Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:10:33.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hidden glosses in manuscripts of Old English poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Alfred Bammesberger
Alfred Bammesberger
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of Eichstätt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The editorial history of Old English poetry has known two extremes in its attitude to the transmitted manuscript readings. Whereas Franciscus Junius in his Caedmonis Monachi Paraphrasis Poetic a Genesios ac Praecipuarum Sacrae Paginae Historiarum, abhinc annos M.LXX. Anglo-Saxonice Conscripta & nunc Primum Edita (Amsterdam, 1655) aimed essentially at reflecting the readings of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11, and was by and large successful in transcribing what the manuscript offered, by the middle of the nineteenth century at the latest an entirely different approach had become predominant. By then it had become clear that our manuscripts are by no means authors' originals; in the course of transmission numerous errors have crept into them. Since it was undeniable that in the copying process errors had occurred it was considered imperative to try to restore the original versions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 13 , December 1984 , pp. 43 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Since this paper is concerned specifically with textual criticism, it has not been deemed necessary to deal in any detail with the numerous suggestions concerning the literary interpretation of the passages discussed.

2 The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, George Philip, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 1 (New York, 1931), 48.Google Scholar The manuscript reads metod in 1549a.

3 Die ältere Genesis mil Einleitung, Anmerkungen, Glossar undder lateinischen Quelle, ed. Holthausen, Ferdinand (Heidelberg, 1914), p. 35.Google Scholar

4 The Cædmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry, Junius XI in the Bodleian Library, ed. Gollancz, Israel (Oxford, 1927), p. lxiii.Google Scholar

5 fere is usually taken as belonging to fær, ‘ship’. This is probably correct, although one could see a form of fēr, ‘danger’, in fere (‘he had come out of the danger’).

6 ‘wærfasst metod’ could hardly refer to Noah and so it seems unavoidable to emend metod to metod[e]. Gollancz, (The Cadmon Manuscript, p. lxiv)Google Scholar proposed metod [es].

7 ‘wætra lafe’ probably refers to the ark and is to be seen in parallel to fere (1544a; see above, n. 5).

8 The funius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, p. 48.Google Scholar

9 Although the provenance of the four names is not germane to this paper, a few notes may perhaps be added. The names of Noah's wife and his daughters-in-law are not found in the Old Testament. The four names as they occur in Junius 11 derive from Irish sources. They are found in the Liber de Numeris, which has been dealt with in an important dissertation by McNally, R. E., SJ, ‘Der irische Liber de Numeris. Eine Quellenanalyse des pseudo-isidorischen Liber de Numeris’ (Phil. Diss., Munich, 1957); see pp. 127–8.Google Scholar For a further brief discussion of these names, see McNally, R. E., ‘The Imagination and Early Irish Biblical Exegesis’, Annuale Mediaevale 10 (1969), 5–27.Google Scholar I owe these references to Dr Michael Lapidge, who, in a letter of 18 September 1983, also noted that the mention of these four names proves that ‘the Liber de Numeris was known in Anglo-Saxon England by the time Junius 11 was copied, perhaps earlier’.

10 Genesis A: a New Edition, ed. Doane, A. N. (Madison, Wis., 1978), p. 153,Google Scholar allows and heora feower wif to stand as one half-line, to which Doane supplies a second half-line of his own. He considers the four names, together with the introductory nemde waron, as a kind of note. He prints the passage in question as follows:

1545 mid his eaforum þrim, yrfes hyrde,

1546 and heora feower wif* [siððan fæle gestod]

1549 wærfæst metod wætra lafe.

The asterisk refers to ‘nemde wæron percoba, olla, olliua, olliuani’ printed at the bottom of the page. But it seems extremely hard to defend the insertion of the half-line 1546b. Doane offers the following translation: ‘Then the wise son of Lamech came from the ship after the flood with his three sons, the guardian of the heritage, together with their four wives [after] the steadfast Lord [had remained faithful] to the survivor of the waters’ (p. 276).

11 The type of gloss envisaged here is commonplace in medieval manuscript transmission. As Alain Renoir pointedly remarked in the discussion following the oral delivery of my paper, we are essentially concerned with the problem of the footnote: medieval scribes had no space at the bottom of a page for adding notes. Hidden glosses are fairly easy to detect in poetic texts with a strict metrical scheme. It may be permitted to add one out-of-the-way example here. In Yasna 30, one of the hymns in Gathic Avestan attributed to Zarathustra, we find a general pattern of a verse line consisting of two hemistichs, the first of which contains seven syllables and the second eight or nine. The last line of verse 7 is transmitted as follows:

aēšąm tōi ā aŋhaṯ yaṯdēnēiš paouruyō, the second hemistich seeming to consist of eleven syllables. Kuiper, F. B. J. (‘On Yasna 30.7c’, DrJ. M. Unvala Memorial Volume (Bombay, 1964), pp. 80–8)Google Scholar considers aya$$$hā a gloss which has intruded into the text. Upon removal of that gloss the second hemistich has the regular eight syllables.

12 The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, p. 36.Google Scholar

13 Die ältere Genesis, ed. Holthausen, p. 19.Google Scholar

14 The Vercelli Book, ed. Krapp, George Philip, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2 (New York, 1932), 61.Google Scholar

15 Ibid. p. 130.

16 On engel dryhtnes, see Pickford, T. E., ‘Another Look at the engel dryhtnes in The Dream of the Rood’, NM 77 (1976), 565–8.Google Scholar

17 Sievets, E. (‘Zur Rhythmik des germanischen Alliterationsverses, III. Der angelsächsische Schwellvers’, BGDSL 12 (1887), 454–82, at 478)Google Scholar suggested that ealle should be removed from the manuscript reading.

18 Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Klaeber, Fr., 3rd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1950), p. 13.Google Scholar

19 Widsith, ed. Malone, Kemp (Copenhagen, 1962), p. 40.Google Scholar

20 Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, p. 3.Google Scholar

21 For a full account of previous discussions of this passage, see Eliason, Norman E., ‘Healfdene's Daughter’, Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, ed. Nicholson, Lewis E. and Frese, Dolores Warwick (Notre Dame, Ind., and London, 1975). PP. 3–13.Google Scholar

22 It may be suggested that 7, ‘and’, is to be inserted at the beginning of line 63a. The list of Healfdene's children then consists of ‘Heorogar and Hrothgar and good Halga and Heatho-Scilfing's spouse’.

23 It seems that names of female persons were rarely used in heroic poetry.

24 I have suggested this reading of Beowulf 59–63, in my Eichstätt inaugural lecture, Ein Neuansatz in der Textkritik der altenglischen Dichtung, Eichstätter Hochschulreden 28 (Munich, 1981), 8–9.Google Scholar