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Anglicized word order in Old English continuous interlinear glosses in British Library, Royal 2. A. XX

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Joseph Crowley
Affiliation:
Auburn University Montgomery

Extract

The Old English interlinear glosses in the prayerbook London, British Library, Royal 2. A. XX frequently render certain Latin verb phrases and noun phrases into Old English with English word order rather than Latin, in contrast to almost all other surviving Old English interlinear glosses of the same prayers. Investigation of the occurrences of similar syntactic tendencies in all other Old English continuous interlinear glosses (the thirteen Old English interlinear glosses to the psalms, the eleven glosses to canticles of the psalter, the two interlinear glosses to the gospels and the thirty other numbered entries under ‘continuous interlinear glosses’ in Angus Cameron's ‘A List of Old English Texts’) reveals that such anglicization is restricted to relatively few texts from various centuries and places. Analysis of the features and conditions of these few witnesses reveals that neither scribal education, region, century nor other particular of situation is a factor common to all witnesses. The scribe of the Old English glosses in Royal 2. A. XX appears to have had deficiencies in Old English grammar, yet confidence in Old English phrasings of the prayers. His gloss was probably not made for students learning Latin grammar; it was more likely intended simply to help laypeople or less-than-well-educated religious persons to understand the Latin prayers. The context is clearer when we consider the Latin prayers in the margins (and a few interlinear glosses in Greek) that were added by the same hand.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 In A Plan for The Dictionary of Old English, ed. Frank, R. and Cameron, A. (Toronto, 1973), pp. 25306, at 224–30.Google Scholar

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13 The regular position of a possessive pronoun is before the headword (Mitchell, , Old English Syntax, § 294Google Scholar; Brown, , A Syntax, pp. 4050).Google Scholar

14 Types 3, 4 and 5 of these anglicizations in RoyGl are the sorts of grammatical adjustment in translation, ‘at the level of the Noun Phrase’, that E. Wiesenekker neatly describes as ‘rearrangement of elements from Latin {Head + Modifier} to Old English {Modifier + Head}, the modifier being either a possessive pronoun, a noun genitive, sometimes an adjective’. Wiesenekker finds these adjustments marginally employed in the Vespasian and Regius glosses, but ‘Very frequently used in Lambeth’, which this study also finds to be the case. Wiesenekker, E., ‘Word be Worde;Andgit of Andgite’: Translation Performance in the Old English Interlinear Glosses to the Vespasian, Regius, and Lambeth Psalters (Huizen, 1991), p. 45.Google Scholar

15 The placement here of the elements of the Old English phrase over the elements of the Latin they gloss should not be taken to represent exactly the locations in the manuscript, but where the Old English elements are not placed squarely over the Latin, they approximately reflect the manuscript situation.

16 This is the word order of glosses in psalters E and I.

17 bodum, rather than bondum, is the manuscript form.

18 This is the word order of glosses in psalters K and L.

19 These gloss forms in the manuscript, gefyð hio, do not make sense, but look most like a noun + possessive. The form gefyð occurs nowhere else in Old English (according to A Microfiche Concordance to Old English), ed. Venezky, R. L. and Healey, A. di Paolo (Toronto, 1980).Google Scholar

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26 Based on slight differences in letter form/size and word alignment, the second witgena (302) might possibly have been written at a different time from the first; the preceding his (300) and witgna (302) might possibly have been squeezed in after the neighbouring words, but not necessarily.

27 I have not noticed this sort of repetition occurring much in other interlinear glosses. Some examples, however, are found in the gloss to the Regula S. Benedicti in Cotton Tiberius A. iii, such as the following: The Rule of St. Benet. Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear Version, ed. Logeman, H., EETS os 90 (London, 1888): p. 23Google Scholar, line 5: se for[ma] witodlice eadmodnes se forma stæpe ans PRIMUS ITAQUE HUMILITATIS GRADUS EST

p. 48, line 2: is to recanne is; p. 54, line 2: godes bebodum godes RECITANDA EST MANDATA DEI.

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37 Though Farman here does not change the word order, he does shift the genitive inflection to the firstword.

37 sic MS (Skeat, , The Four Gospels, pp. 47 and 248).Google Scholar

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40 Cambridge, Pembroke College 312 C + Haarlem, Stadbibliotheek, 188 F 53 + Sondershausen, Schlossmuseum, Br. 1 consist of fragments from a Psalterium Gallicanum, s. ximed, from Ps. VI–VII, LXXIII, LXXIV, LXXVII and CXIX–CXXII; printed editions are Dietz, K., ‘Die ae. Psalterglossen der Cambridger Pembroke College 312’, Anglia 86 (1968), 273–9Google Scholar; Derolez, R., ‘A New Psalter Fragment with O.E. Glosses’, ES 53 (1972), 401–8Google Scholar; and Gneuss, H., ‘A Newly-found Fragment of an Anglo-Saxon Psalter’, ASE 21 (1998), 273–87.Google Scholar London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C. vi (Old Minster, Winchester, s. ximed) consists of Ps. I-CXIII; The Tiberius Psalter, ed. Campbell, A. P. (Ottawa, 1974).Google Scholar Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27 (?Winchester, s. x1) consists of Ps. II.4 to CXLIV.6; Der altenglische Junias-Psalter, ed. Brenner, E., Anglistische Forschungen 23 (Heidelberg, 1908).Google Scholar

41 See above, n. 23.

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55 I count each edition as one text, with the exception that the following pairs each count as one text: Napier 1889 and 1900, Holthausen 1941 and Campbell 1963, Zupitza 1877 and 1878. Thompson, A. H. and Lindelöf's, U. edition of Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (Durham, 1927) is counted here as one text though it includes three different kinds of texts listed separately by Cameron: ‘commonplaces’, hymns and the Ritual proper.Google Scholar

Some of the gloss texts examined do not provide very pertinent evidence. The two Lorica glosses are poetry, which often does not conform to the word order patterns of language in full-sentenced conversation or prose, and, furthermore, the poems mostly list body parts to be covered by Christ's protection. The glosses to Prosper are largely glosses to single words; of the four or five phrases, only one is pertinent (on sceortam gedeorfe = LABORE BREUI). The glosses to the Durham proverbs sometimes depart from the Latin in the order of elements that are not pertinent to this study, and even the very few pertinent anglicizations perhaps should be considered as required in the rendering of brief proverbs, e.g. no. 5:

Beforan his freonde biddeþ se þe his wædle mæneþ

POSTULET CORAM AMICO QUIPENURIAM SUAM PREDICAT.

The glosses to Proverbs and Alcuin are not part of continuous glosses, but gloss individual words and phrases.

56 The Durham Proverbs, ed. Arngart, O. (Lund, 1956).Google Scholar

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59 Zupitza, J., ‘Kentische Glossen des neunten Jahrhunderts’, ed. Zupitza, J., ZDA 21 (1877), 159Google Scholar; idem, Zu den kentischen Glossen ZS. 21,1 ff’, ZDA 22 (1878), 223–6Google Scholar; Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. Wright, T., 2nd ed. by Wülcker, R. P. (London, 1884), cols. 55–88.Google Scholar

60 The Rule of St. Benet ed. Logeman, H., EETS 90 (London, 1888).Google Scholar

61 The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church: a Study and Edition of the ‘Durham Hymnal’, ed. Milfull, I., CSASE 17 (Cambridge, 1996).Google Scholar

61 Catalogue, p. 343.

61 See above, p. 139.

64 Förster, , ‘Die altenglischen Beigaben’, p. 329Google Scholar; O'Neill, , ‘Latin Learning’, p. 145.Google Scholar

65 Such atypical (non-classical) word order in Latin phrases of the sorts we are examining occurs frequendy in some other eleventh-century texts whose glosses we have considered: Abbo of Saint-Germain, Bella Parisiacae urbir, BL Harley 3271, 115v–118 and Oxford, St John's College 154, fols. 221–2; Epitome of Benedict of Aniane, Prognostics and Regularis Concordia: Tiberius A. iii, fols. 164—8, 32v–35v and 3r–27v; Hymns edited by Gneuss, H. (1965): Julius A. vi. and Vespasian D. xii.Google Scholar

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69 Religion and Literature, p.281.

70 See Mitchell, , Old English Syntax, æ 158.Google Scholar

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72 Ibid. p. 240.

73 The Rule of St Benet, ed. Logeman, , pp. xxxix–xli.Google Scholar

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80 The hand referred to is the main hand. Thirty-five Latin prayers were added in the margins of the Royal prayerbook. Although Warner, G. and Gilson, J., in their Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and Kings Collections, 4 vols. (London, 1921) II, 35—6Google Scholar, noted three or four other hands of Latin marginalia, in addition to the hand of the vast majority of those prayers, which hand they assigned to the tenth century, my analysis and that of Michelle P. Brown, Curator of Manuscripts, the British Library (correspondence, 11 1994) find only two hands distinct from the main hand: one of both the corrupt prayer in the bottom margin of 26v and the agnus dei on the slip fol. 29*, and the other of the two prayers on 37v and 38v. The latter parts of the Greek interlinear glosses on 18v and 28r may well be by the same hand as the prayers added on 26v and 29*.Google Scholar

81 Catalogue, no. 248.

82 Professors Susan Keefe, Sarah Keefer and Mary Richards, whom I first consulted about these two scripts, agreed that they could well be by the same hand. This identity has recendy been confirmed by David, Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 77, n. 350Google Scholar, by A. N. Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Facsimile, I 52 and by Michelle P. Brown (correspondence, Nov. 1994). Warner and Gilson in 1921 examined the Latin hand and Ker in 1957 examined the Old English, but neither compared the Latin, Greek and Old English hands or discussed the issue of identity. Nor did A. Corrêa in her edition of the Latin prayers in the margins of Royal 2. A. XX: ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts’.

83 ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts’, p. 289.Google Scholar

84 Letter (14 02 1994) from Professor Keefe, of Duke University Divinity School.Google Scholar

85 See above, p. 124.

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90 Correspondence, 11. 1994.Google Scholar

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92 See above, p. 149.

93 Liturgy, p. 102, n. 33.

94 ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts’, pp. 291 and 307.

95 See Nightingale, J., ‘Oswald, Fleury and the Continental Reform’, St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks, and Cubitt, , pp. 2345.Google Scholar

96 See, for example, Ker, Catalogue, pp. xxvi–xxvii; The Benedictine Office: an Old English Text, ed. Ure, J. (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 60Google Scholar; Keefer, S. L., Psalm-Poem and Psalter-Glosses: the Latin and Old English Psalter-Text Background to ‘Kentish Psalm 50’ (New York, 1991), pp. 22–4.Google Scholar

97 I wish to thank Helmut Gneuss for years ago first suggesting work with the glosses in Royal 2. A. XX, the late Ashley Crandall Amos for later encouraging my getting started, the National Endowment for the Humanities' Summer Seminars for College Teachers programme for the opportunity to gather sources in the Harvard University Library, Auburn University Montgomery for granting leave with pay to work on this project, Mary P. Richards, Sarah Keefer and Michelle P. Brown for helping with questions about the tenth-century Old English and Latin gloss scripts, Susan Keefe for help with the Latin marginal prayers and Daniel Donoghue, Michael Lapidge and, especially, Phillip Pulsiano for giving encouragement, information and many valuable suggestions for the improvement of this article in the later stages of the project.