Astronomical allusion as a way of indicating the season was equally conventional. The opening lines of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales are the best-known example. These lines are directly imitated from the closing lines of the Squire’s Tale (‘Apollo whirleth up his chaar so hye’, V.671). Readers of poems like FL would be familiar from the Calendars in their Books of Hours with pictures of Phoebus passing across a starry sky in his golden chariot; the reference of course is not to the rising of the sun but to its northward course through the zodiac and its entry into Taurus (on 12 April, in Chaucer’s time).

maketh: It is difficult to find a subject for this verb, but loose and diffused syntax of this kind is not uncommon among those who tried to imitate Chaucer’s consummate mastery of the long verse sentence (e.g. General Prologue, 1–18).

The spring opening was conventional in courtly love-allegory, as a way of suggesting the renewal of love and love’s expectation, or the unhappiness by contrast of unrequited love (both suggestions are explicitly denied here, in lines 18–21).

The narrator seems aware of the usual cause of sleeplessness, in love-longing and love-sickness, as in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess.

The sun seems to have risen very suddenly (cf. 28); consistency of realistic visualization is not in general much sought after in these descriptions.

Some very red: this, on the other hand, is a piece of precisely observed botanical detail.

nightingale: it was thought a good omen, foretelling success in love, to hear the nightingale before the cuckoo upon the advent of both with spring.

herber: The enclosed arbor was a favorite feature of medieval gardens, real and literary; lovers discourse there privately, and poets fall asleep. This poet, for a change, does not fall asleep, and the arbor exists as a vantage-point from which to view operations outside.

benched: earthen benches topped with turf were very popular in medieval gardens (as in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women).

The sweet scents of gardens are much emphasized; they were not only pleasant in themselves, but were believed to have healing power.

medle: The medlar tree is stunted and has low-hanging branches; the fruit is small, hard and round, and fit to eat only when decaying, when it turns brown (its popular name was ‘open-ers’; see Chaucer, Reeve’s Tale, I.3871).

The description of the garden is full of echoes of Chaucer, Lydgate, and the French poets. Like the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, it is meant to be recognized as a tapestry of literary allusion (rather than a description of a ‘real’ garden).

surcotes: sleeveless over-garments, often richly embroidered and decorated, worn over a lighter under-garment. In the fifteenth century the arm-openings became so exaggeratedly large that the top became almost like a pinafore.

semes: In the richest clothes, ornamental strips of material, sometimes studded with precious stones, were inserted or laid over the seams.

Agnus castus: a willow-like plant, emblematic of chastity.

roundell: a dance-song, led by a soloist, at the head of a chain or in the middle of a circle (as here), the soloist singing the verses of the song and the chorus repeating part of the verse as a refrain.

Popular songs were often quoted in courtly poems to give an air of freshness and topicality. The lines quoted here are a garbled version of the opening of a fifteenth-century song from Normandy: ‘Dessoubz la branche d’ung verd moy, / S’est mon jolli cueur endormy’ (Beneath the branch of a green May-tree / My joyful heart has gone to sleep). It is the song of a woman, describing how she is waiting for her lover, and affirming the constancy of her love.

Pretir John: Prester John, the fabulously wealthy legendary Christian monarch (‘Prester’ is from the same root as ‘priest’), first associated with Asia, later with Ethiopia.

okes seriall: directly imitated from the Knight’s Tale, I.2290, where Emelye wears a ‘coroune of a grene ook cerial’ as an emblem of her service to Diana. The association intended is clearly with the evergreen or holm-oak (ilex), though the original reference in Boccaccio’s Teseide (which Chaucer follows), is to the deciduous Turkey oak.

kings of armes: heralds in royal employ. Here, there is one in attendance on each of the Nine Worthy (see 240).

veluet: trisyllabic here, as in Chaucer.

kene: ‘noble, brave’; by hypallage, the epithet appropriate to those who bear the oak is transferred to the oak itself.

steeds: i.e., the riderless horses.

enclining: One expects a finite verb, but this rather loose use of participles is common in fifteenth-century poetry (cf. 320 below; 8 above).

greene: The symbolism of white (for purity), worn by the company of the leaf, was clear enough; green was commonly associated with, among other things, fickleness in love and frivolity, as in Chaucer’s poem Against Women Unconstant (‘In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grene’).

These lines refer to the women in the company.

bargaret: from French bergerette, a shepherd’s song, which gave its name to a fixed-form court-song in the fifteenth century. The praise of the daisy is a convention in the French poetry of the fourteenth century and in Chaucer’s Prologue to his The Legend of Good Women.

Si douce, etc.: ‘So sweet is the daisy.’ Probably the refrain of a popular song (cf. 177–8).

whote: a spelling indicative of the development of a strong rounded on-glide before ho (with long vowel), as in whole, whore, where the spelling survives.

to make their justs: It sounds as if they plan to joust with them afterwards, but this seems unlikely. The line may be corrupt.

hearbs: The botanical part of the natural history in the Middle Ages was largely the study of the medicinal properties of plants. Everyone would have known what plants to gather to make a sunburn lotion.

salades: Parsley and lettuce, specifically, are recommended for those who are over-heated (lettuce, incidentally, was also thought to be an antiaphrodisiac).

palfray: A palfrey would be a saddle-horse for ordinary riding, especially suitable for ladies.

service: The idea that the song of the birds in spring was a ‘service’ in honor of God, or Nature, or Love, was a popular conceit with medieval poets, characteristic of the way religious language was appropriated to the celebration of love.

happed: Such ‘chance’ meetings are common in allegorical poetry, where some kind of fictional guide is needed to explain the significance of what has been happening.

yis: ‘yes’; was originally, as here, the emphatic form of ye or yea, and used to answer questions in a negative form.

Agnus castus: a willow-like plant, emblematic of chastity.

The Nine Worthy (properly so, not ‘the Nine Worthies’) appear frequently in late medieval literature and art as types of nobility, illustrious examples for the present, and, in the Ubi sunt (‘Where are . . . ?) topos, as examples of the power of death. They were, traditionally, three Jews (Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus), three pagans (Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar), and three Christians (Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Boulogne). Their presence here may seem odd, but the Middle Ages had little difficulty in imaging forth the past in terms of idealized contemporary chivalry. Julius Caesar, indeed, is seen as the founder of medieval chivalry (see 530–32 below).

Douseperis: Les douze pers, the twelve peers of France, were Charlemagne’s paladins (Roland, Oliver, etc.), who fought with him against the Saracens.

Garter: The Order of the Garter was established by Edward III in 1349.

The reference is to Julius Caesar, who was much venerated in the Middle Ages, and credited with the founding of chivalry.

Titus Livius: Livy (59 BC — AD 17) is not renowned as a historian of Caesar, but he is an unimpeachable historical authority, which is the reason he is alluded to here.

idlenes: for moralists, the ‘mother of all vices’; she is also, it is worth remembering, the portress of the Garden of Love in the Roman de la Rose.

and: this word upsets the grammar of the sentence, to modern taste, but such sentences are not uncommon in fifteenth-century poetry.

For wele to better: an echo, perhaps, of the idiom of the French motto, De bien en mieulx. Cf. De mieulx en mieulx, used as a motto in the fifteenth century by the Paston family of Norfolk.

keping: another loosely related participle.

no such occupacion: i.e. no such occupation (function) as to symbolize perseverance and fidelity.

this yeere: refers to honour, of course, not tell. In the courtly cult of the Flower and the Leaf, the choice was made on the first of May and was binding for the ensuing year.

Male Bouch: ‘Wicked Tongue,’ or Slander, a personification in the Roman de la Rose (called ‘Wykked-Tonge’ in Chaucer’s translation, 3027).

A good example of the ‘modesty epilogue,’ which Lydgate, in particular, develops in an immodestly elaborate way. The ‘little book’ is probably an echo of Chaucer’s Troilus V.1786. The characterization of the little book as blushing at its own boldness is an unusual and effective touch.