The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. Vol. 2. The Vercelli Book 0231087667, 9780231087667

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THE

VERCELLI BOOK EDITED BY

GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

1932

Copyright 1932 C o l u m b ia U n iv e r s it y P r e s s

Published April, 1932

Printed in the United States of America Waverly P ress, I nc. Baltimore, Md.

PREFACE In accordance with the plan of this collective edition of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as announced in the Preface to the first volume, containing the texts of the Junius Manuscript, the poetical parts of the Vercelli Book are here grouped together in a second volume. Although the original compilers of the Vercelli Book, as of the other extant Anglo-Saxon miscellanies, apparently had no very strict principles of similarity in mind in determining what should be included in their collection, nevertheless the Vercelli Book, like the Junius Manuscript, exhibits a certain degree of uniformity. For the poems of the Junius Manuscript are examples of versified Biblical narrative, whereas the poems of the Vercelli Book are legendary and homi­ letic in character. The two longest poems of the Vercelli Book are A ndreas and E l e n e , saints’ lives of less authenticity than the Scripture itself, and like the prose homilies and the other poetical pieces in the Vercelli Book, probably designed for occasional use to supplement and lighten the formal offices of the service. The grouping of these poems in a volume of their own, therefore, reflects something more than a mere accident of preservation within the limits of a single manuscript. Two excellent photographic reproductions of the poems of the Vercelli Book are available, that of Wülker, in a volume pub­ lished in 1894, which contains reproductions only of the poetical parts of the manuscript, and that of Foerster, published in 1913 and containing both the prose and poetical texts of the manu­ script. The present edition has been based upon these repro­ ductions, and as the manuscript is in the main in an excellent state of preservation, the construction of the text has presented comparatively few difficulties. On those rare occasions when it was necessary to support the reading of the reproductions by other authority, especially in those passages in which stains or blots have obscured the readings of the manuscript, definite acknowledgement of this obligation has been made.

vi

PREFACE

In accordance with the general principles of this collective edition, the text of the poems of the Vercelli Book has been conservatively treated. Emendations for metrical reasons have been introduced very sparingly, and then not to make the text correspond to any particular set of metrical convictions, but only when metrical considerations seem to support other evi­ dence that some accidental disturbance has taken place in the transmission of the text. The same remarks apply to orthog­ raphy. Accidents in writing befall every scribe, and obvious accidents have been corrected. But it is scarcely necessary for a modern editor to be a greater purist in spelling than an eleventh century professional scribe, especially one so conscien­ tious and capable as the scribe of the Vercelli Book appears to have been. It is to be regretted that the present state of AngloSaxon scholarship does not permit more positive convictions with respect to the authorship and date of composition of the Anglo-Saxon poetical monuments, with respect also to the methods of composition and construction employed by AngloSaxon poets, or to the metrical principles according to which they wrote, or to the mixture of linguistic forms, dialectal or otherwise, which appear in the recorded texts. If a sceptical attitude towards all these questions still seems necessary after so many years of study, the hope nevertheless remains that further examination, and from new angles, will bring more certain results. In the Introduction to this volume will be found a full list of the accent marks in the poetical parts of the Vercelli Book. No such complete statement was made of the accents of the Junius Manuscript in the first volume of this collective edition, and when the materials for that volume were being assembled, the editor doubted whether the usefulness of such a list would compensate for the amount of space required by it. These doubts have now been resolved, partly on further reflection, partly in deference to the opinions of others. It has therefore seemed advisable to add to the list of accented words in the Vercelli Book, a full list of the accented words in the Junius Manuscript as providing at least materials for study. It is obvious, however, that the whole question of the accents in

PREFACE

vii

Anglo-Saxon manuscripts cannot be disposed of on the basis of poetical texts only, and that for a complete account of the matter, prose texts must also be drawn into consideration. The editor wishes to take this opportunity to acknowledge gratefully the aid of Mr. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie in assembling and seeing through the press the materials of this volume, as also of the volume previously published, containing the poems of the Junius Manuscript.

CONTENTS P reface

.

V

.

.

•

.

xi lxxxi

................................................

I n t r o d u c t i o n ....................................... B i b l i o g r a p h y .......................................

TEXTS A n d r e a s ................................................

3

F ates of the A postles

51

Soul and B ody I ...................................

54

H omiletic F ragment I

59

D ream of the R ood

.

.

.

.

E lene ..........................................................

61 66

NOTES O n A ndreas

.......................................

105

O n F ates of the A postles .

123

O n S oul and B ody I

126

.

On H omiletic F ragment I .

129

O n D ream of the R ood

130

O n E l e n e ................................................

132

INTRODUCTION I THE MANUSCRIPT The Vercelli Book, also known as the Vercelli Codex or Codex Vercellensis, is preserved in the chapter library of the cathedral at Vercelli in northern Italy. The library at Vercelli contains another famous manuscript, a text of the gospels perhaps written by Eusebius, which is also referred to at times by the name Codex Vercellensis.1 The Anglo-Saxon manuscript is designated in the collections of the library as Cod. CXVII. It is a parchment manuscript of one hundred and thirty-six folios, of uniform size and character. Like the Junius Manu­ script, the Vercelli Book was apparently conceived and executed as a single volume into which a variety of matters, prose as well as verse, and in this latter respect, differing from the Junius Manuscript, was to be placed. The size of the folios in the Vercelli Book is on the average 31 by 20 centimeters, that is, approximately 12.2 inches by 7.8 inches. The space covered by writing on the folios is approxi­ mately 24 by 15 centimeters, that is 9.4 inches by 5.8 inches. The pages of the manuscript were prepared for a varying num­ ber of lines to be written on the several pages, but never for less than twenty-three or more than thirty-three. Sometimes a blank space for one or more lines takes the place of writing where sectional divisions occur, thus reducing the number of lines actually written but not the number of lines provided for writing. The grouping of the folios according to the number of lines arranged for on them is as follows: 2 and fol. 131b , in E l . 788, 1089. The symbol is written with a dot before and after, and it stands for the word w y n , according to Cook, or w aldend, according to Wülker. This use of a runic symbol to stand for a word is similar to that in the signatures of the name of Cynewulf on fol. 54a and fol. 133a of the manu­ script, but the use is restricted to these four places in the manuscript. The abbreviation p for p æ t occurs approximately four times as many times as the unabbreviated p æ t in A ndreas , but only four times altogether in E le n e , three times in Soul and B ody I, and not at all in the text of the other poems. The abbrevia­ tion opp occurs once in A n . 1574, but not elsewhere in the poems. The spelling 'ðæt, with initial ð, is not abbreviated in the poems. þā

INTRODUCTION

xxvii

In only seven instances in A ndreas does ond occur written out, 11. 945, 1001, 1203, 1307, 1395, 1400, 1719; to these should perhaps be added on, 1. 1039, apparently an error for ond. Elsewhere in A ndreas the customary abbreviation 7 occurs. In E le n e , ond occurs written out four times, 11. 930, 976, 983, 1209; elsewhere the abbreviation is used. In each of the four instances where ond is written out, the 0 is a small capital in E l en e , whereas it never is in A ndreas . In the other four poems, only the abbreviation occurs. Where ond- occurs in compound words, the usage of the scribe varies. In A ndreas the verb o n d sw a ria n and its forms occur with 7 five times, with ond- five times; o n dsw erian occurs once unabbreviated. The noun ondsw are occurs three times written out, and andsw are occurs twice written out. The form 7 sware occurs seven times. The form 7 w ist occurs in A n . 1540, the only instance of the word; 7 langne occurs in A n . 1274, but ondlangne, 1. 818, and ondlange, 1. 1254. The form 7 sw are occurs once in Soul and B ody I, 106. In E len e , andsw are occurs in 11. 567, 1002, but 7 sw are nine times. The verb form 7 swer occurs once, 1. 396, and also 7 w lita n , 1. 298, 7 weardlice, 1. 1140, jsæ c, 1. 472, -ywyrde , 11. 545, 619, 7 wearde, 1. 630, none of these words occurring unabbreviated. Since the spelling ond is the more frequent in this manuscript when the word is written out, the abbreviation has been regularly so resolved in the texts of the present volume. In the prose parts of the manuscript, abbreviations are some­ what more fully used than in the poetical parts, but in the same ways, except that no runic symbols stand for words in the prose parts. A few of the more notable abbreviations of the prose are as follows: c for cw æ d, fol. 1 2 b, 1 3a, 1 3b, etc., cw for cw æ d, fol. 156, 1206, m þ a l for m en þ a leofestan, fob 9a, 1176, and also m en þ a l, fob 236, 246, m en ð l, fob 80a, and occasionally merely m , fob 19a, 196, etc.; dryfine for dryhtne, fob 9a, and also drift for drihten, fob 9a; fieri g for herigode, fob 19a; a p la s for apostolas, fob 716; scs for sa n ctu s, fob 716, etc.; 'ö'ö for D a u id , fob 14a, etc.; ioh for Io h a n n e m , fob 856. Latin passages in the prose text contain many abbreviations of the customary and easily recognizable types, e.g., ds for deas, d n o for do m in o , scdrn for se cu n d u m , Hr for uester, etc.

xxviii

INTRODUCTION VII PUNCTUATION AND ACCENT MARKS

The metrical punctuation in the poems of the Vercelli Book is very irregular, and contrasts sharply with the careful system of metrical points in the Junius Manuscript. A large part of the pointing in the Vercelli Book seems to be syntactical, rather than metrical in purpose. Usage varies from poem to poem, and therefore the six poems must be taken up separately. The metrical points in the later poems of the manuscript are much less frequent than in A ndreas . An examination of the points in A n . 1-276 shows that the pointing is metrical, but by no means as consistently so, as in the Junius Manuscript. In A n . 1-100 there are 89 points, and this ratio, 89 to 200 half-lines, does not change materially in the rest of the poem. A good example of the pointing is to be found in An . 25-39: swelc wæs þeaw hira- þæt hie æghwylcne ellðeodigra • dydan him to mose mete þearfendii- þara þe þæt ealand utan sohteSwylc wæs þæs folces freoSo leas tacen unlædra eafoð- þæt hie eagena gesihb- hetted heoro grimme- heafod gimmeÁgeton gealgmode gara ordum- sySSan him geblondan bitere to somne • dryas þurh dwolcræft • drync unheorne • se on wende gewit wera ingeþanc heortan hrebre- hyge wæs on cyrredþæt hie ne murndan æfter man dreame- hæleþ heoro grædigeac hie híg 7 gærs- for mete leaste- mebe gedrehteThe pointing here seems to be partly syntactical, partly metrical, though mainly syntactical. If the metrical intention had been uppermost in the mind of the scribe, one would at least expect points after m ose and tacen in this passage. But that the metrical intention of the points was not entirely absent is evidenced by the fact that once in a while the scribe breaks out into a flurry of them, e.g., 11. 190-201: Hu mæg ic dryhten min ofer deop ge lad- fore gefremman on feorne weg- swa hrædlice- heofona scyppend- wuldres wal­ dend- swa