6 - Word usage in the Royal Psalter, the Rule and the Aldhelm glosses

Summary

For various reasons a comparison of word usage between the three texts, the Rule, the Psalter and the Aldhelm glosses, for which a common origin may be suspected, is hampered by serious difficulties. We have noted (above, pp. 133–7) that the two glosses do not lend themselves easily to such a comparison. Thus an evaluation of the lexical evidence which they present is fraught with problems resulting from the different character (in terms of style and register) of the glossed texts, the psalter and the prose De uirginitate. Similar problems arise from the considerable difference in the method of glossing which exists between a continuous interlinear version (where every Latin word is provided with an English interpretamentum, usually no more than a single word), and a text which, although encrusted with thousands of glosses, offers no full interlinear version and where instead very frequently a lemma bears several Old English and Latin glosses which may or may not have originated at various stages in the transmissional history.

Such difficulties are aggravated if we attempt to evaluate the lexical evidence offered by an interlinear gloss and a prose work with a view to establishing a common origin in the same circle for the texts in question.