Part 23 (1/2)

[328] The Psalter was translated into English, in verse, in the second half of the thirteenth century: ”Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter,”

Surtees Society, 1843-7, 8vo; then in prose with a full commentary by Richard Rolle, of Hampole (on whom see below, p. 216): ”The Psalter or the Psalms of David,” ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884, 8vo; again in prose, towards 1327, by an anonym, who has been wrongly believed to be William de Sh.o.r.eham, a monk of Leeds priory: ”The earliest English prose Psalter, together with eleven Canticles,” ed. Bulbring, E.E.T.S., 1891.

The seven penitential psalms were translated in verse in the second half of the fourteenth century by Richard of Maidstone; one is in Horstmann and Furnivall: ”Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.,” p. 12.

[329] ”The Story of Genesis and Exodus, an early English Song,” ab.

1250, ed. R. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1865; shortly before that date a translation in French prose of the whole of the Bible had been completed.

[330] See, _e.g._, ”The early South-English Legendary or lives of Saints; I., MS. Laud, 108, in the Bodleian Library,” ed. C. Horstmann, Early English Text Society, 1887, 8vo.--Furnivall, ”Early English Poems and Lives of Saints,” Berlin, Philological Society, 1862, 8vo.--”Materials for the history of Thomas Becket,” ed. Robertson, Rolls, 1875 ff., 7 vols. 8vo.--Several separate Lives of Saints have been published by the E.E.T.S.

[331] Horstmann, ”The early South-English Legendary,” p. vii. The same intends to publish other texts, and to clear the main problems connected with them; ”but it will,” he says, ”require more brains, the brains of several generations to come, before every question relative to this collection can be cleared.” _Ibid._

[332] The latter is the MS. Laud 108 in the Bodleian, edited by Horstmann; the other is the Harleian MS. 2277 in the British Museum; specimens of its contents have been given by Furnivall in his ”Early English poems” (_ut supra_).

[333] From MS. Harl. 2277, in Furnivall's ”Early English poems,” 1862, p. 34.

[334]

In the faireste lond huy weren that evere mighte beo.

So cler and so light it was that joye thare was i-nogh; Treon thare weren fulle of fruyt wel thicke ever-ech bough ...

Hit was evere-more day: heom thoughte, and never-more nyght.

Life of St. Brendan who ”was here of oure londe,” in Horstmann's ”South-English Legendary,” p. 220. See also ”St. Brandan, a mediaeval Legend of the Sea,” ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1844; Francisque Michel, ”Les Voyages Merveilleux de St. Brandan a la recherche du Paradis terrestre, legende en vers du XIIe. Siecle,” Paris, 1878; _cf._ ”Navigation de la barque de Mael Duin,” in d'Arbois de Jubainville's ”L'Epopee Celtique en Irlande,” 1892, pp. 449 ff. (above p. 12).

[335] Renan, ”Essais de morale et de critique,” Paris, 1867, 3rd edition, p. 446.

[336] By Thomas de Hales, ”Incipit quidam cantus quem composuit frater Thomas de Hales.” Thomas was a friend of Adam de Marisco and lived in the thirteenth century. ”Old English Miscellany,” ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872, p. 94.

[337] The ”Ancren Riwle,” edited and translated by J. Morton, London, Camden Society, 1853, 4to, thirteenth century. Five MSS. have been preserved, four in English and one in Latin, abbreviated from the English (_cf._ Bramlette's article in ”Anglia,” vol. xv. p. 478). A MS.

in French: ”La Reule des femmes religieuses et recluses,” disappeared in the fire of the Cottonian Library. The ladies for whom this book was written lived at Tarrant Kaines, in Dorset, where a convent for monks had been founded by Ralph de Kaines, son of one of the companions of the Conqueror. It is not impossible that the original text was the French one; French fragments subsist in the English version. The anonymous author had taken much trouble about this work. ”G.o.d knows,” he says, ”it would be more agreeable to me to start on a journey to Rome than begin to do it again.” A journey to Rome was not then a pleasure trip.

[338] P. 53, Morton's translation. The beginning of the quotation runs thus in the original: ”Hwoso hevede iseid to Eve theo heo werp hire eien therone, A! wend te awei! thu worpest eien o thi death! Hwat heved heo ionswered? Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me? The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto biholden.”

[339] ”Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus temporis solam invenies, ante cujus fenestram non a.n.u.s garrula vel nugigerula mulier sedeat quae eam fabulis occupet, rumoribus aut detractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monachi vel clerici, vel alterius cujuslibet ordinis viri formam, vultum, moresque describat. Illecebrosa quoque interserat, puellarum lasciviam, viduarum, quibus libet quidquid libet, libertatem, conjugum in viris fallendis explendisque voluptatibus astutiam depingat. Os interea in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur, et venenum c.u.m suavitate bibitum per viscera membraque diffunditur.” ”De vita eremetica Liber,” cap. iii., Reclusarun c.u.m externis mulieribus confabulationes; in Migne's ”Patrologia,” vol. x.x.xii. col. 1451. See above, p. 153. Aelred wrote this treatise at the request of a sister of his, a sister ”carne et spiritu.”

[340]

De le franceis, ne del rimer Ne me dait nuls hom blamer, Kar en Engleterre fu ne E norri ordine et aleve.

Furnivall, ”Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne,” &c., Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, p. 413.

[341] French text of the ”Chateau” in Cooke, ”Carmina Anglo-Normannica,”

1852, Caxton Society; English versions in Horstmann and Furnivall, ”The minor Poems of the Vernon MS.,” Early English Text Society, 1892, pp.

355, 407; Weymouth: ”Castell off Love ... an early English translation of an old French poem by Robert Grosseteste,” Philological Society, 1864, 4to; Halliwell, ”Castle of Love,” Brixton Hill, 1849, 4to. See above, p. 205.

[342] The ”Manuel des Pechiez,” by William de Wadington, as well as the English metrical translation (a very free one) written in 1303 by Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, Lincolns.h.i.+re (1260?-1340?), have been edited by Furnivall: ”Handlyng Synne,” London, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, contains a number of _exempla_ and curious stories. The same Mannyng wrote, after Peter de Langtoft, an Englishman who had written in French (see above, p. 122), and after Wace, a metrical chronicle, from the time of Noah down to Edward I.: ”The Story of England ... A.D. 1338,” ed. Furnivall, Rolls, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo. He is possibly the author of a metrical meditation on the Last Supper imitated from his contemporary St.

Bonaventure: ”Meditacyuns on the Soper of our Lorde,” ed. Cowper, E.E.T.S., 1875, 8vo.

[343] ”The Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience, in the Kentish Dialect, 1340 A.D., edited from the autograph MS.,” by R. Morris, E.E.T.S. The ”Ayenbite” is the work of Dan Michel, of Northgate, Kent, who belonged to ”the bochouse of Saynt Austines of Canterberi.” The work deals with the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, informs us that ”the sothe n.o.blesse comth of the gentyl herte ... ase to the bodye: alle we byeth children of one moder, thet is of erthe” (p. 87). Some of the chapters of Lorens's ”Somme” were adapted by Chaucer in his Parson's tale.

[344] See in particular: ”Legends of the Holy Rood, symbols of the Pa.s.sion and Cross Poems, in old English of the XIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries,” ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1871.--”An Old English Miscellany containing a Bestiary, Kentish sermons, Proverbs of Alfred and religious poems of the XIIIth century,” ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872.--”The religious poems of William de Sh.o.r.eham,” ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1849, on sacraments, commandments, deadly sins, &c., first half of the fourteenth century.--”The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.,” ed. Horstmann and Furnivall, E.E.T.S., 1892; contains a variety of poems in the honour of the Virgin, pious tales, ”a dispitison bitweene a good man and the devel,” p. 329, meditations, laments, vision of St. Paul, &c., of various authors and dates, mostly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.--On visions of heaven and h.e.l.l (vision of St. Paul of Tundal, of St. Patrick, of Thurkill), and on the Latin, French, and English texts of several of them, see Ward, ”Catalogue of Romances,” 1893, vol.