Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'the clock' and foliot 'decoy bird' in 'The Owl and the Nightingale.'

THE word foliot ~a type of clock escapemeat consisting of a bar with adjustable weights on the eads' was discussed some years ago by Professor Rigg.(1) His paper quotes Jean Froissart's descriptioa of a clock in his Li Orloge Amoureus, written probably in England in the later fourteenth century, which mentioas how a clock is controlled ~by the power of the foliot (par la vertu dou foliot), which moves it continually'. The foliot, turning from side to side each second, is never still, since by it the mechanism ~is checked and held back accordiag to proper measure'. In Froissart's elaborate love-allegory the foliot branle ~oscillates' like the loyal heart of the lover.

Rigg believes the French poem casts light on line 868 of The Owl and the Nightiagale, ~Ne singe ih hom no foliot'. He takes foliot here as referring either to the foliot of a clock, with its oscillating motioa and monotoaous tick-tock, or (since …