406. _blakeberied._ The line means--'Though their souls go a-blackberrying'; i. e. wander wherever they like. This is a well-known _crux_, which all the editors have given up as unintelligible. I have been so fortunate as to obtain the complete solution of it, which was printed in Notes and Queries, 4 S. x. 222, xii. 45, and again in my preface to the C-text of Piers the Plowman, p. lxxxvii. The simple explanation is that, by a grammatical construction which was [273] probably due (as will be shewn) to an error, the verb _go_ could be combined with what was _apparently_ a past participle, in such a manner as to give the participle the force of a verbal substantive. In other words, instead of saying 'he goes a-hunting,' our forefathers sometimes said 'he goes a-hunted.' The examples of this use are at least seven. The clearest is in Piers Plowman, C. ix. 138, where we read of 'folk that gon a-begged,' i. e. folk that go a-begging. In Chaucer, we not only have 'goon a-begged,' Frank. Tale, F. 1580, and the instance in the present passage, but yet a third example in the Wyf of Bath's Tale, Group D. 354, where we have 'goon a-caterwawed,' with the sense of 'to go a-caterwauling'; and it is a fortunate circumstance that in two of these cases the idiomatic forms occur at the end of a line, so that the rime has preserved them from being tampered with. Gower (Conf. Amant. bk. i. ed. Chalmers, pp. 32, 33, or ed. Pauli, i. 110) speaks of a king of Hungary riding out 'in the month of May,' adding-- 'This king with noble purueiance Hath for him-selfe his chare [_car_] arayed, Wherein he wolde ryde _amayed_,' &c. that is, wherein he wished to ride _a-Maying_. Again (in bk. v, ed. Chalmers, p. 124, col. 2, or ed. Pauli, ii. 132) we read of a drunken priest losing his way:-- 'This prest was dronke, and _goth a-strayed_'; i. e. he goes a-straying, or goes astray. The explanation of this construction I take to be this; the _-ed_ was not really a sign of the past participle, but a corruption of the ending _-eth_ (A. S._-að_) which is sometimes found at the end of a verbal substantive. Hence it is that, in the passage from Piers Plowman above quoted, one of the best and earliest MSS. actually reads 'folk that gon a-beggeth.' And again, in another passage (P. Pl., C. ix. 246) is the phrase 'gon abrybeth,' or, in some MSS., 'gon abrybed,' i. e. go a-bribing or go a-thieving, since Mid. Eng. _briben_ often means to rob. This form is clearly an imitation of the form _a-hunteth_ in the old phrase _gon a-hunteth_ or _riden an honteth_, used by Robert of Gloucester (Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 14, l. 387):-- 'As he _rod an honteth_, and par-auntre [h]is hors spurnde.'