Middle English brent browsAuthor(s): Walter Clyde CurrySource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Mar., 1918), pp. 180-181Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2915614 .

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180 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

needs. What once had been intended to resemble ice now looked like glass and the property itself suggested some of the lines; so Chaucer's influence was passed on rather unintentionally!

HOWARD R. PATCH. Bryn Mawr College.

MIDDLE ENGLISH brent brows

Jamieson, in A Dictionaary of the Scottish Language, says that in all quotations where the adjective brent, meaning 'high, straight, upright,' is used in connection with 'brow' or 'brows,' it " denotes a high forehead, as contradistinguished from one that is fiat; . smooth, being contrasted with runnkled or wrinkled." Professor Murray gives a like general meaning to the combination (Cf. The New Eng lish Dictionary, art. ' brent '), in spite of the fact that he elsewhere 1 remarks that " In ME. brow is only eyebrow; there is no such sense as modern forehead, frons, which appears not long before Shakespeare's time and first in Scotch." The adjective ' brent' is exceedingly rare in early literature, where it is always found in combination with the plural 'brows '; it is more common in later literature, where it is found generally in connection with the singular 'brow.' 'Undoubtedly, I think, 'brent brow' in Eng- lish literature later than about 1550 does mean a high, smooth, un- wrinkled forehead; but in earlier literature 'brent brows' means high eyebrows. True, in one passage found in Sir Isumnbras (ed. Zupitza and Schleich), the expression " Wythe browys brante " (1. 248), so far as the context shows, may mean either high eyebrows or high forehead; but in the Scottish Legends of the Saints (ed. Metcalfe, Scot. Text. Soc. 1896, No. 34, l. 19) it is certainly the former that are 'brent.' St. Pelagia is described,

with teynder fassone & forred brade, with browis brent, and (ene) brycht.

Again, in Eger and Grine (ed. Hales and Furnivall, Percy Folio MS., Vol. I, 1. 943) the poet describes a fair lady,

A fairer saw I never none, With browes brent, and thereto small.

I In Transactions of the Philological Society, 1888-90, Pt. I, p. 131.

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CORRESPONDENCE 181

where the latter part of the description could not possibly be ap- plied to the forehead, because beautiful foreheads are generally broad and high and never 'small,' as we learn from Chaucer's description of the Prioresse whose "forhead . . . was almost a spanne brood." It is more likely that the poet is trying to say that the lady's eyebrows are high-arched and delicate, not prominent. And, finally, in one passage at least the poet does not mean a high, smooth forehead; namely, in The Destruction of Troy (ed. Panton and Donaldson, EETS. 39, 56). Here the 'forhed' of Helen has juLst been described as being whiter than snow, having neither lines nor wrinkles (Cf. 11. 3027-3029). Then the author proceeds,

With browes full brent, bryghtist of hewe, Semyt as bai set were sotely with honde, Comyng in Compas, & in course Rounde, Full metely made & mesured betwene, Bright as the brent gold enbowet bai were.

This is a comparatively close translation of the corresponding passage in the Historia Trojana (Argentina, 1486, sig. d4, recto 1) of Guido de Colonna. The f-ons has just been described as being snowy and smooth, after which the account continues; Miratur etenim in tam nitide frontis extremis conuallibus gemina super- cilia quasi manu facta sic decenter eleuata flauescere vt germinos exemplata velut in arcus, etc. It may be easily seen that 'browes brent' is an attempt to translate supercilia . . . decenter eleuata. WArith these quotations we may compare the following passage from the Aeneis of Gavin Douglas,

From his blyth browis brent and ayther ene The fyre twinkling (vmi. xii, 14)

wrhere the original in Vergil's Aeneid runs, . . . geminas cui tem- pora faicmmas laeta vomunt. So far as I know, this is the last appearance in English or Scottish literature of the combination brent brows, which, from some of the above quotations, seems to mean ' high eyebrows' and not 'a high forehead' as the dictionaries assert.

WALTER CLYDE CURRY. Vanderbilt Unziversity.

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