If the suggestions offered in the section on metre have any weight, a considerable time and several copies must have intervened between the original and the present form of the poem. The composition of that original should, I think, be placed somewhere about 1180 A.D.
[1]. Seuorde: siforde T; Sifforde W, RJ, which is identified by Spelman 126 with ‘Shifford, six miles west from Oxford.’ That it is ‘remote from the use of the southern dialect’ does not prevent it from being the place where Alfred discoursed. But Seaford, a seaport in Sussex, is more likely to have been associated in the popular mind and tradition with Alfred.
[2]. Biscopes, &c.: comp. ‘Forð iwenden eorles; forð iwenden beornes. | forð iwenden biscopes; & þa boc-ilæred men; forð iwenden þæines; forð iwenden sweines | . . . at þan hustinge,’ L 14620. With bokilered comp. 19/39, 4/20 note.
[3]. egleche, valiant: OE. aglǣca, a fierce warrior. egloche S.
[4]. Alurich: An Ælfric thesaurarius witnesses a charter of King Alfred, A.D. 892, Birch, Cart. Saxon. ii. 209.
[5]. of . . . wis: comp. 212/533.
[6]. hurde: comp. ‘Swa se æþela lareow sægde, þæt se cyning & se biscop sceoldan beón Cristenra folca hyrdas,’ BH 45/24; ‘folces hyrde,’ Beowulf 610.
[7]. Englene durlyng: so, ‘com Alfred þe king; Englelondes deorling,’ L 6316: he has also ‘Bruttene, Orka[n]es, Denemarkes, Irisce monnen, utlaȝen deorling.’ See KH 488 note.
[9]. bigon: gon T, gan W,S: set to work to teach.
[13]. and may be redundant, as often in Layamon, as ‘Ic wlle mine riche to-don; & allen minen dohtren,’ 2945 but Alured, though it is in all the copies, may be an error for Ælder: comp. ‘& þu seolf læuerd king; leoden þu ært ælder,’ L 16835, 17252, in the latter place, leader. T,W,S read a.