The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, Volume 2Langland, William
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The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, Volume 2
Langland, William
Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages -- Poetry
5801. _in a pryvee parlour._ 5803. _in a chambre with a chymenee._ This is
a curious illustration of contemporary manners. The hall was the apartment
in which originally the lord of the household and the male portion of the
family passed nearly all their time when at home, and where they lived in a
manner in public. The chambers were only used for sleeping, and as places
of retirement for the ladies, and had, at first, no fire-places
(_chymenees_), which were added, in course of time, for their comfort. The
parlour was an apartment introduced also at a comparatively late period,
and was, as its name indicates, a place for private conferences or
conversation. As society advanced in refinement, people sought to live less
and less in public, and the heads of the household gradually deserted the
hall, except on special occasions, and lived more in the parlour and in the
"chambre with a chymenee." With the absence of the lord from the hall, its
festive character and indiscriminate hospitality began to diminish; and the
popular agitators declaimed against this as an unmistakeable sign of the
debasement of the times.
5829. Ezech. xviii, 19.
5835. Galat. vi, 5.
5844. Pauli Epist. ad Rom. xii, 3.
5911. _seven artz._ In the scholastic system of the middle ages, the whole
course of learning was divided into seven arts, which were, grammar,
dialectics, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy. They were
included in the following memorial distich:--
Gram. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat,
Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, As. colit astra.
5963. _a baleys._ See before, the note on l. 2819.
5990. _Caton._ Distich. lib. i, 26.
6009. Galat. vi, 10.
6022. Epist. ad Rom. xii, 19.
6037. The second Trin. Coll. MS. reads here--
Experimentis of Alkenemye
Of Albertis makyng,
Nigromancie and permansie
The pouke to reisen,
Gif thou thenke, etc.
6146. Matth. vii, 3.
6179. Matth. xv, 14; Luke vi, 39; Mark (?)
6186. _mausede._ An error of the press for _mansede_. See the Glossary.
6191. _Offyn and Fynes_. Ophni and Phinees. See 1 Samuel iv. (in the
Vulgate called 1 Kings).
6199. Psal. xlix, 21.
6207. Isai. lvi, 10.
6217. The text of the Trin. Coll. MS. 2, differs very much from ours in
this part of the poem. Instead of 6217-6277, we have the following lines:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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