never high in the Middle Ages. In the magnificent Eadwine Psalter, written at Canterbury Cathedral in the twelfth century, Ps. ci. 7 similis factus sum pellicano is rendered by 'I am become like to the skin of a dog' (= pelli canis), though an ecclesiastic would recite this psalm in Latin at least once every week. The records of some thirteenth-century examinations of English clergy may be found in G. G. Coulton, A Medieval Garner (London 1910), pp. 270 ff. They include the classic answer of Simon, the curate of Sonning, who, being examined on the Canon of the Mass, and pressed to say what governed Te in Te igitur, clementissime Pater,... supplices rogamus, replied 'Pater, for He governeth all things'. As for French, Michael of Northgate, a shaky translator, is fortunate in escaping gross blunders in the specimen chosen (III); but the English rendering of Mandeville's Travels is full of errors; see the notes to IX.
b 60. teches: better toches, according to the Footnote.
[V]
Alliterative Verse. The long lines in Gawayne, with The Destruction of Troy, Piers Plowman, and The Blacksmiths (XV h), are specimens of alliterative verse unmixed with rime, a form strictly comparable with Old English verse, from which it must derive through an unbroken oral tradition. While the detailed analysis of the Middle English alliterative line is complex and controversial, its general framework is describable in simple terms. It will be convenient to take examples from Gawayne, which shows most of the developments characteristic of Middle English.
1. The long line is divided by a caesura into two half lines, of which the second is the more strictly built so that the rhythm may be well marked. Each half line normally contains two principal stresses, e.g.