dule and teen

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of Villon's "The Ballad of Dead Ladies" (the poem whence comes the phrase "But where are the snows of yesteryear") includes this line:

(From Love he won such dule and teen!)

Turns out that "teen" is an archaic or obsolete word meaning things like "grief" or "injury" or "irritation." And a Dule Tree was a tree used in Britain for public hangings; "dule" in Scots and Middle English (according to Wikipedia) had to do with sorrow or grief.

There are a few other web pages that include the phrase dule and teen; most are other copies of the Rossetti translation, but a few are other verses, mostly copies of an Andrew Lang poem. One page defines the phrase as meaning "grief and pain."

The connection to teenagers is left as an exercise to the reader.

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