382. The line is too long—a fault not uncommon where direct speech is introduced, e.g. l. 419 and I 78. Usually a correct line can be obtained by dropping words like _quath he_, which are not as necessary in spoken verse as they are where writing alone conveys the sense. But sometimes the flaw may lie in the forms of address: l. 382 would be normal without _Parfay_; l. 419 may once have been: _And seyd 'Lord, ȝif þi wille were'._ There is no task more slippery than the metrical reconstruction of ME. poems, particularly those of which the extant text derives from the original not simply through a line of copyists, but through a line of minstrels who passed on the verses from memory and by word of mouth. 388. The line seems to be corrupt, and, as usual, the Harleian and Ashmole MSS. give little help. _Ful_ can hardly be a sb. meaning 'multitude' from the adj. _full_. Some form of _fele_ (OE. _fela_) 'a great number' would give possible grammar and sense (cp. l. 401), but bad metre. Perhaps _ful_ should be deleted as a scribe's anticipation of _folk_ in the next line; for the construction _seiȝe... of folk_ cp. XVI 388; and _Hous of Fame_, Bk. iii, ll. 147 ff. 433. _Þei we nouȝt welcom no be_: Almost contemporary with _Sir Orfeo_ is the complaint of an English writer that the halls of the nobles stood open to a lawyer, but not to a poet: _Exclusus ad ianuam poteris sedere Ipse licet venias, Musis comitatus, Homere!_ 'Though thou came thyself, Homer, with all the Muses, thou mightst sit at the door, shut out!', T. Wright, _Political Songs_ (1839), p. 209. 446. _hadde he_, 'had she'. For _he_ (OE. _hēo_) = 'she' cp. l. 408. 450. 'Now ask of me whatsoever it may be'. The plots of mediaeval romances often depend on the unlimited promises of an unwary king, whose honour compels him to keep his word. So in the story of Tristram, an Irish noble disguised as a minstrel wins Ysolde from King Mark by this same device, but is himself cheated of his prize by Tristram's skill in music. 458. 'An ill-matched pair you two would be!' 479. The halting verse may be completed by adding _sum tyme_ before _his_, with the Harley and Ashmole MSS. 483. _ybilt_ of the MS. and editors cannot well be a pp. meaning 'housed'. I prefer to take _bilt_ as sb. = _bild_, _build_ 'a building'; and to suppose that _y_ has been miswritten for _ȳ_, the contraction for _yn_. 495. _gan hold_, 'held'; a good example of the ME. use of _gan_ + infinitive with the sense of the simple preterite. 515. An unhappy suggestion _home_ for the second _come_ has sometimes been accepted. But a careful Southern poet could not rime _home_ (OE. _hām_) and _some_ (OE. _sŭm_). See note to VI 224.