CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

233 Me beswac . . . hire ladteow: Eve’s reply to God in the Garden of Eden (the serpent deceived me through fair words)—from the Old English poem Genesis. Following is a phrase from an Old English proverb about a lioness (the chained lion, if she tastes blood, bites first her master)—from Old English translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. (See Hassell A. Simpson in the Suggestions for Further Reading.)