Glosses to Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" 565 merely for the sake of rhyme. *Dreriment (XI) was probably coined by analogy with merriment to rhyme with it. *Fore- wente (VII) is a rather complex case: as a past participle form, it cannot be correctly adduced from go or (be-) forego; and, if one takes it from the Middle English forewend, it should mean incline or dispose rather than go before. Spenser, for his rhyme, seems to have formed a new forewend by re-composition with the Middle English verb, wende, to turn or go. *Gryde (II & VIII) is given by Herford and N. E. D. as a Spenserian metathesis of gird, in spite of the fact that E. K. refers the form, quite correctly, to Lydgate. 46 The intransitive sense, however, seems to be Spenserian. *Lorrell (VII) is apparently a coined variant of losell, a Northern word which E. K. uses to define it in the gloss. *Men of the lay (V), for laymen, is curious. Lay is probably from Middle English lay meaning law and so belief, faith. But clerks as well as laymen are Christians; and so the gloss seems to be based on an inaccuracy; or perhaps Spenser, driven by a refractory rhyme, fell back upon this tag, about the sense of which he was not quite certain. *Newell (V) looks like a French loan; but it is more probably either a variant of the East Anglian newelty or the survival of a rare Middle English form, newell, listed in N. E. D. as occurring once before Spenser, in some songs and carols of the late fifteenth century.
- Overhaile (I) to draw over, may very well be a variant of over-
haul for the sake of rhyme. *An Ivie todde (III) is very puzzling. Herford gives no especial reason for listing it as dialectical. Skeat's gloss to Chaucer suggests that ywe may be used for ground ivy; and, under tat, E. D. D. lists a possible variant tot meaning "a matted mass." I am inclined to think that Spenser used this Northern form, voicing the T into a D for the sake of his rhyme. There are beside these rhyme-words, at least two probable variants for meter. But if (VIII) commonly means unless in Middle English; but the difficult stichomythia of the passage apparently forced Spenser to use it in the dubious sense of not unless, which E. K. puts into the gloss. *Gree (VII) is probably an aphetic form of degree, although E. D. D. suggests with some plausibility that it either may come from the French gre, or be a variant of a Scotch dialect word. At times, Spenser
46 Lydgate's Chron. Troy, II, XIV.
