810. and oure othes swore: i.e. and we swore our oaths and prayed him, etc. It is too frequent a practice with our author to omit the governing pronoun before his verbs. See below, B 621-23:

"But nathelees, ther was gret moornyng Among the peple, and seyn they kan nat gesse That she had doon so gret a wikkednese. Where 'and seyn' is for 'and they seyn.' (Adapted from Tyrwhitt.)

815. And sette a soper at a certeyn pris: i.e. a festival supper on their return, at which the teller of the best story would be the guest and the other pilgrims pay their own reckonings and his as well. The fact that it was to be a special entertainment explains the arrangement as to cost, without obliging us to suppose with Professor Corson that the bills mentioned in 1. 760 had been too high.

817. In heigh and lough: it would seem enough to explain high and low as equivalent to “in things both great and small, i.e. in all respects, but Tyrwhitt assures us that ‘de alto et basso' and ‘haut et bas' are respectively medieval Latin and French expressions "of entire submission on one side and sovereignty on the other."

823. oure aller cok, the cock, or waker, of us all.

825. a litel moore than paas: i.e. at rather more than a walking pace, cp. A 2897, of the procession at the funeral of Arcite:
"And riden forth a paas with sorweful cheere," and Troilus, ii. 626-7:

"And wounded was his hors, and gan to blede, On whiche he rood a pas, ful softely," quotations which prove the existence of this sense. On the other hand, in 1535, in Coverdale's version of the Bible 'apace' has undoubtedly its modern meaning 'quickly.'

826. Unto the wateryng of Seint Thomas: a brook near the second milestone on the Canterbury Road, where pilgrims watered their horses. In Tudor times, and perhaps earlier, Surrey criminals were hanged there as Middlesex ones at Tyburn. "In Carey's Map of 15 miles round London, so late as 1786, we have at the two milestone the Kent Road Watering's Bridge, a remnant of the old name" (Nares' Glossary, under the heading ‘Watering,' St. Thomas a).

829. I it yow recorde: Dr. Liddell follows MSS. E. Hn. and Camb. in omitting 'I,’but the ellipse is more awkward than in 1. 810.

830. If even-song and morwe-song accorde: if you will sing the same tune in the morning as you sang overnight.

838 etc. draweth ... cometh ... studieth: polite plural imperatives. Harry Baily is represented as very careful in using these in talking to the pilgrims of good position or special worth, but to the Pardoner, the Monk, the Nun's Priest, etc., he uses the unceremonious singular, and the poet is himself addressed in the same way: "'What man artow,' quod he," etc. (B 1885 sqq.). 841. He studieth noght. We are told of the Clerk (1. 304) "noght o word spak he moore than was neede," and so the Host took it for granted that he was always working out some philosophical problem: cp. E 1-5:

It was said of S. Thomas Aquinas that 'once when dining with the King of France' he fell into such a study, and woke from it only to strike his fist on the table and cry "They could never answer that," much to the King's delight.

844. by aventure, or sort, or cas: perhaps the three nearest equivalents we can propose for these words are 'luck, fate, and chance.'

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These notes are reproduced verbatim from Alfred W. Pollard, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: The Prologue, London: Macmillan, 1903. The book is in the public domain and available for viewing and download from Google Books. Although the book is old, the notes are enlightening and accurate. Nevertheless, users doing detailed research on aspects of the General Prologue should, if possible, also consult more recent notes in print publications such as The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.