Prologue I- 1 1 17 



But right so as these holtes and these hayes, 

 That han in winter dede been and dreye, 

 Revesten hem in grene whan that May is. 



Other authors of Chaucer's time employ holt and heeth in 

 aUiterative combination. So in Dest. Troy 1350 (about 1350- 

 1400 A. D.) : 'Over hilles and hethes into holte woddes'; Gawain 

 and the Green Knight 1320 (ca. 1370) : To hunt in holtez and 

 hej)e.' The combination is also found in Middle High German: 

 thus in Hartmann von Aue's Erec^^ 3105-7 (ca. 1192) : 



Nu riten si beide 



Nu. hoh nil heide, 

 • Unz daz si der tac verlie. 



The conjunction of the two words suggests the 'silvas saltusque' 

 of Virgil, Aen. 4. 72; Georg. 3. 40 ('saltus silvasque/ Georg. 

 4- 53) > saltus being defined as 'woodland-pastures,' 'glades or 

 open spaces in forests, where cattle pastured and wild beasts 

 wandered.' 



heeth. Current definitions are : 'An uncultivated tract of 

 heathy or shrubby land, usually of a desolate character' {Cent. 

 Diet.) ; 'A bare, more or less flat, tract of land, clothed with 

 low herbage and dwarf shrubs, esp. with the shrubby plants 

 known as heath, heather, or ling' (New Eng. Diet.). Neither 

 of these suggests the presence of trees, as does the Latin saltus, 

 and explicitly Prol. 606-7 (of the Reeve) : 



His woning was ful fair upon an heeth, 

 With grene trees shadwed was his place. 



In Hardy's Return of the Native, too, there was at one side of 

 a house (iv. 5) 'a knoll, and on the top of the knoll a clump of 

 fir trees' (but see his descriptions in i. i). 



tendre croppes (7). See above, p. 10. 



yonge sonne. See Virgil's novos soles, and cf. Ovid, Fasti 



^- ^^3-4: 



Bruma novi prima est, veterisque novissima solis ; 



Principium capiunt Phcebus et annus idem.'*^ 



^ Based upon Chretien de Troyes' Erec et Enide (ca. 1192). Tennyson 

 thus conceives the landscape (Geraint and Enid 31-2) : 



Gray swamps and pools, waste places of the hern, 

 And wildernesses, perilous paths. 

 ^° 'The winter solstice is the first day of the new, and the last of the old 

 sun ; PhcEbus and the year take the same period for commencement.' 



