In Englelond, that cleped was eke Bretaigne."
Dorigene, inconsolable at his loss, sits upon the sea-shore, and views with horror the "grisly, fendly, rockes," with which the coast is studded, in every one of which she sees certain destruction to her husband in his return. She accuses the gods of injustice in forming these rocks for the sole apparent purpose of destroying man, so favoured in other respects, and she concludes her apostrophe in these words,—
"Than, semeth it, ye had a gret chertee
Toward mankind; but how then may it be
That ye such menēs make, it to destroyen,
Which menēs don no good but ever anoyen?"
Undoubtedly, in the third of these lines, "menes" seems to have a perfectly good meaning in the sense of instrument, or means to destroy. But, in the last line, the same sense is not so obvious—"means to destroy" must necessarily be destructive, and Chaucer would never be guilty of the unmeaning truism of repeating—"means which do no good but ever annoy."
Moreover, I am not aware that the accent is ever thrown upon the silent e where the signification of "mene" is an instrument—
"She may be Goddēs mene and Goddēs whippe"—
but in the lines under discussion the last syllable in both cases is accented, agreeing in that respect with the Armorican sound—"menez."