[59]. niuelin: niuelen CNT; nyuelen V; P omits: probably means to snuffle: M has ‘gement’; F, no equivalent: is possibly a form of snivel, and is recorded in EDD. for Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, to turn up the nose in disdain. makien sur semblant, wear a rueful countenance: comp. 117/19; ‘ȝif þu makest ei semblaunt,’ AR 90/18: loþly semblaunt P; ‘frunt vn egre semblant,’ F.
[61]. hond: ham T.
[62]. makien grim chere: comp. ‘niuelen ⁊ makien sure ⁊ grimme chere,’ AR 240/4; ‘makeð hire ueire cheres,’ id. 218/11. M has ‘quia prius discunt officium suum · ut facia[n]t horribilem’ [uultum].
[63]. skirmeð: Master Walter Leskirmissour, who performed before Edward the First at Whitsuntide 1306, was, no doubt, an artist of this sort. A picture of one who is keeping three knives and three balls going in the air may be seen reproduced in Strutt, Horda Angelcynnan, i. plate 19. ⁊: BC omit.
[64]. warpere: so C; worpere N; castere T. M has ‘Iracundus coram diabolo pungnat ut pugil · cum cultellus est protector cultellorum’; his original had probably cultellis, and projector; possibly protector represents a mistake, warde, or wardere.
[65]. eiðer beoð: eiðer baðe ha beoð C, with same meaning.
[66]. he . . . him . . . he: ho . . . hire . . . ho T, and so hire for him in the next three lines. warpeð: so C; warpes T; worpeð N. from: frommard N; see [77/63 note]. skirmeð, directs, aims: ‘impungnat,’ M. P has kerueþ.
[67]. eawles, hooks; comp. 120/126: used of the torturer’s hook, SK 2178; SM 6/28; the ‘īsen hoc’ of BH 43/25. In Ælf. Gloss. 316/6 āwul glosses L. fascinula (= fuscinula), the Vulgate word at 1 Sam. ii. 14, which is a diminutive of fuscina, ‘quoddam instrumentum ferreum . . . quo vtuntur . . . piscatores ad pisces capiendos, coci ad carnes extrahendas de caldario,’ Catholicon. F has ‘crochouns’; M ‘cum creagris’: creagra (= κρεάγρα), fleshhook, occurs in the Vulgate at 2 Paralip. iv. 11, 16. Similarly, ‘And when þai hadde on hym ylayd | Her scharpe hokes al þo | It was in a sori playd | Ytoiled boþe to ⁊ fro,’ Desputisoun, ed. Linow, 56/477.
[67-69.] skirmi—ut: M has dimicabunt for pleien; but otherwise nothing corresponding to this passage: F ‘ietterunt, lun vers laltre; sicome pesce de policon ⁊ despeies denfer le percerunt parmi.’
[68]. dusten, fling; a word characteristic of the group SK, SJ, SM; comp. 120/127: dunchen P, push, strike. pilche clut, rag of a pilch, whether that means a garment of fur or skin, or the nether garment of an infant: but the latter meaning is not evidenced till the seventeenth century.