p. 27, l. 939. This kind of prayer or apostrophe addressed to the God of War is certainly taken from another English work, which I am unable to trace, but which must have been much known at the time of our author, as we find it referred to in different authors. That it has been taken from another poem is proved by some phrases of this prayer which are somewhat obscure or rather unintelligible here, and which we certainly should be able to explain if we knew the original context in which they occurred. Then the form «hase» (l. 940) is somewhat suspicious, as it is the only instance of the 2nd person singular present dropping the «t», which it has always in this poem. The arrangement, too, of the following stanzas differs from that generally observed in the «Sowdan». If we consider our poem as composed in eight-line stanzas (but see «Introduction», p. xl) we mostly find the 1st and 3rd lines rhyming together, then the 2nd and 4th, the 5th and 7th, and finally the 6th and 8th, so that «four» different rhyme-endings are necessary to one stanza. If now we consider the stanza from l. 939 to 946, we only have two rhyme-endings, all the pair lines rhyming together, and all the odd ones [p112] together. In ll. 947 to 950 the 1st and 4th rhyme together, whilst the 2nd and 3rd are paired off together.—ll. 939–941 we find alluded to in «Chaucer», see «Introduction», p. xlvi, and the «Prioress’s Tale», ed. Skeat (Clarendon Press), p. xvii. Compare also Lindsay, «The Historie of Squyer Meldrum», l. 390: “Like Mars, the God Armipotent.” p. 27, l. 939. «rede Mars.» “Bocaccio uses the same epithet in the opening of his Teseide: ‘O rubiconde Marte.’ «Rede» refers to the colour of the planet.” Morris, note to «Knight’s Tale», l. 889.