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Notes on Some Interrelations between the Latin and English Texts of the Ancrene Riwle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In his notable article on the Ancrene Riwle, Macaulay made the first attempt to classify the English MSS on the basis of their readings.1He divided them into two groups: (1) BVP, which share a number of additions, and (2) CTNG, in which these additions do not occur or occur only by insertion in a different hand. The “additions” of B, as Macaulay himself notes, are so-called only with reference to the currently known text of N. But he evidently regards them as additions also with reference to the original text; for after discussing in detail inconsistencies between B and the other group of MSS in two of these passages, he adds (p. 151) :
Considering this, and also the unanimity with which the whole number of passages is rejected by the other thirteenth century manuscripts, so far as their original texts are concerned, I am disposed to think that they may be regarded as interpolations generally, and that we must assume that CTNG, though much inferior in general correctness of text to B, yet represent a more original form in this respect.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949
References
1 MLR, Ix (1914), 63 f., 145 f., 324 f., 463 f. The English MSS are discussed p. 145 f. For summaries see J. E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English (New Haven, 1916), p. 363, and R. W. Chambers, “Recent Research upon the ‘Ancren Riwle’”, RES, I (1925), 4.
2 Macaulay's identification and dating of the MSS are as follows: B (1st half of 13th c.) = Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402; V (latter part of 14th c.)=Vernon, Bodl. S.C. 3938; P (14th c.) = Pepys MS 2498, Madgalene College, Cambridge, printed by Joel Pâhlsson, The Recluse, A Fourteenth Century Version of The Ancren Riwle (Lund, 1911 and 1918); C (13th c.) = Cotton Cleopatra C. vi; T (1st half of 13th c.) = Cotton Titus D. XVIII; N (1st half of 13th c.) = Cotton Nero A. xiv, printed by James Morton, The Ancren Riwle, Camden Society, No. LVII (London, 1853); G (13th c. extracts) = Caius College, Cambridge, 234.
2a The Vitelljus French text is so called here and hereafter to distinguish it from the version in Trinity College Cambridge MS. 883 recently discovered by Hope E. Allen (see below, note 10) and in process of being edited for the EETS by Prof. W. H. Trethewey of the University of Toronto.
3 Sixteen of these are printed separately by Macaulay, p. 465 f., and three shorter passages are included in his list of variants as follows: p. 159 (198:9), p. 160 (200:27 and 206: 19).
4 Macaulay noted four of these. The recovery of portions of the burnt Latin text Cotton Vitellius E. vin extends the list definitely to ten.
5 Following Macaulay's system of reference the English text is identified by page and line of Morton's edition of MS. N. All quotations from the unprinted MSS. BVCTG have been checked with rotographs, for the use of which the writer is indebted to the MLA, the Library of Congress, and thé Williston Memorial Library of Mount Holyoke College. Quotations from MS. P are quoted by page and line from Pâhlsson's edition, for the loan of which the writer is grateful to Yale University. The quotations from MS. N have been checked with the original by Dr. Mabel Day, a service and a courtesy which the writer acknowledges with sincere thanks. Where the fragmentary Robattes MS. (R) is usable, it is quoted from Napier's print in JGP, II (1898–99), 199. Reference to the Latin text is by page and line of EETS 216 (London, 1944); to the V-French text, by page and line of EETS 219 (London, 1944).
6 The French text had dropped out a large section of material including the first five passages to be discussed. See J. A. Herbert's note 2, EETS 219, p. 136.
7 See Macaulay, p. 147, and a note by him quoted by M. S. Serjeantson, “The Index of the Vernon Manuscript”, MLR, xxxII (April, 1937), 259 f.
8 Strictly only three, since 206:19 occurs at a place where the V-French text has a large omission covering N. 166:10–208:10. See EETS 219, p. 136, n. 2, and Macaulay, p. 151.
9 On this addition, crucial for the history both of the text of the ^1 -i?. and of MS. B., see Hope E. Allen's early study in PMLA, xxxIII (1918), 492 f., and her article in Essays and Studies in Honor of Cartelon Brown (New York, 1940), p. 204 f.
10 A reading of this passage similar to that of MS. Tis found in the recently discovered French compilation from the Ancrene Riwle in Trinity Coll. Camb. MS. 883. The corresponding extracts are printed by Miss Allen in Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York, 1940), p. 211.
11 See Allen, p. 216, who uses the word with reference to the Latin text.
12 Anglia, xv (1893), 478–498.
13 Macaulay, pp. 70–78. Macaulay's case against the Latin is accepted by Joseph Hall, Selections from Early Middle English (Oxford, 1920), pt. n, p. 377; R. W. Chambers, “Recent Research upon the Ancren Riwle” RES, i (1925), 6; Allen, p. 214.
14 The writer has in hand a study of the quotations in the Latin text compared with other versions of the Ancrene Riwle which shows that the divergence between the versions in number and kind of quotation is not extensive.
15 EETS 216 p., xv f. For the text in question see p. 10, variant reading 1.22 and p. 36, variant reading 1.1.
16 That projector would prove to be the right reading was suggested by Hall, II, 384, note on 1. 64.
17 MS. T (f. 98, col. 1), MS. C (f. 185') of urn; MS. N (M. 398:29) ouervrn; MS. P (188: 24) ernynge. The passage is lost in MS. V and not included in MS. G. The V-French reads (292:25): de curre.
18 It is amusing to note that in the late Latin MS. R the phrase introducing the pun becomes “In gallico.” Whether the pun was included in the V-French text may be doubted. The line and a half lost at this point (Fr. 45:18) seems hardly sufficient space for the amount of subject matter.
19 For an early use of the quotation in Odo of Cheriton's fable of the wolf turned monk see J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances (London, 1910), in, 39. Carleton Brown, English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1932), p. xi, n. 2, suggests lyric rather than proverb origin for the quotation. For further references see B. J. Whiting's review of Brown's book in Speculum, ix (1934), 219.
20 Bramlette (p. 494) notes this fact. He was inclined to suspect the whole clause because of its shift in the symbolic representation of the sins from “animals” to “hags.” But the symbols in the Ancrene Riwle shift constantly. The only unorthodox point about this passage is the statement that mortal sinners, not the Devil himself, take the seven deadly sins to wife.
21 in page 1179 This passage is discussed by Bramlette, p. 497, by Macaulay, p. 69, by Dymes, Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, ix (1924), 32, by Chambers, p. 6. The occurrence of a variant version of these English verses in the 13th c. Seinte Marherete and their relation to the A.R. verses are discussed by the editor, F. M. Mack, EETS o.s. 193 (1934), p. 73 f. See also S.T.R.O. d'Ardenne, An Edition of pe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte luliene (Liége and Paris, 1936), p. xliv f., and H. E. Allen, p. 214, n. 34.