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The Assembly Of Fowls
by
16. Hautain: haughty, lofty; French, “hautain.”
17. Well to my pay: Well to my satisfaction; from French, “payer,” to pay, satisfy; the same word often occurs, in the phrases “well apaid,” and “evil apaid.”
18. Valentia, in Spain, was famed for the fabrication of fine and transparent stuffs.
19. The obvious reference is to the proverbial “Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus,” (“Love is frozen without freedom and food”) quoted in Terence, “Eunuchus,” act iv. scene v.
20. Cypride: Venus; called “Cypria,” or “Cypris,” from the island of Cyprus, in which her worship was especially celebrated.
21. Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, was seduced by Jupiter, turned into a bear by Diana, and placed afterwards, with her son, as the Great Bear among the stars. Atalanta challenged Hippomenes, a Boetian youth, to a race in which the prize was her hand in marriage — the penalty of failure, death by her hand. Venus gave Hippomenes three golden apples, and he won by dropping them one at a time because Atalanta stopped to pick them up. Semiramis was Queen of Ninus, the mythical founder of Babylon; Ovid mentions her, along with Lais, as a type of voluptuousness, in his “Amores,” 1.5, 11. Canace, daughter of Aeolus, is named in the prologue to The Man of Law’s Tale as one of the ladies whose “cursed stories” Chaucer refrained from writing. She loved her brother Macareus, and was slain by her father. Hercules was conquered by his love for Omphale, and spun wool for her in a woman’s dress, while she wore his lion’s skin. Biblis vainly pursued her brother Caunus with her love, till she was changed to a fountain; Ovid, “Metamorphoses.” lib. ix. Thisbe and Pyramus: the Babylonian lovers, whose death, through the error of Pyramus in fancying that a lion had slain his mistress, forms the theme of the interlude in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Sir Tristram was one of the most famous among the knights of King Arthur, and La Belle Isoude was his mistress. Their story is mixed up with the Arthurian romance; but it was also the subject of separate treatment, being among the most popular of the Middle Age legends. Achilles is reckoned among Love’s conquests, because, according to some traditions, he loved Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, who was promised to him if he consented to join the Trojans; and, going without arms into Apollo’s temple at Thymbra, he was there slain by Paris. Scylla: Love-stories are told of two maidens of this name; one the daughter of Nisus, King of Megara, who, falling in love with Minos when he besieged the city, slew her father by pulling out the golden hair which grew on the top of his head, and on which which his life and kingdom depended. Minos won the city, but rejected her love in horror. The other Scylla, from whom the rock opposite Charybdis was named, was a beautiful maiden, beloved by the sea-god Glaucus, but changed into a monster through the jealousy and enchantments of Circe. The mother of Romulus: Silvia, daughter and only living child of Numitor, whom her uncle Amulius made a vestal virgin, to preclude the possibility that his brother’s descendants could wrest from him the kingdom of Alba Longa. But the maiden was violated by Mars as she went to bring water from a fountain; she bore Romulus and Remus; and she was drowned in the Anio, while the cradle with the children was carried down the stream in safety to the Palatine Hill, where the she-wolf adopted them.
22. Prest: ready; French, “pret.”
23. Alanus de Insulis, a Sicilian poet and orator of the twelfth century, who wrote a book “De Planctu Naturae” — “The Complaint of Nature.”
24. The falcon was borne on the hand by the highest personages, not merely in actual sport, but to be caressed and petted, even on occasions of ceremony, Hence also it is called the “gentle” falcon — as if its high birth and breeding gave it a right to august society.