#Manuscript:# Worcester Cathedral Library, 174. It consists of sixty-six leaves of vellum, ‘which had been cut and pasted together to form covers for a book in the Cathedral archives’ (Catalogue of the Chapter Library, ed. Floyer and Hamilton, Oxford, 1906). Its contents are (1) an incomplete copy of Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary, used by Zupitza for his edition of the text (Berlin, 1880); (2) the scrap here marked A; (3) the pieces B and C with five more fragments of the same poem. A completes the page on which the glossary ends, and B is on the verso of the leaf. The leaves have been slightly shorn at one side and reduced at top and bottom, but probably to no great extent: the conjectural complement, which is here printed within square brackets, is for the most part fairly obvious, the more so as portions of the lost letters often remain. The whole MS. is in the same large square hand, but the pieces in verse, which are written continuously, like prose, are less carefully executed. The handwriting is of the second half of the twelfth century, perhaps about 1180 A.D. The Latin headings are not in the MS. #Editions:# Phillipps, Sir T., Fragment of Ælfric’s Grammar, &c., London, 1838; Wright, T., Biographia Britannica Literaria, AS. Period, p. 59, 60, London, 1842 (omits the last four lines); Varnhagen, H., Anglia, iii. pp. 423-25. #Phonology:# The scribe is mainly faithful to the orthography of his original, which was in Anglo-Saxon script (as is shown by _Sipum_ for _Ripum_) and older language. He still uses the rune for _w_. His spelling wavers between old and new, #ǣ# survives in ilærde, lærden, læreþ, beside _e_ in ilerde, weren; #ea# persists in wireceastre, but wincæstre, rofecæstre; the inflection is not levelled in leodan, but leoden, hoteþ, losiæþ (æ = e). Drihten represents an OE. form in i; #ie# is _e_ in derne; #ā# is _o_ in hoteþ, _eo_ (= _o_) in leore. OE. #æ# + #g# is _æi_ in fæire, fæier, sæiþ; #e# + #g# is _ei_ in lorþeines; #ēo# + #h# is _i_ in liht; #ēa# + #h#, _eih_ in unwreih. Bocare goes back to late OE. #bōcre#; #c# is written _ch_ in wisliche; #sć# [š] is still _sc_ in sceolen. #Accidence:# The def. article is _s. n. neut._ þet 17, 19; _s. a. f._ þa 5; _pl. n._ þeo 3, 17; _pl. d._ þen 19; _pl. a._ þeo 4. Noteworthy nouns are the mutation _pl._ bec 7; diȝelnesse, _s. a._ 5; leoden, _pl. n._ 3, 18, leodan, _pl. a._ 15 (weak forms); leore, _pl. n._ 17. The relatives are þe, þeo 18 (as in L 257, 2999), þet 3: the demonstrative þis, _pl. n. neut._ 22, þeos, _pl. n. m._ 15, _pl. a. m._ 9 (properly a _sing._ form): possessives, ure 9, 15, 18; heore 16. Glod 16 is a weak preterite beside strong #glēow#, but the cognate forms in other languages are weak, and this may be a borrowing from the Norse (NED _s.v._). French are questiuns, probably its first appearance, and feþ 23, with its peculiar monophthong (OF. feid in which _d_ was the spirant [ð]); comp. 8/91 note. #Dialect:# Middle or Western South.