2n« S. V. 120., April 17. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



309 



LONDON, SATURDAY, APBIL 17. 1858. 



THE DirriCULTIES OP CHAUCEE. NO. X. 



" Gon a Make heried." — 



" I recke never, whan that they be beried, 

 Though that hir soules gon a hlahe beried." 



Cant. Tales, 12339-40. 



1. *It will be remarked that we have here one 

 of those instances, occasionally occurring in Chau- 

 cer and in other old poets, where, in lieu of a 

 rhyme, the lines terminate alike : " beried," " be- 

 ried." Where this occurs in Chaucer, there are 

 two observations to be made. 



First, though the sounds are the same, the sense 

 is frequently different. For example : — 



" The holy blisful martyr for to seke. 

 That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke." 



So in old French poetry : — 



" Lors qu' ^neas recent dedans son port, 

 N'eut teir richesse, honneur, maintien, eiport." 



CI. Marot. 



Our second observation is, that when Chaucer 

 is thus pleased to close the two lines of a couplet 

 with identical syllables instead of a rhyme, he oc- 

 casionally effects his object by spelling two words 

 alike, which he elsewhere spells differently. Thus 

 for sick he usually writes sike ; but in the example 

 just cited it is seke, for the sake'of exact agree- 

 ment with the seke of the previous line. (See 

 edit. Tyrwhitt, 1830; Essay on the Language and 

 Versification of Chaucer, p. clii.) 



Must we not then apply the same principles to 

 the double ending at present under consideration, 

 "beried," "beried?" Taking the "beried" of 

 the first line as equivalent to " buried," what is 

 the corresponding " beried" of the second ? I have 

 viewed it as equivalent to hered or bier'd, that is, 

 carried on a bier — the form beried being adopted 

 by the poet merely for the sake of adjustment to 

 the termination of the previous line, as in the case 

 just noticed, of seke for sike. 

 Bier is with Chaucer here : — 



" Upon hir shuldres carrieden the here." 

 " He laid him, bare the visage, on the here." 



Cant. Tales, 2902. 2897. 

 As, then, from coffin we make coffin' d — or rather 

 as Shakspeare from hearse gives us hearsed (dis- 

 syllable) — so from here, I would submit, does 

 Chaucer gives us hered or heried, that is, hierd. 



2. But " hlake beried." What is hlake ? In 

 Chaucer it is equivalent to hlack. Conf. The 

 Monkes Tale, 14135: — 



" Till that his flesh was for the venim blaked." 



(Cited by Richardson, who also gives " The Nor- 

 mans were sorie, of contenance gan blaken."^ 

 In all ordinary burials the bier itself, of course, 



was black. But over the bier (Du Cange on 

 pallium) was thrown a hlack cloth, diflferent from 

 what we now understand by the pall ; and on this 

 cloth was laid the corpse. Over the corpse, pro- 

 vided fundg were forthcoming, was laid the pall. 

 The pall, being church-property, not, as now, sup- 

 plied by the undertaker, was in the keeping of the 

 church-servants (qu. the churchwardens ?), and 

 was supplied if paid for, or kept back if there were 

 no assets. The humblest kind of pall for throw- 

 ing over the corpse of which I can find any ac- 

 count, was black and white ; a large white cross 

 on a black ground. If there were no available 

 funds to pay for the use of the pall, the corpse 

 went to the grave on the hlack bier, as already 

 described ; i. e. on a bier which was covered with 

 a black cloth. Such was the case contemplated 

 by the " Pardonere." 



With respect to the payment exacted for the 

 pall, see in Archceologia, vol. i. p. 15., " Church- 

 wardens' Accounts for St. Helen's, Abingdon, 

 1560:" — 



" At the burial of E. Charilton, for his grave and the 



paule, §-c., 10s." "At the burial of K. Hill with 



the paule, 3s. 8d." 



Consequently, if the deceased had expended all 

 his means in giving to "Pardoneres" and "Fryars," 

 so that there was nothing left for the hire of a 

 pall, he was carried to his grave on a black bier, 

 i. e. on a bier which had the ordinary covering of 

 a black cloth, but with nothing over him ; and his 

 soul, as we have already explained in the previous 

 paper, went black-bier'd (or blake-beried). 



3. In the phrase, " gon a blake beried," there 

 are several ways of explaining the a. But as the 

 general import of the passage is not materially 

 concerned, I will mention only two. 



First, a for in may stand connected with 

 "blake;" a-blake, in black: as says the "Par- 

 donere," line 12870., "brake his neck atwo" (in 

 two). So " a-bed," for in bed (Chaucer and Shak- 

 speare) ; " brast atwo," for burst in two ; and " a 

 Latyne," for in Latin (Richardson and Halliwell). 



Or secondly, and this appears the preferable 

 explanation, a may be viewed as the auxiliary, 

 have, placed after the participle gon. " Gon u" 

 will then be equivalent, to a gon, or have gone. 

 This may be considered a strange and forced solu- 

 tion ; yet let it not be rejected without fair con- 

 sideration. 



We find "a done," for have done; "might a 

 saved himself," for might have saved himself; and 

 " A don, Seris," for Have done. Sirs (Halliwell). 



Then again, with respect to the transposition, 

 we find that Chaucer does certainly place the 

 auxiliary, sometimes, after the participle ; — 



" Since each of these recovered hath his make " (mate). 



So in old German : — 

 " Welcher alle Menschen Kraft imd Macht zugeben hat." 



