Note the unstressed 3 sg. and 3 pl. form a, e.g. at a13, 27.
Sounds: There is no instance of v for initial f, which is evidenced in the spelling of early South-Western writers like Robert of Gloucester (about 1300), or of z for initial s, which is less commonly shown in spelling. u for OE. y occurs in hulles 'hills' a 18 (beside bysynes b 24, where Modern English has u in spelling but i in pronunciation; and lift (OE. lyft) b 39, where Modern English has the South-Eastern form left).
a 2-3. Mayster... Minerua... hys: Trevisa appears to have understood 'Minerva' as the name of a god.
a 6-49. Higden took all this passage from Book i of the twelfth-century Annals of Alfred of Beverley (ed. Hearne, pp. 6-7). The Polychronicon is a patchwork of quotations from earlier writers.
a 7. Pectoun. Higden has ad Peccum, and Alfred of Beverley in monte qui vocatur Pec, i.e. The Peak of Derbyshire. cc and ct are not distinguishable in some hands of the time, and Trevisa has made Peccum into Pectoun.
a 14. Cherdhol. Hearne's text of Alfred of Beverley has Cherole; Henry of Huntingdon (about 1150), who gives the same four marvels in his Historia Anglorum, has Chederhole; and on this evidence the place has been identified with Cheddar in Somerset, where there are famous caves.
a 22. an egle hys nest: cp. b 23 a child hys brouch. This construction has two origins: (1) It is a periphrasis for the genitive, especially in the case of masculine and neuter proper names which had no regular genitive in English; (2) It is an error arising from false manuscript division of the genitive suffix -es, -is, from its stem.
a 36. <þat> here and in l. 52 is inserted on the evidence of the other MSS. Syntactically its omission is defensible, for the suppressed relative is a common source of difficulty in Middle English; see the notes to V 4-6, 278-9; X 146; XIV c 54; XVII 66.
a 50. Wynburney. Wimborne in Dorset. Here St. Cuthburga founded a nunnery, which is mentioned in one of Aldhelm's letters as early as A.D. 705. The information that it is 'not far from Bath', which is hardly accurate, was added by Higden to the account of the marvel he found in the Topographia Hibernica of Giraldus Cambrensis (vol. v, p. 86 of the Rolls Series edition of his works).