There is a district called _St. Loye's_ in Bedford; a _Saint Loyes_ chapel [14] near Exeter; &c. Churchyard mentions 'sweete _Saynct Loy_'; Siege of Leith, st. 50. In Lyndesay's Monarchè, bk. ii. lines 2299 and 2367, he is called 'sanct _Eloy_.' In D. 1564, the carter prays to God and Saint Loy, joining the names according to a common formula; but the Prioress dropped the divine name. Perhaps she invoked _St. Loy_ as being the patron saint of goldsmiths; for she seems to have been a little given to a love of gold and corals; see ll. 158-162. Warton's notion, that _Loy_ was a form of _Louis_, only shews how utterly unknown, in his time, were the phonetic laws of Old French. Many more illustrations might be added; such as--'_By St. Loy_, that draws deep'; Nash's Lenten Stuff, ed. Hindley, p. xiv. 'God save her and _Saint Loye_'; Jack Juggler, ed. Roxburgh Club, p. 9; and see _Eligius_ in the Index to the Parker Society's publications. We already find, in Guillaume de Machault's Confort d'Ami, near the end, the expression:--'Car je te jur, par _saint Eloy_'; Works, ed. 1849, p. 120. The life of St. Eligius, as given in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, contains a curious passage, which seems worth citing:--'St. Owen relates many miracles which followed his death, and informs us that _the holy abbess_, St. Aurea, who was swept off by a pestilence, ... was advertised of her last hour some time before it, by a comfortable vision of _St. Eligius_.' See also Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed., p. 728. There is, perhaps, a special propriety in selecting _St. Loy_ for mention in the present instance. In an interesting letter in _The Athenæum_ for Jan. 10, 1891, p. 54, Prof. Hales drew attention to the story about St. Eligius cited in Maitland's Dark Ages, pp. 83-4, ed. 1853. When Dagobert asked Eligius to swear upon the relics of the saints, the bishop _refused_. On being further pressed to do so, he burst into tears; whereupon Dagobert exclaimed that he would believe him _without an oath_. Hence, to swear by St. Loy was to swear by one who refused to swear; and the oath became (at second-hand) no oath at all. See Hales, Folia Literaria, p. 102. At any rate, it was a very mild one for those times. Cf. Amis and Amiloun, 877:--'Than answered that maiden bright, And swore "by Jesu, ful of might."' 121. _cleped_, called, named; A. S. _cleopian_, _clypian_, to call. Cf. Sir David Lyndesay's Monarchè, bk. iii. l. 4663:-- 'The seilye Nun wyll thynk gret schame Without scho callit be _Madame_.' 122. 'She sang the divine service.' Here _sér-vic-è_ is trisyllabic, with a secondary accent on the last syllable. 123. _Entuned_, intoned. _nose_ is the reading of the best MSS. The old black-letter editions read _voice_ (wrongly). _semely_, in a seemly manner, is in some MSS. written _semily_. The _e_ is here to be distinctly sounded; _hertily_ is sometimes written for _hertely_. See ll. 136, 151. [15]