f. I am obliged to Professor Carleton Brown for the information that this poem is found, with two additional stanzas, in MS. 18. 7. 21 of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and that the full text will be published shortly in his Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century.
f 4. bere (OE. bȳr) riming with fere (OE. (ge)fēra) indicates a South-Eastern composition.
g 1. Scere Þorsday: Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday.
g 1-2. aros: Iudas: the alternative form aras may have given the rime in the original, but it is not justifiable to accept this as certain and so to assume an early date of composition for the poem. Morsbach, ME. Grammatik, § 135, n. 4, quotes a number of parallel rimes with proper names, and the best explanation is that o in aros still represented a sound intermediate between ā and ǭ, and so served as an approximate rime to ā̆ in proper names.
g 6. cunesmen: as c and t are hard to distinguish in some ME. hands, and are often confused by copyists, this reading is more likely than tunesmen of the editors—Wright-Halliwell, Mätzner, Child, Cook (and N. E. D. s.v. townsman). For (1) tunesman is a technical, not a poetical word. (2) In a poem remarkable for its terseness, tunesmen reduces a whole line to inanity, unless the poet thinks of Judas quite precisely as a citizen of a town other than Jerusalem; and in the absence of any Biblical tradition it is unlikely that a writer who calls Pilate þe riche Ieu would gratuitously assume that Judas was not a citizen of Jerusalem, where his sister lived. (3) Christ's words are throughout vaguely prophetic, and as Judas forthwith imette wid is soster—one of his kin—cunesmen gives a pregnant sense. [I find the MS. actually has cunesmen, but leave the note, lest tunesmen might appear to be better established.]
g 8. The repetition of ll. 8, 25, 30 is indicated in the MS. by 'ii' at the end of each of these lines, which is the regular sign for bis.
g 16. 'He tore his hair until it was bathed in blood.' The MS. has top, not cop.
g 24. In him com ur Lord gon. In the MS. c'ist = Crist has been erased after Lord. Note (1) the reflexive use of him, which is very common in OE. and ME. with verbs of motion, e.g. Up him stod 27, 29; Þau Pilatus him com 30; Als I me rode XV a 4; The Kyng him rod XIV c 61; cp. the extended use ar þe coc him crowe 33, and notes to II 289, V 86: (2) the use of the infinitive (gon) following, and usually defining the sense of, a verb of motion, where Modern English always, and ME. commonly (e.g. ȝede karoland I 117; com daunceing II 298), uses the pres. p.: 'Our Lord came walking in'.
g 27. am I þat? 'Is it I?', the interrogative form of ich hit am or ich am hit. The editors who have proposed to complete the line by adding wrech, have missed the sense. The original rime was þet: spec, cp. note to I 240.
g 30. cnistes: for cniste = cnihte representing the OE. gen. pl. cnihta. On the forms meist 6, heiste 18, eiste 20, bitaiste 21, iboust 26, miste 29, cnistes 30, fiste 31, all with st for OE. ht, see Appendix § 6 end.