Glosses to Spenser 1 s "Shepheardes Calender" 567 -er pural to he and she in order to form collective nouns. *To holden chatt (VII) is a clear enough expression which Spenser seems to have coined for the sake of his rhyme. *Jouisaunce (XI) is a convenient invention, probably to escape the difficult feminine rhyme oijoyance. Kidst (XII) may come from either a Middle English kith or a dialectical kythe; but both of these are properly used only in an intransitive or in a causative sense. Lambkins (XII) is one of the few coinages that has justified it- self; it is an obvious case of a noun plus the diminutive -kin.
- Overgrast (IX) is an obvious enough coinage, partly, one may
suppose, for the sake of rhyme. Shole (V) meaning a large number, especially of fish, is a word common enough in English since 1579, but seemingly never used before that date. N. E. D. suggests an origin in Frisian, Dutch or Flemish, where the word appeared as sko'l, school etc. The active communication in Elizabeth's reign between the Low Countries and England brought in numerous nautical terms of which this was doubtless one. 49 Underfonge (VI), meaning to undermine or deceive may be related to Middle English underfon to seize or receive; but the meanings do not synchronize, and the ge must be accounted for by some analogy. It appears in Havelok, line 115, as perceive; the sense may have been extended to deceive; or, what is more probable, Spenser, led on by a false etymology, may have mis-read his Middle English. Speght's Chaucer (1598) glosses underfongen as take in hand. Speght, then, understood at least one sense of the word correctly, but Spenser probably did not. Vetchie (IX) is a variant, perhaps a deminu- tive, of Middle English vetch. E. D. D. does not give the form; but it may have existed in some obsolete dialectical expression. In the foregoing list of words, the glossing seems to be correct; and we must suppose either that the words were more common than the records would have us suppose, or that E. K. was rather lucky in guessing the sense from the context, or that Spenser had a considerable hand in the glossing. The last supposition 49 See Kluge in Paul's Grundriss, I, 792; and Skeat's Princ. of Etymology, I, 485. This word (shole) does not appear in Baret's Ahearie, 1573. So far as I have been able to test, E. K. does not seem to have used the contemporary word-glosses of the day; for the purpose of most of them is to give the equivalent for common words in other languages. N.E.D. is not a safe criterion for uses
in these glosses as Wiener points out, M.L.N., XI, 176.
