[291]-294. ‘Sic lex est Christi nobis complenda magistri | Cuius, qui faciet, pascua repperiet,’ T.
[293]. bitwixen us . . . brice, useful, serviceable to one another: comp. 194/592.
[294]. lage: acc. after to fillen, which is subject of is.
[295]. ðar wið ne dillen, be not sluggish about that: comp. ‘Hymself to on sware he is not dylle,’ E. E. Allit. Poems, 21/679. The first half of the line is feeble: perhaps dred for ned would be better.
[298]. hire follows the gender of vulpes. For to name see 179/107. queðsipe: Holthausen suggests flerdscipe to restore the alliteration, with reference to 187/351; the compound does not occur elsewhere. Perhaps fikenunge, deceit; or, for the last half-line read for ure unframe, comp. ‘Quad esau, rigt is his name | hoten iacob, to min unframe,’ GE 1565. But the writer may have intended an inflectional rhyme.
[299]. harm-dedes, injurious action; a compound which apparently occurs here only.
[301]. feccheð, steals: comp. ‘Bothe my gees ⁊ my grys . his gadelynges feccheth,’ P. Plowman B. iv. 51. tun, the enclosed farmyard.
[305]. hulen is hardly possible; it is not found elsewhere till the end of the fourteenth century and the construction with the direct acc. hire is improbable. Mätzner suggested hunten, Holthausen, hurlen, drive: huten, revile seems preferable; comp. ‘⁊ ȝiff mann wollde tælenn þatt, | ⁊ hutenn hire ⁊ þutenn,’ Orm 2033, 4875. So chauntecler says to the fox, ‘Acoursed be thou of Godes mouthe,’ Rel. Ant. ii. 273/19. Further the repetition of hatien is feeble; harien, persecute, would give a good sense, while huntes (176/21, 192/512) for men would restore the alliteration. So the line would run, harien ⁊ huten . boðe huntes ⁊ fules.
[307]. furg, furrow. ‘In terram scissam se tendit atque supina | Et quasi mortua sit, flamina nulla trahit,’ T.
[308] is made up of halves of two lines which may have run thus: fugeles to bilirten . mid hire fel wrenche | In eried lond er in erðchine . ge strekeð adun. bilirten, deceive, ensnare, a Midland and Northern word: OE. belyrtan. eried lond, ploughed land, ‘terram scissam,’ the ‘furg’ of l. 307. erðchine, a cleft in the ground: a compound found here only.