[172]. of fayre, not, out of what is fair, but, in choosing a fair wife: of = in the form of, in the person of. For frakele, comp. ‘he bið wið-uten feire ⁊ frakel wið-innen,’ OEH i. 25/27. ‘Munditiam seruat sinceram rara uenustas,’ Fec. Ratis 114/581.
[175]. So: Holthausen, Archiv lxxxviii. 370, suggests wo, which gives a common phrase, ‘Wo is hym alyue,’ OEM 183/221; ‘wa is me on liue,’ L 3422.
[177]. vppen eorþe, a favourite tag: see 28/315; KH 247 O.
[179]-82. These lines are repeated with small variation in Hendyng, 133-7, but the ‘wyf’ is ‘ȝonge’; Kneuer, 53. Zupitza, Anglia, iii. 370, quotes an inscription in Low German from a room in the Lübeck Rathskeller, which is identical with the English proverb, and Holthausen, Archiv, lxxxviii. 371, contributes two more versions in the same dialect.
[184]. so wod . . . þat . . . segge, so mad as to say: see 23/159; and comp. ‘Ne wurðe nan cniht swa wod; ne kempe swa wilde,’ L 8593, ‘& þa drihliche gumen; weoren win drunken,’ id. 8125.
[185]. wille, all that is in thy mind: comp. 27/305, 23/166.
[186]. þu: T has hue, and Skeat alters here to heo, but the text may very well mean, if you ever found yourself. Perhaps the original had: For if þu hi myd worde · iwreþþed heuede | And heo iseye þe · bi vore þine ivo alle. Comp. ‘confundet te in conspectu inimicorum,’ Ecclus. xxv. 35.
[188]. lete, omit, refrain from: form and meaning from OE. lǣtan, but with construction, þat- clause with subj., of OE. lettan.
[189]. Omit scholde, a mere repetition from the preceding line. Comp. ‘gyf þonne þissa þreora þinga ænig hwylcne man lette, þæt hine to ðam fæstene ne ónhágje,’ Wulfstan 285/3 (quoted in B.-T.). forþ, openly, freely: comp. ‘ðane sei ðu forð mid seinte Petre: Tu es Christus,’ VV 25/31. baleusyþes, cast up to you your misfortunes: comp. 2/27. But one expects, after l. 185, something like, will reveal all your secrets.
[190]. woþ: T has wod and wordwod may mean word-mad; in that case the second half of the line is little more than repetition. But T has often d for þ, and so his reading may be the same in effect as that of J, which does not put þ for d. Now in Layamon the younger MS. writes woþ for wouh, woh in the elder, 3327, 4333, where the sense requires the latter, and word woh, perverse of speech, would fit well here.