v. 1314. _rounses_] i. e. common hackney-horses (though the word is frequently used for horses in general).
_He plucked the bull_ _By the horned skull,_ _And offred to Cornucopia_]
The “bull” means Achelous, who, during his combat with Hercules, assumed that shape:
“rigidum fera dextera cornu Dum tenet, infregit; truncaque a fronte revellit. Näides hoc, pomis et odoro flore repletum, Sacrarunt; divesque meo bona Copia cornu est.”
Page 92. v. 1322. _Ecates_] i. e. Hecate’s.
—— _the venemous serpent,_ _That in hell is neuer brent_]
—_brent_, i. e. burned. A somewhat profane allusion to the scriptural expression “the worm dieth not;”—(_worm_ and _serpent_ were formerly synonymous).
v. 1332. _infernall posty_]—_posty_, i. e. power. So Lydgate;
“Of heuene and erthe and _infernal pooste_.”
_Testamentum_,—_MS. Harl._ 2255. fol. 47.
v. 1344. _Primo Regum_] i. e. _The First Book of Kings_, or, as it is now called, _The First Book of Samuel_, chap, xxviii.
Lydgate’s _Fall of Prynces_, B. ii. leaf xxxix. ed. Wayland.
_He bad the Phitonesse_ ... _But whether it were so,_ _He were idem in numero,_ _The selfe same Samuell, &c._]
—_Phitonesse_, i. e. Pythoness, witch,—the witch of Endor.
“And speke as renably, and faire, and wel, As to the _Phitonesse_ did Samuel: And yet wol som men say it was not he,” &c.
Chaucer’s _Freres Tale_, v. 7091. ed. Tyr.;
and see his _House of Fame_, B. iii. fol. 267, _Workes_, ed. 1602.
“And of Phyton that Phebus made thus fine Came _Phetonysses_ that can so deuyne,” &c.
Lydgate’s _Warres of Troy_, B. ii. sig. K vi. ed. 1555.
“And secretelye this Saule is forth gone To a woman that should him rede and wisse, In Israell called a _phytonesse_. ... To diuines this matter I commit, ... _Whether it was the soule of Samuell_,” &c.
Lydgate’s _Fall of Prynces_, B. ii. leaf xl. ed. Wayland.
See also Gower’s _Conf. Am._ B. iv. fol. lxxiii. ed. 1554; Barbour’s _Bruce_, B. iii. v. 982. ed. Jam.; G. Douglas’s Preface to his Virgil’s _Æneados_, p. 6, 1. 51. ed. Rudd.; and Sir D. Lyndsay’s _Monarchie_, B. iv. _Works_, iii. 151. ed. Chalmers.
Page 92. v. 1346. _dresse_] i. e. address, apply.
v. 1351. _condityons_] i. e. qualities. But in our author’s _Garlande of Laurell_, where this “adicyon” is given, the passage according to Fake’s ed., and rightly perhaps (compare the preceding lines), stands thus;