I-blessyd Be Cristes Sonde, Notes

I-BLESSYD BE CRISTES SONDE: NOTES

Refrain This poem has music. "The burden and first stanza are first written for two voices; then the last line and whole first stanza are repeated for three voices" (RHR).

4 goth. So MS, Greene, and RHR; Stainer and Chambers gothe (interpreting the flourish as final e; also makethe in line 8). Chambers considerably normalizes the spelling. I do not record his normalizations in these notes.

10 Browne, Morel and gore. I accept Greene's reading of the first two as names for oxen. "'Browne' and 'Morel' (dark-coloured) seem to be the names of the plough-oxen. 'Gore' has presented difficulty to previous editors. Neither Stevens's 'dark-coloured' nor Robbins's suggestion of 'gray' meets the case. It is more likely that it is a dialect word for 'goad' and that the meaning is either 'Brown, Morel, and the goad' or alternatively, with 'Brown' as an adjective, 'Brown Morel and Gore,' the second ox being named for the goad" (pp. 464-65).

14 shefe. The clerk begs "a shef of corne" in God Spede the Plough line 22. A "sheaf" is an arm-load bundle, tied.