_Belamy_ occurs in an Early Eng. Life of St. Cecilia, MS. Ashmole 43, l. 161; and six other examples are given in the New Eng. Dictionary. Similar forms are _beau filtz_, dear son, Piers Plowman, B. vii. 162; _beau pere_, good father; _beau sire_, good sir. Cf. _beldame_. 321. _ale-stake_, inn-sign. Speght interprets this by 'may-pole.' He was probably thinking of the _ale-pole_, such as was sometimes set up before an inn as a sign; see the picture of one in Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards, Plate II. But the _ale-stakes_ of the fourteenth century were differently placed; instead of being perpendicular, they projected horizontally from the inn, just like the bar which supports a painted sign at the present day. At the end of the ale-stake a large garland was commonly suspended, as mentioned by Chaucer himself (Prol. 667), or sometimes a bunch of ivy, box, or evergreen, called a 'bush'; whence the proverb 'good wine needs no _bush_,' i. e. nothing to indicate where it is sold; see Hist. Signboards, pp. 2, 4, 6, 233. The clearest information about ale-stakes is obtained from a notice of them in the Liber Albus, ed. Riley, where an ordinance of the time of Richard II. is printed, the translation of which runs as follows: 'Also, it was ordained that whereas the _ale-stakes_, projecting in front of the taverns in Chepe and elsewhere in the said city, extend too far over the king's highways, to the impeding of riders and others, and, by reason of their excessive weight, to the great deterioration of the houses to which they [269] are fixed,... it was ordained,... that no one in future should have a stake _bearing either his sign or leaves_ [i. e. a bush] extending or lying over the king's highway, _of greater length than 7 feet at most_,' &c. And, at p. 292 of the same work, note 2, Mr. Riley rightly defines an _ale-stake_ to be 'the pole projecting from the house, and supporting a bunch of leaves.' The word _ale-stake_ occurs in Chatterton's poem of Ælla, stanza 30, where it is used in a manner which shews that the supposed 'Rowley' did not know what it was like. See my note on this; Essay on the Rowley Poems, p. xix; and cf. note to A. 667. 322. _of a cake_; we should now say, a bit of bread; the modern sense of 'cake' is a little misleading. The old cakes were mostly made of dough, whence the proverb 'my cake is dough,' i. e. is not properly baked; Taming of the Shrew, v. 1. 145. Shakespeare also speaks of 'cakes and ale,' Tw. Nt. ii. 3. 124. The picture of the 'Simnel Cakes' in Chambers' Book of Days, i. 336, illustrates Chaucer's use of the word in the Prologue, l. 668. 324. The Pardoner was so ready to tell some 'mirth or japes' that the more decent folks in the company try to repress him. It is a curious comment on the popular estimate of his character. He has, moreover, to refresh himself, and to think awhile before he can recollect 'some honest (i. e. decent) thing.' 327, 328. The Harleian MS. has--