Part 33

p. 2. Lady Facetia. Apparently the author’s feminine of Facetus (perhaps through confusion with facetiæ, jokes), because courtesy was usually personified as a woman. In the Tesoretto, the chief virtue is Larghezza (liberality), upon whom Courtesy attends, together with Good-Faith and Valour, over against the masculine qualities, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice.

p. 3. Bele. Fr. belle, beautiful. Not common in English (see N.E.D.) until the seventeenth century.

p. 6. Trencher. Originally, a slice of wholemeal bread, four days old, upon which food was served. Later, it was made of wood.

p. 8. Where they ought to be. In a knife-rack or case? See Wright, Domestic Manners and Customs, p. 464.

THE A B C OF ARISTOTLE

MS. Lambeth 853, fol. 30, about 1430, written without breaks; Harl. 5086, fol. 70b, and Harl. 1304, fol. 103, about 1450 (printed in Queene Eliz. Achad.). It is needless to say that nothing of the sort is found in Aristotle; the author is unknown. The introduction is in connected alliterative verse (lacking in Harl. 5086, and expanded into a generalised religious discourse in Harl. 1304).

p. 10. Elenge. See N.E.D. on this rare word. Its two originally distinct meanings (1) long, hence, tedious, and (2) lonely, remote, combine to form a third meaning, melancholy.

URBANITATIS

MS. Cotton Caligula, A ii, fol. 88, 1446-60. Author unknown. Apparently first printed by Dr. Furnivall. The Duke of Norfolk, grandfather of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, was among the young henchmen at the court of Edward IV., brought up on “the booke of urbanitie.”

p. 13. Good manners, &c. William of Wykeham was more curt in his motto for Winchester College: “Manners makyth man.”

p. 14. Close your hand, &c., i.e., one hand over the over, to keep a secret.

p. 14. Had I wist. Proverbial. See notes on The Good Wife, p. 186, below.

p. 15. Let your right shoulder, &c., i.e., keep a step behind him to the left.

THE LITTLE CHILDREN’S LITTLE BOOK

MSS. Harl. 541, fol. 210, and Egerton 1995, about 1480. Sub-title Edyllys be. Edyllys may be the O. E. æthele, German edel, meaning noble; but the sentence is then incomplete. Ends “Quod Whytyng.” Whether he was author or scribe I do not know, more probably the latter. I have kept the rhyme in this version, because it is at once shorter and more interesting than the other.

p. 16. Seven Arts. The quadrivium: arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy; and the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, logic.

p. 16. When Gabriel ... meet. It is interesting to note that a medieval writer connected courtesy with the worship of Mary, even although he includes no precepts which touch upon what we call chivalry to-day.

p. 16. Villainy. The French equivalent of churlishness; what Russell calls “simple conditions.”

p. 17. Beginning ... think. This kind of rhyme, not uncommon in the fifteenth century, seems to indicate a pronunciation as in the cockney nothink.

p. 17. Mess. Here food, but sometimes table (Latin mensa), and again group of people at a table, as used still in the expression “officers’ mess.”

p. 17. Fault. Text: that thy salt holds—which the rhyme shows to be corrupt.

p. 18. Work. Text: keep—changed for the rhyme.

p. 18. Fingers, i.e., not with thy knife? Or has a negative been omitted?

p. 19. No drop be seen. So Chaucer’s Prioress. See Introduction, p. xvi.

p. 19. Behind no man’s back. There was perhaps originally an idea of greed, or, it may be, of possible tampering with the drink, behind the prohibition.

p. 20. Jill. From Gillian, once a common name for women.

p. 20. The same. Text: in same (German zusammen) together.

p. 21. Cumbered with no fiends. This fear was very real in the Middle Ages, and was fostered by such stories as Robert the Devil, Sir Gowther, and ballads of supernatural beings.