12 Prologue I- 1 1 



The parching air 

 Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.^* 



perced to the rote (2). This may possibly have a physiological 

 connotation, if one has regard to the fissures produced in the 

 earth by drought. Cf . Virgil, Georg. 2. 353 : 'The sultry dog- 

 star cleaves the fields that gape with drought' ; 3. 432 : 'When 

 the marsh is burnt up, and the ground gapes with the burning 

 heat'; add Catullus 68. 62; Tibullus i. 7. 21. See especially 

 rirna, Juvenal 3. 97, and cf. Macrobius 7. 16. 27. For a possible 

 remote analogy, see Milton, Par. Lost 7. 453 ff., and cf. Georg. 

 2. 330: 'Parturit almus ager.' Similar clefts are sometimes 

 produced by frost, as well as by drought. Rote, in one of its 

 senses, appears to signify the lowest or deepest point of a thing. 

 Thus, herte rote ('bottom, depths, ground of the heart') : Rom. 



Rose 1661-2: 



The savour of the roses swote 

 Me smoot right to the herte rote; 



and again (Wife's Prol. 471) : 



It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote. 



The association of droghte and rote may perhaps have been 

 facilitated by Isa. 53. 2; Hos. 9. 16. 



veyne (3). This is difficult to visualize. Vein of what? Of 

 the dry earth? Then it must mean minute cracks, well under the 

 surface (cf. Petrarch's 'dentro, dove gia mai non s'aggiorna,' 

 quoted in Romanic Review 8. 225 ; my note there must be 

 judged in the light of the present paper). Of the embryonic 

 'plant? Or of the matrix or mould for the plant, continuing the 



^* Par. Lost 2. 594-5. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 43. 20-21 : 'When the cold north 

 wind bloweth, and the water is congealed into ice, . . . it . . . 

 burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire.' Urere, adurere 

 are thus used in Latin: for the latter, cf. Virgil, Georg. i, 92; Ovid, 

 Met. 14. 763-4; for the former, Lucan 4. 54-5: 'The whole earth [in 

 Spain] . . . was parched, hardened beneath the winter's clear sky.* 

 All of these were accessible to Chaucer, as was possibly Macrobius, 5*0^ 

 I. 12. 14, with its truer etymology of 'April' (see p. 9, note 15) : 

 'Cum fere ante sequinoctium vernum . . . terrae . . . aut aqua 

 aut pruina aut nivibus contegantur, eaque omnia verno. id est hoc mense, 

 aperiantur, . . . ab his omnibus mensem Aprilem dici merito credendum 

 est, quasi Aperilem.' 



