[Accidence:] This has been sufficiently described in the texts mentioned above. Noteworthy is heoren 85, perhaps the earliest instance of the form with n added from min, þin.
[Vocabulary:] Scandinavian are bule 21, crokes 43 with its derivative crokinde 87, euene 20, ȝeinen 60 (keinen T), (god)lec 98, 101, hap 62, keisere 60, lates 35, menske 45, witer(liche) 96: possibly hird 53, ȝeinde 54. French are lay 55, mawmez 21, mawmetes 48: possibly cang 88, crauant 45.
[Dialect:] As for Sawles Warde.
[Style:] What has been said about the arrangement of Sawles Warde in Layamonic verse applies to Einenkel’s distribution of SK in Otfridic verse, which Trautmann, the discoverer of Otfrid’s verse in England, afterwards recognized as Layamon’s. It produces such strange divisions as, ‘þet an engel ne com | lihtinde, with swuch | leome, from heouene,’ 666-8; ‘He haueð iweddet him to | mi meiðhad mit te ring,’ 1507, 8; ‘to habben ant to halden þe | cwic, þen to acwellen þe,’ 1867, 8; ‘ant heo duden; drohen hire | wið uten þe burhȝetes,’ 2173, 4, and such rhythms as, ‘hwet he warpe a word aȝein ow,’ 643; ‘for hwas nome ich underneome,’ 765; ‘ant kénest of ow álle óf þe créft,’ 814; ‘ant cweðe ham al sker up,’ 867, with many others. There is a parallel to SK in the OHG. Himmel und Hölle printed as verse in MSD i. 67. It is described by Einenkel (p. xxi) as ‘a poem which, curiously enough, is in its unrhymed form unique in O. H. G., and forms the only perfect analogy to our three legends and to numerous other Old and Middle English poems of the same class,’ while Steinmeyer (MSD ii. 162) is of opinion that to treat it as verse and so create an unique rhymeless poem in the earliest German literature is a very doubtful proceeding.
[Introduction:] This is the first version of the Legend extant in English. It was followed by six other redactions in Middle English, all in verse: they are enumerated and traced to their originals in Varnhagen’s tract of 1901.
[1]. Maxence: a mistake of the Latin original and of its source, Simeon Metaphrastes, for Maximinus, as correctly given in the Menologium Basilianum (Hardwick, p. 11). Galerius Valerius Maximinus was raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle, the Emperor Galerius, and made governor of Syria and Egypt in 303 A.D. He died in 313. See 138/16. as, as being: comp. 122/180, 131/103, 139/15, 141/49, 142/57, 145/105, 108.
[2]. hehest i rome: comp. 140/32.
[3]. þurh: the usual prep. is bi, as ‘ðe ferden al bi fendes red,’ GE 2921: ‘be his witena ræde,’ Ælf. Lives, ii. 106/591. hwiles: hwile BT, which is grammatically correct; but comp. ‘umbehwiles,’ l. 5 (where BT have again hwile); ‘sumehwiles,’ AR 272/28; ‘oðer hwiles,’ HM 33/31.
[4]. refschipe: comp. 143/71.
[5]. comen: subject hi, contained in preceding ‘him’: see 6/18. Similarly warð, l. 10.