v. 447. _leche_] i. e. physician, doctor.—Dunbar makes a distinction, which I do not understand;
“In Medicyne the most Practicianis, _Leichis_, Surrigianis, and Phisicianis.”
v. 451. _the vertue of an vnset leke_] “_Vnsette lekes_ be of more _vertue_ than they that be sette ... _præstant in medicina_.” Hormanni _Vulgaria_, sig. f ii. ed. 1530.
v. 460. _noughty froslynges_] i. e. worthless things, stunted by frost. In Suffolk, _froslin_ is applied to any thing—a lamb, a _goslin_, a chicken, an apple, &c., nipped, or pinched, or injured by frost: see Moor’s _Suffolk Words, Appendix_.
Page 110. v. 462. _callet_] i. e. trull, drab, jade.
v. 465. _wretchockes_] “The famous imp yet grew a _wretchock_; and though for seven years together he was carefully carried at his mother’s back, rocked in a cradle of Welsh cheese, like a maggot, and there fed with broken beer, and blown wine of the best daily, yet looks as if he never saw his _quinquennium_.” Jonson’s Masque, _The Gipsies Metamorphosed_,—_Workes_, vii. 371. ed. Gifford, who thus comments on the passage in his authoritative style: “i. e. pined away, instead of thriving. Whalley appears to have puzzled himself sorely in this page, about a matter of very little difficulty. In every large breed of domestic fowls, there is usually a miserable little stunted creature, that forms a perfect contrast to the growth and vivacity of the rest. This unfortunate abortive, the goodwives, with whom it is an object of tenderness, call a _wrethcock_; and this is all the mystery. Was Whalley ignorant that what we now term chick, was once chocke and _chooke_?” The fol. ed. of the _Masque of Gipsies_ has “_wretch-cock_,” which Nares, who does not know what to make of the word, observes “would admit of an easy derivation from _wretch_ and _cock_, meaning a poor wretched fowl.” _Gloss._ in v.
Page 110. v. 466. _shyre shakyng nought_] i. e. sheer worthless. So again our author in his _Magnyfycence_;
“From _qui fuit aliquid_ to shyre shakynge nought.”
v. 483. _foggy_] “_Foggy_, to full of waste flesshe.” Palsgrave’s _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530. fol. lxxxviii. (Table of Adiect.).
Page 111. v. 492. _an old rybibe_] Chaucer, in _The Freres Tale_, says,