Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/569

 Glosses to Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" 565 merely for the sake of rhyme. *Dreriment (XI) was probably coined by analogy with merriment to rhyme with it. *Fore- wente (VII) is a rather complex case: as a past participle form, it cannot be correctly adduced from go or (be-) forego; and, if one takes it from the Middle English forewend, it should mean incline or dispose rather than go before. Spenser, for his rhyme, seems to have formed a new forewend by re-composition with the Middle English verb, wende, to turn or go. *Gryde (II & VIII) is given by Herford and N. E. D. as a Spenserian metathesis of gird, in spite of the fact that E. K. refers the form, quite correctly, to Lydgate. 46 The intransitive sense, however, seems to be Spenserian. *Lorrell (VII) is apparently a coined variant of losell, a Northern word which E. K. uses to define it in the gloss. *Men of the lay (V), for laymen, is curious. Lay is probably from Middle English lay meaning law and so belief, faith. But clerks as well as laymen are Christians; and so the gloss seems to be based on an inaccuracy; or perhaps Spenser, driven by a refractory rhyme, fell back upon this tag, about the sense of which he was not quite certain. *Newell (V) looks like a French loan; but it is more probably either a variant of the East Anglian newelty or the survival of a rare Middle English form, newell, listed in N. E. D. as occurring once before Spenser, in some songs and carols of the late fifteenth century. haul for the sake of rhyme. *An Ivie todde (III) is very puzzling. Herford gives no especial reason for listing it as dialectical. Skeat's gloss to Chaucer suggests that ywe may be used for ground ivy; and, under tat, E. D. D. lists a possible variant tot meaning "a matted mass." I am inclined to think that Spenser used this Northern form, voicing the T into a D for the sake of his rhyme. There are beside these rhyme-words, at least two probable variants for meter. But if (VIII) commonly means unless in Middle English; but the difficult stichomythia of the passage apparently forced Spenser to use it in the dubious sense of not unless, which E. K. puts into the gloss. *Gree (VII) is probably an aphetic form of degree, although E. D. D. suggests with some plausibility that it either may come from the French gre, or be a variant of a Scotch dialect word. At times, Spenser 46 Lydgate's Chron. Troy, II, XIV.
 * Overhaile (I) to draw over, may very well be a variant of over-