ticle in "Anglia," vol. xv. p. 478). A MS.
in French: "La Reule des femmes religieuses et recluses," disappeared in
the fire of the Cottonian Library. The ladies for whom this book was
written lived at Tarrant Kaines, in Dorset, where a convent for monks
had been founded by Ralph de Kaines, son of one of the companions of the
Conqueror. It is not impossible that the original text was the French
one; French fragments subsist in the English version. The anonymous
author had taken much trouble about this work. "God knows," he says, "it
would be more agreeable to me to start on a journey to Rome than begin
to do it again." A journey to Rome was not then a pleasure trip.

[338] P. 53, Morton's translation. The beginning of the quotation runs
thus in the original: "Hwoso hevede iseid to Eve theo heo werp hire eien
therone, A! wend te awei! thu worpest eien o thi death! Hwat heved heo
ionswered? Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me? The
eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto biholden."

[339] "Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus temporis solam invenies, ante cujus
fenestram non anus garrula vel nugigerula mulier sedeat quae eam fabulis
occupet, rumoribus aut detractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monachi
vel clerici, vel alterius cujuslibet ordinis viri formam, vultum,
moresque describat. Illecebrosa quoque interserat, puellarum lasciviam,
viduarum, quibus libet quidquid libet, libertatem, conjugum in viris
fallendis explendisque voluptatibus astutiam depingat. Os interea in
risus cachinnosque dissolvitur, et venenum cum suavitate bibitum per
viscera membraque diffunditur." "De vita eremetica Liber," cap. iii.,
Reclusarun cum externis mulieribus confabulationes; in Migne's
"Patrologia," vol. xxxii. col. 1451. See above, p. 153. Aelred wrote
this treatise at the request of a sister of his, a sister "carne et
spiritu."

[340]

De le franceis, ne del rimer
Ne me dait nuls hom blamer,
Kar en Engleterre fu ne
E norri ordine et aleve.

Furnivall, "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne," &c., Roxburghe Club,
1862, 4to, p. 413.

[341] French text of the "Chateau" in Cooke, "Carmina Anglo-Normannica,"
1852, Caxton Society; English versions in Horstmann and Furnivall, "The
minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," Early English Text Society, 1892, pp.
355, 407; Weymouth: "Castell off Love ... an early English translation
of an old French poem by Robert Grosseteste," Philological Society,
18