Transcriber’s Notes:
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redits: This e-text was scanned, re-formatted and edited with extra notes byDonal O’ Danachair (kodak_seaside@hotmail.com). I would like to acknowledge thehelp of Edwin Duncan, Juris Lidaka and Aniina Jokinnen in identifying some ofthe poems no Longer attributed to Chaucer. This e-text, with its notes, ishereby placed in the public domain. Preface: The preface is for a combined volume of poems by Chaucer and EdmundSpenser. The Spenser poems will shortly be available as a separate E-text. Spelling and punctuation: These are the same as in the book as far as possible.Accents have been removed. Diereses (umlauts) have been removed from Englishwords and replaced by “e” in German ones. The AE and OE digraphs have beentranscribed as two letters. The British pound (currency) sign has been replacedby a capital L. Greek words have been transliterated. Footnotes: The original book has an average of 30 footnotesper page. These were of three types:(A) Glosses or explanations of obsolete words and phrases.These have been treated as follows:1. In the poems, they have been moved up into the right-handmargin. Some of them have been shortened or paraphrased inorder to fit.Explanations of single words have a single asterisk at theend of the word and at the beginning of the explanation*. *like thisIf two words in the same line have explanationsthe first* has one and the second**, two. *like this **and thisExplanations of phrases have an asterisk at thestart and end *of the phrase* and of the explanation *like this*Sometimes these glosses wrap onto the next line, still in theright margin. If you read this e-text using a monospaced font(like Courier in a word processor such as MS Word, or thedefault font in most text editors) then the marginal notes areright-justified.2. In the prose tales, they have been imbedded into the text insquare brackets after the word or phrase they refer to [like this].(B) Etymological explanations of these words. These areindicted by a number in angle brackets in the marginalgloss.* The note will be found at the *like this <1>end of the poem or section.(C) Longer notes commenting on or explaining the text. Theseare indicated in the text by numbers in angle brackets thus: <1>.The note will be found at the end of the poem or section. Latin: Despite his declared aim of editing the tales “for popular perusal”,Purves has left nearly all Latin quotations untranslated. I have translatedthem as well as I could — any errors are my fault, not his.
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