Notes
1] shryne: holy shrine.
2] mapamounde: map o' the world (cf. French "monde").
8] do no daliance: do not flirt, chat with.
9] tyne: tub, as holding fish.
10] "Yet that misery will not overwhelm my heart."
11] semy voys: perhaps "semi-voice," quiet voice. small: "synall" in ms, and emended by all editors following W. W. Skeat's suggestion. out twyne: spin out.
12] habounde: abundant, rich in.
15] Rosemounde: "rose of the world" and hence compared to the map of the world (2).
17] "Never was there a pike so drenched in galantine" (a chilled, jello-like sauce).
18] iwounde: tied up.
19] deuyne: imagine.
20] tristam: Tristram, lover and beloved of Iseult, about whom is written the earlier English romance "Sir Tristrem" and whose story appears in works from Malory's Morte Darthur to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. They are fated to love one another after mutually drinking a love potion. Despite her marriage to King Mark of Cornwall, their love continues and eventually leads to Tristram's death.
21] refreyde: chilled. affounde: made cold; (perhaps) immersed or foundered (cf. the pike in the galantine sauce).
] Tregentil: "very noble" (or a proper name). This line is written in a different script.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Bodleian Rawlinson MS Poet. 163, fol. 114r; facsimile of original page and edition in The Minor Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. George B. Pace and Alfred David, A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. V (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982): 161-70.
First publication date:
1891
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2002
Recent editing: 1:2002/5/13
Composition date:
1369
-
1396
Rhyme: ababbcbc