medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 11:41 PM +0000 12/29/06, Desmond Swords wrote:
>I am trying to find out the meaning of middle english words and have found
>an online dictionary, but it doesn't have the word "cairen" in it.
>
>This is in line 29 of Piers Plowman by Langland and reads
>
>29 - Coveiten noght in contree to cairen aboute ...
Welcome to the list!
See the note on line 31 of the prologue in volume 2 of Skeat's edition:
http://tinyurl.com/yxllbe (Google Books digitization)
Stratmann's ME dictionary, s.v.:
http://tinyurl.com/yb7sqr (also at Google Books)
and for confirmation from a more modern source (or at least one more
recently revised), the OED s.v. cair:
1. intr. A poetic word for 'to go, proceed, make one's way': perh.
orig. to drive, convey (oneself).
Best,
John
--
*** John McChesney-Young ** panis~at~pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***
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