for life's help and soul's comfort (counsel).
[500] alied = halihed = holiness; toch = toc = took. [501] fro mannes mene, from man's fellowship, society. The usual form of mene in O.E. is ymene, ymone = common, general. [503]-510 From Hampole's Pricke of Conscience, pp. 122-126, we learn that both Enoch and Hely (Elijah) shall come before doomsday to turn the Jews from following Antichrist to the Christian law:—"For 1260 days, or three years, shall they continue to preach. Antichrist, in great wrath, shall put the two prophets to death in Jerusalem, where their bodies shall lie in the streets for three days and a half, after which they shall ascend to heaven in a cloud. After their death Antichrist shall only reign fifteen days, at the end of which time he shall be slain before the Mount of Olivet." Some "clerks" affirm that he shall be slain by St Michael in Babylon, "that great hill." (See "Antichrist and the Signs before the Doom," in Jahrbuch für Romanische und Englische Literatur, 1863.) [517] Metodius. In the "Polychronicon Ranulphi Higdeni," p. 23, ed. by Churchill Babington, 1865, amongst the "auctores names" we find mention made of "Methodius etiam martyr et episcopus, cui incarcerato revelavit angelus de mundi statu principio et fine." [518] sighe sir = sigðhe sir = sheer insight, clear fore-knowledge.
P. 16. l. [525] quat agte awold = what should happen. [526] water wold, destroyed by water. wold may = walled, flooded, from wallen. [530] hore-plage, whore-play, whoredom. Cf. O.Sax. hor-uuilo; O.H.G. huorgilust. In O.E. hore (not whore) was an epithet applicable to men as well as women. It occasionally signifies adultery. It is found in combination as a qualifying term in hore-cop, horesone, a bastard; hore-hous, a brothel. The O.E. horwed, defiled, unclean; horowe, foul (Chaucer); hori, ouri, dirty; Provincial E. horry (Devonshire), seem to belong to another family of words.
Wimmen welten weres mester
Women wielded a man's art.—(See Rom. i. 26.)
See Allit. Poems, p. 46, ll. 269-272.
And swilc woded wenten on,
And such madness (folly) went on.