Heo maden certeyne covenaunt þat heo were al at on. — I. page 113.
The first phrase in Italics answers to quisque, the second to quidam, the third to unus. From the fourth, often repeated in this piece, comes ‘to set them at one again,’ and our word atonement. The Old English gleow had been hitherto seen as glew, gleu, and glie; it now approached its more long-lived form in gle. Makes (socii) is now seen as mates, II. 536. Formerly sceoppa had stood for a treasury; it was now degraded in meaning, and became our shop: it occurs in Robert's account of the riot at Oxford (he may have been an eye-witness), not long before the battle of Lewes.[1] It was a bowyer's shop that suffered; and this word is spelt bowiar: lawyer, collier, and such like forms were to follow.[2] The adjective bad (malus) is now first found; it has much puzzled the brains of antiquaries, for there seems to be no kindred word nearer to it than the Persian bud. Different explanations have also been given of Robert's new word, balledness (baldness); Mr. Dasent (Jest and Earnest, II. 70) talks of the God Baldr, who had a glorious whiteness of face.
Our poet uses the Norse word tome for otium; and this lasted down to the Fifteenth Century, when it was confused with time. We still say, ‘I have time’ (vacat mihi); the Scotch toom (vacuus) is well known. John Balliol was nicknamed Toom-tabard, which well hits off his gaudy emptiness; Robert talks of ‘5,000 poundes of sterlinges:’ this last word we owe to Germany.
