'Pair of Beads' in America

Abstract

T HE PRIORESS'S 'peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,' in the well-known description of that lady of the Canterbury Tales, has long seemed to demand explanation. Various notes remind the reader that 'A pair here means ';1 that 'until recently English retained some other phrases in which pair meant a set of more than two: pair of stairs, pair of cards [a pack], pair of arrows [three]';2 that a 'peire of bedes' was a rosary.3 The OED records the term pair of beads as one of a group all obsolete or only dialectal;4 the quotations cited furnish evidence that the phrase was at one time in general use. Chaucer's Prioress wore her 'peire of bedes' with its green gauds on her fourteenth-century journey to Canterbury; priests in the contemporary Vision concerning Piers Plowman might bear in their hands 'a peyre bedes'; in wills registered at York in the fifteenth century are mentioned 'a pare of bedes of corall with gaudes of gete'; records from the fourteenth through the late seventeenth century show 'peyre bedes, pare of bedes, pair of beads' in such quotations as 'a pair of Beads of Paulo d'Aguila, a curious sort of wood' (1697). Scottish records offer instances of use of the phrase with corresponding frequency: 'For ane pair of bedis of jasp to the King' (1492); 'A pare of bedes of curall gawdet with sex perle' (i oi); 'Ane pair of beidis of sabill' (I489).5 Other such instances of the use of the term in early times might be quoted indefinitely. Gower mentions 'a paire of bedes blacke as sable';6 Dame Abstinence-Streyned, of the Romaunt of the Rose, forgot not her psalter, and 'A peire of bedis eke she ber .... On which that she hir bedes bed';' in various wills and local records appear 'one payre of beads of silver with riche gaudeys';