256 Notes and Illustrations. 
26. 1. Psalm cxliv. 4. 
26. 3. “Atrop.” ‘The fatall sisters,” Clotho, Lachesis, and 
Atropos, daughters of Erebus and the Night, were supposed to 
spin out the life of man as it were a long thread, which they drew 
out in length, till his fatal hour had arrived; but if by any other 
casualty his days were shortened, then A/ropos was said to have cut 
the thread in two. Hence the old verse: ‘‘Clotho colum bajulat, 
Lachesis trahit, Atropos occat.” 
27. 4. ‘Euer among,” an expression of frequent occurrence in 
Early English, meaning ‘‘ constantly, continually.”” Compare the 
Mod. Eng. ‘all the while.” In a Carol of the fifteenth century, 
we read: 
“Thys endus ny3th 
I saw a sy3th, 
A stare as bry3t as day; 
And ever among 
A mayden song 
Lullay, by by, lullay.”’ 
And in another: . 
“Our der Lady she stod hym by, 
And wepe water ful bytterly, 
And terys of blod ever among.” 
28. 4. ‘As onely of whom our comfort is had.” The expression 
is obscure, but the meaning is clear: as the only one from whom 
our comfort (or strength) is derived. 
29. 2. “Good husbands,” that is, good husbandmen or farmers. 
29. 3. ‘Then lightly,” an old form of expression. Tusser means 
that poor people are then fvobadbly or generally most sorely oppressed. 
Cf. “Short summer /ghtly has a forward spring.”—Shakspere, 
Richard III. Act iii. sc. 1. 
31. 3. ‘‘Few Capons are cut now except about Dorking in Surrey; 
they have been excluded by the turkey, a more magnificent, but 
perhaps not a better fowl.” —Pegge’s Forme of Cury, ed. 1780, p. 19. 
32. 1. “‘Vpon the tune of King Salomon.” Mar. 4, 1559, there 
is a receipt from Ralph Newberry for his licence for printing a 
ballad called ‘‘ Kynge Saloman,” Registr. Station. Comp. Lond. 
notat. A fol. 48a. Again in 1562, a licence to print ‘‘iij balletts, 
the one entituled ‘ Newes oute of Kent;’ the other, a ‘Newe ballat 
after the tune of Kynge Solomon;’ and the third, ‘ Newes oute of 
Heaven and Hell.’”—Jdid. fol. 75a. Again, zdzd.. ‘‘ Crestenmas 
Carowles auctorisshed by my lord of London.” A ballad of Solo- 
mon and the Queen of Sheba is entered in 1567, zbzd. fol. 166a.— 
Warton’s Hist. of Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, vol. iii. p. 428. 
32. 4, 1.7. There is some confusion here, although the sense is 
clear; probably we should read, ‘‘and fies from sinne,” etc. 
33. 32. ‘Michel cries,” 7z.e. to delay the operation of cutting, 
and therefore the cries of the animals, till Michaelmas, will have 
