"MENEZ, s. m. Grande masse de terre, ou de roche, fort élevée au-dessus du sol de la terre.
"MEAN, ou MAEN, s. m. Pierre, corps dur et solide qui se forme dans la terre.
"(En Treguier et Cornouailes), MÉNÉ."
(Gonidec, Dictionnaire Celto-Breton. Angoulême, 1821.)
This last reference is doubly valuable, in referring the word méné to the very neighbourhood of the scene of Chaucer's "Frankleine's Tale," and in dispensing with the terminal letter z, thereby giving us the verbum ipsissimum used by Chaucer.
I must not be understood as entertaining the opinion that Chaucer's knowledge of astronomy—although undoubtedly great, considering the age in which he lived and the nature of his pursuits—would have enabled him to determine the moon's true place, with such correctness, wholly from theory; on the contrary, I look upon it as more probably the result of real observation at the time named, and, as such, adding another link to the chain of presumptive evidence that renders it more probable that Chaucer wrote the prologues to his Canterbury Tales more as a narration (with some embellishments) of events that really took place, than that they were altogether the work of his imagination.
A. E. B.
Leeds, June, 1851.
CURIOUS EPIGRAMS ON OLIVER CROMWELL.
Looking carefully over a curious copy of the Flagellum, or the Life and Death, Birth and Buriall of O. Cromwell, the late Usurper, printed for Randal Taylor, 1672, I found on the back of the title the following epigrams, written in a handwriting and ink corresponding to the date of the book (which, by the way, is a late edition of the "little brown lying book," by Heath, which Carlyle notices): as they are curious and worth preserving, and I believe not to be met with elsewhere, I presume they may be of some interest to your readers. The book is also full of MS. marginal notes and remarks, evidently by some red-hot royalist, which are also curious in themselves, and with a selection of which I may some day trouble you should you wish it.