Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 | Page 2

drawn attention.
The first is, that, "with respect to the time of year at which the tournament takes place, there seems to be an inconsistency." Theseus fixes "this day fifty wekes" from the fourth of May, as the day on which the final contention must come off, and yet the day previous to the final contention is afterwards alluded to as "the lusty seson of that May," which, it is needless to say, would be inconsistent with an interval of fifty ordinary weeks.
But fifty weeks, if taken in their literal sense of 350 days, would be a most unmeaning interval for Theseus to fix upon,--it would almost require explanation as much as the difficulty itself: it is therefore much easier to suppose that Chaucer meant to imply the interval of a solar year. Why he should choose to express that interval by fifty, rather than by fifty-two, weeks, may be surmised in two ways: first, because the latter phrase would be unpoetical and unmanageable; and, secondly, because he might fancy that the week of the Pagan Theseus would be more appropriately represented by a lunar quarter than by a Jewish hebdomad.
Chaucer sometimes makes the strangest jumble--mixing up together Pagan matters and Christian, Roman and Grecian, ancient and modern; so that although he names Sunday and Monday as two of the days of the week in Athens, he does so evidently for the purpose of introducing the allocation of the hours, alluded to before, to which the planetary names of the days of the week were absolutely necessary. But in the fifty weeks appointed by Theseus, the very same love of a little display of erudition would lead Chaucer to choose the hebdomas lun?, or lunar quarter, which the Athenian youth were wont to mark out by the celebration of a feast to Apollo on every seventh day of the moon. But after the first twenty-eight days of every lunar month, the weekly reckoning must have been discontinued for about a day and a half (when the new moon was what was called "in coitu," or invisible), after which a new reckoning of sevens would recommence. Hence there could be but four hebdomades in each lunar month; and as there are about twelve and a half lunar months in a solar year, so must there have been fifty lunar weeks in one solar year.
It will explain many anomalies, even in Shakspeare, if we suppose that our early writers were content to show their knowledge of a subject in a few particulars, and were by no means solicitous to preserve, what moderns would call keeping, in the whole performance.
The next difficulty, adverted to by [Greek: e]., is the mention of the THIRD as the morning upon which Palamon "brake his prison," and Arcite went into the woods "to don his observaunce to May."
There is not perhaps in the whole of Chaucer's writings a more exquisite passage than that by which the latter circumstance is introduced; it is well worth transcribing:--
"The besy larke, the messager of day, Sal[=e]weth in hire song the morw[=e] gray; And firy Phebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient laugheth at the sight; And with his strem[=e]s drieth in the greves The silver drop[=e]s hanging on the leves."
Such is the description of the morning of the "thridde of May;" and perhaps, if no other mention of that date were to be found throughout Chaucer's works, we might be justified in setting it down as a random expression, to which no particular meaning was attached. But when we find it repeated in an entirely different poem, and the same "observaunce to May" again associated with it, the conviction is forced upon us that it cannot be without some definite meaning.
This repetition occurs in the opening of the second book of Troilus and Creseide, where "the thridde" has not only "observaunce to May" again attributed to it, but also apparently some peculiar virtue in dreams. No sooner does Creseide behold Pandarus on the morning of the third of May, than "by the hond on hie, she tooke him fast," and tells him that she had thrice dreamed of him that night. Pandarus replies in what appears to have been a set form of words suitable to the occasion--
"Yea, nece, ye shall faren well the bet, If God wull, all this yeare."
Now unless the third of May were supposed to possess some unusual virtue, the dreaming on that morning could scarcely confer a whole year's welfare. But, be that as it may, there can at least be no doubt that Chaucer designedly associated some celebration of the advent of May with the morning of the third of that month.
Without absolutely asserting that my explanation is the true one, I may nevertheless suggest it until some better may be offered. It is,