Title: Two Scribally Misunderstood Words in Old English Homilies:<i>tiber</i>and<i>færlet/ferlet</i>
Abstract: Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 On HomS 24 and its relation to Vercelli Homily I, see D. G. Scragg (ed.), The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS os 300 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 1–5; on the introduction see also Paul E. Szarmach, ‘The Earlier Homily: De Parasceve’, in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, 1986), pp. 381–99, at pp. 382–83.2 Scragg, Vercelli Homilies, 7.14. References to edited texts are made by page and line number where possible.3 Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth (Oxford, 1898), henceforth cited as Bosworth-Toller, s.v. timber.4 Scragg, Vercelli Homilies, p. 463 (s.v. ge-timber).5 Cf. Bosworth-Toller, s.v. tiber.6 Janet Bately (ed.), The Old English Orosius, EETS ss 6 (London, 1980), 32.3. The clause in which tibernessa occurs lacks a predicate; Bately assumes a textual loss in the archetype immediately following this word. As a noun tiberness is remarkable in itself, inasmuch as nouns with the suffix -ness are rarely denominal (Richard M. Hogg and R. D. Fulk, A Grammar of Old English. Volume 2: Morphology [Chichester, 2011], § 2.47(1)). Suspicion is invited by the context, where only a tenuous relation to the sense of tiber seems conceivable, and a noun meaning simply ‘calamity’ might rather be expected, as far as it may be judged from the transmitted text and the Latin original: cf. Bosworth-Toller, s.v. tiberness, where only the arbitrarily added ‘destruction’ in the proposed definition ‘sacrifice, destruction, immolation’ seems to suit the context; Bately’s glossary (p. 394) offers ‘destruction, sacrifice of life’.7 All quotations of poetry are from G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie (eds), The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 6 vols (New York, 1931–53).8 This translation assumes that sigortifre is instrumental, following Rosemary Woolf (ed.), Juliana (London, 1955), 32, but the proposed emendation sigortifr of P. J. Cosijn (‘Anglosaxonica IV’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 23 [1898], 109–30, at 124) seems plausible in light of the frequent use of tiber as the direct object of onsecgan.9 On on for ond, see e.g. Bately, Orosius, p. xlix.10 Richard M. Hogg, A Grammar of Old English. Volume 1: Phonology (Oxford, 1992), § 2.54 and note 3; Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), § 57.1 and note 2.11 See R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 60–4, 391–92. In addition to the instances quoted above, tiber also occurs in Genesis A 979a.12 In the instances quoted above, and in tifrum in the Metrical Psalms at 65.13.3a.13 David Porter (ed.), The Antwerp-London Glossaries: The Latin and Latin-Old English Vocabularies from Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2 – London, British Library Add. 32246. Volume I: Texts and Indices (Toronto, 2011), p. 69 (gloss 842 in the ‘bilingual class glossary’).14 Philip G. Rusche, ‘The Cleopatra Glossaries: An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and their Sources’, unpublished doctoral thesis (Yale University, 1996), p. 314 (gloss H 70).15 Dictionary of Old English: A to G online, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. (Toronto, 2007), henceforth cited as DOE, s.v. fyrd-tīber.16 hostiae apud ueteres dicebantur sacrificia quae fiebant antequam ad hostem pergerent (‘hostiae is what the ancients called sacrifices that were made before they went against the foe’), from Etymologiae 6.19.33, as cited in the DOE and Rusche, ‘Glossaries’, p. 650.17 Wolfgang Kittlick, Die Glossen der Hs. British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A. III: Phonologie, Morphologie, Wortgeographie (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), pp. 231–34.18 Rusche, ‘Glossaries’, pp. 127–34.19 On the date, see Rusche, ‘Glossaries’, pp. 3–4.20 Rusche, ‘Glossaries’, p. 650.21 Hogg, Phonology, § 2.54 and note 3; see Campbell, Grammar, § 461, note 3, on weobud and late West Saxon weofod.22 Samantha Zacher, ‘The Source of Vercelli VII: An Address to Women’, in New Readings in the Vercelli Book, ed. Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard (Toronto, 2009), pp. 98–149; see pp. 104–9 for textual criticism made possible by the discovery of the source.23 Scragg, Vercelli Homilies, 134.14.24 Cf. DOE, s.v. for-lǣtan, sense 24.25 Max Förster (ed.), Die Vercelli-Homilien: I.–VIII. Homilie (Hamburg, 1932; reprinted Darmstadt, 1964), p. 138, note 6; Alistair Campbell, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth: Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda (Oxford, 1972), s.v. forlǣte; Scragg, Vercelli Homilies, 430; DOE, s.v. for-lǣte.26 Zacher, ‘Source’, p. 130.27 DOE, s.v. færeld, færelt, senses 1.a and 1.c.28 Arthur S. Napier (ed.), Old English Glosses (Oxford, 1900), p. 43 (no. 1.1602); Louis Goossens (ed.), The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm’s De laudibus virginitatis) (Brussels, 1974), p. 251 (no. 1606).29 As instances in the Pastoral Care, Soliloquies, the Old English Orosius, the Junius Psalter, and the Cleopatra Glossaries indicate (cf. citations from these texts in the DOE, s.v. færeld, færelt under senses 1.a, 1.c.ii, 1.d, 4.a, and 5); cf. Hogg, Phonology, § 7.65.30 Sherman M. Kuhn (ed.), The Vespasian Psalter (Ann Arbor, 1965), p. 142.31 R. I. Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon Scratched Glosses in a Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript’, Otium et Negotium: Studies in Onomatology and Library Science presented to Olof von Feilitzen, ed. F. Sandgren (Stockholm, 1973), pp. 209–15, at p. 211 (fourth gloss recorded from fol. 64v).32 Franz Wenisch, Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut in den nordhumbrischen Interlinearglossierungen des Lukasevangeliums (Heidelberg, 1979), p. 327; see ‘VH VII’ in the index at p. 351 for references to the specific Anglian lexical items noted by Wenisch.33 Cf. T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth: Supplement (Oxford, 1921), s.v. wiþer-dúne.34 These glosses are collected in Herbert Dean Meritt (ed.), Old English Glosses (A Collection) (New York, 1945), as no. 4 (pp. 6–14); see gloss no. 89 for wiþerdynum. While they exhibit a number of likely Kentish spellings (cf. Meritt, ‘Old English Scratched Glosses in Cotton MS. Tiberius C. ii’, American Journal of Philology 54 (1933), 305–22, at 307 and note 9), e.g. orlete (18) for orhlyte, myðels (124) for mæðles ‘speech’, wyod (190) for weod, and ðem (201), the glosses may represent a mixture of dialects or have been adapted from Anglian sources: Sherman M. Kuhn, enumerating various Mercian linguistic phenomena, considered the glosses ‘predominantly Mercian’ (‘From Canterbury to Lichfield’, Speculum 23 [1948], 591–629, at 617–19), while Franz Wenisch posited an Anglian origin (for his ‘OEGC 4’; see Wortgut, pp. 183, 327).35 W. W. Skeat (ed.), The Gospel According to Saint Matthew in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions (Cambridge, 1887), p. 63; Hans Hecht (ed.), Bischof Wærferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregor des Grossen (Leipzig and Hamburg, 1900–7; reprinted as 1 vol. Darmstadt, 1965), 322.20.36 In verse: Guthlac A 622b, 792b; Phoenix 643b; Precepts 30b; Judith 11a; Metrical Psalms 144.19.4b. Most of the remaining instances occur in Wærferth; beside those in the text of Hecht, Übersetzung, at 5.13, 184.28, 186.26, and 346.33, MS O, which often uniquely preserves Anglian forms, has instances at 109.30 and 205.1. Otherwise ræfn(i)an is found in the partial translation of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis (R. D-N. Warner [ed.], Early English Homilies from the Twelfth Century MS. Vesp. D. XIV, EETS os 152 [London, 1917], 97.13), of Anglian origin (Hans Schabram, Superbia: Studien zum altenglischen Wortschatz. Teil I: Die dialektale und zeitliche Verbreitung des Wortguts [Munich, 1965], pp. 68–73); the ‘dl’ group of Aldhelm glosses in the First Cleopatra Glossary (Rusche, ‘Glossaries’, p. 400 [gloss P 90]), judged by Wolfgang Kittlick to be of Anglian origin (Glossen, pp. 222–27); and in the Salisbury Psalter gloss at Psalm 105.13 (Celia and Kenneth Sisam [eds], The Salisbury Psalter, EETS os 242 [London, 1959], p. 226).37 Hogg, Phonology, § 2.82; Campbell, Grammar, p. 31, note 2.38 Cf. Wenisch, Wortgut, p. 257, note 1150.39 Most of the glosses are edited in Meritt, Glosses, pp. 29–38, to which Page, ‘Scratched Glosses’, offers supplementary and corrected readings.40 See M. B. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography of the Parker Manuscript of the Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius, and Historiography at Winchester in the Late Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976), 149–71; cf. R. I. Page, ‘The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England [2]: The Evidence of English Glosses’, in Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain, ed. Nicholas Brooks (Leicester, 1982), pp. 141–65, at p. 154.41 Some clear instances (forms are cited by gloss number in Meritt, Glosses, or folio number in Page, ‘Scratched Glosses’): ielde (27) and geieldum (108), with ie for the i-mutation of West Germanic ă before l plus consonant (Hogg, Phonology, § 5.82; Campbell, Grammar, § 200.1); gemenifealdre (406), with ea by breaking (Hogg, Phonology, § 5.15; Campbell, Grammar, § 143); þu[f]bæran (94), having the West Saxon suffix -bǣre rather than Anglian -berende (see Bogislav von Lindheim, ‘Das Suffix -bære im Altenglischen’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 208 [1972], 310–20); and West Saxon cucu (398) rather than Anglian cwic (Hogg and Fulk, Morphology, § 4.6, note 1).42 Some notable non-West-Saxon features include e before a liquid plus consonant for the i-mutation of West Germanic ă, (Hogg, Phonology, §§ 5.82, 5.79.2a; Campbell, Grammar, §§ 193.a, 200.1–2), e.g. erfes (24), gecerrende (fol. 65r), eldran (168), and eldende (282); ē rather than ǣ for West Germanic ā (Hogg, Phonology, §§ 3.24–5, 5.191; Campbell, Grammar, § 128), e.g. þurredenne (23), merthu (41), and mere ‘renowned’ (169); and -ad- rather than -od- in the past tense and passive participle forms of weak class II verbs (Hogg and Fulk, Morphology, § 6.113; Campbell, Grammar, § 757), e.g. gemedamad (36), gelacnade (228), and geðreatadan (343).43 Thus e often appears for West Germanic ă, as in Kentish and West Mercian (Hogg, Phonology, §§ 5.88, 90, 189; Campbell, Grammar, §§ 164, 168, 288), e.g. in þet (245, 252), smele (248), and creft (307). īo appears for earlier ēo in several instances, a phenomenon likely in late texts to be Kentish (cf. Hogg, Phonology, §§ 5.155–60; Campbell, Grammar, §§ 293–7): wiopan (185: presumably intended as a preterite plural form, although glossing present indicative deflemus), watr̄siocn̄s (424), and sioce (fol. 69v). The ernn that glosses priscum (330) seems to be an error for a form of ǣrra having ē for the i-mutation of Germanic ai, and therefore likely to be Kentish (Hogg, Phonology, §§ 5.188 and 5.79, note 1; Campbell, Grammar, §§ 288, 292).44 Wenisch, Wortgut, p. 163 (on ‘OEGC 28’).45 See Robert J. Menner, ‘The Anglian Vocabulary of the Blickling Homilies’, in Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies, ed. Thomas A. Kirby and Henry B. Woolf (Baltimore, 1949), pp. 56–64, at pp. 58–9 and 61.46 Hogg, Phonology, § 5.15; Campbell, Grammar, § 143. ea by breaking before l plus consonant is predominant in the Kentish Glosses; see Ursula Kalbhen, Kentische Glossen und kentischer Dialekt im Altenglischen: Mit einer kommentierten Edition der altenglischen Glossen in der Handschrift London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), pp. 260–1.47 Hogg, Phonology, § 5.22; Campbell, Grammar, § 146. e, never eo, is written in forms of self in the Kentish Glosses (Kalbhen, Glossen, nos 52, 650) and the Kentish Psalm (18b, 25a, 28b, 43b, etc.), although two ninth-century charters from Canterbury attest single instances of siolf(-) (cf. Hogg, Phonology, § 5.160) and one of seolfa (no. 3 in A. J. Robertson [ed.], Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2nd ed. [Cambridge, 1956], at 4.22).48 Hogg and Fulk, Morphology, § 6.127, where instances of lifg- in early charters from Kent and the Kentish Psalm are also noted; Campbell, Grammar, § 762.49 See the fourth gloss in Meritt’s no. 31 in Glosses, p. 42.50 Hogg, Phonology, § 7.13.51 Cf. R. Vleeskruyer (ed.), The Life of St. Chad: An Old English Homily (Amsterdam, 1953), p. 120.52 W. M. Lindsay (ed.), The Corpus Glossary (Cambridge, 1921), p. 174 (gloss T 85). Sherman Kuhn notably argued that the language of the Corpus Glossary was similar to that of the Vespasian Psalter gloss in ‘The Dialect of the Corpus Glossary’, PMLA 54 (1939), 1–19; in any case the Corpus Glossary exhibits, though to a lesser degree, the second fronting and æ-raising that characterize the Vespasian Psalter gloss (Hogg, Phonology, § 5.90; Campbell, Grammar, §§ 168, 207).53 A. B. Kuypers (ed.), The Prayer Book of Aedeluald the Bishop Commonly Called the Book of Cerne (Cambridge, 1902), 88.3. On the Mercian dialect of this stratum of glosses, see Kuhn (who proposed Lichfield for the manuscript’s origin) in ‘Canterbury to Lichfield’, 619–27; cf. Campbell, Grammar, § 12, and Hogg, Phonology, § 1.8. An origin for the Book of Cerne in western or central Mercia has been favoured by Michelle P. Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England (London, 1996), pp. 178–81 (for a summary of earlier views, see pp. 20–4).54 On possibly Kentish elements in the gloss, see C. J. E. Ball, ‘The Language of the Vespasian Psalter Gloss: Two Caveats’, The Review of English Studies 21 (1970), 462–5.55 Scragg, Vercelli Homilies, pp. lxx–lxxi.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-12-01
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