Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250. Part 2: Notes
General
Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250. Part 2: Notes
English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500
Other MSS. are v. Digby A 4, Bodleian D, of the beginning of the
thirteenth century; described in Macray, W. D., Catalogue of the Digby
MSS., Oxford, 1883. The PM is written in half lines and stanzas; it is
in a hand found nowhere else in the MS., which was probably copied at
Christ Church, Canterbury (James, M. R., The Ancient Libraries of
Canterbury and Dover, Cambridge, 1903; Förster, M., Archiv cxv. 167).
Its dialect is Kentish. vi. Jesus College, Oxford, E 29 (J): see p. 285.
vii. McClean MS. 123 (M), Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 122 leaves on
vellum, 262 × 167 mm.: about 1300: the Nuneaton Book, described by Miss
Anna C. Paues, who discovered this copy of the poem, in Anglia xxx.
217-26, and in A Descriptive Catalogue of the McClean Collection of
Manuscripts by M. R. James, Cambridge, 1912. Like Egerton 613 it has the
Bestiary of William the Norman and the Gospel of Nicodemus in French.
The dialect of PM is South-Eastern, bordering on Kent. It begins with
two lines from Sinners Beware (OEM p. 72), and has four other lines not
found in any other copy: on the other hand, it wants seventy lines found
in T; it diverges from the other MSS. in the order of the lines, and in
other respects gives the impression of having been written down from
memory.
#Facsimile:# Of vi. Skeat, W. W., Twelve Facsimiles, Oxford, 1892; plate
vi gives ll. 1-34.
#Editions:# Of L: OEH i. 159-75 with modern version. Kluge, F., ME.
Lesebuch, 57-61. Of E: Furnivall, F. J., Early English Poems.
Philological Society, 1862, 22-34, with readings of e and OEH i. 288-95,
175-83. Of e: Zupitza-Schipper, Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch,
Wien, 1907, 80-91, completed from E. Of T: OEH ii. 220-32 and Specimens
195-221. Of J: OEM 58-71 and Specimens 194-220. Of D: Zupitza, J.,
Anglia i. 6-32, part in Hickes i. 222. Of M: Paues, A. C., Anglia xxx.
227-37 (I read l. 29, hire; 63 þon; 65 na{m}more; 71 ouersicþ; 84
þurȝsicþ; 105 diaþe; 147 þar pine; 152 ysicþ; 191 ofspreng; 223 hi
neure; 236 Mot; 268 wulle; 314 hī = hi{m}; 333 ḅyseo = yseo).
A critical edition based on all the MSS. then known was issued by H.
Lewin, Halle, 1881. He adopted Zupitza’s filiation of the MSS. as
expressed in the following table:
+------------- L
+--- X ---+
| | +--- E
+--- Y ---+ +--- W ---+
| | +--- e
| |
U ---+ +----------------------- J
|
| +----------------------- T
+--- Z ---+
+----------------------- D
Miss Paues thinks that M is descended from V co-equal with U, thus
displacing the latter from its position of original: to me it seems to
belong to the Z group, and to be most nearly related to D.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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