Scottish Text Society publications > New series > Kingis quair; together with A ballad of good counsel

NOTES TO THE KINGIS QUAIR (20, 21).
63
Thesiphone, Tisiphone. Our author was doubtless misled by
Chaucer, who invokes Tisiphone in the very first stanza of his
Troilus, thus:—
Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte
Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryte.
Chaucer knew very well that Tisiphone was one of the furies ; for
he invokes “ Megera, Alete, and eek Thesiphonee ” in the Proem
to his Troilus, book iv. But King James does not seem to have
remembered this, and doubtless assumed that Chaucer, in begin¬
ning his Troilus, must have invoked a Muse. Or, indeed, he may
have been misled by Lydgate ; see Schick’s note to the Temple
of Glass, 1. 958. The blunder is not one made by the scribe, as
Tytler supposes, but by the author. Hence the critics are wrong
in proposing to read Terpsichorej and most of all is Chalmers to
blame, who coolly substitutes Terpsichore in the text itself, without a
word of comment, or any hint as to the MS. reading! It need not
be added that Chalmers’s edition is, by a long way, the worst of all.
In nowmer ix, nine in number. Compare Chaucer, Troil. iii.
1809—
Ye sustren nyne eek, that by Elicone,
In hil Parnaso listen for tabyde.
In this processej guide my wayward wits in this undertaking.
For convoye, cf. Romaunt of the Rose, 2916; and see st. 71.
20. In vere, in spring. The poets are very fond of this con¬
ventional form of beginning. Compare the beginning of Chaucer’s
Prologue.
Synthius, Cynthius, the sun ; as in Ovid, Fasti, iii. 346.
A morow, in the morning.
Vpward his course; to drive his course upward in the sign of
Aries. By upward is meant Northward. The path of the sun
crosses the equatorial line at the vernal equinox, and then proceeds
northward, passing through the sign of Aries first. In Chaucer’s
time, as shown by his treatise On the Astrolabe, the vernal equinox
was on the 12th of March. In 1406, it was on the nth of March.
Consequently, King James is speaking of that day or of some day
nearly succeeding it. Compare notes to st. 191.
In ariete, in Aries. We have here the Latin phrase, the prep, in
being followed by the ablative case. But Ariete was also used for
the accus. Arietem, and hence as a general form for Aries. This
appears by the following phrase—viz., “out of this Ariete,” Chaucer,
Troil. iv. 1592 ; and again, id. v. 1190.
21. Foure greis evin, four degrees exactly, just four degrees.
The reference, in the present case, is to the apparent motion of the
sun, at the rate of one degree in four minutes. Our author is there¬
fore speaking of the sun being about sixteen minutes past mid-day.
Mr J. T. T. Brown notes that it was then apparent noon ; p. 54.