235. Skeat equates #scumes# with Icel. skūmi, twilight, and translates, ‘like twilight-shadows (they) mislead (us),’ which is fanciful. #Scumes# may be miswriting for _scunnes_, which would represent OE. #scēones#, #scȳness#, suggestion, temptation, as in ‘deofol þonne þurh þa attor berendan næddran mid hire þære yfelan scéonesse . . . beswác þone ærestan wifmon,’ BH 3/17. The sense would be, as temptation they mislead. But more probably the place is corrupt, and the original may simply have had, as cwen us forteoþ, with an allusion to Eve’s bad counsel. 237. Björkman, 14, thinks that this proverb was originally Scandinavian, and it adds point to understand #cold# in the meaning, disastrous, of the Icelandic version. Comp. ‘Wommennes counseils been ful ofte colde,’ Chaucer, C. T., B 4446. ‘Mulier cum sola cogitat, male cogitat,’ Syrus 87/335. 240, 241. Skeat’s version, ‘I do not say this because a good woman is not a good thing,’ shows that he takes #for þan þat# together, which is contrary to the metrical stress on #þan# and gives no sufficient sense: #for þan#, is, therefore, i.e. in spite of all the hard things I have said about women: #hit# is an anticipatory object, which is expanded in the object clause, #þat . . . wymmon#. The scribe deleted _n_ before #ys#, Skeat restores it; T also has #is#, for which Skeat substitutes [n]is, quoting, ‘Hic ne sige nout byþan | þat moni ne ben gentile man,’ T 665. I think that what the scribe wrote should be retained. It is clear that the relation between a negative principal clause and its dependent object clause was often in ME. very loose and illogical. Comp. ‘For sco was traist and duted noght, | þat godds wil ne suld be wroght,’ CM 12321; ‘Ne doð ham no þing swo wo | . . . | swo ꝥ hi niten, ꝥ here þine | ne sal habben ende,’ Poema Morale, MS. D. 140 (see 46/290); ‘ihc nas na wurdra[;] þenne ich nes weldinde,’ L 3466; also 100/104. ‘Ðat ne forȝeit ðu naure · þat ðu godd ne heriȝe,’ 93/149, means, That forget thou never that thou honour God; what is more natural than to leave out the negative, if the contrary meaning is required? Our text may be paraphrased, Whatever I have said about women in general, I do not say it with reference to the proposition that a good woman is a good thing. For the sentiment comp. ‘Femina raro bona, sed que bona digna corona,’ Prov. Hein. 65; ‘Femina pauca bona est; si forte inveneris ullam, | De celo cecidit, tessella caractere miro,’ Fecunda Ratis 153/919. 242. #þe mon þe#, for the man who. #icouere#, &c. win her from his rivals. 244. Repeated from 21/108. 245. Comp. ‘Nulla sevior pestis quam familiaris hostis. Nis non werse fo[;] þene frakede fere,’ OEH ii. 189/33; ‘Gravior est inimicus, qui latet in pectore,’ Syrus 79/200. 246. #vayre . . . frakele#: see 23/172 note.