Vnbliþe.’
[St. 3]
p. 2, [l. 28]. I have not met with the verb fesomnen anywhere else, and it is not mentioned in Stratmann and Mätzner. Halliwell, Dictionary, p. 354, explains it by ‘feoffed, gave in fee,’ doubtless regarding this very passage, although he doesn’t cite it; might fesomnyd not be a corruption from sesyd? cf. Havelok, ll. 250 f.:
‘Þat he ne dede al Engelond
Sone sayse intil his hond.’
Hall writes to me on this word as follows: fesomnyd is, I am convinced, not a word at all, but a scribe’s error for festonyd or festnyd = confirmed, fixed. Comp. ’And þat ich hym wolde myd trewþe siker faste on honde,’ Robert of Gloucester (Hearne), p. 150. For this use of fasten, fastnen, comp. ’But my forwarde with þe I festen on þis wyse,’ Alliterative Poems, p. 47, l. 327: ’& folden fayth to þat fre, festned so harde,’ Sir Gawayne, p. 57, l. 1783: ’And þis forward, in faith, I festyn with hond,’ Destruction of Troy, p. 22, l. 636. See also Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary, ii. p. 216, under to Fest.
p. 2, [l. 30]. I am by no means sure that fede is the original reading, but I wasn’t able to find a better word rhyming with dedde, wede; even the ne. ‘feed’ means pasture, and that is what we expect here.
p. 2, [l. 31]. For my correction cf. Lüdtke’s note to The Erl of Tolouse, l. 199, sub 2; Eglam., l. 26:
‘That was a maydyn as whyte as fome,’
Ib. l. 683: