But it must mean a long _s_.]
[Footnote 9: May be _subdied_; the word has been corrected.]
NOTES.
The two first of the three operations of flax-dressing described in
lines 526-529, p. 15,
One of hem knocked lyne,
A-nothyr swyngelyd good and fyne
By-fore the swyngy{l~l}-tre,
The thyrde did rele and spynne,
must correspond to the preliminary breaking of the plant, and then the
scutching or beating to separate the coarse tow or hards from the tare
or fine hemp. Except so far as the _swingle_ served as a heckle, the
further _heckling_ of the flax, to render the fibre finer and cleaner,
was dispensed with, though heckles (iron combs) must have been in use
when the poem was written--inasmuch as _hekele_, _hekelare_, _hekelyn_,
and _hekelynge_, are in the Promptorium, ab. 1440 A.D. Under _Hatchell_,
Randle Holme gives a drawing of a heckle.
The lines through the _h_'s in the MS. are not, I believe, marks of
contraction. There are no insettings of the third lines, or spaces on
changes of subject, in the MS.
For reference to two analogous stories to that of the Poem, I am
indebted to Mr Thomas Wright. The first is that of _Constant Duhamel_ in
the third volume of Barbazan, and the second that of the Prioress and
her three Suitors in the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, published by
the Percy Society, ed. Halliwell.
In the Barbazan tale "the wife is violently solicited by three suitors,
the priest, the provost, and the forester, who on her refusal persecute
her husband.
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