3321. _wachet_, a shade of blue. Tyrwhitt wrongly connects it with the town of _Watchet_, in Somersetshire. But it is French. Littré, s. v. _vaciet_, gives: 'Couleur d'hyacinthe ou _vaciet_,' colour of the hyacinth, or _bilberry_ (Lat. _uaccinium_). Roquefort defines _vaciet_ as a shrub which bears a dark fruit fit for dyeing violet; it is applied, he [102] says, both to the fruit and the dye; and he calls it _Vaccinium hysginum_. Phillips says _watchet_ is 'a kind of blew colour.' Todd's Johnson cites from Milton's Hist. of Muscovia, c. 5, '_watchet_ or sky-coloured cloth'; and the line, 'Who stares, in Germany, at _watchet_ eyes,' tr. of Juvenal, Sat. xiii, wrongly attributed to Dryden. See examples in Nares from Browne, Lyly, Drayton, and Taylor: and, in Richardson, from Beaumont and Fletcher, Hackluyt, Spenser, and Ben Jonson. Cotgrave explains F. _pers_ as 'watchet, blunket, skie-coloured,' and _couleur perse_ as 'skie-colour, azure-colour, a blunket, or light blue.' See _Blunket_ in the New E. Dict., and my article in Philolog. Soc. Trans. Nov. 6, 1885, p. 329. Webster has '_watchet_ stockings,' The Malcontent, A. iii. sc. 1. Lydgate has '_watchet_ blewe'; see Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. (1840), ii. 280. 3322. _poyntes_, tagged laces, as in Shakespeare. MS. Hl. has here a totally different line, involving the word _gores_ (cf. l. 3237 above), viz. 'Schapen with goores in the newe get,' i. e. in the new fashion. 3329. Tyrwhitt says:--'The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing, as that of Stratford for its French'; see l. 125. He probably meant this satirically; but it may mean the very opposite, or something nearly so. The Stratford-at-Bow French was excellent of its kind, but unlike that of France (see note to l. 125); and probably the Oxford dancing was, likewise, of no mean quality after its kind, having twenty 'maneres.' 3331. _rubible_; also _ribible_ (4396). Cf. 'where was his fedylle [fiddle] or hys _ribible_'; Knight de la Tour, cap. 117. See _Ribibe_, _Ribible_ in Halliwell; The Squire of Low Degree (in Ritson), l. 1071; Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 194. Also called a _rebeck_, as in Milton. A two-stringed musical instrument, played with a bow, of Moorish origin; Arab. _rab[=a]b_. '_Hec vitula_, a rybybe'; Wright's Gloss. 738. 19. 3332. _quinible._ Not a musical instrument, as Tyrwhitt supposed, but a kind of voice. It is not singing consecutive fifths upon a plain song, as Mr. Chappell once thought (Pop. Music of the Olden Time, i. 34); but, as afterwards explained by him in Notes and Queries, 4 S. vi. 117, it refers to a very high voice. The _quinible_ was an octave higher than the _treble_; the _quatreble_ was an octave higher than the mean. The _mean_ was intermediate between the _plain-song_ or _tenor_ (so called from its _holding on_ the notes) and the _treble_. It means 'at the extreme pitch of the voice.' Skelton miswrites it _quibyble_.