4-5 Madge Mumblecrust a toothless character from Udall’s play Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1553)

6 kennels gutters noisome annoying

9 bandog and bedlam roar like a furious madman. A bandog was ‘A dog tied or chained up, either to guard a house, or on account of its ferocity; hence gen. a mastiff, bloodhound’ (O.E.D.), and a bedlam was a madman; see note to 1.213.

15 Let . . . it i.e. comparing his face to a pig’s head being readied for cooking

16 souse-wife woman who washes and pickles pigs’ trotters and offal

21 towards starting

24 clowns rustics

27 can you see to rise? is it light enough for you to get up? (said sarcastically)

Trip and go the name of a morris dance; used here with the sense of ‘act quickly’.

30 marvel wonder

31 yawling noisy racket

33 privy secret (with a pun: ‘privy’ could also mean ‘toilet’)

34 swinge . . . stirrup beat her with a strap (see 1.181)

36-41 Der . . . mannekin ‘There was a boor from Gelderland, merry they be; he was so drunk he could not stand, pissed they all be; clink once the cannikin, drink, pretty mannikin’. The Dutch had a reputation in England as uncouth drinkers; as Parr notes, ‘boer’, the Dutch word for farmer, had already acquired the modern sense of ‘boor’.

41 schone ed. (scheue Q1)

43 Saint Hugh’s bones shoemaker’s tools; see Introduction, pp. xvii, xx.

44 uplandish foreign (with a possible malapropism on the ‘Low Countries’)

45 gibble-gabble incoherent chatter

50 butter-box common derogatory term for Dutchmen, who were supposed to be great gluttons

66 gallimaufry a hot pot of various meats, hence a hotch-potch; used here contemptuously.

68 Goeden . . . oak ‘Good day, master, and you mistress too’

69 ‘Nails by God’s nails (i.e. of the Cross); a frequent expletive after like

71 Yaw . . . skomaker ‘Yes, yes, I am a shoemaker’

77-8 Yaw . . . cleane ‘Yes, yes, don’t you fear. I have all the things for making shoes large

and small’; cleane, see German ‘klein’, i.e. small. 81 mystery craft, also guild association; see Introduction, p. xvi. cordwainers see note on 1.212

82 Ick . . . niet ‘I don’t know what you are saying; I don’t understand you’

verstaw (Q2; vestaw Q1)

84 Yaw . . . doen ‘Yes, yes, yes; I can do that well’

87 double extra-strong

93 trullibubs slutty guts; Eyre’s neologism, combining ‘trillibub’ (entrails, tripe) with ’trull’ (whore). 95 Use thyself Be

98 Gargantua the prodigiously hungry giant of Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel

99 heelblock a small block used to attach a heel to a shoe; possibly used here as slang for a round of drinks.

101-2 O . . . freelicke ‘O, I understand you: I must buy a half dozen cans. Here, boy, take this shilling, fill us up freely’

103 snipper-snapper ‘A young insignificant or conceited fellow’ (O.E.D.)

104 last of the fives little one; last is a wooden model for a shoe, and the size-five ‘last’ would be amongst the smallest.