The autumn opening is rare in comparison with the spring opening (as in FL), but was developed because of its appropriateness to rather sad and somber poems (like AL).

foure: Thynne, in the first print of AL, changed this to fayre, presumably because lines 10–11 obviously refer to more than four. But he was wrong, and we must assume that all nine of the felawship are there spoken of. The matter is made clear at line 408 and by the sequence of petitions at lines 582–623 and 624–79. There was a fine but clear social distinction between ladyes and gentil wymmen.

crosse aleys: These sanded alleys, bordered by low rails (see line 42), came to be laid out with greater symmetry in the fifteenth century; here the crosswise layout forms a kind of maze (see line 17). There is a very similar scene, with a group of ladies walking in a garden with ‘rayled . . . aleyes,’ in Chaucer’s Troilus, II.813–26.

Whereof I serve?: The blurring of direct into indirect speech is common in Middle English poetry. The sense of the question, ‘What are you doing here?’ is, less politely, ‘What is your function (office, purpose)?’

mase: Mazes became increasingly popular with the formalization of gardens in the late Middle Ages. They also became more difficult to negotiate, with hedges between the alleys (as Hampton Court) rather than low rails that could be stepped over, as here (see line 42).

must me wite: This impersonal use of must with personal object, ‘it is necessary for (me) to’ (also 74, 334, 509, 749), seems a peculiar favorite of the poet of AL, though not common elsewhere.

herber: See FL 49n.

tornyng whele: It is not quite clear what feature of the herber is here referred to, whether a spiral stair-case, a turnstile, or a circular flower-stand (like a sundial).

margoleyne, etc: All the flowers in the arbor are emblematic, some by their very names, of serious and constant love.

streames: jets of water issuing from natural spring-heads (ingeniously concealed, line 70) and led through conduits about the garden, in this case to one side of the arbor and below floor level (underneth).

blewe: The wearing of blue is emphasized throughout the poem because blue was traditionally the color of truth and fidelity, especially as opposed to green (see FL 329n).

enbrowdid: There is abundant testimony in France and England in the fifteenth century to the practice of embroidering garments with devices or emblems, especially flowers.

hir word: Mottoes, usually in French, were also frequently embroidered on garments, especially on the hems of wide hanging sleeves (see 119). This kind of ornamentation had a rich symbolic language of its own in the ‘game of love’; such mottoes are quite different from family mottoes, being intended as an ingenious form of mystification and not for identification. The mottoes in AL (88, 208, 308, 364, 489, 583, 590, 598, 616, 627, 645, 666, 675) belong to no known historical persons, and were probably made up for the purposes of the poem.

ussher: The Usher of the Chamber looked after the food and service in the lord’s room. Distinctions of rank and status (see 99) were carefully observed in a lord’s household, and the carrying of a staff of office (see 103–5) was a jealously guarded privilege.

benedicité: Literally, ‘bless ye (the Lord)!’

bay wyndowes: This is the first recorded use of the term in a literary text. One of the earliest buildings to have bay windows was the palace of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, at Plesaunce, near Greenwich.

galaries: sheltered walks along the side of a house, partly open at the sides, like a monastic cloister.

Plesaunt Regard: the allegorical reference (buildings often have such names in love-vision poetry) is to the pleasant aspect of a lady towards one who pleases her (cf Swete-Lokyng in Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose, 2896), but it is easy to see how the name might be thought appropriate to the building itself (see 171–2).

seynt Julyan: a prayer for good lodging for the night, to St Julian the Hospitaller, patron saint of hospitality. After accidentally killing his parents, Julian set up a hospital to harbor poor people, and bore travellers across a nearby river as a penance.

hospital: In the Middle Ages the monastic and military-religious orders set up ‘hospitals’ for the accommodation of poor travellers and pilgrims, for the sick, aged and insane, and for lepers. The reference to the wal (230) is reminiscent of the high continuous walls surrounding leper hospitals.

marchal of the halle: An important functionary of the household, responsible for the arrangement of ceremonies, especially the ordering and serving of guests at banquets.

bille: The usual word in fifteenth-century literature for a written petition or a statement of complaint, especially one concerning faithless or unrequited love, but there is much in AL, in the administrative arrangements for the presentation of the bills and in the bills themselves, to suggest that the poet is aware too of the stricter legal sense of the word and is making some attempt to imitate current legal procedure. In law, as in AL, the bill was the initiatory action of all procedure in equity; it consisted of a statement of complaint and a prayer for redress; it tended to be vague in point of fact but vehement in presenting the enormity of the offense; it was written in semi-legal parlance, with a profusion of loosely related participles and a convoluted syntax. Closest to AL in point of style are bills presented to the King’s Council, which, like the court of Lady Loyalty, was approached by suitors as the supreme authority, able to right wrongs of every kind.

secretarye: The main job of the secretary — to collect, read over, and read out (553, 564) the written bills — is strikingly reminiscent of the role of the Clerk to the King’s Council.

A medieval audience would need little reminding of the notorious dilatoriness of the law, whether in civil or criminal actions.

hir goodenesse: One can see here how an abstract noun comes to be used as a form of title.

berel and cristal: The idea of walls of beryl (not the modern semi-precious stone, but a form of crystal) and crystal is a fantasy, reminiscent of Chaucer’s House of Fame and Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, which in their turn form part of a descriptive tradition going back to the Book of Revelation, Chapter 21.

graven: Tapestries and painted cloths were much more common in domestic interiors (as distinct from churches) than mural decoration, but literary buildings are often embellished with murals, as in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls (284–94), and the Knight’s Tale (1918–2074), and Lydgate’s Temple of Glass (42–142). The crystal engravings of AL are an added touch of fantasy. The storyes many oon, as befits the allegory, are of love’s martyrs, true and faithful women unfortunate or wronged in love. Chaucer often finds occasion for introducing such lists of unfortunate women, and his Legend of Good Women is a systematic martyrology. Phyllis, Thisbe and Cleopatra usually figure in Chaucer’s lists, and he tells the stories of all three in the Legend.

of wommanly pite: The idea is that Phyllis’s misfortunes were due to her first taking pity on Demophon when he was shipwrecked on the shores of her kingdom. See Legend 2394–2561.

under a tre: The mulberry tree figures importantly in the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.

was slayne: This rather misses the point of Cleopatra’s suicide. For the medieval view of Cleopatra as one of love’s martyrs, see Legend 580–705.

Melusene: The heroine of a well-known story, translated from the French in two English fifteenth-century versions, Melusine (ed. A.K. Donald, EETS, es 68, 1895) and Partenay (ed W. W. Skeat, EETS, os 22, 1866). Melusine was under a spell and used to turn into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. When she married Count Raymond, she made him promise not to try to find out where she went on Saturdays. She proved a true and faithful wife, and bore him ten children, but Raymond’s curiosity finally got the better of him. He followed her one Saturday, hacked a hole with his sword in the door of the room where she used to lock herself, and found her in the bath with her serpent’s tail. His betrayal of the secret brings about her perpetual damnation.

Anelada: from Chaucer’s Anelida and Arcite, much of which is devoted to Anelida’s Compleynt.

stages: Mandeville describes an elaborate throne set on seven ‘degrees’ or steps in the palace of Prester John (Travels, ed. P. Hamelius, EETS, os 153, 1919, p. 183), very similar to the throne of Darius in the Alexander legend (see Wars of Alexander, ed. H. Duggan and T. Turville-Petre, EETS, ss 10, 1989, 3464–3519.

cassidony: chalcedony is a semi-transparent white quartz, which forms the third foundation of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:19, and is associated in the medieval lapidaries with authority.

saphirs: the most precious of all jewels in the lapidaries; they were a token of truth and constancy.

Ynde: India was, to the medieval imagination, the extreme limit of remoteness, as well as a symbol of fabulous splendor.

tappet: a piece of figured cloth used as a hanging over a door or doorway.

chaunceler: In medieval households, the chancellor was a very important official who supervised the running of the household and the estate.

In taberd wyse: The reference is to the tabard, the short sleeveless tunic (originally simply two panels of cloth joined over the shoulders) emblazoned with armorial bearings, worn by heralds; but clearly the phrase here describes the development of the late fifteenth-century surcoat (see FL 141n) with wide openings below the arms and long hanging sleeves.

The hems of the garment were studded with rows of pearls instead of ermine fur, and ‘powdered’ (sprinkled, a heraldic term) with diamonds instead of little black ermine tails. The details of Lady Loyalty’s costume-decoration are very close to what can be seen in paintings of the mid to late fifteenth century, especially from Flanders, and what can be deduced from wills and inventories of the time.

serpe: a serpentine collar or neck-ring of precious metal, chased out or engraved, and set with white enamel flowers, each with a ruby in the center. Charles of Orleans had a similar collar.

balays of entaile: a balas ruby (a delicate rose-red variety of the spinel ruby), with an engraved design, set in the front of the diadem.

Proverbial.

youre: Lady Loyalty addresses the narrator.

seynt Jame: St James (the Greater), brother of St John the Evangelist. His shrine at Compostella in north-western Spain was the greatest place of Christian pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.

The narrator’s ‘bill’ is the only one of which we hear the exact words, as it is read out by the secretary.

parlement: The same distinction between an assembly (see 752), for the preliminary hearing of complaints, and a parliament, to pass judgment and enact laws, seems to be made in The Isle of Ladies 1967–72.

The postponed judgment is a frequent convention in poems involving an assembly or debate (eg, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls), though of course it was common enough in real life, in law as in politics.

water: Skeat suggested that the water was thrown in her face by her companion to wake her up; this seems rather drastic. Perhaps the spray from the fountain caught her face as her head nodded in sleep. Poets exercise considerable ingenuity in waking their dream-narrators from sleep.

this booke: She seems to move momentarily outside the fiction of oral retelling of her story, as happens not uncommonly in medieval narrative.

The lady’s story (29–742) ends here, and the knight or squire who originally accosted her (line 15) speaks.

Punctuation here obliges an editor to decide that the narrator turns from her interlocutor to her reader. Cf the ambiguity in 740.