ant in the Huth Collections--the true title being 'Ane Complaint vpon
Fortoun;' beginning 'Inconstant world, fragill and friuolus.'"

[112] Nares quotes from Chapman's _May Day_, "Lord, how you roll in your
_rope-ripe_ terms." Minshew explains the word as "one ripe for a rope,
or for whom the gallows groans." I find the expression "to rowle in
their ropripe termes" in William Bullein's rare and curious "Dialogue
both pleasaunt and pietiful," 1573, p. 116.

[113] A very common term for a pimp.

[114] "Bale of dice"--a pair of dice; the expression occurs in the
_New Inn_, I. 3, &c.

[115] This song is set to music in an old collection by Ravenscroft,
1614.

[116] More usually written "mammets," i.e., puppets (_Rom. & Jul_.
iii. 5; though, no doubt, in _Hen. IV_., ii. 3, Gifford was right
in connecting the word with Lat. mamma).

[117] Cf. Drayton's _Fairy Wedding_:--

"Besides he's deft and wondrous airy,
And of the noblest of the fairy!
Chiefe of the Crickets of much fame
In fairy a most ancient name."

So in _Merry Wives_, v. 5, l. 47.

[118] Quy. What kind o' God, &c.

[119] "There is a kind of crab-tree also or _wilding_ that in like
manner beareth twice a yeare." Holland's Plinie, b. xvi.

[120] "Assoyle" usually = _absolve_; here _resolve, explain_.

[121] The italics are my own, as I suppose that the four lines were
intended to be sung.

[122] 4to. It is, it is not, &c.

[123] The sense of "fine, rare," rather than that of "frequent,
abundant" (as Nares explains), would seem to suit the passages in
Shakespeare and elsewhere where the word is used colloquially.

[124] "Sib" = akin. Possibly the word still lingers in the North
Country: Sir Walter Scott uses it in the _Antiquary_, &c.

[125] "Wonning" sc. dwelling (Germ. wohnen). Spenser frequently uses
the word.

[126] A Spenserian passage (as Mr. Collier has pointed out): vid. F.Q.,
B. 2. C. xii. 71.

[127] 4to. then.

[128] 4to. And here she woman.

[129] "Caul" = part of a lady's head-dress: "reticulum crinale vel
retiolum," Withals' Dictionarie, 1608 (quoted by Nares).

[130] "The battaile. The Combattantes Sir Ambrose Vaux, knight, and
Glascott the Bayley of Southwarke: the place the Rule of the Kings
Bench."

[131] In some copies the name "John Kirke" is given in full.

[132] _Bottom_ = a ball of worsted. George Herbert in a letter to his
mother says: "Happy is he whose _bottom_ is wound up, and laid ready
for wo