GOD SPEDE THE PLOUGH: FOOTNOTES

1 And our payment shall be with [the beating] of a stick

2 Thus are we fleeced, we may not choose

GOD SPEDE THE PLOUGH: NOTES

1 As I me walked. "This line is omitted in its right place; but is written perpendicularly on the inner margin of the leaf, with a guide-line to shew its position" (Sk).

10-88 And said. The husbandman's testimony takes up 79 lines of the poem. The narrator is merely a witness to the testimony.

11-12 lande, claye. The corner of the leaf is torn away; lande and claye are Sk's conjectures based on the rhyme words.

22 growe. MS groweth. Sk observes that groweth and plough (line 24) do not rhyme; he suggests the word might have been grewe, which comes closer to rhyme.

33 the fiftene. "Fifteenth, a tax amounting to a fifteenth of one's property" (Sk).

ease. MS eases.

37 bayllys and bedellis. Bailiffs and beadles. See Song of the Husbandman note to line 15.

43 To buye the kyngis. I adopt Sk's conjecture about this portion of the line. The corner of the leaf is torn away. Sk comments: "The words within square brackets are conjectural, and were suggested by the fact recorded in Piers Plowman, that getting pardon for a bribe even from a King is not altogether a thing unknown . . . ." Words are also lacking at the beginning of lines 40, 41, and 42. I adopt Sk's likely readings of I, Than come[th, and What gret.

45 clerkes of saint John Frary. Clerks of the friary of St. John. "There was one such in Clerkenwell" (Sk).

49-55 graye Freres . . . blak Freres. Graye Freres = Franciscans (Minorites); white Freres = Carmelites; Freres Augustynes = Austins or Augustinians; blak Freres = Dominicans or Jacobins. Sk comments: "On fol. 9b of this very Lansdowne MS. we find the following. "Fratres London. Whitefreres in fletestrete, Carmelitarum. Blak freres within ludgate, predicatorum vel Jacob: Greye freres within newgate, Minorum. Augusteyn freres by saint Antonyes, Augustinencium. Crowched freres, Fratres sancte Crucis."

58 poore Observauntes. Sk: "'Observants, a branch of the Franciscan order, otherwise called Recollects.' Imperial Dict." However, Phillippe Yates, OFM, notes that Recollects began in the late sixteenth century and were separate from Observaunts.

69 the grenewex. "Greenwax was used for estreats [copies of court fines, for use in prosecution] delivered to the sheriffs out of the king's exchequer. These estreats were under the seal of that court, made in green wax. See Blount's Law Dictionary" (Sk). See also Song of the Husbandman, lines 38 and 55 and notes.

74 Scala celi or "Ladder of heaven": the name of a chapel in Rome. "It derives its name from a vision of St. Bernard's, who, while celebrating a funereal mass, saw the souls for whom he was praying going up to heaven by a ladder" (Sk). In the anticlerical context of this poem, Scala celi is ironic.

77 tipped-staves. "Tipstaves, constables. So called from their bearing a staff tipped with metal" (Sk). Marshalse = Marshalsea court and prison.

93 God. MS Gog here and in line 96.