YEER

"I shouldn't like to sleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old woman.

And eek men broghte hym out of his contree, From yeer to yeer, ful pryvely his rente; But honestly and slyly he it spente, That no man wondred how that he it hadde.

For most of the story Beryn is a wayward gallant, of 'age of eightene yeer'.

As one almanac-maker wrote in 1593, should the world last 22,646 years, and should the calendar 'remaine so long unreformed', midsummer would fall on the winter solstice; thus 'processe of yeeres' would 'breede no small alteration of tyme'.(3)

In Boccaccio, the wife is described as a very beautiful woman ("assai bella femina," 1074) and her daughter is also beautiful, but graceful and young as well--15 or 16 years old ("una giovanetta bella e leggiadra, d'eta di quindici o di sedici anni"), while in Chaucer the wife is put down as having as much dignity as ditch water (she "was as digne as water in a dich," 3964) and the daughter is said to be both overweight--a "wenche thikke" (3973)--and over the hill ("twenty yeer," 3970).

In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, Geoffrey Chaucer "fond the point of my reule in the bordure upon the firste degre of Aries, a litel within the degre" in "the yeer of oure Lord 1391, the 12 day of March at midday," (158) nine days earlier than the vernal equinox used to calculate Easter.

This entry should therefore record the payment for the feast on the day of the wardens' accession, 'from the ffest of Seint Dunston the xxvj yeer of Kyng H.

It was "among the ancient Protestant Brit[o]ns in Wales, about the yeer of our Lord, 466" that "the Church Christian Orthodox and truly Catholike," so often the target of persecution, managed to turn the tables and "trample upon heresie." Godly bishops intervened and suppressed the Pelagian heresy in late fifth-century Britain.

Pandarus reassures her: "Ye, nece, yee shal faren wei the bet, / If God wol, al this yeer" (II.91-92).

With mr haywood I remayned three yeer and mor, in the which tym I learned to play on the virginals, the liut, and to mak english verses.(22)