Lokeynge _ascaunce_ upon the naighboure greene.
The usual sense of _ascaunce_ in Chaucer, and other old writers, has been explained in a note on ver. 7327. of the Canterbury Tales. It is used in the same sense by Gascoigne. The more modern adverb _ascaunce_, signifying _sideways, obliquely_, is derived from the Italian _a schiancio_, and I doubt very much whether it had been introduced into the English language in the time of the supposed Rowley.
I despair of finding any authorized sense of the word _asterte_, that will suit this passage. It cannot, I think, signifie _neglected or passed by_, as Chatterton has rendered it.
7. AUMERE. Æ. 398.--Ch. 7. AUMERES. E. III. 25.
Depycte wyth skylled honde upponn thie wyde _aumere_. And eke the grounde was dighte in its mose deste _aumere_. Wythe gelten _aumeres_ stronge ontolde.
The only place in which I remember to have met with this word is in Chaucer's Romant of the Rose, ver. 2271. and there it undoubtedly signifies _a purse_; probably from the Fr. _Aumoniere. Aumere of silk_ is Chaucer's translation of _Bourse de foye_. In another place of the same poem, ver. 2087. he uses _aumener_ in the same sense. The interpretations given of this word by Chatterton will be considered below.
Nott, whan from the _barbed_ horse, &c. Mie lord fadre's _barbde_ halle han ne wynnynge.
Let it be allowed, that _barbed horse_ was a proper expression, in the XV Century, for _a horse covered with armour_, can any one conceive that _barbed hall_ signified _a hall in which armour was hung_? or what other sense can _barbde_ have in this passage?
Whanne Autumpne _blake_ and sonne-brente doe appere. _Blake_ stondeth future doome, and joie doth mee alyse.
_Blake_, in old English, may signifie either _black_, or _bleak_. Chatterton, in both these passages, renders it _naked_; and, in the latter, some such signification seems absolutely necessary to make any sense.
_Bodekin_ is used by Chaucer more than once to signifie a _bodkin_ or _dagger_. I know not that it had any other signification in his time. _Swarthe_, used as a noun, has no sense that I am acquainted with.
11. BORDEL. E. III. 2.--Æ 147. BORDELIER. Æ 410.
Goe serche the logges and _bordels_ of the hynde. We wylle in a _bordelle_ lyve. Hailie the robber and the _bordelyer_.
