¹ Keightley had expressed the same opinion in 1834 (cf. Skeat's note, III, 463), but apparently without gaining a hearing.

² I have omitted Brandl's references.

¹ Dr. Skeat says (III, 474, n. 2), “This is Chaucer's ‘Sarra;'” but in none of the six texts of Chaucer is the name spelled Sarra. Scarcely more intelligible is the remark (v. 370), “And it is easy to see that, although Chaucer names Sarai, his description really applies to Cambaluc.” Chaucer nowhere describes Sarai; one feels that it must have been a fine city, but Chaucer does not say so; and if he had, why should his description apply rather to Cambaluc than to Kinsay, which, according to Polo, means “The City of Heaven” and “is beyond dispute the finest and noblest in the world?”—Marco Polo, ed. Yule, II, 145.

It is hypercritical to call attention to the fact that on “the laste Idus of March” Kublai, according to Polo, was never in his capital city: “After he has stopped at his capital city those three months that I mentioned, to wit, December, January and February, he starts off on the first day of March, and travels southward toward the Ocean Sea, a journey of two days” (M. P., I, 357-8). “And when he has travelled till he reaches a place called Cachar Modun, there he finds his tents pitched” (Ib. 359). “The Lord remains encamped there until the spring [the middle of May], and all that time he does nothing but go hawking” (Ib. 361).

² M. P., I, 4. Apparently the Polos were not at Sarai, but at Bolgara, cf. I, 5.

¹ “And so I will tell you about the Tartars of the Ponent and the lords who have reigned over them. The first lord of the Tartars of the Ponent was Sain, a very great and puissant king…. After King Sain reigned King Patu, and after Patu Barca, and after Barca Mungletemur, and after Mungletemur King Totamangul, and then Toctai the present sovereign. Now I have told you of the Tartar kings of the Ponent, and next I shall tell you of a great battle that was fought between Alau the Lord of the Levant and Barca the Lord of the Ponent” (II, 421). It is true, however, that Polo also speaks of “that Prince whose name was Cublay Kaan, Lord of the Tartars all over the earth” (I, 12), and of “this Cublay, who is the Lord of all the Tartars in the world, those of the Levant and of the Ponent included” (I, 217).

² “…. whilst he [sc. Chaucer] names Gengis Khan …. his description really applies to Kublai Khan, his grandson, the celebrated ‘Grand Khan’ described by Marco Polo.”—Skeat, v, 371. But so far as Chaucer's description applies to either, it applies equally well to Genghis; cf. Marco Polo, I, 209-216.

Why, if Chaucer used Polo, he did not take Kublai as his King does not appear. Kublai is praised again and again by Polo; cf., e. g., “ Cublai Kaan, who is the sovereign now reigning, and is more potent than any of the five who went before him; in fact, if you were to take all those five together, they would not be so powerful as he is. Nay, I will say yet more; for if you were to put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians,—aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot,—would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Cublay” (I, 217).

¹ Cf. p. 358, below.

² Dr. Skeat quotes only the words here italicized.

¹ It cannot be necessary to cite passages to prove that in mediæval literature any good person or thing is usually described as being unsurpassed in any region; typical instances are: King Arthur, Ywain and Gawain, vv. 11-14, Ottouyan, Dagabers and Marsabelle, Octavian, I, vv. 25 ff., 45 ff., II, 16 ff., 781 ff., Athelwold, Havelok, 27-109, and cf. Kölbing's note on Bevis, A 2047. This was moreover Chaucer's own practice.

² Polo's description of the palace and park (I, 324-7) is too long for quotation; but it has several characteristic features, not one of which is reproduced by Chaucer. On the feasts cf. below, p. 356. Brandl (see quotation, p. 349, above) speaks of “der baumgarten mit allerlei falken in der nähe des palastes;” but, so far as we know, the only falcon in the park of Cambyuskan was the faucon peregryn of fremde londe. It therefore seems hardly just to lay stress, as Dr. Skeat does (III, 474), upon the great number of falcons in Cathay, or even upon the particular description of peregrine falcons. The falcon was no rare bird in mediæval Europe; he flies through most of the romances, cf. Libeaus Desconus, passim.

¹ Cf. quotation above, p. 352.

² Cf. Skeat, III, 472, 473, 474, and also, “the Great Kaan now reigning, by name Cublay Kaan; Kaan being a title which signifieth ‘The Great Lord of Lords,’ or Emperor.”—Polo, I, 295. The mss. appear not to have distinguished Khan and Kaan.

¹ Besides the striking feature of the color of the garments worn at the White Feast, cf. Polo's account of the cups which move as if by magic and serve Kublai (I, 266, 310), the presentation of 100,000 white horses (I, 346, quoted by Skeat, III, 474), and the general offering of presents in accordance with prescription (Polo, I, 344; Skeat, III, 473) to which the sole counterpart in Chaucer is the voluntary offering of “the King of Arabie and of Ynde.”

¹ “De forma vivendi dixit [sc. Petrus arciepiscopus Russiae fugatus a Tartaris]; Carnes comedunt jumentinas, caninas et alias abominabiles, et etiam in necessitate humanas, non tamen crudas, sed coctas.”—M. Paris, ed. Wats, p. 648; cf. also Ib., 470 and 546. “Rattos etiam et canes edunt et cattos libentissime comedunt.”—Vincentii Bellovac. Spec. Histor., lib. xxix, cap. lxxviii; cf. lib. xxix passim. “Without difference or distinction they eat all their beasts that die of age or sickness.”—W. de Rubruquis, ap. Pinkerton, VIII, 30. “Comedunt enim ranas, canes, et serpentes, et omnia indifferentur.”—Letter of a Hungarian Bishop, ap. M. Paris, ed. Wats, Additamenta, p. 211.

¹ Polo says distinctly “his capital city of Cambaluc” (I, 309), “the capital city of Cathay, which is called Cambaluc” (Ib. 324), cf. also Ib. 331, 362, 365, 366, 367, 370, 378, 385, 388, 399; II, 1, 95, c., c.

¹ Towers were in mediæval Europe the usual places for keeping treasures, cf. The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry (EETS), p. 191.

² Yule's notes on the Arbre Sec (Polo, I, 120, and II, 397) will furnish or lead to the multitudinous occurrences of the Dry Tree in mediæval literature.

³ It is to be hoped that the dry tree which Sir Bors saw in his dream (Morte d’ Arthur, capp. lxxii and lxxvii) will not suggest the allegorizing of the one which Canacee found in the park,—though birds come into the former story too.

¹ Marco Polo, I, 119; in other passages it is barely mentioned, II, 396, 405, 406.

² Yule, Cathay, I, 18.

³ “Every year that emperor keepeth four great feasts, to wit, the day of his birth, that of his circumcision, and so forth. To these festivals he summons all his barons and all his players and all his kinsfolk; and all these have their established places at the festival. But it is especially at the days of his birth and circumcision that he expects all to attend. And when summoned to such a festival all the barons come with their coronets on, whilst the emperor is seated on his throne, as has been described above, and all the barons are ranged in order in their appointed places. Now these barons are arrayed in divers colours; for some, who are the first in order, wear green silk; the second are clothed in crimson; the third in yellow. And all these have coronets on their heads and each holds in his hand a white ivory tablet and wears a golden girdle of half a span in breadth; and so they remain standing and silent. And round about them stand the players with their banners and ensigns. And in one corner of a certain great palace abide the philosophers, who keep watch for certain hours and conjunctions; and when the hour and conjunction waited for by the philosophers arrives, one of them calls out with a loud voice, saying: ‘Prostrate yourselves before the emperor, our mighty lord!’[Then the minstrels play.] And after this all those of the princely families parade with white horses. And a voice is heard calling: ‘Such an one of such a family to present so many hundreds of white horses to the lord;’ and then some of them come forward saying that they bring two hundred horses (say) to offer to the lord, which are ready before the palace…. And then come the barons to offer presents of different kinds on behalf of the other barons of the empire. [Then occur performances by singing men and women and mummers and jugglers.] “

¹ Sarai is mentioned by many writers; Pascal of Vittoria, for example (Cathay, I, 231), and Hayton the Armenian, whose history of Tartary was written in French in 1307 (cf. Cathay, I, cxxxi).

² W. de Rubruquis, in Pinkerton, VIII, 30, 40, 43, 44, 54, 57, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89.

¹ Brandl suggests (Engl. Studien, XII, 163), with much plausibility, that the visit of the Armenian King Leo to London in 1385-6 may have contributed to arouse Chaucer's interest in the far East (if Sarai can properly be so-called); it may even be that his knowledge of Tartary came mainly from the common talk connected with that event. I hope myself ere long to publish a paper dealing, among other things, with the question of Chaucer's relations to some men who had traveled a good deal.