[8707], [8708]. The two persons mentioned here (the shoemaker of Southwark and dame Emma of Shoreditch) were probably eminent sorcerers and fortune-tellers of the time.
[8769]-[8778]. To understand fully this passage, it must be borne in mind that the corn lands were not so universally hedged as at present, and that the portions belonging to different persons were separated only by a narrow furrow, as is still the case in some of the uninclosed lands in Cambridgeshire.
[8812]. Brugges. Bruges was the great mart of continental commerce during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.
[8813]. Pruce-lond—Prussia, which was then the farthest country in the interior of Europe with which a regular trade was carried on by the English merchants.
[8827]. Matth. vi, 21.
[8858]. Luke vi, 25.
[8879]. Psalm ci, 7.
[8891]. a lady of sorwe. The old printed edition has a laye of sorow.
[8900]. Whitaker has no division here, but continues the previous passus, and omits many lines and has many variations in what follows.
[8903]. I slepe therinne o nyghtes. This passage is curious, because at the time the poem was written, it was the custom for all classes of society to go to bed quite naked, a practice which is said to have been not entirely laid aside in the sixteenth century. We see constant proofs of this practice in the illuminations of old manuscripts. The following memorial lines are written in the margin of a MS. of the thirteenth century:—