2360. _A stamin large_, a large piece of stamine. _Stamin_ or _stamine_ is usually explained as a kind of woollen cloth. Cotgrave gives: '_Estamine_, the stuffe tamine.' Godefroy gives both _estamin_, masc. and _estamine_, fem. explained by 'tissu léger de laine ou de coton.' Palsgrave has:--'Stamell, fyne worstede, _estamine_'; and--'Stamyne, _estamine_.' The Prompt. Parv. has:--'Stamyn, clothe, _stamina_.' _Stamin_ was used as a material for shirts, and was worn by way of penance; Fosbrooke explains it as 'a shirt made of woollen and linen, used instead of a penitentiary hair-shirt.' '_Stamin_ habbe whoso wule,' whoso will may have a stamin; Ancren Riwle, p. 418. Chaucer uses it thus near the end of the Persones Tale (I 1052); 'Also in weringe of heyres or of _stamin_ or of haubergeons on hir naked flesh for Cristes sake, and swiche manere penances.' MSS. C. T. A. have _stamyn_, which seems the better form; the rest (like the printed editions) have _stames_, which may be an error for _stamel_, O.F. _estamel_, used in the same sense as O.F. _estamine_. Else it may answer to O.F. _estame_, 'laine peignée, tricot de laine' in Godefroy. The fact that Ovid's word is _stamina_ is in favour of the spelling _stamin_. (Bell remarks that 'the printed copies read _flames_, which is nonsense.' He seems to have misread _stames_ (with long _s_) as _flames_. The editions of 1532, 1550, and 1561 certainly have _stames_.) 2373-82. Abridged from Met. vi. 581-605. Ovid mentions the triennial festival to Bacchus. 2379. _Compleint_ is a much better reading than the _constreynte_ of the old editions. 2383. _No charge_, of no consequence; Squi. Ta., F 359. 2383-93. All Chaucer's own. The last line is characteristic: 'unless it happens to be the case that he cannot get another,' i.e. a new love. For _non other_, old editions have _another_! 2385. Here _deserved_ is the usual Chaucerian form of the pt. tense. Prof. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 403) calls this a false form. But cf. _wyped_, _lipsed_ (in _-ed_, not _-ede_); Prol. to C. T., 133, 264. VIII. THE LEGEND OF PHYLLIS. Gower tells the same story in his Confessio Amantis, bk. iv. (ed. Pauli, ii. 26); and it is likely that he and Chaucer derived it from the same source, whatever that may have been. A portion of the latter part, from l. 2496, is taken from Ovid, Heroides, Ep. ii. And see note to l. 2423. 2395. An allusion to Matt. vii. 16, and to Legend VI, above. 2398. _Demophon_, usually Demophoön, son of Theseus and Phædra, who, on his return from Troy, gained the love of Phyllis, daughter of Sithon, king of Thrace. Observe that Gower says that Demophoön was on his way _towards_ Troy. 2400. 'Unless it were.' 2401. Observe that _grac-e_ is dissyllabic, as in l. 2433. 2403. 'Now I turn to the effect (the pith) of what I have to say.'