_Biron._ Well followed: _Judas was hang'd on an elder._
681. _Lucifer with legions._ The story of Lucifer's rebellion and fall was extremely popular in the middle ages, and particularly among the Anglo-Saxons, who, in the fine poem ascribed to Cædmon, had given it almost as much detail as Milton had done at a later date. This legend is related in prose in an Anglo-Saxon tract in MS. Cotton. Vespas. D. xiv, fol. 2.
682. The second Trin. Col. MS. has, _Leride it in hevene, | and as the lovelokest | to loke on, aftir oure Lord_.
697-704. Instead of these lines, we find the following in Whitaker's text:
Lord, why wolde he tho, Thulke wrechede Lucifer, Lepen on a-lofte In the northe syde, To sitten in the sonne side Ther the day roweth, Ne were it for northerne men, Anon ich wolde telle: Ac ich wolle lacke no lyf, Quath that lady sotthly. 'Hyt is sykerer by southe, Ther the sonne regneth, Than in the north, by meny notes, No man loyne other. For theder as the fend flegh, Hus fote for to sette, Ther he failede and fuel, And hus felawes alle. And helle is ther he is, And he ther y-bounde, Evene contrarie suteth Criste, Cierkus knowen the sothe, _Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sede a dextris meis._ 'Ac of this matere No more mene ich nelle, He was in the halyday After heten wayten, They care noght thauh it be cold Knaves wen thei worchen.'
Whitaker has translated the last four lines of the foregoing extract thus, "Excepting that hyndes on the holyday look out for warm places, but knaves (servants) when working hard, are indifferent to cold."
695. Isaiah xiv, 14. The citation varies a little from the text of the printed vulgate.
707. _Somme in the eyr._ The monks in the middle ages endeavoured to explain the existence of different classes of spirits and fairies, which the popular creed represented as harmless, or even beneficent creatures, by supposing that some of the angels who fell with Lucifer were less guilty than others, and were allowed to occupy the different elements on the earth instead of being condemned to "the pit." In "The Master of Oxford's Catechism," written early in the fifteenth century, and printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. i, p. 231, we have the following question and answer,--"_C._ Where be the anjelles that God put out of heven, and bycam devilles? _M._ Som into hell, and som reyned in the skye, and som in the erth, and som in waters and in wodys."