Old English prose before and during the reign of Alfred

Janet M. Bately

doi:10.1017/S026367510000404X

Old English prose before and during the reign of Alfred

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008

Janet M. Bately

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Janet M. Bately: Affiliation:
King's College, London

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Old English poetry had its origins in the pagan continental past of the Anglo-Saxons. The development of an Old English literary prose is generally supposed to have taken place many centuries later in Christian England. According to a recent work by Michael Alexander, for instance.

Type: Research Article
Information: Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 17 , December 1988 , pp. 93 - 138

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S026367510000404X [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

¹ Alexander, M., Old English Literature (London, 1983), p. 132.CrossRef Google Scholar

² Ibid., p. 153. There is in fact no evidence at all to support the theory that the Cynewulf and Cyneheard annal is a faithful representation of prose from the period ‘before Alfred’, rather than a slightly clumsy paraphrase of a ‘lay’ (transmitted either orally or in written form), which a late-ninth-century chronicler interpolated in a series of annals dealing with the second half of the eighth century. See Wrenn, C. L., A Study of Old English Literature (London, 1967), pp. 53 and 202–5, andGoogle ScholarBately, J., ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 60 B.C. to A.D. 890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, PBA 64 (1980 for 1978), 93–129; see further, below, n. 215.Google Scholar

³ Alexander, Old English Literature, p. 150. For a warning against taking literally claims made in the prefatory letter to the Pastoral Care concerning the lack of literacy in England, see, e.g., Morrish, J., ‘King Alfred's Letter as a Source on Learning in England in the Ninth Century’, Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Szarmach, P. E. (Albany, NY, 1986), pp. 87–107; see alsoGoogle ScholarWormald, C. P., ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours’, TRHS 5th ser. 27 (1977), 95–114.Google Scholar

⁴ Wrenn, A Study, ch. 12; esp. p. 205. Cf ‘Alfred's purposes in starting up the process which eventually came to be known as English literature were, in the proper sense of the word, political, and practical rather than artistic’ (Alexander, Old English Literature, p. 153).

⁵ The Life of St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, R. (Amsterdam, 1953), p. 41.Google Scholar

⁶ Greenfield, S. B. and Calder, D. G., A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, 1986), pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid. pp. 63 and 38; see also ‘There were, of course, translations into English before Alfred's time’, Ibid. p.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ The first version of this paper, entitled ‘On the Development of Vernacular Written Prose in the Early Old English Period’, was given at the ISAS conference of 1985 and was dedicated to the memory of Professor Rowland Collins, ‘who contributed in so many ways to our understanding and our appreciation of a much neglected and undervalued corpus of early literature’.

¹⁰ E.g., Stockholm Kungliga Biblioteket. A. 135 (the Codex Aureus), dated ‘s. ix med.’ by Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 385;, and ptdGoogle ScholarThe Oldest English Texts, ed. Sweet, H., EETS os 83 (1885), 174–5; also London, British Library, Cotton Augustus 11. 19 (P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), no. 1200), and BL Stowe Charter 8 (Sawyer no. 1500). I exclude runic inscriptions and non-continuous glosses from the corpus.Google Scholar

¹¹ BL Add. 23211, IV (Ker, Catalogue, no. 127 (‘s. ix ex.’)). Although this text is generally described as a regnal list, it is written in continuous prose. The fact that it ends with King Alfred appears to indicate a date of composition (though not necessarily of copying) before 900. For the most recent edition, see Dumville, D., ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, Anglia 104 (1986), 1–32.CrossRef Google Scholar

¹² BL Cotton Vespasian A. i and The Oldest English Texts, ed. Sweet, pp. 183–420; Ker, Catalogue, no. 203, dates the hand of the Vespasian Psalter gloss as ‘probably of s. ix med.’ However, cf. K. Sisam, ‘Canterbury, Lichfield, and the Vespasian Psalter’, RES ns 7 (1956), 1–10 and 113–31, at 120 and 128, where a possible link with Plegmund and the late ninth century is suggested, but a tenth-century date for the gloss is not ruled out.

¹³ Cambridge, University Library, Ll. 1. 10, ptd The Oldest English Texts, ed. Sweet, p. 174; see Ker, Catalogue, no. 27, art, a, ‘s. ix–x’.

¹⁴ See BL Add. 23211, fol. 2, and above, n. 11. Since the Martyrology scribe seems also to have written the text of the West Saxon regnal list ending with Alfred in the same manuscript, he must have been working after 871. For another early fragmentary copy, see BL Add. 40165 A, fols 6–7, dated ‘s. ix/x’ by Ker, Catalogue, no. 132. For the Mercian characteristics of the Martyrology text of Add. 23211 and its West Saxon veneer, see Sisam, C., ‘An Early Fragment of the Old English Martyrology’, RES ns 4 (1953), 209–20, and for the language of the Martyrology as a whole, seeGoogle ScholarDas altenglische Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor, G., Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, Neue Forschung 88 (Munich, 1981), an important edition which supersedes An Old English Martyrology, ed. G. Herzfeld, EETS os 116 (1900).Google Scholar

¹⁵ The two oldest surviving manuscripts of this work date from the time of ‘publication’. These are Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 20, and the badly fire-damaged BL Cotton Tiberius B. xi+Kassel, Landesbibliothek, Anhang 19, both dated 890–7 by Ker, Catalogue, nos. 324 and 19;. See further, Sisam, K., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953, repr. 1967), pp. 140–7, andGoogle ScholarKing Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, H., EETS os 45 and 50 (Oxford, 1871), hereafter referred to as Pastoral Care. For the Latin text, see Liber regulae pastoralis, PL 77 (Paris, 1862), 13–128, hereafter referred to as Cura pastoralis.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes, in progress: vol, 3, MS A, ed. J.M. Bately (Cambridge, 1986), and vol. 4, MS B, ed. S. Taylor (Cambridge, 1983).

¹⁷ See Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904, repr. with an article by D. Whitelock, Oxford, 1959) andGoogle ScholarAlfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and other Contemporary Sources, ed. and trans, Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M. (Harmondsworth, 1983). For the dating of the first hand of MS A (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 173) to ‘s. ix/x’, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, pp. xxi–xxv. A late-ninth-century date can thus be established for the Pastoral Care and Chronicle and, even allowing for a margin of error in dating by handwriting, a similar date appears likely for the Martyrology; see further, below, p. 103, and K. Sisam, ‘Canterbury, Lichfield, and the Vespasian Psalter’, pp. 115–14.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Early texs which have not survived and which were arguably in prose include the translations of parts of the Gospel of St John and Isidore, De natura rerum by the Northumbrian scholar, Bede (see Venerabilis Baedae Opera historica, ed. Plummer, C. (Oxford, 1896, repr. 1975), pp. lxxv–lxxvi and clxii). The Council of Clofesho (746/7) allowed translations not only of the Creed and Lord's Prayer, but also of the offices of Mass and Baptism; see Wormald, ‘Literacy’, pp. 103–4. Other lost works that may have been partly or wholly in vernacular prose are the laws of Offa and Mercia, King Alfred's handbook and (perhaps) a version of Hrabanus Maurus; see D. Whitelock, Alfred the Great (forthcoming).Google Scholar

¹⁹ E.g., Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J. (Cambridge, 1939), nos. VII, XI, XII and XIV, and Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. F. E. Harmer (Cambridge, 1914), nos. VIII and XI–XVII.Google Scholar

²⁰ The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. Attenborough, F.L. (Cambridge, 1922).Google Scholar

²¹ E.g., Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, nos. I and II; see Ibid. pp. 259–60, where it is suggested (not implausibly) that these translations could have been made in the time of Werferth.

²² Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969) 11.5. This text is hereafter referred to as Historia ecclesiastica.Google Scholar

²³ See, e.g., Vollrath, H., ‘Gesetzgebung und Schriftlichkeit. Das Beispiel der Angelsächsischen Gesetze’, Historisches Jahrbuch 99 (1979), 28–54, and Wormald, ‘Literacy’, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

²⁴ English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D. (2nd edn, London, 1979), p. 358.Google Scholar

²⁵ King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. Sedgefield, W.J. (Oxford, 1899), hereafter referred to as Alfred's Boethius. For the Latin text, seeGoogle ScholarAnicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio, ed. Bieler, L., CCSL 94 (Turnholt, 1957), hereafter referred to as De consolatione.Google Scholar

²⁶ King Alfred's Version of St Augustine's ‘Soliloquies’, ed. Carnicelli, T. A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), hereafter referred to as Alfred's Soliloquies. The attribution to Alfred in this text could be a later scribal addition;Google Scholar see, however, idem, pp. 38–40, and Bately, J. M., ‘King Alfred and the Translation of the Old English Orosius’, Anglia 88 (1970), 433–60.Google Scholar

²⁷ Die Gesetze der Ags. I Text und Übersetzung, ed. Liebermann, F. (Halle, 1903), 16–88. For ‘Alfredian’ vocabulary in this text, see Bately, ‘King Alfred and the Translation of the Old English Orosius’, pp. 452–3. I exclude the body of the laws from this part of the discussion.Google Scholar

²⁸ Bischof Wærferths von Worcester Übersetung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. Hecht, H. (Leipzig, 1900–7, repr. Darmstadt, 1965), hereafter referred to as Dialogues. For the Latin text, see Gregoire le Grand, Dialogues, ed. A. de Vogüié, with translation byGoogle ScholarAntin, P., Sources Chrétiennes, 260 and 265 (Paris, 1979 and 1980), hereafter referred to as Dialogi.Google Scholar

²⁹ Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, ch. 77.

³⁰ Liber Psalmorum. The West-Saxon Psalms, ed. Bright, J.W. and Ramsey, R.L. (Boston and London, 1907). Alfred was using a version of the Roman psalter.Google Scholar

³¹ The Old English Orosius, ed. Bately, J., EETS, ss 6 (Oxford, 1980), hereafter referred to as Old English Orosius. For the Latin text, seeGoogle ScholarPauli Orosii Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII, ed. Zangemeister, C., CSEL 5 (Vienna, 1882), hereafter referred to as Historiarum libri septem.William of Malmesbury's attribution of this work to King Alfred has now been discredited; seeGoogle ScholarRaith, J., Untersuchungen zum englischen Aspekt, I. Grundsätzliches Altenglisch (Munich, 1951), pp. 54–61;Google ScholarLiggins, E.M., ‘The Authorship of the Old English Orosius’, Anglia 88 (1970), 289–322; and Bately, ‘King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius’, pp. 433–60. Although Alexander (Old English Literature, pp. 144–5) claims that ‘even sceptics … credit [Alfred] with the addition of a few pages on northern geography to the text of Orosius’, I for one have been strenously denying this in print since 1970.Google Scholar

³² Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi De gestis regum anglorum libri quinque, ed. Stubbs, W., RS (London, 1887–9)1, 132.Google ScholarFrantzen, A.J., King Alfred (Boston, 1986), p. 91, describes Alfred's authorship as ‘established beyond reasonable doubt’. For nineteenth-and twentieth-century attributions of the translation to Alfred and for an assessment of the evidence, seeGoogle ScholarBately, J.M., ‘Lexical Evidence for the Authorship of the Prose Psalms in the Paris Psalter’, ASE 10 (1982), 69–95.Google Scholar

³³ See Old English Orosius, pp. lxxxvi–xciii, and J.M. Bately, ‘Those Books that are Most Necessary for All Men to Know: the Classics and Ninth Century England, a Reappraisal’, The Classics in the Middle Ages, ed. A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (forthcoming).

³⁴ See Shippey, T. A., ‘A Missing Army: some Doubts about the Alfredian Chronicle’, In Geardagum 4 (1982), 41–55;Google ScholarWaterhouse, R., ‘The ‘Hæsten Episode in 894 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, SN 46 (1974), 136–41; andGoogle ScholarBately, J., ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Once More’, Leeds Stud, in Eng. ns 16 (1985), 7–36.Google Scholar

³⁵ The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, T., EETS os 95, 96, 110 and 111 (Oxford, 1890–8, repr. 1959), hereafter referred to as Old English Bede.Google Scholar

³⁶ Æfric‘ Catholic Homilies: the Second Series, ed. Godden, M., EETS ss 5 (Oxford, 1979), 72, and De gestis regum, ed. Stubbs 1, 132. The Latin couplet in MS Ca of the Bede, attributing the work to King Alfred, is in a hand of the sixteenth century.Google Scholar

³⁷ Kuhn, S. M. ‘Synonyms in the Old English Bede’, JEGP 46 (1947), 168–76, following a suggestion byGoogle ScholarSchipper, J., Die Geschichte und der gegenwärtige Stand der Forschung über König Alfreds Übersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte (Vienna, 1898), p. 8;Google Scholar also Kuhn, ,‘The Authorship of the OE Bede Revisited;, NM 73 (1972), 172–80.Google Scholar

³⁸ ‘His hand is not obvious in the West Saxon version of Bede’, but he had it translated (Old English Literature, pp. 144–5).

³⁹ See Old English Bede, Introduction; also Liggins, ‘The Authorship’, and G. G. Waite, ‘The Vocabulary of the Old English Version of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica’ (unpbl. Ph.D.dissertation, Toronto Univ., 1984). Did Ælfric read this work in a late manuscript with its most prominent Anglian features removed, or did he simply not associate with a specific geographical area what we today take to be distinctive Anglian features?

⁴⁰ BL Cotton Domitian ix, fol. 11; see Ker, Catalogue, no. 151, art. 1. A second early manuscript is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10; see Ker, Catalogue, no. 351 (‘s. x¹’).

⁴¹ For the terms ‘Anglian’ and ‘Mercian’, see, e.g., Campbell, A., Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959, repr, 1974), §§6–8 and 19. A West Saxon text controversially attributed to the ninth century, this time on linguistic grounds, is the translation of the gospels, which Grünberg suggests was made in the ninth century by a West Saxon using a Mercian gloss. SeeGoogle ScholarThe West Saxon Gospels: a Study of the Gospel of St Matthew with Text of the Four Gospels, ed. Grünberg, M. (Amsterdam, 1967). However, Grünberg's arguments have not found acceptance and will not be considered here.Google Scholar

⁴² Förster, M., ‘A New Version of the Apocalypse of Thomas in Old English’, Anglia 73 (1955), 6–36; see alsoCrossRef Google ScholarWenisch, F., Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut in den nordhumbrischen Interlinearglossierungen des Lukasevangeliums (Heidelberg, 1979), p. 72, where it is dated ‘spätestens 1.H. des 9. Jhs.’Google Scholar

⁴³ Three Old English Prose Texts in MS Cotton Vitellius Axv, ed. Rypins, S., EETS os 161 (Oxford, 1924, repr. 1971), 1–50. Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 19, dates this text ‘2.H. des 9. Jhs’. For Sisam (Studies, p 85), ‘a certain uncouthness in the translation… points to an early date’, insufficiency in Latin becoming less likely as the tenth century advances, whileGoogle Scholar (Ibid. p. 88) ‘the spirit of the translation, like its style, accords well with the period of King Alfred's wars’.

⁴⁴ Vleeskruyer puts the translation ‘at some time between, roughly, 850 and 900’, but is inclined to favour the earlier date and to suggest that composition was not later than the third quarter of the ninth century (St Chad, p. 70); Schabram, H., Superbia: Studien: zum altenglischen Wortschatz, Teil 1: Die dialektale und zeitliche Verbreitung des Wortguts (Munich, 1965), p. 35, includes this work with the Martyrology and Epistola Alexandri among Voralfredische Denkmäler; and Greenfield and Calder, A New Critical History, p. 62, give the date of composition as c. 850.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Das angelsächsische Prosa-Leben des hl. Guthlac, ed. Gonser, P. (Heidelberg, 1909, repr. Amsterdam, 1966). Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 42, dates the work ‘spätestens 1.H. des 10. Jhs.’, andGoogle ScholarHallander, L.-G., Old English Verbs in ‘-sian’, a Semantic and Derivational Study, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Stud. in Eng. 15 (Stockholm, 1966), 2.6.5, ninth-century. For J. Crawford (now J. Roberts), ‘although it was possible that the original translation of the Vita sancti Guthlaci was made within the ninth century, … little if any specific evidence can be advanced to prove that it was made before the tenth century’ (‘Guthlac: an edition of the Prose Life’ (unpubl. Ph.D dissertation, Oxford Univ., 1967), p. 230). See further, below, n. 122.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Three Old English Prose Texts, ed. Rypins, pp. 51–67; also ‘Wonders of the East: a Synoptic Edition of the Letter of Pharasmanes and the Old English and Old Picard Translations’, ed. A. Knock (unpubl. Ph.D dissertation, London Univ., 1982), with an important discussion of texts and source materials. Vleeskruyer (St Chad, p. 50, n. 1) assigns this text to the ninth century; see also Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 79.

⁴⁷ Three Old English Prose Texts, ed. Rypins, pp. 68–76. Sisam (Studies, pp. 68–9 and 62) argues that the Anglo-Saxon version, which is ‘in good average Late West Saxon’, was ‘probably made about or soon after the middle of the tenth century’. However, Vleeskruyer (St Chad, p. 56) believes that ‘archaic traits’ might point to a considerably earlier period, while for Wenisch (who, following Vleeskruyer and Schabram, sees the text as ‘Ws. Kopie eines merz. Originals’), the original is ‘Wahrscheinlich 10., möglicherweise auch 9. Jh.’ (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 72).

⁴⁸ Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine: Illustrated Specially from the Semi-Pagan Text Lacnunga, ed. Grattan, J.H.G. and Singer, C. (London, 1952), pp. 96—227. See Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, pp. 54–5 (‘Ws. Kopie eines angl. wahrscheinlich merz. Originals. 9 Jh.’).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Leechdoms, Wordcunning, and Star-Craft of Early England, ed. Cockayne, O. (London, 1864–6) 11, andGoogle ScholarLeonhardi, G., Kleinere angelsächsische Denkmäler 1 (Hamburg, 1905). Randolph QuirkGoogle Scholar (Bald's Leechbook, ed. Wright, C. E., EEMF 5 (Copenhagen, 1955), 32) sees certain spellings in the Leechbook as ‘possibly suggesting an archetype of perhaps fifty years earlier’, i.e. c. 900. However, Wenisch (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 54) describes it as ‘Ws. Kopien eines angl., vermutlich merz. Originals … Wahrscheinlich vor 900’. A. L. Meaney (‘Variant Versions of Old English Medical Remedies and the Compilation of Bald's Leechbook’, ASE 13 (1984), 235–68, at 251) suggests that the compiler of the ‘original version’ of Bald's Lechbook ‘was arguably working in Winchester in or just before King Alfred's time’.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, ed. de Vriend, H.J., EETS os 286 (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

⁵¹ Schauman, B. and Cameron, A., ‘A Newly-Found Leaf of Old English from Louvain’, Anglia 95 (1977). 289–312. For medical material in Nowell's transcript of BL Cotton Otho B. xi, possibly also ultimately derived from a ninth-century compilation, seeGoogle ScholarTorkar, R., ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten in Otho B. xi und Royal 52. D. xvii’, Anglia 94 (1976), 319–38. For the dates assigned to these texts, see below, nn. 62–4.Google Scholar

⁵² The Old English Herbarium, ed. De Vriend, pp. 234–75.

⁵³ Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection 71; Ker, Catalogue, no. 382, ‘s. x/xi’. See The Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, R., EETS os 58, 63 and 73 (Oxford, 1874–80, repr. As one volume, 1967). Wenisch (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 30) dates the collection between 875 and 950; Vleeskruyer puts it before 900 (see below, n. 123).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Die Vercelli-Homilien. I–VIII. Homilie, ed. Förster, M. (Hamburg, 1932, repr. Darmstadt, 1964) andGoogle ScholarVercelli Homilies IX–XXIII, ed. Szarmach, P. E. (Toronto, 1981). Wenisch (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, pp. 72–8), reporting Schabram's dating of between 875 and 925 for the bulk of these, isolates Vercelli II–VI, X, XIII–XVI, XVIII and XXI as first-half-tenth-century at the latest. Szarmach, (‘The Earlier Homily: De Parasceve’, Studies, ed. Szarmach, p. 382), quotesGoogle ScholarScragg, D.G., The language of the Vercelli Homilies (unpubl. Ph.D dissertation, Manchester Univ., 1970), pp. 378–9, as suggesting that the composition of Vercelli I may be as early as the ninth century. See, now, however,Google ScholarScragg, D.G., ‘The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric’, ASE 8 (1979), 225–77, at 223: ‘Although there have been attempts to show that individual pieces were composed in the ninth century, we still have no sure means of distinguishing between homilies of the tenth century and any that are earlier.’ For a Mercian origin for a number of the Vercelli Homilies, seeGoogle ScholarScragg, D. G., ‘The Compilation of the Vercelli Book’, ASE 2 (1973), 189–207.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Wulfstan, Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ibre Echtheit I Text und Varianten, ed. Napier, A. S. (Berlin, 1883), andGoogle ScholarAngelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, B. (Kassell, 1889, repr. Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 194–207; see also Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, pp. 45 and 49. Although Vleeskruyer (St Chad, pp. 59–60 and n. 6) describes Vita Malchi as displaying ‘all the characteristics of the ninth-century Mercian translations’, Wenisch, following Sisam, Studies, pp. 210–11, suggests that it was probably not composed before the second half of the tenth century.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Greenfield and Calder (A New Critical History, p. 117) describe the Leechbook as ‘a plain but elegant remnant of Anglo-Saxon culture’.

⁵⁷ See above, nn. 48–9, and below, nn. 61–2 and 64. For the complicated relationships between the various medical texts and the possible derivation of a number of them from a single large compilation, see Meaney, ‘Variant Versions’.

⁵⁸ The Herbarium, pp. xliii and xlii. De Vriend concludes that both these texts were ‘translated into OE during an early period, probably the eighth century’, that is, ‘in the period of Northumbrian cultural ascendancy … The extant text of OEH is either directly descended from [the] early version … or it is a new translation direct from Latin, which was subsequently supplemented by a pre-existing Anglian-coloured MdQ. The extant text of MdQ is closely connected with the early Anglian version.’

⁵⁹ Ibid. p. lxxxii.

⁶⁰ Private communication. Grierson goes on to suggest that ‘there is one feature which might suggest an early date – no mancus (ninth century onwards) and no ora or mark (tenth/eleventh century)’, but he says that this could be because these were thought of as being specific to precious metals.

⁶¹ But not a wholly implausible one. For what appears to be ‘an imperfectly achieved translation into Old High German’ of an Old English medical recipe, preserved in an eighth-century continental manuscript, see Basle, Universitätsbibliothek, F. III. 15^a, fol. 17, and Ker, Catalogue. App. 3.

⁶² I follow here the dating of Ker, N.R. (‘A Supplement to Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon’, ASE 5 (1976), 128) rather than that of Schauman, who believes that the leaf ‘probably predates the manuscripts associated with the reign of King Alfred’ and suggests a date of. 850, and Cameron, who puts it between 850 and 900 (‘A Newly-Found Leaf’, esp. pp. 290, 301, 302 and 312). I do not find any of Schauman's palaeographical arguments for her early date convincing, while, as Cameron himself observesGoogle Scholar (Ibid. p.312), many features of the orthography are shared with manuscripts of not only the late ninth but also the early tenth century.

⁶³ See esp. Nowell transcript eburfean for eaforfearn, and Leechbook earhan for earfan and innel/begnid for innelfe gnid; see also Torkar, ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 325–6, and above, n. 51. The fact that the Leechbook contains prescriptions allegedly sent to King Alfred by Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, c. 879–907, does not necessarily require us to suppose a close connection between the work and the prose of Alfred's reign, though it obviously gives a terminus ante quem non of c. 880 for one part of the Leechbook. We may compare the reference to an interview between Alfred and Ohthere in the Old English Orosius; see my edition, esp. pp. 194–5, and below, n. 143.

⁶⁴ See, e.g., St Chad, ed. Vleekruyer, p. 33, n. 2, and Meaney (‘Variant Versions’, pp. 247 and 251), following Torkar, ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 331–8, where it is suggested that the remedies transcribed from BL Cotton Otho B. xi are ultimately derived from a text which belongs ‘at latest to the very beginning of Alfred's reign’, and (more tentatively) that the scribe of Otho B. xi was copying from the last few surviving sheets of the ‘massive compilation’ of which Bald's Leechbook forms a part.

⁶⁵ But not necessarily pre-890. The spellings cited by Schauman and Cameron (‘A Newly-found Leaf; pp. 305–6) and Torkar (‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 325–7) are certainly typical of very early texts; however, b for f and uu or u (post-consonantal) for w occur occasionally in the Pastoral Care, in word such as næbre, febranne, diobul and cuom; the spelling e is frequent in hand 1 of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A and still found on three occasions in the work of hands 2c 2d and 3 (annal for 937); a Worcester charter of 904 (Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. xviii) has ae and uu, and a charter of 969 (Ibid. no. XLVI) has twuam, while the late-tenth-century Durham Ritual and Lindisfarne Gospels glosses have spellings such as diobul and diubol alongside diofles, diowlas etc, esuica, uutedlice, cuedo, drygi and giseni. Doubling of vowels is sporadic throughout Old English. With spellings such as eolectran cf. the Durham Ritual gloss elechtre and Latin electrum. As for walcalo, is this an error for wælscalo?

⁶⁶ Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, ch. 77. For the dating of the prefatory letter, see above, n. 15. Alfred's preface to the Dialogues implies that this translation was intended primarily for his own private use, not commissioned as part of a grand plan for the revival of learning. However, the very existence of the preface shows that he subsequently circulated copies of it.

⁶⁷ Since Asser implies that the Mercian helpers came before Asser (885?) and Grimbald (886?), Keynes and Lapidge (Alfred the Great, p. 26) suggest that they most likely arrived in the early 880s. So Mercian translations inspired by King Alfred could date from a period before 885. For Werwulf as a possible collaborator with Werferth, see Whitelock, D., ‘The Prose of Alfred's Reign’, Continuations and Beginnings, Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Stanley, E. G. (London, 1966), pp. 67–8, and Alfred the Great, ed. Keynes and Lapidge, p. 293.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See, e.g., C. Sisam, ‘An Early Fragment’, pp. 209–20, and Cross, J. E., ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis: a Sermon for All Saints and its Use in Old English Prose’, Traditio 33 (1977), 101–35; also Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor. pp. 443–54.CrossRef Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See above, n. 14, and C. Sisam, ‘An Early Fragment’, p. 217. A date of composition shortly after 899 cannot, however, be ruled out; see K. Sisam, ‘Canterbury, Lichfield and the Vespasian Psalter’, pp. 113–14, for warnings about firm datings based on palaeographical evidence.

⁷⁰ Swanton, M. (Anglo-Saxon Prose (London, 1975;), p. xvii) is one of many to suggest that the Bede was the work of one or other of Alfred's four known Mercian helpers, Werferth, Plegmund, Athelstan and Werwulf Vleeskruyer (St Chad, pp. 61–2) tentatively names Plegmund, Æthelbald (sic) and Werwulf However, if the Dialogues adequately reflects Werferth's usage, he cannot also have been the author of the Bede, while Plegmund seems an unlikely candidate, given the reference to the monastery of St Peter and St Paul (i.e. St Augustine's, Canterbury) as the burial place of archbishops of Canterbury. See D. Whitelock, ‘The Old English Bede’, PBA 48 (1962), 58, 67 and 70.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Set Ibid. esp. pp. 61 and 77. Cf. Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 57–8, where the postulation of a date for the composition of the Bede earlier than Alfred's reign is said to be ‘dependent upon more positive proof of a Mercian tradition of vernacular writing in the ninth century’. Wenisch (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 47), following Schabram (Superhia, pp. 45–6), assigns the Bede to the second half of the ninth century or earlier.

⁷² See above, p. 98. For Ker's practice of dating at quarter-century intervals, see Catalogue, p. xx. Waite (‘The Vocabulary’, p. 57) is wrong in claiming that ‘we know for certain that the OE Bede does not postdate Alfred's reign’. Not only does the date of the manuscript not preclude a date of composition after 900, but, even if Alfred commissioned the Bede, it need not have been completed until after his death.

⁷³ St Chad, pp. 19–20 and 69. Vleeskruyer claims that the ‘singularly archaic quality’ of St Chad ‘suggests strongly that its archetype was composed before the educational reform of the later ninth century’ he dates the Bede ‘late ninth century’ (St Chad, p. 53).

⁷⁴ Ibid. p. 41.

⁷⁵ They are, for instance, generally adopted in the important word studies of Schabram and Wenisch. See, however, the review of Vleeskruyer's edition by Sisam, C., RES, ns 6 (1955), 302, where it is pointed out that ‘his arguments, both linguistic and paleographical, are not decisive’, and that ‘it may be doubted whether the words he cites, such as … preat and onseon would have seemed archaic or poetic to Mercians in the late ninth or early tenth century, or whether alliteration in prose is a mark of earliness’.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ St Chad, Introduction, passim.

⁷⁷ Ibid. p. 69.

⁷⁸ Ibid. p. 46, referring apparently to both prose and verse in this medium. Even if we accept that the existence of glossaries indicates the existence of a literary dialect – and I know of no good reason why this should be so – the origin of these is far from certain. See, e.g. Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, ed. Pheifer, J.D. (Oxford, 1974), p. lvii: ‘Bradley's suggestion that “the archetype of Epinal and Erfurt was compiled in the school of Aldhelm at Malmesbury … ” is an attractive possibility which is not at variance with the linguistic evidence.’Google Scholar

⁷⁹ St Chad, p. 40, n. 4. The ability to translate Latin documents does not necessarily imply the existence of a tradition of written prose; moreover, although Alfred's claim (Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, p. 5, lines 18–21) that translation had not been attempted by the scholars of the past may be exaggeration, it is made in a letter which must surely have been read and checked by some of his Mercian advisers. Alfred obviously finds it necessary to make a case for the desirability of translation, even if what he says may be ‘persuasive rather than factual’ (see Morrish, ‘King Alfred's Letter’, p. 90).

⁸⁰ St Chad, p. 42. Alfred's helpers were certainly scholars and they may well have constructed homilies out of a variety of Latin sources (as the author of the Martyrology seems to have done with hagiographical material); however, that does not necessarily mean that they were also already producers of written translations for circulation.

⁸¹ Ibid. Introduction, esp. sections III, IV and V. For a discussion of Vleeskruyer's claims concerning style, see below, pp. 132–8.

⁸² See, e.g.. The Parker Chronicle and Laws (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 173). A Facsimile, ed. Flower, R. and Smith, H. (London, 1941), 21V21, innan (annal for 914), and cf. St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, p. 69 and line 151, beside Ker, Catalogue, p. xxx, ‘old forms occur occasionally still in manuscripts of s. x.’.Google Scholar

⁸³ For the form weccenum, see, e.g., Campbell, Grammar, §i93c, and also Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 306, n. 192. In his comments on a cc-type a (St Chad, p. 69 and n. to line 127), Vleeskruyer is following Keller, W., Angelsächsische Palaeographie, Palaestra 43 (Berlin, 1906), as also on p. 44, where he takes the letter forms g and t in the ninth-century manuscripts of the Pastoral Care to show unmistakable signs of Mercian influence; however, Keller's identification has not found general acceptance. For the cc-type a, see Ker, Catalogue, p. xxviii. Its last appearance in a dated manuscript known to Ker is in a charter of 969 from Worcester: ‘probably it survived as a genuine element of the script longer in the west and north … but its actual last appearance, except as a copyist's archaism … seems to be in an ill-written addition to the annual for 1001 in the Parker Chronicle’.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, pp. xxix–xxx and cxxx. We may compare the Hatton manuscript of the Pastoral Care, with þ hardly used at all by the main hand, the Worcester charter of 904 (see above, n. 64) with only two examples of þ, and the Omont fragment with ð only. For Vleeskruyer's comments on the distribution of the two letters, see St Chad, pp. 7 and 69–70.

⁸⁵ See, e.g., the Mercian charter of 969 (Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. XLVI), Ru¹(for which, see below, n. 94) elcur, deoful, degul etc.; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MSA, annal 914 pearruc.

⁸⁶ See A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, ed. Venezky, R.L., Healey, A. diPaolo et al. (Toronto, 1980).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ See Ibid., the entries for balga, micle etc. See further, Campbell, Grammar, §388, and also Amos, A.C., Linguistic Means of Determining the Dates of Old English Literary Texts (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 28.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See further, Ibid. pp. 125–8, and also Mitchell, B., Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985) 1, 566: ‘Neither a preference for nor the avoidance of the instrumental case provides sufficient grounds for dating a text.’CrossRef Google Scholar

⁸⁹ See Ibid., 1, 17, n. 7, and also St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, p. 68: ‘inflexional -u is most probably a peculiarity of ninth-century Mercian prose under Latin influence; but it is not an archaism in the sense apparently intended by Napier’. For the construction combining possessive and demonstrative, see Mitchell, Old English Syntax 1, 51–6, esp. 55: ‘It is hard to see in what sense [these patterns] can be “archaic”.’.

⁹⁰ St Chad, p. 56; see also Ibid. p. 45, n. 2: ‘That Mercian prose translations were also actively copied during the EWS. period is proved by the appearance of the characteristic EWS. diphthong ie.’ We have to be wary of generalizations based on the presence of Mercian spellings in early West Saxon texts and vice versa. Alfred himself acknowledges the help of Mercian scholars; Mercian-trained scribes could have been employed in West Saxon scriptoria, while the possibility of Mercian copies of West Saxon texts cannot be ruled out. Moreover, as C.L. Wrenn points out (‘Standard Old English’, TPS (1933), (73) ‘there are reasons for expecting considerable variety in the language of the Wessex of Alfred's time’, with little unifying force to be set against strong centrifugal tendencies. For the use of more than one scriptorium, see the metrical preface to the Pastoral Care (ed. Sweet, p. 9, lines 12–15), and Sisam, Studies, pp. 140–7. Typical West Saxon spellings were in use long before Alfred's reign: see, e.g., the Æthelwulf charter of 847 The Oldest English Texts, ed. Sweet, p. 433), with awielme, fordealf, wealdenes etc. besides ‘non-West Saxon’ spellings such as walles and Alhstan.

⁹¹ ‘A New Version’, p. 35: ‘it seems…safe to assume that the form of the text as we have it in the Exeter MS. has been copied from an Old West Saxon text of the first half of the ninth century–and that this Old West Saxon form had been transcribed from an Old Mercian form of the text. At least this would cover all the phonological data before us.’ See also Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 72. However, I wonder whether Förster's reference to the ninth century is not in fact an error in translation. The forms he notes (occasional ie spellings, 0 + nasal, primary and secondary io, and uncontracted verb forms) are all still to be found in tenth-century texts. Ker, Catalogue, no. 32, art. 12, describes the only surviving manuscript copy (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41) as ‘s. xi’

⁹² Sec further, Bately, J., ‘Linguistic Evidence as a Guide to the Authorship of Old English Verse: a Reappraisal with Special Reference to Beowulf, Learning and Literature in Anglo–Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 411–13; and see, e.g., the forms anliesnesse and hiered in King Eadred's will (c. 951–5; Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, no. XXI) and the Worcester charter of 969 (see above, n. 65).Google Scholar

⁹³ See St Chad, Introduction, passim. I find very revealing Vleeskruyer's comment, concerning the occurrence of words that he believes became obsolete during the later West Saxon period (Ibid. p. 68), ‘St Chad is most definitely not more modern than Orosius or the Pastoral Care.’.

⁹⁴ In addition to those already mentioned, texts with a terminus apud quern non of ‘s. x. med.’ provided by Ker's dating of the manuscripts in which they have been preserved include the prose Solomon and Saturn of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422, the collection of remedies that follows Bald's Leechbook in BL Royal 12. D. XVII, and a confessional prayer in BL Cotton Vespasian D. xx. Some glosses also survive in tenth–century manuscripts of ‘s. x¹’ and ‘s. x. med.’ The most important of these is the interlinear gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels (BL Cotton Nero D. iv; Ker, Catalogue, no. 165), usually dated to the period 950–70. Literary texts preserved in manuscripts of the second half of the tenth century or later for which an earlier date of composition has been conjectured include the Macarius Homily of the eleventh-century Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201 (Theodulfi Capitula in England, ed. Sauer, H. (Munich, 1978), pp. 411–16, and composed perhaps as early as the first half of the tenth century according to Sauer,Google ScholarIbid. p. 512). Texts from the period c. 950– 80 include the ‘Anglian’ Durham Ritual and Rushworth glosses. The Durham Ritual glosses, in Durham Cathedral Library, A. IV. 19 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 106), were probably written c. 970. The Rushworth glosses, in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. D. 2. 19 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 292, ‘s. x²’), fall into two groups. The first group (Ru¹) consists of glosses in a Mercian dialect to Matthew, Mark 1–11.15 and John XVIII.1–3; the second group (Ru²) consists of Northumbrian glosses to the remaining gospel texts. In view of the apparent dependence of Ru² on the Lindisfarne glosses, the possibility that others of the glosses are also copies of earlier texts cannot be ruled out. A translation of part of Genesis already existed when Ælfric translated the rest of the book; see The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, ed. S.J.Crawford, EETS os 160 (1922 for 1921, repr. 1969), 76, lines 4–6.

⁹⁵ St Chad, pp. 24–5, 49–50 and 61–2. Vleeskruyer (p. 62) is wrong in seeing the vocabulary of the early Middle English Katherine Group as ‘that of the LWS. homilies’, see Bately, J.M., ‘On Some Aspects of the Vocabulary of the West Midlands in the Early Middle Ages: the Language of the Katherine Group’, Medieval English Studies presented to George Kane, ed. Kennedy, D., Waldron, R. and Wittig, J. (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 55–77.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ See further, Bately, J., ‘Some Words for Time in Old English Literature’, Problems of Old English Lexicography, ed. Bammesberger, A. (Regensburg, 1985), pp. 47–64.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ For linguistic heterogeneity in early Old English, see above, n. 90; for Anglian words surviving into Middle English, see Bately, ‘Some Aspects’; for scribal ‘updating’ of lexical items, see, e.g., Amos, Linguistic Means, pp. 141–56; and for an example of such ‘updating’, see Yerkes, D., The Two Versions of Warferth's Translation of Gregory's Dialogues: an Old English Thesaurus (Toronto, 1979). Yerkes's lists of items of vocabulary removed from the version of the Dialogues in MS H include a number of the words discussed below; however, others remain unchanged.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ For gebedhus and preat, see St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, pp. 21–2 and 28. Vleeskruyer's information is sometimes inaccurate, with a number of words enjoying a wider currency than he supposed. See, e.g., bled, described as ‘apparently not found in WS.’ (Ibid. p. 26), but in fact used by Ælfric in the very collocation named by Vleeskruyer, ‘windes blæd’.

⁹⁹ See Gneuss, H., ‘The Origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold's School at Winchester’, ASE 1 (1972), 63–83.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Vleeskruyer describes carcernzs ‘obsolete in LWS’ (St Chad, p. 26). For its distribution in Old English texts, including Theodulfi Capitula, the so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum, commonly attributed to Wulfstan, and the Lindisfarne and Rushworth glosses, see Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, pp. 114–120, and the Microfiche Concordance. Other words in Vleeskruyer's list which are recorded in tenth-century laws include lar(e)dom (also in the Durham Ritual gloss), medmicel (also in Ru¹) and monung (also in Ru¹); for medmicel, see also Theodulfi Capitula, ed. p. Sauer, p. 251.

¹⁰¹ Herenes, described by Vleeskruyer variously as a ‘Mercian archaism’ and ‘an archaic formation’ (St Chad, pp. 55 and 58, n. 2), is found also in the late-tenth-century Northum-brian Durham Ritual and Lindisfarne glosses and both parts of the Rushworth glosses and is used, alongside hering, in early West Saxon texts.

¹⁰² Vleeskruyer (St Chad, p. 55) lists the word amongst ‘Mercian archaisms’; see, however, Bately, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 61, and Oxford English Dictionary streale, and cf. St Chad, p. 33, with its reference to the views of Jordan.

¹⁰³ I am deeply indebted to the authors of the Microfiche Concordance, whose work made this exhaustive study possible.

¹⁰⁴ See, e.g., the entries for byrgan, ymbsellan, dwolian and variants in the Microfiche Concordance.

¹⁰⁵ See, e.g., the entries for agangan, spyrian, getimbre, tocerran, þunorrad and variants in the Microfiche Concordance. For a rebuttal of the claim that tid is ‘more or less archaic’ in the sense of time' (St Chad, p. 33), see, e.g., Gretsch, M., Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in England und ihre altenglische Übersetzung (Munich, 1973), pp. 355–6, and also Theodulfi Capitula, ed. Sauer, pp. 261–3.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ E g., beotian, bold, forhwon, higian, hrinan, miþan, nænig, swæþ, þreat, stræl, wigbed, winnan (‘strive’), and (ge)eadmodian; see further, Bately, ‘Some Aspects’, pp. 59–64.

¹⁰⁷ Translating praeesse and found also in the Bede; seebelow, n. 116.

¹⁰⁸ Apart from St Chad, where it translates amabilis, leofwynde is recorded only in verse, Boethius and the mid-tenth-century glossaries of BL Cotton Cleopatra A. iii, which Joan Turville-Petre (unpublished monograph, lodged in the Anglo-Saxon Archive of King's College, London) has shown to incorporate much older glossary material; cf. the similarly formed but commonplace compound halwende. For amabilis the Bede has lufiendlic and leof, both words still in use in late West Saxon texts.

¹⁰⁹ Recorded from St Chad and Pastoral Care only. However, the word is not uncommon in Middle English; cf. modern English ‘slowly’.

¹¹⁰ Translating Latin potius, maxime. Forms of this word are found also in the Corpus and Epinal-Erfurt glossaries, in one manuscript of the Dialogues and in the Leechbook. The example in the Dialogues is at p. 277, line 25, MS O tilg 7 swyðor, for which the printed text (MS C) reads only swyþor. Other instances may have been similarly removed by later scribes.

¹¹¹ Translating Latin paupertas and recorded also in Dialogues, Bede, the Vespasian Psalter gloss and some related psalter glosses, with þearfness in the psalter gloss of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27 (apparently a copy of the Vespasian Psalter gloss) and the Benedictine Rule gloss of BL Cotton Tiberius A. iii; cf. the rendering wædl for paupertas in Epistola Alexandri. I exclude the form þenede, otherwise found only in the Vespasian Psalter, but occurring in the form geþenede in the later Mercian texts.

¹¹² Translating Latin catholicus and recorded also from the Bede, Dialogues, Boethius, the glossaries of BL Cotton Cleopatra A. iii and an anonymous life of St Mary of Egypt (Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., EETS os 94 and 114 (Oxford, 1890–1900) 11, 2–52); cf. the common form geleafful, beside ribtgelyfed and ryhtgelyfende.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Words found only in a combination of early and undatable texts include arful, gecignes, forþlutan (see also leat forþ), onlysan and ureþnes. However, the Durham Ritual has onlesend and a charter of Edward the Confessor uneaþnes, while the Lindisfarne Gospels have eþnisse. Cf. orleahtor, confined to a handful of texts whose date of composition is uncertain, including Beowulf.

¹¹⁴ St Chad, pp. 33 and 68.

¹¹⁵ For the dangers of dating texts according to the proportions of hapax legomena see Amos, The Linguistic Means, pp. 146–7. Similar caution needs to be exercised in drawing conclusions from the presence in a text of words of limited distribution. See, e.g., miþan, recorded from a combination of early and undatable texts only, but also found in early Middle English, and cf. the entries relating to the Bede and Ælfric in Waite's list of words in the Bede found otherwise only in one other Old English text or author (‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 264–7).

¹¹⁶ E.g., none of the Latin words amabilis, catholicus, paupertas, praeesse and segniter is used in the gospels, so that we have no knowledge of what their equivalents in the dialect of the authors of Ru¹ and the Lindisfarne glosses might have been. However, these have ðorfendlic and ðarfe for pauperculus and pauper, and geleaffull for fidelis, and use the suffix –wende in halwoende. Forewesan is recorded by Waite (‘The Vocabulary’, p. 265) as found only in the Bede and St Chad; however, the two elements are also recorded separately, as in Ælfric‘s Grammar, where prae-esse is translated ‘fore wesan’ and praesum as ‘fore eom’.

¹¹⁷ St Chad, p. 50, n. 1. Indeed Vleeskruyer himself seems to imply that the activity could have continued into the tenth century by referring to the possible hastening of the displacement of Mercian as the official language at Worcester by the cessation of Werferth's influence with his death in 915.

¹¹⁸ See St Chad, p. 5 5. For Sisam's opinion that St Christopher is a mid-tenth-century text, see above, no. 47.

¹¹⁹ For herenis, medmicel, stræl and tid, see above. Broga, gsfea and sigor are all used by Ælfric.

¹²⁰ The verbal prefix a is a very common one in Old English; see, however, Waite's comment (‘The Vocabulary’, p. 268), ‘It will be seen that many cOE verbs are found prefixed by ā- only or predominantly in Anglian and poetic texts.’ Abregan,‘terrify’, is otherwise recorded only from a handful of texts, including the Dialogues, Leechbook and Blickling Homilies; bregan is found in a wide range of texts including the works of Alfred, Ælfric and Wulfstan. We may compare the Lindisfarne glosses where terrere is renderd by afyrhtigan, forhtigan and gefyrhtigan and terror by fyrhtnesse.See also gebrosnodlic, found otherwise only in Blickling Homily x and Napier XLIX; cf. the entries brosnendlic, brosniendlic and brosnodlic in the Microfiche Concordance. Apart from a handful of hapax legomena and words of very rare occurrence, I have found no other items of special interest in the St Christopher.

¹²¹ I am tempted by the high proportion of hapax legomena and of words typical of the Bede and Dialogues to favour a ninth or early tenth century date for the Epistola Alexandri.Hapax legomena include anæglede (cOE nægled), fromnes, gryto, unretu and gimmisc. Words confined to Epistola Alexandri and texts known to have been composed before c. 950 include godsprecum (Be godgespræce), gelise (Be geles), fromscipe, fremsumlice and hreademus. However, the need for great caution in interpreting these forms can be illustrated from the words wreþian (in Old English apparently confined to verse and to ‘early’ texts – Bede, Cleopatra Glosses and Epistola Alexandri – but recorded also from Middle English and beyond) and pullian (Epistola Alexandri, beside apullian in Medicina de quadrupedibus); see also epistol (Bede, Pastoral Care, Orosius, Dialogues and Epistola Alexandri only, with the word replaced by arendgewrit in MS H of the Dialogues). In view of the significantly large number of Latin loan words in the Epistola Alexandri, and since epistol could have been borrowed or reborrowed at any time in Old English, this distribution need not be significant. Also a feature of Epistola Alexandri is a fondness for compounding of a type typical of poetry; see, e.g., byrnwiga, cynegierela, leodpeaw, hronfisc, oferhleoþrian (found otherwise only in poetry) and the hapax legomena stanhol, longscaft and godmægen.

¹²² J. Roberts, ‘The Old English Prose Translation of Felix's Vita Sancti Guthlaci’, Studies, ed.Szarmach, pp. 363–79, at 367. Dr Roberts concludes (Ibid. pp. 368–9) that ‘few indeed if any of the words cited are diagnostic of ninth-century dating. However, together they suggest that the original prose Guthlac was a non-West-Saxon translation made at a time not late in the tenth century’ For a detailed examination of the evidence for Anglian origin for the vocabulary of Guthlac, and the relationship of the Vita to Vercelli Homily XXIII, see J. Crawford (Roberts), ‘Guthlac’, cited above, n. 45.

¹²³ E.g., the list of ‘words often presented as evidence for the early composition of prose texts’ (Roberts, ‘The Old English Prose Translation’, p. 368) contains six still in use in both late Old English and Middle English (bearn, geara, nænig, rec, stræl and tid in the sense ‘time’), nine words and groups still used by Ælfric (broga, bregean, campian, eac swylce, forþfor, gefea, neowolnes, semninga and smyltnes), and six words not in the works of Ælfric but used in the Lindisfarne and Rushworth glosses or in the Durham Ritual (ac interrogative, cigan (‘cry’, ‘summon’), gefeon, iumanna, medmycclan and ymbsellan). Gæstliþnesse is indeed limited otherwise to verse, known early texts and the Blickling Homilies, with gæstliþende in the Wonders of the East, but the word hospitalitas is not used in the gospels, while Ælfric has the related adjective gistliþe. Of the items in the list of words ‘which, because they tend to disappear from successive psalter glosses, are also often presented as evidence for the early composition of prose texts‘ eleven are still used by Ælfric (adreogan, andlyfen, æfter þon, bysmr- forms, clypung, ehtnes, geondstregde, goma, intinga, geunrotsod and þeatw), while the Durham Ritual has æfæstnes and tælnysse. Gefeannesse, leasliccetung, ungeþeawe and witedomlic are apparently hapax legomena (for a full list of these from the Life and the related Guthlac homily in the Vercelli Book, see Crawford, ‘Guthlac’, pp. 215–17). Found only in texts of uncertain date are æfþancas and orleahtor. Found only in early texts and in texts of uncertain date are beotung, onbærnan, wolberende and ondrysenlic (cf. the laws of Athelstan I), c.927–30, ondryslic Similarly non-proven is Vleeskruyer's claim about the Blickling Homilies (St Chad, p. 56), ‘the archaic vocabulary shared by all the homilies suggests strongly that none of them can have been composed even in the early tenth century’, and about Vita Malchi (Ibid. pp. 59–60, n. 6), ‘Malchus … in general shows all the characteristics of the ninth-century Mercian translations’; see further, above, n. 55. The Apocalypse of Thomas has three words from Vleeskruyer's lists, nænig, gefea and scyldig, none of them indicative of an exclusively early date (see above, p. 110). I have found no other items to support the theory of composition before 950.

¹²⁴ See esp. Wake, ‘The Vocabulary’, Appendices 1, 2 and 3, and above, n. 71.I am preparing a detailed study of early Old English vocabulary with the aid of Dr Jane Roberts's materials for a thesaurus of Old English.

¹²⁵ Ed. Vleeskruyer, line 187, rendering Latin ‘in Hibernia’.

¹²⁶ Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 205, lines 5–17, and 215, lines 15–22. Wenisch (Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut, p. 49) describes the date and dialect of these homilies as unbekannt.For Niall, a diacon, living ‘on Scotta ealonde’ (var. Sceotland), who prophesied that fire would consume first Scotta land, then Brytwealas, then Angelcynn, see Whitelock, D., ‘Bishop Ecgred, Pehtred and Niall’, Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. Whitelock, D., McKitterick, R. and Dumville, D. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 47–68. Niall's death is reported in the Annals of Ulster, s.a.860, so that a late-ninth-century date for the material shared by these passages is a possibility.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Entry for 16 January, St Fursey.

¹²⁸ ‘Here the priest Columba came from Ireland to Britain to teach the Picts and built a monastery in the island of Iona’ Restoration of erased entry in the Parker Manuscript; see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, p. 23.

¹²⁹ For the ‘northern recension’ and the text of MS E, see Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer on the basis of an edition by Earle, J. (Oxford, 1899, repr, 1965); English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, p. 113; andGoogle ScholarBately, J.M., ‘Manuscript Layout and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, John Kylands Bull. 70 (1988), 21–43, at 23.CrossRef Google Scholar

¹³⁰ ‘A proportion of the Gaels departed from Hibernia into Britain and settled part of that land’ Reading from MS E.

¹³¹ ‘Regressus in Galliam legiones in hiberna (var.hibernia) dimisit’ (HE 1.2) and ‘þa he forlet his here abidan mid Scottum 7 gewat into Galwalum’ (Anglo–Saxon Chronicle entry for 60 BC (MS E)).

¹³² Old English Orosius, p. 19, lines 14, 18 and 15, besides pp. 9, line 10, and 19, line 5; see also ‘wið Peohtas 7 wið Scottas’ (p. 142, line 12).

¹³³ See, e.g., Old English Bede, ‘Hibernia, Scotta ealonde’ (p. 270, line 12), beside Scotland (pp.22, line 28, and 28, line 9), for Latin Hibernia, and see further, below, n. 136. Is it coincidence that of the instances of Scotland in this text, one is in the list of chapter headings? For problems posed by the chapter headings, see Whitelock, D., ‘The List of Chapter-Headings in the Old English Bede’, Old English Studies in Honour of J C. Pope, ed. Burlin, R. B. and Irving, E. B. (Toronto, 1974), pp. 263–84.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ For the variant hira land in MS A, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, p. cxxxi.

¹³⁵ ‘He ferde ða geond eal ýrrland. and Scótland, bodiende ðda ðing þe he geseah. and gehyrde’ (Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, ed. Godden, p. 197, lines 252–3). MSS D, G and P omit the words and Scotland.Godden (Ibid. p. 366) notes that ‘Ælfric's main source, the Vita Fursei, does not mention Scotland but refers at this point to Hibernia and its inhabitants the Scotti Bede (not definitely consulted for this homily by Ælfric, but certainly available to him) says that Fursey was in Scotia, clearly meaning Ireland. Ælfric's error in placing Fursey in Scotland as well could have been induced by either the Vita or Bede (Scotia could apparently mean modern Scotland by the end of the tenth century). The omission of and Scotland by D, G, and P presumably reflects Ælfric's correction of the error, unless we assume that one of his scribes coincidentally dropped the phrase by accident. Yrum and scottum is allowed to stand at 258 in all manuscripts; perhaps Ælfric missed this phrase, or perhaps he felt that, with and Scotland deleted, the reference to scottum could be allowed to stand, for the sake of the rhythm, as a term for the inhabitants of Ireland’

¹³⁶ ‘Meuanias Brettonum insulas, quae inter Hiberniam et Brittaniam sitae sunt, Anglorum subiecit imperio’ (HE 11.5); at Old English Bede, pp. 108, line 32–110, line 2. MST here reads ‘Swelce he eac monige Bretta ealond, þa seondon geseted betweoh Ibernia, Scotland (MSS O and Ca Scotlande) 7 Breotone, Ongolcynnes rice underþeodde’, and MS B (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41) ‘… betwyh Hibernia Scotta iglande 7 Brytene’. Miller, giving monige a capital M, translates, ‘He also brought under the authority of the English Man, islands of the Britons lying between Ireland, Scotland and Britain.’ The Mevanian islands are Anglesey and Man.

¹³⁷ The Old English Life of Machutus, ed. Yerkes, D. (Toronto, 1984), p. 29, line 21.Google Scholar The corresponding passage in the Latin (Ibid. p. 29, line 15) reads ‘Scottorum partibus ueniens’. As Yerkes observes (Ibid. p. xxxvi), the vocabulary of Machutus is very close to that of the late West Saxon ‘Winchester group’. However, rewriting of the type found in the revision of the Dialogues cannot be ruled out.

¹³⁸ The Anglo–Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, annal 565, Columban, recte Columba.

¹³⁹ Old English Orosius, p. 16, lines 6 and 7.

¹⁴⁰ See Ibid. p. lxxii.

¹⁴¹ However, see the comment in An Icelandic–English Dictionary, ed. R. Cleasby and rev. G. Vigfusson, 2nd edn with a Supplement by Sir William Craigie (Oxford, 1957), under Skotar, that in some passages of the Landnamabok the terms Skotar and Skotland seem to be used of the Irish and Ireland.

¹⁴² See. e.g., Craigie, W. A., ‘“lraland” in King Alfred's “Orosius”’, MLR 12 (1917), 200–1; see also Christine Fell's comment (Two Voyagers at the Court of King Alfred, ed. N. Lund, translated by C. E. Fell, with contributory essays by O. Crumlin–Pedersen, P. H. Sawyer and C. E. Fell (York, 1984), p. 63): ‘It seems to me highly likely that Ohthere spoke of Island, and not at all improbable that a West–Saxon scribe should have got it wrong. It may indicate one of the times when communication between Ohthere and his interrogator remained unsuccessful.’CrossRef Google Scholar

¹⁴³ All the signs are that the passages were added after the translation and rewriting of Orosius, Historiarum libri septem I.ii was completed and that the terminus ad quem is the date of the Lauderdale manuscript (BL Add. 47967), which is in a hand very close to that of the scribe of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A; see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, p. xxxii. There is no attempt to link the last words of the account of northern Europe and the statement (Old English Orosius, p. 13, lines 29–30) ‘Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, þæt he ealra Norðmonna norþmest bude’, though the insertion at this point has clearly been prompted by the reference to Norþmenn as living west of the Swedes in the passage immediately preceding. There is similarly no transition between the account of Ohthere's voyage and that of Wulfstan.

¹⁴⁴ The period when scribe 2c of the Chronicle, MS A, whose last entry is for 920, appears to have been writing; see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Bately, pp. xxv–xxxiv.

¹⁴⁵ See above, pp. 96–8.

¹⁴⁶ Cf. Alexander, Old English Literature, p. 132, ‘Thousands of sermons, for example, must have been preached in Old English in the seventh century and some may have reached written form.’ However, see the important assessment of preaching and preaching materials in Anglo-Saxon England by Gatch, M. McC., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), esp. chs. 4 and 5.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ See above, p. 114. This source has a number of features which link it with texts of ‘Mercian’ or potentially early origin; e.g., use of words such as arlic and nænig, forms such as cymeþ, word pairs and occasionally constructions combining possessive and demonstrative.

¹⁴⁸ Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, p. 148.

¹⁴⁹ For convenience I am assuming that the Martyrology and Bede are ninth-century texts (though this is not proven) and that the Ohthere and Wulfstan passages of the Orosius are based on notes made in the late ninth century.

¹⁵⁰ Old English Literature, p. 133.

¹⁵¹ See Old English Orosius, esp. notes to pp. 13, lines 29–30, 14, line 11, 15, line 6, and 16, lines 7–8. For instance, the problems inherent in p. 15, lines 2–6, vanish if we suppose that Ohthere had been asked (1) how big the ‘horse-whales’ were; (ii) where the best whale-hunting was; (iii) how big the largest whales were in his own country; and (iv) what was the biggest catch of whales that he had ever made.

¹⁵² See Clark, C., ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, England before the Conquest, ed. Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 215–35.Google Scholar

¹⁵³ See, e.g., annal 592, ‘Her micel wælfill wæs æt Woddesbeorge, 7 Ceawlin wæs ut adrifen‘, and annal 409, ‘Her Gotan abræcon Romeburg, 7 næfre siþan Romane ne ricsodon on Bretone’, which is a translation of Historia ecclesiastica v.24, ‘Anno ccccviiii Roma a Gothis fracta, exquo tempore Romani in Brittania regnare cessarunt.’ The statement by C. Sprockel, The Language of the Parker Chronicle (The Hague, 1965–73) 11, 73: ‘As for the frequent use of ond in A to string sentences together instead of conjunctions or adverbs that express the logical relation, this is generally regarded as characteristic of a primitive style’, must be read in the context of Amos's warning (The Linguistic Means, p. 161), against using degrees of hypotaxis and parataxis as indicators of date.

¹⁵⁴ ‘Here ealdorman Wulfheard fought at Hamton against thirty three ship loads and there inflicted great slaughter and took victory; and in this year Wulfheard died, and in this same year dux Æthelhelm fought against a Danish force at Port with the men of Dorset and for a good length of time put the enemy force to flight, and the Danes had control of the battle field and slew the ealdorman’ (reading from MS A).

¹⁵⁵ Entry for 25 December: ‘On the first day of the year, that is on the first Yule-day, all Christian folk celebrate Christ's birth. St Mary gave birth to him on that night in a hollow cave outside the town of Bethlehem, and immediately when he was born, a heavenly light shone all over the land, and God's angel appeared to shepherds a mile to the east of the town, and told them that the Saviour of all peoples had been born; and the shepherds heard a great song of angels on earth.’

¹⁵⁶ Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, ch. 77: ‘Werfrithum…qui, imperio regis, libros Dialogorum Gregorii papae et Petri sui discipuli de Latinitate primus in Saxonicam linguam, aliquando sensum ex sensu ponens, elucabratim et elegantissime interpretatus est’.It should be noted that Asser does not claim that Werferth was the first person ever to translate into Old English.

¹⁵⁷ Potter, S., On the Relation of the Old English Bede to Werferth's Gregory and to Alfred's Translations (Prague, 1931), pp. 2 and 4.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Potter, Ibid. p. 22, gives the figures as 123 in the Old English for 265 in the Latin. The late tenth-century reviser adds more instances than he removes; see Yerkes, D., Syntax and Style in Old English (Binghampton, NY, 1982). For the dative absolute in Old English, see Mitchell, Old English Syntax 11, §§3804–31.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ See, e.g., Dialogues, p. 261, line 3, ‘urum þam ærestan mæge Adame’, and p. 35, line 21,‘se his wisdom’.

¹⁶⁰ See, e.g.,Ibid. p. 11. line 5, ‘ fæsten 7 forhæfdnesse’ for abstentia, and p. 221, line 13, ‘ wregend 7 wrohtbora’ for accusator.For a detailed list, see Ibid., 11, 87–96.

¹⁶¹ Or less commonly vice versa; cf. Potter, The Relation, p. 4, ‘Again and again it was sufficient for the translator to make subordinate clauses – especially adverb clauses of cause, purpose and result – non-dependent, and to insert co-ordinating conjunctions.’ For a detailed discussion of the manner of the translation, see the second part of Hecht's edition.

¹⁶² See, e.g., Dialogues, p. 71, lines 6–7, ‘þæt he þa unclænan gastas of mannum aflyman mihte’, for Dialogi I.x, ‘in exfugandis spiritibus’.

¹⁶³ See, e.g., Dialogues 11, 78.

¹⁶⁴ See, e.g., the added reference to a monastery, Dialogues, p.5, lines 23–4, quoted below, p. 122, and see also Ibid. 11, pp. 38–53.

¹⁶⁵ ‘Because there are very many men, who completely do many good works but nevertheless are yet touched with carnal vices in the delight of their thought, that is very just that the mist of that foulness beset there those whom the pleasure of the flesh still delights and pleases here. About which the blessed Job pronounced when he saw the same delight of the body that it was in that foulness, he spoke then this speech about the wanton and slidden [for slidoran ‘slippery’?] man: “all the delight and sweetness of the body will become as food(?) for worms”. In this and subsequent translations I have attempted to follow the original as closely as possible, in order to demonstrate similarities and differences between the Latin and Old English versions.

¹⁶⁶ ‘Because there are a considerable number who do many good works, but nevertheless are yet touched with carnal vices in the delight of thought, and it is extremely just that a cloud of foulness beset there those whom the carnal foulness [var. foulness of the flesh] still delights here. Whence the blessed Job, seeing that same delight of the flesh to be in foulness, offered this observation on the wanton and slippery man, “The sweetness of that man [is that] of a worm”. For a polished translation into French see Dialogi, ed. de Vogüé.

¹⁶⁷ ‘See, now, Peter, that I am most like the person who is on a frail ship, that is hard-pressed by the waves of a great sea: so I am now stirred up by the tribulations of this world, and I am struck with the storms of the strong tempest in the ship of my mind, and when I recall that my previous life which I spent previously in a monastery, then I sigh and murmur, like the person who approaches land in a frail ship and the whirlwind and storm then drive(s) it so far on the sea that he finally can see no land.’

¹⁶⁸ Cf. the frequently cited fondness for images concerning water and boats in Alfred's translations.

¹⁶⁹ ‘Behold now indeed I am battered by the waves of a great sea and struck in the ship of my mind by the storms of a powerful tempest, and when I recall my previous life, as though with eyes turned behind me, with the shore having been seen, I sigh.‘

¹⁷⁰ For a list of word pairs translating a single Latin word, or added to the Latin, see Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 205–30, and also Ibid. pp. 30–47, and for partial lists, see Schmidt, A., Untersucbungen über König Ælfreds Bedaübersetzung (Berlin, 1889), pp. 36–9, and Potter, The Relation, pp. 23–6.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ ‘And the Britons gave and granted them a dwelling-place among them, on condition that they fought and battled against their enemies for the peace and safety of their country, and that they granted them wages and property in return for their warfare.’ For a polished translation, see Old English Bede

¹⁷² ‘Those who had arrived, therefore, received (with the Britons giving) a place of dwelling among them, on that condition that these should fight against the foes for the peace and safety of the country, [and that] those should grant to the people fighting the payment owed.’ For a polished translation, see Historia ecclesiastica.

¹⁷³ See Whitelock, ‘The Old English Bede’, pp. 76–7, and Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 25–6 and ch. 2.

¹⁷⁴ See, e.g., Old English Bede, p. 54, line 4, ‘sume ofer sæ sarigende gewiton’, and also Klaeber, F., ‘Zur ae Bedaübersetzung’, Anglia 25 (1902), 257–315, and 27 (1904), 243–82 and 399–435, at 25, 291; for a list of poetic words, see Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 291–2. Eardungstow is, however, also used in a range of prose texts.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁵ Potter's figures (‘The Relation’, p. 22) are Historia ecclesiastica 558 ablative absolutes, Old English Bede 100 dative absolutes. For examples, see also Schmidt, Untersucbungen, pp. 53–4.

¹⁷⁶ ‘In addition to this the cowardly band of Britons stood on the top of the fortification and there remained day and night with trembling hearts.’

¹⁷⁷ ‘In addition to this the slothful army was stationed along the top of the defence, where day and night, they drooped with trembling and benumbed hearts.’

¹⁷⁸ ‘And not only did laymen do these things, but also the Lord's flock and His shepherds. And they were subjecting their necks to drunkenness and pride and strife and dispute and envy and other sins of this kind, with Christ's light and sweet yoke having been cast away.’ For the compound weoruldmen, replacing ‘viri saeculares’, see above, p. 123, and n. 173. Note also the word pair ‘þam leohte 7 þam swete’ for Latin leui.

¹⁷⁹ ‘And not only did secular men do these things, but also the Lord's flock itself and His shepherds, subjecting their necks to drunkenness, enmity, quarrelling, strife, and envy and other crimes of this kind, with Christ's light yoke having been cast off.’ Animositas in ecclesiastical Latin has the meaning ‘wrath, enmity’; in post-classical texts, however, it can be translated ‘courage, spirit, impetuosity’.

¹⁸⁰ For a study of the Old English translator' technique, see D.K. Fry, ‘Bede Fortunate in his Translator: the Barking Nuns’, Studies, ed. Szarmach, pp. 345–62, and also Clement, R. W., ‘An Analysis of Non-Finite verb Forms as an Indication of the Style of Translation in Bede's Ecclesiastical History’, Jnl of Eng, Ling. 12 (1978), 19–28.CrossRef Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 29–30, and Whitelock, ‘The Old English Bede’, p. 76.

¹⁸² Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, ch. 77.

¹⁸³ Since Asser does not mention Alfred's translations, it is generally assumed that they all post-dated the translation of the Dialogi. It should be noted, however, that Asser's reference to Alfred as not yet having begun to read anything, in the same paragraph as the reference to Werferth's translation, is in no way a confirmation of this chronology. The reference to the translation occurs in a general description of Werferth, which accompanies a reference to that bishop's arrival at Alfred's court.

¹⁸⁴ The priority of the Pastoral Care is a reasonable assumption; however, it has not always been maintained; see e.g., King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius, ed. Bosworth, J. (London, 1859), pp. viii–x, where the order Boethius, Bede, Orosius and Pastoral Care is suggested.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁵ Cura pastoralis, ‘You poor little one, overthrown with a tempest’; Pastoral Care, ‘You poor man, who are overturned and thrown over with the storm and with the tempest.‘ For other instances of ‘doublets’ in the Pastoral Care, see Brown, W. H., ‘Method and Style in the Old English Pastoral Care‘, JEGP 68 (1969), 666–84, at 669–74. For a polished translation of these passages, see Henry Davis, Ancient Christian Writers XI (1950).Google Scholar

¹⁸⁶ ‘From the very door of this book, that is, from the beginning of this discourse, the unwary are driven away and reproved, who appropriate to themselves the art of that mastership which they never learned.’

¹⁸⁷ ‘Let them be reproved from the very beginning of this book, that since unlearned and hasty they desire to hold the citadel of teaching, they may be driven back from the attempts of their hastiness at the very door of our discourse.’ Did the manuscript used by Alfred read artem for arcem?

¹⁸⁸ ‘Is not this great Babylon which I have built as the house of the kingdom, in the power of my strength and in the glory of my honour?’ Decus and gloria, like wlite and wuldor in the Old English version, can both have the meaning ‘glory’.

¹⁸⁹ ‘How, is not this the great Babylon which I myself built as a royal throne and for magnificence, as an adornment and glory for myself, with my own power and strength?‘ For Ælfric's use of this sentence, see Godden, M., ‘Ælfric and the Vernacular Prose Tradition’, The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds, ed. Szarmach, P. E. and Huppé, B. F. (Albany, NY, 1978), pp. 99–117, at 103–4.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁰ The Relation, p. 22.

¹⁹¹ For a detailed survey, see Brown, W. H., A Syntax of King Alfred's Pastoral Care (The Hague, Paris, 1970);CrossRef Google Scholar see also idem, ‘Method and Style’. Brown (Ibid. p. 678) describes Alfred's purpose as utilitarian: ‘he translates literally when he can conveniently do so, when he can take the Latin over with no substantial change in diction or syntax and still write understandable English’. I disagree with Brown's conclusion that the result is ‘unadorned and, as a rule, undistinguished’. For a different picture of the achievement of Alfred and his helpers, see Potter, The Relation, p. 48, where it is said that the knowledge of Latin of the translator of Cura pastoralis is superior to that of the authors of the Old English Bede and the Dialogues: ‘This is proved beyond dispute by his accurate and skilful renderings of very intricate passages.’ For Alfred's stylistic achievement in the letter prefixed to the Pastoral Care, see, e.g., B. F. Huppé, ‘Alfred and Ælfric: a Study of Two Prefaces’, The Old English Homily, ed. Szarmach and Huppé, pp. 119–37.

¹⁹² ‘Dearest brother, very friendlily and very kindly you reproved me, and with humble intent you chid me, because I hid myself and wished to flee the burden of pastoral care.’.

¹⁹³ ‘You reprove me, dearest brother, with kind and humble intent for having wished to flee the burdens of pastoral care by hiding myself.’

¹⁹⁴ Note also the alliteration on f reflecting alliteration on p and f in the Latin.

¹⁹⁵ ‘For in this world the human soul is, as it were, in the manner of a ship ascending against the current of a river: it is never suffered to stay in one place, for it floats back again to the lowest parts, unless it strives to reach the highest parts.’

¹⁹⁶ ‘Every man's mind in this world has the manner of a ship. The ship sometimes wishes to ascend against the current, but it cannot, unless the rowers impel it, but must float with the current; it cannot remain still, unless an anchor hold it or it be impelled forward by oars; otherwise it goes with the current.’

¹⁹⁷ ‘Now this book is divided into quadripartite debate, that it may enter into the mind of its reader by orderly propositions, as if by certain steps.’

¹⁹⁸ ‘Now I wish that this discourse should rise into the mind of the learner as on a ladder, step by step, nearer and nearer, until it firmly stands in the upper chamber of the mind which learns it; and therefore I divide it into four.’ Sweet here weakens and distorts Alfred's metaphor by translating solore as ‘floor’.

¹⁹⁹ Potter, The Relations, p. 22.

²⁰⁰ For recent discussions of aspects of the style of these works, see Wittig, J. S., ‘King Alfred's Boethius and its Latin Sources: a Reconsideration’, ASE 11 (1983), 157–98; Old English Orosius, pp. c–cv; and E.M. Liggins, ‘Syntax and Style in the Old English Orosius’, Studies, ed. Szarmach, pp. 245–73. For pairings and parallel constructions in the Soliloquies, see Alfred's Soliloquies, p. 25–6.Google Scholar

²⁰¹ ‘Such brothership, said Orosius, they held among themselves, who were nurtured and instructed in one family, that it is now to us much more like a mockery that we complain about that, and that we now call that war, when strangers and foreigners come upon us and plunder us of some little and again quickly leave us and will not think how it then was, when no man could buy his life of another, nor even that those then would be friends who were brothers by father and by mother.’

²⁰² ‘Such are the ties of blood and fellowship between parents, sons, brothers, and friends. Such is the importance they attach to heavenly and earthly bonds. Let the people of this generation blush with shame over the recollection of these past events, who now realize that it is only by the intervention of the Christian faith and by means of the sworn oath that they live at all with their enemies and suffer no injury. This proves beyond question that now barbarians and Romans … assure one another such loyalty by the oath taken on the Gospels, as nature was unable in those days to ensure even between fathers and sons.’ Translation from Seven Books of History against the Pagans, trans. I. W. Raymond (New York, 1936).

²⁰³ ‘How can the Romans, said Orosius, now say with truth, that they had better times then than they now have, when they had undertaken so many wars at the same time? One was in Spain, a second in Macedonia, a third in Cappadocia, a fourth at home against Hannibal; and they were, moreover, most often put to flight and disgraced. But that was very obvious that they were better soldiers then than they now are; that they, nevertheless, would not cease from the fight; (but they often remained in a little and hopeless position), so that at last they had control over all those who before nearly had [control] over them.’

²⁰⁴ See esp. 18–25, ‘And who would believe that at this time when, as we have said, they could not wage even one war at home, they undertook three more wars across the seas: one in Macedonia against Philip … another in Spain … a third in Sardinia … a fourth against Hannibal, who was pressing them hard in Italy. And yet a display of courage, bred of desperation, led to better fortune in every case; for in all these wars it was desperation that made them fight, and fighting that made them victorious. From this it is clearly evident that the times were not then more peaceful for the pursuits of leisure than they are at present, but that the men were braver as a result of their miseries.’ For the Old English translator's handling of his sources, see Old English Orosius, pp. xciii–xcvi.

²⁰⁵ ‘As soon as I first saw you lamenting thus in this sadness, I perceived that you had departed from your father's land – that is, in spite of my teachings. You there departed from it when you forsook your steadfastness and believed that Fate directed this world at her own pleasure, regardless of God's purpose and consent and of the deeds of men. I knew that you had departed, but I did not know how far, before you yourself explained it to me with your plaints.’

²⁰⁶ ‘When I saw you sad and weeping, I immediately knew you to be wretched and an exile; but I would not have known how far that banishment was, if your speech had not reported it.’

²⁰⁷ ‘It seems to me that you are misleading and baffling me, as one does a child; you lead me hither and thither into a wood so thick that I cannot get out.’ See further, Bately, ‘Those Books’ (forthcoming).

²⁰⁸ ‘Are you not playing with me, I said, by weaving an inextricable labyrinth of arguments? now indeed you enter where you will come out, now you come out where you went in.’

²⁰⁹ ‘O Philosophy, lo, you know that covetousness and greed for worldly dominion never greatly delighted me, nor did I all too greatly desire this earthly rule, but yet I desired tools and material for the work that I was charged to perform; that was that I should worthily and fittingly steer and rule the dominion entrusted to me. Now you know that no man can reveal any talent or rule and steer any dominion without tools and material.’ (Translation based on Whitelock, English Historical Documents, p. 919.) One of the mannerisms of this passage is the use of the collocation ‘steoran 7 reccan’; cf. Old English Bede ‘heold 7 rehte’ etc., and Waite, ‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 217–18.

²¹⁰ For a valuable discussion of the laws, see Frantzen, King Alfred, ch. 2.

²¹¹ ‘The Lord who is a just ruler and strong and patient, will he be angry every day? Unless you turn to him, the devil will brandish his sword at you, and he will bend his bow, which is now ready to shoot; he intends that he should shoot the vessel of death, that is the unrighteous [ones]; he makes his arrows fiery, that he may shoot with and burn those who here burn in licentiousness and vices’; cf. Vespasian Psalter VII.12–13, ‘Deus iudex iustus fortis et longanimis numquid irascitur per singulos dies, nisi conuertamini gladium suum uibra[u]it. Arcum suum tetendit et parauit illum, et in ipso parauit uasa mortis sagittas suas ardentibus effecit’, and 1611 Bible, ‘God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors making his arrows fiery shafts.’

²¹² ‘And then there ran as it were flashes of lightning before his countenance; and he mixed hail and coals of fire and made thunderclaps in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice. He sent his arrows and scattered them and multiplied his lightnings and violently moved them with that.’

²¹³ ‘The Lord resounds from heaven and the highest gives his voice. He sends his arrows and disperses them; he multiplies lightnings and violently moves them.’

²¹⁴ ‘The Lord resounds from heaven and the highest gives his voice. He sends his arrows and he scatters them, he multiplies lightnings and he violently moves them.’

²¹⁵ 1611 Bible. ‘At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings and discomfited them‘.

²¹⁶ Unfortunately, because of the problems involved in dating the Martyrology, it is not possible to determine whether it was early enough to be a possible model for these writers.

²¹⁷ See, e.g., St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, p. 22, where poetic technique is said to constitute the ‘only autochthonous model by virtue of which a prose style could be created’.

²¹⁸ Ibid. pp. 19–20.

²¹⁹ The story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard in annal 755 of the Chronicle is often cited as evidence of such a tradition, and prose must surely have regularly been used for oral narrative. However, the hypothetical lay underlying annal 755 could have been in verse, while the ‘ambiguous’ use of pronouns, so often taken to be a sign of oral origin, might equally well represent Latin hi, illi.See further, above, n. 2.

²²⁰ There is not infrequent alliteration in the Latin texts translated by Alfred and his contemporaries; see, e.g., Dialogi I.i.4, ‘ut nunc usque montem cernentibus casura pendere uideatur’, translated, also with alliteration, as Dialogues p. 12, lines 19–20, ‘ac gyt nu todæg he hangaþ swa hreosende, swylce he feallan wylle, 7 þæt magon geseon þa þe þone munt sceawiað’, and also De consolatione 1, pr. v, ‘Sed tu quam procul a patria non quidem pulsus es, sed aberrasti; ac si te pulsum existimari mauis, te potius ipse pepulisti.’

²²¹ See Wetherbee, W., ‘Some Implications of Bede's Latin Style’, Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Farrell, R. T., BAR 46 (Oxford, 1978), and alsoGoogle ScholarHart, J. M., ‘Rhetoric in the Translation of Bede’, An English Miscellany presented to Dr Furnivall (Oxford, 1901), pp. 150–4.Google Scholar

²²² See, e.g., the variety of renderings for ‘consul’ and ‘philosopher’ in the Orosius, Bede and Boethius. It should be remembered that access to Old English prose works may have been strictly limited. However, Vleeskruyer's comment, (St Chad, p. 45) that it is ‘a legitimate supposition that in the latter half of the ninth century no fixed literary terminology existed in the South-West, and that the hapax legomena of the Pastoral Care are the result of an attempt to supply this need’, has to be read in the light of the fact that Mercian scholars participated in the translation of that work.

²²³ ‘The Vocabulary’, p. 2. He continues, ‘The contribution of the glossators in establishing the foundations of an English literature has to a large extent been obscured by our preoccupation with Anglo-Saxon poetry as the early manifestation of vernacular literature.’

²²⁴ St Chad, p. 24. See also Whitelock, ‘The Old English Bede’, pp. 75–6, ‘The author was the product of a school of translating similar to that which trained Bishop Werferth …They both often translate over-literally, retaining Latinate constructions and using a word-order unnatural to English, to an extent which suggests that they were influenced by the practice of interlinear glossing of a text.’ For Waite (‘The Vocabulary’, pp. 32–3), ‘It remains a moot point whether doubling is to be associated in particular with translation or whether it is passed over from a school of original prose writing.’

²²⁵ Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, no. XII, ‘For this cause, I Earl Aethelred, by God's inspiring grace made wealthy and enriched with a portion of the realm of the Mercians, for the love of God and for the remission of my sins and offences, and because of the entreaties of the abbot and the community at Berkeley, and also on behalf of the whole of Mercia – 1 grant them remission for ever of the tribute which they are still obliged to give to the king’; see also Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, nos. I and II.

²²⁶ See above, pp. 99–100, and cf. St Chad, ed. Vleeskruyer, pp. 55 and 58–61. Vleeskruyer claims (p. 59) that Napier homily XL retains ‘occasional traces of an early archetype, such as the possessive with demonstrative, leornjað “read”, and more generally, in its markedly poetic style'. In this context it should be noted that St Chad has virtually no word pairs that are not straight translations of the Latin and at least two of these, ‘underbeode 7 cyðde’ (120) and ‘secað 7 tocumað’ (216), are non-tautological expansions.

²²⁷ Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. XVIII. ‘With our Lord the Saviour Christ reigning in eternity, who governs all things both in the heavens and on earth, in the year of the incarnation when nine hundred years and four years have passed and in the seventh Indiction; I bishop Werfrith, with the permission and leave of my honourable community in Worcester, grant to Wulfsige my reeve for his loyal efficiency and humble obedience, one hide of land [lit. land of one hide] at Aston.’

²²⁸ See Funke, Otto, ‘Studien zur Alliterienden und Rhythmisierendan Prosa in der älteran altenglischen Homiletic’, Anglia 80 (1962), 9–36. For similar features in Middle English, see the texts of the Katherine Group.Google Scholar

²²⁹ Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. cxx. For this construction in texts by Alfred, see Bately, ‘Lexical Evidence’, p. 94.

²³⁰ Martyrology entries for 26 December, St Eugenia (‘served and ministered’), 16 January, St Fursey (‘then he grew pale and trembled’), 6 January, the Epiphany (‘the great and famous day’), 26 March, Christ's Decent into Hell (‘his the bright light’) and 5 May, the Ascension (‘that his footprint’); for a list of word pairs, see Das altengliscbe Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor, pp. 421–5.

²³¹ 9 August, St Romanus, ‘with red–hot iron rods’, and 4 March, St Adrianus ‘another powerful heathen man’.

²³² ‘On that same day is the festival of saint Tecle the holy maiden, who was in the city of Iconium and she was there wedded to a noble bridegroom. Then she heard the teaching of Paul the apostle, then she believed in God and remained in her virginity, and therefore she suffered many tortures: she was cast into burning fire and that would not burn her, and she was sent into a multitude of wild animals, into [a multitude] of lions and of bears, and those would not tear her; she was cast into a pit of sea-beasts, and those did not harm her; she was bound to wild bulls, and those did not injure her; and then finally she cut off her hair just like men and dressed herself with a man's garment and went with Paul the messenger of God. Tecle was so mighty a maiden that she procured from God some rest in the eternal world for the spirit of a certain heathen maiden.’

²³³ 19 January, St Ananias: ‘and the reeve who ordered them to be killed was immediately tormented with such great pain, that he would not live longer, but he ordered his own men to send him into the sea, and the sea-beasts immediately swallowed him, so that not even one bone of his came to the land again’.

²³⁴ We may compare the late-ninth-century Chronicle entries which must have been written at about the same time that Alfred's translations were being produced, or shortly after, but which share few of their stylistic features; see Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Once More’.

²³⁵ That is not to say, of course, that the West Saxon documents themselves could not have been influenced by Mercian traditions.

²³⁶ Cf., e.g., ‘gefæstnode 7 getrymede’ (laws of Ine, cited below, n. 238), ‘trymme 7 faestna’ (Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, no. III, dated to 844–5) and variants such as ‘festnie 7 write’ and ‘gesette 7 gefestnie’ (ibid. no. iv, dated to 843–62) and ‘write 7 geðeafie’ (ibid. no. II, dated to 833–9). Nos. IV and II both have ‘bidde 7 bebeode’, while no. Iv has ‘soecende 7 smeagende’. See also ibid. no. XII.

²³⁷ Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. XI. This charter begins like the Worcester charter of 904 with a dative absolute, ‘Ricsiendum urum dryhtne hælendun Criste in ecnisse’, rendering Latin ‘Regnante in perpetuum domino nostro lesu Christo‘. The sentence structure of the earliest wills and charters has obviously been influenced by the conventions of their Latin predecessors.

²³⁸ Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, ed. Whitelock, D. (London, 1967, repr. 1983) item XI: ‘I, Ine, by the grace of God, king of the West Saxons, with the advice and with the instruction of my father Cenred, and my bishop Hædde, and my bishop Eorcenwold, with all my ealdormen and the chief councillors of my people, and also a great assembly of the servants of God, have been inquiring about the salvation of our souls and about the security of our kingdom, that the true law and true statutes might be established and strengthened throughout our people, so that none of the ealdormen or of those subjected to us might afterwards change these our decrees.’Google Scholar

²³⁹ Ibid. P. 53: ‘If a man from a distance or a foreigner goes through the wood off the track, and does not shout nor blow a horn, he is to be assumed to be a thief, to be either killed or redeemed’. For the style of the laws and for Sievers's theory of Sagvers, see Bethurum, D., ‘Stylistic Features of the Old English Laws’, MLR 27 (1932), 263–79.CrossRef Google Scholar

²⁴⁰ Sweet, Henry, ‘Some of the Sources of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle‘, ES 2 (1879), 310–12. Sweet cites annal 491 (‘with alliteration and poetical diction’) and annal 501, which he says ‘looks like an attempt to eke out a few poetical epithets into an historical statement’.Google Scholar

²⁴¹ ‘Here Hengest and Æsc fought against the Britons and captured countless spoils, and the Britons fled from the English as from fire.’

²⁴² ‘Here Ælle and Cissa besieged Andredesceaster and killed all who dwelt inside, and there was not even a single Briton left.’

²⁴³ ‘Fought and battled’. This collocation is found four times in the Bede.

²⁴⁴ Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, ch. 81; see also chs. 76 and 77.

²⁴⁵ It is sometimes suggested that the Dialogues was also a teaching text; however, its preface describes it as composed for leisure reading by Alfred.

²⁴⁶ We have no knowledge of Northumbrian literary prose of the early Old English period; see above, n.18.

²⁴⁷ Old English Syntax II, 985.

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