notes on 'cantilena' by john peck

cantilena mus
The plain-song or canto-fermo in old church music; the melody or `air' in any composition, now usually the highest part.
A ballad

louvre
Chiefly pl. An arrangement of sloping boards, laths or slips of glass overlapping each other, so as to admit air, but exclude rain. Originally, such a contrivance as used to close the apertures of a `louvre' (sense 1). Cf. louvre-board in 5. Also used for other purposes, e.g. to deflect air issuing from an opening or to prevent the direct passage of light through it. Used in sing. in same sense; also, an individual slat or strip of such an arrangement.


sirocco
An oppressively hot and blighting wind, blowing from the north coast of Africa over the Mediterranean and affecting parts of Southern Europe (where it is also moist and depressing). Usually with the.
fig. A blighting influence; a fiery storm.

chaw
To chew; now esp. to chew roughly, to champ; or to chew without swallowing

katabasis
A going down; a military retreat, in allusion to that of the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon, related by him in his Anabasis.