I. THE ROBIN. 37 



leading his carol-dance, in the garden of the 

 Rose. 



His dress is embroidered with figures of flowers 

 and of beasts ; but about him fly the living birds. 

 The French is : 



II etoit tout couvert d'oisiaulx 

 _^^ De rossignols et de papegaux 



De calendre, et de mesangel. 

 .: II semblait que ce fut une angle 



Qui fuz tout droit venuz du ciel. 



. 36. There are several points of philology in this 



transitional PVench, and in Chaucer's translation, 



which it is well worth your patience to observe. The 



monkish Latin " angelus," you see, is passing through 



the very unpoetical form ''angle," into "ange;" but, 



in order to get a rhyme with it in that angular form, 



the French troubadour expands the bird's name, 



" mesange," quite arbitrarily, into " mesangel." Then 



Chaucer, not liking the " mes " at the beginning of 



the word, changes that unscrupulously into "arch;" 



and gathers in, though too shortly, a lovely bit from 



another place about the nightingales flying so close 



round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves 



off his crown of roses ; so that the English runs thus : 



But nightingales, a full great rout 

 That flien over his head about, 

 The leaves felden as they flien 

 And he was all with birds wrien. 

 With popinjay, with nightingale, 

 With chelaundre, and with wodewale. 



