Seigneurie, verb, ‘ lordest.’ 3. Souldre, ‘pay

14-29. These two stanzas, which are chiefly paraphrased from two passages of the Bible (Eccles. xi. 9, 10, and Job vii. 6), have been much altered in different editions, and the text and exact sense are both to a certain extent conjectural. It is sufficient to say that ‘n’en puis mais, a very common idiom in Old French and not wholly obsolete, means, ‘I cannot but do it,’ ‘cannot help it,’ and that this meaning may be connected with the sense of mass lower down, which simply = p/us; that ‘sers bien d'un autre mets’ is a metaphor for ‘change your conduct, and that the second stanza substitutes for the ‘ clipping’ of the Vulgate and the passage of the shuttle in our version, the image of singeing the nap.

15. The point of this reference to the great sea boots and leg swathings of oyster dredgers is that the monks should have gone barefoot or at most sandalled.