Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose

by Unknown

I. RATS AWAY. Bodleian MS. Rawlinson C. 288, f. 113 (15th-century writing, blurred).

I comawnde alle þe ratones þat are here abowte,

Þat non dwelle in þis place, withinne ne withowte,

Thorgh þe vertu of Iesu Crist, þat Mary bare abowte,

Þat alle creatures owyn for to lowte,

And thorgh þe vertu of Mark, Mathew, Luke, an Ion,— 5

Alle foure Awangelys corden into on,—

Thorgh þe vertu of Sent Geretrude, þat mayde clene,

God graunte þat grace

Þat <non> raton dwelle in þe place

Þat here namis were nemeled in; 10

And thorgh þe vertu of Sent Kasi,

Þat holy man, þat prayed to God Almyty

For [skathes] þat þei deden

Hys medyn

Be dayes and be nyȝt, 15

God bad hem flen and gon out of euery manesse syȝt.

Dominus Deus Sabaot! Emanuel, þe gret Godes name!

I betweche þes place from ratones and from alle oþer schame.

God saue þis place fro alle oþer wykked wytes,

Boþe be dayes and be nytes! et in nomine Patris et Filii,20

&c.

13 [skathes]] t altered from f (?) MS.

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XVI THE YORK PLAY 'HARROWING OF HELL' British Museum MS. Addit. 35290 (about 1430-40), f. 193 b.

The miracle play Harrowing of Hell is assigned to the craft of Saddlers in the York cycle, edited by Miss L. Toulmin-Smith, Oxford 1885, pp. 372 ff. This is the text reproduced below. It is also found, though in a less perfect form, among the Towneley Plays, ed. England and Pollard, E.E.T.S., 1897, pp. 293 ff.

All the mediaeval stories of Christ's Descent into Hell are based on the gospel of Nicodemus, which seems to date from the fourth century, though the legend is referred to nearly two centuries earlier. This apocryphal narrative was popular throughout the Middle Ages. There is a prose translation in late Anglo-Saxon, and a Middle English verse rendering supplies some of the phrases in the play.

Two points deserve notice for their bearing on the development of miracles. A trace of their origin in the services of the Church is seen in the use made of the Scriptural passage 'Attollite portas, principes, vestras, et elevamini portae aeternales, et introibit rex gloriae', the dramatic possibilities of which were recognized in ritual from an early date. And the growing taste for comic scenes is met, without prejudice to the serious characters, by the rudimentary buffoonery of the Devil and his companions.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

ADAME

EUA

ISAIAH

SYMEON

IESUS

IOHANNES BAPTISTA

MOYSES

BELSABUB

SATTAN

DAUID

BELLIALL

MICHILL (Archangel)

PRIMUS DIABOLUS

SECUNDUS DIABOLUS

[SCENE I, outside the gates of Hell.]

1. <Iesus. M>anne on molde, be meke to me,

And haue thy Maker in þi mynde,

And thynke howe I haue tholid for þe

With pereles paynes for to be pyned.

The forward of my Fadir free 5

Haue I fulfillid, as folke may fynde,

Þerfore aboute nowe woll I bee

Þat I haue bought for to vnbynde.

Þe feende þame wanne with trayne,

Thurgh frewte of erthely foode; 10

I haue þame getyn agayne

Thurgh bying with my bloode.

2. And so I schall þat steede restore

[Fro] whilke þe feende fell for synne;

Þare schalle mankynde wonne euermore 15

In blisse þat schall neuere blynne.

All þat in werke my werkemen were,

Owte of thare woo I wol þame wynne,

And some signe schall I sende before

Of grace, to garre þer gamys begynne. 20

A light I woll þei haue

To schewe þame I schall come sone;

My bodie bidis in graue

Tille alle thes dedis be done.

3. My Fadir ordand on þis wise 25

Aftir His will þat I schulde wende,

For to fulfille þe prophicye<s>,

And als I spake my solace to spende.

My frendis, þat in me faith affies,

Nowe fro ther fois I schall þame fende, 30

And on the thirde day ryght vprise,

And so tille heuen I schall assende.

Sithen schall I come agayne

To deme bothe goode and ill

Tille endles ioie or peyne; 35

Þus is my Fadris will.

[SCENE II, Hell; at one side Limbo, enclosing the patriarchs and prophets; a light shines across.]

4. Adame. Mi bretheren, harkens to me here,

Swilke hope of heele neuere are we hadde.

Foure thowsande and sex hundereth ȝere

Haue we bene heere [in †þis stedde†.] 40

Nowe see I signe of solace seere,

A glorious gleme to make vs gladde,

Wherfore I hope oure helpe is nere,

And sone schall sesse oure sorowes sadde.

Eua. Adame, my husband hende, 45

Þis menys solas certayne;

Such light gune on vs lende

In Paradise full playne.

5. [Isaiah.] Adame, we schall wele vndirstande;

I, Ysaias, as God me kende, 50

I prechid in Neptalym þat lande,

And Ȝabulon, even vntill ende.

I spake of folke in mirke walkand,

And saide a light schulde on þame lende;

This lered I whils I was leuand, 55

Nowe se I God þis same hath sende.

Þis light comes all of Criste,

Þat seede, to saue vs nowe,

Þus is my poynte puplisshid.

But Symeon, what sais þou? 60

6. Symeon. Þhis, my tale of farleis feele,

For in þis temple His frendis me fande;

I hadde delite with Hym to dele,

And halsed homely with my hande.

I saide, 'Lorde, late thy seruaunt lele 65

Passe nowe in pesse to liffe lastand,

For nowe myselfe has sene Thy hele,

Me liste no lengar to liffe in lande.'

Þis light Þou hast purueyed

To folkes þat liffis in leede, 70

Þe same þat I þame saide,

I see fulfillid in dede.

7. Iohan. Baptista. Als voyce criand to folke I kende

Þe weyes of Criste, als I wele kanne;

I baptiste Hym with bothe my hande 75

Euen in þe floode of flume Iordanne.

Þe Holy Goste fro heuene discende

Als a white dowue doune on Hym þanne;

The Fadir voice, my mirthe to mende,

Was made to me euen als manne, 80

'This is my Sone,' he saide,

'In whome me paies full wele.'

His light is on vs laide,

He comes oure cares to kele.

8. Moyses. Of þat same light lernyng haue I, 85

To me Moyses He mustered his myght,

And also vnto anodir, Hely,

Wher we were on an hille on hight.

Whyte as snowe was His body,

And His face like to þe sonne to sight: 90

No man on molde was so myghty

Grathely to loke agaynste þat light;

Þat same light se I nowe

Shynyng on vs sarteyne,

Wherfore trewly I trowe 95

We schalle sone passe fro payne.

9. i Diabolus. Helpe! Belsabub! to bynde þer boyes,

Such harrowe was neuer are herde in helle.

ii Diab. Why rooris þou soo, Rebalde? þou royis;

What is betidde, canne þou ought telle? 100

i Diab. What! heris þou noȝt þis vggely noyse?

Þes lurdans þat in Lymbo dwelle,

Þei make menyng of many ioies,

And musteres grete mirthe þame emell.

ii Diab. Mirthe? nay, nay, þat poynte is

paste, 105

More hele schall þei neuer haue.

i Diab. Þei crie on Criste full faste,

And sais he schal þame saue.

10. Belsabub. Ȝa, if he saue þame noght, we schall,

For they are sperde in speciall space; 110

Whils I am prince and principall

Schall þei neuer passe oute of þis place.

Calle vppe Astrotte and Anaball

To giffe þer counsaille in þis case,

Bele-Berit and Belial, 115

To marre þame þat swilke maistries mase.

Say to Satan oure sire,

And bidde þame bringe also

Lucifer louely of lyre.

i Diab. Al redy, lorde, I goo. 120

11. Iesus [Without]. Attollite portas, principes,

Oppen vppe, ȝe princes of paynes sere,

Et eleuamini eternales,

Youre yendles ȝatis þat ȝe haue here.

Sattan. What page is þere þat makes prees, 125

And callis hym kyng of vs in fere?

Dauid [in Limbo]. I lered leuand, withouten lees,

He is a kyng of vertues clere.

A! Lorde, mekill of myght,

And stronge in ilke a stoure, 130

In batailes ferse to fight,

And worthy to wynne honnoure.

12. Sattan. Honnoure! in þe deuel way, for what dede?

All erthely men to me are thrall;

Þe lady þat calles hym lorde in leede 135

Hadde neuer ȝitt herberowe, house, ne halle.

i Diab. Harke, Belsabub! I haue grete drede,

For hydously I herde hym calle.

Belliall. We! spere oure ȝates, all ill mot þou spede!

And sette furthe watches on þe wall. 140

And if he calle or crie

To make vs more debate,

Lay on hym þan hardely,

And garre hym gang his gate.

13. Sattan. Telle me what boyes dare be so bolde 145

For drede to make so mekill draye.

i Diab. Itt is þe Iewe þat Iudas solde

For to be dede, þis othir daye.

Sattan. O we! þis tale in tyme is tolde,

Þis traytoure traues<es> vs alway; 150

He schall be here full harde in holde,

Loke þat he passe noght, I þe praye.

ii Diab. Nay, nay, he will noȝt wende

Away or I be ware,

He shappis hym for to schende 155

Alle helle, or he go ferre.

14. Sattan. Nay, faitour, þerof schall he faile,

For alle his fare I hym deffie;

I knowe his trantis fro toppe to taile,

He leuys with gaudis and with gilery. 160

Þerby he brought oute of oure bale,

Nowe late, Laȝar of Betannye,

Þerfore I gaffe to þe Iewes counsaille

Þat þei schulde alway garre hym dye.

I entered in Iudas 165

Þat forwarde to fulfille,

Þerfore his hire he has,

Allway to wonne here stille.

15. Belsabub. Sir Sattanne, sen we here þe saie

Þat þou and [þe] Iewes wer same assente, 170

And wotte he wanne Laȝar awaye,

Þat tille vs was tane for to tente,

Trowe þou þat þou marre hym maye

To mustir myghtis, what he has mente?

If he nowe depriue vs of oure praye, 175

We will ȝe witte whanne þei are wente.

Sattan. I bidde ȝou be noȝt abasshed,

But boldely make youe boune

With toles þat ȝe on traste,

And dynge þat dastard doune. 180

16. Iesus [Without]. Principes, portas tollite,

Vndo youre ȝatis, ȝe princis of pryde,

Et introibit rex glorie,

Þe kyng of blisse comes in þis tyde.

[Enters the gates of Hell.

Sattan. Owte! harrowe <[what harlot]> is hee 185

Þat sais his kyngdome schall be cryed?

Dauid [in Limbo]. Þat may þou in my Sawter see

For þat poynte [I] prophicie<d>.

I saide þat he schuld breke

Youre barres and bandis by name, 190

And on youre werkis take wreke;

Nowe schalle ȝe see þe same.

17. Iesus. Þis steede schall stonde no lenger stoken;

Opynne vppe, and latte my pepul passe!

Diabolus. Owte! beholdes, oure baill is brokynne, 195

And brosten are alle oure bandis of bras.

Telle Lucifer alle is vnlokynne.

Belsabub. What þanne, is Lymbus lorne? allas!

Garre Satan helpe þat we wer wroken;

Þis werke is werse þanne euere it was. 200

Sattan. I badde ȝe schulde be boune

If he made maistries more;

Do dynge þat dastard doune,

And sette hym sadde and sore.

18. Belsabub. Ȝa, sette hym sore, þat is sone saide, 205

But come þiselffe and serue hym soo;

We may not bide his bittir braide,

He wille vs marre and we wer moo.

Sattan. What! faitours, wherfore are ȝe ferde?

Haue ȝe no force to flitte hym froo? 210

Belyue loke þat my gere be grathed,

Miselffe schall to þat gedlyng goo.

[To Iesus.] Howe! belamy, abide,

With al thy booste and bere,

And telle to me þis tyde, 215

What maistries makes þou here?

19. Iesus. I make no maistries but for myne,

Þame wolle I saue, I telle þe nowe;

Þou hadde no poure þame to pyne,

But as my prisoune for þer prowe 220

Here haue þei soiorned, noght as thyne,

But in thy warde, þou wote wele howe.

Sattan. And what deuel haste þou done ay syne,

Þat neuer wolde negh þame nere, or nowe?

Iesus. Nowe is þe tyme certayne 225

Mi Fadir ordand before

Þat they schulde passe fro payne,

And wonne in mirthe euer more.

20. Sattan. Thy fadir knewe I wele be sight,

He was a write his mette to wynne, 230

And Marie me menys þi modir hight,

Þe vttiremeste ende of all þi kynne.

Who made þe be so mekill of myght?

Iesus. Þou wikid feende, latte be thy dynne!

Mi Fadir wonnys in heuen on hight, 235

With blisse þat schall neuere blynne.

I am His awne sone,

His forward to fulfille;

And same ay schall we wonne,

And sundir whan we wolle. 240

21. Sattan. God<ys> sonne! þanne schulde þou be ful gladde,

Aftir no catel [neyd thowe crau]e!

But þou has leued ay like a ladde,

And in sorowe, [as] a symple [knaue].

Iesus. Þat was for hartely loue I hadde 245

Vnto mannis soule, it for to saue;

And for to make þe mased and madde,

And by þat resoune þus dewly to haue

Mi godhede here, I hidde

In Marie modir myne, 250

For it schulde noȝt be kidde

To þe, nor to none of thyne.

22. Sattan. A! þis wolde I were tolde in ilke a toune.

So, sen þou sais God is thy sire,

I schall þe proue, be right resoune, 255

Þou motes His men into þe myre.

To breke His bidding were þei boune,

And, for they did at my desire,

Fro Paradise He putte þame doune

In helle here to haue þer hyre. 260

And thyselfe, day and nyght,

Has taught al men emang

To do resoune and right,

And here werkis þou all wrang.

23. Iesus. I wirke noght wrang, þat schal þow witte, 265

If I my men fro woo will wynne;

Mi prophetis playnly prechid it,

All þis note þat nowe begynne.

Þai saide þat I schulde be obitte,

To hell þat I schulde entre in, 270

And saue my seruauntis fro þat pitte,

Wher dampned saulis schall sitte for synne.

And ilke trewe prophettis tale

Muste be fulfillid in mee;

I haue þame boughte with bale, 275

And in blisse schal þei be.

24. Sattan. Nowe sen þe liste allegge þe lawes,

Þou schalte be atteynted, or we twynne,

For þo þat þou to wittenesse drawes

Full even agaynste þe will begynne. 280

Salamon saide in his sawes

Þat whoso enteres helle withynne

Shall neuer come oute, þus clerkis knawes,

And þerfore, felowe, leue þi dynne.

Iob, þi seruaunte, also 285

Þus in his tyme gune telle,

Þat nowthir frende nor foo

Shulde fynde reles in helle.

25. Iesus. He saide full soth, þat schall þou see,

Þat in helle may be no reles, 290

But of þat place þan preched he

Where synffull care schall euere encrees.

And in þat bale ay schall þou be,

Whare sorowes sere schall neuer sesse,

And for my folke þerfro wer free, 295

Nowe schall þei passe to þe place of pees.

Þai were here with my wille,

And so schall þei fourthe wende,

And þiselue schall fulfille

Þer wooe withouten ende. 300

26. Sattan. O we! þanne se I howe þou menys emang

Some mesure with malice to melle,

Sen þou sais all schall noȝt gang,

But some schalle alway with vs dwelle.

Iesus. Ȝaa, witte þou wele, ellis were it wrang, 305

Als cursed Cayme þat slewe Abell,

And all þat hastis hemselue to hange,

Als Iudas and Archedefell,

Datan and Abiron,

And alle of þare assente; 310

Als tyrantis euerilkone

Þat me and myne turmente.

27. And all þat liste noght to lere my lawe,

Þat I haue lefte in lande nowe newe,

Þat is my comyng for to knawe, 315

And to my sacramente pursewe,

Mi dede, my rysing, rede be rawe,

Who will noght trowe, þei are noght trewe,

Vnto my dome I schall þame drawe,

And iuge þame worse þanne any Iewe. 320

And all þat likis to leere

My lawe, and leue þerbye,

Shall neuere haue harmes heere,

But welthe, as is worthy.

28. Sattan. Nowe here my hande, I halde me paied; 325

Þis poynte is playnly for oure prowe;

If þis be soth þat þou hast saide,

We schall haue moo þanne we haue nowe.

Þis lawe þat þou nowe late has laide

I schall lere men noȝt to allowe. 330

Iff þei it take, þei be betraied,

For I schall turne þame tyte, I trowe.

I schall walke este and weste,

And garre þame werke wele werre.

Iesus. Naye, feende, þou schall be feste, 335

Þat þou schalte flitte not ferre.

29. Sattan. Feste! þat were a foule reasoune,

Nay, bellamy, þou bus be smytte.

Iesus. Mighill! myne aungell, make þe boune,

And feste yone fende, þat he noght flitte. 340

And Deuyll, I comaunde þe go doune

Into thy selle where þou schalte sitte.

[Satan sinks.

Sattan. Owt, ay! herrowe! helpe Mahounde!

Nowe wex I woode oute of my witte.

Belsabub. Sattan, þis saide we are, 345

Nowe schall þou fele þi fitte.

Sattan. Allas! for [dole] and care,

I synke into helle pitte.

[Falls into the pit.

30. Adame. A! Iesu Lorde, mekill is Þi myght,

That mekis Þiselffe in þis manere, 350

Vs for to helpe, as Þou has hight,

Whanne both forfette, I and my feere.

Here haue we leuyd withouten light

Foure thousand and six hundred ȝere;

Now se I be þis solempne sight 355

Howe Thy mercy hath made vs [clere].

Eue. A! Lorde, we were worthy

Mo turmentis for to taste,

But mende vs with mercye,

Als Þou of myght is moste. 360

31. Baptista. A! Lorde, I loue Þe inwardly,

That me wolde make Þi messengere

Thy comyng in erth for to crye,

And teche Þi faith to folke in feere;

And sithen before Þe for to dye, 365

And bringe boodworde to þame here,

How þai schulde haue Thyne helpe in hye:

Nowe se I all Þi poyntis appere.

Als Dauid prophete trewe

Ofte tymes tolde vntill vs, 370

Of þis comyng he knewe,

And saide it schulde be þus.

32. Dauid. Als I haue saide, ȝitt saie I soo,

Ne derelinquas, Domine,

Animam meam <in> inferno, 375

Leffe noght my saule, Lorde, aftir Þe,

In depe helle where dampned schall goo,

Ne suffre neuere †saules fro Þe be†

The sorowe of þame þat wonnes in woo

Ay full of filthe, †þat may repleye†. 380

Adame. We thanke His grete goodnesse

He fette vs fro þis place,

Makes ioie nowe more and lesse;

Omnis. We laude God of His grace.

33. Iesus. Adame and my frendis in feere, 385

Fro all youre fooes come fourth with me,

Ȝe schalle be sette in solas seere,

Wher ȝe schall neuere of sorowes see.

And Mighill, myn aungell clere,

Ressayue þes saules all vnto þe, 390

And lede þame als I schall þe lere

To Paradise with playe and plenté.

[They come out of Limbo.

Mi graue I woll go till,

Redy to rise vpperight,

And so I schall fulfille 395

That I before haue highte.

34. Michill. Lorde, wende we schall aftir Þi sawe,

To solace sere þai schall be sende,

But þat þer deuelis no draught vs drawe,

Lorde, blisse vs with Þi holy hende. 400

Iesus. Mi blissing haue ȝe all on rawe,

I schall be with youe, wher ȝe wende,

And all þat lelly luffes my lawe,

Þai schall be blissid withowten ende.

Adame. To Þe, Lorde, be louyng, 405

Þat vs has wonne fro waa,

For solas will we syng,

Laus Tibi cum gloria.

[Exeunt.

14 [Fro]] For MS.

40 [in þis stedde]] in darknes stad Towneley.

49 [Isaiah]] Isaac MS.

170 [þe]] ȝe MS.

185 [what harlot]] from Towneley MS.: om. MS.

188 [I]] of MS.

242 [neyd thowe craue]] þus þe I telle first hand.

244 [as]] added later MS.

244 [knaue]] braide first hand.

347 [dole]] dolee MS.

356 [clere]] clene MS.

---

XVII THE TOWNELEY PLAY OF NOAH Towneley MS. (about 1475), ff. 76 ff.

The Towneley Miracles, so called because the manuscript belonged in recent times to the library of Towneley Hall in Lancashire, are edited by England and Pollard, E.E.T.S., 1897. The cycle is a composite one—for instance it includes a later form of the York play Harrowing of Hell (No. XVI, above)—but it is distinguished by a group of plays and interpolated scenes which seem to have been specially composed for representation at Wakefield. Formally this group is marked by the use of a peculiar nine-lined stanza, riming a a a a b c c c b, with central rimes in the first four lines. The rough vigour of the comic scenes is still more distinctive, and there can be little doubt that all are the work of one man. The specimen of his style most often reprinted is The Second Shepherd's Play, which has an original and purely secular comic plot. The Play of Noah is more typical of the English Miracle in its later development. This subject was always popular with early playwrights, for the Ark made a spectacle, and the traditional quarrels of Noah and his wife gave scope for contests in fisticuffs and rough raillery—the stuff of primitive comedy.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
NOE	PRIMUS FILIUS	PRIMA MULIER
DEUS	SECUNDUS FILIUS	SECUNDA MULIER
VXOR NOE	TERCIUS FILIUS	TERCIA MULIER

1. Noe. Myghtfull God veray, Maker of all that is,

Thre persons withoutten nay, oone God in endles blis,

Thou maide both nyght and day, beest, fowle, and fysh,

All creatures that lif may wroght Thou at Thi wish,

As Thou wel myght; 5

The son, the moyne, verament,

Thou maide, the firmament,

The sternes also full feruent

To shyne Thou maide ful bright.

2. Angels Thou maide ful euen, all orders that is, 10

To haue the blis in heuen; this did Thou, more and les,

Full mervelus to neuen; yit was ther vnkyndnes

More bi foldis seuen then I can well expres;

For whi?

Of all angels in brightnes 15

God gaf Lucifer most lightnes,

Yit prowdly he flyt his des,

And set hym euen Hym by.

3. He thoght hymself as worthi as Hym that hym made,

In brightnes, in bewty, therfor He hym degrade, 20

Put hym in a low degré soyn after, in a brade,

Hym and all his menye, wher he may be vnglad

For euer.

Shall thay neuer wyn away

Hence vnto Domysday, 25

Bot burne in bayle for ay;

Shall thay neuer dysseuer.

4. Soyne after, that gracyous Lord to his liknes maide man,

That place to be restord euen as He began,

Of the Trinité bi accord, Adam and Eue that woman, 30

To multiplie without discord, in Paradise put He thaym,

And sithen to both

Gaf in commaundement

On the Tre of Life to lay no hend.

Bot yit the fals feynd 35

Made Hym with man wroth,

5. Entysyd man to glotony, styrd him to syn in pride;

Bot in Paradise, securly, myght no syn abide,

And therfor man full hastely was put out in that tyde,

In wo and wandreth for to be, in paynes full vnrid 40

To knowe,

Fyrst in erth, and sythen in hell

With feyndis for to dwell,

Bot He his mercy mell

To those that will Hym trawe. 45

6. Oyle of mercy He hus hight, as I haue hard red,

To euery lifyng wight that wold luf Hym and dred;

Bot now before His sight euery liffyng leyde,

Most party day and nyght, syn in word and dede

Full bold; 50

Som in pride, ire, and enuy,

Som in coueteis and glotyny,

Som in sloth and lechery,

And other wise many fold.

7. Therfor I drede lest God on vs will take veniance, 55

For syn is now alod, without any repentance.

Sex hundreth yeris and od haue I, without distance,

In erth, as any sod, liffyd with grete grevance

Allway;

And now I wax old, 60

Seke, sory, and cold,

As muk apon mold

I widder away.

8. Bot yit will I cry for mercy and call:

Noe, Thi seruant, am I, Lord ouer all! 65

Therfor me, and my fry shal with me fall,

Saue from velany, and bryng to Thi hall

In heuen;

And kepe me from syn

This warld within; 70

Comly Kyng of mankyn,

I pray The, here my stevyn!

[God appears above.]

9. Deus. Syn I haue maide all thyng that is liffand,

Duke, emperour, and kyng, with Myne awne hand,

For to haue thare likyng, bi see and bi sand, 75

Euery man to My bydyng shuld be bowand

Full feruent,

That maide man sich a creatoure,

Farest of favoure;

Man must luf Me paramoure 80

By reson, and repent.

10. Me thoght I shewed man luf when I made hym to be

All angels abuf, like to the Trynyté;

And now in grete reprufe full low ligis he,

In erth hymself to stuf with syn that displeases Me85

Most of all.

Veniance will I take

In erth for syn sake;

My grame thus will I wake

Both of grete and small. 90

11. I repente full sore that euer maide I man;

Bi me he settis no store, and I am his soferan;

I will distroy therfor both beest, man and woman,

All shall perish, les and more; that bargan may thay ban

That ill has done. 95

In erth I se right noght

Bot syn that is vnsoght;

Of those that well has wroght

Fynd I bot a fone.

12. Therfor shall I fordo all this medill-erd 100

With floodis that shall flo and ryn with hidous rerd;

I haue good cause therto; for Me no man is ferd.

As I say shal I do—of veniance draw My swerd,

And make end

Of all that beris life, 105

Sayf Noe and his wife,

For thay wold neuer stryfe

With Me, then Me offend.

13. Hym to mekill wyn, hastly will I go

To Noe my seruand, or I blyn, to warn hym of his wo. 110

In erth I se bot syn reynand to and fro,

Emang both more and myn, ichon other fo

With all thare entent.

All shall I fordo

With floodis that shall floo; 115

Wirk shall I thaym wo

That will not repent.

[God descends and addresses Noah.]

14. Noe, My freend, I thee commaund, from cares the to keyle,

A ship that thou ordand of nayle and bord ful wele.

Thou was alway well-wirkand, to Me trew as stele, 120

To My bydyng obediand: frendship shal thou fele

To mede.

Of lennthe thi ship be

Thre hundreth cubettis, warn I the,

Of heght euen thirté, 125

Of fyfty als in brede.

15. Anoynt thi ship with pik and tar, without and als within,

The water out to spar—this is a noble gyn;

Look no man the mar, thre [chese] chambres begyn;

Thou must spend many a spar this wark or thou wyn 130

To end fully.

Make in thi ship also

Parloures oone or two,

And houses of offyce mo

For beestis that ther must be. 135

16. Oone cubite on hight a wyndo shal thou make;

On the syde a doore, with slyght, beneyth shal thou take;

With the shal no man fyght, nor do the no kyn wrake.

When all is doyne thus right, thi wife, that is thi make,

Take in to the; 140

Thi sonnes of good fame,

Sem, Iaphet, and Came,

Take in also <t>hame,

Thare wifis also thre.

17. For all shal be fordone that lif in land, bot ye, 145

With floodis that from abone shal fall, and that plenté;

It shall begyn full sone to rayn vncessantlé,

After dayes seuen be done, and induyr dayes fourty,

Withoutten fayll.

Take to thi ship also 150

Of ich kynd beestis two,

Mayll and femayll, bot no mo,

Or thou pull vp thi sayll,

18. For thay may the avayll when al this thyng is wroght.

Stuf thi ship with vitayll, for hungre that ye perish noght.

Of beestis, foull, and catayll, for thaym haue thou in thoght, 155

For thaym is My counsayll that som socour be soght

In hast.

Thay must haue corn and hay,

And oder mete alway. 160

Do now as I the say,

In the name of the Holy Gast.

19. Noe. A! benedicite! what art thou that thus

Tellys afore that shall be? Thou art full mervelus!

Tell me, for charité, thi name so gracius. 165

Deus. My name is of dignyté, and also full glorius

To knowe.

I am God most myghty,

Oone God in Trynyty,

Made the and ich man to be; 170

To luf Me well thou awe.

20. Noe. I thank The, Lord so dere, that wold vowchsayf

Thus low to appere to a symple knafe.

Blis vs, Lord, here, for charité I hit crafe,

The better may we stere the ship that we shall hafe, 175

Certayn.

Deus. Noe, to the and to thi fry

My blyssyng graunt I;

Ye shall wax and multiply

And fill the erth agane, 180

21. When all thise floodis ar past, and fully gone away.

Noe. Lord, homward will I hast as fast as that I may;

My <wife> will I frast what she will say, [Exit Deus.]

And I am agast that we get som fray

Betwixt vs both; 185

For she is full tethee,

For litill oft angré;

If any thyng wrang be,

Soyne is she wroth.

Tunc perget ad vxorem.

22. God spede, dere wife, how fayre ye? 190

Vxor. Now, as euer myght I thryfe, the wars I thee see.

Do tell me belife where has thou thus long be?

To dede may we dryfe, or lif, for the,

For want.

When we swete or swynk, 195

Thou dos what thou thynk,

Yit of mete and of drynk

Haue we veray skant.

23. Noe. Wife, we ar hard sted with tythyngis new.

Vxor. Bot thou were worthi be cled in Stafford blew; 200

For thou art alway adred, be it fals or trew,

Bot God knowes I am led, and that may I rew,

Full ill;

For I dar be thi borow,

From euen vnto morow 205

Thou spekis euer of sorow;

God send the onys thi fill!

24. We women may wary all ill husbandis;

I haue oone, bi Mary that lowsyd me of my bandis!

If he teyn, I must tary, how so euer it standis, 210

With seymland full sory, wryngand both my handis

For drede.

Bot yit other while,

What with gam and with gyle,

I shall smyte and smyle, 215

And qwite hym his mede.

25. Noe. We! hold thi tong, ram-skyt, or I shall the still.

Vxor. By my thryft, if thou smyte, I shal turne the vntill.

Noe. We shall assay as tyte. Haue at the, Gill!

Apon the bone shal it byte.

Vxor. A, so, Mary! thou smytis ill! 220

Bot I suppose

I shal not in thi det

Flyt of this flett!

Take the ther a langett

To tye vp thi hose! 225

26. Noe. A! wilt thou so? Mary! that is myne.

Vxor. Thou shal thre for two, I swere bi Godis pyne!

Noe. And I shall qwyte the tho, in fayth, or syne.

Vxor. Out apon the, ho!

Noe. Thou can both byte and whyne

With a rerd; 230

For all if she stryke,

Yit fast will she skryke;

In fayth, I hold none slyke

In all medill-erd.

27. Bot I will kepe charyté, for I haue at do. 235

Vxor. Here shal no man tary the, I pray the go to!

Full well may we mys the, as euer haue I ro;

To spyn will I dres me.

Noe. We! fare well, lo;

Bot wife,

Pray for me beselé 240

To eft I com vnto the.

Vxor. Euen as thou prays for me,

As euer myght I thrife.

[Exit Vxor.]

28. Noe. I tary full lang fro my warke, I traw;

Now my gere will I fang, and thederward draw; 245

I may full ill gang, the soth for to knaw,

Bot if God help amang, I may sit downe daw

To ken;

Now assay will I

How I can of wrightry, 250

In nomine patris, et filii,

Et spiritus sancti. Amen.

29. To begyn of this tree my bonys will I bend,

I traw from the Trynyté socoure will be send;

It fayres full fayre, thynk me, this wark to my hend; 255

Now blissid be He that this can amend.

Lo, here the lenght,

Thre hundreth cubettis euenly;

Of breed, lo, is it fyfty;

The heght is euen thyrty 260

Cubettis full strenght.

30. Now my gowne will I cast and wyrk in my cote,

Make will I the mast or I flyt oone foote;

A! my bak, I traw, will brast! This is a sory note!

Hit is wonder that I last, sich an old dote, 265

All dold,

To begyn sich a wark!

My bonys ar so stark,

No wonder if thay wark,

For I am full old. 270

31. The top and the sayll both will I make,

The helme and the castell also will I take,

To drife ich a nayll will I not forsake,

This gere may neuer fayll, that dar I vndertake

Onone. 275

This is a nobull gyn,

Thise nayles so thay ryn

Thoro more and myn

Thise bordis ichon.

32. Wyndow and doore, euen as He saide, 280

Thre ches chambre, thay ar well maide,

Pyk and tar full sure therapon laide;

This will euer endure, therof am I paide;

For why?

It is better wroght 285

Then I coude haif thoght.

Hym that maide all of noght

I thank oonly.

33. Now will I hy me, and no thyng be leder,

My wife and my meneye to bryng euen heder. 290

Tent hedir tydely, wife, and consider,

Hens must vs fle, all sam togeder,

In hast.

Vxor. Whi, syr, what alis you?

Who is that asalis you? 295

To fle it avalis you

And ye be agast.

34. Noe. Ther is garn on the reyll other, my dame.

Vxor. Tell me that ich a deyll, els get ye blame.

Noe. He that cares may keill—blissid be His name!— 300

He has <het> for oure seyll to sheld vs fro shame,

And sayd

All this warld aboute

With floodis so stoute,

That shall ryn on a route, 305

Shall be ouerlaide.

35. He saide all shall be slayn, bot oonely we,

Oure barnes that ar bayn, and thare wifis thre.

A ship He bad me ordayn, to safe vs and oure fee;

Therfor with all oure mayn thank we that fre, 310

Beytter of bayll.

Hy vs fast, go we thedir.

Vxor. I wote neuer whedir,

I dase and I dedir

For ferd of that tayll. 315

36. Noe. Be not aferd, haue done, trus sam oure gere,

That we be ther or none, without more dere.

Primus filius. It shall be done full sone. Brether, help to bere.

Secundus filius. Full long shall I not hoyne to do my devere,

Brether sam. 320

Tercius filius. Without any yelp,

At my myght shall I help.

Vxor. Yit, for drede of a skelp,

Help well thi dam.

37. Noe. Now ar we there as we shuld be; 325

Do get in oure gere, oure catall and fe,

Into this vessell here, my chylder fre.

Vxor. I was neuer bard ere, as euer myght I the,

In sich an oostré as this.

In fath, I can not fynd 330

Which is before, which is behynd.

Bot shall we here be pynd,

Noe, as haue thou blis?

38. Noe. Dame, as it is skill, here must vs abide grace;

Therfor, wife, with good will, com into this place. 335

Vxor. Sir, for Iak nor for Gill will I turne my face,

Till I haue on this hill spon a space

On my rok.

Well were he myght get me!

Now will I downe set me; 340

Yit reede I no man let me,

For drede of a knok.

39. Noe. Behold to the heuen the cateractes all,

That are open full euen, grete and small,

And the planettis seuen left has thare stall. 345

Thise thoners and levyn downe gar fall

Full stout

Both halles and bowers,

Castels and towres.

Full sharp ar thise showers 350

That renys aboute.

40. Therfor, wife, haue done, com into ship fast.

Vxor. Yei, Noe, go cloute thi shone, the better will thai last.

Prima mulier. Good moder, com in sone, for all is ouercast

Both the son and the mone.

Secunda mulier. And many wynd blast 355

Full sharp.

Thise floodis so thay ryn,

Therfor, moder, come in.

Vxor. In fayth, yit will I spyn;

All in vayn ye carp. 360

41. Tercia mulier. If ye like ye may spyn, moder, in the ship.

Noe. Now is this twyys com in, dame, on my frenship.

Vxor. Wheder I lose or I wyn, in fayth, thi felowship

Set I not at a pyn. This spyndill will I slip

Apon this hill, 365

Or I styr oone fote.

Noe. Peter! I traw we dote.

Without any more note

Come in if ye will.

42. Vxor. Yei, water nyghys so nere that I sit not dry,370

Into ship with a byr therfor will I hy

For drede that I drone here.

Noe. Dame, securly,

It bees boght full dere ye abode so long by

Out of ship.

Vxor. I will not, for thi bydyng, 375

Go from doore to mydyng.

Noe. In fayth, and for youre long taryyng

Ye shal lik on the whyp.

43. Vxor. Spare me not, I pray the, bot euen as thou thynk,

Thise grete wordis shall not flay me.

Noe. Abide, dame, and drynk, 380

For betyn shall thou be with this staf to thou stynk;

Ar strokis good? say me.

Vxor. What say ye, Wat Wynk?

Noe. Speke!

Cry me mercy, I say!

Vxor. Therto say I nay. 385

Noe. Bot thou do, bi this day!

Thi hede shall I breke.

44. Vxor. Lord, I were at ese, and hertely full hoylle,

Might I onys haue a measse of wedows coyll;

For thi saull, without lese, shuld I dele penny doyll, 390

So wold mo, no frese, that I se on this sole

Of wifis that ar here,

For the life that thay leyd,

Wold thare husbandis were dede,

For, as euer ete I brede, 395

So wold I oure syre were.

45. Noe. Yee men that has wifis, whyls they ar yong,

If ye luf youre lifis, chastice thare tong:

Me thynk my hert ryfis, both levyr and long,

To se sich stryfis wedmen emong. 400

Bot I,

As haue I blys,

Shall chastyse this.

Vxor. Yit may ye mys,

Nicholl Nedy! 405

46. Noe. I shall make þe still as stone, begynnar of blunder!

I shall bete the bak and bone, and breke all in sonder.

[They fight.]

Vxor. Out, alas, I am gone! Oute apon the, mans wonder!

Noe. Se how she can grone, and I lig vnder;

Bot, wife, 410

In this hast let vs ho,

For my bak is nere in two.

Vxor. And I am bet so blo

That I may not thryfe.

[They enter the Ark.]

47. Primus filius. A! whi fare ye thus, fader and moder both? 415

Secundus filius. Ye shuld not be so spitus, standyng in sich a woth.

Tercius filius. Thise <floodis> ar so hidus, with many a cold coth.

Noe. We will do as ye bid vs, we will no more be wroth,

Dere barnes!

Now to the helme will I hent, 420

And to my ship tent.

Vxor. I se on the firmament,

Me thynk, the seven starnes.

48. Noe. This is a grete flood, wife, take hede.

Vxor. So me thoght, as I stode; we ar in grete drede; 425

Thise wawghes ar so wode.

Noe. Help, God, in this nede!

As Thou art stereman good, and best, as I rede,

Of all;

Thou rewle vs in this rase,

As Thou me behete hase. 430

Vxor. This is a perlous case.

Help, God, when we call!

49. Noe. Wife, tent the stere-tre, and I shall asay

The depnes of the see that we bere, if I may.

Vxor. That shall I do ful wysely. Now go thi way,435

For apon this flood haue we flett many day

With pyne.

Noe. Now the water will I sownd:

A! it is far to the grownd;

This trauell I expownd 440

Had I to tyne.

50. Aboue all hillys bedeyn the water is rysen late

Cubettis fyfteyn, bot in a higher state

It may not be, I weyn, for this well I wate:

This forty dayes has rayn beyn; it will therfor abate 445

Full lele.

This water in hast

Eft will I tast.

Now am I agast,

It is wanyd a grete dele. 450

51. Now are the weders cest, and cateractes knyt,

Both the most and the leest.

Vxor. Me thynk, bi my wit,

The son shynes in the eest. Lo, is not yond it?

We shuld haue a good feest, were thise floodis flyt

So spytus. 455

Noe. We haue been here, all we,

Thre hundreth dayes and fyfty.

Vxor. Yei, now wanys the see;

Lord, well is vs!

52. Noe. The thryd tyme will I prufe what depnes we bere. 460

Vxor. How long shall thou hufe? Lay in thy lyne there.

Noe. I may towch with my lufe the grownd evyn here.

Vxor. Then begynnys to grufe to vs mery chere;

Bot, husband,

What grownd may this be? 465

Noe. The hyllys of Armonye.

Vxor. Now blissid be He

That thus for vs can ordand!

53. Noe. I see toppys of hyllys he, many at a syght,

No thyng to let me, the wedir is so bright. 470

Vxor. Thise ar of mercy tokyns full right.

Noe. Dame, thou counsell me, what fowll best myght,

And cowth,

With flight of wyng

Bryng, without taryying, 475

Of mercy som tokynyng,

Ayther bi north or southe?

54. For this is the fyrst day of the tent moyne.

Vxor. The ravyn, durst I lay, will com agane sone;

As fast as thou may, cast hym furth, haue done; 480

He may happyn today com agane or none

With grath.

Noe. I will cast out also

Dowfys oone or two.

Go youre way, go, 485

God send you som wathe!

55. Now ar thise fowles flone into seyr countré;

Pray we fast ichon, kneland on our kne,

To Hym that is alone worthiest of degré,

That He wold send anone oure fowles som fee 490

To glad vs.

Vxor. Thai may not fayll of land,

The water is so wanand.

Noe. Thank we God Allweldand,

That Lord that made vs! 495

56. It is a wonder thyng, me thynk, sothlé,

Thai ar so long taryyng, the fowles that we

Cast out in the mornyng.

Vxor. Syr, it may be

Thai tary to thay bryng.

Noe. The ravyn is a-hungrye

All way; 500

He is without any reson;

And he fynd any caryon,

As peraventure may be fon,

He will not away.

57. The dowfe is more gentill, her trust I vntew, 505

Like vnto the turtill, for she is ay trew.

Vxor. Hence bot a litill she commys, lew, lew!

She bryngys in her bill som novels new;

Behald!

It is of an olif tre 510

A branch, thynkys me.

Noe. It is soth, perdé,

Right so is it cald.

58. Doufe, byrd full blist, fayre myght the befall!

Thou art trew for to trist, as ston in the wall; 515

Full well I it wist thou wold com to thi hall.

Vxor. A trew tokyn ist we shall be sauyd all:

For whi?

The water, syn she com,

Of depnes plom 520

Is fallen a fathom

And more, hardely.

59. Primus filius. Thise floodis ar gone, fader, behold.

Secundus filius. Ther is left right none, and that be ye bold.

Tercius filius. As still as a stone oure ship is stold. 525

Noe. Apon land here anone that we were, fayn I wold,

My childer dere,

Sem, Iaphet and Cam,

With gle and with gam,

Com go we all sam, 530

We will no longer abide here.

60. Vxor. Here haue we beyn, Noy, long enogh

With tray and with teyn, and dreed mekill wogh.

Noe. Behald on this greyn nowder cart ne plogh

Is left, as I weyn, nowder tre then bogh, 535

Ne other thyng;

Bot all is away;

Many castels, I say,

Grete townes of aray,

Flitt has this flowyng. 540

61. Vxor. Thise floodis not afright all this warld so wide

Has mevid with myght on se and bi side.

Noe. To dede ar thai dyght, prowdist of pryde,

Euerich a wyght that euer was spyde

With syn, 545

All ar thai slayn,

And put vnto payn.

Vxor. From thens agayn

May thai neuer wyn?

62. Noe. Wyn? No, iwis, bot He that myght hase 550

Wold myn of thare mys, and admytte thaym to grace;

As He in bayll is blis, I pray Hym in this space,

In heven hye with His to purvaye vs a place,

That we,

With His santis in sight, 555

And His angels bright,

May com to His light:

Amen, for charité.

Explicit processus Noe.

129 [chese]] chefe MS.

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NOTES

[I]

Dialect: North-East Midland of Lincolnshire.

Inflexions:—

VERB: pres. ind. 2 sg. hast 131.

3 sg. stondeþ 8.

3 pl. calle 32, seye 254; beside dos 157 ([see note]).

imper. pl. comeþ 80, doþ 82.

pres. p. karoland (in rime) 117, 150, 222.

strong pp. wryte 37, fal 195, gone 161.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: fem. nom. she 48; pl. nom. þey 32; poss. here 37; obj. hem 39.

The inflexions are very much simplified as compared with those of the Kentish Ayenbyte (III), but the verse shows that final unaccented -e was better preserved in the original than in our late MS., e.g.

And specyaly at hygh<ė> tymės 13.

For to see þys hard<ė> dome 173.

And at þe þre<ė> day<ė>s endė 198.

Þat nonė myȝt<ė> leye yn grauė 217.

Sounds: ǭ is regular for OE. ā: lothe 9, wroth 10, &c.; but the only decisive rime is also (OE. alswā): to (OE. tō) 35-6, where ǭ after (s)w has become close ọ̄; see Appendix § 8. ii, note.

Syntax: the loose constructions, e.g. ll. 15 ff. (note), 134-5, 138-9, 216-19, are characteristic of the period.

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The history of this legend is traced by E. Schröder, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. xvii, 1896, pp. 94 ff., and, more summarily, by Gaston Paris, Les Danseurs maudits, Paris 1900. The circumstances from which it sprang appear to belong to the year 1021. Kölbigk, in Anhalt, Saxony, was the scene of the dance. In 1074 it is referred to as 'famous' by a German chronicler, who records the healing of one of the dancers in 1038 through the miraculous powers of St. Wigbert.

Mendicants who suffered from or could simulate nervous diseases like St. Vitus's dance, were quick to realize their opportunity, and two letters telling the story were circulated as credentials by pretended survivors of the band. Both are influenced in form by a sermon of St. Augustine of Hippo which embodies a similar story (Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxxviii, col. 1443). The first (Letter of Otbert), which claims to be issued by Peregrinus bishop of Cologne, spread rapidly through Western Europe. This was the version that Mannyng found in William of Wadington. The second (Letter of Theodric) makes Bruno bishop of Toul, afterwards Pope Leo IX, vouch for the facts. It was incorporated in the account of the miraculous cure of Theodric at the shrine of St. Edith of Wilton, and is known only from English sources. This was the text that Mannyng used. A later English version, without merit, is found in the dreary fifteenth-century Life of St. Editha (ed. Horstmann, ll. 4063 ff.).

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1 ff. games: Dances and shows in the churchyard were constantly condemned by the Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1287 a synod at Exeter rules ne quisquam luctas, choreas, vel alios ludos inhonestos in coemeteriis exercere praesumat, praecipue in vigiliis et festis sanctorum. See Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, vol. i, pp. 90 ff.

6. or tabure bete: Note the use of bete infin. as a verbal noun = betyng; cp. XI b 184-5.

10-12. 'And he (sc. a good priest) will become angered sooner than one who has no learning, and who does not understand Holy Writ.'

15 ff. noght... none: An accumulation of negatives in ME. makes the negation more emphatic. Here the writer wavers between two forms of expression: (1) 'do not sing carols in holy places', and (2) 'to sing carols in holy places is sacrilege'.

25-8. yn þys londe, &c. The cure of Theodric, not the dance, took place in England. Brightgiva is said to have been abbess of Wilton at the time (1065), and 'King Edward' is Edward the Confessor (1042-66).

34-5. The church of Kölbigk is dedicated to St. Magnus, of whom nothing certain is known. The memory of St. Bukcestre, if ever there was such a saint, appears to be preserved only in this story.

36. þat þey come to: Construe with hyt in l. 35.

37 ff. Here names of alle: The twelve followers of Gerlew are named in the Latin text, but Mannyng gives only the principal actors. The inconsistency is still more marked in the Bodleian MS., which after l. 40 adds:—

Þe ouþer twelue here names alle

Þus were þey wrete, as y can kalle.

Otherwise the Bodleian MS. is very closely related to the Harleian, sharing most of its errors and peculiarities.

44. þe prestes doghtyr of þe tounne, 'the priest of the town's daughter'. In early ME. the genitive inflexion is not, as in Modern English, added to the last of a group of words: cp. XIV d 10 Þe Kynges sone of heuene 'the King of Heaven's son'. The same construction occurs in VIII a 19 for þe Lordes loue of heuene = 'for the love of the Lord of Heaven', and in VIII a 214; but in these passages the genitive is objective, and Modern English does not use the inflexion at all (note to I 83). The ME. and modern expressions have their point of agreement in the position of the genitive inflexion, which always precedes immediately the noun on which the genitive depends. Cp. notes to II 518,VI 23, and XIV d 1.

46. Aȝone: ȝ = z here. The name is Azo in the Latin.

55. Beu<u>ne: (derived from the accusative Beuonem) = Beuo of l. 59 and Beuolyne of l. 62. The form is properly Bovo not Bevo. Considerable liberties were taken with proper names to adapt them to metre or rime: e.g. l. 52 Merswynde; l. 63 Merswyne; cp. note to l. 246. This habit, and frequent miscopying, make it difficult to rely on names in mediaeval stories.

65. Grysly: An error for Gerlew, Latin Gerleuus, from Low German Gērlēf = OE. Gārlāf.

83. for Crystys awe: In Modern English a phrase like Christ's awe could mean only 'the awe felt by Christ'. But in OE. Cristes ege, or ege Cristes, meant also 'the awe of Christ (which men feel)', the genitive being objective. In ME. the word order eie Cristes is dropped, but Cristes eie (or awe, the Norse form) is still regular for '(men's) fear of Christ'. Hence formal ambiguities like þe Lordes loue of heuene VIII a 19, which actually means '(men's) love of the Lord of Heaven', but grammatically might mean 'the Lord of Heaven's love (for men)'—see note to l. 44 above.

96-7. The Latin Letter of Theodric in fact has ab isto officio ex Dei nutu amodo non cessetis, but probably amodo is miswritten for anno.

127. a saue: lit. 'have safe', i.e. 'rescue'. Saue is here adj.

128-9. ys: flessh: The rime requires the alternative forms es (as in l. 7) and fles(s). Cp. note to VII 4.

132. Ȝow þar nat aske: 'There is no need for you to ask'; ȝow is dative after the impersonal þar.

156-7. werynes: dos. The rime is false. Perhaps Mannyng wrote: As many body for goyng es [sc. wery], and a copyist misplaced es, writing: As many body es for goyng. If body es were read as bodyes, a new verb would then be added.

169. Note the irony of the refrain. The Letter of Otbert adds the picturesque detail that they gradually sank up to their waists in the ground through dancing on the same spot.

172. Þe Emperoure Henry: Probably Henry II of Germany, Emperor from 1014 to 1024. A certain vagueness in points of time and place would save the bearers of the letter from awkward questions.

188-9. banned: woned. The rime (OE. bannan and wunian) is false, and the use of woned 'remained' is suspicious. Mannyng perhaps wrote bende 'put in bonds': wende (= ȝede l. 191) 'went'; or (if the form band for banned(e) could be evidenced so early) band 'cursed': wand, pret. of winden, 'went'.

195. fal yn a swone: So MS., showing that by the second half of the fourteenth century the pp. adj. aswon had been wrongly analysed into the indef. article a and a noun swon. Mannyng may have written fallen aswone. See Glossary, s.v. aswone.

234. Wyth sundyr lepys: 'with separate leaps'; but Wyth was probably added by a scribe who found in his original sundyrlepys, adv., meaning 'separately',—

Kar suvent par les mains

Des malvais escrivains

Sunt livre corrumput.

240. Seynt Edyght. St. Edith (d. 984) was daughter of King Edgar, and abbess of Wilton. The rime is properly Edit: Teodric, for t and k are sufficiently like in sound to rime together in the best ME. verse; cp. note to XV g 27.

246. Brunyng... seynt Tolous: Latin Bruno Tullanus. Robert probably did not hesitate to provide a rime by turning Toul into Toulouse. Bruno afterwards became Pope Leo IX (1049-54).

254-5. trowed: God. Read trŏd, a shortened form, revealed by rimes in North Midland texts. The identical rime occurs three times in Mannyng's Chronicle (ed. Hearne, p. 339; ed. Furnivall, ll. 7357-8, 8111-12); and, again with substitution of troud for trod, in Havelok, ll. 2338-9. Cp. note to XVII 56.

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[II]

Dialect: South-Western, with some admixture of Northern forms due to a copyist.

Inflexions:—

VERB: pres. ind. 1 sg. ichaue, &c. (see note to l. 129).

2 sg. makest 169, worst 170.

3 sg. geþ (in rime) 238; contracted fint 239, last 335, sitt 443, stont 556.

2 pl. ȝe beþ 582.

3 pl. strikeþ 252 (proved by rime with 3 sg. likeþ).

imper. pl. make 216, chese 217; beside doþ 218.

pres. p. berking 286 (in rime with verbal sb.); daunceing (in rime) 298. The forms kneland 250, liggeand 388, are due to a Northern copyist.

strong pp. (various forms): go (: wo) 196, ygo (: mo) 349, ydone (: -none) 76, comen 29, come 181, ycomen 203, yborn 174, bore 210.

infin. Note aski (OE. acsian) 467 (App. § 13 vii).

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: fem. nom. he 408, 446, hye 337, beside sche 75, 77, &c.

pl. nom. he (in rime) 185, hye 91, beside þai 32, 69, &c.;

poss. her 'their' 87, 413, 415; obj. hem 69, &c.

NOUN: Note the plurals honden 79, berien 258.

The original text preserved final -e better than the extant MSS., e.g.

And seyd<ė> þus þe king<ė> to 119.

Þat noþing help<ė> þe no schal 172.

Al þe vt<ė>mast<ė> wal 357.

So, sir, as ȝe seyd<ė> nouþė 466.

Sounds: ǭ for OE. ā is proved in rime: biholde (OE. beháldan): gold (OE. góld) 367-8 (cp. 467-8); and yhote (OE. gehāten): note (OFr. note) 601-2.

The rime frut: lite 257-8 points to original frut: lut (OE. lȳt), with Western ǖ, from OE. ȳ, riming with OFr. ǖ.

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1-22. These lines, found also in Lai le Freine, would serve as preface to any of the Breton lays, with the couplet ll. 23-4 as the special connecting link. In the Auchinleck MS., Orfeo begins on a fresh leaf at l. 25, without heading or capitals to indicate that it is a new poem. The leaf preceding has been lost. There is good reason to suppose that it contained the lines supplied in the text from the Harleian MS.

4. frely, 'goodly': Lai le Freine has ferly 'wondrous'.

12. MS. moost to lowe: means 'most (worthy) to be praised', and there are two or three recorded examples of to lowe = to alowe in this sense. But MS. Ashmole and the corresponding lines in Lai le Freine point to most o loue 'mostly of love' as the common reading. The typical 'lay' is a poem of moderate length, telling a story of love, usually with some supernatural element, in a refined and courtly style.

13. Brytayn, 'Brittany': so Brytouns 16 = 'Bretons'. Cp. Chaucer, Franklin's Tale, Prologue, beginning

Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes

Of diverse aventures maden layes

Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge,

Whiche layes with hir instrumentz they songe, &c.

20. The curious use of it after the plural layes is perhaps not original. Lai le Freine has: And maked a lay and yaf it name.

26. In Inglond: an alteration of the original text to give local colour. Cp. ll. 49-50 and l. 478.

29-30. Pluto: the King of Hades came to be regarded as the King of Fairyland; cp. Chaucer, Merchant's Tale, l. 983 Pluto that is the kyng of fairye. The blunder by which Juno is made a king is apparently peculiar to the Auchinleck copy.

33-46. These lines are not in the Auchinleck MS., but are probably authentic. Otherwise little prominence would be given to Orfeo's skill as a harper.

41 ff. A confused construction: In þe world was neuer man born should be followed by <þat> he <ne> schulde þinke; but the writer goes on as if he had begun with 'every man in the world'. And = 'if'.

46. ioy and overload the verse, and are probably an unskilful addition to the text.

49-50. These lines are peculiar to the Auchinleck MS., and are clearly interpolated; cp. l. 26 and l. 478. Winchester was the old capital of England, and therefore the conventional seat of an English king.

57. comessing: The metre points to a disyllabic form comsing here, and to comsi in l. 247.

80. it bled wete: In early English the clause which is logically subordinate is sometimes made formally co-ordinate. More normal would be þat (it) bled wete 'until (or so that) it bled wet'; i.e. until it was wet with blood.

82. reuey<se>d or some such form of ravished is probably right. reneyd 'apostate' is a possible reading of the MS., but does not fit the sense. N. E. D. suggests remeued.

102. what is te?: 'What ails you?; cp. l. 115. Te for þe after s of is. Such modifications are due either to dissimilation of like sounds, as þ: s which are difficult in juxtaposition; or to assimilation of unlike sounds, as þatow 165, for þat þow.

115. 'What ails you, and how it came about?'; cp. l. 102.

129. ichil = ich wille; and so ichaue 209, icham 382, ichot XV b 23. These forms, reduced to chill, cham, &c., were still characteristic of the Southern dialect in Shakespeare's time: cp. King Lear, IV. vi. 239 Chill not let go, Zir.

131. þat nouȝt nis: 'That cannot be'; cp. l. 457 þat nouȝt nere.

157-8. palays: ways. The original rime was perhaps palys: wys 'wise'.

170. 'Wherever you may be, you shall be fetched.'

201-2. barouns: renouns. Forms like renouns in rime are usually taken over from a French original.

215. The overloaded metre points to a shorter word like wite for vnderstond.

216. Make ȝou þan a parlement: ȝou is not nom., but dat. 'for yourselves'. Observe that Orfeo acts like a constitutional English king.

241. þe fowe and griis: A half translation of OFr. vair et gris. Vair (Lat. varius) was fur made of alternate pieces of the grey back and white belly of the squirrel. Hence it is rendered by fowe, OE. fāg 'varicolor'. Griis is the grey back alone, and the French word is retained for the rime with biis, which was probably in the OFr. original.

258. berien: The MS. may be read berren, but as this form is incorrect it is better to assume that the i has been carelessly shaped by the scribe.

289. him se, 'see (for himself), and similarly slep þou þe XV g 13. This reflexive use of the dative pronoun, which cannot be reproduced in a modern rendering, is common in OE. and ME., especially with verbs of motion; cp. note to XV g 24. But distinguish went him 475, 501, where him is accusative, not dative (OE. wente hine), because the original sense of went is 'turned', which naturally takes a reflexive object.

342. me no reche = I me no reche. The alternative would be the impersonal me no recheþ.

343. also spac = also bliue 142 = also swiþe 574: 'straightway', &c.

363. MS. auowed (or anowed) is meaningless here. Anow<rn>ed, or the doubtful by-form anow<r>ed 'adorned', is probably the true reading.

382. The line is too long—a fault not uncommon where direct speech is introduced, e.g. l. 419 and 178. Usually a correct line can be obtained by dropping words like quath he, which are not as necessary in spoken verse as they are where writing alone conveys the sense. But sometimes the flaw may lie in the forms of address: l. 382 would be normal without Parfay; l. 419 may once have been:

And seyd 'Lord, ȝif þi wille were'.

There is no task more slippery than the metrical reconstruction of ME. poems, particularly those of which the extant text derives from the original not simply through a line of copyists, but through a line of minstrels who passed on the verses from memory and by word of mouth.

388. The line seems to be corrupt, and, as usual, the Harleian and Ashmole MSS. give little help. Ful can hardly be a sb. meaning 'multitude' from the adj. full. Some form of fele (OE. fela) 'a great number' would give possible grammar and sense (cp. l. 401), but bad metre. Perhaps ful should be deleted as a scribe's anticipation of folk in the next line; for the construction seiȝe... of folk cp. XVI 388; and Hous of Fame, Bk. iii, ll. 147 ff.

433. Þei we nouȝt welcom no be: Almost contemporary with Sir Orfeo is the complaint of an English writer that the halls of the nobles stood open to a lawyer, but not to a poet:

Exclusus ad ianuam poteris sedere

Ipse licet venias, Musis comitatus, Homere!

'Though thou came thyself, Homer, with all the Muses, thou mightst sit at the door, shut out!', T. Wright, Political Songs (1839), p. 209.

446. hadde he, 'had she'. For he (OE. hēo) = 'she' cp. l. 408.

450. 'Now ask of me whatsoever it may be'. The plots of mediaeval romances often depend on the unlimited promises of an unwary king, whose honour compels him to keep his word. So in the story of Tristram, an Irish noble disguised as a minstrel wins Ysolde from King Mark by this same device, but is himself cheated of his prize by Tristram's skill in music.

458. 'An ill-matched pair you two would be!'

479. The halting verse may be completed by adding sum tyme before his, with the Harley and Ashmole MSS.

483. ybilt of the MS. and editors cannot well be a pp. meaning 'housed'. I prefer to take bilt as sb. = bild, build 'a building'; and to suppose that y has been miswritten for ȳ, the contraction for yn.

495. gan hold, 'held'; a good example of the ME. use of gan + infinitive with the sense of the simple preterite.

515. An unhappy suggestion home for the second come has sometimes been accepted. But a careful Southern poet could not rime home (OE. hām) and some (OE. sŭm). See note to VI 224.

518. For mi lordes loue Sir Orfeo, 'for my lord Sir Orfeo's love'. Logically the genitive inflexion should be added to both of two substantives in apposition, as in OE. on Herodes dagum cyninges 'in the days of King Herod'. But in ME. the first substantive usually has the inflexion, and the second is uninflected; cp. V 207 kyngeȝ hous Arthor 'the house of King Arthur'; and notes to I 44, VI 23.

544. Allas! wreche: wreche refers to the speaker, as in l. 333.

551. hou it geþ—: The sense is hard to convey without some cumbrous paraphrase like 'the inexorable law of this world—'.

552. It nis no bot of manes deþ: 'There is no remedy for man's death', i.e. violent grief will do no good. Note it nis 'there is (not)'. In ME. the anticipated subject is commonly it where we use there.

565. in ynome: '<had> taken up my abode'; in 'dwelling' = NE. 'inn'.

599. herof overloads the line and is omitted in the Ashmole MS.

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[III]

Dialect: Pure Kentish of Canterbury.

Inflexions are well preserved, and are similar to those found in contemporary South-Western texts.

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. multiplieþ 1; contracted ret 3, 16.

1 pl. habbeþ 2.

strong pp. yyeue 25, yhote 29.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: the new forms she, they, their, them are not used.

3 sg. fem. nom. hi 32, hy 45;

poss. hare 33, beside hire 36;

pl. nom. hi 58.

Note the objective form his(e) = 'her' 32, 53 (twice); and = 'them' 7, 8, 28.

NOUN: plurals in -en occur: uorbisnen 2, ken 56. In diaknen 5, -en represents the dat. pl. inflexion.

ADJECTIVE: onen dat. sg. 4, oþren dat. pl. 53, þane acc. sg. masc. 59, þet (word) nom. sg. neut. 57, show survivals rare even in the South at this date.

Sounds: Characteristic of the South-East is ē̆ for OE. (West-Saxon) ȳ̆: kertel (OE. cyrtel) 39, ken (OE. cȳ) 56.

Old diphthongs are preserved in greate (OE. grēat) 9, yeaf 22. In hyerof 1, yhyerde 49, hier 2, þieues 18, ye, ie represent diphthongs developed in Kentish rather than simple close ē.

Initial z = s in zome 'some' 2, zede 'said' 12, zuo 'so' 17; and initial u = f in uele 2, uayre 2, uram 4, bevil 41, evidence dialectical changes which occurred also in the South-West.

Syntax: The constructions are distorted by slavish following of the French original; see note to ll. 48-60.

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3. Saint Germain of Auxerre (MS. Aucerne) is famous for his missions to Britain in the first half of the fifth century. This particular story is found in the Acta Sanctorum for July 31, p. 229.

16. St. John the Almoner (d. 616) was bishop of Alexandria. For the story see Acta Sanctorum for January 23, p. 115.

27-8. and huanne he hit wiste þe ilke zelue þet his hedde onderuonge: an obscure sentence. Perhaps: 'and when he, the same who had received them (i.e. John, who had received the five hundred pounds), knew it' (sc. the truth).

38. This tale of Boniface, bishop of Ferentia in Etruria, is told in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, Bk. i, chap. 9. Its first appearance in English is in the translation of the Dialogues made by Bishop Wærferth for King Alfred (ed. Hans Hecht, Leipzig 1900, pp. 67 ff.).

48-60. The French original of the passage, taken from an elegant fourteenth-century MS., Cotton Cleopatra A.V., fol. 144 a, will show how slavishly Dan Michael followed his source:—

Apres il fu un poure home, sicom on dit, qui auoit une vache; e oi dire a son prestre en sarmon que Dieu disoit en leuangile que Dieu rendoit a cent doubles quanque on donast por lui. Le prodomme du conseil sa femme dona sa uache a son prestre, qui estoit riches. Le prestre la prist uolentiers, e lenuoia pestre auoec les autres quil auoit. Kant uint au soir, la uache au poure home sen uint a son hostel chies le poure homme, com ele auoit acoustume, e amena auoeques soi toutes les uaches au prestre, iukes a cent. Quant le bon home uit ce, si pensa que ce estoit le mot de leuangile que li auoit rendu; e li furent aiugiees deuant son euesque contre le prestre. Cest ensample moustre bien que misericorde est bone marchande, car ele multiplie les biens temporels.

58-9. 'And they were adjudged to him before his bishop against the priest', i.e. the bishop ruled that the poor man should have all the cows.

The French fabliau 'Brunain' takes up the comic rather than the moral aspect of the story. A peasant, hearing the priest say that gifts to God are doubly repaid, thought it was a favourable opportunity to give his cow Blérain—a poor milker—to the priest. The priest ties her with his own cow Brunain. To the peasant's great joy, the unprofitable Blérain returns home, leading with her the priest's good cow.

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[IV]

Dialect: Northern of Yorkshire.

Inflexions: are reduced almost as in Modern English.

VERB: pres. ind. 1 sg. settes a 30; beside uninflected sygh a 69, sob a 69.

3 sg. lastes a 1.

1 pl. flese b 86: beside we drede b 85.

3 pl. lyse a 61, lufes b 7, &c.; beside þay take, þay halde b 12, &c., which agree with the Midland forms.

pres. p. lastand a 25, byrnand a 26, riming with hand.

strong pp. wryten a 2.

Note the Northern and North Midland short forms mase 'makes' a 15, tane 'taken' a 53 (in rime).

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. scho b 1;

pl. nom. þai a 60;

poss. þar a 59 or þair a 65;

obj. thaym b 2.

The demonstrative thire 'these' at b 55, b 59 is specifically Northern.

Sounds: OE. ā is regularly represented by ā, not by ǭ of the South and most of the Midlands: wa a 2, euermare a 20, balde 'bold' a 51; bane (in rime) a 54.

ọ̄ becomes ū (ǖ?) in gud(e) b 9, b 15; and its length is sometimes indicated by adding y, as in ruysand 'vaunting' b 80.

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a.This poem is largely a translation of sentences excerpted from Rolle's Incendium Amoris, cc. xl-xli (Miss Allen in Mod. Lang. Review for 1919, p. 320). Useful commentaries are his prose Form of Perfect Living (ed. Horstmann, vol. i, pp. 3 ff.), and Commandment of Love to God (ibid. pp. 61 ff.), which supply many parallels in thought and phrasing; see, for example, the note to l. 48 below.

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a 1. feste. Not the adj. 'fast', but pp. 'fastened', and so in l. 82.

a 5. louyng, 'beloved one', here and in l. 56. This exceptional use of the verbal noun occurs again in my ȝhernyng 'what I yearn for', a 22; my couaytyng 'what I covet', a 23.

a 9-12. The meaning seems to be: 'The throne of love is raised high, for it (i.e. love) ascended into heaven. It seems to me that on earth love is hidden, which makes men pale and wan. It goes very near to the bed of bliss (i.e. the bridal bed of Christ and the soul) I assure you. Though the way may seem long to us, yet love unites God and man.'

a 24. louyng, 'praise' here and in XVI 405, from OE. lof 'praise'; quite distinct from louyng, lufyng, in ll. 5 and 56.

a 36. fle þat na man it maye, 'which no man can escape'. See Appendix § 12, Relative.

a 42. styll, 'always' rather than 'motionless'.

a 43-4. Apparently 'the nature of love (þat kyend) turns from care the man (þe lyfe) who succeeds in finding love, or who ever knew it in his heart; and brings him to joy and delight.'

a 48. Cp. Form of Perfect Living, ed. Horstmann, vol. i, pp. 39-40: For luf es stalworth als þe dede, þat slaes al lyuand thyng in erth; and hard als hell, þat spares noght till þam þat er dede. In The Commandment of Love Rolle explains: For als dede slas al lyuand thyng in þis worlde, sa perfite lufe slas in a mans sawle all fleschly desyres and erthly couaytise. And als hell spares noght til dede men, bot tormentes al þat commes bartill, alswa a man þat es in þis [sc. the third, called 'Singular'] degré of lufe noght anly he forsakes þe wretched solace of þis lyf, bot alswa he couaytes to sofer pynes for Goddes lufe. (Ibid. p. 63.)

b 4. scho takes erthe: From the Historia Animalium attributed to Aristotle, Bk. ix, c. 21. This is the authority referred to at l. 18, and at l. 33 (Bk. ix, c. 9); but the citations seem to be second hand, as they do not agree closely with the text of the Historia Animalium.

b 21-2. 'For there are many who never can keep the rule of love towards their friends, whether kinsmen or not.' MS. ynesche has been variously interpreted; but it must be corrected to ynence.

b 47. strucyo or storke: the ostrich, not the stork, is meant. Latin struthio has both meanings. On the whole, fourteenth-century translators show a fair knowledge of Latin, but the average of scholarship, even among the clergy, was never high in the Middle Ages. In the magnificent Eadwine Psalter, written at Canterbury Cathedral in the twelfth century, Ps. ci. 7 similis factus sum pellicano is rendered by 'I am become like to the skin of a dog' (= pelli canis), though an ecclesiastic would recite this psalm in Latin at least once every week. The records of some thirteenth-century examinations of English clergy may be found in G. G. Coulton, A Medieval Garner (London 1910), pp. 270 ff. They include the classic answer of Simon, the curate of Sonning, who, being examined on the Canon of the Mass, and pressed to say what governed Te in Te igitur, clementissime Pater,... supplices rogamus, replied 'Pater, for He governeth all things'. As for French, Michael of Northgate, a shaky translator, is fortunate in escaping gross blunders in the specimen chosen (III); but the English rendering of Mandeville's Travels is full of errors; see the notes to IX.

b 60. teches: better toches, according to the Footnote.

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[V]

Alliterative Verse. The long lines in Gawayne, with The Destruction of Troy, Piers Plowman, and The Blacksmiths (XV h), are specimens of alliterative verse unmixed with rime, a form strictly comparable with Old English verse, from which it must derive through an unbroken oral tradition. While the detailed analysis of the Middle English alliterative line is complex and controversial, its general framework is describable in simple terms. It will be convenient to take examples from Gawayne, which shows most of the developments characteristic of Middle English.

1. The long line is divided by a caesura into two half lines, of which the second is the more strictly built so that the rhythm may be well marked. Each half line normally contains two principal stresses, e.g.

And wént on his wáy || with his wýȝe óne 6.

Þat schulde téche hym to tóurne || to þat téne pláce 7.

But three stresses are not uncommonly found in the first half line:

Brókeȝ býled and bréke || bi bónkkeȝ abóute 14;

and, even for the simpler forms in Old and Middle English, the two-stress analysis has its opponents.

2. The two half lines are bound together by alliteration. In alliteration ch, st, s(c)h, sk, and usually sp, are treated as single consonants (see lines 64, 31, 15, 99, 25); any vowel may alliterate with any other vowel, e.g.

Þis óritore is v́gly || with érbeȝ ouergrówen 122;

and, contrary to the practice of correct OE. verse, h may alliterate with vowels in Gawayne:

Hálde þe now þe hýȝe hóde || þat Árþur þe ráȝt 229.

The háþel héldet hym fró || and on his áx résted 263.

3. In correct OE. verse the alliteration falls on one or both of the two principal stresses of the first half line, and invariably on the first stress only of the second half line. This is the ordinary ME. type:

Þat schulde téche hym to tóurne || to þat téne pláce 7;

though verses with only one alliterating syllable in the first half line, e.g.

Bot Í wyl to þe chápel || for cháunce þat may fálle 64,

are less common in ME. than in OE. But in ME. the fourth stress sometimes takes the alliteration also:

Þay clómben bi clýffeȝ || þer cléngeȝ þe cólde 10.

And when there is a third stress in the first half line, five syllables may alliterate:

Míst múged on þe mór || mált on þe móunteȝ 12.

In sum, Middle English verse is richer than Old English in alliteration.

4. In all these verses the alliteration of the first stress in the second half line, which is essential in Old English, is maintained; but it is sometimes neglected, especially when the alliteration is otherwise well marked:

With héȝe hélme on his héde || his láunce in his hónde (129; cp. 75),

where the natural stress cannot fall on his.

5. So far attention has been confined to the stressed syllables, around which the unstressed syllables are grouped. Clearly the richer the alliteration, the more freedom will be possible in the treatment of the unstressed syllables without undue weakening of the verse form. In the first two lines of Beowulf—

Hwæt we Gárdéna || in géardágum

Þéodcýninga || þrým gefrúnon—

three of the half lines have the minimum number of syllables—four—and the other has only five. In Middle English, with more elaborate alliteration, the number of unstressed syllables is increased, so that the minimum half line of four syllables is rare, and often contains some word which may have had an additional flexional syllable in the poet's own manuscript, e.g.

|| þe sélf<e> chápel 79.

|| árȝeȝ in hért<e> 209.

The less regular first half line is found with as many as eleven syllables; e.g.

And syþen he kéuereȝ bi a crágge || 153.

6. The grouping of stressed and unstressed syllables determines the rhythm. In Old English the falling rhythm predominates, as in || Gáwayn þe nóble 81; and historically it is no doubt correct to trace the development of the ME. line from a predominantly falling rhythm. But in fact, owing to the frequent use of unstressed syllables before the first stress (even in the second half line where they are avoided in the OE. falling rhythm) the commonest type is:

|| and þe bróde ȝáteȝ 1,

(× × -́ × -́ ×)

which from a strictly Middle English standpoint may be analysed as a falling rhythm with introductory syllables (× × | -́ × -́ ×), or as a rising rhythm with a weak ending (× × -́ × -́ | ×). A careful reader, accustomed to the usage of English verse, will have no difficulty in following the movement, without entering into nice technicalities of historical analysis.

7. The Destruction of Troy is more regular than Gawayne in its versification, and better preserves the Old English tradition. Piers Plowman is looser and nearer to prose, so that the alliteration sometimes fails altogether, e.g. Extract a 95, 138. Such differences in technique may depend on date, on locality, or on the taste, training, or skill of the author.

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Dialect: West Midland of Lancashire or Cheshire. (There is evidence of local knowledge in the account of Gawayne's ride in search of the Green Chapel, ll. 691 ff. of the complete text.)

Vocabulary. Sir Gawayne shows the characteristic vocabulary of alliterative verse.

It is rich in number and variety of words—Norse, French, and native. Besides common words like race 8, wylle 16, kyrk 128, aȝ- 267 (which displace native English forms rēs, wylde, chyrche, eie), Norse gives mug(g)ed 12, cayreȝ 52, scowtes 99, skayned 99, wro 154, broþe 165, fyked 206, snyrt 244, &c. French are baret 47, oritore 122, fylor 157, giserne 197, kauelacion 207, frounses 238, &c. Myst-hakel 13, orpedly 164 are native words; while the rare stryþe 237 and raþeled 226 are of doubtful origin.

Unless the alliteration is to be monotonous, there must be many synonyms for common words like man, kniȝt: e.g. burne 3, wyȝe 6, lede 27, gome 50, freke 57, tulk 65, knape 68, renk 138, most of which survive only by reason of their usefulness in alliterative formulae. Similarly, a number of verbs are used to express the common idea 'to move (rapidly)': boȝen 9, schowued 15, wonnen 23, ferked 105, romeȝ 130, keuereȝ 153, whyrlande 154, &c. Here the group of synonyms arises from weakening of the ordinary prose meanings; and this tendency to use words in colourless or forced senses is a general defect of alliterative verse. For instance, it is hard to attach a precise meaning to note 24, gedereȝ 92, glodes 113, wruxled 123, kest 308.

The Gawayne poet is usually artist enough to avoid the worst fault of alliterative verse—the use of words for mere sound without regard to sense, but there are signs of the danger in the empty, clattering line:

Bremly broþe on a bent þat brode watȝ aboute 165.

Inflexions: The rime waþe: ta þe 287-9 shows that organic final -e was sometimes pronounced in the poet's dialect.

VERB: pres. ind. 1 sg. haf 23; leue 60.

2 sg. spelleȝ 72.

3 sg. prayses 4; tas 237.

2 pl. ȝe han 25.

3 pl. han 345.

imper. pl. gotȝ (= gǭs) 51, cayreȝ 52.

pres. p. normally -ande, e.g. schaterande 15; but very rarely -yng: gruchyng 58.

strong pp. born 2, wonnen 23; tone (= taken) 91.

The weak pa. t. and pp. show occasional -(e)t for -(e)d: halt 11, fondet 57, &c.

Note that present forms in -ie(n) are preserved, and the i extended to the past tense: louy (OE. lufian) 27, louies 31; spuryed 25.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. nom. þay 9; poss. hor 345, beside her 352; obj. hom, beside hem 353.

Sounds: ǭ for older ā is common, and is proved for the original by rimes like more: restore (OFr. restorer) 213-15, þore: restore 286-8. But a is often written in the MS.: snaw 20, 166 (note rimes), halden 29, &c.

u for OE. y, characteristic of Western dialects, is found especially in the neighbourhood of labial consonants: spuryed (OE. spyrian) 25; muryly 268, 277; munt vb. 194 and sb. 282; beside myntes 284, lyfte 78, hille 13.

u for OE. eo (normal ME. e) is another Western feature: burne 3, 21, &c., rurde 151.

aw for OE. ēow (normal ME. ew, ow) as in trawe 44, trawþe 219, rawþe 136, is still found in some Northern dialects.

Spelling: ȝ (= z) is commonly written for final s: bredeȝ 3, &c.; even when the final s is certainly voiceless as in forȝ, 'force', 'torrent' 105, (aȝ-)leȝ 'fear-less' 267. tȝ is written for s in monosyllabic verbal forms, where it indicates the maintenance of voiceless final s under the stress (see rimes to hatȝ 'has', VI 81): watȝ 'was' 1, gotȝ 'goes' 51, &c. In early Norman French z had the sound ts, and so could be written tz, as in Fitz-Gerald 'son (Mod. Fr. fils) of Gerald'. But later, French (t)z fell together with s in pronunciation, so that the spelling tz was transferred to original s, both in fourteenth-century Anglo-French and in English.

qu- occurs for strongly aspirated hw- in quyte 'white' 20, quat 'what' 111; but the alliteration is with w, not with k(w), e.g.

And wyth quettyng awharf, er he wolde lyȝt 152.

The spelling goud 5, 50, &c., for gōd 'good' may indicate a sound change.

Notable is the carefully distinguished use of ȝ in ȝe, but y in yow, e.g. at ll. 23-6.

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3. blessed hym, 'crossed himself'; cp. XII b 86.

4-6. 'He gives a word of praise to the porter,—<who> kneeled before the prince (i.e. Gawayn) <and who> greeted him with "God and good day," and "May He save Gawayn!"—and went on his way, attended only by his man, who, &c.' Clumsiness in turning direct speech into reported speech is a constant source of difficulty in Middle English. For the suppressed relative cp. note to XIII a 36.

11. 'The clouds were high, but it was threatening below them.' Halt for halet pp. 'drawn up'.

16. 'The way by which they had to go through the wood was very wild.' Note the regular omission of a verb of motion after shall, will, &c. Cp. l. 64 I wyl to þe chapel; l. 332 ȝe schal... to my woneȝ, &c.

28. 'If you would act according to my wit (i.e. by my advice) you would fare the better.'

34. Hector, oþer oþer, 'Hector, or any other'. Hector is quoted as the great hero of the Troy story, from which, and from the legends of Arthur, the Middle Ages drew their models of valour.

35. 'He brings it about at the green chapel <that>', &c.

37. dyngeȝ: for MS. dynneȝ; Napier's suggestion.

41. 'He would as soon (lit. it seems to him as pleasant to) kill him, as be alive himself.'

43. 'If you reach that place you will be killed, I may warn you, knight.' Possibly I, y, has fallen out of the text after y of may (cp. VI 3), though there are clear instances in Old and Middle English where the pronominal subject must be understood from the context, e.g. I 168, VIII a 237, 273. Note the transitions from plural ȝe to singular þe in ll. 42-3; and the evidence at l. 72 f. that þou could still be used in addressing a superior.

44. Trawe ȝe me þat: trow has here a double construction with both me and þat as direct objects.

56. 'That I shall loyally screen you, and never give out the tale that you fled for fear of any man that I knew.'

64. for chaunce þat may falle, 'in spite of anything that may happen'.

68-9. 'Though he be a stern lord (lit. a stern man to rule), and armed with a stave'. The short lines are built more with a view to rime than to sense.

72-4. 'Marry!' said the other, 'now you say so decidedly that you will take your own harm upon yourself, and it pleases you to lose your life, I have no wish to hinder you.'

76. ryde me: an instance of the rare ethic dative, which expresses some interest in the action of the verb on the part of one who is neither the doer of the action nor its object. Distinguish the uses referred to in the notes to II 289, XV g 24.

86. Lepeȝ hym, 'gallops'. For hym, which refers to the rider, not the horse, cp. note to XV g 24.

92. Gryngolet: the name of Gawayn's horse. gedereȝ þe rake seems to mean 'takes the path'. No similar transitive use of 'gather' is known.

95. he wayted hym aboute, 'he looked around him'. Cp. l. 221 wayteȝ, and note to l. 121.

99. 'The clouds seemed to him grazed by the crags'; i.e. the crags were so high that they seemed to him to scrape the clouds. I owe to Professor Craigie the suggestion that skayned is ON. skeina 'to graze', 'scratch'.

102-4. 'And soon, a little way off on an open space, a mound (as it appeared) seemed to him remarkable.'

107. kacheȝ his caple, 'takes control of his horse', i.e. takes up the reins again to start the horse after the halt mentioned at l. 100.

109. his riche: possibly 'his good steed'. The substantival use of an adjective is common in alliterative verse, e.g. l. 188 þat schyre (neck); 200 þe schene (axe); 245 þe scharp (axe); 343 þat cortays (lady). But it has been suggested that brydel has fallen out of the text after riche.

114. 'And it was all hollow within, nothing but an old cave.'

115 f. he couþe hit noȝt deme with spelle, 'he could not say <which it was>'. For deme 'to speak', &c., cp. VI 1, XV b 29-30.

118. Wheþer commonly introduces a direct question and should not be separately translated. Cp. VI 205 and note to XI a 51.

121. wysty is here, 'it is desolate here'. Note Wowayn = Wauwayn, an alternative form of Gawayn used for the alliteration. The alternation is parallel to that in guardian: warden; regard: reward XIV c 105; guarantee: warranty; (bi)gyled 359: (bi)wyled 357; werre 'war' beside French guerre; wait 'watch' (as at l. 95) beside French guetter; and is due to dialectal differences in Old French. The Anglo-Norman dialect usually preserved w in words borrowed from Germanic or Celtic, while others replaced it by gw, gu, which later became simple g in pronunciation.

125. in my fyue wytteȝ: construe with fele.

127. þat chekke hit bytyde, 'which destruction befall!' þat... hit = 'which'. chekke refers to the checkmate at chess.

135. Had we not Chaucer's Miller and The Reeves Tale, the vividness and intimacy of the casual allusions would show the place of the flour-mill in mediaeval life. Havelok drives out his foes

So dogges ut of milne-hous;

and the Nightingale suggests as fit food for the Owl

one frogge

Þat sit at mulne vnder cogge.

These are records of hours spent by the village boys amid the noise of grinding and rush of water, in times when there was no rival mechanism to share the fascination of the water-driven mill.

137-43. 'This contrivance, as I believe, is prepared, sir knight, for the honour of meeting me by the way. Let God work His will, Lo! It helps me not a bit. Though I lose my life, no noise causes me to fear.' It has been suggested that wel o<r w>oo 'weal or woe' should be read instead of the interjection we loo! But Gawayn's despair (l. 141) is not in keeping with ll. 70 f., 90 f., or with the rest of his speech. The looseness of the short lines makes emendation dangerous. Otherwise we might read Hit helppeȝ þe not a mote, i.e. whatever happens, mere noise will not help the Green Knight by making Gawayn afraid; or, alternatively, hermeȝ 'harms' for helppeȝ.

151. 'Yet he went on with the noise with all speed for a while, and turned away <to proceed> with his grinding, before he would come down.' The nonchalance of the Green Knight is marked throughout the poem.

155. A Deneȝ ax: the ordinary long-bladed battle-axe was called a 'Danish' axe, in French hache danoise, because the Scandinavians in their raids on England and France first proved its efficiency in battle.

158. bi þat lace, '<measured> by the lace'. In Gawayne (ll. 217 ff. of the full text) the axe used at the first encounter is described. It had:

A lace lapped aboute, þat louked at þe hede,

And so after þe halme halched ful ofte,

Wyth tryed tasseleȝ þerto tacched innoghe, &c.

'A lace wrapped about <the handle>, which was fastened at the <axe's> head, and was wound about the handle again and again, with many choice tassels fastened to it', &c.

159. as fyrst, 'as at the first encounter', i.e. when he rode into Arthur's hall. His outfit of green is minutely described at ll. 151 ff. of the full text.

162. Sette þe stele to þe stone: i.e. he used the handle of the axe as a support when crossing rough ground. stele = 'handle', not 'steel'.

164. hypped... strydeȝ: note the frequent alternation of past tense and historic present. So ll. 3-4 passed... prayses; 107-8 kacheȝ... com... liȝteȝ; 280-1 haldeȝ... gef, &c.

169 f. 'Now, sweet sir, one can trust you to keep an appointment.'

175. þat þe falled, 'what fell to your lot', i.e. the right to deal the first blow.

177. oure one, 'by ourselves'. To one 'alone' in early ME. the dative pronoun was added for emphasis, him one, us one, &c. Later and more rarely the possessive pronoun is found, as here. Al(l) was also used to strengthen one; so that there are six possible ME. types: (1) one, e.g. ll. 6, 50; (2) him one; (3) his one; (4) al one = alone l. 87; (5) al him one, or him al one; (6) al his one, or his al one.

181. at a wap one, 'at a single blow'.

183. 'I shall grudge you no good-will because of any harm that befalls me.'

189-90. 'And acted as if he feared nothing: he would not tremble (dare) with terror.'

196. 'He (Gawayn) who was ever valiant would have been dead from his blow there.'

200. It must not be supposed that the chief incidents of Sir Gawayne were invented by the English poet. The three strokes, for example, two of them mere feints and the third harmless, can be shown to derive from the lost French source, which has Irish analogues. See pp. 71-4 of A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (London 1916), by Professor Kittredge, a safe guide in the difficult borderland of folklore and romance.

207. 'Nor did I raise any quibble in the house of King Arthur.' On kyngeȝ hous Arthor see note to II 518.

222. ryueȝ: the likeness of n and u in MSS. of the time makes it impossible to say whether the verb is riue 'to cleave', which is supported by l. 278, or rine, OE. hrīnan, 'to touch'.

230. 'And look out for your neck at this stroke, <to see> if it may survive.'

233. I hope: here, and often in ME., hope means 'believe', 'expect'.

250. Gawayn appears to have carried his shield on his back. By a movement of his shoulders he lets it fall in front of him, so that he can use it in defence.

258. foo, 'fiercely', adv. parallel with ȝederly.

269. ry<n>kande, 'ringing'; Napier's suggestion for MS. rykande.

271-2. 'Nobody here has ill-treated you in an unmannerly way, nor shown you <discourtesy>': the object of kyd being understood from vnmanerly mysboden. habbeȝ for MS. habbe is Napier's reading.

278-9. 'And cleft you with no grievous wound, <which> I rightly <merely> proffered you, because of the compact we made fast', &c. It is better to assume a suppression of the relative, than to put a strong stop after rof and treat sore as sb. object of profered. This latter punctuation gives sore the chief stress in the line, and breaks the alliteration and rhythm, which is correct as long as sore is taken with rof, so that its stress is subordinated.

286-7. 'Let a true man truly repay—then one need dread no peril.'

291. weued: perhaps not a weak pa. t. of weave-woven, but rather means 'to give', from OE. wǣfan, 'to move'; weue in this sense occurs in Gawayne l. 1976.

294-5. 'And truly you seem to me the most faultless man that ever walked on foot.' The ME. construction, on þe fautlest, where on 'one' strengthens the superlative, is found in Chaucer, Clerk's Tale 212:

Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne,

and still survives in Shakespeare's time, e.g. Henry VIII, II. iv. 48 f. one the wisest prince. It has been compared with Latin unus maximus, &c. In modern English the apposition has been replaced, with weakening of the sense: one of the (wisest), &c.

298. yow lakked... yow wonted: impersonal, since yow is dative, 'there was lacking in you'.

319. 'Let me win your good-will', 'Pardon me'.

331. I have transposed MS. of þe grene chapel at cheualrous knyȝteȝ, because such a use of at is hardly conceivable. A copyist might easily make the slip. Cp. l. 35.

344. Boþe þat on and þat oþer: Besides the Green Knight's young wife, there was a much older lady in the castle, 'yellow', with 'rugh, ronkled chekeȝ', and so wrapped up

Þat noȝt watȝ bare of þat burde bot þe blake broȝes,

Þe tweyne yȝen, and þe nase, þe naked lyppeȝ,

And þose were soure to se, and sellyly blered.

Gawayne ll. 961-3.

350-1. 'And David afterwards, who suffered much evil, was <morally> blinded by Bathsheba.'

352-6. 'Since these were injured with their wiles, it would be a great gain to love them well, and not believe them—for a man who could do it [cp. note to XI b 209]. For these (Adam, Solomon, &c.) were of old the noblest, whom all happiness followed, surpassingly, above all the others that lived beneath the heavens.' mused 'thought' is used for the rime, and means no more than 'lived'. ll. 354-6 amount to 'above all other men'.

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[VI]

Dialect: West Midland, like Gawayne.

The metre occasionally gives clear evidence that final flexional -e of the original has not always been preserved in the extant MS., e.g.

Þaȝ cortaysly ȝe carp<ė> con 21.

The most noteworthy verbal forms are:

pres. ind. 1 sg. byswykeȝ 208 (once only, in rime);

2 sg. þou quyteȝ 235;

3 sg. leþeȝ 17; totȝ (= tǭs = tās = takes) 153 (note).

1 pl. we leuen 65; we calle 70;

3 pl. temen 100 (and cp. ll. 151-2); knawe 145; but þay gotȝ 150, pykeȝ 213 (both in rime).

imperative pl. dyspleseȝ 62; gos, dotȝ 161.

pres. p. spornande 3.

pp. runne (in rime) 163, beside wroken 15, &c.

Characteristic Western forms are burne 37 (OE. beorn); vrþe 82 (OE. eorþe).

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5. 'Like bubbling water that flows from a spring', i.e. his wild words rise from a heart that can no longer contain its affliction.

11-12. 'You, who were once the source of all my joy, made sorrow my companion.'

15. 'From the time when you were removed from every peril'. The child died before she was two years old (l. 123).

22. 'I am but dust, and rough in manners.' The MS. has marereȝ mysse, which has been rendered 'botcher's waste'; but the poet is contrasting his own ill-mannered speech with the Pearl's courtesy.

23. 'But the mercy of Christ and of Mary and of John'. The genitive inflexion is confined to the noun immediately preceding mersy, while the two following nouns, which are logically genitives with exactly the same construction as Crystes, remain uninflected. For analogies see note to II 518.

36. and: MS. in. The sign for and is easily mistaken for ī = in. Cp. note to XVII 42.

48. Þat, 'who'.

65. þat... of, 'from whom'; the later relative form of quom occurs at l. 93.

70. Fenyx of Arraby: the symbol of peerless perfection. Cp. Chaucer, Death of Blanche the Duchess, ll. 980-3

Trewly she was to myn ye

The soleyn Fenix of Arabye,

For ther lyveth never but oon,

Ne swich as she ne knew I noon.

71. 'which was faultless in form'; fleȝe 'flew' is used with weakened sense because a bird is normally thought of as on the wing.

74. folde vp hyr face, '<with> her face upturned'; folde is pp.

91-2. 'And each would wish that the crowns of the others were five times as precious, if it were possible to better them.'

97. Poule: the common OFr. and ME. form, as at VIII a 25, 270, XI b 80. But the rime with naule 'nail' (ON. nagl) points to the form Paule for the original. The reference is to 1 Corinthians vi. 15 and xii. 12 ff.

100. hys body, 'its body', 'the body'. tyste: for tyȝte 'tight', like l. 102 myste for myȝte 'might'. The rimes with Kryst, gryste, lyste show that st and ȝt were very similar in pronunciation. See Appendix § 6 (end).

106. 'Because you wear a ring on arm or finger.'

109-11. 'I <well> believe that there is great courtesy and charity among you.' The construction of the next line (which conveys an apology, cp. l. 62) is not clear owing to the following gap in the MS.; nor is it easy to guess the missing rime word, as emong can rime with OE. -ung- (e.g. with ȝonge, ll. 114, 175), or with OE. -ang-; see the note to XVII 400.

116. stronge may be adj. 'violent' with worlde, but is more likely adv. 'severely'.

124-5. Note the cumulation of negatives. cowþeȝ has a double construction: 'You never knew how to please God nor pray to Him, nor <did you know even> the Paternoster and Creed.' The Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed were prescribed by the Church as the elements of faith to be taught first to a child.

137. Matthew xx. 1-16.

139. 'He represented it very aptly in a parable.'

141. My regne... on hyȝt, 'My kingdom on high'.

145. þys hyne: the labourers. This, these are sometimes used in early English to refer to persons or things that have not been previously mentioned, but are prominent in the writer's mind. Cp. XV b 4, 19; and the opening of Chaucer's Prologue to the Franklin's Tale quoted in the note to II 13.

150. pené: in ME. the final sound developed from OFr. -é (e) fell together with the sounds arising from OE. -ig, OFr. ie, &c. Hence pené or peny 186 (OE. penig); reprené 184 for repreny; cortaysé 120, 121, beside cortaysye 72, 84, 96. The acute accent is editorial.

153. 'At midmorning the master goes to the market.' totȝ (= tǭs) = tās, contracted form of takes 'betakes himself'; cp. tone = taken V 91. The spelling and rimes with o (which cannot develop normally from ă lengthened in open syllables because this lengthening is everywhere later than the change ā ≻ ǭ) are usually explained as artificial. It is assumed that as Northern bān corresponded to Midland bǭn, so from Northern tá 'take' an unhistorical Midland tǭ was deduced. But it is possible that the contraction of tăke(n), and consequent lengthening tá(n), is older than the ordinary lengthening tăke ≻ táke, and also older than the development of ā to ǭ in North Midland.

164. I yow pay: note the survival of the old use of the present to express future tense.

176. þat at ȝe moun, 'what you can'. At as a relative appears usually to be from Old Norse at, with the same sense, and it is not uncommon in Northern English. But þat at here is more likely the normal development of þat þat ≻ þat tat (note to II 102) ≻ þat at.

179. sumoun is infin. not sb.: 'he had (them) summoned'; cp. note to VIII a 79.

192. 'It seems to us we ought to receive more.' Vus þynk is a remnant of the old impersonal construction of þynceþ 'it seems'. In this phrase, probably owing to confusion with we þynk(en), the verb often has no flexional ending; cp. l. 192. vus oȝe is formed by analogy, the verb being properly personal; cp. must vs XVII 292, 334.

200. And, 'If'.

205-8. More, which is necessary for the metrical form, is best taken as conj. 'moreover', 'further'; weþer introduces a direct question (note to V 118). louyly is perhaps miswritten for lauly 'lawful', as the Pearl-Gawayne group often show the converse au, aw for normal ou, ow, e.g. bawe for bowe, trawþe for trowþe. 'Further, is my power to do what pleases me with my own lawful?' The meaning is fixed by Matthew xx. 15 'Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?'

212. mykeȝ. In the few recorded examples mik, myk seems to mean 'an intimate friend'. Here it is used for the sake of rime in an extended sense 'chosen companion of the Lord'.

221 f. Wheþer, &c., 'Although I began <only> just now, coming into the vineyard in the eventide, <yet>', &c.

224. Note the rime (OE. sŭm) with ON. blóm(i), OE. dōm, cōm. Such rimes occur occasionally in Northern texts of the fourteenth century—never in the South.

233. Psalm lxii. 12 'Also unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for Thou renderest to every man according to his work.'

237-40. Loosely constructed. 'Now, if you came to payment before him that stood firm through the long day, then he who did less work would be more entitled to receive pay, and the further <it is carried>, the less <work>, the more <claim to be paid>.'

249-51. On the meaning of these lines there is no agreement. Gollancz and Osgood interpret: 'That man's privilege is great who ever stood in awe of Him (God) who rescues sinners. From such men no happiness is withheld, for,' &c. Yet it is difficult to believe that even a poet hard pressed would use dard to Hym to mean 'feared Him'. One of several rival interpretations will suffice to show the ambiguities of the text: 'His (God's) generosity, which is always inscrutable (lit. lay hidden), is abundant to the man who recovers his soul from sin. From such men no happiness is withheld', &c. The sense and construction of dard (for which the emendation fard, pret. of fere 'to go', has been suggested, the rest of the interpretation following Gollancz), and the obscurity of the argument, are the chief obstacles to a satisfactory solution.

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[VII]

Dialect: Irregular, but predominantly North-West Midland; cp. V and VI.

Inflexions:—

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. warys 19, has 20.

3 pl. ben 11, sayn 182, haue 31.

pres. p. claterand 137, þriuaund 158, leymonde 153; beside blowyng 106, doutyng 114.

strong pp. slydyn 6, stoken 11.

The weak pp. and pa. t. have -it, -(e)t for -(e)d: drepit 9, suet 24.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. nom. þai 45; poss. hor 8, beside þere 9, 10; obj. hom 24.

Sounds and Spelling: Northern and North Midland forms are qwiles (= whiles) 39, hondqwile 117; and wysshe 4 (note). West Midland indications are buernes 'men' 90, 91 = OE. beorn (but buerne 'sea' 159 = OE. burn- is probably miswritten owing to confusion with buern 'man'); and perhaps the spelling u in unaccented syllables: mecull 10, watur 119, wintur 124.

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4. wysshe = wisse 'guide'. In the North final sh was commonly pronounced ss; cp. note to I 128-9, and the rimes in XVII 1-4. Conversely etymological ss was sometimes spelt ssh.

7-8. strongest... and wisest... to wale, 'the strongest... and wisest... that could be chosen' (lit. 'to choose').

15. On lusti to loke, 'pleasant to look upon'.

21 ff. A typical example of the vague and rambling constructions in which this writer indulges: apparently 'but old stories of the valiant <men> who <once> held high rank may give pleasure to some who never saw their deeds, through the writings of men who knew them at first hand (?) (in dede), <which remained> to be searched by those who followed after, in order to make known (or to know?) all the manner in which the events happened, by looking upon letters (i.e. writings) that were left behind of old'.

45. Benoît de Sainte-Maure says the Athenians rejected Homer's story of gods fighting like mortals, but charitably explains that, as Homer lived a hundred years after the siege, it is no wonder if he made mistakes:

N'est merveille s'il i faillit,

Quar onc n'i fu ne rien n'en vit.

Prologue, ll. 55-6.

53-4. 'That was elegantly compiled by a wise clerk—one Guido, a man who had searched carefully, and knew all the actions from authors whom he had by him.' See Introductory note, pp. 68 f.

66-7. Cornelius Nepos was supposed to have found the Greek work of Dares at Athens when rummaging in an old cupboard (Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Prologue, ll. 77 ff.).

157. Note the slovenly repetition from l. 151. So l. 159 repeats l. 152.

168-9. I have transposed these lines, assuming that they were misplaced by a copyist. Guido's Latin favours the change, and the whole passage will illustrate the English translator's methods:

Oyleus uero Aiax qui cum 32 nauibus suis in predictam incidit tempestatem, omnibus nauibus suis exustis et submersis in mari, in suis uiribus brachiorum nando semiuiuus peruenit ad terram; et, inflatus pre nimio potu aque, uix se nudum recepit in littore, vbi usque ad superuenientis diei lucem quasi mortuus iacuit in arena, [et] de morte sua sperans potius quam de uita. Sed cum quidam ex suis nando similiter a maris ingluuie iam erepti nudi peruenissent ad littus, dominum eorum querunt in littore [et] si forsitan euasisset. Quem in arena iacentem inueniunt, dulcibus uerborum fouent affatibus, cum nec in uestibus ipsum nec in alio possunt subsidio refouere. (MS. Harley 4123, fol. 117 a—the bracketed words are superfluous.)

178. Telamon was not at the siege, and his name appears here and in l. 150 as the result of a tangle which begins in the confusion of Oyleus Ajax with Ajax the son of Telamon. In classical writers after Homer it is Oyleus Ajax who, at the sack of Troy, drags Cassandra from the temple of Minerva. This is the story in Dictys. Dares, like Homer, is silent. In Benoît de Sainte-Maure's poem (ll. 26211-16), the best MSS. name Oyleus Ajax as Cassandra's captor, but others have 'Thelamon Aiax', i.e. Ajax, the son of Telamon. Guido read Benoît in a MS. of the latter class, and accordingly makes Telamonius Aiax do the sacrilege. With the English translator this becomes Telamon simply (Bk. xxix, ll. 11993-7). So when later, in Bk. xxxi, he comes to describe the shipwreck, he replaces Guido's Aiax by Telamon, and spoils the story of Minerva's vengeance on the actual violator of her sanctuary.

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[VIII]

Dialect: South Midland, with mixture of forms.

a. VERB: pres. ind. 2 sg. seist 226, wilnest 256.

3 sg. comaundeth 16.

1 pl. haue 118, preye 119.

2 pl. han 11, wasten 127.

3 pl. liggeth 15, &c.; beside ben 50, waste 155.

imper. pl. spynneth 13.

pres. p. (none in a); romynge b 11.

strong pp. bake 187, ybake 278, ybaken 175.

Infinitives in -ie (OE. -ian) are retained: erye 4, hatie 52, tilye 229 (OE. erian, hatian, tilian).

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. nom. þei 126, &c., beside hii 15; poss. her 54; obj. hem 2.

Sounds: OE. y often shows the Western development, as in huyre(d) 108, 133, &c.; abugge 75, 159; beside bigge 275. So Cornehulle b 1. But such forms were not uncommon in the London dialect of the time.

b. The second extract has a more Southern dialectal colouring. Note especially the gen. pl. forms lollarene 31, knauene 56, lordene 77, continuing or extending the OE. weak gen. pl. in -ena; and menne 29, 74, retaining the ending of the OE. gen. pl. manna.

The representation of unaccented vowels by u in hure (= 'their') 50, (= 'her') 53; (h)us 'his' 60, 101; clerkus 65, is commonest in Western districts. h(w) is no longer aspirated: wanne 1, werby 35, MS. eggen 19; and conversely hyf 'if' 43, his 'is' 105.

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a 9. for shedyng, 'to prevent spilling'; and so for colde 62 'as a protection against cold'; for bollyng 209 'to prevent swelling'; for chillyng 306, &c.

a 11. Þat ȝe han silke and sendal to sowe: The construction changes as if Piers had begun: Ich praye ȝow, which is the reading in the C-text. The difficulty of excluding modern ideas from the interpretation of the Middle Ages is shown by the comment of a scholar so accomplished as M. Petit-Dutaillis: 'Il attaque les riches peu miséricordieux, les dames charmantes aux doigts effilés, qui ne s'occupent pas des pauvres' (Soulèvement, p. lxii). But there is no hint of satire or reproach in the text. The poet, always conventional, assigns to high-born ladies the work which at the time was considered most fitting for them. So it is reported in praise of the sainted Isabella of France, sister of St. Louis: Quand elle fust introduicte des lettres suffisamment, elle s'estudioit à apprendre à ouurer de soye, et faisoit estolles et autres paremens à saincte Eglise—'When she was sufficiently introduced to letters, she set herself to learn how to work in silk, and made stoles and other vestments for Holy Church.' (Joinville, Histoire d. S. Louys, Paris 1668, pt. i, p. 169.)

a 19. for þe Lordes loue of heuene: cp. l. 214, and notes to I 44, I 83, II 518.

a 23. on þe teme, 'on this subject'; teme 'theme' is a correct form, because Latin th was pronounced t. The modern pronunciation is due to the influence of classical spelling.

a 32. affaite þe, 'tame for thyself'; cp. l. 64 (I shal) brynge me = 'bring (for myself)', and the note to II 289.

a 40-1. 'And though you should fine them, let Mercy be the assessor, and let Meekness rule over you, in spite of Gain.' This is a warning against abuse of the lord of the manor's power to impose fines in the manorial court with the object of raising revenue rather than of administering justice. Cp. Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History, vol. i (1894), pt. ii, p. 266. For maugré Medes chekes cp. 151.

a 49. Luke xiv. 10.

a 50. yuel to knowe, 'hard to distinguish'.

a 72-5. These clumsy lines, which are found in all versions, exemplify the chief faults in Piers Plowman: structural weakness and superfluous allegory.

a 79. I wil... do wryte my biqueste, 'I will have my will written'; make(n), ger (gar), and lete(n) are commonly used like do(n) with an active infinitive, which is most conveniently rendered by the passive; so do wryte 'cause to be written'; dyd werche 'caused to be made' I 218; mad sumoun 'caused to be summoned' VI 179; gert dres vp 'caused to be set up' X 16; leet make 'caused to be made' IX 223, &c.

a 80. In Dei nomine, amen: A regular opening phrase for wills.

a 84. 'I trust to have a release from and remission of my debts which are recorded in that book.' Rental, a book in which the sums due from a tenant were noted, here means 'record of sins'.

a 86. he: the parson, as representing the Church.

a 91. douȝtres. In l. 73 only one daughter is named. In the B-text, Passus xviii. 426, she is called Kalote (see note to b 2 below).

a 94. bi þe rode of Lukes: at Lucca (French Lucques) is a Crucifix and a famous representation of the face of Christ, reputed to be the work of the disciple Nicodemus. From Eadmer and William of Malmesbury we learn that William the Conqueror's favourite oath was 'By the Face of Lucca!', and it is worth noting that the frequent and varied adjurations in Middle English are copied from the French.

a 114. 'May the Devil take him who cares!'

a 115 ff. faitoures (cp. ll. 185 ff.), who feigned some injury or disease to avoid work and win the pity of the charitable, multiplied in the disturbed years following the Black Death. Statutes were passed against them, and even against those who gave them alms (Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life, pp. 261 ff.). But the type was long lived. In the extract from Handlyng Synne (No. I), we have already a monument of their activities.

a 141. 'And those that have cloisters and churches (i.e. monks and priests) shall have some of my goods to provide themselves with copes.'

a 142. Robert Renne-aboute. The type of a wandering preacher; posteles are clearly preachers with no fixed sphere of authority, like the mendicant friars and Wiclif's 'poor priests'. Against both the regular clergy constantly complained that they preached without the authority of the bishop.

a 186. Þat seten: the MS. by confusion has þat seten to seten to begge, &c.

a 187. þat was bake for Bayarde: i.e. 'horse-bread' (l. 208), which used to be made from beans and peas only. Bayard, properly a 'bay horse', was, according to romance, the name of the horse given by Charlemagne to Rinaldo. Hence it became the conventional name for a horse, just as Reynard was appropriated to the fox. Chaucer speaks of proude Bayard (Troilus, Bk. i. 218) and, referring to an unknown story, Bayard the blynde (Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 860).

a 221. Michi vindictam: Romans xii. 19.

a 224. Luke xvi. 9.

a 229. Genesis iii. 19.

a 231. Sapience: the Book of Wisdom, but the quotation is actually from Proverbs xx. 4.

a 234. Mathew with mannes face. Each of the evangelists had his symbol: Matthew, a man; Mark, a lion; Luke, a bull; John, an eagle; and in early Gospel books their portraits are usually accompanied by the appropriate symbols.

a 235 ff. Matthew xxv. 14 ff.; Luke xix. 12 ff.

a 245. Contemplatyf lyf or actyf lyf. The merits of these two ways of life were endlessly disputed in the Middle Ages. In XI b Wiclif attacks the position of the monks and of Rolle's followers; and the author of Pearl (VI 61 ff.) takes up the related question of salvation by works or by grace.

a 246. Psalm cxxviii. 1.

a 264. Jusserand gives a brief account of the old-time physicians in English Wayfaring Life, pp. 177 ff. The best were somewhat haphazard in their methods, and the mountebanks brought discredit on the profession. Here are a few fourteenth-century prescriptions:

For hym that haves the squynansy ['quinsy']:—

Tak a fatte katte, and fla hit wele and clene, and draw oute the guttes; and tak the grees of an urcheon ['hedgehog'], and the fatte of a bare, and resynes, and feinygreke ['fenugreek'], and sauge ['sage'], and gumme of wodebynde, and virgyn wax: al this mye ['grate'] smal, and farse ['stuff'] the catte within als thu farses a gos: rost hit hale, and geder the grees, and enoynt hym tharwith. (Reliquiae Antiquae, ed. Wright and Halliwell (1841), vol. i, p. 51.)

Ȝyf a woud hund hat ybite a man:—

Take tou<n>karsyn ['towncress'], and pulyole ['penny-royal'], and seþ hit in water, and ȝef hym to drynke, and hit schal caste out þe venym: and ȝif þou miste ['might'] haue of þe hundys here, ley hit þerto, and hit schal hele hit. (Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century, ed. G. Henslow, London 1899, p. 19.)

A goud oynement for þe goute:—

Take þe grece of a bor, and þe grece of a ratoun, and cattys grece, and voxis grece, and hors grece, and þe grece of a brok ['badger']; and take feþeruoye ['feverfew'] and eysyl ['vinegar'], and stampe hem togedre; and take a litel lynnesed, and stampe hit wel, and do hit þerto; and meng al togedre, and het hit in a scherd, and þerwith anoynte þe goute by the fuyre. Do so ofte and hit schal be hol. (Ibid., p. 20.)

a 284. Lammasse tyme: August 1, when the new corn (l. 294) would be in. On this day a loaf was offered as firstfruits: whence the name, OE. hlāf-mæsse.

a 307 ff. Owing to repeated famines, the wages of manual labour rose throughout the first half of the fourteenth century. A crisis was reached when the Black Death (1349) so reduced the number of workers that the survivors were able to demand wages on a scale which seemed unconscionable to their employers. By the Statute of Labourers (1350 and 1351) an attempt was made to force wages and prices back to the level of 1346. For a day's haymaking 1d. was to be the maximum wage; for reaping 2d. or 3d. Throughout the second half of the fourteenth century vain attempts were made to enforce these maxima, and the penalties did much to fan the unrest that broke out in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

a 309-10. From Bk. i of the Disticha of Dionysius Cato, a collection of proverbs famous throughout the Middle Ages.

a 321. Saturn was a malevolent planet, as we see from his speech in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 1595 ff.

a 324. Deth: the Plague.

b 1. Cornehulle. Cornhill was one of the liveliest quarters of fourteenth-century London, and a haunt of idlers, beggars, and doubtful characters. Its pillory and stocks were famous. Its market where, if The London Lickpenny is to be credited, dealing in stolen clothes was a speciality, was privileged above all others in the city. See the documents in Riley's Memorials of London.

b 2. Kytte: In the B-text, Passus xviii. 425-6, Kytte is mentioned again:

and riȝt with þat I waked

And called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my douȝter.

b 4. lollares of London: The followers of Wiclif were called 'Lollards' by their opponents; but the word here seems to mean 'idlers' as in l. 31. lewede heremytes: 'lay hermits': hermits were not necessarily in holy orders, and so far from seeking complete solitude, they often lived in the cities or near the great highways, where many passers would have opportunity to recognize their merit by giving alms. See Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, pp. 93 ff.

b 5. 'For I judged those men as Reason taught me.' Skeat's interpretation—that made of means 'made verses about'—is forced. The sense is that the idlers and hermits thought little of the dreamer, and he was equally critical of them.

b 6. as ich cam by Conscience: 'as I passed by Conscience', referring to a vision described in the previous Passus, in which Conscience is the principal figure.

b 10 f. In hele and in vnité, 'in health and in my full senses', and Romynge in remembraunce qualify me.

b 14. Mowe oþer mowen, 'mow or stack'. For these unrelated words see the Glossary.

b 16. haywarde: by derivation 'hedge-ward'. He watched over enclosures and prevented animals from straying among the crops. Observe that ME. nouns denoting occupation usually survive in surnames:—Baxter 'baker', Bow(y)er, Chapman, Dyer, Falconer, Fletcher 'arrow-maker', Fo(re)ster, Franklin, Hayward, Lister (= litster, 'dyer'), Palmer, Reeve(s), Spicer, Sumner, Tyler 'maker or layer of tiles', Warner 'keeper of warrens', Webb, Webster, Wright, Yeoman, &c.

b 20-1. 'Or craft of any kind that is necessary to the community, to provide food for them that are bedridden.'

b 24. to long, 'too tall': cp. B-text, Passus xv. 148 my name is Longe Wille. Consistency in such details in a poem full of inconsistencies makes it probable that the poet is describing himself, not an imagined dreamer.

b 33. Psalm lxii. 12.

b 45. 1 Corinthians vii. 20.

b 46 ff. Cp. the note to XI b 131 f. The dreamer appears to have made his living by saying prayers for the souls of the dead, a service which, from small beginnings in the early Middle Ages, had by this time withdrawn much of the energy of the clergy from their regular duties. See note to XI b 140 f.

b 49. my Seuene Psalmes: the Penitential Psalms, normally vi, xxxii, xxxviii, li, cii, cxxx, cxliii, in the numbering of the Authorised Version. The Prymer, which contained the devotions supplementary to the regular Church service, included the Placebo, Dirige, and the Seven Psalms: see the edition by Littlehales for the Early English Text Society.

b 50. for hure soules of suche as me helpen: combines the constructions for þe soules of suche as me helpen, and for hure soules þat me helpen.

b 51. vochen saf: supply me as object, 'warrant me that I shall be welcome'.

b 61. 1 Thessalonians v. 15; Leviticus xix. 18.

b 63. churches: here and in l. 110 read the Norse form kirkes for the alliteration, as in a 28, 85. But the English form also belongs to the original, for it alliterates with ch at a 12, 50.

b 64. Dominus, &c.: Psalm xvi. 5.

b 83. Symondes sone: a son of Simon Magus—one guilty of simony, or one who receives preferment merely because of his wealth.

b 90. Matthew iv. 4.

b 103-4. Simile est, &c.: Matthew xiii. 44. Mulier que, &c.: Luke xv. 8 ff.

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[IX]

Dialect: South-East Midland.

Vocabulary: A number of French words are taken over from the original, e.g. plee 81, ryot 83, violastres 97, saphire loupe 116, gowrdes 139, clowe gylofres 157, canell 158, avaled 195, trayne (for taynere?) 222, bugles 256, gowtes artetykes 314, distreynen 315.

Inflexions: Almost modern.

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. schadeweth 19, turneth 23.

3 pl. ben 4, han 14, wexen 22, loue 100.

pres. p. fle(e)ynge 148, 252; recordynge 317.

strong pp. ȝouen 90, begonne 171.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. þei 5; here 71; hem 20.

Sounds: OE. ā becomes ǭ: hoot 11, cold 31.

OE. y appears as y (= i): byggynge 90, kyȝn 'kine' 256; except regular left (hand) 69, 71, 72, where Modern English has also adopted the South-Eastern form of OE. lyft.

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21-3. The French original says that the children have white hair when they are young, which becomes black as they grow up.

24-5. The belief that one of the Three Kings came from Ethiopia is based on Ps. lxviii. 31: 'Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.' In mediaeval representations one of the three is usually a negro.

27. Emlak: miswritten for Euilak, a name for India taken from Havilah of Genesis ii. 11.

28. þat is: þe more: Ynde has probably fallen out of the text after is.

34-5. Ȝalow cristall draweth <to> colour lyke oylle: the insertion of to is necessary to give sense, and is supported by the French: cristal iaunastre trehant a colour doile. (MS. Harley 4383, f. 34 b.)

36-7. The translation is not accurate. The French has: et appelle homme les dyamantz en ceo pais 'Hamese'.

64 ff. It was supposed that the pearl-bearing shell-fish opened at low tide to receive the dew-drops from which the pearls grew.

74. ȝif ȝou lyke, 'if it please you', impersonal = French si vous plest.

75. þe Lapidarye, Latin Lapidarium, was a manual of precious stones, which contained a good deal of pseudo-scientific information about their natures and virtues, just as the Bestiary summed up popular knowledge of animals. A Latin poem by Marbod bishop of Rennes (d. 1123) is the chief source of the mediaeval lapidaries, and, curiously enough, there is a French prose text attributed by so intimate an authority as Jean d'Outremeuse to Mandeville himself. Several Old French texts have been edited by L. Pannier, Les Lapidaires Français du Moyen Âge, Paris 1882. Their high repute may be judged from the inclusion of no less than seven copies in the library of Charles V of France (d. 1380); and it is surprising that no complete ME. version is known. But much of the matter was absorbed into encyclopaedic works like the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomaeus, which Trevisa translated.

97. Mistranslated. The French has: qi sont violastre, ou pluis broun qe violettes.

100-1. But in soth to me: French: Mes endroit de moy, 'but for my part'; the English translator has rendered en droit separately.

108. þerfore: the context requires the sense 'because', but the translator would hardly have used þerfore had he realized that ll. 108-9 correspond to a subordinate clause in the French, and do not form a complete independent sentence. He was misled by the bad punctuation of some French MSS., e.g. Royal 20 B. X and (with consequent corruption) Harley 4383.

136. Cathaye: China. See the classic work of Colonel Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, 2 vols., London 1866. The modernization of the Catalan map of 1375 in vol. i gives a good idea of Mandeville's geography.

142. withouten wolle: the story of the vegetable lamb is taken from the Voyage of Friar Odoric, which is accessible in Hakluyt's Voyages. Hakluyt's translation is reprinted, with the Eastern voyages of John de Plano Carpini (1246) and of William de Rubruquis (1253), in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. A. W. Pollard, London 1900. The legend probably arose from vague descriptions of the cotton plant; and Mandeville makes it still more marvellous by describing as without wool the lamb which had been invented to explain the wool's existence.

143-4. Of þat frute I haue eten: This assertion seems to be due to the English translator. The normal French text has simply: et cest bien grant meruaille de ceo fruit, et si est grant oure [= oeuvre] de nature (MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 70 b).

147. the Bernakes: The barnacle goose—introduced here on a hint from Odoric—is a species of wild goose that visits the Northern coasts in winter. It was popularly supposed to grow from the shell-fish called 'barnacle', which attaches itself to floating timber by a stalk something like the neck and beak of a bird, and has feathery filaments not unlike plumage. As the breeding place of the barnacle goose was unknown, and logs with the shell-fish attached were often found on the coasts, it was supposed that the shell-fish was the fruit of a tree, which developed in the water into a bird. Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica, I. xv, reproves certain casuistical members of the Church who ate the barnacle goose on fast-days on the plea that it was not flesh; but himself vouches for the marvel. The earliest reference in English is No. 11 of the Anglo-Saxon Riddles, of which the best solution is 'barnacle goose'. For a full account see Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii, pp. 583-604.

157. grete notes of Ynde, 'coco-nuts'.

163-4. Goth and Magoth: see Ezekiel xxxviii and xxxix. The forms of the names are French.

170. God of Nature: Near the end of the Travels it is explained that all the Eastern peoples are Deists, though they have not the light of Christianity: þei beleeven in God þat formede all thing and made the world, and clepen him 'God of Nature'.

191-2. þat þei schull not gon out on no syde, but be the cost of hire lond: the general sense requires the omission of but, which has no equivalent in the original French text: qils ne<nt> issent fors deuers la coste de sa terre (MS. Sloane 1464, f. 139 b). But some MSS. like Royal 20 B. X have fors qe deuers, a faulty reading that must have stood in the copy used by the Cotton translator. Cp. note to l. 108.

199-200. a four grete myle: renders the French iiii grantz lieus. There is no 'great mile' among English measures.

209 ff. In the Middle Ages references to the Jews are nearly always hostile. They were hated as enemies of the Church, and prejudice was hardened by stories, like that in the text, of their vengeance to come, or of ritual murder, like Chaucer's Prioress's Tale. England had its supposed boy martyrs, William of Norwich (d. 1144), and Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255) whom the Prioress invokes:

O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also

With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,

For it is but a litel while ago,

Preye eek for us, &c.

Religion was not the only cause of bitterness. The Jews, standing outside the Church and its laws against usury, at a time when financial needs had outgrown feudal revenues, became the money-lenders and bankers of Europe; and with a standard rate of interest fixed at over 40 per cent., debtors and creditors could hardly be friends. In England the Jews reached the height of their prosperity in the twelfth century, so that in 1188 nearly half the national contribution for a Crusade came from them. In the thirteenth century their privileges and operations were cut down, and they were finally expelled from the country in 1290 (see J. Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin England, 1893). The Lombards, whose consciences were not nice, took their place as financiers in fourteenth-century England.

222. trayne: read taynere, OFr. taignere 'a burrow'.

237-8. The cotton plant has already given us the vegetable lamb (l. 142). This more prosaic account is taken from the Eþistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem: 'in Bactriacen... penitus ad abditos Seres, quod genus hominum foliis arborum decerpendo lanuginem ex silvestri vellere vestes detexunt' (Julius Valerius, ed. B. Kübler, p. 194). From the same text come the hippopotami, the bitter waters (Kübler, p. 195), and the griffins (Kübler, p. 217). The Letter of Alexander was translated into Anglo-Saxon in the tenth century.

254 ff. talouns etc.: In the 1725 edition there is a reference to 'one 4 Foot long in the Cotton Library' with the inscription, Griphi Unguis Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi sacer, 'griffin's talon, sacred to St. Cuthbert of Durham'. This specimen is now in the Mediaeval Department of the British Museum, and is really the slim, curved horn of an ibex. The inscription is late (sixteenth century), but the talon was catalogued among the treasures of Durham in the fourteenth century.

260. Prestre Iohn: Old French Prestre Jean, or 'John the Priest', was reputed to be the Christian ruler of a great kingdom in the East. A rather minatory letter professing to come from him reached most of the princes of Europe, and was replied to in all seriousness by Pope Alexander III. Its claims include the lordship over the tribes of Gog and Magog whom Alexander the Great walled within the mountains. Official missions were sent to establish relations with him; but neither in the Far East nor in Northern Africa, where the best opinion in later times located his empire, could the great king ever be found. The history of the legend is set out by Yule in the article Prester John in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

261. Yle of Pentexoire: to Mandeville most Eastern countries are 'isles'. Pentexoire in the French text of Odoric is a territory about the Yellow River (Yule, Cathay, vol. i, p. 146).

262 ff.: For comparison the French text of the Epilogue is given from MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 83 a, the words in < > being supplied from MS. Sloane 1464:

'Il y a plusours autres diuers pais, et moutz dautres meruailles par de la, qe ieo nay mie tout veu, si nen saueroye proprement parler. Et meismement el pais en quel iay este, y a plusours diuersetes dont ieo ne fais point el mencioun, qar trop serroit long chose a tout deuiser. Et pur ceo qe ieo vous ay deuisez dascuns pais, vous doit suffire quant a present. Qar, si ieo deuisoie tout quantqez y est par de la, vn autre qi se peneroit et trauailleroit le corps pur aler en celles marches, et pur sercher la pais, serroit empeschez par mes ditz a recompter nuls choses estranges, qar il ne purroit rien dire de nouelle, en quoy ly oyantz y puissent prendre solaces. Et lem dit toutdis qe choses nouelles pleisent. Si men taceray a tant, saunz plus recompter nuls diuersetez qi soyent par de la, a la fin qe cis qi vourra aler en celles parties y troeue assez a dire.

'Et ieo, Iohan Maundeuille dessudit, qi men party de nos pais et passay le mer lan de grace mil cccxxiide; qi moint terre et moint passage et moint pays ay puis cerchez; et qy ay este en moint bone compaignie et en molt beal fait, come bien qe ieo <ne fuisse dignes, et> ne feisse vncqes ne beal fait ne beal emprise; et qi meintenant suy venuz a repos maugre mien, pur goutes artetikes qi moy destreignont; en preignan solacz en mon cheitif repos, en recordant le temps passe, ay cestes choses compilez et mises en escript, si come il me poet souuenir, lan de grace mil ccc.lvime, a xxxiiiite an qe ieo men party de noz pais.

'Si pri a toutz les lisauntz, si lour plest, qils voillent Dieu prier pur moy, et ieo priera pur eux. Et toutz cils qi pur moy dirrount vne Paternoster qe Dieu me face remissioun de mes pecches, ieo les face parteners et lour ottroie part dez toutz les bons pelrinages et dez toutz les bienfaitz qe ieo feisse vnqes, et qe ieo ferray, si Dieu plest, vncqore iusqes a ma fyn. Et pry a Dieu, de qy toute bien et toute grace descent, qil toutz les lisantz et oyantz Cristiens voille de sa grace reemplir, et lour corps et les almes sauuer, a la glorie et loenge de ly qi est trinz et vns, et saunz comencement et saunz fin, saunz qualite bons, saunz quantite grantz, en toutz lieus present et toutz choses contenant, et qy nul bien ne poet amender ne nul mal enpirer, qy en Trinite parfite vit et regne par toutz siecles et par toutz temps. Amen.'

274. blamed: The Old French verb empescher means both 'to hinder, prevent', and 'to accuse, impeach'. But here empeschez should have been translated by 'prevented', not 'blamed'.

284-306. This passage, which in one form or another appears in nearly all the MSS. in English, has no equivalent in the MSS. in French so far examined: and, as it conflicts with ll. 313 ff., which—apart from the peculiarities of the Cotton rendering—indicate that the Travels were written after Mandeville's return, it must be set down as an interpolation.

The art of forging credentials was well understood in the Middle Ages, and the purpose of this addition was to silence doubters by the imprimatur of the highest authority, just as the marvel of the Dancers of Colbek is confirmed by the sponsorship of Pope Leo IX (I 246-9). The different interpretation of the latest editor, Hamelius, who thinks it was intended as a sly hit at the Papacy (Quarterly Review for April 1917, pp. 349 f.) seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that the passage belonged to the French text as originally written.

The anachronism by which the author is made to seek the Pope in Rome gives a clue to the date of the interpolation. From the beginning of the fourteenth century until 1377 Avignon, and not Rome, was the seat of the Pope; and for another thirty years there was doubt as to the issue of the conflict between the popes, who had their head-quarters at Rome and were recognized by England, and the antipopes, who remained at Avignon and had the support of the French. The facts were notorious, so that the anachronism would hardly be possible to one who wrote much before the end of the century, even though he were a partisan of the Roman court.

From internal evidence it would seem that the interpolation first appeared in French. The style is the uniform style of translation, with the same tags—and ȝee schull vndirstonde = et sachiez; ȝif it lyke ȝou = si vous plest; and the same trick of double rendering, e.g. of dyuerse secte and of beleeve; wyse and discreet; the auctour ne the persone. More decisive is an example of the syntactical compromise explained in the note to l. 329: be the whiche the Mappa Mundi was made after. With so many French MSS. of Mandeville in use in England, an interpolation in French would have more authority than one that could not be traced beyond English; and it can hardly be an insuperable objection that no such French text exists to-day, since our knowledge of the Cotton and Egerton versions themselves depends in each case on the chance survival of a single MS.

The point has a bearing on the vexed question of the relations of the English texts one to another. For brevity we may denote by D the defective text of the early prints and most MSS., which is specially distinguished by a long gap near the beginning; by C the Cotton text (ed. Halliwell, Pollard, Hamelius); by E the Egerton text (ed. Warner). Nicholson (in the Encyclopaedia Britannica) and Warner give priority to D, and consider that C and E are independent revisions and expansions of D by writers who had recourse to the French original. Their argument seems to be this: There is precise evidence just before the gap that D derives direct from a mutilated French text (see Enc. Brit.), and if it be granted that a single translation from the French is the base of C, D, and E, it follows that C and E are based on D.

A fuller study by Vogels (Handschriftliche Untersuchungen über die Englische Version Mandeville's, Crefeld 1891) brings to light a new fact: the two Bodleian MSS., E Museo 116 and Rawlinson D 99, contain an English translation (say L) made from a Latin text of the Travels. Vogels also shows that E is based on D, because the characteristic lacuna of D is filled in E by a passage which is borrowed from L and is not homogeneous with the rest of E. So far there is no conflict with the view of Nicholson and Warner. But, after adducing evidence in favour of the contention that C, D, and E are at base one translation, Vogels concludes that D derives from C, arguing thus: There is good evidence that C is a direct translation from the French, and if it be granted that a single translation from the French is the base of C and D, it follows that D derives from C.

In short, the one party maintains that C is an expansion of D, the other that D is an abridgement of C; and this flat opposition results from the acceptance of common ground: that C and D represent in the main one translation and not two translations.

To return to our interpolation:

(1) Vogels's first piece of evidence that C, D, and E are at base one translation is the appearance in all of this interpolation, which is absent from the MSS. in French. But a passage so remarkable might spread from one to the other of two independent English texts; or if the interpolation originated in England in a MS. of the French text since lost, it might be twice translated.

(2) Vogels assumes that the interpolation first appeared in type C. But C is the form in which it would be least likely to originate, because here the contradiction of statement is sharpest owing to the rendering at ll. 313-14: and now I am comen hom, which is peculiar to C (see the French).

(3) If, in order to eliminate individual peculiarities, we take two MSS. of the D type—say Harley 2386 and Royal 17 C. XXXVIII—we find that their text of the interpolation is identical with that of E. This is consistent with Vogels's finding that the body of E derives from D; and it confirms the evidence of all the defective MSS. that the interpolation in this particular form was an integral part of the D type.

(4) But between the text of the interpolation in D and that in C there are differences in matter, in sentence order, and in phrasing, which, while they do not exclude the possibility of interdependence, do not suggest such a relation. In D the passage is a naked attempt at authentication; in C it is more artfully though more shamelessly introduced by the touch of piety conventional in epilogues. And as the signs of a French original that appear in C are absent from D, it is unlikely that the text of the interpolation in C derives from D.

(5) Again, in D and E the addition follows the matter of ll. 307-20. Unfortunately, though the balance of probability is in favour of the order in C, the order intended by the interpolator is not certain enough to be made the basis of arguments. But such a difference in position is naturally explained from the stage when the interpolation stood in the margin of a MS., or on an inserted slip, so that it might be taken into the consecutive text at different points. And an examination of the possibilities will show that if the interpolation originated in French, the different placing is more simply explained on the assumption that C and D are independent translations than on the assumption that one of them derives from the other.

To sum up: the central problem for the history of the English texts is the relation of C and D. Taken by itself the evidence afforded by the text of the interpolation is against the derivation of C from D; it neither favours nor excludes the derivation of D from C; it rather favours independent translation in C and D.

For the relations of the rest of the text these deductions afford no more than a clue. Against independent translation of C and D stands the evidence adduced by Vogels for basic unity. Much of this could be accounted for by the coincidences that are inevitable in literal prose translations from a language so near to English in vocabulary and word order; and a few striking agreements might be due to the use of French MSS. having abnormal variants in common, or even to reference by a second translator to the first. The remainder must be weighed against a considerable body of evidence in the contrary sense, e.g. several places where the manuscripts of the French text have divergent readings, of which C translates one, and D another.

It is unlikely that any simple formula will be found to cover the whole web of relationships: but any way of reconciling the conclusions of the authorities should be explored; and the first step is an impartial sifting of all the evidence, with the object of discovering to what extent C and D are interdependent, and to what extent independent translations. The chief obstacle is the difficulty of bringing the necessary texts together; for an investigator who wished to clear the ground would have to face the labour of preparing a six-text Mandeville, in the order, French, C, D, E, L, Latin.

301. Mappa Mundi: OFr. and ME. Mappemounde, was the generic name for a chart of the world, and, by extension, for a descriptive geography of the world. It is not clear what particular Mappa Mundi is referred to here, or whether such a map was attached to the manuscript copy of the Travels in which this interpolation first appeared.

329. fro whom all godenesse and grace cometh fro: cp. 24-5 the lond of the whiche on of the þre Kynges... was kyng offe; 76-8 þei... of whom all science... cometh from; and 301-2 be the whiche the Mappa Mundi was made after. The pleonasm is explained by the divergence of French and ME. word order. In French, as in modern literary English, the preposition is placed at the beginning of the clause, before the relative (de qui, dont, &c.). ME. writers naturally use the relative that, and postpone the preposition to the end of the clause: e.g. þat all godenesse cometh fro. The translator compromises between his French original and his native habit by placing the preposition both at the beginning and at the end.

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[X]

Dialect: Northern (Scots): the MS. copy was made in 1487 more than a century after the poem was composed.

Vocabulary: Note till 'to' 4, 77 (in rime); syne 'afterwards' 35, 112; the forms sic 'such' 135, begouth 94, and the short verbal forms ma (in rime) 'make' 14, tane (in rime) 'taken' 19.

Inflexions:

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. has 76.

3 pl. has 52, mais 72; but thai haf 16.

pres. p. rynand 17, vyndland 129 (in rime).

strong pp. gane 84, drawyn 124.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. nom. scho (in rime) 80; pl. thai 1: thair 28; thame 3.

Sounds: OE. ā remains: brynstane (in rime) 20, sare 51.

OE. ō (close ọ̄) appears as u (ǖ?): gude 36, fut 57, tume 143.

Unaccented -(e)d of weak pa. t. and pp. becomes -(i)t: passit 2, &c.

Spelling: i (y) following a vowel indicates length: weill 10, noyne 'noon' 67.

OE. hw- appears as quh- (indicating strong aspiration): quhelis 'wheels' 17, quhar 18.

v and w are interchanged: vithall 9, behevin 163, in swndir 106.

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Book XVII of The Bruce begins with the capture of Berwick by the Scots in March 1318. Walter Stewart undertakes to hold the city, and is aided in preparing defences by a Flemish engineer, John Crab. Next year King Edward II determines to recapture the stronghold by an attack from both land and sea. He entrenches his forces and makes the first assault unsuccessfully early in September 1319. In this battle the Scotch garrison capture a clever engineer (see note to l. 71 below). King Robert Bruce meanwhile orders a raid into England as a diversion, and on 20 September 1319, an English army, led by the Archbishop of York, is disastrously defeated by the invaders at Mitton. Our extract gives the story of the second assault on Berwick, which was also fruitless. The fortress fell into English hands again as a result of the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333: see XIV a 35-6.

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5-6. 'They made a sow of great joists, which had a stout covering over it.' The sow was essentially a roof on wheels. The occupants, under shelter of the roof, pushed up to the walls of the besieged place and tried to undermine them. For an illustration see Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, Pt. VI, chap. vi, where other military engines of the time are described.

15. Crabbis consale: John Crab was the engineer of the garrison. He is no doubt the same as the John Crab who in 1332 brought Flemish ships round from Berwick to attack the English vessels at Dundee. There was an important Flemish colony at Berwick from early times.

36. Schir Valter, the gude Steward: Walter Steward, whose surname denotes his office as Steward of Scotland, was the father of Robert II, the first king of the Stuart line.

42. Rude-evyn: September 13, the eve of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

49. thame... of the toune, 'the defenders of the town'.

51. or than, 'or else'.

71 ff. The engynour: an English engineer captured by the garrison in the previous assault and forced into their service.

80. scho, 'she', some engine of war not previously referred to: apparently a mechanical sling.

123 ff. The boats were filled with men and hoisted up the masts, so as to overtop the walls and allow the besiegers to shoot at the garrison from above. The same engine that proved fatal to the sow was used to break up the boats.

146. thar wardane with him had, 'their warden <who> had with him'; cp. note to XIII a 36.

158-61. A confused construction. The writer has in mind: (1) 'Of all the men he had there remained with him only one whom he had not left to relieve', &c.; and (2) 'There were no members of his company (except one) whom he had not left', &c.

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[XI]

Dialect: South Midland.

Inflexions: u for inflexional e, as in knowun a 2, seun a 51, aȝenus a 29, mannus b 114 is found chiefly in West Midland.

VERB: pres. ind. 2 sg. madist b 214.

3 sg. groundiþ a 4.

3 pl. seyn a 1, techen b 5.

pres. p. brennynge b 67.

strong pp. knowun a 2, ȝouen b 264, take b 271.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. þey, þei, a 3, b 9; possessive usually þer in a 1, 23, &c.; but her a 52, and regularly here in b 25, 36, &c.; objective hem a 4, b 3.

Sounds: OE. ā appears regularly as o, oo: more a 7, Hooly a 10, toolde a 65.

OE. y appears as y, i: synne a 61, stiren b 93.

The form þouþ (= þouȝ b 190 probably indicates sound-substitution; and in ynowþȝ (= ynouȝ) b 149 there is wavering between the two forms.

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a 12. Wit Sunday: the first element is OE. hwīt 'white', not 'wit'.

a 25 ff. Translations of the Bible were common in France at this time. No less than six fine copies survive from the library of John, Duke of Berry (d. 1416). About the middle of the fourteenth century King John of France ordered a new translation and commentary to be made at the expense of the Jews, but it was never finished, although several scholars were still engaged on it at the end of the century. The early French verse renderings, which incorporate a good deal of mediaeval legend, are described by J. Bonnard, Les Traductions de la Bible en Vers Français au Moyen Âge (Paris 1884); the prose by S. Berger, La Bible Française au Moyen Âge (Paris 1884). Of the surviving manuscripts mentioned in these excellent monographs several were written in England.

a 28 ff. In earlier times, when most of those who could read at all were schooled in Latin, the need for English translations of the Scriptures was not so pressing, and the partial translations that were made were intended rather for the use of the clergy and their noble patrons than for the people. Bede (d. 735) completed a rendering of St. John's Gospel on his death-bed. Old English versions of the Gospels and the Psalms still survive. Abbot Aelfric (about A.D. 1000) translated the first five books of the Old Testament; and more than one Middle English version of the Psalms is known. Wiclif was perhaps unaware of the Old English precedents because French renderings became fashionable in England from the twelfth century onwards, and he would probably think of the Psalter more as a separate service book than as an integral part of the Bible. But the prologue to the Wiclifite version attributed to John Purvey quotes the example of Bede and King Alfred; and the Dialogue on Translation which, in Caxton's print, serves as preface to Trevisa's translation of Higden, emphasizes the Old English precedents. Both may be read in Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, ed. A. W. Pollard, London 1903, pp. 193 ff. The attitude of the mediaeval Church towards vernacular translations of the Bible has been studied very fully by Miss M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and other Medieval Biblical Versions, Cambridge 1920.

a 34. þe pley of Ȝork. The York Paternoster Play has not survived, but there are records from 1389 of a Guild of the Lord's Prayer at York, whose main object was the production of the play. It seems to have been an early example of the moral play, holding up 'the vices to scorn and the virtues to praise', and it probably consisted of several scenes, each exhibiting one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The last recorded representation was in 1572. See Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, vol. ii, p. 154. The association of the friars with the production of religious plays is confirmed by other writings of the time. They were quick to realize the value of dramatic representation as a means of gaining favour with the people, and their encouragement must be reckoned an important factor in the development of the Miracle Play.

a 51. wher, 'whether'; cp. b 207. In ll. 197, 266, 274, it introduces a direct question; see note to V 118.

b 20. Gregory, Gregory the Great. See his work In Primum Regum Expositiones, Bk. iii, c. 28: praedicatores autem Sanctae Ecclesiae... prophetae ministerio utuntur (Migne, Patrologia, vol. lxxix, col. 158).

b 44. <God>. Such omissions from the Corpus MS. are supplied throughout from the copy in Trinity College, Dublin, MS. C. III. 12.

b 79-80. Cp. Luke xxi. 36 and 1 Thessalonians v. 17.

b 89-91. Proverbs xxviii. 9.

b 126. as Ambrose: In 386 St. Ambrose, besieged in the Portian Church at Milan by Arian sectaries, kept his followers occupied and in good heart by introducing the Eastern practice of singing hymns and antiphons. See St. Augustine's Confessions Bk. ix, c. 7.

b 131-2. placebo. Vespers of the Dead, named from the first word of the antiphon, Placebo Domino in regione vivorum (Psalm cxiv. 9).

dirige. Matins of the Dead, named from the first word of the antiphon, Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam (Psalm v. 9). Hence our word dirge.

comendacion: an office in which the souls of the dead are commended to God.

matynes of Oure Lady: one of the services in honour of the Virgin introduced in the Middle Ages.

The whole question of these accretions to the Church services is dealt with by our English master in liturgical study, the late Mr. Edmund Bishop, in his essay introductory to the Early English Text Society's edition of the Prymer, since reprinted with additional notes in his Liturgica Historica (Oxford 1918), pp. 211 ff.

b 137 f. deschaunt, countre note, and orgon, and smale brekynge. The elaboration of the Church services in mediaeval times was accompanied by a corresponding enrichment of the music. To the plain chant additional parts were joined, sung in harmony either above or below the plain chant. Descant usually means the addition of a part above, organ and countre-note (= counterpoint) the addition of parts either above or below. All these could be composed note for note with the plain chant. But smale brekyng represents a further complication, whereby the single note in the plain chant was represented by two or more notes in the accompanying parts.

b 140 f. The abuse is referred to in Piers Plowman:

Persones and parsheprests pleynede to the bisshop

That hure parshens ben poore sitthe the pestelence tyme,

To haue licence and leue in Londone to dwelle,

And synge ther for symonye, for seluer ys swete.

Prologue ll. 81-4.

and by Chaucer in his description of the Parson:

He sette nat his benefice to hyre,

And leet his sheepe encombred in the myre,

And ran to Londoun, unto Seint Poules,

To seken hym a chaunterie for soules.

Prologue ll. 507-10.

b 183. Ordynalle of Salisbury. An 'ordinal' is a book showing the order of church services and ceremonies. In mediaeval times there was considerable divergence in the usage of different churches. But after the Conquest, and more especially in the thirteenth century, there was developed at Salisbury Cathedral an elaborate order and form of service which spread to most of the English churches of any pretensions. This was called 'Sarum' or 'Salisbury' use.

b 209. þei demen it dedly synne a prest to fulfille, &c. For this construction, cp. Chaucer, Prologue 502 No wonder is a lewed man to ruste; Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, V.. iv. 108 f. It is the lesser blot... Women to change their shapes, &c. The same construction, where we now insert for, is seen in Gawayne (v. 352-3) hit were a wynne huge... a leude, þat couþe, to luf hom wel, &c.

b 221-3. 'They say that a priest may be excused from saying mass, to be the substance of which God gave Himself, provided that he hears one.'

b 228 f. newe costy portos, antifeners, graielis, and alle oþere bokis. Portos, French porte hors, represents Latin portiforium, a breviary convenient for 'carrying out of doors'. The antifener contained the antiphons, responses, &c., necessary for the musical service of the canonical hours. The graiel, or gradual, was so called from the gradual responses, sung at the steps of the altar, or while the deacon ascended the steps of the pulpit: but the book actually contained all the choral service of the Mass.

b 230. makynge of biblis. Wiclif in his Office of Curates (ed. Matthew, p. 145) complains of the scarcity of bibles. But fewe curatis han þe Bible and exposiciouns of þe Gospelis, and litel studien on hem, and lesse donne after hem. But wolde God þat euery parische chirche in þis lond hadde a good Bible! &c.

b 234. At this time books, especially illuminated books, were very dear. The Missal of Westminster Abbey, which is now shown in the Chapter-house, was written in 1382-4 at a cost of £34 14s. 7d.—a great sum in those days, for the scribe, Thomas Preston, who took two years to write it, received only £4 for his labour, 20s. for his livery, and board at the rate of 21s. 8d. the half year. The inscription in British Museum MS. Royal 19 D. II, a magnificently illustrated Bible with commentary, shows that it was captured at Poitiers with King John of France, and bought by the Earl of Salisbury for 100 marks (about £66). Edward III gave the same sum to a nun of Amesbury for a rich book of romance. In France John, Duke of Berry, paid as much as £200 for a breviary, and the appraisement of his library in 1416 shows a surprisingly high level of values (L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. iii, pp. 171 ff.). These were luxurious books. The books from the chapel of Archbishop Bowet of York (d. 1423) sold more reasonably: £8 for a great antiphonar and £6 13s. 4d. pro uno libro vocato 'Bibill', were the highest prices paid; and from his library there were some fascinating bargains: 4s. for a small copy of Gregory's Cura Pastoralis; 5s. pro uno libro vocato 'Johannes Andrewe', vetere et debili, which would probably turn out to be a dry work on the Decretals; and 3s. 4d. for a nameless codex, vetere et caduco, 'old and falling to pieces'. (Historians of the Church of York, ed. J. Raine, vol. iii, pp. 311, 315.)

But the failing activity of the monastic scriptoria, and the formation of libraries by the friars and by rich private collectors, made study difficult for students at the universities, where at this time a shilling per week—a third of the price of Bowet's most dilapidated volume—was reckoned enough to cover the expenses of a scholar living plainly. The college libraries were scantily supplied: books were lent only in exchange for a valuable pledge; or even pawned, in hard times, by the colleges themselves.

These conditions were not greatly improved until printing gave an easy means of duplication, and for a time caused the humble manuscripts in which most of the mediaeval vernacular literature was preserved to be treated as waste paper. As late as the eighteenth century Martène found the superb illuminated manuscripts left by John, Duke of Berry, to the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges serving as roosting places to their keeper's hens (Voyage Littéraire, Paris 1717, pt. i, p. 29).

b 261-3. The reference is to Acts vi. 2, 'It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.'

b 266. wisere þan. After these words the Corpus MS. (p. 170, col. i, l. 34 mid.), without any warning, goes on to the closing passage of an entirely unrelated 'Petition to the King and Parliament'. By way of compensation, the end of our sermon appears at the close of the Petition. Clearly the scribe (or some one of his predecessors) copied without any regard for the sense from a MS. of which the leaves had become disarranged.

b 285. Cp. Acts iii. 6.

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[XII]

Dialect: London (SE. Midland) with Kentish features.

Inflexions:

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. loveth a 5; contracted stant a 74.

3 pl. schewen a 136, halsen a 148, be (in rime) a 92.

pres. p. growende a 80.

strong pp. schape (in rime) a 130, beside schapen a 169.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. nom. sche a 32; pl. thei a 148; here a 144; hem a 112.

Unaccented final -e is treated as in Chaucer, having its full value in the verse when it represents an inflexion or final vowel in Old English or Old French, e.g.

And for he scholdė slepė softė a 93

An apė, which at thilkė throwė b 5

Sounds: e appears as in Kentish for OE. y: hell 'hill' a 65, 79, 86; keste 'kissed' a 178; note the rimes unschette: lette a 71-2; pet 'pit': let b 9-10; and less decisive pet: knet (OE. knyttan) b 29-30, 53-4; dreie: beie b 23-4.

Spelling: ie represents close ẹ̄: flietende a 157, hier b 34; diemed b 216.

Syntax: The elaborate machinery of sentence connexion deserves special attention; and many turns of phrase are explained by Gower's fluency in French.

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a 1. Gower follows Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. xi. Chaucer tells the story of Ceix and Alcyone in his Death of Blanche the Duchess, ll. 62 ff. This is presumably the early work to which the Man of Law refers:

I kan right now no thrifty tale seyn

But Chaucer, thogh he kan but lewedly

On metres and on rymyng craftily,

Hath seyd hem, in swich Englissh as he kan,

Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man;

And if he have noght seyd hem, leve brother,

In o book, he hath seyd hem in another;

For he hath toold of loveris up and doun

Mo than Ovide made of mencioun

In his Epistelles , that been ful olde.

What sholde I tellen hem, syn they ben tolde?

In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcione, &c.

(Link to Man of Law's Tale, ll. 46 ff.)

Gower's rendering is the more poetical.

a 2. Trocinie. Ovid's Trachinia tellus, so called from the city of Trachis, north-west of Thermopylae.

a 23. As he which wolde go: otiose, or at best meaning no more than 'desiring to go'. Cp. b 25 As he which hadde = 'having' simply; and similarly b 37, 203. It is an imitation of a contemporary French idiom comme celui qui.

a 26. and: the displacement of the conjunction from its natural position at the beginning of the clause is characteristic of Gower's verse. Cp. l. 152 Upon the morwe and up sche sterte = 'and in the morning she got up', and a 45, 49, b 121, 124, 135, 160, 182. See notes to ll. 32, 78 f.

a 32. Editors put a comma after wepende, and no stop after seileth: but it is Alceoun who weeps. The displacement of and is exemplified in the notes to l. 26 and ll. 78 f.

a 37. 'One had not to look for grief'; a regular formula of understatement, meaning 'her grief was great'.

a 53. Hire reyny cope, &c.: the rainbow, which was the sign or manifestation of Iris.

a 59 ff.

Prope Cimmerios longo spelunca recessu,

Mons cavus, ignavi domus et penetralia Somni.

(Metamorphoses xi. 592-3.)

Much of the poetry of Gower's description is due to Ovid.

a 78 f. Editors put no stop after may and a comma after hell. Hence The New English Dictionary quotes this passage as an isolated instance of noise, transitive, meaning 'disturb with noise'. But noise is intransitive, hell is governed by aboute round, and the position of bot is abnormal as in l. 105. Cp. notes to ll. 26, 32, and render 'But all round about the hill'.

a 105. For the word order see notes to ll. 26, 32, 78 f.

a 117. The lif, 'the man', cp. IV a 43.

a 118. Ithecus: for Icelos. According to Ovid 'Icelos' was the name by which he was known to the gods, but men called him 'Phobetor'.

a 123. Panthasas: Ovid's Phantasos.

a 152. See note to l. 26.

a 197. The halcyon, usually identified with the kingfisher, was supposed to build a floating nest on the sea in midwinter, and to have power to calm the winds and waves at that season, bringing 'halcyon weather'.

b 2. I finde. Matthew Paris in his Chronica Maiora (ed. Luard, Rolls Series, vol. ii, pp. 413 ff.) gives a similar story, which, he says, King Richard the First often told to rebuke ingratitude. In this version, Vitalis of Venice falls into a pit dug as a trap for wild beasts. The rescued animals are a lion and a serpent; the rescuer is nameless, and the gem given to him by the serpent has not the magic virtue of returning whenever sold. Nearer to Gower is the story told in Nigel Wireker's Speculum Stultorum, a late twelfth-century satire in Latin verse, which, from the name of its principal character Burnellus the Ass, who is ambitious to have a longer tail, is sometimes called Burnellus; cp. Chaucer, Nun's Priest's Tale, l. 492:

I have wel rad in Daun Burnel the Asse

Among his vers, &c.

The poem is printed in T. Wright's Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century (Rolls Series, 1872), vol. i. At the end the Ass returns disappointed to his master Bernardus (= Bardus). Bernardus, when gathering wood, hears Dryanus (= Adrian), a rich citizen of Cremona, call from a pit for help. The rescued animals are a lion, a serpent, and an ape. The gem given by the serpent in token of gratitude always returns to Bernardus, who, with more honesty than Gower's poor man shows, takes it back to the buyer. The fame of the marvellous stone reaches the king; his inquiries bring to light the whole story; and Dryanus is ordered to give half his goods to Bernardus.

Gower probably worked on a later modification of Nigel's story.

b 86. blessed, 'crossed (himself)'.

b 89. Betwen him and his asse, i.e. pulling together with the ass. The ass is, of course, the distinguished Burnellus.

b 116. his ape: for this ape (?).

b 191. Justinian, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (d. 565), was best known for his codification of the Roman Law, and so is named here as the type of a lawgiver.

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[XIII]

Dialect: South-Western, with some Midland forms.

Inflexions:

VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. bloweþ a 7, casteþ a 8.

3 pl. buþ a 10, habbeþ a 15.

pres. p. slyttyng, frotyng b 59.

strong pp. yknowe a 12, ysode a 30.

NOUN: Note the plural in -(e)n, tren 'trees' a 44, 51, 53; chyldern b 16 is a double plural.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. hy a 17; here a 61; ham a 23.

Note the unstressed 3 sg. and 3 pl. form a, e.g. at a13, 27.

Sounds: There is no instance of v for initial f, which is evidenced in the spelling of early South-Western writers like Robert of Gloucester (about 1300), or of z for initial s, which is less commonly shown in spelling. u for OE. y occurs in hulles 'hills' a 18 (beside bysynes b 24, where Modern English has u in spelling but i in pronunciation; and lift (OE. lyft) b 39, where Modern English has the South-Eastern form left).

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a 2-3. Mayster... Minerua... hys: Trevisa appears to have understood 'Minerva' as the name of a god.

a 6-49. Higden took all this passage from Book i of the twelfth-century Annals of Alfred of Beverley (ed. Hearne, pp. 6-7). The Polychronicon is a patchwork of quotations from earlier writers.

a 7. Pectoun. Higden has ad Peccum, and Alfred of Beverley in monte qui vocatur Pec, i.e. The Peak of Derbyshire. cc and ct are not distinguishable in some hands of the time, and Trevisa has made Peccum into Pectoun.

a 14. Cherdhol. Hearne's text of Alfred of Beverley has Cherole; Henry of Huntingdon (about 1150), who gives the same four marvels in his Historia Anglorum, has Chederhole; and on this evidence the place has been identified with Cheddar in Somerset, where there are famous caves.

a 22. an egle hys nest: cp. b 23 a child hys brouch. This construction has two origins: (1) It is a periphrasis for the genitive, especially in the case of masculine and neuter proper names which had no regular genitive in English; (2) It is an error arising from false manuscript division of the genitive suffix -es, -is, from its stem.

a 36. <þat> here and in l. 52 is inserted on the evidence of the other MSS. Syntactically its omission is defensible, for the suppressed relative is a common source of difficulty in Middle English; see the notes to V 4-6, 278-9; X 146; XIV c 54; XVII 66.

a 50. Wynburney. Wimborne in Dorset. Here St. Cuthburga founded a nunnery, which is mentioned in one of Aldhelm's letters as early as A.D. 705. The information that it is 'not far from Bath', which is hardly accurate, was added by Higden to the account of the marvel he found in the Topographia Hibernica of Giraldus Cambrensis (vol. v, p. 86 of the Rolls Series edition of his works).

a 54-64. Higden took this passage from Giraldus, Itinerarium Cambriae, Bk. ii, c. 11 (vol. vi, p. 139 of the Rolls edition).

a 60-1. be at here aboue, 'be over them', 'have the upper hand'.

a 63. Pimbilmere: the English name for Lake Bala.

b 6-7. þe Flemmynges. The first settlement of Flemings in Pembrokeshire took place early in the twelfth century, and in 1154, Henry II, embarrassed alike by the turbulence of the Welsh, and of the new host of Flemish mercenaries who had come in under Stephen, encouraged a further settlement. They formed a colony still distinguishable from the surrounding Welsh population.

b 11-12. The threefold division of the English according to their Continental origin dates back to Bede's Ecclesiastical History. But the areas settled by Bede's three tribes do not correspond to Southern, Northern, and Midland. The Jutes occupied Kent, whence the South-Eastern dialect; the Saxons occupied the rest of the South, whence the South-Western dialect; and the Angles settled in the Midlands and the North; so that the Midland and Northern dialects are both Anglian, and derive from the same Continental tribe or tribal group.

b 26. þe furste moreyn: the Black Death of 1349. There were fresh outbreaks of plague in 1362, 1369, 1376.

b 26-42. The bracketed passage is an addition by Trevisa himself, and is of primary importance for the history of English and of English education. See the valuable article by W. H. Stevenson in An English Miscellany Presented to Dr. Furnivall, pp. 421 ff.

b 27-8. Iohan Cornwal, a mayster of gramere. A 'master of grammar' was a licensed teacher of grammar. Mr. Stevenson points out that in 1347-8 John of Cornwall received payment from Merton College, Oxford, for teaching the boys of the founder's kin. His countryman Trevisa probably had personal knowledge of his methods of teaching.

b 39-40. and a scholle passe þe se, 'if they should cross the sea'.

b 47-8. The bracketed words are introduced by Trevisa.

b 50 f. and ys gret wondur: and is superfluous and should perhaps be deleted.

b 58-65. Though still often quoted as a fourteenth-century witness to the pronunciation of Northern English (e.g. by K. Luick, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, 1914, pp. 40 f.), this passage, as Higden acknowledges, comes from the Prologue to Book iii of William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum, completed in the year 1125: see the Rolls Series edition, p. 209.

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[XIV]

a 2. Bannokburn. Minot's subject is not so much the defeat of the English at Bannockburn in 1314, as the English victory at Halidon Hill on 19 July 1333, which he regards as a vengeance for Bannockburn.

a 7. Saint Iohnes toune: Perth, so called from its church of St. John the Baptist. It was occupied by the English in 1332 after the defeat of the Scots at Dupplin Moor.

a 13. Striflin, 'Stirling'.

a 15. Hall suggests that this refers to Scotch raids on the North of England undertaken to distract Edward III from the siege of Berwick.

a 19 f. Rughfute riueling... Berebag: nicknames for the Scots, the first because they wore brogues (riuelings) of rough hide; the second because, to allow of greater mobility, each man carried his own bag of provisions instead of relying on a baggage train.

a 22. Brig = Burghes l. 25, 'Bruges'. At this time Scots, English, and French had all close connexions with the Netherlands. Observe that John Crab, who aided the Scots in the defence of Berwick (note to X 15), was a Fleming.

a 35. at Berwik. Berwick fell as a result of the battle of Halidon Hill which the Scots fought with the object of raising the siege. For an earlier siege of Berwick, in 1319, see No. X.

a 36. get, 'watch', 'be on the look out' (ON. gǽta).

b 5-6. Calais was at this time a convenient base for piracy in the Channel.

b 19. A bare: Edward III, whom Minot often refers to as 'the boar'.

b 24-6. In preparation for the long siege Edward III had built a regular camp beside Calais.

b 32. Sir Philip. Philip de Valois, Philip VI of France (1293-1350). His son, John Duke of Normandy (1319-64), who succeeded him in 1350, is of good memory as a lover of fine books. Two are mentioned in the notes to XI a 25 ff. and XI b 234. A splendid copy of the Miracles de Notre Dame, preserved until recently in the Seminary Library at Soissons, seems also to have been captured with his baggage at Poitiers, for it was bought back from the English by King Charles V. Another famous book produced by his command was the translation of Livy by Bersuire, with magnificent illuminations. The spirit of the collector was not damped by his captivity in England from 1356-60, for his account books show that he continued to employ binders and miniaturists, to encourage original composition, and to buy books, especially books of romance. See Notes et Documents relatifs à Jean, Roi de France, &c., ed. by Henry of Orleans, Duc d'Aumale (Philobiblon Soc., London 1855-6).

b 40. þe Cardinales. Pope Clement VI had sent cardinals Annibale Ceccano bishop of Frascati, and Etienne Aubert, who became Pope Innocent VI in 1352, to arrange a peace between France and England. But the English were suspicious of the Papal court at Avignon, and accused the cardinals of favouring the French cause.

b 82. Sir Iohn de Viene. Jean de Vienne, seigneur de Pagny (d. 1351), a famous captain in the French wars.

c 5 f. 'They (friends) are so slippery when put to the test, so eager to have <for themselves>, and so unwilling to give up <to others>.'

c 14. And, 'if'.

c 47. King John of France was captured at Poitiers in 1356 and held in England as a prisoner until the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360. See note to XIV b 32.

c 54. Note the omission of the relative: 'which recked not a cleat for all France', and cp. ll. 43-4, XIII a 36 (note).

c 59. his helm, 'its helm'—the bar by which the rudder was moved.

c 61. 'The King sailed and rowed aright'; on him, see note to XV g 24.

c 83. An ympe: Richard II.

c 90. sarri: not in the dictionaries in this sense, is probably OFr. serré, sarré, in the developed meaning 'active', 'vigorous', seen in the adv. sarréement.

c 103-4. 'If we are disloyal and inactive, so that what is rarely seen is straightway forgotten.'

c 108. 'Who was the fountain of all courage.'

c 111. los, 'fame'.

d 1. SCHEP: here means 'shepherd', 'pastor', a name taken by Ball as appropriate to a priest.

Seynte Marie prest of Ȝork, 'priest of St. Mary's of York' (cp. note to I 44), a great Benedictine abbey founded soon after the Conquest; see Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. iii, pp. 529 ff. Marie does not take the s inflexion, because it has already the Latin genitive form, cp. Mary-ȝet X 163.

d 2. Iohan Nameles, 'John Nobody', for nameless has the sense 'obscure', 'lowly'.

d 6. Hobbe þe Robbere. Hob is a familiar form for Robert, and it has been suggested that Hobbe þe Robbere may refer to Robert Hales, the Treasurer of England, who was executed by the rebels in 1381. But Robert was a conventional name for a robber, presumably owing to the similarity of sound. Already in the twelfth century, Mainerus, the Canterbury scribe of the magnificent Bible now in the library of Sainte-Geneviève at Paris, plays upon it in an etymological account of his family: Secundus (sc. frater meus) dicebatur Robertus, quia a re nomen habuit: spoliator enim diu fuit et praedo. From the fourteenth century lawless men were called Roberts men. In Piers Plowman Passus v (A- and B-texts) there is a confession of 'Robert the Robber'; and the literary fame of the prince of highwaymen, 'Robin Hood', belongs to this period.

d 14. do wel and bettre: note this further evidence of the popularity of Piers Plowman, with its visions of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.

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[XV]

a 8. Þe clot him clingge! 'May the clay cling to him!' i.e. 'Would he were dead!'

a 12. Þider: MS. Yider, and conversely MS. Þiif 23 for Yiif 'if'. y and þ are endlessly confused by scribes.

b 1. Lenten ys come... to toune. In the Old English Metrical Calendar phrases like cymeð... us to tune Martius reðe, 'fierce March comes to town', are regular. The meaning is 'to the dwellings of men', 'to the world'.

b 3. Þat: construe with Lenten.

b 7. him þreteþ, 'chides', 'wrangles' (ON. þrǽta?). See the thirteenth-century debate of The Thrush and the Nightingale (Reliquiae Antiquae, vol. i, pp. 241 ff.), of which the opening lines are closely related to this poem.

b 11. Ant wlyteþ on huere wynter wele, 'and look at their winter happiness (?)'. This conflicts with huere wynter wo above; and the explanation that the birds have forgotten the hardships of the past winter and recall only its pleasures is forced. Holthausen's emendation wynne wele 'wealth of joys' (cp. l. 35) is good.

b 20. Miles: a crux. It has been suggested without much probability that miles means 'animals' from Welsh mīl.

b 28. Deawes donkeþ þe dounes. Of the suggestions made to improve the halting metre the best is þise for þe. The poet is thinking of the sparkle of dew in the morning sun; cp. Sir Gawayne 519 f.:

When þe donkande dewe dropeȝ of þe leueȝ

To bide a blysful blusch of þe bryȝt sunne.

b 29-30. 'Animals with their cries (rounes) unmeaning to us (derne), whereby they converse (domes for te deme).' For the weakened sense of deme (domes) see note to V 115.

c 30. Wery so water in wore: the restless lover (l. 21) has tossed all night like the troubled waters in a wore; cp. I wake so water in wore in another lyric of the same MS. It has been suggested that wore = Old High German wuor 'weir'; but the rimes in both passages show that the stem is OE. wār, not wōr.

d 2. the holy londe: because Ireland was par excellence 'the Land of the Saints'.

f. I am obliged to Professor Carleton Brown for the information that this poem is found, with two additional stanzas, in MS. 18. 7. 21 of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and that the full text will be published shortly in his Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century.

f 4. bere (OE. bȳr) riming with fere (OE. (ge)fēra) indicates a South-Eastern composition.

g 1. Scere Þorsday: Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday.

g 1-2. aros: Iudas: the alternative form aras may have given the rime in the original, but it is not justifiable to accept this as certain and so to assume an early date of composition for the poem. Morsbach, ME. Grammatik, § 135, n. 4, quotes a number of parallel rimes with proper names, and the best explanation is that o in aros still represented a sound intermediate between ā and ǭ, and so served as an approximate rime to ā̆ in proper names.

g 6. cunesmen: as c and t are hard to distinguish in some ME. hands, and are often confused by copyists, this reading is more likely than tunesmen of the editors—Wright-Halliwell, Mätzner, Child, Cook (and N. E. D. s.v. townsman). For (1) tunesman is a technical, not a poetical word. (2) In a poem remarkable for its terseness, tunesmen reduces a whole line to inanity, unless the poet thinks of Judas quite precisely as a citizen of a town other than Jerusalem; and in the absence of any Biblical tradition it is unlikely that a writer who calls Pilate þe riche Ieu would gratuitously assume that Judas was not a citizen of Jerusalem, where his sister lived. (3) Christ's words are throughout vaguely prophetic, and as Judas forthwith imette wid is soster—one of his kin—cunesmen gives a pregnant sense. [I find the MS. actually has cunesmen, but leave the note, lest tunesmen might appear to be better established.]

g 8. The repetition of ll. 8, 25, 30 is indicated in the MS. by 'ii' at the end of each of these lines, which is the regular sign for bis.

g 16. 'He tore his hair until it was bathed in blood.' The MS. has top, not cop.

g 24. In him com ur Lord gon. In the MS. c'ist = Crist has been erased after Lord. Note (1) the reflexive use of him, which is very common in OE. and ME. with verbs of motion, e.g. Up him stod 27, 29; Þau Pilatus him com 30; Als I me rode XV a 4; The Kyng him rod XIV c 61; cp. the extended use ar þe coc him crowe 33, and notes to II 289, V 86: (2) the use of the infinitive (gon) following, and usually defining the sense of, a verb of motion, where Modern English always, and ME. commonly (e.g. ȝede karoland I 117; com daunceing II 298), uses the pres. p.: 'Our Lord came walking in'.

g 27. am I þat? 'Is it I?', the interrogative form of ich hit am or ich am hit. The editors who have proposed to complete the line by adding wrech, have missed the sense. The original rime was þet: spec, cp. note to I 240.

g 30. cnistes: for cniste = cnihte representing the OE. gen. pl. cnihta. On the forms meist 6, heiste 18, eiste 20, bitaiste 21, iboust 26, miste 29, cnistes 30, fiste 31, all with st for OE. ht, see Appendix § 6 end.

h 17-18. Difficult. Perhaps 'The master smith lengthens a little piece [sc. of hot iron], and hammers a smaller piece, twines the two together, and strikes [with his hammer] a treble note'.

h 21-2. cloþemerys... brenwaterys: not in the dictionaries, but both apparently nonce names for the smiths: they 'clothe horses' (for by the end of the fourteenth century a charger carried a good deal of armour and harness), and 'burn water' (when they temper the red-hot metal).

i 4. Þat: dat. rel. 'to whom'; cp. VI 64. But lowte is sometimes transitive 'to reverence'.

i 6. This line, at first sight irrelevant, supplies both rime and doctrine. See in Chaucer's Preface to his Tale of Melibeus the passage ending:

I meene of Marke, Mathew, Luc and John—

Bot doutelees hir sentence is all oon.

An erased t after Awangelys in the MS. shows that the scribe wavered between Awangelys 'Gospels' and Awangelystes.

i 7. Sent Geretrude: Abbess of Nivelle (d. 659), commemorated on March 17. She is appropriately invoked, for one or more rats make her emblem.

i 11. Sent Kasi. I cannot trace this saint, or his acts against the rats. But parallels are not wanting. St. Ivor, an Irish saint, banished rats from his neighbourhood per imprecationem because they gnawed his books; and the charm-harassed life of an Irish rat was still proverbial in Shakespeare's day: 'I was never so berhymed' says Rosalind (As You Like It, III. ii) 'since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat'. In the South of France the citizens of Autun trusted more to the processes of the law, and brought a suit against the rats which ended in a victory for the defendants because the plaintiffs were unable to guarantee them safe conduct to the court (see Chambers, Book of Days, under Jan. 17). Even in such little things the Normans showed their practical genius:—A friend chancing to meet St. Lanfranc by the way inquired the cause of the strange noises that came from a bag he was carrying: 'We are terribly plagued with mice and rats', explained the good man, 'and so, to put down their ravages, I am bringing along a cat' (Mures et rati valde nobis sunt infesti, et idcirco nunc affero catum ad comprimendum furorem illorum). Acta Sanctorum for May 28, p. 824.

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[XVI]

Dialect: Yorkshire.

Inflexions:

VERB: pres. ind. 2 sg. þou royis 99, þou is 360; beside þou hast 69.

3 sg. bidis 23, comes 57.

1 pl. we here 169.

2 pl. ȝe haue 124.

3 pl. þei make 103, þei crie 107, dwelle (rime) 102 ; beside musteres 104, sais 108.

imper. pl. harkens 37, beholdes 195; but vndo 182.

pres. p. walkand 53 (in rime); beside shynyng 94.

strong pp. stoken 193, brokynne 195, &c.

Contracted verbal forms are mase pres. 3 pl. (in rime) 116, bus pres. 2 sg. 338, tane pp. 172.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: pl. nom. þei 21; poss. thare 18, þer 20; obj. þame 9; but hemselue 307.

The demonstrative þer 'these' 97, 399, is Northern.

Sounds: ā remains in rimes: are: care 345-7, waa: gloria 406-8, lawe: knawe 313-15, moste (for māste): taste 358-60; but ō̮ is also proved for the original in restore: euermore: were (for wǭre): before 13 ff.

Spelling: In fois (= fǭs) 30, the spelling with i indicates vowel length.

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17. were: rime requires the alternative form wǭre.

39. Foure thowsande and sex hundereth ȝere. I do not know on what calculation the writer changes 5,500, which is the figure in the Greek and Latin texts of the Gospel of Nicodemus, in the French verse renderings, and the ME. poem Harrowing of Hell. Cp. l. 354.

40. in þis stedde: the rimes hadde: gladde: sadde point to the Towneley MS. reading in darknes stad, 'set in darkness', as nearer the original, which possibly had in þister(nes) stad.

49. we: read ȝe (?). For what follows cp. Isaiah ix. 1-2.

59. puplisshid: the rime with Criste shows that the pronunciation was puplist. Similarly, abasshed: traste 177-9. In French these words have -ss-, which normally becomes -sh- in English. It is hard to say whether -ss- remained throughout in Northern dialects, or whether the development was OFr. -ss- ≻ ME. -sh- ≻ Northern -ss- (notes to I 128, VII 4).

62. þis: read His (?) frendis: here 'relatives', 'parents' (ON. frǽndi); see Luke ii. 27.

65-8. Luke ii. 29-32.

73-82. Matthew iii. 13-17, &c.

75. hande: the rime requires the Norse plural hend as at l. 400; cp. XVII 255, IV a 65 (Footnote).

86 ff. Cp. Matthew xvii. 3 ff., Mark ix. 2 ff.

113. Astrotte: cp. 2 Kings xxiii. 13 'Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians'. I cannot identify Anaball among the false gods.

115. Bele-Berit: Judges viii. 33 'the children of Israel... made Baal-Berith their god'. For Belial see 2 Cor. vi. 15.

122-4. A common misrendering for 'Be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors', Psalm xxiv. 7.

125 ff. postulate a preceding et introibit rex glorię, which the writer has not been able to work into the frame of his verse.

128. a kyng of vertues clere = dominus virtutum, rendered 'Lord of Hosts' in Psalm xxiv. 10.

154-6. ware: ferre: the rime indicates some corruption. ware probably stands for werre 'worse'. The Towneley MS. has or it be war.

162. John xi.

165. John xiii. 27.

171 ff. 'And know he won away Lazarus, who was given to us to take charge of, do you think that you can hinder him from showing the powers that he has purposed (to show)?' But it is doubtful whether what is a true relative. Rather 'from showing his powers—those he has purposed (to show)'.

188. I prophicied: MS. of prophicie breaks the rime scheme.

190. Psalm cvii. 16 'For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder.'

205 ff. The rimes saide: braide: ferde: grathed are bad. For the last two read flaide = 'terrified', and graid, a shortened form of graithed.

208. and we wer moo, 'if we were more', 'even if there were more of us'.

220. as my prisoune might be taken closely with here: 'in this place as my prison'. The Towneley MS. has in for as. Better would be prisoune<s> 'prisoners'.

240. wolle: read wille for the rime.

241. God<ys> sonne: MS. God sonne might be defended as parallel to the instances in the note to XVII 88.

256. Apparently, 'you argue his men in the mire', i.e. if Jesus is God's Son, the souls should remain in hell because God put them there. But the text may be corrupt.

267 ff. Cp. Ezekiel xxxi. 16, &c.

281 ff. Salamon saide: Proverbs ii. 18-19 taken with vii. 27 and ix. 18. It was hotly disputed in the Middle Ages whether Solomon himself was still in hell. Dante, Paradiso, x. 110, informs a world eager for tidings that he is in Paradise: but Langland declares Ich leyue he be in helle (C-text, iv. 330); and, more sweepingly, coupling him with Aristotle: Al holy chirche holden hem in helle (A-text, xi. 263).

285-8. Perhaps a gloss on Job xxxvi. 18 'Because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee away with his stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee.'

301. menys, the reading of the Towneley MS. is better than mouys, which appears to be a copyist's error due to the similarity of n and u, e and o, in the handwriting of the time.

308. Judas hanged himself, according to Matthew xxvii. 3-5; Acts i. 18 gives a different account of his end. Archedefell: Ahithophel who hanged himself (2 Samuel xvii. 23) after the failure of his plot against David.

309. Datan and Abiron: see Numbers xvi.

313-16. 'And all who do not care to learn my law (which I have left in the land newly, and which is to make known my Coming), and to go to my Sacrament, and those who will not believe in my Death and my Resurrection read in order—they are not true.'

338. þou bus, 'you ought'; bus, a Northern contracted form of behoves, is here used as a personal verb, where þe bus, 'it behoves thee', is normal. See note to XVII 196.

360. moste: read maste to rime with taste.

371. Of þis comyng: the Towneley MS. reading of Thi commyng is possible.

378-80: Corrupt. The copy from which the extant MS. was made seems to have been indistinct here. The Towneley MS. has:

Suffre thou neuer Thi sayntys to se

The sorow of thaym that won in wo,

Ay full of fylth, and may not fle,

which is more intelligible and nearer Psalm xvi. 10:

Nec dabis sanctum tuum videre corruptionem.

405. louyng: 'praise', cp. IV a 24 (note).

---

[XVII]

Dialect: Late Yorkshire.

Vocabulary: Northern are then 108 (note), and at 'to' 235.

Inflexions:

VERB: pres. ind. 2 sg. thou spekis 206.

3 sg. ligis he 84; he settis 92; (God) knowes 202.

1 pl. we swete or swynk 195.

2 pl. ye carp (in rime) 360.

3 pl. thay ryn (in rime) 277, 357; beside has 345, renys 351.

pres. p. liffand 73, bowand 76, wirkand 120 (all in rime); beside lifyng 47, 48; standyng 416; taryyng 497.

strong pp. rysen 442; fon 'found' 503 is a Northern short form.

PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. nom. she 186; pl. thay 27; thare 75; thaym 31. (MS. hame 143 is miswritten for thame.)

Sounds: OE. ā appears as ǭ in rime: old: cold: mold (OE. móld) 60-2, and probably dold: old 266-70; sore: store: therfor: more 91-4; but elsewhere remains ā, e.g. draw (OE. drăgan): knaw 245-6. The spelling with o is the commoner.

See notes on emong 400; grufe 463.

Spelling: Note the Northern spellings with i, y following a vowel to indicate length: moyne 'moon' 6, bayle 'bale' 26, leyde = lede 48; and conversely farest 'fairest' 79, fath 'faith' 330.

---

The maritime associations of the play of Noah made it a special favourite with the Trinity House guild of master mariners and pilots at Hull; and some of their records of payments for acting and equipment are preserved, although the text of their play is lost (Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, vol. ii, pp. 370-1):

anno 1485. To the minstrels, 6d.

To Noah and his wife, 1s. 6d.

To Robert Brown playing God, 6d.

To the Ship-child, 1d.

To a shipwright for clinking Noah's ship, one day, 7d.

22 kids for shoring Noah's ship, 2d.

To a man clearing away the snow, 1d.

Straw for Noah and his children, 2d.

Mass, bellman, torches, minstrels, garland &c., 6s.

For mending the ship, 2d.

To Noah for playing, 1s.

To straw and grease for wheels, ¼d.

To the waits for going about with the ship, 6d.

1494. To Thomas Sawyr playing God, 10d.

To Jenkin Smith playing Noah, 1s.

To Noah's wife, 8d.

The clerk and his children, 1s. 6d.

To the players of Barton, 8d.

For a gallon of wine, 8d.

For three skins for Noah's coat, making it, and a rope to hang the ship in the kirk, 7s.

To dighting and gilding St. John's head, painting two tabernacles, beautifying the boat and over the table, 7s. 2d.

Making Noah's ship, £5. 8s.

Two wrights a day and a half, 1s. 6d.

A halser [i.e. hawser] 4 stone weight, 4s. 8d.

Rigging Noah's ship, 8d.

---

10. is: read es for the rime. Cp. note to I 128-9.

42. and sythen: MS. in sythen. Cp. note to VI 36.

49. syn: 3 pl. because euery liffyng leyde is equivalent to a plural subject 'all men'.

52. coueteis: MS. couetous.

56. alod: a shortened form of allowed, apparently on the analogy of such words as lead infin., led pa. t. and pp. For a parallel see note to I 254-5.

57. Sex hundreth yeris and od: the od thrown in to rime, as Noah was exactly 600 years old according to Genesis vii. 6.

66. and my fry shal with me fall: 'and the children <that> I may have' (?).

88. for syn sake: 'because of sin'. Until modern times a genitive preceding sake usually has no s, e.g. for goodness sake. The genitive of sin historically had no s (OE. synne), but the omission in a Northern text is due rather to euphony than to survival of an old genitive form. Cp. for tempest sake I 177.

108. then: 'nor', a rare Northern usage, which is treated as an error here in England and Pollard's text, though it occurs again at l. 535. Conversely nor is used dialectally for than.

109. Hym to mekill wyn: 'to his great happiness'.

137. take: 'make', and so in l. 272.

167-71. knowe: awe. The rime requires knāwe or ǭwe.

191. 'The worse <because> I see thee.'

196. what thou thynk: 'what seems to you best', 'what you like'; thou thynk for thee thynk—the verb being properly impersonal; see notes to XVI 338 and VI 192.

200. Stafford blew: from the context this line might mean 'you are a scaremonger', for blue is the recognized colour of fear, and it might be supposed that 'Stafford blue' represents a material like 'Lincoln green'. But Mätzner is certainly right in interpreting the line 'you deserve a beating'. Stafford blew would then be the livid colour produced by blows. The reference, unless there is a play on staff, is obscure.

202. led: 'treated'.

211. sory: the rime requires sary.

220. Mary: the later marry! = 'by (the Virgin) Mary!' cp. l. 226. So Peter! 367 = 'by St. Peter!'

246. to knaw: 'to confess'.

247-8. daw to ken: 'to be recognized as stupid', 'a manifest fool'.

272. castell: note the rime with sayll: nayll: fayll, which may be due to suffix substitution on the analogy of catail beside catel 'cattle'. For take see note to 137.

281. chambre: the rime points to a by-form chamb(o)ur, but the uninflected form is awkward. Cp. thre chese chambres 'three tiers of chambers' 129, where the construction is the same as the obsolete three pair gloves.

289-92. Read lider, hider, togider.

292. must vs: cp. l. 334 and note to VI 192.

298. 'There is other yarn on the reel', i.e. there is other business on hand.

320. brether sam: 'brothers both'. Some editors prefer to read brother Sam 'brother Shem'.

336 ff. Chaucer refers to the quarrels of Noah and his wife in the Miller's Tale (ll. 352 ff.):—

'Hastou nat herd', quod Nicholas, 'also

The sorwe of Noe with his felaweshipe

Er that he myghte brynge his wyf to shipe?

Hym hadde be levere, I dar wel undertake,

At thilke tyme, than alle his wetheres blake,

That she hadde had a shipe hirself allone.'

The tradition is old. In the splendid tenth-century Bodleian MS. Junius 11, which contains the so-called Caedmon poems, a picture of the Ark shows Noah's wife standing at the foot of the gangway, and one of her sons trying to persuade her to come in.

370. Yei is defensible; cp. l. 353. Þe 'the' has been suggested.

383. Wat Wynk: an alliterative nick-name like Nicholl Nedy in l. 405.

400. emong: OE. gemang, here rimes as in Modern English with u (OE. iung: tunge: lungen), cp. note to VI 109 ff.; but in ll. 244-7 it rimes with lang: fang: gang—all with original a.

417. <floodis>. Some such word is missing in the MS. Cp. ll. 454 f. and 426.

461. How: MS. Now. The correction is due to Professor Child. Initial capitals are peculiarly liable to be miscopied.

463. grufe: a Northern and Scottish form of the verb grow. The sb. ro 'rest' 237 sometimes has a parallel form rufe.

525. stold: for stalled 'fixed'. Note the rime words, which all have alternative forms behald: bald: wald.

APPENDIX THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

§ 1. GENERAL. Gower's work shows that at the end of the century Latin and French still shared with English the place of a literary language. But their hold was precarious.

Latin was steadily losing ground. The Wiclifite translation of the Bible threatened its hitherto unchallenged position as the language of the Church; and the Renaissance had not yet come to give it a new life among secular scholars.

French was still spoken at the court; but in 1387 Trevisa remarks (p. 149) that it was no longer considered an essential part of a gentleman's education: and he records a significant reform—the replacement of French by English as the medium of teaching in schools. After the end of the century Anglo-French, the native development of Norman, was practically confined to legal use, and French of Paris was the accepted standard French.

English gained wherever Latin and French lost ground. But though the work of Chaucer, Gower, and Wiclif foreshadows the coming supremacy of the East Midland, or, more particularly, the London dialect, there was as yet no recognized standard of literary English. The spoken language showed a multiplicity of local varieties, and a writer adopted the particular variety that was most familiar to him. Hence it is almost true to say that every considerable text requires a special grammar.

Confusion is increased by the scribes. Nowadays a book is issued in hundreds or thousands of uniform copies, and within a few months of publication it may be read in any part of the world. In the fourteenth century a book was made known to readers only by the slow and costly multiplication of manuscripts. The copyist might work long after the date of composition, and he would then be likely to modernize the language, which in its written form was not stable as it is at present: so of Barbour's Bruce the oldest extant copies were made nearly a century after Barbour's death. Again, if the dialect of the author were unfamiliar to the copyist, he might substitute familiar words and forms. Defective rimes often bear witness to these substitutions.

Nor have we to reckon only with copyists, who are as a rule careless rather than bold innovators. While books were scarce and many could not read them, professional minstrels and amateur reciters played a great part in the transmission of popular literature; and they, whether from defective memory or from belief in their own talents, treated the exact form and words of their author with scant respect. An extreme instance is given by the MSS. of Sir Orfeo at ll. 267-8:

Auchinleck MS.:	His harp, whereon was al his gle,
	He hidde in an holwe tre;
Harley MS.:	He takeþ his harpe and makeþ hym gle,
	And lyþe al nyȝt vnder a tre;
Ashmole MS.:	In a tre þat was holow
	Þer was hys haule euyn and morow.

If the Ashmole MS. alone had survived we should have no hint of the degree of corruption.

And so, before the extant MSS. recorded the text, copyists and reciters may have added change to change, jumbling the speech of different men, generations, and places, and producing those 'mixed' texts which are the will-o'-the-wisps of language study.

Faced with these perplexities, beginners might well echo the words of Langland's pilgrims in search of Truth:

This were a wikked way, but whoso hadde a gyde

That wolde folwen vs eche a fote.

There is no such complete guide, for the first part of Morsbach's Mittelenglische Grammatik, Halle 1896, remains a splendid fragment, and Luick's Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, Leipzig 1914-, which promises a full account of the early periods, is still far from completion. Happily two distinguished scholars—Dr. Henry Bradley in The Making of English and his chapter in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. i, Dr. O. Jespersen in Growth and Structure of the English Language—have given brief surveys of the whole early period which are at once elementary and authoritative. But for the details the student must rely on a mass of dissertations and articles of very unequal quality, supplemented by introductions to single texts, and, above all, by his own first-hand observations made on the texts themselves.

Some preliminary considerations will be helpful, though perhaps not altogether reassuring:

(i) A great part of the evidence necessary to a thorough knowledge of spoken Middle English has not come down to us, a considerable part remains unprinted, and the printed materials are so extensive and scattered that it is easy to overlook points of detail. For instance, it might be assumed from rimes in Gawayne, Pearl, and the Shropshire poet Myrc, that the falling together of OE. -ang-, -ung-, which is witnessed in NE. among (OE. gemang), -monger (OE. mangere), was specifically West Midland, if the occurrence of examples in Yorkshire (XVII 397-400) escaped notice. It follows that, unless a word or form is so common as to make the risk of error negligible, positive evidence—the certainty that it occurs in a given period or district—is immeasurably more important than negative evidence—the belief that it never did occur, or even the certainty that it is not recorded, in a period or district. For the same reason, the statement that a word or form is found 'in the early fourteenth century' or 'in Kent' should always be understood positively, and should not be taken to imply that it is unknown 'in the thirteenth century' or 'in Essex', as to which evidence may or may not exist.

(ii) It is necessary to clear the mind of the impression, derived from stereotyped written languages, that homogeneity and stability are natural states. Middle English texts represent a spoken language of many local varieties, all developing rapidly. So every linguistic fact should be thought of in terms of time, place, and circumstance, not because absolute precision in these points is attainable, but because the attempt to attain it helps to distinguish accurate knowledge from conclusions which are not free from doubt.

If the word or form under investigation can be proved to belong to the author's original composition, exactness is often possible. In the present book, we know nearly enough the date of composition of extracts I, III, VIII, X, XI a, XII, XIII, XIV; the place of composition of I, III, X, XI a, XII, XIII, XVI, XVII (see map).

But if, as commonly happens, a form cannot be proved to have stood in the original, endless difficulties arise. It will be necessary first to determine the date of the MS. copy. This is exactly known for The Bruce, and there are few Middle English MSS. which the palaeographer cannot date absolutely within a half-century, and probably within a generation. The place where the MS. copy was written is known nearly enough for IV b, c, XII, XIV e, XV b, c (possibly Leominster), XVI, XVII; and ME. studies have still much to gain from a thorough inquiry into the provenance of MSS. Yet, when the extant copy is placed and dated, it remains to ask to what extent this MS. reproduces some lost intermediary of different date and provenance; how many such intermediaries there were between the author's original and our MS.; what each has contributed to the form of the surviving copy—questions usually unanswerable, the consideration of which will show the exceptional linguistic value of the Ayenbyte, where we have the author's own transcript exactly dated and localized, so that every word and form is good evidence.

Failing such ideal conditions, it becomes necessary to limit doubt by segregating for special investigation the elements that belong to the original composition. Hence the importance of rimes, alliteration, and rhythm, which a copyist or reciter is least likely to alter without leaving a trace of his activities.

§ 2. DIALECTS. At present any marked variation from the practice of educated English speakers might, if it were common to a considerable number of persons, be described as dialectal. But as there was no such recognized standard in the fourteenth century, it is most convenient to consider as dialectal any linguistic feature which had a currency in some English-speaking districts but not in all. For example, þat as a relative is found everywhere in the fourteenth century and is not dialectal; þire 'these' is recorded only in Northern districts, and so is dialectal. Again, ǭ represents OE. ā in the South and Midlands, while the North retains ā (§ 7 b i): since neither ǭ nor ā is general, both may be called dialectal.

If a few sporadic developments be excluded because they may turn up anywhere at any time, then, provided sufficient evidence were available,[29] it would be possible to mark the boundaries within which any given dialectal feature occurs at a particular period: we could draw the line south of which þire 'these' is not found, or the line bounding the district in which the Norse borrowing kirke occurs; just as French investigators in L'Atlas linguistique de la France have shown the distribution of single words and forms in the modern French dialects.

[29] Sufficient evidence is not available. If in the year 1340 at every religious house in the kingdom a native of the district had followed the example of Michael of Northgate, and if all their autograph copies had survived, we should have a very good knowledge of Middle English at that time. If the process had been repeated about every ten years the precision of our knowledge would be greatly increased. For the area in which any feature is found is not necessarily constant: we know that in the pres. p. the province of -ing was extending throughout the fourteenth century; that the inflexion -es in 3 sg. pres. ind. was a Northern and North-Midland feature in the fourteenth century, but had become general in London by Shakespeare's time. And though less is known about the spread of sound changes as distinct from analogical substitutions, it cannot be assumed that their final boundaries were reached and fixed in a moment. There is reason to regret the handicap that has been imposed on ME. studies by the old practice of writing in Latin or French the documents and records which would otherwise supply the exactly dated and localized specimens of English that are most necessary to progress.

Of more general importance is the fixing of boundaries for sound changes or inflexions that affect a large number of words, a task to which interesting contributions have been made in recent years on the evidence of place-names (see especially A. Brandl, Zur Geographie der altenglischen Dialekte, Berlin 1915, which supplements the work of Pogatscher on the compounds of street and of Wyld on the ME. developments of OE. y). For example, on the evidence available, which does not permit of more than rough indications, OE. ā remains ā, and does not develop to ǭ, north of a line drawn west from the Humber (§ 7 b i); -and(e) occurs in the ending of the pres. p. as far south as a line starting west from the Wash (§ 13 ii); farther south again, a line between Norwich and Birmingham gives the northern limit for Stratton forms as against Stretton (§ 8 iv, note).[30] The direction of all these lines is roughly east and west, yet no two coincide. But if the developments of OE. y (§ 7 b ii) are mapped out, u appears below a line drawn athwart from Liverpool to London, and normal e east of a line drawn north and south from the western border of Kent. Almost every important feature has thus its own limits, and the limits of one may cross the limits of another.

[30] The evidence of place-names does not agree entirely with the evidence of texts. Havelok, which is localized with reasonable certainty in North Lincolnshire, has (a)dradd in rimes that appear to be original, and these indicate a North-Eastern extension of the area in which OE. strǣt, drǣdan appear for normal Anglian strēt, drēda(n). This evidence, supported by rimes in Robert of Brunne, is too early to be disposed of by the explanation of borrowing from other dialects, nor is the testimony of place-names so complete and unequivocal as to justify an exclusive reliance upon it.

What then is a ME. dialect? The accepted classification is

	{ South-Western	=	OE. West Saxon
Southern	{
	{ South-Eastern	=	OE. Kentish
	{ East Midland }
Midland	{ }	=	OE. Mercian
	{West Midland }
Northern		=	OE. Northumbrian

with the Thames as boundary between Southern and Midland, and the Humber between Midland and Northern. And yet of five actual limiting lines taken at random, only the first coincides approximately with the line of Humber or Thames.

Still the classification rests on a practical truth. Although each dialectal feature has its own boundaries, these are not set by pure chance. Their position is to some extent governed by old tribal and political divisions, by the influence of large towns which served as commercial and administrative centres, and by relative ease of communication. Consequently, linguistic features are roughly grouped, and it is a priori likely that London and Oxford would have more features in common than would London and York, or Oxford and Hull; and similarly it is likely that for a majority of phenomena York and Hull would stand together against London and Oxford. Such a grouping was recognized in the fourteenth century. Higden and his authorities distinguish Northern and Southern speech (XIII b); in the Towneley Second Shepherds' Play, ll. 201 ff., when Mak pretends to be a yeoman of the king, he adopts the appropriate accent, and is promptly told to 'take outt that Sothren tothe'. In the Reeves Tale Chaucer makes the clerks speak their own Northern dialect, so we may be sure that he thought of it as a unity.

But had Chaucer been asked exactly where this dialect was spoken, he would probably have replied, Fer in the North,—I kan nat telle where. A dialect has really no precise boundaries; its borders are nebulous; and throughout this book 'Southern', 'Northern', &c., are used vaguely, and not with any sharply defined limits in mind. The terms may, however, be applied to precise areas, so long as the boundaries of single dialect features are not violently made to conform. It is quite accurate to say that -and(e) is the normal ending of the pres. p. north of the Humber, and that u for OE. y is found south of the Thames and west of London, provided it is not implied that the one should not be found south of the Humber, or the other north of the Thames. Both in fact occur in Gawayne (Cheshire or Lancashire); and in general the language of the Midlands was characterized by the overlapping of features which distinguish the North from the South.

From what has been said it should be plain that the localization of a piece of Middle English on the evidence of language alone calls for an investigation of scope and delicacy. Where the facts are so complex the mechanical application of rules of thumb may give quick and specious results, but must in the end deaden the spirit of inquiry, which is the best gift a student can bring to the subject.

§ 3. VOCABULARY. The readiness of English speakers to adopt words from foreign languages becomes marked in fourteenth-century writings. But the classical element which is so pronounced in modern literary English is still unimportant. There are few direct borrowings from Latin, and these, like obitte XVI 269, are for the most part taken from the technical language of the Church. The chief sources of foreign words are Norse and French.

(a) Norse. Although many Norse words first appear in English in late texts, they must have come into the spoken language before the end of the eleventh century, because the Scandinavian settlements ceased after the Norman Conquest. The invaders spoke a dialect near enough to OE. to be intelligible to the Angles; and they had little to teach of literature or civilization. Hence the borrowings from Norse are all popular; they appear chiefly in the Midlands and North, where the invaders settled; and they witness the intimate fusion of two kindred languages. From Norse we get such common words as anger, both, call, egg, hit, husband, ill, law, loose, low, meek, take, till (prep.), want, weak, wing, wrong, and even the plural forms of the 3rd personal pronoun (§ 12).

It is not always easy to distinguish Norse from native words, because the two languages were so similar during the period of borrowing, and Norse words were adopted early enough to be affected by all ME. sound changes. But there were some dialectal differences between ON. and OE. in the ninth and tenth centuries, and these afford the best criteria of borrowing. For instance in ME. we have þouȝ, þof (ON. þō̆h for *þauh) beside þei(h) (OE. þē(a)h) II 433; ay (ON. ei) 'ever' XVI 293 beside oo (OE. ā) XV b 7; waik (ON. veik-r) VIII b 23, where OE. wāc would yield wǭk; the forms wǭre XVI 17 (note) and wāpin XIV b 15 are from ON. várum, vápn, whereas wēre(n) and wĕppen V 154 represent OE. (Anglian) wēron, wēpn. So we have the pairs awe (ON. agi) I 83 and ay (OE. ege) II 571; neuen (ON. nefna) 'to name' XVII 12 and nem(p)ne (OE. nemnan) II 600; rot (ON. rót) II 256 and wort (OE. wyrt) VIII a 303; sterne, starne (ON. stjarna) XVII 8, 423 and native sterre, starre (OE. steorra); systyr (ON. systir) I 112 and soster (OE. sweostor) XV g 10; werre, warre (ON. verri) XVI 154 (note), 334 and native werse, wars (OE. wyrsa) XVI 200, XVII 191; wylle (ON. vill-r) V 16 and native wylde (OE. wilde) XV b 19.

Note that in Norse borrowings the consonants g, k remain stops where they are palatalized in English words: garn XVII 298, giue, gete (ON. garn, gefa, geta) beside ȝarn, ȝiue, for-ȝete (OE. gearn, giefan, for-gietan); kirke (ON. kirkja) beside chirche (OE. cirice). Similarly OE. initial sc- regularly becomes ME. sh-, so that most words beginning with sk-, like sky, skin, skyfte VI 209 (English shift), skirte (English shirt), are Norse; see the alliterating words in V 99.

There is an excellent monograph by E. Björkman: Scandinavian Loan-Words in Middle English, 1900.

(b) French. Most early borrowings from French were again due to invasion and settlement. But the conditions of contact were very different. Some were unfavourable to borrowing: the Normans, who were relatively few, were dispersed throughout the country, and not, like the Scandinavians, massed in colonies; and their language had little in common with English. So the number of French words in English texts is small before the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Other conditions made borrowing inevitable: the French speakers were the governing class; they gradually introduced a new system of administration and new standards of culture; and they had an important literature to which English writers turned for their subject-matter and their models of form. Fourteenth-century translators adopt words from their French originals so freely (see note at p. 234, foot), that written Middle English must give a rather exaggerated impression of the extent of French influence on the spoken language. But a few examples will show how many common words are early borrowings from French: nouns like country, face, place, river, courtesy, honour, joy, justice, mercy, pity, reason, religion, war; adjectives like close, large, poor; and verbs cry, pay, please, save, serve, use.

Anglo-French was never completely homogeneous, and it was constantly supplemented as a result of direct political, commercial, and literary relations with France. Hence words were sometimes adopted into ME. in more than one French dialectal form. For instance, Late Latin ca- became cha- in most French dialects, but remained ca- in the North of France: hence ME. catch and (pur)chase, catel and chatel, kanel 'neck' V 230 and chanel 'channel' XIII a 57. So Northern French preserves initial w-, for which other French dialects substitute g(u): hence Wowayn V 121 beside Gawayn V 4, &c. (see note to V 121). Again, in Anglo-French, a before nasal + consonant alternates with au:—dance : daunce; chance : chaunce; change : chaunge; chambre XVII 281 : chaumber II 100. English still has the verbs launch and lance, which are ultimately identical.

As borrowing extended over several centuries, the ME. form sometimes depends on the date of adoption. Thus Latin fidem becomes early French feið, later fei, and later still foi. ME. has both feiþ and fay, and by Spenser's time foy appears.

The best study of the French element in ME. is still that of D. Behrens: Beiträge zur Geschichte der französischen Sprache in England, 1886. A valuable supplement, dealing chiefly with Anglo-French as the language of the law, is the chapter by F. W. Maitland in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. i.

§ 4. HANDWRITING. In the ME. period two varieties of script were in use, both developed from the Caroline minuscule which has proved to be the most permanent contribution of the schools of Charlemagne. The one, cursive and flourished, is common in charters, records, and memoranda; see C. H. Jenkinson and C. Johnson, Court Hand, 2 vols., Oxford 1915. The other, in which the letters are separately written, with few flourishes or adaptations of form in combination, is the 'book hand', so called because it is regularly used for literary texts. Between the extreme types there are many gradations; and fifteenth-century copies, such as the Cambridge MS. of Barbour's Bruce, show an increasing use of cursive forms, which facilitate rapid writing.

The shapes of letters were not always so distinct as they are in print, so that copyists of the time, and even modern editors, are liable to mistake one letter for another. Each hand has its own weaknesses, but the letters most commonly misread are:—

e : o e.g. Beuo for Bouo I 59; wroche for wreche II 333; teches IV b 60, where toches (Footnote) is probably right; pesible (MS. posible) XI b 67.

u : n (practically indistinguishable) e.g. menys (MS. mouys) XVI 301; skayned (edd. skayued) V 99; ryueȝ or ryneȝ V 222 (note). This is only a special case of the confusion of letters and combinations formed by repetition of the downstroke, e.g. u, n, m, and i (which is not always distinguished by a stroke above). Hence dim II 285 where modern editors have dun, although i has the distinguishing stroke.

y : þ e.g. ye (MS. þe) XIV d 11; see note to XV a 12. Confusion is increased by occasional transference to þ of the dot which historically may stand over y. ȝ for þ initially, as in XVI 170, is more often due to confusion of the letters þ: y and subsequent preference of ȝ for y in spelling (§ 5 i) than to direct confusion of þ: ȝ, which are not usually very similar in late Middle English script.

þ : h e.g. doþ (MS. doh) XV b 22; and notes to XII b 116, XVI 62.

b : v e.g. vousour (edd. bonsour) II 363.

c : t e.g. cunesmen (edd. tunesmen) XV g 6 (note); top (edd. cop) ibid. 16; see note to XIII a 7.

f : ſ (= s) e.g. slang (variant flang) X 53.

l : ſ (= s) e.g. al (edd. as) II 108.

l : k e.g. kyþeȝ (MS. lyþeȝ) VI 9.

§ 5. SPECIAL LETTERS. Two letters now obsolete are common in fourteenth-century MSS.: þ and ȝ.

þ : 'thorn', is a rune, and stands for the voiced and voiceless sounds now represented by th in this, thin. The gradual displacement of þ by th, which had quite a different sound in classical Latin (note to VIII a 23), may be traced in the MSS. printed (except X, XII). þ remained longest in the initial position, but by the end of the fifteenth century was used chiefly in compendia like þe 'the', þt 'that'.

ȝ : called 'ȝoȝ' or 'yogh', derives from <g>, the OE. script form of the letter g. It was retained in ME. after the Caroline form g had become established in vernacular texts, to represent a group of spirant sounds:

(i) The initial spirant in ȝoked IX 253 (OE. geoc-), ȝere I 151 (OE. gēar), where the sound was approximately the same as in our yoke, year. Except in texts specially influenced by the tradition of French spelling, y (which is ambiguous owing to its common use as a vowel = i) is less frequent than ȝ initially. Medially the palatal spirant is represented either by ȝ or y : eȝe (OE. ē(a)ȝ-) XV c 14 beside eyen VIII a 168; iseȝe (OE. gesegen) XIV c 88 beside iseye XIV c 16. The medial guttural spirant more commonly develops to w in the fourteenth century: awe (ON. agi) I 83, felawe (ON. félagi) XIV d 7, halwes (OE. halg-), beside aȝ- V 267, felaȝ- V 83, halȝ- V 54.

(ii) The medial or final spirant, guttural or palatal, which is lost in standard English, but still spelt in nought, through, night, high : ME. noȝt, þurȝ, nyȝt, hyȝ : OE. noht, þurh, niht, hēh. The ME. sound was probably like that in German ich, ach. The older spelling with h is occasionally found; more often ch as in mycht X 17; but the French spelling gh gains ground throughout the century. Abnormal are write for wrighte XVI 230, wytes, nytes for wyȝtes, nyȝtes XV i 19 f.

(iii) As these sounds weakened in late Southern ME., ȝ was sometimes used without phonetic value, or at the most to reinforce a long i: e.g. Engliȝsch XI a 28, 37, &c.; kyȝn 'kine' IX 256.

N.B.—Entirely distinct in origin and sound value, but identical in script form, is ȝ, the minuscule form of z, in Aȝone (=Azone) I 105, clyffeȝ 'cliffs' V 10, &c. It would probably be better to print z in such words.

§ 6. SPELLING. Modern English spelling, which tolerates almost any inconsistency in the representation of sounds provided the same word is always spelt in the approved way, is the creation of printers, schools, and dictionaries. A Middle English writer was bound by no such arbitrary rules. Michael of Northgate, whose autograph MS. survives, writes diaknen III 5 and dyacne 9; vyf 22, uif 23, vif 37; þouzond 30 and þousend 34. Yet his spelling is not irrational. The comparative regularity of his own speech, which he reproduced directly, had a normalizing influence; and by natural habit he more often than not solved the same problem of representation in the same way. Scribes, too, like printers in later times, found a measure of consistency convenient, and the spelling of some transcripts, e.g. I and X, is very regular. If at first ME. spelling appears lawless to a modern reader, it is because of the variety of dialects represented in literature, the widely differing dates of the MSS. printed, and the tendency of copyists to mix their own spellings with those of their original.

The following points must be kept in mind:

(i) i : y as vowels are interchangeable. In some MSS. (for instance, I) y is used almost exclusively; in others (VIII a) it is preferred for distinctness in the neighbourhood of u, n, m, so that the scribe writes hym, but his.

(ii) ie is found in later texts for long close ẹ̄: chiere XII a 120, flietende XII a 157, diemed XII b 216.

(iii) ui (uy), in the South-West and West Midlands, stands for ǖ (sounded as in French amuser): puit XIV c 12; vnkuynde XIV c 103. The corresponding short ü is spelt u: hull 'hill', &c.

(iv) Quite distinct is the late Northern addition of i (y), to indicate the long vowels ā, ē, ō: neid X 18, noyne 'noon' X 67.

(v) ou (ow) is the regular spelling of long ū (sounded as in too): hous, now, founden, &c.

(vi) o is the regular spelling for short u (sounded as in put) in the neighbourhood of u, m, n, because if u is written in combination with these letters an indistinct series of downstrokes results. Hence loue but luf, come infin., sone 'son', dronken 'drunk'. In Ayenbyte o for ŭ is general, e.g. grochinge III 10. In other texts it is common in bote 'but'.

(vii) u : v are not distinguished as consonant and vowel. v is preferred in initial position, u medially or finally: valay 'valley', vnder 'under', vuel (= üvel) 'evil', loue 'love'. (Note that in XII the MS. distinction of v and u is not reproduced.)

(viii) So i, and its longer form j, are not distinguished as vowel and consonant. In this book i is printed throughout, and so stands initially for the sound of our j in ioy, iuggement, &c.

(ix) c : k for the sounds in kit, cot, are often interchangeable; but k is preferred before palatal vowels e, i (y); and c before o, u. See the alliterating words in V 52, 107, 128, 153, 272, 283.

(x) c : s alternate for voiceless s, especially in French words: sité 'city' VII 66, resayue 'receive' V 8, vyse 'vice' V 307, falce V 314; but also in race (ON. rás) V 8 beside rase XVII 429.

(xi) s : z (ȝ) are both used for voiced s, the former predominating: kyssedes beside raȝteȝ V 283; þouzond III 30 beside þousend III 34. But ȝ occasionally appears for voiceless s: (aȝ-)leȝ 'awe-less' V 267, forȝ 'force' 'waterfall' V 105.

(xii) sh : sch: ss are all found for modern sh, OE. sc: shuld I 50; schert II 230; sserte III 40; but sal 'shall', suld 'should' in Northern texts represent the actual Northern pronunciation in weakly stressed words.

(xiii) v : w: In late Northern MSS. v is often found for initial w: vithall X 9, Valter X 36. The interchange is less common in medial positions: in swndir X 106.

(xiv) wh- : qu(h)-: w-:—wh- is a spelling for hw-. In the South the aspiration is weakened or lost, and w is commonly written, e.g. VIII b. In the North the aspiration is strong, and the sound is spelt qu(h)-, e.g. quhelis 'wheels' X 17. Both qu- and wh- are found in Gawayne. The development in later dialects is against the assumption that hw- became kw- in pronunciation.

See also § 5.

The whole system of ME. spelling was modelled on French, and some of the general features noted above (e.g. ii, iii, v, vi, x) are essentially French. But, particularly in early MSS., there are a number of exceptional imitations. Sometimes the spelling represents a French scribe's attempt at English pronunciation: foret in XV g 18 stands for forþ, where -rþ with strongly trilled r was difficult to a foreigner; and occasionally such distortions are found as knith, knit, and even kint (Layamon, Havelok) for kniȝt, which had two awkward consonant groups. More commonly the copyist, accustomed to write both French and English, chose a French representation for an English sound. So st for ht appears regularly in XV e: seuenist 'sennight', and XV g: iboust 'bought', &c. The explanation is that in French words like beste 'bête', gist 'gît', s became only a breathing before it disappeared; and h in ME. ht weakened to a similar sound, as is shown by the rimes with Kryste 'Christ' in VI 98-107. Hence the French spelling st is occasionally substituted for English ht. Again, in borrowings from French, an + consonant alternates with aun: dance or daunce; change or chaunge (p. 273); and by analogy we have Irlande or Irlaunde in XV d. Another exceptional French usage, -tz for final voiceless -s, is explained at p. 219, top.

§ 7. SOUND CHANGES. (a) Vowel Quantity. No fourteenth-century writer followed the early example of Orm. Marks of quantity are not used in fourteenth-century texts; doubling of long vowels is not an established rule; and there are no strictly quantitative metres, or treatises on pronunciation. Consequently it is not easy to determine how far the quantity of the vowels in any given text has been affected by the very considerable changes that occurred in the late OE. and ME. periods.

Of these the chief are:

(i) In unstressed syllables original long vowels tend to become short. Hence ŭs (OE. ūs), and bŏte (OE. būtan) 'but', which are usually unstressed.

(ii) All long vowels are shortened in stressed close syllables (i.e., usually, when they are followed by two consonants): e.g. kēpen, pa. t. kĕpte, pp. kĕpt; hŭsband beside hous; wĭmmen (from wĭf-men) beside wīf.

Exception. Before the groups -ld, -nd, -rd, -rð, -mb, a short vowel is lengthened in OE. unless a third consonant immediately follows. Hence, before any of these combinations, length may be retained in ME.: e.g. fēnd 'fiend', bīnden, chīld; but chĭldren.

(iii) Short vowels ă, ĕ, ŏ are lengthened in stressed open syllables (i.e., usually, when they are followed by a single consonant with a following vowel): tă|ke ≻ táke; mĕ|te ≻ méte 'meat'; brŏ|ken ≻ bróken. To what extent ĭ and ŭ were subject to the same lengthening in Northern districts is still disputed. Normally they remain short in South and S. Midlands, e.g. drĭuen pp.; lŏuen = lŭven 'to love'.

There are many minor rules and many exceptions due to analogy; but roughly it may be taken that ME. vowels are:

short when unstressed;

short before two consonants, except -ld, -nd, -rd, -rð, -mb;

long (except i (y), u) before a single medial consonant;

otherwise of the quantity shown in the Glossary for the OE. or ON. etymon.

(b) Vowel Quality. The ME. sound-changes are so many and so obscure that it will be possible to deal only with a few that contribute most to the diversity of dialects, and it happens that the particular changes noticed all took effect before the fourteenth century.

(i) OE. and ON. ā develop to long open ǭ (sounded as in broad), first in the South and S. Midlands, later in the N. Midlands. In the North ā (sounded approximately as in father) remains: e.g. bane 'bone' IV a 54, balde 'bold' IV a 51. The boundary seems to have been a line drawn west from the Humber, and this approximates to the dividing line in the modern dialects. There are of course instances of ǭ to the north and of ā to the south of the Humber, since border speakers would be familiar with both ā and ǭ, or would have intermediate pronunciations; and poets might use convenient rimes from neighbouring dialects.

(ii) OE. ȳ̆ (deriving from Germanic ū̆ followed by i) appears normally in E. Midlands and the North as ī̆ (ȳ̆): e.g. kȳn, hill (OE. cȳ, hyll). In the South-East, particularly Kent, it appears as ẹ̆̄: kēn, hell. In the South-West, and in W. Midlands, it commonly appears as u, ui (uy), with the sound of short or long ü. London was apparently at a meeting point of the u, i, and e boundaries, because all the forms appear in fourteenth-century London texts, though ṻ̆ and ē̆ gradually give place to ī̆. The extension of ṻ̆ forms to the North-West is shown by Gawayne, and a line drawn from London to Liverpool would give a rough idea of the boundary. But within this area unrounding of ṻ̆ to ī̆ seems to have been progressive during the century. N.B.—It is dangerous to jump to conclusions from isolated examples. Before r + consonant e is sometimes found in all dialects, e.g. schert II 230. Church, spelt with u, i, or e, had by etymology OE. i, not y. And in Northern texts there are a number of e-spellings in open syllables, both for OE. y and i.

(c) Consonants:

(i) f ≻ v (initial): this change, which dates back to OE. times, is carried through in Ayenbyte: e.g. uele uayre uorbisnen = Midland 'fele fayre forbisnes'. In some degree it extended over the whole of the South.

(ii) s ≻ z (initial), parallel to the change of f to v, is regularly represented in spelling in the Ayenbyte: zome 'some', &c. Otherwise z is rare in spelling, but the voiced initial sound probably extended to most of the Southern districts where it survives in modern dialect.

§ 8. PRONUNCIATION. One of the best ways of studying ME. pronunciation is to learn by heart a few lines of verse in a consistent dialect, and to correct their repetition as more precise knowledge is gained. The spelling can be relied on as very roughly phonetic if the exceptional usages noted in § 6 are kept in mind. Supplementary and controlling information is provided by the study of rimes, of alliteration, and of the history of English and French sounds.

Consonants. Where a consonant is clearly pronounced in Modern English, its value is nearly enough the same for ME. But modern spelling preserves many consonants that have been lost in speech, and so is rather a hindrance than a help to the beginner in ME. For instance, the initial sounds in ME. kniȝt and niȝt were not the same, for kniȝt alliterates always with k- (V 43, 107) and niȝt with n- (VII 149); and initial wr- in wringe, wriȝte is distinct from initial r- in ring, riȝt (cp. alliteration in VIII a 168, V 136). Nor can wriȝte rime with write in a careful fourteenth-century poem. In words like lerne, doghter, r was pronounced with some degree of trilling. And although there are signs of confusion in late MSS. (IV a, XVI, XVII), double consonants were generally distinguished from single: sonne 'sun' was pronounced sŭn-ne, and so differed from sone 'son', which was pronounced sŭ-ne (§ 6 vi).

Vowels. Short vowels ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ (§ 6 vi) were pronounced respectively as in French patte, English pet, pit, pot, put. Final unstressed -e was generally syllabic, with a sound something like the final sound in China (§ 9).

The long vowels ā, ī, ū (§ 6 v) were pronounced approximately as in father, machine, crude. But ē and ō present special difficulties, because the spelling failed to make the broad distinction between open ǭ and close ọ̄, open ę̄ and close ẹ̄—a distinction which, though relative only (depending on the greater or less opening of the mouth passage), is proved to have been considerable by ME. rimes, and by the earlier and subsequent history of the long sounds represented in ME. by e, o.

(i) Open ǭ (as in broad) derives:

(a) from OE. ā, according to § 7 b i: OE. brād, bāt, báld ≻ ME. brǭd, bǭt, bǭld ≻ NE. broad, boat, bold. The characteristic modern spelling is thus oa.

(b) from OE. ŏ in open syllables according to § 7 a iii: OE. brŏcen ≻ ME. brǫ́ke(n) ≻ NE. broken.

NOTE.—In many texts the rimes indicate a distinction in pronunciation between ǭ derived from OE. ā and ǭ derived from OE. ŏ, and the distinction is still made in NW. Midland dialects.

(ii) Close ọ̄ (pronounced rather as in French beau than as in standard English so which has developed a diphthong ọu), derives from OE. ō: OE. gōs, dōm, góld ≻ ME. gọ̄s, dọ̄m, gọ̄ld ≻ NE. goose, doom, gold. The characteristic modern spelling is oo.

NOTE.—(1) After consonant + w, ǭ often develops in ME. to ọ̄: OE. (al)swā, twā ≻ ME. (al)sǭ, twǭ ≻ later (al)sọ̄, twọ̄.

(2) In Scotland and the North ọ̄ becomes regularly a sound (perhaps ǖ) spelt u: gōd ≻ gud, blōd ≻ blud, &c.

Whereas the distribution of ǭ and ọ̄ is practically the same for all ME. dialects, the distinction of open ę̄ and close ẹ̄ is not so regular, chiefly because the sounds from which they derive were not uniform in OE. dialects. For simplicity, attention will be confined to the London dialect, as the forerunner of modern Standard English.

(iii) South-East Midland open ę̄ (pronounced as in there) derives:

(a) from OE. (Anglian) ǣ: Anglian dǣl ≻ SE. Midl. dę̄l ≻ NE. deal;

(b) from OE. ēa: OE. bēatan ≻ ME. bę̄te(n) ≻ NE. beat;

(c) from OE. ĕ in open syllables according to § 7 a iii: OE. mĕte ≻ ME. mę́te ≻ NE. meat.

The characteristic modern spelling is ea.

(iv) South-East Midland close ẹ̄ (pronounced as in French été) derives:

(a) from OE. (Anglian) ē of various origins: Anglian hēr, mēta(n), (ge)lēfa(n) ≻ SE. Midl. hẹ̄re, mẹ̄te(n), lẹ̄ue(n) ≻ NE. here, meet, (be)lieve.

(b) from OE. ēo: OE. dēop, þēof ≻ ME. dẹ̄p, þẹ̄f (þief) ≻ NE. deep, thief.

The characteristic modern spellings are ee, and ie which already in ME. often distinguishes the close sound (§ 6 ii).

NOTE.—The distinction made above does not apply in South-Eastern (Kentish), because this dialect has ME. ea, ia, ya for OE. ēa (iii b), and OE. ē for Anglian ǣ (iii a). Nor does it hold for South-Western, because the West Saxon dialect of OE. had gelīefan for Anglian gelēfa(n) (iv a). West Saxon also had strǣt, -drǣdan, where normal Anglian had strẹ̄t, -drẹ̄da(n), but the distribution of the place-names Stratton beside Stretton, and of the pa. t. and pp. dradd(e) beside dredd(e) (p. 270 and n.), shows that the ǣ forms were common in the extreme South and the East of the Anglian area; so that in fourteenth-century London both ę̄ and ẹ̄ might occur in such words, as against regular West Midland and Northern ẹ̄.

In NE. Midland and Northern texts some ē sounds which we should expect to be distinguished as open and close rime together, especially before dental consonants, e.g. ȝēde (OE. ēode): lēde (Anglian lǣda(n)) I 152-3.

§ 9. INFLEXIONS. Weakening and levelling of inflexions is continuous from the earliest period of English. The strong stress falling regularly on the first or the stem syllable produced as reflex a tendency to indistinctness in the unstressed endings. The disturbing influence of foreign conquest played a secondary but not a negligible part, as may be seen from a comparison of some verbal forms in the North and the N. Midlands, where Norse influence was strongest, with those of the South, where it was inconsiderable:

	Normal OE.	Early Sth. ME.	Early Nth.and N. Midl.	Old Norse
Infin.	drīfan	driue(n)	driue	drífa
Pres. p.	drīfende	driuinde	driuande	drífandi
Pp. strong	gedrifen	ydriue	driuen	drifenn

and although tangible evidence of French influence on the flexional system is wanting (for occasional borrowings like gowtes artetykes IX 314 are mere literary curiosities), every considerable settlement of foreign speakers, especially when they come as conquerors, must shake the traditions of the language of the conquered. A third cause of uncertainty was the interaction of English dialects in different stages of development.

The practical sense of the speakers controlled and balanced these disruptive factors. There is no better field than Middle English for a study of the processes of vigorous growth: the regularizing of exceptional and inconvenient forms; the choice of the most distinctive among a group of alternatives; the invention of new modes of expression; the discarding of what has become useless.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century the inflexional endings are: -e; -en; -ene (weak gen. pl.); -er (comparative); -es; -est; with -eþ, -ede (-de, -te), -ed (-d, -t), -ynge (-inde, -ende, -ande), which are verbal only.

NOTE.—(a) Sometimes one of these inflexions may be substituted for another: e.g. when -es replaces -e as the Northern ending of the 1st sg. pres. ind. Such analogical substitutions must be distinguished from phonetic developments.

(b) In disyllabic inflexions like -ede, -ynge (-ande), final -e is lost early in the North. In polysyllables it is dropped everywhere during the century.

(c) The indistinct sound of flexional -e- covered by a consonant is shown by spellings with -i-, -y-: woundis X 51; madist XI b 214; blyndiþ XI b 7; fulfillid XVI 6; etin XIV b 76; brokynne XVI 195. And, especially in West Midland texts, -us, -un (-on) appear for -es, -en: mannus XI b 234; foundun XI a 47; laghton VII 119. Complete syncope sometimes occurs: days I 198, &c.

Otherwise all the inflexions except -e, -en, are fairly stable throughout the century.

-en: In the North -en is found chiefly in the strong pp., where it is stable. In the South (except in the strong pp.) it is better preserved, occurring rarely in the dat. sg. of adjectives, e.g. onen III 4, dat. pl. of nouns, e.g. diaknen III 5, and in the infinitive; more commonly in the weak pl. of nouns, where it is stable, and in the pa. t. pl., where it alternates with -e. In the Midlands -en, alternating with -e, is also the characteristic ending of the pres. ind. pl. As a rule (where the reduced ending -e is found side by side with -en) -e is used before words beginning with a consonant, and -en before words beginning with a vowel or h, to avoid hiatus. But that the preservation of -en does not depend purely on phonetic considerations is proved by its regular retention in the Northern strong pp., and its regular reduction to -e in the corresponding Southern form.

-e: Wherever -en was reduced, it reinforced final -e, which so became the meeting point of all the inflexions that were to disappear before Elizabethan times.

-e was the ending of several verbal forms; of the weak adjective and the adjective pl.; of the dat. sg. of nouns; and of adverbs like faste, deepe, as distinguished from the corresponding adjectives fast, deep.

That -e was pronounced is clear from the metres of Chaucer, Gower, and most other Southern and Midland writers of the time. For centuries the rhythm of their verse was lost because later generations had become so used to final -e as a mere spelling that they did not suspect that it was once syllabic.

But already in fourteenth-century manuscripts there is evidence of uncertainty. Scribes often omit the final vowel where the rhythm shows that it was syllabic in the original (see the language notes to I, II). Conversely, in Gawayne forms like burne (OE. beorn), race (ON. rás), hille (OE. hyll) appear in nominative and accusative, where historically there should be no ending. The explanation is that, quite apart from the workings of analogy, which now extended and now curtailed its historical functions, -e was everywhere weakly pronounced, and was dropped at different rates in the various dialects. In the North it hardly survives the middle of the century (IV a, X). In the N. Midlands its survival is irregular. In the South and S. Midlands it is fairly well preserved till the end of the century. But everywhere the proportion of flexionless forms was increasing. It may be assumed that, in speech as in verse, final -e was lost phonetically first before words beginning with a vowel or h.

§ 10. NOUNS: Gender, which in standard West Saxon had been to a great extent grammatical (i.e. dependent on the forms of the noun), was by the fourteenth century natural (i.e. dependent on the meaning of the noun). This change had accompanied and in some degree facilitated the transfer of nearly all nouns to the strong masculine type, which was the commonest and best defined in late OE.:

	OE.	ME.
Sg. nom. acc.	cniht	kniȝt
gen.	cnihtes	kniȝtes
dat.	cnihte	kniȝte
	OE.	ME.
Pl. nom. acc.	cnihtas	kniȝtes
gen.	cnihta	kniȝtes
dat.	cnihtum	kniȝtes

In the North final -e of the dat. sg. was regularly dropped early in the fourteenth century, and even in the South the dat. sg. is often uninflected, probably owing to the influence of the accusative. In the plural the inflexion of the nom. acc. spreads to all cases; but in early texts, and relatively late in the South, the historical forms are occasionally found, e.g. gen. pl. cniste (MS. cnistes) XV g 30 (note), dat. pl. diaknen III 5.

Survivals: (i) The common mutated plurals man: men, fot: fet, &c., are preserved, and in VIII b a gen. pl. menne (OE. manna) occurs; ky pl. of cow forms a new double pl. kyn, see (iii) below; hend pl. of hand is Norse, cp. XVI 75 (note).

(ii) Some OE. neuters like shep 'sheep' VIII b 18, ȝer 'year' II 492, þing II 218, folk II 389, resist the intrusion of the masculine pl. -es in nominative and accusative. Pl. hors II 304, XIII a 34 remains beside horses XIV b 73; but deores 'wild animals' occurs at XV b 29, where Modern English preserves deer.

(iii) In the South the old weak declension with pl. -en persists, though by the fourteenth century the predominance of the strong type is assured. The weak forms occur not only where they are historically justified, e.g. eyȝen (OE. ēagan) II 111, but also by analogy in words like honden (OE. pl. honda) II 79, tren (OE. pl. trēo) XIII a 51, platen (OFr. plate) XV g 4. The inflexion still survives in three double plural formations: children VIII b 70 beside childer (OE. pl. cildru); bretheren VIII a 201 beside brether XVII 320 (OE. pl. brōþor); and kyȝn IX 256 for ky (cp. (i) above). The OE. weak gen. pl. in -ena leaves its traces in the South, e.g. knauene VIII b 56, XV h 4, and unhistorical lordene VIII b 77.

(iv) The group fader, moder, broþer, doghter commonly show the historical flexionless gen. sg., e.g. doghtyr arme I 136; moder wombe XI b 29 f.; brother hele XII a 18; Fadir voice XVI 79.

(v) The historical gen. sg. of old strong feminines remains in soule dede (OE. sāwle) I 212; but Lady day (OE. hlǣfdigan dæg) I 242 is a survival of the weak fem. gen. sg.

§ 11. ADJECTIVES. Separate flexional forms for each gender are not preserved in the fourteenth century; but until its end the distinction of strong and weak declensions remains in the South and South Midlands, and is well marked in the careful verse of Chaucer and Gower. The strong is the normal form. The weak form is used after demonstratives, the, his, &c., and in the vocative. As types god (OE. gōd) 'good' and grene (OE. grēne) 'green' will serve, because in OE. grēne had a vowel-ending in the strong nom. sg. masc., while gōd did not. The ME. paradigms are:

Singular.		Plural.
Strong	Weak	Strong and Weak
god	god	godė
grenė	grenė	grenė

Examples: Strong sg. a gret serpent (OE. grēat) XII b 72; an unkindė man (OE. uncynde) XII b 1; a stillė water (OE. stille) XII a 83. Weak sg. The gretė gastli serpent XII b 126; hire oghnė hertes lif XII a 4; O lef liif (where the metre indicates leuė for the original) II 102. Strong pl. þer wer widė wones II 365. Weak pl. the smalė stones XII a 84.

Note that strong and weak forms are identical in the plural; that even in the singular there is no formal distinction when the OE. strong masc. nom. ended in a vowel (grēne); that monosyllables ending in a vowel (e.g. fre), polysyllables, and participles, are usually invariable; and that regular dropping of final -e levels all distinctions, so that the North and N. Midlands early reached the relatively flexionless stage of Modern English.

Survivals. The Ayenbyte shows some living use of the adjective inflexions. Otherwise the survivals are limited to set phrases, e.g. gen. sg. nones cunnes 'of no kind', enes cunnes 'of any kind', XV g 20, 22. That the force of the inflexion was lost is shown by the early wrong analysis no skynnes, al skynnes, &c.

Definite Article. Parallel to the simplification of the adjective, the full OE. declension sē, sēo, þæt, &c., is reduced to invariable þe. The Ayenbyte alone of our specimens keeps some of the older distinctions. Elsewhere traces appear in set phrases, e.g. neut. sg. þat, þet in þat on 'the one', þat oþer 'the other' V 344, and, with wrong division, þe ton XI b 27, the toþer IX 4; neut. sg. dat. þen (OE. þǣm), with wrong division, in atte nale (for at þen ale) VIII a 109.

§ 12. PRONOUNS. In a brilliant study (Progress in Language, London 1894) Jespersen exemplifies the economy and resources of English from the detailed history of the Pronoun. In the first and second persons fourteenth-century usage does not differ greatly from that of the Authorized Version of the Bible. But the pronoun of the third person shows a variety of developments. In the singular an objective case replaces, without practical disadvantages, the older accusative and dative: him (OE. hine and him), her(e) (OE. hīe and hiere), (h)it (OE. hit and him). The possessive his still serves for the neuter as well as the masculine, e.g. þat ryuer... chaungeþ hys fordes XIII a 55 f.; though an uninflected neuter possessive hit occasionally appears in the fourteenth century. In the plural, where one would expect objective him from the regular OE. dat. pl. him, clearness is gained by the choice of unambiguous hem, from an OE. dat. pl. by-form heom.

But as we see from Orfeo, ll. 408, 446, 185, in some dialects the nom. sg. masc. (OE. hē), nom. sg. fem. (OE. hēo), and nom. pl. (OE. hīe), had all become ME. he. The disadvantages of such ambiguity increased as the flexional system of nouns and adjectives collapsed, and a remedy was found in the adoption of new forms. For the nom. sg. fem., s(c)he, s(c)ho (mostly Northern), come into use, which are probably derived from si̯ē, se̯ō, the corresponding case of the definite article. The innovation was long resisted in the South, and ho, an unambiguous development of heō, remains late in W. Midland texts like Pearl.

In the nom. pl. ambiguous he was replaced by þei, the nom. pl. of the Norse definite article. This is the regular form in all except the Southern specimens II (orig.), III, XIII. And although the full series of Norse forms þei, þeir, þe(i)m is found in Orm at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Chaucer and other Midland writers of the fourteenth century as a rule have only þei, with native English her(e), hem in the oblique cases. (For details see the language note to each specimen.)

The poss. pl. her(e), beside hor(e), was still liable to confusion with the obj. sg. fem. her(e), cp. II 92. Consequently this was the next point to be gained by the Norse forms, e.g. in VII 181. In the Northern texts X, XVI, XVII, all from late MSS., the Norse forms þai, þa(i)r, þa(i)me are fully established; but (h)em, which was throughout unambiguous, survived into modern dialects in the South and Midlands.

Note the reduced nominative form a 'he', 'they' in XIII; and the objective his(e) 'her', 'them' in III, which has not been satisfactorily explained.

Relative: The general ME. relative is þat, representing all genders and cases (note to XV i 4). Sometimes definition is gained by adding the personal pronoun: þat... he (sche) = 'who'; þat... it = 'which'; þat... his = 'whose'; þat ... him = 'whom', &c.; e.g. a well, þat in the day it is so cold IX 5-6, cp. V 127 (note); oon That with a spere was thirled his brest-boon 'one whose breast-bone was pierced with a spear', Knight's Tale 1851. For the omission of þat see note to XIII a 36.

In later texts, which, properly an interrogative, appears commonly as a relative, both with personal and impersonal antecedents, e.g. Alceone... which... him loveth XII a 3 ff.; þat steede... fro whilke þe feende fell XVI 13 f. Under the influence of French lequel, &c., which is often compounded with the article þe, e.g. a gret serpent... the which Bardus anon up drouh XII b 72 f.; no thing of newe, in the whiche the hereres myghten hauen... solace IX 275 f. Further compounding with þat is not uncommon, e.g. the queen of Amazoine, the whiche þat maketh hem to ben kept in cloos IX 190 f.

More restricted is the relative use of whos, whom, which are originally interrogatives, though both are found very early in ME. as personal relatives. Examples of the objective after prepositions are: my Lady, of quom... VI 93; God, fro whom ... IX 328 f.; my Sone... in whome XVI 81 f. The possessive occurs in Seynt Magne... yn whos wurschyp I 90 f.; I am ... the same, whos good XII b 78 f.; and, compounded with the article, in Morpheüs, the whos nature XII a 113. The nominative who retains its interrogative meaning, e.g. But who ben more heretikis? XI b 77 f.; or is used as an indefinite, e.g. a tasse of grene stickes... to selle, who that wolde hem beie XII b 22 ff.; but it is never used as a relative; and probably what in XVI 174 is better taken as in apposition to myghtis than as a true relative.

§ 13. VERB. Syntactically the most interesting point in the history of the ME. verb is the development of the compound tenses with have, be, will, shall, may, might, mun, can, gan. But the flexional forms of the simple tenses are most subject to local variation, and, being relatively common, afford good evidence of dialect. Throughout the period, despite the crossings and confusions that are to be expected in a time of uncertainty and experiment, the distinction between strong and weak verbs is maintained; and it will be convenient to deal first with the inflexions common to both classes, and then to notice the forms peculiar to one or the other.

(i) The Infinitive had already in Northumbrian OE. lost final -n: drīfa 'to drive'. Hence in ME. of the North and N. Midlands the ending is -e, which becomes silent at varying rates during the fourteenth century; e.g. dryue I 171, to luf IV a 17. In the South and S. Midlands the common ending is -e, e.g. telle III 3, which usually remains syllabic to the end of the century; but -(e)n is also found, especially in verse to make a rime or to avoid hiatus: e.g. sein (: aȝein) XII a 27; to parte and ȝiven half his good XII b 201.

(ii) The Present Participle (OE. drīfende) in the North and N. Midlands ends in -and(e), though -yng(e), -ing(e) is beginning to appear in V, VII, XVI, XVII. In S. Midlands the historical ending -ende still prevails in Gower; but Chaucer has more commonly -yng(e); and in IX, XI, both late texts, only -yng(e) appears. In the South -yng(e) is established as early as the beginning of the century, e.g. in II.

N.B. Carefully distinguish the verbal noun which always ends in -yng(e). Early confusion resulted in the transference of this ending to the participle.

(iii) Present Indicative.

(a) Singular: OE. 1 drīfe, 2 drīf(e)s(t), 3 drīf(e)ð (late Northumbrian drīfes).

In ME. -e, -est, -eþ are still the regular endings for the South and most of the Midlands. Shortened forms like fint = findeþ II. 239; stant = standeþ XII a 74 are commonest in the South, where in OE. they were a feature of West Saxon and Kentish as distinguished from Anglian. Distinct are the Northern and N. Midland mas(e) 'makes', tas 'takes', with contracted infinitives ma, ta; and bus 'behoves', which Chaucer uses in his imitation of Northern English, Reeves Tale 172.

In N. Midlands the modern 3rd sg. -(e)s is common (V, VI, but not in earlier I). Farther North it is invariable (IV, X, XVI, XVII). The distribution of -es as the ending of the 2nd sg. is the same, and it is extended even to the 1st person.

(b) Plural: OE. drīfað (late Northumbrian drīfas).

Only Southern ME. retains the OE. inflexion as -eþ (II, III, XIII). The Midland ending, whence the modern form derives, is -e(n); though in the N. Midlands -es occasionally appears. Northern has regularly -es, unless the personal pronoun immediately precedes, when the ending is -e, as in the Midlands, e.g. þei make XVI 103.

N.B. In applying this test, care must be taken to exclude inversions, which are subject to special rules; to distinguish the subjunctive (e.g. falle XIII a 52, drawe XIII b 6) from the indicative; and, generally, to choose examples that are syntactically free from doubt, because concord of number is not always logical in ME.

SUMMARY.

	OE.
1. sg.	drīf-e
2.	drīf-es(t)
3.	drīf-eð (Nth. -es)
pl.	drīf-að (Nth. -as)
	ME.
	South	S. Midl.	N. Midl.	North
1. sg.	-e	-e	-(e)	-(e) or -(e)s
2.	-est	-est	-es(t)	-es
3.	-eþ	-eþ	-eþ or -es	-es
pl.	-eþ	-e(n)	-e(n) or -es	-es or -(e)

(iv) The Imperative Plural might be expected to agree with the pres. ind. pl. In fact it has the ending -eþ not merely in the South, but in most of the Midlands, e.g. I, VIII, Gower and Chaucer. Northern and NW. Midland (V, VI, XIV b, XVI) have commonly -es. But Chaucer, Gower, and most late ME. texts have, beside the full inflexion, an uninflected form, e.g. vndo XVI 182.

(v) Past Tense.

(a) Strong: The historical distinctions of stem-vowel were often obscured in ME. by the rise of new analogical forms, the variety of which can best be judged from the detailed evidence presented in the New English Dictionary under each verb. But, for the common verbs or classes, the South and S. Midlands preserved fairly well the OE. vowel distinction of past tense singular and plural; while North and N. Midlands usually preferred the form proper to the singular for both singular and plural, e.g. þey bygan I 72; þey ne blan I 73; thai slang X 53, where OE. has sg. gan: gunnon; blan: blunnon; ON. slǫng: slungu.

(b) Weak: In the South and Midlands the weak pa. t. 2nd sg. usually ends in -est (N. Midland also -es): hadest II 573; cursedest I 130; kyssedes, raȝteȝ V 283. In the North, and sometimes in N. Midland, it ends in -(e): þou hadde XVI 219. The full ending of the pa. t. pl. is fairly common in the South, S. Midlands, and NW. Midlands: wenten II 185, hedden III 42, maden XII b 196, sayden VI 174.

(vi) Past Participle (Strong): OE. (ge)drĭfen.

In the North and N. Midlands the ending -en is usually preserved, but the prefix y- is dropped. In the South the type is y-driue, with prefix and without final n. S. Midland fluctuates—for example, Gower rarely, Chaucer commonly, uses the prefix y-.

(vii) Weak Verbs with -i- suffix: In OE. weak verbs of Class II formed the infinitive in -ian, e.g. acsian, lufian, and the i appeared also in the pres. ind. and imper. pl. acsiað and pres. p. acsiende. In ME. a certain number of French verbs with an -i- suffix reinforced this class. In the South and W. Midlands the -i- of the suffix is often preserved, e.g. aski II 467, louy V 27, and is sometimes extended to forms in which it has no historical justification, e.g. pp. spuryed V 25. In the North and the E. Midlands the forms without i are generalized.

PRINTED IN ENGLAND

AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

---

CORRIGENDA To Sisam's Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose

p. xlv, l. 7:	for carat read caret
p. xlvii:	for Jessop read Jessopp
p. 21, l. 259:	for be read he
p. 28, l. 493:	for enn read en
p. 43, Foot-note to l. 69:	omit 'for:'
p. 62, l. 100:	for tyste read t<r>yste (Morris); and adjust note at p. 225.
p. 103, l. 254:	for largeand read large and
p. 175, l. 1:	for Daib. read Diab.
p. 214, note to a:	for 'The best... are' read 'This poem is largely a translation of sentences excerpted from Rolle's Incendium Amoris, cc. xl-xli (Miss Allen in Mod. Lang. Review for 1919, p. 320). Useful commentaries are'
p. 226, note to l. 153:	in l. 8 for tǫ read tǭ
p. 243, n. to ll. 5-6:	for 'external covering' read 'covering over it'
p. 291, table, last column, 1 sg.:	for '-e or (e)s' read '-(e) or -(e)s'

Transcriber's Note

([See also] the Transcriber's Note at the beginning of this e-text.)

The CORRIGENDA to Sisam's Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (see above) has been moved here from the end of the accompanying vocabulary volume. All items listed have been corrected, except

p. 62, l. 100: [...] and adjust note at p. 225

which remains unadjusted.

A number of editorial corrections are without Footnotes or Notes. The manuscript readings for these are here supplied by the transcriber from the editions of Hamelius and England & Pollard:

	IX	166	Sythye] Sychye MS.
	IX	270	it] is MS.
	IX	287	greuous] grouous MS.
	XVII	85	displeases] displeasse MS.
	XVII	472	thou] thi MS.

The line numbering has been regularised to multiples of 5. Lines of prose have their line numbers at the right side of the text, or in some reading devices, line numbers will appear in {braces} within the text.

The companion volume,
A Middle English Vocabulary, designed for use with SISAM's Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose, by J. R. R. Tolkien
is available at PG #43737.