16. ASSARON
1 reame, realm.
2 reyne, rain.
3 dyspence, dispense (spending).
7 easefull, easy.
9 leve, leave.
10 wele attempred, temperate.
11 seeke, sick.
12 and, if.
15 ordenaunce roial, royal ordinance.
16 freendlyhed, friendliness.
17 ware or he gave, wary ere he give.
18 defaute, default.
18-19 sodeynely, suddenly.
22 dede, deed; verrey, true.
26 feythe, faith; here, their.
31 medell, meddle; longeth, belong.
35 sothe, truth.
38 thresoure, treasure.
40 besynesses, occupation; preved, proven.
43 amendeth meche, amends much.
48 wole, will.
55 obeysaunce, obedience.
56 yeldeth, yields.
60 heere, hears.
16. ASSARON: EXPLANATORY NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS: B = Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, ed. Bühler (1941); CA = Gower's Confessio Amantis; CT = Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; G = Pierpont Morgan Library MS G.66; MED = Middle English Dictionary; OED = Oxford English Dictionary; S = Scrope, Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, ed. Schofield (1936).
These explanatory notes cannot hope to provide a complete accounting for the source of every proverbial statement in Dicts and Sayings. That task would be a separate book in its own right. Instead, I have attempted to contextualize this rather heterogeneous body of lore by identifying the people and places named in the text, as well as noting points that may be of interest to students and general readers. Those interested in tracing the source of particular quotations should begin by consulting Whiting's Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases From English Writings Mainly Before 1500. Readers are also invited to consult the thorough notes to Knust's Bocados de Oro, the Spanish translation of the original Arabic ancestor of Dicts and Sayings.
1 Assaron. He remains a mystery; neither Schofield nor I could identify him. Michael Livingston suggests - quite ingeniously, in my estimation - that Assaron may be a woman, specifically Fatima Az-Zahra, daughter of Mohammed (personal communication). Her connection to philosophy is by no means tenuous: Az-Zahra was the namesake of a Cairo university called Al-Azhar, one of the intellectual beacons of the medieval Muslim world. The Arabic transmission of Dicts and Sayings text is not known, but it is possible that an early redaction of the text passed through the university that bears Az-Zahra's name.
4 of wommen, of wyne, of huntynges, and pleyes. In this context the word pleyes refers not to drama, but to frivolous amusements; compare Galen, lines 20-25. The Spanish Bocados de Oro lists the same items in the same order: "mugeres e vino e caça e trebejos" (ed. Knust, p. 321); it is the same also in the later Liber Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum: "mulierum, vini, venationis et laxamenti multiplex usus" (ed. Francheschini, p. 535). However, in place of pleyes, Scrope has "were" (war), translating "guerre" in his French source.
16. ASSARON: TEXTUAL NOTES
35 sothe. I follow B in emending from G's soore.