Befe and moton wylle serve wele enow; And for to seche so ferre a lytill bakon flyk, Which hath long hanggid resty and tow And the wey, I telle you, is comborous and thyk, And thou might stomble, and take the cryk; Therfor bide at home, what so ever hap Tylle the world be turnyd into another shap.
One or two other allusions to this custom have been found in manuscripts of the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth century these allusions become more numerous.
5613. _Margery perles._ A margarite pearl, _perle marguerite_. The Latin name for a pearl (_margarita_) seems to be the origin of this expression.
5634. _a love day | to lette with truthe._ Love days (_Dies amoris_) were days fixed for settling differences by umpire, without having recourse to law or to violence. The ecclesiastics seem generally to have had the principal share in the management of these transactions, which throughout the Visions of Piers Ploughman appear to be censured as the means of hindering justice and of enriching the clergy. A little further on, Religion is blamed for being "a ledere of love-dayes." (l. 6219.) In Chaucer, it is said of the friar:--
And over'al, ther eny profyt schulde arise, Curteys he was, and lowe of servyse. . . . . . . And rage he couthe and pleye as a whelpe, In love-dayes, ther couthe he mochil helpe. For ther was he not like a cloysterer With a thredbare cope, as a pore scoler, But he was like a maister or a pope.--_Cant. T._ 249, 259.
5646. The quotation is made up from Job xxi, 7; and Jerem. xii, 2.
5659. Psal. x, 4. Quoniam quæ perfecisti, destruxerunt: justus autem quid fecit?
5778. Tob. iv, 9. Si multum tibi fuerit, abundanter tribue; si exiguum tibi fuerit, etiam exiguum libenter impertiri stude.
In what follows, Whitaker's text is in parts much more brief than the one now printed; there are also many transpositions, and other variations, which are not of sufficient importance to be pointed out more particularly.
5801. _in a pryvee parlour._ 5803. _in a chambre with a chymenee._ This is a curious illustration of contemporary manners. The hall was the apartment in which originally the lord of the household and the male portion of the family passed nearly all their time when at home, and where they lived in a manner in public. The chambers were only used for sleeping, and as places of retirement for the ladies, and had, at first, no fire-places (_chymenees_), which were added, in course of time, for their comfort. The parlour was an apartment introduced also at a comparatively late period, and was, as its name indicates, a place for private conferences or conversation. As society advanced in refinement, people sought to live less and less in public, and the heads of the household gradually deserted the hall, except on special occasions, and lived more in the parlour and in the "chambre with a chymenee." With the absence of the lord from the hall, its festive character and indiscriminate hospitality began to diminish; and the popular agitators declaimed against this as an unmistakeable sign of the debasement of the times.