Introductory Comments

This 250-line text in rhyming couplets is extant in three manuscripts:

1. (G) London, Lambeth Palace, MS 223, fols 102v–105v;

2. (Hx2) London, British Library, MS Harley 2250, fols 81v–83r; and

3. (M) London, British Library, MS Egerton 2810, fols 170r–170v.

G and Hx2 contain the entire text (though line 126 has been omitted in G), and M contains only the final 46 lines (205–50), inserted over an erasure at the end of a verse life of St Silvester. Görlach notes that this inclusion is not unique in this manuscript, which has had leaves added after binding to accommodate new texts.

M is the earliest of the three manuscripts, dated to c. 1350–1400, though the St Elyn fragment is later, after 1450; G was produced c. 1400, and Hx2 at some time after 1477.

All three MSS are compilations of religious material. G and M contain exclusively items from the South English Legendary, whereas Hx2 contains, as well as verse hagiography (including St Erkenwald), the Stanzaic Life of Christ, and other religious texts in both prose and poetry.

G has been chosen as the base text as it is the earlier of the two complete versions of St Elyn. A full list of its contents is contained in James's Catalogue, and the manuscript is further described by Görlach, who dates it on the basis of Secretary influence on the handwriting to c. 1400; G was written by a single scribe, in a south-east Derby dialect.