Page 72. v. 682. _Pandaer_] Or _Pandare_ as Chaucer occasionally calls Pandarus.
—— _bylles_] i. e. letters: see Chaucer’s _Troilus and Creseide_.
v. 686. _An ouche, or els a ryng_] “_Nouche_. Monile.” _Prompt. Parv._ ed. 1499. “_Ouche_ for a bonnet _afficquet_.” Palsgrave’s _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530. fol. li. (Table of Subst.). “He gaue her an _ouche_ couched with perles, &c.... _monile_.” Hormanni _Vulgaria_, sig. k iii. ed. 1530.—Concerning _ouche_ (jewel, ornament, &c.), a word whose etymology and primary signification are uncertain, see Tyrwhitt’s _Gloss._, to Chaucer’s _Cant. Tales_, v. _Nouches_, and Richardson’s Dict. in v. _Ouch_.—Here, perhaps, it means a brooch: for in the third book of Chaucer’s _Troilus and Creseide_, Cressid proposes that Pandarus should bear a “blew ring” from her to Troilus; and (_ibid._) afterwards the lovers
“enterchaungeden her _ringes_, Of which I can not tellen no scripture, But well I wot, a _broche_ of gold and azure, In which a Rubbie set was like an herte, Creseide him yaue, and stacke it on his sherte.”
After Cressid becomes acquainted with Diomede, she gives him _a brooch_, which she had received from Troilus on the day of her departure from Troy. _Id._ fols. 179, 181. In Henrysoun’s _Testament of Creseide_ (a poem of no mean beauty), Cressid, stricken with leprosy, bequeathes to Troilus _a ring_ which he had given her. _Id._ fol. 184.
Page 72. v. 700. _That made the male to wryng_] So Skelton elsewhere;
“That ye can not espye Howe the _male_ dothe _wrye_.”
“The countrynge at Cales _Wrang_ vs on the _males_.”
_Why come ye nat to Courte_, v. 74. vol. ii. 29,
“Now al so mot I thryue and the, saide he than, I can nat se for alle wittes and espyes, And craft and kunnyng, but that _the male so wryes_ That no kunnyng may preuayl and appere Ayens a womans wytt and hir answere.”
_The prohemy of a mariage_, &c.,—_MS. Harl._ 372. fol. 50.
I do not understand the expression. In Palsgrave’s _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530, besides “_Male_ or wallet to putte geare in,” we find “_Mayle_ that receyueth the claspe of a gowne in to it ... _porte_,” fol. xlvi. (Table of Subst.).
v. 702. _The song of louers lay_]—_lay_ seems here to mean—law.