line is the first hint that Actyf is a boaster: he will continue to speak in a way that inflates his own importance.
197–99 Munstracye … þe more: The statement makes better sense in Schmidt and Pearsall, who do not put a comma at the end of 197. “I don’t know much minstrelsy except how to make men happy, and welcome God’s guests, with wafers, as a waferer; because of my work all, both the less and the great, laugh and are happy.” Actyf’s account is calculated to emphasize the superiority of his minstrelsy to the ordinary sort: it appeals to a deeper need and brings a deeper pleasure; it abets God’s work of hospitality; it reaches a wider audience, the less as well as the great, the poor as well as the rich. But the recompense is worse.
198 godes gestes: Everyday people, alluding to Luke’s parable of the Great Supper or Matthew’s of the Son’s Wedding. In both the host stands for God; in the first (Luke 14:16–24), once the original guests bail, the invitation goes out to “the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame”; in the second (Matt 22:1–14, which L draws on in the excuses made to Piers, 7.292–304 and quotes at 12.47–49 [B.11.112–14] and B.15.464), the king finally tells his servants to go into the highways and invite “as many as you shall find,” and they gather “all that they found, both bad and good.” As Gregory says, commenting on the Luke, “hos itaque elegit Deus quos despicit mundus” (PL 76.169; and so God chose those whom the world despised). The phrases þe lasse and þe more and the pore and the ryche in the next two lines may echo Matthew’s “both bad and good”; cf. 214 and B.13.239–42. Welcome godes gestes thus means the same thing (in Actyf’s bloated way of talking) as make men merye in the previous line.
The phrase has universally been taken, however—e.g., by Skeat, Pearsall, Schmidt—to mean “welcome God’s guests to the Communion table,” since (they all say) waferers provided communion wafers—though OED does not give this meaning of “wafer” until 1559; MED gives it, but none of its many citations support it (unless the present line is thought to do so). In L’s time wafers were worldly delicacies such as Absolon sent Alison “pipyng hoot out of the gleede,” MillT A3379. They were thin sweet crisp pastries, probably with a honeycomb pattern imparted by the wafering irons, modern French gaufres, like our waffles, ultimately the same word, which meant honeycomb. (Cf. DML, s.v. wafrarius: “1313 Willelmo P. wafrario regis et E. consorti suae, menestrallis servientibus de waffr’ suis ad mensas dominorum” [To William P., the king’s waferer, and to E. his wife, servers who serve their wafers at the tables of lords]). And even if waferers did supply churches, how would doing that elevate Actyf to the function of welcoming communicants? (“Welcome” may not be a verb at all but an adjective, depending on “make” in the preceding line: “As a waferer, I make men merry, and God’s guests welcome, with wafers”; but in either case the meaning is the same.)
A check of “hospites Dei” and similar Latin phrases in the PL online yields sporadic appearances in varying contexts, but nothing at all associated with Communion except this one: Honorius Augustodensis says that at Mass the celebrant and the people together are “hospites unius Domini,” guests of one Lord (Sacramentarium, PL 172.767); this may be a bit of evidence for the traditional interpretation of Actyf’s phrase. Meantime, MED, s,v, gest 1 (b) glosses “goddes gest” as “stranger,” citing this line, perhaps also with reference to Jesus’s two parables. In sum, Actyf’s wafers make people feel good, and there is probably nothing here about Communion at all.
201 (B.13.227) robes … forrede gounes, 203 (B.13.229) mantel: On the common aristocratic practice of making gifts of clothing (from which L himself may occasionally have benefited, or for which he may have wished), see B.14.25, 16.358 (B.15.233); also 7.84 and the end of the Summoner’s Tale, D2293; Cutts 1922:297; John Baldwin 1997:636n5, 640; Southworth 1989:58–59, and Crawford 2004. Chaucer’s Clerk’s preference of books over “robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie” (A296) may suggest that he might have chosen to become a minstrel instead.
202 (B.13.228) lye: Tell stories; see telle … gestes two lines later; Prol. 50 (B.Prol.49, A.Prol.49), B.Prol.51; 7.82 (B.13.422). John Baldwin 1997:639 cites the canonist Rufinus, who “defined ystriones (actors) as ystoriones (storytellers) who by transforming their faces and clothing created images that provided laughter, thus telling a ystoria (story) corporally.” Actually Actyf’s consistent hyperbolic mode makes clear that he does indeed know how to lie.
204–7 (B.13.230–33) tabre … syngen with þe geterne: Skeat provides a wealth of information about these skills. He primly passes over farting, but Pearsall fills in for him; see both. (Pearsall and Larry Benson have both delivered funny lectures on farting in Middle English literature, but I regret that I was not present for either. For attestation by those who were, see Shanzer 2009 [Pearsall] and Barney 2001:112 [Benson]). Tabre: play drums; trompy: play a horn; genteliche pipe: Kane, Glossary, says “sweetly” pipe, but perhaps “pipe like gentlefolk” such as Chaucer’s Squire, “syngynge … or floytynge al the day,” A91; sayle: dance or leap, AF sailler, Latin saltare. L may well have seen all these skills at the great houses he visited, though they could come from books, too, since lists of various kinds of performance were frequent in moral writers as far back as Ambrose and Augustine through Peter the Chanter, Thomas of Chobham, and John of Salisbury. Interestingly, the moralists have little use for dancers but go easy on instrumentalists, and especially string players (Page 1989:24–33), so that Actyf might have gained most credit had he learned fiddle, harp, psaltery, or guitar.
208–13 Y haue … hate (B.13.234–37 I haue … waiten): 210–11: “My only satisfaction is that the parish priest prays for me on Sundays; otherwise, I regret that I bother to sow or plant for anyone but myself.” This is the so-called “bidding prayer,” more properly “the bidding of the bedes,” i.e., the praying of the prayers. It is fully described in Duffy 1992:124–25; The Lay Folks Mass Book gives five examples from York on pp. 61–80; many more are in Coxe 1840. On Sunday only, before the offertory the priest would turn to the people and call, in English, for prayers for a whole series of people—the king, the bishop, benefactors of the parish, and so on, including, regularly, “al land tilland” (The Lay Folks Mass Book, ed. Simmons 1879: 65, 70, 78). The prayer requested was the Paternoster (and sometimes also a Hail Mary); thus B.13.236. Of course the Paternoster itself includes the petition, “give us this day our daily bread,” so that to say that prayer for land-tillers is particularly apt. Thus his point is not finally to complain that his only reward is that he gets prayed for, but to acknowledge that people need him and recognize that they need him. (Sowe or sette 211, like mete [food] and drynke 215, is yet another instance of Actyf’s habit of stretching the truth: here he extends his activity beyond just selling wafers to the whole business of food production.) þat ydelnesse hate: Cf. Ymaginatyf’s similar self-introduction, “ydel was y neuere” 14.1 (B.12.1), but in Actyf’s case a pleonasm, already stated in B at line 225 above: if your name is Actyf, you hate idleness. B.13.237 and þat hym profit waiten: and those who look for profit from him (i.e., me).
215 (B.13.240) Mihelmasse to Mihelmasse: “Michaelmas (September 29), the feast of St Michael and all Angels, marked the beginning and ending of the husbandman’s year. At that time harvest was over, and the bailiff or reeve of the manor would be making out the accounts for the year…. At once after Michaelmas, if not before, the planting of the new field of rye and wheat would begin, the field which had lain fallow during the year past” (Homans 1941:354). Homans was writing of the thirteenth century, but clearly the custom continued.
215 drynke: I.e., beer and ale, made from grain.
B.13.242 folk wiþ brode crounes: Parish priests with their
