THE SQUIER OF LOW DEGREE, PERCY FOLIO: FOOTNOTES
1 He was harassed so much that he crossed the sea
2 Lines 53-54: And in the first place I will consider you the best of all, / And next my father will think of you so as well
3 I have remained in bed a little too long
THE SQUIER OF LOW DEGREE, PERCY FOLIO: TEXTUAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS: P = the Percy Folio Manuscript; K = Kittredge readings suggested in M (1904); M = Mead edition (1904).
5 see. P: fome, which is probably due to the fome of line 7; it was emended to see by Percy himself.
16 setter. The household officer responsible for the table arrangement; usually this was not the usher but the marshal (see Squire of Low Degree, lines 7-8).
17 curteous. P: Curterous; this looks like a contamination of courtier and curteous.
52 an other wise knight. A mix-up, M suggests, of"You must dress you otherwise" and"You must dress you like any other knight."
an. M; P: and.
64 pound. P: li (for Latin libra).
68 A verb describing the action of the men is missing here.
69 It is left to the reader to find out that lines 69-70 are said by the squire, there being of course no quotation marks, or any such signs, in the MS. Apart from that, it is incomprehensible that the lady refuses to open the door to the squire whom she had just been talking with and had given a hundred pounds.
76 stone. K; P: from.
79 They. P: the.
82 The. P: they.
94 virgin. P: virgins.
96 grave. P; M suggests lawe (as in Squire of Low Degree, line 686).
101 tree. M; P: stree, which in the context makes no sense.
118 The lady does not mean that her sorrow is for someone who is not a Christian, but, as the next lines make clear, for a man who is dead.
121 The knife no doubt has phallic overtones here. M, following K, prints a parallel in which a knight has lost his lady and complains:
. . . I've lost my knife
I loved as dear almost as my own life.
But I have lost a far better thing,
I lost the sheath that the knife was in.
("Leesome Brand," in English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1.177)
126 can. M; omitted in P.
137 the. P: they.
138 fustyan. A kind of cloth made of cotton, flax, or wool, and especially used for the coverlet of a bed. See the explanatory note to line 841 of The Squire of Low Degree.
139 Father. P: fathe.
142 torches. P: torchers.
153 The face of perfect beauty combined white (for the brow) and red (for the cheeks).
157 stane. K; P: frane.
158 a whales bone. M suggests the reading"white as whales bone," which certainly must come close to the original (unless much more text has been lost).
161 Through. M; P: Throug.