This old proverb, with Latin version, occurs in MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. O. 2. 45, and is quoted by Mr. T. Wright in his Essays on England in the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 168. Cf. Cotgrave's F. Dict. s. v. _Oeillet_. 'Das Feld hat Augen, der Wald hat Ohren'; Ida von Düringsfeld, Sprichwörter, vol. i. no. 453. 1524. _at unset stevene_, at a meeting not previously fixed upon, an unexpected meeting or appointment. This was a proverbial saying, as is evident from the way in which it is quoted in Sir Eglamour, 1282 (Thornton Romances, p. 174):-- '_Hyt ys sothe seyde_, be God of heven, Mony metyn at on-sett stevyn.' Cf. 'Wee may chance to meet with Robin Hood Here _att some unsett steven_.' Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne; in Percy's Reliques of Eng. Poetry. [72] 'Thei _setten steuen_,' they made an appointment; Knight de la Tour-Landry, ch. iii. And see below, The Cokes Tale: 'And ther they _setten steven_ for to mete'; A. 4383. 1531. _hir queynte geres_, their strange behaviours. 1532. Now in the top (i. e. elevated, in high spirits), now down in the briars (i. e. depressed, in low spirits). 'Allas! where is this worldes stabilnesse? _Here up, here doune_; here honour, here repreef; Now hale, now sike; now bounté, now myscheef.' Occleve, De Reg. Princip. p. 2. 1533. _boket in a welle._ Cf. Shakespeare's Richard II., iv. 1. 184. 'Like so many buckets in a well; as one riseth another falleth, one's empty, another's full.'--Burton's Anat. of Mel. p. 33. 1536. _gery_, changeable; so also _gerful_ in l. 1538. Observe also the sb. _gere_, a changeable mood, in ll. 1372, 1531, and Book of the Duchesse, 1257. This very scarce word deserves illustration. Mätzner's Dictionary gives us some examples. 'By revolucion and turning of the yere A _gery_ March his stondis doth disclose, Nowe reyne, nowe storme, nowe Phebus bright and clere.' Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 24. 'Her _gery_ Iaces,' their changeful ribands; Richard Redeless, iii. 130. 'Now _gerysshe_, glad and anoon aftir wrothe.' Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 245. 'In _gerysshe_ Marche'; id. 243. '_Gerysshe_, wylde or lyght-headed'; Palsgrave's Dict., p. 313. In Skelton's poem of Ware the Hauke (ed. Dyce, i. 157) we find:-- 'His seconde hawke wexid _gery_, And was with flying wery.' Dyce, in his note upon the word, quotes two passages from Lydgate's Fall of Princes, B. iii. c. 10. leaf 77, and B. vi. c. 1. leaf 134. 'Howe _gery_ fortune, furyous and wode.' 'And, as a swalowe _geryshe_ of her flyghte, Twene slowe and swyfte, now croked, now upright.' Two more occur in the same, B. iii. c. 8, and B. iv. c. 8. 'The _gery_ Romayns, stormy and unstable.' 'The _geryshe_ quene, of chere and face double.' See also in his Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. B 6, back, col. 2; &c.