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Some Arthurian Fragments from Fourteenth Century Chronicles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Huntington Fletcher
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Extract

The Chronicle of the Monastery of Hales (in Gloucestershire) occupies the first fifty-six folios of ms. Cotton Cleopatra D. iii, a manuscript written in or soon after the year 1301, with which it originally ended. As is the case with scores of other Latin Chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, its first part, the “Gesta Britonum,” consists essentially of a condensation of Geoffry of Monmouth's Historia, with a few divergences. It has no notable feature before the reign of Arthur.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , 1903 , pp. 84 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1903

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References

Note 1 in page 84 Cf. Hardy, Des. Cat. of Materials, iii, 352, No. 580.

Note 2 in page 84 This is on the authority of H. A. Herbert, Esq., of the Department of mss., British Museum, who has kindly aided me in deciphering the passage.

Note 3 in page 84 It contains certain preliminary material; is confused in the story of the eponymous Brutus; agrees verbally with the chronicle ascribed to Peter Ickham (ms. Cott. Calig. A. x. 1, etc. See Did. Nat'l Biog., xxviii, 411) in a concluding sentence, foreign to Geoffrey's narrative, about Brenius, fol. 3 b (Calig. A. x. fol. 12 a); inserts a description of Ireland, fol. 3 b; and calls Hoel the son, instead of the nephew, of Loth and Anna, fol. 7 a. (Cf. Geoffrey viii. 21, and ix. 2.)

Note 4 in page 84 Fols. 7 b-8 a.

Note 5 in page 84 Section 56.

Note 6 in page 84 Ms. Cott. Calig. A. x. fol. 20 a.

Note 1 in page 85 Gesta Reg. iii, 287, ed. Stubbs, Rolls Ser., ii, 342.

Note 2 in page 85 Published in Chrons. of Stephen, etc., ed. Howlett, Rolls Ser., vol. iv, p. 74.

Note 3 in page 85 It is probable that this almost inevitable elaboration of Geoffrey's narrative (xi. 2) originated with Henry. Other chronicles and romances which include it, some of them drawing certainly from Henry, though without actually quoting his words, are: Brut Tysilio, San Marte's trans. in his ed. of “Gottfried v. Monmouth,” p. 567; Benedict of Gloucester in his Life of St. Dubricius, ed. Wharton, Angl. Sac. ii, 656 ff.; Robert of Gloucester, ed. W. A. Wright, Rolls Ser., vol. i, lines 4574–9; Langtoft, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Ser., vol. i, p. 222; the “Polistorie del Eglise de Christ de Caunterbyre” (see below), fol. 27 a; the very composite fourteenth century chronicle of ms. Cott. Cleop. A. i. 1, fol. 49 a (cf. Hardy, Des. Gat. iii, 258, No. 466); Hardyng, ed. Ellis, 1812, p. 146; the chronicle of ms. Coll. Magdalen, Oxford, 72, No. 1 (cf. Hardy, Des. Cat. ii, 472, No. 620), p. 48; Wavrin, Recueil, ed. W. Hardy, Rolls Ser., i, 445; the prose Lancelot, see P. Paris' very brief summary, Romans de la Table Ronde, v, 350; the Thornton Morte Arthur, ed. Perry, 1865, and again, Brock, 1871, E. E. T. S., lines 4228 ff.; the Morte Arthur of Harl. ms. 2252, ed. Furnivall, 1864, lines 3389 ff.; Malory, xxi, 4 (here resembling the Harl. Morte Arthur. See Sommer, Morte Darthur, iii, 269); the Dutch metrical Roman van Lancelot, ed. W. Jonckbloet, p. 267, lines 11885–11916; Ulrich Füeterer (von Zatzikhoven) Prosaroman von Lanzelot, ed. Peter, pp. 356–7. The Magdalen Coll. ms. version and all the others here named after it, except the last, are like the prose Lancelot, and unlike Henry of Huntingdon, in that they represent Arthur as piercing (not hewing down) Modred, and Modred as giving Arthur his fatal wound. In all except the Thornton ms., the piercing is with a spear, there with a sword.

Note 4 in page 85 xi, 2.

Note 5 in page 85 Beginning about the middle of fol. 7 b.

Note 1 in page 88 Lines 28587–28651, ed. Madden.

Note 2 in page 88 Obviously no notice need be taken in this connection of Geoffrey's Vita Merlini, ed. Michel and Wright, 1837, p. 37; nor of the Draco Normannicus, ed. Howlett in Chrons. of Reigns of Stephen, etc., Rolls Ser., vol. ii, p. 703.

Note 3 in page 88 Wavrin also mentions his confession.

Note 1 in page 89 Helgakvia I, Hildebrand's Altere Edda, p. 150. Cf. Bugge, trans. by Schofield, The Home of the Eddic Poems, 1899, pp. 72 and 79–87.

Note 2 in page 89 De Prin. Instruct., Rolls ed. of Giraldus, vol. viii, ed. G. F. Warren, pp. 126–9, and Spec. Eccles. ii, 9, vol. iv, ed. J. S. Brewer, pp. 47–51.

Note 3 in page 89 Ed. Jos. Stevenson, Rolls Ser., p. 203.

Note 4 in page 89 It has been described by G. Paris, Hist. lit. de la France, xxviii, 480–486. See also Hardy, Des. Cat. iii, 350, no. 576. The ms. is Harl. 636.

Note 5 in page 89 Fols. 21 ff. Geof. ix, 14 ff.

Note 1 in page 90 Fol. 26 b.

Note 2 in page 90 Fol. 24a2.

Note 3 in page 90 Lines 12262–79, ed. de Lincy.

Note 4 in page 90 The following lines are not written as poetry. The words here italicized have been corrected by a scribe (perhaps the original one) who made many changes in the manuscript.

Note 5 in page 90 The l here was originally b.

Note 6 in page 90 Query, for deyt porter ? There is a mark under the de which seems to belong to the next line.

Note 7 in page 90 Line 21133.

Note 8 in page 90 Line 23784.

Note 1 in page 91 Paul u. Brauue's Beiträge, 1876, iii, 524–555.

Note 2 in page 91 pp. 541–2.

Note 3 in page 91 I have examined carefully only that part of the story included between the accession of Constantine, Arthur's grandfather, and the disappearance of Arthur.

Note 1 in page 92 Gr., vi, 17. 15 (references to book, chapter, and line of San Marte's ed.); W., 7549; L., 15556.

Note 2 in page 92 G., vi, 18. 11; W., 7607; L., 15702–12.

Note 3 in page 92 G., viii, 10. 5 ff.; W., 8207 ff.; L., 16989 ff.

Note 4 in page 92 G., lines 11–14; W., 8217–20; L., 17017–18.

Note 5 in page 92 G., viii, 20. 4; W., 8980; L., 19136–7. But the printed text of Wace reads:

Et li quens fort se desfendi,

Mais au desfendre fu ocis;

and corruption of descendre into desfendre would be very easy.

Note 6 in page 92 G., ix, 4. 29; W., 9580 ff.; L., 21368. Madden was certainly right in suggesting that the names of Arthur's shield and spear, Pridwen and Ron, which appear at this point in Geoffrey and Layamon, but not in the printed text of Wace, were really included by the latter. They occur in two mss. of his works that I have examined, Cott. Vitell., A, x, fol. 81 b 1, and Harl. 6508. Also the printed text of Wace does not call Iny, Cadwalader's nephew, as do Geoffrey and Layamon (G., xii, 18.7; W., 15254: L., 32139); but the statement appears in ms. Vitell., A., x, fol. 115 b 1.

Note 1 in page 93 7733–4.

Note 2 in page 93 G., vii, 3. 20; W., 13691–2.

Note 3 in page 93 15227–9.

Note 4 in page 93 p. 543.

Note 5 in page 93 I expect soon to call attention elsewhere to facts which lend some support to the doubt.

Note 6 in page 93 As Wülker pointed out for those which he mentioned.

Note 1 in page 94 32178–81.

Note 2 in page 94 32090–93.

Note 3 in page 94 18847 ff.

Note 4 in page 94 23027 ff.

Note 5 in page 94 28632.

Note 6 in page 94 28648–51. A text reads erroneously, “Anglen.”