and enbanamen, sb., is distinctly said to be "terme de fortification, ouvrage a cornes.' This "ouvrage a cornes" is described in Littré as a term in fortification, exactly like what in English is termed a 'horn-work'; see N.E.D. Moreover, the mod. F. corne is used, architecturally, with the sense of a 'salient angle.' We may conclude that an embanamen was made with a kind of hornwork, an outwork with angles, including a space like three sides of a square beyond the main-wall; and such a horn-work may well have been called a bantel. The phrase under batelment suggests that these outworks were battlemented like the main wall itself; and the phrase on basyng boun means that they were prepared on a good foundation. They would require a firm basis because of their superior height. I would, therefore, explain "Enbaned vnder batelment with bantelles quoynt" by "provided, beneath battlements, with fair outworks." The pictures in Knight's Old England of such castles as Rochester (fig. 375) or Cardiff (fig. 390) probably show what is meant. Thus Rochester keep-tower has a three-angled projection or 'horn' at each of its four corners, and the battlements on these projections are higher and more conspicuous than the rest. The most conspicuous part of the Tower of London has similar bantels at each corner.'

1461. c[ov]acles. MS., M. canacles. Cf. 1515 'clatering of covacles (M. conacles).' Bödtker pointed out (Mod. Lang. Notes 26. 127) that the word should be covacle, as in Partonope of Blois 1768: 'be covacle of Rube redde.' The scribe undoubtedly thought the word was conacle (canacle), mistaking ou for on, and he would naturally write con- or can- indifferently, since he made no distinction between on and an (see Knigge, p. 16). Although there are French variants of OF. couvercle without the r, such as couve(s) cle (see Godefroy's Complément), Bödtker thinks the 'English form rather represents an independent change from covarcle to covacle, due to analogy of the frequent nouns in -acle.' The usual form couvercle is used by Chaucer, Hous of Fame 2. 284. 1464 ff. The poet is here adorning his description of Belshazzar's feast with details which he had read in Mandeville's account of the wonders of the Great Chan's palace and the land of Prester John. The 'richly enameled birds' (1410-1), and those which seem to be waving their feathers on the ornamental boughs of the candlestick (1484-6), as well as the 'fruit of flaming gems' (1468 ff.) are all found in Mandeville: 'Et deuant la table del emperour as grantz festes lem porte grant tables dor, ou il y a paouns dor et molt dautres maners oiseaulx toutz dor et enameles et molt noblement ouerez. Et les fait homme dauncer et bauler en batant lez

paumes ["pennes" interlined in MS. R; both Cotton and Egerton MSS. translate wings] et en fait homme des grantz museries. Par dessure vne partie de la sale y ad vne vigne faite de fyn or, qui est entendue tout par dessur; et y a plusours treches de reisins des blanches, iaunes, rouges, viertz et noirs, toutz de pierres preciouses. Ly blanc sount de cristall et de bericle et de yris; les iaunes sount de toupaces; les rouges de rubiis, des grenaz et des alabaundines; les vertz sont des emeraudes, des peridoz et des crisolites; et li noyrs sount des oniches et des geracites. Et sount toutz si proprement faitz qils roient touz proprement reysins' (ed. Warner, p. 107, ll. 31-42). To these passages from the account of the splendor of the Great Chan's court, may be added a similar description of artificial birds in the land of Prester John: 'Et auoit fait faire molt de diverse chose et de diuerses museries des histoires et de diuerses bestes et des oiseaux, qi chanteroient et tourneient par engine come ils fussent toutz vifs' (p. 137, 1. 35). The names of the two rarely mentioned jewels penitotes (1472) and alabaundarynes (1470) the poet almost certainly borrowed from the passage from Mandeville quoted above. All the poets of the alliterative school delight in ornamenting their descriptions with lists of precious stones (cf. Piers Plow. B. 2. 8-14; Rich. Redeless 1. 35-48; Alex. C. 3329 ff., 3660 ff., 5259-80; Sege of Jer. 1245-64; Parl. Three Ages 117-29; Howlat 339-45; Awnt. Arth. 391-6). But it should be noted that alabandine occurs in none of these lists, and the peridot only in Awnt. Arth. 396 in the forms pelicocus, pelidoddes (see Amour's note), and Sege of Jer. 1247: 'with perles & peritotes.' The list of jewels which corresponds most exactly with this given in Purity is that of Pearl 1002 ff. The description most similar n other details is that of the hall of an Indian palace in Alex. C. (1660 ff.), where there are golden vines, with grapes fashioned from various precious gems, and marvelously painted birds which are made to sing. But these descriptions are commonplace in medieval romance; cf. Eneas, ed. Salverda de Grave, pp. 389-90; Huon de Bordeaux 4921 ff.

1472. pynkardines. This is the only occurrence of the word, which must be corrupted, though it is difficult to say from what. M. in his glossary has '?perre carnadine, carnelian stone (Marsh).' The word pintadine is given by Littré, and defined 'genre de mollusques (meleagrina) dont une des espèces fournit les perles orientales et la nacre de perle,' and it is also found in Mistral's dictionary of Provençal. It has come into English, according to the Century Dict., Supplement, from Span.-Amer. pintadina. If the word could be shown to be old, pynkardine might easily be considered a corruption from it.

1473.

a-traverse.

the date 1430.

NED.'s earliest example of this word bears

tryfled. Amours is probably right in considering tryfled of this line a variant form of trefoiled (see his long note on Awnt. Arth. 354). This occurrence would be older than any example (noun or adj.) cited by NED.

1474. bekyr ande bolle. MS. bekyrande pe bolde. M. interpreted bekyrande as 'bickering, fighting'; but a warrior can hardly be thrust so suddenly into a description of the ornamentation of cups and goblets, even if we were to overlook the extreme awkwardness of the construction ‘each warrior (fighting-man), the bold.' As emended, lines 1473-4 mean: 'thus all the edges of each beaker and bowl were decorated crosswise.' Another case of the conjunction ande being mistaken for a participial ending probably occurs in glaymande glette, Pat. 269, and perhaps also ramelande myre, Pat. 279, where both NED. (s. v. gleiming and ramelande) and Emerson (Engl. Stud. 47. 129-30) would read glaym ande glette, ramel ande myre. NED. gives the following ME. forms for beaker: biker, becure, byker, biker, so that the form bekyr is unexceptionable. Miss Weston's translation (Romance, Vision and Satire, p. 157) indicates that she recognized some corruption in . the text:

So, twined and twisted, doth the fair design
Bold, on the border of each beaker shine.

This emendation has also occurred to Professor Emerson (Publ.
Mod. Lang. Ass. 34. 515).

1476. Ekwall (Engl. Stud. 49. 484) explains fleez as plural of fly (OE. fleoze), but his objection to 'golden fleece' as ornamentation seems to me groundless; cf. Emerson, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. 34. 516.

1485. [launces]. I adopt Bülbring's ingenious suggestion of inserting this word before lampes, since it does away with the difficulty of having to make 1485 refer back to the bryddes (1482), and at the same time makes lampes and oper lovelych lyst the parallel subjects of the new sentence. The poet is plainly introducing a new detail in 1485-92, a fact which is obscured and confused by the scribe's omission of launces, an easy mistake to make when the next word also began with la. The word occurs again at Pearl 978.

1491. This emendation also occurred to Emerson (Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. 34. 516).

1513-6. M.'s marginal gloss, 'Music of all kinds is heard in the hall,' is altogether misleading, since the poet is not speaking of

musical instruments, which have been mentioned in their proper place at 1413-6, but merely of the merry clattering of cups and covers which sounded like music. The general meaning is well brought out in Miss Weston's translation (though the meaning of rok (see 1514 n.) is misunderstood):

The bowls so bright, with wine they swiftly fill,
Rich metal, touching metal, rang full loud
As men to catch the cups together crowd,
Clashing, the maids the covers cast away,

As song from psaltery ring the sounds so gay.

Hit must refer to the wine (1508); the 'renkkes (1514) are the 'swyfte swaynes' (1509) who quickly seize the cups and run to catch the wine which is being poured.

1514. rok. M. defined 'crowd, throng,' and connected with Scot. rok (see NED., s. v. ruck). Bateson and Gollancz both accept this meaning, but though the latter finds a possible parallel for the figurative use of rok in Destr. Troy 7149, his explanation of pat ryche rok as 'the rich crowd of liveried servants' seems far-fetched. It is more probable that the word is ME. rok (ke) (roche), OF. roque (roche), here used in the figurative sense of 'castle.' NED. does not record this sense in English, but it is frequent in OF. Godefroy, s. v. roche (under which he includes the forms roque, roke) defines 'château fort bâti sur une roche,' and La Curne de Ste.-Palaye gives a definition 'château, forteresse,' s. v. roche 2, citing an example from the Roman d'Alexandre (c. 1177). Another sufficiently early OF. example (quoted by Du Cange, s. v. rocca) is to be found in Philippe Mousket's Chronique Rimée (ed. Reiffenberg, 1836-8, in Collect. des Chroniques Belges) 17037-9:

S'en ot Buiémont de Sésile.

Et cil fu au prendre Andioce,
U il a mainte forte roce.

The meaning 'fortress, castle,' is extremely common in mediæval Lat. (see Du Cange's Glossarium, s. v. rocca, roccha), and is used in Italian by both Dante and Boccaccio. Tommaso's Dizion. cites Francesco de Buti, who, in commenting on Dante's 'sicura quasi rocca in alto monte' (Purg. 32. 148), says 'Rocca si chiama la fortezza ben fornita.' The alliterative phrase rich rock(s), rock being employed in its literal sense, occurs at Pearl 68: 'Where rych rokkez wer to dyscreuen,' and Gol. and Gaw. 238: 'Reirdit on ane riche roche, beside ane riveir.' In Purity the form with k and that with ch are used indifferently: rok, 446; roches, 537; cf. roche, Gaw. 2199; rokkez, Pearl 68, Pat. 254.

1518. [drynkez] arn dressed [to]. The line is obviously too short, and three ways of correcting it have been suggested (see textual notes). Bateson's insertion of dere is simple, but arn dressed would then have to mean 'arose,' and this gives little point to the line. Gollancz's general interpretation of the passage (Mod. Lang. Rev. 14. 161) is plausible, but his emendation, 'pat derrest [arn dressed], dukez and prynces,' is awkward. Bülbring's proposal '[drinkes] arn dressed [for] dukez and prynces,'. i. e. ‘prepared for,' is unlikely, because such a statement would not follow the account of the servants hurrying for the drinks in 11. 1508 ff. I suggest '[drynkez] arn dressed [to] dukez,' etc., i. e. 'portioned out to, divided among'; cf. defin. 2 c in NED. ‘to arrange amongst; to divide,' and examples.

1520. hade hym inhelde. 'Had poured in for himself,' as was first correctly explained by Emerson, Mod. Lang. Notes 30. 9. NED.'s only example of the cpd. inhelde is from Chaucer's invocation to Venus, Troilus 3. 44:

Ye in my naked herte sentement

Inhelde, and do me shewe of thi swetnesse.

The simple verb (NED. hield) is common in the sense of 'pour out.' NED. followed M., who glossed in helde, 'in mind, in purpose, disposed,' inserts under the noun hield, defining ‘inclination,' but this is the only example given of this particular figurative meaning. 1543. romyes. 'Roars'; a common word in ME. NED. says: 'Of obscure origin. The synonymous Scottish form rummis (h) may indicate an OF. form *rumir, *romir, with lengthened stem *rumiss-. But we do not have to reconstruct a word from which to derive romy. A form rumier, from Lat. rumigare, is given both in Körting's Latein.-Roman. Wörterbuch and in Meyer-Lübke's Roman. Etymolog. Wörterbuch, as a variant of rungier, which is the regular development in OF. Meyer-Lübke says that the form rumier is Old Lotharingian. The word appears in Provençal and Portuguese in the form romiar. Now though Godefroy does not give the form rumier, he gives as one of his definitions of rongier (rungier) 'rugir,' with two examples. OF. rumier, variant (dialectal?) of rungier, would naturally be borrowed into English in the form rumy, romy (both occur in NED.), just as OF. chastier > ME. chasty. We need not concern ourselves with how the meaning 'roar' developed in OF. But it may be pointed out that the Latin ruminare, which has exactly the same meaning as rumigare, has come to mean 'snore' in one of the examples given by Du Cange: 'fortiter dormientem et ruminantem, hoc est, stertentem, ronchissantem.'