The Miller's name is Robin (l. 3129).
3110. The reading companye (as in old editions and Tyrwhitt) in place of route makes the line too long.
3115. I. e. the bag is unbuckled, the budget is opened; as when a packman displays his wares. See Group I, l. 26.
3119. To quyte with, to requite the Knight with, for his excellent Tale. This position of with, next its verb, is the almost invariable M. E. idiom. Cf. F. 471, 641, C. 345; Notes to P. Pl., C. i. 133, &c.
3120. 'Very drunk, and all pale'; cf. A. 4150, H. 30.
3124. I. e. in a loud, commanding voice, such as that of Pilate in the Mystery Plays. In the Chester Plays, Pilate is of rather a meek disposition; but in the York Plays, pp. 270, 307, 320, he is represented as boastful and tyrannical, as is evidently here intended. The expression seems to have been proverbial. Palsgrave has: 'In a pylates voyce, a haulte voyx'; p. 837. Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegms (repr. 1877), last page, has—'speaking out of measure loude and high, and altogether in Pilates voice.'
3125. by armes, i. e. by the arms of Christ; see note to C. 651.
3129. 'My dear brother'; a common form; cf. 3848, below, and 1136, above.
3131. thriftily, i. e. profitably, to a useful purpose; cf. B. 1165.
3134. a devel wey, in the devil's name; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 287; originally, in the way to the devil, with all ill luck. Compare—
See note to l. 3713 below.
3140. Wyte it, lay the blame for it upon. of Southwerk, i. e. of the Tabard inn.
3143. 'Made a fool of the wright,' i. e. of the carpenter; cf. A. 586, 614; also A. 3911, and the note.
3145. The Reeve interferes, because he was a carpenter himself (A. 614). 'Let alone your ignorant drunken ribaldry.'
3152. A reference to a proverbial expression which is given in Rob. of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, 1892:—
Compare also Le Roman de la Rose, 9167-9171, which expresses a similar opinion.
3155-6. Tyrwhitt omits these two lines in his text, but admits, in his Notes, that they should have been inserted. The former of the two lines is repeated from l. 277 of the original (but rejected) Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. but-if thou madde, unless thou art going mad.
3161. oon, one, i. e. a cuckold; or, possibly, an ox (l. 3159). As an ox was a 'horned' animal, it comes to the same thing, according to the miserable jest so common in our dramatists.
3165. goddes foyson, sufficient abundance, i. e. all he wants, all the affection he expects. there, in his wife.
3166. A defective line; read—Of | the rém' | nant, &c.
On the Miller's Tale, see Anglia, i. 38, ii. 135, vii (appendix), 81; and see the remarks in vol. iii. p. 395.
3188. gnof, churl, lit. a thief; a slang word, of Hebrew origin; Heb. ganāv, a thief, Exod. xxii. 1. The same as the mod. E. gonoph, the epithet applied to Jo in Dickens, Bleak House, ch. xix. Halliwell's Dict. quotes from The Norfolke Furies, 1623—'The country gnoffes, Hob, Dick, and Hick, With clubbes and clouted shoon,' &c. Drant, in his tr. of Horace, Satires, fol. A i, back (1566), has:—'The chubbyshe gnof that toyles and moyles.' Todd, in his Illustration of Chaucer, p. 260, says—'See A Comment upon the Miller's Tale and the Wife of Bath, 12mo. Lond. 1665, p. 8, [where we find] "A rich gnofe; a rich grub, or miserable caitiff, as I render it; which interpretation, to be proper and significant, I gather by the sence of that antient metre:
This, as I conceive, explains the author's meaning; which seems no less seconded by that antient English bard:
The note in Bell's Chaucer, connecting it with oaf, is wrong. The carpenter's name was John (l. 3501).
3190. This shews that students used often to live in lodgings, as is so common at Cambridge, where the number of students far exceeds the number of college-rooms.
3192, 3. Chaucer himself knew something of astrology, as shewn by his numerous references to it. The word conclusions in l. 3193 is the technical name for 'propositions' or problems. In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, prologue (l. 9), he says to his son Lowis—'I purpose to teche thee a certein nombre of conclusions apertening to the same instrument.' We here learn that one object of astrology was to answer questions relating to coming weather, as well as with reference to almost every other future event.