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The Manuscripts

The Old English dialogues of Solomon and Saturn edited here survive in two manuscripts. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422, Part A (A) contains a dialogue between Solomon and Saturn on the Pater Noster in verse (SolSatI) and prose (SolSatPNPr), followed by a poetical dialogue on a range of subjects (SolSatII); at the head of p. 13 is a fragment of verse (SolSatFrag). Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41 (B) contains the first 95 lines of SolSatI. In A SolSatI begins on the badly damaged and mostly unreadable p. 1, continuing to p. 6, line 12, where without change of manuscript format, the dialogue continues in prose; this proceeds as far as the bottom of p. 12, where it terminates abruptly owing to the loss of a leaf. On the top of p. 13 (recto of the last leaf of the first quire) are seven lines of text in verse (nine edited lines), which are clearly the conclusion of a dialogue, though whether these were originally designed to conclude SolSatI or SolSatII has proved a subject of debate. Following these lines on p. 13 a second verse dialogue begins, continuing to p. 26, where it ends incomplete. In B the first part of SolSatI (as far as line 94a) is found written in the margins of pp. 196–8 of the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica.

A (CCCC 422; Part A)

CCCC 422 (Ker, no. 70; Gneuss nos. 110, 111) is comprised of two distinct parts. The larger of these is Part B, a missal; its calendar dates this part to c.1060. The two quires containing the dialogues making up Part A are in a unique hand, and apparently were used by a medieval binder as flyleaves for the missal. These leaves are now bound together at the front of CCCC 422, and their Parkerian pagination, pp. 1–26, points to rearrangement in the sixteenth century. The leaves of Part A are difficult to read in places, owing to rubbing and the application of reagents. Page 1, which was long an outside page, is barely legible, though Page’s examination of the leaf under ultraviolet light has confirmed that those parts of the text which can be seen substantially agree with B.