51. WHOSE YEELDED PRIDE, etc., object of _had marked_, l. 52.
77. HE KEPT BOTH WATCH AND WARD, he kept awake and guarded her.
89. A DAMZELL SPYDE, Abessa, who symbolizes Flagrant or Secret Sin.
99. HER CAST IN DEADLY HEW, threw her into a deathly paleness.
102. WHEREAS HER MOTHER BLYND, where her blind mother, Corceca, or Blind Devotion.
109. UNRULY PAGE. This refers to the violence with which Henry VIII forced Protestantism upon the people. In his _Present State of Ireland_ (p. 645), Spenser speaks of the ignorance and blind devotion of the Irish Papists in the benighted country places.
116. PATER NOSTERS, the Lord's Prayer; AVES, prayers to the Virgin.
136. ALDEBORAN, the Bull's Eye, a double star of the first magnitude in the constellation Taurus.
137. CASSIOPEIAS CHAIRE, a circumpolar constellation having a fancied resemblance to a chair.
139. ONE KNOCKED AT THE DORE, Kirkrapine, the plunderer of the Church. Spenser represents in him the peculiar vices of the Irish clergy and laity.
166. STAY HIM TO ADVIZE, stop to reflect.
172. HIM BOOTETH NOT RESIST, it does him no good to resist. This whole passage refers, perhaps, to Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries and convents in 1538-39.
185. THAT LONG WANDRING GREEKE. Ulysses, or Odysseus, the hero of Homer's _Odyssey_, who wandered ten years and refused immortality from the goddess Calypso in order that he might return to Penelope.
xxii. Note the rhymes _deare_, _heare_, and _teare_ (air). This 16th century pronunciation still survives in South Carolina. See Ellis's _Early English Pronunciation_, III, 868. This stanza reads like the description of an Irish wake.
238. OR OUGHT HAVE DONE, or have done something to displease you.
239. THAT SHOULD AS DEATH, etc., that should settle like death, etc.
248. AND CHOSE IN FAERY COURT. See Spenser's letter to Sir W. Raleigh, p. 6.
250. HER KINDLY SKILL, her natural power.
276. FIERCE ORIONS HOUND, Sirius, the Dog-star, the brightest of the fixed stars. The constellation Orion was named from a giant hunter who was beloved by Aurora and slain by Diana.
279. AND NEREUS CROWNES WITH CUPS, and Nereus drinks bumpers in his honor. Nereus was a sea-god, son of Ocean and Earth.
297. SANS LOY symbolizes the pagan lawlessness in Ireland. There is also a wider reference to the struggles between the Turks and the allied Christian powers, which had been going on since the siege of Vienna in 1529.