The dialect of the Life of Saint Katherine: A linguistic study of the phonology and inflections 9783111355429, 9783110999624

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA M E M O R I A E N I C O L A I VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curai C. H. VAN S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University

Series

Practica,

130

THE DIALECT OF THE LIFE OF SAINT KATHERINE A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE PHONOLOGY AND INFLECTIONS

by

H. M. L O G A N University

of

Waterloo

1973

MOUTON THE HAGUE-PARIS

© Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

L I B R A R Y OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER : 72-88211

Printed in Hungary

PREFACE

The language of the Katherine Group has been the subject of considerable study, mostly stimulated by J . R. R. Tolkien's important article, "Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad", in Essays and Studies 14 (1929), 104-120, which connected the Bodley 34 version of the Katherine Group with the Ancrene Wisse. Since then, the separate pieces in the Group have been reedited for the Early English Text Society, and the editors have described in some detail the language of each text. Perhaps the most important piece in the Group is the Life of Saint Katherine, which is found in all three manuscripts which contain the Group. Yet this work has not been reedited recently nor has its language been described. The only available edition is still that of Eugen Einenkel in EETS, OS 80 (1884). This is essentially a critical text based on the version found in the MS Royal 17 A X X V I I , with variants from MSS Bodley 34 and Cotton Titus D XVIII; but it is often inconsistent and inaccurate. Unfortunately the language described in the introduction to the edition is t h a t of the reconstructed text and not that of any of the manuscripts. Before anything can be done with the language of the Katherine Group as a whole, the language of the Saint Katherine must be adequately described. The purpose of this study, then, is to provide such a description. An attempt is made throughout to localize the three texts of the Saint Katherine. The localization is based on a diachronic description of the phonology and inflections of each text, to which are applied the findings of Samuel Moore, et al., "Middle English Dialect Characteristics and Dialect Boundaries: . . . Localized Texts and Documents", in Essays and Studies in English and Comparative Literature (Ann Arbor, 1935). I n order to avoid distortion of the material and to facilitate comparison with the other texts of the Group, full lists of examples are given for every significant linguistic feature, and exceptional forms are noted and discussed. This was made possible by the use of the Univac I computer at the University of Pennsylvania Computer Center. The entire text was typed onto magnetic

6

PREFACE

tape which was then programmed to produce a complete concordance of the Saint Katherine and a classification of the phonological and grammatical features of each text. Although all line references are to Einenkel's edition, reproductions of the manuscripts were consulted and their forms cited. Thus the description is based on a collation of the manuscripts with Einenkel's edition and on a study of all the forms. As a result of this study, it may be possible to make a more detailed comparison of the entire Group to determine whether dialectal variation occurs within the collection in each manuscript. This study developed out of my dissertation, undertaken some ten years ago at the University of Pennsylvania and completed in 1966. Since that time the University of Waterloo has given me several summer research grants and I have been able to make use of the impressive facilities of the University of Waterloo Computer Centre to continue my research on the Katherine text. Every page of this book offers perhaps inadequate acknowledgement of the debt all students of medieval language owe to those scholars in the great tradition of philology, editors and grammarians without whom nothing would be possible. I should like to acknowledge here the more personal debt I owe to those people who have helped me in the course of writing this book. Mr. Robert L. Carroll kindly gave his time and considerable ability to program the data for me at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Albert C. Baugh made several fruitful suggestions in the preliminary stages of writing. I am especially indebted to Professors James D. Gordon and Theophilus E. M. Boll of the University of Pennsylvania for their valuable comments and recommendations. All scholars know the special debt they owe their wives, which, one hopes, can never be fully paid. I owe more than the usual debt to my wife, Grace, who not only helped to program the material for the computer, but also prepared the various versions of the text. I am most obligated to Professor Harold S. Stine of the University of Pennsylvania for his kindness and encouragement throughout the writing of this book and the time and considerable knowledge he freely gave. The final shape and character of the book are due to his guidance. The inadequacies are my own.

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Preface

5

I . P R O B L E M S I N T E X T AND D I A L E C T I I . T E X T U A L R E L A T I O N S AND T H E A B — D I A L E C T

U 18

I I I . GRAPHOLOGY

32

I V . PHONOLOGY

52

Vowels 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE OE

a? /»/, Merc., Kt. e a j&l a+ I ce + l + i/j a + nasal a + nasal + i/j e i o u y a & (WG ai + i/j) ae1 e (other than Se1) I o u y

52 59 62 63 65 69 70 72 74 75 76 82 85 89 93 94 94 95 96

8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Diphthongs 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

OE ear (breaking of a? before r - f consonant) OE ear + consonant - f i/j OE eah (breaking of as before h) OE eah + consonant + i/j OE eo OE m OE Sä + i/j OE S3 Influence of Initial Palatals OE Front Vowels + 3// OE Vowels + w

97 100 102 102 103 110 112 114 117 120 123

Consonants 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

OE c OE 3 OE A OE initial / OE p ßj OE d Loss of Consonants Summary of Phonology

V . GRAMMAR

124 127 132 133 135 137 139 141 145

Nouns 39. Declensions 40. Cases

145 150

Pronouns 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Personal Pronouns Possessive Pronouns Intensives and Reflexives Demonstratives and the Definite Article Relative Pronominals Interrogative Pronouns Indefinite Pronouns Numerals

157 162 163 164 171 173 174 176

Adjectives and Adverbs 49. Classes of Adjectives 50. Inflections of Adjectives

177 178

TABLE OF CONTENTS

51. Adverbs 52. Comparative and Superlative

9

181 183

Verbs 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

General Infinitive (OE -an) Infinitive (OE -ian) Present Participle and Gerund Present Indicative Present Subjunctive Imperative Preterite Endings Past Participle Strong Verbs Weak Verbs Preterite-Present Verbs Irregular Verbs OE Negative Contractions

185 187 188 190 192 198 198 199 201 203 211 217 218 221

V I . SUMMARY OF DIALECTAL FEATURES

222

Bibliography

234

Index

241

I PROBLEMS IN TEXT AND DIALECT

The Katherine Group has been established for some time as an important text in the historical study of English language and literature. I t is one of the earliest and certainly most extensive examples of Early Middle English prose. In addition, it has textual connections with the Ancrene Riwle, t h a t masterpiece of English prose, and with the group of texts related to the Wohunge of ure Laured. The Katherine Group is made up of three saints' lives and two homilies which are found together in three manuscripts of the early thirteenth century. These manuscripts are MS Bodley 34, referred to in this study as B ; MS Royal 17 A X X V I I , referred to here as R ; and MS Cotton Titus D XVIII, referred to here as T. All the texts of the Group are found in the Bodley MS, and the Life of St. Katherine and the Sawles Warde are contained in the other two MSS as well ; the other texts, however, appear in only two of the three MSS : the Life of St. Juliana and the Life of St. Margaret in the Bodley and Royal ; and Hali Meidhad in the Bodley and Titus. The Titus and Royal also contain versions of the Wohunge, and the Titus includes a revised version of the Ancrene Riwle. The close connection between these works is also suggested by the fact that another manuscript of the Riwle, MS Cotton Nero A XIV, also contains a version of the Wohunge. Furthermore, the Bodley MS of the Katherine Group has been shown to be written in a language identical with t h a t in the Ancrene Wisse, a version of the Riwle contained in MS Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402. 1 The three works - the Katherine Group, the Ancrene Riwle, and the Wohunge group - are thus closely related in content, language, and style, and because of this, earlier scholars assumed t h a t all were written by a single author. 2 1

J. R . R . Tolkien, "Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad,", Essays and Studies 14 (1929), 104-120, who also edited the Ancrene Wisse in EETS 249 (London, 1962). 2 See the discussion of these earlier views of the authorship in S. T. R . O. d'Ardenne, An Edition of pe Lijlade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene ( = Bibliothèque de la faculté de philo-

12

PROBLEMS IN TEXT AND DIALECT

Although the hypothesis of single authorship is no longer held today, it is generally believed that these works are the product of a single center of scholarship that existed somewhere in England during the latter part of the twelfth and the early part of the thirteenth centuries. The language of this center is thought to be reflected in the Ancrene Wisse and the Bodley MS of the Katherine Group, and is commonly referred to as the "AB dialect" (see d'Ardenne, Seinte Iuliene,

§ 5).

Nevertheless, before the problems of authorship and dating of the original texts can be finally solved, the language of the texts in each manuscript should be described and compared. The Early English Text Society has therefore undertaken to issue or reissue editions of the texts in all the manuscripts. Thus far the Wohunge and most of the texts of the Riwle and the Katherine Group have recently appeared in EETS editions. The only text of the Katherine Group which has not been recently edited is the Life of St. Katherine. Yet this text is certainly crucial to any study of the Group as a whole since it is the longest piece in the Group and it is found in all the manuscripts. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to provide a description of the phonology and inflections in the three manuscript versions of the Life of St. Katherine and on the basis of that description attempt to localize the dialect of the Katherine in each. Such a study is necessary because of the inadequacy of the only available edition of the Life of Saint Katherine,

ed. Eugen Einenkel, EETS,

OS 80

(1884). This edition makes a comparison with the other texts difficult because of its awkward arrangement, its inconsistency and its frequent inaccuracy. Einenkel thought the Katherine was written in verse rather than prose, so that he uses short lines in the edition that do not reflect the manuscripts at all. Although the recent editions of the rest of the Group have presented the complete text in each manuscript containing the particular piece, Einenkel's edition is based on the Royal MS because the text in the Bodley is incomplete, lacking three leaves in the middle (lines 878-1254). Variant readings from each manuscript are given at the bottom of each page, but these, together with the short line, sometimes confuse the syntax of the manuscripts. Thus line 1751 appears in B as pear as me pear as me rihte bileaue; in R as per as mi rihte bileaue schawde me; in T as per is al mi rihte bileaue; Einenkel confuses

the syntax of the manuscripts by reading the line as per as me rihte mi bileaue. This example also suggests some of the inconsistencies in the edition, in which forms are taken from the manuscripts almost at random. Occasionally forms are given that do not occur in any of the manuscripts. Thus Einenkel gives pa in 1.177, where all three manuscripts have pah. He regularly reads sophie et lettres de l'université de Liège 64) (Liége-Paris, 1936 ; reptd. EETS 248 [1961]), xl-xlvii, §5.

PROBLEMS IN TEXT AND DIALECT

13

biforen, although R regularly has biuoren, B biuore(n), and T variously toforen in 51, biuore in 58, biforen in 1400, bifore in 1613, etc. In 59 wurdgede is given for R to wurgen, B wurdgede, T wurdchipede; but in 272 wurgid appears for R wurgid, B wurdgid, and T wurched. There are, furthermore, a number of misreadings in the edition, especially in B. A number of these have been listed by Ragnar Furuskog, "A Collation of the Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34)", Studia Neophilologica 19 (194647), 34ff, and in the recollation by d'Ardenne and Tolkien, "MS Bodley 34: A Recollation of a Collation", Stud. Neophil. 20 (1947-48), 65-72. But even after these collations, there are still more misreadings to be found. Neither collation mentions the following (the form of the MS is given first): MS B an: Einenkel on 111; unfor^ult: unforgult 231; bigetene: bi$etene 262; wurrdschipe: wurdschipe 472; hehnen: spehnen 496 ; stod; stod 597 ; pe pe: pe 1620; ba pe: bade 2006; wicchecreft (t altered from f ) : wicchecreff 2266. There are fewer misreadings in R and T, but they are still too f r e q u e n t : MS R geinen: Einenkel 3einen 176; biginnunge: beginnunge 287; as: al 303 ; bringen pe: bringen 394; ant: "j 459 mil tet ilke: mid tet illce 713; heast: heaste 886; as: ah 1205; wult ^ preat: wult preat 1499; eordliche: eordliche 1622; swottre: swettre 1691; Vre: Ure 1829 ; al for to renden: al for to torenden 1973 ; duste hit: duste hit 1999 ; p' : V 2138 ; uirgines: uirgnes 2310 ; schulen: schullen 2358. MS T summe: Einenkel sume 39 ; p' : > 222 ; Vre: ure 490 ; bigunen : bigunnen 678 ; unimet: unimete 738 ; Gersum: jersum 798 ; Oalienes: 31alienes 853 ; Godes: godes 1248 ; ah nis nawt lihtliche: ah nis hit nawt lihtlich 1313 ; ih'u: iesu 1611, 1623; to Gederes: togederes 1659, 1774, 2236 ; Vre: ure 1829 ; cud ^ icud: cud ^ icud 2276 ; schulen: schullen 2358. Einenkel then described the language of this hypothetical, reconstructed text with all its inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Because of these difficulties in the edition, it was first necessary to collate the three manuscripts with Einenkel and form a practically new edition. For this purpose I have consulted microfilms of MSS Royal and Titus, and the facsimile edition of the Bodley MS in EETS, OS 247 (1960). All forms cited in this study are those found in the manuscripts, but since Einenkel is still the only edition available, the line references are to his edition. Several difficulties occur in localizing the dialect of a Middle English literary text. For one thing, the literary dialect of a text may not correspond to

14

PROBLEMS IN TEXT AND DIALECT

the spoken dialect of a region. Even if it did, our present knowledge of Middle English speech dialects is too limited to be conclusive and the interpretations of t h e evidence are often conflicting. The analysis of Middle English dialects was considerably changed by t h e appearance in 1935 of the study by Samuel Moore, Sanford Brown Meech, and Harold Whitehall. 3 One of the effects of this report was to revise the older interpretations of dialect boundaries in Middle English. For example, w h a t was once assigned to the Southern dialect was now assigned to the Midlands. Thus, Joseph and Mary Wright in An Elementary Middle English Grammar, 2nd ed. (London, 1928), considered Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to be Southern dialects, and similarly, Einenkel assigned the dialect of the Katherine, presumably MS B, to a "more or less pure Southern dialect", which, however, he considered to be "somewhere between Worcestershire and Dorsetshire - say Gloucestershire" (pp. lvi-lvii). The MEDG assigned both Herefordshire a n d Gloucestershire to the Southwest Midlands. Even Mary S. Serjeantson's analyis of the West Midland dialects is slightly different from the findings of the MEDC.4 Thus, where Serjeantson recognized three subdialects of the West Midlands, the MEDC recognized four. This disagreement over the boundaries of the Middle English dialect areas and even the names for these boundaries had caused considerable confusion in dialectal studies. Unfortunately, the "Preliminary R e p o r t " of the MEDC also turned out to be the final one, b u t their findings were somewhat modified and expanded to include "Auxiliary Features". 5 Since then, the whole approach of the MEDC has been criticized by Angus Mcintosh and M. Samuels for being too highly selective - selective in the criteria, in the examples, and in the texts. 6

3 "Middle English D i a l e c t Characteristics a n d D i a l e c t Boundaries : Preliminary R e p o r t of an I n v e s t i g a t i o n B a s e d E x c l u s i v e l y o n Localized T e x t s and D o c u m e n t s " , Essays and Studies in English and Comparative Literature 13 (Ann Arbor, 1935), 1 - 6 0 , hereafter referred to as MEDC. 4 " D i a l e c t s of t h e W e s t Midlands", RES 3 (1927), 5 4 - 6 7 , 1 8 6 - 2 0 3 , 3 1 9 - 3 3 1 . 5 S a m u e l Moore, Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections, rev. b y Albert Marckwardt ( A n n Arbor, 1951) ; and F e r n a n d Mosse, A Handbook of Middle English, trans, b y J a m e s A . W a l k e r (Baltimore, 1952). A m o r e e x t e n s i v e list of Middle E n g l i s h dialect features h a d been presented s o m e w h a t earlier b y J. P . Oakden, Alliterative Poetry in Middle English; The Dialectal and Metrical Survey, 1 (Manchester, 1930), 5 - 3 9 ; (reptd. A r c h o n B o o k s , 1968). 6 M c i n t o s h described t h e approach in "A N e w A p p r o a c h t o Middle E n g l i s h Dialectol o g y " , ESs 44 (1963), 1 - 1 1 ; S a m u e l s illustrated it in " S o m e A p p l i c a t i o n s of Middle E n g lish D i a l e c t o l o g y " , ESs 44 (1963), 8 1 - 9 4 . B o t h are reprinted in Approaches to English Historical Linguistics: An Anthology, ed. b y R o g e r L a s s ( N e w Y o r k , 1969), 3 9 2 - 4 0 3 , 4 0 4 - 4 1 8 . The following c o m m e n t s appeared in m y article, "The Computer and Middle English D i a l e c t o l o g y " , CJL 13 (1967), 3 7 - 4 9 , w h i c h t h e editor h a s k i n d l y g r a n t e d m e permission t o use. See also t h e discussion b y Gillis Kristensson, A Survey of Middle Eng-

PROBLEMS I N TEXT A N D

15

DIALECT

I n discussing their criteria Mcintosh pointed out t h a t first of all only eleven features thought to be significant were considered, while modern dialect studies consider hundreds if not thousands of features and map out each in detail. Of these eleven features, six were phonological; five were inflectional b u t included only pronominal and verbal forms. While the phonological features were treated diachronically, the inflectional features were treated synchronically. Mcintosh argued t h a t one should study the total number of items which do in fact show a variation between one area and any other and which show a reasonable frequency of occurrence (i.e., they are not rare words occurring in a few texts). For instance, a characteristic of t h e AB dialect in Middle English is t h e occurrence of ea-spellings for e before r, b u t the authors of MEDC would have no way of indicating its importance, if it is important, since they did not consider the dialectal development of OE e. On the other hand, Mcintosh maintained t h a t the criteria t h a t were used by the MEDC were too inclusive; e.g., they lumped together reflexes of OE long and short y, where these should have been treated separately. B u t the reflexes of long and short y were in t u r n lumped together with those of long and short eo. I n fact, as Mary S. Serjeantson later showed, the boundary between areas with rounded vowels for OE eo and y did not coincide. 7 A further criticism of the MEDC was t h a t it reconstructed phonological forms where graphemic forms should have been recorded regardless of their phonemic value; for, according to Mcintosh, the spellings themselves might be significant. These significant spellings might include particular symbols such as p or th or the distribution of symbols ( p initially, d elsewhere, etc.), or it might include combinations of symbols, such as eo and ea spellings. Such spellings might have a diachronic as well as a synchronic significance. T h a t is, they might represent the conventions of a particular dialect in Middle English and at the same time reflect a tradition from Old English, which in t u r n might help to identify the ME dialect. For instance, the spellings eo and ea no longer represented diphthongs in Middle English ; they were traditional spellings of Old English diphthongs long since monophthongized. I n certain words t h e retention of these spellings could reveal a development from a particular OE dialect, as ME beoren 'to bear, carry' reflects a development from OE Anglian beoran and not West Saxon beran, so t h a t the ME word would suggest a West Midland dialect rather t h a n Southern. Nevertheless, the spelling system does have some relation to the sound system, since writing is at least potential speech; and this relationship cannot be ignored. All the relevant forms in a

lish Dialects 1290-1350 : The Six Northern Counties and Lincolnshire English 35) (Lund, 1967), ix-xii. 7 "The Index of the Vernon Manuscript", MLR 32 (1937), 225.

( = Lund Studies

in

16

PROBLEMS IN TEXT AND DIALECT

text would have to be studied to determine this relationship. I n many texts, for instance, eo and ea spellings alternate with e but not with each other; the various forms should be studied to determine whether eo and ea represent phonemes distinct from each other and from e in these words or not. Many of these details did not appear in the MEDC because the evidence was not sufficient to justify their inclusion. Mcintosh thought the evidence was insufficient partly because the selections of the texts may have been too rigorous. They limited their study to localized texts but largely ignored literary texts, using only forty-three, a small fraction of one per cent of the whole. Mcintosh maintained that, even though they used a great many more localized documents than ever had been used before, they could have used still more of them ; and they certainly could have used more literary manuscripts. Furthermore, their selection represented too wide a chronological spread. Thirteenth and occasionally twelfth century texts were used next to fourteenth and fifteenth century ones, thus confusing changes due to diachronic differences and those due to diatopic (geographical) ones. However, most of the documents were dated 1400-1450, and the authors of the MEDC made it clear their conclusions applied to t h a t period. Mcintosh agreed t h a t this was the all-important period for establishing dialect criteria, though he preferred a slightly earlier starting point, 1350-1450 ; but he pointed out t h a t twenty-six (or ten percent) of the two hundred sixty-six localized documents considered by the MEDC were either too early or too late. With a good description of dialects at the end of the Middle English period, it would be possible to relate earlier features to it, establishing a chronology of dialectal developments. Mcintosh concluded t h a t it was possible to build up information about a region by fitting unlocalized texts into established areas. They would 'fit' if their dialectal characteristics in their totality were reconcilable with those of other localized texts in t h a t particular area and only t h a t area. The more data accumulated in this way, the more precise the knowledge of significant features of dialect for t h a t area. As Mcintosh pointed out, there were limitations to such a method ; the hypothesis about the provenance of a text would have to be fairly certain before it could be used, but its absolute localization could never be certain. Mcintosh claimed that he tested his 'fit' technique and found it accurate ; nevertheless, the whole method creates a number of problems. Since this approach emphasizes the importance of studying all forms with as much detail as possible without imposing selective and sometimes misleading criteria, the crucial problem becomes the exhaustiveness made necessary by this method. I t is the evidence of whole texts t h a t is important and not just certain isolated features in them. Ideally, no doubt, all forms of all texts should be studied; but practically, this has been impossible, even in a limited corpus of ten thousand words. There is always the danger of selecting, for the

PROBLEMS IN T E X T AND DIALECT

17

sake of simplicity, only what conforms to the normal pattern while omitting what might have proved significant. Another problem is created by the use of unlocalized literary texts. Such texts seldom exist in an autograph copy and there are usually more manuscripts of a text than one. Where there is more than one manuscript, however, it is important to consider the textual relations of the manuscripts, or else, as d'Ardenne pointed out, one will simply "project textual relations upon an imaginary geographical plane" (Seinte Iuliene, xxxiv). One must consider not only diachronic and diatopic differences, as Mcintosh mentioned, but also diatextual differences, which he did not. I t is necessary to study the particular form in its context and to determine whether it represents an original reading, a scribal error, or the influence of another text. This in turn involves the study of the corresponding forms in all the texts in order to establish the characteristics of each. For example, it would be foolish to conclude anything about the isolated spelling in the Royal text of the Life of Saint Katherine of hwid for wid when it appears surrounded by hw's in 1. 1941 iohwideret hwid pe hweoles and every other occurrence has w. In order to consider all the forms in the text of the Katherine so that any possible distortion of the material could be avoided it was necessary to use a computer. The text of each manuscript was typed onto magnetic tape, and each word was coded to identify the context by manuscript and line number, its grammatical uses in that context, and any significant phonological feature of dialect it might display (a or o before a nasal, for instance). The computer could then be programmed to produce a complete concordance as well as a classification of all the grammatical forms and the significant phonological features. The grammatical and phonological classification was edited to list together all the examples of a particular grammatical use (e.g., all singular nouns as object of verb in one class, singular nouns as object of preposition in another, and similarly for plural nouns, etc.). Also, all the reflexes of various OE phonemes were classified so that all the words containing a reflex of OE a? would appear in one class, of OE ae in another, etc. Since some forms exhibited more than one significant phonological feature of dialect, these were noted and classified manually. I t was thus possible to consider all the forms conveniently, although it proved difficult to assimilate all the material thus provided. For the most part, the discussion of the phonology and grammar in chapters IV and V of this study is based on a study of all the forms, and I have illustrated the relevant forms as fully as possible.

II TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND T H E AB-DIALECT

The three manuscripts containing the text of the Life of St. Katherine are as follows: (B) MS Bodley 34 consists of eighty folios in vellum, 6-3/8 by 4-7/8 inches with twenty-five lines to a page. I t contains the following items : Seinte Kaierine (ff. lr-18r), Seinte Margarete (ff. 18r-36v), Seinte Iuliene (ff. 36v-52v), Hali Meidhad (ff. 52v-71v), and Sawles Warde (ff. 72r-80v, incomplete, two leaves having been lost after f. 80, which is faint and defective). The MS is written in one hand throughout, which has been dated "probably in the first quarter of the thirteenth century". 1 The handwriting of the St. Katherine is fairly clear and neatly written, especially in the first seven folios, but after this there is increasing difficulty in distinguishing between the o, e, a, and c ; between n and u; and between j and g? In the margins appear several names written in sixteenth-century hands and these connect the manuscript with Herefordshire. The people named are lesser Herefordshire gentry from Ledbury, Sutton, Tedstone Delamere, Castleditch in Eastnor, and Much Cowarne. 3 The manuscript was given to the Bodleian library in 1612 by Thomas Twine. (R) MS Royal 17 A XXVII, British Museum, consists of ninety-eight folios in vellum, 6-1/2 by 4-3/4 inches, in two parts. The first part (ff. lr-70v) contains almost all the Katherine Group, with the exception of Hali Meidhad, in the following order: Sawles Warde (ff. lr-10v), Seinte Katerine (ff. llr-37r), Seinte Marherete (ff. 37r-56r), Seinte Iuliana (ff. 56r-70r), pe Wohunge of ure Laured (in this MS called Oreisun of Seinte Marie, ff. 70r-70v, incomplete). This 1

N. R . Ker, Facsimile of MS. Bodley 34 ( = EETS 247) (London, 1960), x. S. T. R . O. d'Ardenne, An Edition of pe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Itiliene (Liege, 1936), xv, and A. F . Colborn (ed.), Hali Meidhad (Copenhagen, 1940), 47, date it "about A. D. 1210". 2 For a description of these letters, see Ker, Facs., x-xi. 3 Ker, xiii-xiv; Hope Emily Allen, "The Localisation of the Bodl. MS. 34", MLR 28, (1933), 485-487.

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

19

first part of the manuscript is written in three apparently different hands, all dating from the early thirteenth century. 4 The St. Katherine, however, is written in one hand throughout, the same hand t h a t begins the Sawles Warde to f. 9 and resumes with the St. Katherine through part of St. Margaret, ending at f. 45 v . A second hand finished Sawles Warde (one leaf), then finished the Juliana from f. 58v to the end of the Oreisun. A third hand had copied the Margaret and the beginning of the Juliana (from ff. 45 v -58 r ). 5 The handwriting of the Katherine itself is quite neat and legible, all the letters being distinct. The second part of the MS (ff. 71-91) is an early fifteenth-century collection of hymns and prayers. The first part and possibly the second part as a separate MS came from the Theyer library. The name Ihohanes Theyer is written on a piece of vellum attached to the front flyleaf (numbered f. I*), 6 and again quite clearly in the upper left-hand margin of f. 70v. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, this Ihohanes, or John, Theyer was a seventeenth-century antiquarian who was born in Brockworth, Gloucestershire in 1597. I n his collection were some 800 manuscripts, some of which, including this one, eventually passed to the British Museum. (T) MS Cotton Titus D XVIII, British Museum, consists of one hundred and forty-eight folios in vellum 6-1/5 by 4-7/8 inches, written in double columns. The first thirteen folios are written in a fifteenth-century hand. 7 They include an Alphabeta Varia (ff. l v -12 v ) and an index to the rest of the manuscript (f. 13v). The rest of the manuscript contains the Ancrene Riwle (ff. 14 r 105r), with two folios missing from the beginning, and part of the Katherine Group. These pieces appear in the following order: Sawles Warde (ff. 105 v 112v), Hali Meidenhad (ff. 112 v -127 r ), Wohunge (ff. 127 r -133 r ), and St. Katherine (ff. 133 v -147 v ). These are all written in one hand, which dates from the early thirteenth century. 8 The writing is quite clear and can be read without difficulty. None of the manuscripts seems to be copied from any of the others. Although it is not the purpose of this study to prove the relations of the manuscripts to each other, which would be an inquiry in itself, it is nevertheless necessary to 4

W . Meredith T h o m p s o n (ed.), pe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd ( = EETS 241) (London, 1958), xii. 5 Frances M. Mack (ed.), Seinte Marherete, pe Meiden ant Martyr ( = EETS 193) (London, 1934 ; reptd. 1958), x i i i - x i v . 6 This c a n n o t quite be distinguished o n t h e microfilm, b u t see T h o m p s o n , xii. 7 (= EETS 80) T h o m p s o n , x i i ; E u g e n E i n e n k e l (ed.), The Life of Saint Katherine (London, 1884), lix; Mack, The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. from Cotton Titus D XVIII (= EETS 252) (London, 1963, for 1962), ix. 8 T h o m p s o n , x i i ; E u g e n Einenkel, St. Katherine, lix. J o s e p h Hall, Selections from Early Middle English, 1 1 3 0 - 1 2 5 0 (Oxford, 1920), 2. 355, t a k e s 1220 A . D . as t h e date of writing ; b u t Mack, Ancrene Riwle (T) (1963), i x - x , suggests " t h a t t h e second quarter of t h e thirt e e n t h c e n t u r y is a better d a t e t h a n c. 1225".

20

TEXTUAL RELATIONS A N D THE AB-DIALECT

establish the relationships generally in order to discuss the dating and dialect. I t may be assumed, at least tentatively, the MSS B and R are copies of one exemplar (X) and T of another (Y). Aside from dialectal considerations, whenever there are errors and omissions, MS R usually supports B against T, so t h a t this relationship may be diagrammed as in Fig. I. 9

B R T The exemplars X and Y must have been similar to each other, since there are relatively few discrepancies among the three versions of St. Katherine, fewer, indeed, than the discrepancies in the other pieces making up the Katherine Group. 10 Moreover, both exemplars must have been similar to the version in MS B. One indication of this is t h a t in numerous examples, either R or T agrees with B against the other manuscript, but they very seldom agree with each other against B. However, the fact that they sometimes do give a better reading than B suggests that B is not itself the exemplar. For instance, in lines 1311-1312, B has acomen for R and T al torn in p' he ne talde him al torn er he turnde him from us (this is the passage in R ; B and T agree in having ear and in omitting the second him). The phrase al torn in R and T must represent the original. I t not only alliterates with the rest of the passage, it also agrees with the Latin text, which has continuo victus et confusus recessit. Both R and T combine a language similar to t h a t in B with one different from it. For instance, the reflex of OE (Mercian) a? is normally spelled ea in MS B and a in the other two, but all three manuscripts have numerous ea forms (see below, Phonology § 1). Presumably, these ea-spellings in R and T represent the influence of a B-like exemplar. That MS T is copied from an exemplar resembling the version in B is suggested by several examples. Perhaps the clearest is the peculiar translation in T of line 1490, which appears in B as as ded meareminnes (R has mereminnes) - 'as doth the siren's (music)'. Apparently the scribe of T was unfamiliar with the meareminnes, mereminnes 'siren's' < OE meremenen = mere 'sea' + menen 'female slave'. Confused by the word, the scribe of T made the most he could of the line with as ded mare p' tu munnest 'as doth more than thou thinkest'. At any rate, meareminnes must have been in his exemplar, for he would not have been able to derive mare from R mere.11 Similarly, T has Headed in line 1895 for B il'e'adet (with * Einenkel, xiv-xvii. For further examination of the MSS and comparisons, see especially d'Ardenne, x x i x - x l ; Mack, Marherete, xviii-xix. The diagram may also be found in Colborn, 447 ; see also Thompson, lix-lxi. 10 According to d'Ardenne, xxxv, Juliana has more than Katherine or Margaret. 11 See d'Ardenne, xxxii, for this and further examples.

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

21

V inserted from above), and R iladet < OE geladian 'invite, summon to a feast'. The same thing, of course, is true of R where, for instance, R, which normally has arerde (1060 and 1111), in line 1040 has astearde for T arearde (the passage is missing from B). Perhaps the scribe started to write steah before realizing his mistake. But steah is characteristic of B, while R normally has steh (338, 714, 1854). In either case, ea must have occurred in the exemplar. The best examples, however, occur in line 2030 where B has o uet, T has o fot 'on foot', but R has ouer; and in line 40 where B has eisfule preates, T eifule preates, but R has hisfule preates. Furthermore, the exemplars themselves could not have been separated very far in either time or place from O, whether the original or a good copy of it. This was demonstrated by J . R . R . Tolkien in his article on Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad, which completely revised studies of the Katherine Group. Tolkien showed that the Bodley 34 MS of the Katherine Group is written in language and orthography identical to those in the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 402 (abbreviated A) of the Ancrene Riwle. I t is titled Ancrene Wisse in the manuscript and is now usually called t h a t to distinguish it from the other texts of the Riwle. The language of these texts is remarkably consistent and unadulterated, the more remarkable since "few Middle English texts represent in detail the real language (in accidence, phonology, or even in choice of spelling) of any one time or place or person" (p. 104). Because of their purity of language, Tolkien suggested t h a t the manuscripts represented either "a faithful manuscript transcript of some actual dialect, or a 'standard' language based on one" (p. 106). But Tolkien denied the possibility of the existence of a literary standard at t h a t time. Most medieval manuscripts show a partial substituion of linguistic forms from a dialect of a time more nearly t h a t of the scribe's than the copy from which he is working, and there would be some evidence of the unsuccessful assimilation of natural speech to a written standard. Therefore, the consistency of dialect and the lack of scribal corruption in the manuscripts suggest a simple textual history or a fortunate one, so t h a t Tolkien concluded "the scribe or scribes used naturally the same language as t h a t of their original" (p. 107). Since both A and B use the same language and spelling system, but are not the work of a single scribe, being written in quite different hands, they must have been closely connected in time and place. But it is improbable that either manuscript represents the autograph copy of the author; it is also improbable that the two manuscripts represent a translation of the originals into a different dialect. Such a translation would require "a philological state of mind rather than a scribal one" (p. 108). Even if there were some reason for a scribe to take such pains to render an accurate translation, it is inconceivable t h a t there should not appear in this work some sign of the original. The only other alternative is t h a t the two manuscripts belonged to the same place and approxi-

22

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

mately the same time as their original works and their authors. The originals could not have been composed long before their copies or some evidence of archaic forms would have appeared in A and B. Tolkien therefore concluded that "we should not on linguistic grounds willingly concede more than a decade or two" (p. 108). Since the Ancrene Wisse mentions the Franciscan and Dominican friars as being established in England and since the Franciscans did not arrive until 1224 (the Dominicans came somewhat earlier, in 1221), the manuscript could not have been written much before 1225, and it is usually dated c. 1230.12 According to Tolkien, then, the original compositions could not be dated before 1200. If Tolkien's theory is correct, then dating one text would date the other, and although there is very little, if any external evidence of date in the Bodley MS, various references and allusions in the Riwle fit in with Tolkien's theory quite nicely.13 There is, for instance, a reference to Saint Ailred, who was not canonized until 1191,14 and mention is made of some liturgical practices that were not common until after 1210.15 Furthermore, Beatrice White noted that a reference in the Nero text of the Riwle to Christ on the cross, "ase {)e on uot, efter pet me wenejD, sete upon Jae o3er note", indicated a date of composition after 1200 when Christ first was depicted with his feet crossed.16 Similarly the mentioning of the three enemies of man, the flesh, the world, and the devil, "only made its appearance in the religious writings of the thirteenth century". 17 Such a dating may also have some support from the linguistic evidence of both manuscripts. Most important for this is the development of OE weak verbs of Class II. 18 A. F. Colborn pointed out that these verbs form a regular paradigm in A and B which preserves the OE paradigm in all its details except for the normal phonetic changes of the unaccented vowels being reduced to -e- and of -i(j)e- becoming -i after long or polysyllabic stems, while -ie remains after a short stem with secondary stress, e.g., onswerien. Since the -i forms depend on earlier -ie forms, a text preserving -ie in all verbs of this 12

G. C. M a c a u l a y , " T h e Ancren Riwle", MLR 9 (1914), 150. F o r t h e a r r i v a l of t h e f r i a r s , see also J . C. D i c k i n s o n , Monastic Lije in Medieval England ( N e w Y o r k , 1962), 89, 91. 13 T h e d a t i n g of t h e o r i g i n a l t e x t is discussed in m o r e d e t a i l in A r n e Z e t t e r s t e n , Studies in the Dialect and Vocabulary of the 'Ancrene Riwle' ( = Lund Studies in English 34) ( L u n d , 1965), 12-19. F o r s o m e c r i t i c i s m of his conclusions, see t h e r e v i e w of h i s b o o k b y S v e n B a c k m a n , ESs 49 (1968), 4 5 5 - 4 5 6 . 14 R o b e r t W . C h a m b e r s , " R e c e n t R e s e a r c h u p o n t h e Ancren Riwle", RES 1 (1925), 17 a n d f n . 15 C. H . T a l b o t , " S o m e N o t e s o n t h e D a t i n g of t h e Ancrene Riwle", Neophil. 40 (1956), 38-50. 16 B e a t r i c e W h i t e , " T h e D a t e of t h e Ancrene Riwle", MLR 40 (1945), 205 — 206. 17 A . B . v a n Os, Religious Visions ( A m s t e r d a m , 1932), 209. 18 F o r t h e f o l l o w i n g a r g u m e n t , see A . F . C o l b o r n , 5 1 - 5 3 . F o r t h e f o r m s in t h e Katherine, see below, G r a m m a r , §55.

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

23

class is probably older than one in which -ie has diverged into -i and -ie. But this divergence had not yet occurred in the West by 1200. The Caligula manuscript of La^amon, for instance, has regularly fondien for fondin, but retains polien. If A and B are Western manuscripts, as they seem to be, and if the rate of phonetic change did not vary greatly in closely related areas in the West, then the distinction between -i and -ie indicates a date of composition later than 1200, and perhaps, according to Colborn, no earlier than 1225. As Colborn pointed out, there was a sharp cleavage in ME between those areas (the West and the South) which retained the OE verbal system and slowly modified it phonetically, and those areas on the other hand (the North and the East) in which it was violently disrupted and remodelled even before the ME period proper began. Where there was strong Scandinavian influence, inflections were levelled as early as late OE, so that -an forms replaced -ian forms (hence Orm lolcenn, polenn). "The -i- of the present stem had already been lost in the North and the East in the earliest ME texts, but in the South and the West it persists into the fourteenth century." 19 Where English remained intact, there was a regular development from OE until well into the thirteenth century. This led Colborn to conclude that the particular stage represented by the original language of A and B could not be copies of an older period (fondien text and fondin scribe ; or fondin text and fonden scribe). Colborn's argument is undoubtedly ingenious, but it would require even more ingenuity to explain how the original composition, which was written "round about A. D. 1225" (p. 53), could have been copied in a manuscript written "about 1210 A.D." (p. 47), fifteen years earlier. Even if the manuscript of B is dated later than 1210 (Mack dated it ca. 1230, p. xx), 1225 still seems too late for the original composition, since the transmission of the texts might require at least a decade or so.20 Colborn may have dismissed too easily the possibility of regional differences in the West. For instance, d'Ardenne (p. 237), thinks the development of -i, -ie forms was "probably accomplished during the latter part of the twelfth century (in some dialects perhaps not until later)". Undifferentiated -ien forms occur not only in the Lagamon, but also in the Nero text of the Riwle, which was copied at approximately the same time as MSS A and B. Since the La3amon and Nero texts are associated with Worcester, it seems likely t h a t -ien forms are simply characteristic of that dialect at t h a t time. 21 Moreover, differentiated forms consistently occur in R and T, where they seem to be normal in the dialects of both texts, but in T -i(n) but 19 Karl Brunner, An Outline of Middle English Grammar, trans. Grahame K. W. Johnston (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 80, §70. 20 Mack, Marherete, xxi, allows a period of 25 to 30 years; Thompson, lxi, allows "probably a few years". 21 Richard Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Orammatik I : Lautlehre, rev. H. Ch. Matthes (Heidelberg, 1934), §138, Anm.

24

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

not -ie(n) forms were falling together with those with -e(n), suggesting a fondin text and fonden scribe. Since R and T were written about the same time as B, the -en forms in T suggest a dialectal rather than a diachronic difference. But even allowing Colborn's assumption, it does not seem necessary to conclude that twenty-five years must have passed between the time -ie forms appear and the time -i, -ie forms appear. Shortly after this, confusion set in, and forms which had only -i- gradually prevailed, 22 suggesting that the rate of change was greater than Colborn had assumed. Perhaps one might allow a decade or two for the differentiation to have occurred in another region. This would indicate a date for the original compositions somewhere between 1200 and 1210, which agrees with all the other evidence. There is, however, a major difficulty in Tolkien's theory of dating, and that is that the Ancrene Wisse is clearly a revised version of the Riwle, and that there are two circumstances in this revision which indicate a considerable lapse of time between it and the original. I t is apparently written for a much larger community than the original three anchoresses - for it refers to the members as numbering "twenti nu3e Oder ma" - and it omits all references to the personal circumstances of the sisters, implying, according to J . R. Hulbert, that they are dead. 23 But these references suggest a much greater time interval between the original and the revision than Tolkien's "decade or two". I n an attempt to account for the discrepancy, Professor Hulbert argued that Tolkien might have rejected too easily the possibility that the language of A and B represented a literary 'standard'. There is some evidence to support this view. For instance, both texts make use of special spelling conventions which are not explainable on a simple phonetic basis : e.g., 'God' is written godd (only as nom., or acc.sing. in Katherine) to distinguish it from god 'good'; prof and prin represent morphemes according to Hulbert, and not the loss of a vowel; and the consistent use of ea for /ae/ and /ae:/ and of eo for /o/ and ¡0 :/ from OE $5 whether by breaking or, in Mercian, by «-umlaut, is a spelling convention, not a way by which monophthongs would be spelled independently. If A and B did represent a standard language, then it is possible to explain the production of a dialectally consistent text in these manuscripts when alterations had been made. 24 22

Brunner, 81. T h e s e interpolations were first noted in t h e collation of the Ancrene Wisse w i t h t h e N e r o t e x t b y G. C. Macaulay, MLR 9 (1914), 470, and cited by J. R . H u l b e r t , "A Thirt e e n t h Century E n g l i s h Literary Standard", JEGP 45 (1946), 4 1 1 - 4 1 2 . 24 Hulbert, 4 1 1 - 4 1 4 ; see also Zettersten, 2 2 - 2 3 . A n n e H u d s o n , "Tradition and I n n o v a tion in Some Middle English Manuscripts", RES 17 (1966), 371, fn. 5, p o i n t s o u t t h a t t h e distinction b e t w e e n orthographical translation and dialectal translation are n o t o f t e n n o t e d : " W h e n translation is dismissed as a n e x p l a n a t i o n for t h e ' A B ' language, it is usually dialectal translation which is m e a n t . B u t f r o m t h e ea a n d eo spellings in t h e t e x t s , 23

TEXTUAL RELATIONS A N D THE AB-DIALECT

25

No doubt Tolkien was too quick in rejecting the possibility of a standard language, b u t even so, the best explanation of the uniformity of language in A and B is t h a t the sources were in the same language and t h a t the scribe or scribes were familiar with this language. Because MS A was written in the same dialect as the original does not necessarily mean that it was written for the same house ; it may have been written for another house using the same, or a similar, dialect. Moreover, there is some evidence in MS B t h a t when the scribe was confronted with an adulterated or unfamiliar dialect, he produced a 'mixed' text just as would any other scribe. An example of this can be seen in the beginning of the Seinte Margarete where the scribe began copying the legend from a manuscript which did not fully preserve the spelling system found in the rest of the manuscript. This part of the manuscript was later corrected in another hand as far as f. 21 or so. Then either the exemplar was changed (according to d'Ardenne, Iuliene, xxxiii), or, as Mack thought, a second scribe took over the copying of the exemplar of B (Marherete, xiv). I n either case, the corrected section shows certain marked differences in orthography from the rest of the legend. Although B usually provides a more reliable version than R or T, in this case it is inferior, even aside from the orthographical mistakes, and apparently the revision of it was based on a copy similar to R, for almost all the corrections are designed to make the text of B agree with t h a t of R, even where the corrected section had the better reading. 25 The very fact that two such widely different texts as the Ancrene Wisse and the Bodley version of the Katherine Group, written in two different hands, should use the same language and orthography suggests t h a t we are not dealing with a single scribe, a Western Orm formulating spelling systems in his cell. I t suggests rather the obedience to some school or authority. We are dealing then with a center t h a t employed a 'standard' language in the sense t h a t it was familiar with and preserved native English written traditions. But it used the language natural to it, the language of a region where English was cultivated and had some tradition, and where the language must have developed virtually undisturbed from OE. I t is not the rustic language of peasants nor, as Professor Tolkien made clear, is it " a language long relegated to the 'uplands', struggling once more for expression in apologetic emulation of its betters, or out of compassion for the 'lewed', but rather one t h a t has never fallen back into 'lewedness', and has contrived, in troublous times, to maintain the air of a gentleman. I t has traditions, and some acquaintance with books and the pen, but it is also in close touch with a good living speech - a soil not to mention such refinements as the use of d and p, 'AB' is a highly stylized orthography» a scribal 'Standard' even if only of a single scriptorium. Orthographic translation into this standard may well have occurred." 25 Mack, xiv-xvi and note to 2/23, p. 58 ; d'Ardenne, x x x - x x x v ; cf. Hulbert, 412.

26

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

somewhere in England." 26 For various reasons this soil appears to be somewhere in the West Midlands. Since both manuscripts were associated with Herefordshire, the Bodley MS being there in the sixteenth century and the Ancrene Wi-sse apparently at Wigmore Abbey by about 1300, Tolkien was inclined to assign both MSS A and B, and therefore their originals, to Herefordshire. 27 In the later Middle Ages, according to Colborn (p. 48), manuscripts are more likely to migrate from the West than into it. Although Colborn did not explain the reason for this, it is apparently because the centers of learning and power had shifted from the West by then. At any rate, if a particular manuscript was found in the West in the sixteenth century, it was probably there earlier. " I t is not unusual for Middle English manuscripts to be found in later times near the place in which they were written." 28 But the fact t h a t two manuscripts in the same language should be found near each other makes it even more probable that they were written there. Certainly the West Midland area in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries affords such a language as Professor Tolkien describes. I t is this area t h a t is connected both with the survival of literary English under Wulfstan and the revival of English by La3amon. Moreover, the Katherine Group is written in richly alliterative prose, and it is in the West Midlands t h a t the alliterative tradition was preserved, culminating in the Gawain in the fourteenth century. The Katherine Group is connected with the Old English prose tradition, which it continues, and the author is at least aware of the earlier language, for he writes in the St. Margaret of "ure ledene, \>' is aid Englis" (Mack, p. 52/32).29 The explanation of this phenomenon lies in the relative isolation, both political and geographical, of the West. Geographically, it is cut off by the Pennines in the north and the Jurassic ridge in the east and south (the highest part of this ridge, to the south, is called the Cotswold Hills). As the writers of the MEDC point o u t : 26

Essays and Studies 14 (1929), 104. T o l k i e n , 117, t h o u g h t t h e h a n d w r i t i n g m e n t i o n i n g t h e n a m e s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h H e r e f o r d s h i r e w a s f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y , b u t cf. a b o v e , p . 18 a n d f n . 3. F o r t h e p r o v e n a n c e of A , see M a c a u l a y , MLR 9 (1914), 145 a n d f n . 3. A f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y i n s c r i p t i o n of f. l r of A m e n t i o n s t h a t J o h n P u r c e l l g a v e i t t o t h e C h u r c h of S t . J a m e s of W i g m o r e a t t h e i n s t a n c e of " f r a t r i s W a l t e r i d e L o n d e l a w e senioris t u n c p r e c e n t o r i s " , w h o m M a c a u l a y i d e n t i f i e d aa t h e " W a l t e r d e L o n d e l a w e s e n i o r " m e n t i o n e d a m o n g t h e l e a d i n g C a n o n s of W i g m o r e a b o u t 1300. 27

28

T r o u n c e , Athelston ( = Publications of the Philological Society 9) (1933), 2, a s q u o t e d b y d ' A r d e n n e , x x v i i (q. v.). See also C o l b o r n , Hali Meidhad, 48. 29 F o r t h e l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n of t h e W e s t a n d of t h e Katherine Oroup, see D o r o t h y B e t h u r u m , " T h e C o n n e c t i o n of t h e Katherine Oroup w i t h Old E n g l i s h P r o s e " , JEOP 24 (1935), 5 5 3 - 5 6 4 , a n d R o b e r t W . C h a m b e r s , On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and His School ( = i n t r o . t o EETS 186, p u b l . s e p a r a t e l y as 191 [1932]) ( L o n d o n , 1931), x l v - c l x x i v , e s p . x c i v f f .

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

27

I t would b e difficult t o o v e r e s t i m a t e t h e effects of t h e Jurassic e s c a r p m e n t u p o n mediev a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n , and c o n s e q u e n t l y u p o n racial m o v e m e n t s and phonological developm e n t s . The English . . . m a d e great use of t h e navigable rivers as routes of travel and trade. One is n o t surprised, therefore, t o find t h a t m a n y of t h e i m p o r t a n t diocesan and political limits of t h e Old a n d Middle English periods followed t h e crest of t h e Jurassic escarpment. I t formed t h e Old English diocesan b o u n d a r y b e t w e e n Leicester and Lichfield, b e t w e e n Dorchester and Worcester, a n d b e t w e e n W i n c h e s t e r a n d Worcester ; and w i t h later modifications it c o n t i n u e d t o be a m a i n diocesan b o u n d a r y until t h e R e f o r m a t i o n . A s a purely political b o u n d a r y its earlier significance w a s i m m e n s e ; and traces of this importance are still revealed b y t h e fact t h a t the c o u n t y boundaries b e t w e e n Warwickshire and N o r t h a m p t o n s h i r e and b e t w e e n Warwickshire and Oxfordshire h a v e a definite correlation w i t h it even today.30

Between the Jurassic ridge and the River Anker, the West was marked off by Watling Street, especially important in Old English as the political boundary between the Danelaw on the east and Mercia on the west; in Middle English, it formed the extreme eastern boundary of the diocese of Lichfield. The West was also cut off by the Rivers Anker and Trent, "not only the most considerable barrier to east-west communication, but also the main basis for the border between the Scandinavian colonies in Leicestershire and East Derbyshire and the English West Mercia" (MEDG, p. 41). The ancient nucleus of the West Midlands was the Diocese of Worcester, which corresponded to the AngloSaxon kingdom of the Hwicce. This area was occupied by Saxons from Wessex and Anglians making their way West. But even before this there was already an "ancient and strongly rooted native culture with its focus in the Cotswold Hills and the Avon and Severn valleys". 31 Herefordshire and Shropshire were even more remote since, as R.H. Hilton observed, they "really belong to the Marches of Wales, a regional society well worth studying in its own right" (Mediaeval

Society,

p. 8).

Politically, too, the West was isolated. The geographical barriers would, of course, impede invasion ; but since invasion in Britain normally proceeded from east to west anyway, the West was relatively little affected by the Norse invasions succeeded by Norman and French domination. Thus the West naturally retained much of its traditions, linguistic and other, and English language and literary tradition could be preserved in full continuity there in the West. 32 But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the West Midlands and Hereford in particular must have been a social, political and military center, "for this was the period of the Welsh wars, and of the rebellion of Simon de Montford, ,0

MEDG, 39 ; cf. R . H . H i l t o n , A Medieval Society: the Thirteenth Century (London, 1966), 8 - 2 3 . 31 Hilton, 8. 32 D'Ardenne, x x v - x x v i i i .

The West Midlands

at the End of

28

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

which was fought to a conclusion on the Welsh border". 3 3 I t was also the location of the great families, including the Mortimers, of whom it was said about 1300, "At this point the History of the House of Mortimer passes from the scope of a merely provincial record and becomes a feature of the annals of a nation." 3 4 As a result of the increasing political importance of the West, its language, though based upon a "good living speech" with a relatively unbroken tradition from Old English, must have received some polish and standardization as a written language. Other evidence from the social history of the West also indicates how such works as the Riwle and the Katherine Group could have been composed there in the thirteenth century. Hope Emily Allen has shown that these works coincided in date with an important religious movement when the highest born women became anchoresses, and the women of the great West Country families bore an important part in t h a t movement ("Localisation"), and D.S. Brewer noted t h a t nowhere else was there any equivalent of the group of devout and important laity expressing itself in such active patronage (which included the foundation of nunneries). 35 As Brewer said, "there was strong Augustinian influence at Wigmore; and in Herefordshire generally there was an upper-class devout laity, able and willing to command artists and scholars who were in touch with continental influences and Old English traditions" (234-235). All this reflects conditions t h a t are implied in the Riwle. There may also be a further connection between Wigmore Abbey where the Ancrene Wisse was located and the Katherine Group in that there had been at Wigmore a wooden chapel of "Saincte Juliana", whose legend is included in the Group, and there were close ties between Wigmore and St. Victor in Paris. This last may be significant because another piece in the Group, Sawles Warde, was a translation of De anima of Hugh of St. Victor. 36 Thus, the external evidence offers a strong a priori argument for the West Midland, specifically Herefordshire, origin of the Bodley manuscript. So does the linguistic evidence. Mary S. Serjeantson claimed to have shown t h a t the Ancrene Wisse can be assigned to Herefordshire on purely linguistic grounds, 37 and the editors of the Katherine Group agreed t h a t "such a localization fits very well the linguistic features of the dialect in relation with other texts of 33

H o p e E m i l y Allen, MLR 28 (1933), 486. A s quoted b y Allen, 487. T h e W M society ca. 1300 is t h e subject of t h e recent s t u d y b y Hilton, mentioned above. 35 "Two N o t e s on t h e A u g u s t i n i a n and P o s s i b l y W e s t Midland Origin of t h e Ancrene Riwle", N & Q 201 (1956), 2 3 2 - 2 3 5 . 36 J . A . W . B e n n e t t and G. V. Smithers (eds.), Early Middle English Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1966), 4 0 2 - 4 0 3 . 37 "The D i a l e c t of t h e Corpus Manuscript of t h e Ancrene Riwle", London Medieval Studies 1 (1938), 2 2 5 - 2 4 8 . 34

29

TEXTUAL RELATIONS A N D THE AB-DIALECT

similar date and linguistic character, e.g., the Brut".38 In the most recent study of the Riwle, A. Zettersten similarly assigned the dialect of A to the Herefordshire-Staffordshire-Shropshire area (Studies in ... the Ancrene Riwle, 287). Because of the importance of the AB-dialect, the Bodley manuscript has received more attention than the Royal or Titus manuscripts, yet these are interesting in themselves. They have been considered the usual adulterated texts of Middle English manuscripts in which the language of the scribe is superimposed on the language of the original, and forms from one dialect occur next to forms from another ; yet MS R is in many ways more consistent than B. Although there may be confusion of forms in the two manuscripts, there is not chaos. Generally both texts are written in the AB-dialect combined with one somewhat different, the language of R differing less than T from AB. Assuming that MS B represents almost pure AB (Herefordshire), the language of all three manuscripts has been formulated in this way :39 MS B = AB MS R = AB -f X MS T = AB + Y R and T may well represent separate houses or centers of learning, as d'Ardenne suggests (p. xxxiv), but if so, they represent centers located in X and Y rather than in the dialect area of the original. There must have been close connections among the three centers, for not only is B written in the same language as a version of the Ancrene Riwle, but T contains another version of the Riwle. Moreover, the revision at the beginning of the St. Margaret in MS B is apparently based on a text similar to R (but not R itself), so that Miss Mack concluded that R and the revision of B were copied from the same manuscript (xvi and 58, n. to 2/23). Whether the manuscript was in the library of B or borrowed from R, the circumstance suggests some connection between the two houses. As it also suggests, the textual relations among the manuscripts are rather complicated, but they cannot be ignored by anyone studying the dialect of the manuscripts. Crucial to these relations, of course, is the language of the Bodley manuscript. Although the other texts of the Bodley Katherine Group have been assigned to Herefordshire, there has been no full linguistic study of the St. Katherine. Yet it cannot be assumed that all the pieces of the Group in any one manuscript are written in the same dialect simply because they appear together. A close study of one of these pieces, for instance, may reveal the presence of a slightly different dialect, say Z, from the others in the same manuscript. This is as true of B as it is for R and T. And this problem of dialect is closely related to the 38 w

D'Ardenne, 103. See also Mack, Marherete, xxi, and Colborn, Hali Meidhad, Thompson, Wohunge, lviii; Zettersten, 296.

55.

30

TEXTUAL RELATIONS A N D THE AB-DIALECT

central problem of the Katherine Group - that of authorship. I t is still a matter of conjecture whether one author wrote all the Group or some of it (in which case there might be as many as five authors). No doubt, one should not confuse peculiarities of dialect with those of ideolect, but one can hardly distinguish between the two until the dialect has been identified. Therefore the problem of authorship cannot be solved until the problem of dialect is solved. To do both things, all the texts must be compared, and t h a t means the language of all the texts should be described, especially the Katherine because it is somewhat longer than the other pieces and because it is found in all three manuscripts. Although the three saint's lives have approximately the same number of leaves in the Bodley manuscript, three leaves of the St. Katherine are missing. In the Royal manuscript the St. Katherine has seven leaves more than the Margaret and twelve more than the Juliana. The Margaret and Juliana do not occur at all in the Titus, and Hali Meidhad does not occur in the Royal. This study of the language and dialect of the three texts is thus divided into two sections: the first describes the phonology (Ch. IV) and the inflections (Ch. V); the second part summarizes the dialectal characteristics found and also localizes each manuscript. The focus throughout, however, is on the significant features of dialect, for which full lists are provided. In the descriptive part of the study, syntax is not discussed because it is difficult to determine what the dialectally significant features of syntax are. Syntax is undoubtedly important, but it is more closely related to ideolect than to dialect and might more profitably be studied in an analysis of style. That is, a person's range of linguistic choice is much greater for syntax than it is for phonology and inflections, which are fairly well determined by dialect. A writer may have a choice of sentence structure (e.g., adverbial clause introducing a sentence, included in it, or ending i t ; compound sentence or two sentences, etc.), but he rarely has a choice in pronunciation or inflectional ending. On the other hand, the major syntactic patterns (such as the order of subjectverb-object or of article-adjective-noun) are less likely to vary from one dialect to another than are sounds or even inflections. The description of the phonology is diachronic while that of the inflections is essentially synchronic. This is perhaps the most efficient way of approaching Middle English dialects; it is, at any rate, the approach used in most studies of these dialects and in the various editions of the Katherine Group. The order of the items follows generally that in the various editions of the Group, thus providing a basis for comparison with them. Throughout the study, an attempt is made to explain the development from OE of forms in the manuscripts, assuming that distinctions in Middle English dialects partially reflect those already existing in OE as well as those developing at a later stage. For this purpose the standard OE, as well as ME grammars have been consulted. Indispensable to any study of the Katherine

TEXTUAL RELATIONS AND THE AB-DIALECT

31

Group, however, is d' Ardenne's discussion of the AB-language (without a t t e m p t ing to localize it) in her edition of St. Juliana (cited above). There she showed t h e close connection between AB and the language of the Vespasian Psalter, and frequent reference will be made to her work. The forms of t h e Katherine texts are then related to this description of the AB-dialect in d'Ardenne's study of St. Juliana, Zettersten's study of the Ancrene Riwle, and to the description of Middle English dialects at a later stage, ca. 1400, established b y MEDC and modified by subsequent studies. I n spite of the criticism of this work, which is summarized in m y first chapter, it remains the best available survey of Middle English dialects. The findings of Mcintosh and Samuels, who criticized the MEDC, are not yet available, and the survey of Middle English dialects now underway is only complete for the northern counties. 40 Because of the importance of the Bodley manuscript, it serves as a basis for the description t h a t follows. The forms in the Royal and Titus manuscripts are then compared with those in t h e Bodley. Treating the three manuscripts together in this way prevents a great deal of repetition t h a t would result from taking up each manuscript separately, and it shows more clearly the similarities and differences of the three texts. I t also makes it possible to isolate the AB and non-AB elements of the manuscripts. From this information it m a y then be possible to localize the AB-dialect and the dialects of X and Y in the formula on p. 29 above.

40

See Ch. V I . below on t h e various features of dialect treated b y m o s t studies. I h a v e used for this Oakden, Moore-Marckwardt, Mosse-Walker, m e n t i o n e d in Ch. I, p. 14 a n d fn. 5, and such particular studies as Zettersten, Bertil S u n d b y , Studies in the Middle English Dialect Material of Worcestershire Records ( = Norwegian Studies in English 10) ( B e r g e n - O s l o , 1963) ; Gillis Kristensson, A Survey of Middle English Dialects 1 2 9 0 - 1 3 5 0 : The Six Northern counties and Lincolnshire ( = Lund Studies in English 35) (Lund, 1967). T h e t e x t s of t h e Group h a v e already been cited, b u t I h a v e also used as a m o d e l Mary S. Serjeantson's analysis in Legends of Hooly Wummen by Osbern Bokenham (= EETS 206) (London, 1938).

Ill GRAPHOLOGY

Graphology, or the writing system, and phonology, the sound system, are ilosely connected in Middle English texts, and they will be treated together cn the discussion of phonology below. Before the phonology can be discussed, however, it will be necessary to characterize the graphological system of the three texts of the St. Katherine by which the phonology is revealed. The assumption made by many linguists that language is primarily speech and that writing is secondary, a mere reflection of speech, has recently been questioned. 1 No doubt speech and writing should not be confused, but rather than being a reflection of speech, writing may be considered an independent manifestation of a graphological system to which it should be referred as speech is of a phonological system. The two systems are related to each other, since the distinct units or graphemes in the graphological system may signify the distinct units or phonemes of the phonological system, and similarly spellings may influence pronunciations (as the spelling of the word theater influenced the pronunciation 1

The various attitudes towards writing are discussed in J o h n C. McLaughlin, A Oraphemic-Phonemic Study of a Middle English Manuscript (The Hague, 1963), 18-43. The view t h a t writing is secondary to speech m a y be found in Leonard Bloomfield, Language (New York, 1933), 285 ; H . A. Gleason, An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (New York, 1955), 301 ; W . Nelson Francis, The Structure of American English (New York, 1958), 36-37, cf. Francis' later view in The English Language, an Introduction : Background for Writing (New York, 1963), 197-199. The view t h a t writing m a y be considered an independent system appears in H . J . Uldall, "Speech and W r i t i n g " , Acta linguistica 4 (1944), 11-16 ; Josef Yachek, "Some Remarks on Writing and Phonetic Transcription", Acta linguistica 5 (1945-49), 86-93, both of which appear in Readings in Linguistics, ed. by Eric P . H a m p , F . W . Householder, and R . Austerlitz (Chicago and London, 1966), 147-151, 152-157 ; E . Pulgram, "Graphic and Phonic Systems: Figurse and Signs", Word 21 (1965), 208-224. J o h n Lyons also considers writing independent b u t argues the priority of speech in Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge, 1968), 38-42, 60-66. See also Angus Mcintosh, "'Graphology' and Meaning" (1961), Chapter 6 of Mcintosh a n d M. A. K . Halliday, Patterns of Language: Papers in General, Descriptive, and Applied Linguistics (Bloomington and London, 1966), 98-110, f r o m which I take t h e term 'graphology', and " T h e Analysis of Written Middle English", TPS (1956), 26-55.

33

GRAPHOLOGY

with /0/ for /t/). A written text can always be read aloud, but the letters are not 'translated' immediately into sounds; they must ffr^t be related to the graphological system. The graphological and phonological systems are themselves independent manifestations of the lexico-grammatical system of a language. The various relations may be visualized in the diagram of Fig. 2.2 SEMANTIC SYSTEM t LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL SYSTEM

t

t

MORPHOGRAPHEMIC SYSTEM

MORPHOPHONEMIC SYSTEM t t GR APHEMIC *• - GR APHONEMIC - * PHONEMIC SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM t t GRAPHETIC PHONETIC SYSTEM SYSTEM t t WRITING SPEECH Fig. 2

The graphological system, which is implied in the 'graph'-systems and their interrelations, thus parallels the phonological system, to which it is related at the graphonemic level. I t is also related to the lexico-grammatical system at the morphographemic level and to writing at the graphetic level. The graphemic system is an organization of graphetic distinctions which is used to represent morphographemic and graphonemic distinctions. For example, the two expressions the sons raise meat and the sun's rays meet may be indistinguishable phonologically but not graphologically. 3 The spelling represents certain graphonemic distinctions with the graphemes corresponding to certain distinct sounds ; but it also represents certain morphographemic distinctions in the contrast between the lexical morphemes son- and sun-, raise and rays, meat and meet, as well as the grammatical morphemes common case plural and genitive case singular in -s and -s. The morphographemic distinctions are based upon graphonemic uses of graphemes and their combinations to represent phonemes. Of the various ways of representing /e :/ and /z/, for instance, two are selected to distinguish raise and rays; another could be used to distinguish raze. However, graphemic devices which are not graphonemic may also 2

Adapted from Francis, The English Language, 198, modified for McLaughlin's theory of the graphoneme. The double headed arrows indicate representation and realization or manifestation. 3 The example is found in Charles F. Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), 15.

34

GRAPHOLOGY

be used to make morphographemic distinctions, as in the use of the majuscule and apostrophe to distinguish Ray's from rays. I n a completely phonemic system of writing, that is, an isomorphic graphonemic system such as t h a t used in phonemic transcription, the two expressions discussed above would be spelled the same, since the spelling would represent phonological rather than lexico-grammatical distinctions. There would be a consistent one-to-one correspondence between sound and letter or phoneme and grapheme, so that every phoneme would be expressed by one and only one grapheme and every grapheme would express one and only one phoneme. On the other hand, a perfect morphographemic system of writing would distinguish consistently all the morphemes of the language. Thus, what might be written phonemically as /ro : z/ would have to be distinguished not only as rows, roes, and rose, but further distinctions would have to be made between row-noun + Zplural and row-verb + ^present and rose and rise -jDpreterite. As this indicates, most writing systems are neither purely graphonemic nor purely morphographemic but combine the two. Generally, Middle English texts employ an alphabetic system t h a t is more consistently phonemic than Modern English, but it is not completely isomorphic. The same phoneme may be represented by several different graphemes or combinations of graphemes, e.g., /§/ may be represented by s, ss, sch, sh, sc, t h a t is, the graphoneme // = (&{s)(c){Ji)') ; the same grapheme may represent several different phonemes, e.g., may represent /v u( :) y( :)/. This may be seen in the three texts of the St. Katherine, which are remarkably consistent and even suggest a written 'standard' (see p. 24 above). I n part their consistency comes from being written in a good tradition. The graphology in all three texts is based on Old English traditions, modified by subsequent phonological developments and by the French graphological system. 4 The following graphemes are found in all the texts :