_d_ 6. _Hobbe þe Robbere._ _Hob_ is a familiar form for _Robert_, and it has been suggested that _Hobbe þe Robbere_ may refer to Robert Hales, the Treasurer of England, who was executed by the rebels in 1381. But _Robert_ was a conventional name for a robber, presumably owing to the similarity of sound. Already in the twelfth century, Mainerus, the Canterbury scribe of the magnificent Bible now in the library of Sainte-Geneviève at Paris, plays upon it in an etymological account of his family: _Secundus_ (sc. _frater meus_) _dicebatur Robertus, quia a re nomen habuit: spoliator enim diu fuit et praedo_. From the fourteenth century lawless men were called _Roberts men_. In _Piers Plowman_ Passus v (A- and B-texts) there is a confession of 'Robert the Robber'; and the literary fame of the prince of highwaymen, 'Robin Hood', belongs to this period. _d_ 14. _do wel and bettre_: note this further evidence of the popularity of _Piers Plowman_, with its visions of _Dowel_, _Dobet_, and _Dobest_. XV _a_ 8. _Þe clot him clingge!_ 'May the clay cling to him!' i.e. 'Would he were dead!' _a_ 12. _Þider_: MS. _Yider_, and conversely MS. _Þiif_ 23 for _Yiif_ 'if'. _y_ and _þ_ are endlessly confused by scribes. _b_ 1. _Lenten ys come... to toune._ In the Old English _Metrical Calendar_ phrases like _cymeð... us to tune Martius reðe_, 'fierce March comes to town', are regular. The meaning is 'to the dwellings of men', 'to the world'. _b_ 3. _Þat_: construe with _Lenten_. _b_ 7. _him þreteþ_, 'chides', 'wrangles' (ON. _þrǽta_?). See the thirteenth-century debate of _The Thrush and the Nightingale_ (_Reliquiae Antiquae_, vol. i, pp. 241 ff.), of which the opening lines are closely related to this poem. _b_ 11. _Ant wlyteþ on huere wynter wele_, 'and look at their winter happiness (?)'. This conflicts with _huere wynter wo_ above; and the explanation that the birds have forgotten the hardships of the past winter and recall only its pleasures is forced. Holthausen's emendation _wynne wele_ 'wealth of joys' (cp. l. 35) is good. _b_ 20. _Miles_: a crux. It has been suggested without much probability that _miles_ means 'animals' from Welsh _mīl_. _b_ 28. _Deawes donkeþ þe dounes._ Of the suggestions made to improve the halting metre the best is _þise_ for _þe_. The poet is thinking of the sparkle of dew in the morning sun; cp. _Sir Gawayne_ 519 f.: _When þe donkande dewe dropeȝ of þe leueȝ To bide a blysful blusch of þe bryȝt sunne._ _b_ 29-30. 'Animals with their cries (_rounes_) unmeaning to us (_derne_), whereby they converse (_domes for te deme_).' For the weakened sense of _deme_ (_domes_) see note to V 115. _c_ 30. _Wery so water in wore_: the restless lover (l. 21) has tossed all night like the troubled waters in a _wore_; cp. _I wake so water in wore_ in another lyric of the same MS. It has been suggested that _wore_ = Old High German _wuor_ 'weir'; but the rimes in both passages show that the stem is OE. _wār_, not _wōr_.