stanzas, in which
every stanza has a burden after the Lidgate manner. The recurrence of
this burden no doubt caused copyists to lose their place, and so the
stanza came to be omitted in other copies. Its omission, however, spoils
the ballad. Both it and the curious lines in Piers Ploughmans Crede,

"For aungells and arcangells / all [th]ei whijt vse[th]
And alle aldermen / [th]at ben _ante tronum_,

"i.e. all the elders before the throne, allude to Rev. iv. 10. This Crede
passage has special reference to the _Carmelites_ or _White_ Friars.

"The first two leaves of the Oriel copy are misplaced inside out at the
end; but this is not the only misarrangement. The poem has evidently
been copied into this MS. from an older copy having a leaf capable of
containing _six stanzas at a time_; which leaves were out of order.
Hence the poem in the Oriel MS. is written in the following order, as
now bound up, Stanzas 11 (l. 5)-18, 25-30, 37-42, 19-24, 49-54, 31-36,
43-48, 55-76, 8-11 (l. 4), 4 (l. 5)-7, 1-4 (l. 4)."

As an instance of a word improved by the Oriel text, may be cited the
'_brecheles_ feste' of Caxton's and Hill's texts, l. 66, and l. 300,

ffor truste ye well ye shall you not excuse
ffrom _brecheles feste_, & I may you espye
Playenge at any game of rebawdrye.--_Hill_, l. 299-301.

Could it be 'profitless,' from A.-Sax. _brec_, gain, profit; or
'breechless,' a feast of birch for the boy with his breeches off? The
latter was evidently meant, but it was a forced construction. The Oriel
_byrcheley_ set matters right at once.

Another passage I cannot feel sure is set at rest by the Oriel text.
Hill's and Caxton's texts, when describing the ill-mannered servant
whose ways are to be avoided, say of him, as to his hair, that he is

Absolon with disheveled heres smale,
lyke to a prysoner of saynt Malowes,[1]
_a sonny busshe able to the galowes_.--_Hill_, l. 462.

[Footnote 1: An allusion to the strong castle built at St Malo's by
Anne, Duchess of Bretayne.--Dyce.]

For the last line the Oriel MS. reads,

_a sonny bush myght cause hym to goo louse_,

and Mr Skeat says,--"This is clearly the right reading, of which
_galowes_ is an unmeaning corruption. The poet is speaking of the
_dirty_ state of a bad and ill-behaved servant. He is as dirty as a man
come out of St Malo's prison; a sunny bush would cause him to go and
free himself from minute attendants. A 'sunny bush'