Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 | Page 2

first referred to.
I shall now, in my turn, suggest explanations of the two new difficulties
in Chaucer's text, to {202} which, at the conclusion of his note, [Greek:
e]. has drawn attention.
The first is, that, "with respect to the time of year at which the
tournament takes place, there seems to be an inconsistency." Theseus
fixes "this day fifty wekes" from the fourth of May, as the day on
which the final contention must come off, and yet the day previous to
the final contention is afterwards alluded to as "the lusty seson of that
May," which, it is needless to say, would be inconsistent with an
interval of fifty ordinary weeks.
But fifty weeks, if taken in their literal sense of 350 days, would be a
most unmeaning interval for Theseus to fix upon,--it would almost

require explanation as much as the difficulty itself: it is therefore much
easier to suppose that Chaucer meant to imply the interval of a solar
year. Why he should choose to express that interval by fifty, rather than
by fifty-two, weeks, may be surmised in two ways: first, because the
latter phrase would be unpoetical and unmanageable; and, secondly,
because he might fancy that the week of the Pagan Theseus would be
more appropriately represented by a lunar quarter than by a Jewish
hebdomad.
Chaucer sometimes makes the strangest jumble--mixing up together
Pagan matters and Christian, Roman and Grecian, ancient and modern;
so that although he names Sunday and Monday as two of the days of
the week in Athens, he does so evidently for the purpose of introducing
the allocation of the hours, alluded to before, to which the planetary
names of the days of the week were absolutely necessary. But in the
fifty weeks appointed by Theseus, the very same love of a little display
of erudition would lead Chaucer to choose the hebdomas lunæ, or lunar
quarter, which the Athenian youth were wont to mark out by the
celebration of a feast to Apollo on every seventh day of the moon. But
after the first twenty-eight days of every lunar month, the weekly
reckoning must have been discontinued for about a day and a half
(when the new moon was what was called "in coitu," or invisible), after
which a new reckoning of sevens would recommence. Hence there
could be but four hebdomades in each lunar month; and as there are
about twelve and a half lunar months in a solar year, so must there have
been fifty lunar weeks in one solar year.
It will explain many anomalies, even in Shakspeare, if we suppose that
our early writers were content to show their knowledge of a subject in a
few particulars, and were by no means solicitous to preserve, what
moderns would call keeping, in the whole performance.
The next difficulty, adverted to by [Greek: e]., is the mention of the
THIRD as the morning upon which Palamon "brake his prison," and
Arcite went into the woods "to don his observaunce to May."
There is not perhaps in the whole of Chaucer's writings a more
exquisite passage than that by which the latter circumstance is

introduced; it is well worth transcribing:--
"The besy larke, the messager of day, Sal[=e]weth in hire song the
morw[=e] gray; And firy Phebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient
laugheth at the sight; And with his strem[=e]s drieth in the greves The
silver drop[=e]s hanging on the leves."
Such is the description of the morning of the "thridde of May;" and
perhaps, if no other mention of that date were to be found throughout
Chaucer's works, we might be justified in setting it down as a random
expression, to which no particular meaning was attached. But when we
find it repeated in an entirely different poem, and the same
"observaunce to May" again associated with it, the conviction is forced
upon us that it cannot be without some definite meaning.
This repetition occurs in the opening of the second book of Troilus and
Creseide, where "the thridde" has not only "observaunce to May" again
attributed to it, but also apparently some peculiar virtue in dreams. No
sooner does Creseide behold Pandarus on the morning of the third of
May, than "by the hond on hie, she tooke him fast," and tells him that
she had thrice dreamed of him that night. Pandarus replies in what
appears to have been a set form of words suitable to the occasion--
"Yea, nece, ye shall faren well the bet, If God wull, all this yeare."
Now unless the third of May were supposed to possess some unusual
virtue, the dreaming on that morning could scarcely confer a whole
year's welfare. But, be that as it may, there can at least be no doubt that
Chaucer