For the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, 1849 should be a more significant date than 449. In 1849 John Mitchell Kemble published The Saxons in England. Earlier historians, even critical ones like Sharon Turner and J. M. Lappenberg, had basically retold the narratives of Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with picturesque details from Henry of Huntingdon and others. Kemble swept all that away: ‘I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.’

Insular Latinity – its origins, characteristics, affiliations and dissemination – has attracted much attention in the last decade. One area which has benefited from this increased interest is the investigation of the Latin grammars written by Insular scholars: consider, for example, the editions of Insular grammatical writings recently published in the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. But it is noteworthy that the Anglo-Latin grammarians have profited far less from this upsurge in interest than their Irish counterparts. Although Anglo-Latin as well as Hiberno-Latin texts have been among those recently edited, and have been the subject of several specialized studies, they have failed to excite scholarly attention to the same extent as the Irish works. Their origin, history, relationship and cultural context have not yet been satisfactorily established. Studies such as the series of articles by Louis Holtz, tracing the evolution of the study of grammar in Ireland and the relationship of the surviving texts to one another, are lacking for the Anglo-Latin grammarians. Yet the unknown factors in early England are scarcely fewer. To take one example, the fundamental problem of the rôle of the Irish in the creation of an Anglo-Latin grammatical tradition has hardly been touched upon. Indeed, that the Anglo-Saxons can even be credited with a grammatical tradition of their own has been questioned. Too often, the few surviving Anglo-Latin grammars are held up as an isolated phenomenon and contrasted with the prolific outpourings of a diligent host of Irish anonymi. It is the purpose of this article to investigate the evidence for the study of Latin grammar in England south of the Humber up to the time of its best-known manifestations, the grammars of Tatwine and Boniface, in the early eighth century.

Part I of this article1 treated the three main streams of lapidary knowledge current in the early Middle Ages (the classical encyclopaedists, the patristic2 and the medical traditions, with particular attention, in the last-named, to the lapidary of Damigeron and its recensions);3 gloss traditions, terminology and popular beliefs about jewels in Anglo-Saxon England; and the origin and content of the Old English Lapidary, with a new edition of it. This part II treats the lapidary passage in Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis; a Hiberno-Latin tract De Duodecim Lapidibus (henceforth DDL) used by Bede; and (with a critical edition) a tenth-century Latin hymn Cives celestis patrie, quite likely composed in Anglo-Saxon England, and closely based on Bede's work.4

A manuscript fragment containing part of ch. 47 of Bede's De Temporum Ratione has recently been identified in the State Papers Supplementary in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane (London), where it has the reference SP 46/125, fol. 302 (see pl. I).1 It was added to the volume in which it is now to be found in June 1925, on the authority of C. S. B. Buckland, an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, but no information appears to have survived about its source.

Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library 2981 is a large album which Pepys described as ‘My Calligraphical Collection vol. 1’. It contains ‘Original Proofs of Antient Hand-Writing English & Forreign between the Years 700 & 1500’ in the form of fragments from manuscripts pasted down firmly on each of the album's paper pages. Notes are written round the margins of the pages and incorporate ‘the Opinion of that Eminent Critick in re Diplomaticâ, our Country-Man Mr Humphrey Wanley of Oxford, touching the different Ages, Characters & Countrys of ye said Pieces, in Return to my Enquiries from him on that behalf’.

Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Fragm. lat. I. 56, a single detached leaf written in Anglo-Caroline minuscule of mid-eleventh-century date and containing a number of neumed metra of Boethius, was recently brought to the attention of Dr M. T. Gibson1 by the Keeper of Manuscripts in Frankfurt, Dr Gerhard Powitz.2 Dr C. Page identified it as part of the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5. 35 (fols. 432–41). The leaf throws valuable new light not only on the subject of musical notation in late Anglo-Saxon England, but also on the composition of one of the best-known collections of medieval Latin lyrics.3

Among the surviving medical writings in Old English, Bald's Leechbook holds a deservedly important place. It is preserved uniquely in London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii, a manuscript which may be dated on palaeographical grounds to the mid-tenth century (s. xmed), and which may arguably be attributed to a scriptorium at Winchester.1 Linguistic evidence suggests that this manuscript is in turn a copy of a manuscript written perhaps half a century earlier. Although it is written by one scribe throughout, the manuscript contains three distinct books. A metrical colophon at the end of the second book contains the hexameter ‘Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit’. Neither Bald nor Cild can be identified, and the ambiguity of conscribere in medieval Latin makes it difficult to determine whether Bald ordered Cild to compile the book or simply to transcribe it. (Because of this ambiguity, I shall refer to the person responsible as the ‘compiler’.) In any case, it is clear that the first two books form a distinct unit, and it is these two books that are customarily described as Bald's Leechbook2 (a practice I shall follow in the present essay). The third book is a collection of medical recipes, of lesser scholarly import, entirely separate from and unrelated to Bald's Leechbook; it will not be discussed further here.

Oral literature research entered Old English literature through Albert Lord's 1949 dissertation, eleven years later to become The Singer of Tales, and Francis P. Magoun, Jr's ensuing essay, ‘The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry’.1 As I have pointed out elsewhere,2 these two scholars were not the first to identify and discuss the recurrent phrase or ‘formula’ in the poetry; German Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century had analysed the use of commonplaces of diction (or Parallelstellen) to try to determine authorship and to establish the text of various poems. What Lord and Magoun originated was the idea of an explicit and necessary connection between the formula, defined by Milman Parry as ‘a group of words regularly used under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’,3 and a poem's orality. Following the lead of Parry's ground-breaking analyses of Homeric epic and the Parry–Lord field work on South Slavic oral epic, they and scholars following them reasoned that the source of formulaic structure lay in a tradition of oral verse-making and that formulaic phraseology was a kind of poetic idiom fashioned over generations by bards responding to the continual pressure of composition in performance. Only if his mind were well stocked with phrases of metrical shape – if, in short, he had learned his poetic language well – could an oral poet fluently tell his tale in the form of traditional verse.

The Old English poem Andreas deserves a reading entirely on its own terms. For years we have been studying it in various distracting ways: as if it were a deliberate and feeble imitation of Beowulf (which it is not);1 or trying to attach it to the Cynewulfian canon;2 or taking it as a compendium of patristic lore (which hardly any Old English poems are);3 or we may see it as an example of an inherently inferior medieval genre, hagiographical romance; or (most often) as an embarrassing misapplication of the heroic style to the wrong subject. Clearly the poem invites us to make these classifications, but its own noteworthy achievements have been generally overlooked. We need a straightforward frontal attack by the critic: just what is this poem up to, line by line? The best guide in the process seems to me to be the Latin source, to which we have a fairly close approximation in the Recensio Casanatensis.4 Careful consultation of this source lets us see what forms the poet's imagination imposes on his given material and gives us the clearest idea of the kind of poet he is.

Part II provides a list of all conjectures and emendations accepted in at least one edition of Beowulf published from 1950 onwards. It thus adds to part I the readings which have been proposed since 1857. The list is intended as a survey only. No context is given for readings proposed by 1857, since that was done in part I, at pp. 253–74. For readings proposed since 1857 the immediate context is given where necessary, but it is assumed that an edition of Beowulf will be used in conjunction with the list. Following the main section, tables 1–8 indicate the origin of each reading, identified by its line number. Each table corresponds to one of the categories I–VIII used in part I and defined there at p. 250. Tables 9 and 10 and the figure accompanying table 10 present the statistics on which the conclusions stated in part I, at pp. 250–1, are based. Appendix I lists addenda and corrigenda to part I. Appendix II presents some conjectures or emendations which were proposed by 1857 but which have not found favour with any editor from 1950 onwards. The items concern places in the text where a majority of editors from 1950 onwards believe that there are defects.

This bibliography is meant to include all books, articles and significant reviews published in any branch of Anglo-Saxon studies during 1982. It excludes reprints unless they contain new material. It will be continued annually. The year of publication of a book or article is 1982 unless otherwise stated.