“ In Godric’s verse the strict syllabic principle, with its consequent abandonment of alliteration, save for ornament, and its consistent attempt at end-rhyme, has obtained already a complete mastery, whilst in most of the contemporary poetry it is still struggling with the traditional alliterative metric. His methods rank him with the writers of popular topical verse, while the more conscious artists still linger in the old ways. ”

“ The scribe uses þ initially, ð in other positions, and once th. So he has ƿ generally, but 242 once w in wel. In selfd 8, d is due to anticipation of the following word: in wid 10 d is scribal error for ð.
Grammar: moderes is a new genitive (OE. mōdor, mēder) ; e of the dative is lost in mod, scamel, burth. fote 10 is pl. d., sinne acc. pl. Of the possessives mine 10 is pl. d., the others are uninflected; min sinne 7 is noteworthy, because the pl. forms at this period are usually inflected. Iledde is a solitary ind. pt. pl., silde subj. pt. sing.; the other verbs are imperatives: rix = rixe. ”

“ This manuscript stands nearest in dialect to the original; it appears to be a copy of a North-Midland text made by a scribe not long enough resident in the Midland area to have quite forgotten his native Southern speech.
Style: MS. N is not only the most remote from the original in dialect, it has also been altered in language more than the others, partly from a desire to make the meaning plainer, partly from a dislike of any singularity of expression. The changes made may be classified as i. insertion of connecting particles, ‘and,’ ‘vor,’ ‘þeonne,’ N 144 &c. ”

“ Most of the adjective inflections are lost, and there is little trace of the distinction between strong and weak. There is no instance of undoubted inflection of a strong adj. in the singular, but ful 56, an 60, scort 60, al 66, 88 are uninflected: micel is invariable. Strong pl. in e are sæhte 35, alle 45, 62, 67, 68, 72, 96, 129, yuele 51, scærpe 61, suilce 86, manie 102, gode 104, wunderlice, manifældlice 112: not inflected are al 15, cnotted 57, hethen 77, mani 103. ”

“ Orm’s verse is monotonously regular; every line has its fifteen syllables exactly counted out and ends in x́ x; the caesura comes after the eighth syllable; the rhythm is iambic without substitution. For the sake of this uniformity he does violence to the natural accent in Niþþrédd 35, Bisscópess 51, Enngléss 69, sahhtnésse 140, drihhtíness 171, though Schipper regards such cases as examples of ‘hovering accent,’ wherein the stress is distributed equally over the two syllables having the word-accent and the verse-accent,—a spondee rather than an iamb. ”

“ On the other hand the scribe of D, regardless of the rhyme, can have meant only lǣnde in writing, wite whet he us lende, meaning, preserve what he has entrusted to us, i.e. our souls; the expression of a familiar idea as at 121/144; 127/339, 368, and similarly lenne in e r. w. þenne, must be taken to represent lǣne, pr. s. subj. of lǣnan. The meaning of L, with which E and M agree, is probably the same, but if lende means convey, then wite must have the rare sense of, see to it, provide, as in, ‘Wite ȝe þet ȝe ȝemen þenne halie sunnendei,’ OEH i. ”

“ Feminine endings before the caesura are not uncommon, 2, 9, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24; but the ending of the line is invariably feminine. A comparison of the manuscripts shows that the author’s practice was more correct than the representation of any of them; thus the unmetrical second section of 25 is in e, þe hwílẹ | he méi | to héuẹne. But it is clear that he used all the licences detailed above.
Introduction: The Moral Ode is, to all appearance, an original work, the natural product of an old man’s musings on life with its lost opportunities, death, and judgement. ”

“ This article is mostly original. Sirene, genitive of sirena; the title in T. is ‘De Sirenis’; classical Latin has only siren, -is, fem. In T. they are female and birds in the nether half; his account is very brief and general, and it is followed closely by that of the onocentaur, which is ‘biformis’ like the siren; the ‘significacio’ is common to both. An earlier description is found in Layamon, 1322-1347, which is based on Wace, Brut, 733-771. The author of the Bestiary was acquainted with one or both of these. Comp. also Bozon, Contes Moralisés, p. ”

“ Lives, i. 494/106 (afflicted the Saints with every kind of misery) ; ‘ha tukeð ure godes to balewe ⁊ to bismere,’ SK 551. Whether to is to be inserted, or wroþe (which is a noun, ON 944) and vuele are to be regarded as adverbs, in any case the verb must have a direct object; over is probably a misreading of the common original MS. for oþer; comp. ON 1524 where J has correctly oþer and C over. The mistake would lead to the omission of to before wroþe. 570 The sense then is, thou dost harass with evil and harm other small birds wherever thou canst. fugele as pl. ”

“ As the editors of the Facsimiles of Royal and other Charters point out, H1, H2 are in a book hand, not that of an official court scribe; they are without witnesses or place of execution. Their seals do not prove them to be the original grant, for both H1 and its duplicate Cotton Charter, vii. 1, have seals, and a note on the back of the latter appears to indicate that it is one of four copies. The duplicate of H3 also has its seal, attached, like the others, in an unusual way to the left side of the document, as if to show that both documents and seals are replicas of the original. ”

“ The version of MS. J is not necessarily the more primitive because it is shorter than that of T. A poem of such loose structure readily lends itself to selection on the part of the copyist; and the scribe of MS. J was evidently a critic.
If the suggestions offered in the section on metre have any weight, a considerable time and several copies must have intervened between the original and the present form of the poem. The composition of that original should, I think, be placed somewhere about 1180 A.D.
1. ”

“ Initial f is once v, vare 176, elsewhere f, faren 45, fareþ 48; between vowels or vowel and liquid it is u, v, delue 221, ived 100, iveiþed 175, vuele 21, but bilefeþ 53, life 46, and before u f is retained, biful 122: fu is written in bilefue 24, 46, lefue 92, 207, leofue 79, 274, lifue 22, lofuieþ 286, wifues 43 (5) . For t, d is written in bed 100; fifþe 62 (fīfta) is an early instance of the modern form. ”

“ Morris inserts herte after ille, producing a truism and spoiling the verse. Mätzner translates ‘quia situm est in malo,’ treating ille as a neuter noun, evil. Possibly ille means, evil men, but more probably the place is corrupt, and we should read, And hate sor þat ille in it lið, (envy) and bitter hatred which wickedly co-exists with envy, that is, envy which produces hatred of the person envied. For ille as adverb, comp. ”

“ So if words in sufficient number occur often in one writing and seldom or not at all in another, if the percentage of the foreign element is not similar, if the synonyms for abstract notions like joy and sorrow, luck and mishap are not the same, the compositions must be the work of different authors. ”

“ Phonology: Oral a is a, habbe 75, last 212; awakede 172 has its form from āwacian, its meaning from āweccan. a before nasals is a, fram 35 (5 times) , man 120 &c., þan conj. 34, þanne 47, 160, wanne 21 (4) ; man indef. pron. is man 112, me 34; apparently lengthened in naam 237, from the plural. a before lengthening groups is o, belongeth 86, fond 206 (3) , hond 138, londes 31, longe 246, 275, but shortened and 10, answerden 18, and amenges 217, influenced by gemengan. ”

“ But he certainly did not write gangande 530, secande 536, and transmission through a Northern or North Midland copy may accordingly be assumed. Our manuscript was written by a scribe of the Southern border of East Anglia. He has left his mark in a number of syncopated presents which spoil the metre and probably in the case of others where the full form is metrically admissible, in luuien 135, hatieð 304, rotieð 311, wulle 634, wullen 314, and probably in were 134 &c., since wore 578 r. w. more is the only form controlled by rhyme. ”

“ The translation in some of the MSS. is ‘virginalis puritas, matris flos.’ Godric has in mind, ‘Ave mater per quam via | Immaculata patuit | Quia (Qui à in text) Deo flore | Virginitas effloruit,’ Anselm, 306/93-6; ‘Ave coeleste lilium | Per florem cuius unicum,’ &c., id. 305/153, 4. Christ then is the Virgin’s pure offspring, the mother’s flower to whom the next two lines are addressed, and þe in l. 8 (which Zupitza rejects) presents no difficulty. The abandonment of the vocative for a new subject is artless. ”

“ Phonology: Godric’s Northern dialect has been well preserved, but he would have written scild 3, ric 4, and probably birth 13. a is a in scamel (sćeamol) 9; æ is a in þat, bare 10, at 13. e is e in help 3., itredie 10. i is i in schild 3, dilie 7, and y (written for i before m) in tymbre 12. o is o in godes 4. y is i in sinne 7, winne 8. ā is a in swa 9, clenhad 6. ǣ1 (WG. ai + i) is e in clenhad 6, iledde 9; ǣ2 (WG. ā) is a in bare 13, þare 14. ō is o in moder 2, onfo 3, mod 7, fote 10. ū is u in bur 5, hus 12. eo before r + consonant is e in erðe 10. ”

“ I think a good case can be made out. He was brought up in South Lincolnshire, where the Danish element was strong, and not far from the northern border of the Midland area, for Lincolnshire north of the Witham was more Northern than Midland. In later years his visitations took him often to his houses of Watton and Malton in Yorkshire. ”

“ Sathanas with th is French. Scandinavian are bene, efninges eueningges (influenced by efen) , ille, laȝe loȝe, lofte, niþinges, þralles þrelles, wrange wronge, and possibly fruden frute, lan 32/64: baþe boþe in a Southern text may descend from OE. bā þā (Björkman, 108) .
Metre: The Septenarius is a purely syllabic metre of seven feet, with or without end-rhyme, fashioned on the model of such mediaeval Latin verse as the well-known méum | ést pro|pósit|úm || ín ta|bérna | móri; the first section of the line having four stresses with a masculine and the second three with a feminine ending. ”

“ The prefix ge is regularly i: k is often used for c; cw 290 is qu; č is ch, as chireche 57, cheorl 58, &c. sc is generally sch, but scolde 87, wrþsipes 22: ġ is regularly y.
In syllables of minor stress the vowels have mostly been levelled to e, as in egleche, sadelbowe, sikerliche, vppen, &c. An e, generally slurred in scansion, is inserted in clerek, euere, seorewe, arewe, erewe, foleweþ, pouere. ”

“ Ælches weies, in every direction, but Mätzner explains, in any wise, any way, quoting ‘Ælches weies him wes wa,’ 18703, where the meaning appears to be, in both directions, on either side. in grene O, on a green, is a curious variant, and an early use of the noun in this sense.
204. hæne . . . riche; a frequent combination in L: it means the lowly . . . the exalted, the commons . . . the nobles, rather than, the poor . . . the rich.
210. þer . . . on, on which: see 1/3.
213. þe refers to hude. ”

“ The n. s. f. and n. pl. of the pronoun of the third person is ho 4, 122; hom 167 is miswritten for ho; heora is hare 125, 127, hore 126. The relative pronoun is þat: the demonstrative þā, those, is seen in (⁊) ta 68, 161: the indef. is mon 8 (5) ; hwat as noun occurs at 145, 159; āwiht is oht 208; alle is s. d. 128, pl. d. 116.
Infinitives are divided equally between -en and -e; those in -ien are hatien 117, þolien 87, 169, in -ie, werie 27, but loke 124; forms with -in, -i are absent. Dative infinitives are for to biginnen 199, for to puffen 143, to habben 56, with four others in -en ”

“ Metre: This is in dispute. Schipper sees in it a mixture of septenaries, alexandrines, and alliterative verse. He regards l. 28, pléieð and swéieð and síngeð bitwéonen as the only indubitable example of the last, but first half-lines have two accents only in, to þé ich búwe 2; and þónkie wúlle 12; ne wéopen ne múrnen 44, 72, 77, and second half-lines in, þi uéir to iséonne 30; mid gúldene chélle 45; mid énglene wílle 46, 52, 70. The alexandrine is a French verse of six stresses equally divided into two half-verses by a caesura; the ending of each half-line may be masculine or feminine ”

“ J means, blesses my coming.
318. þat—wte may mean, that thou mayest know, but the reading of J gives a better sense, though you find fault with her action, and þat is probably a scribe’s mistake for þah.
320, 323. shulle: the ordinary construction of biddan where its object is expressed by a clause is þat with the subjunctive of the verb, as at 77/60, 141/39; ‘þa bæd he eaðmodlice þæt he hiene ne sende,’ Cura Past., 48/6; the insertion of shulle, which apparently does not alter the sense, is new; comp. ‘Ðeo apostles hine beden ꝥ he scalde suggen hwet þeo saȝe bicweðe,’ OEH 133/23. ”

“ Strong inflections of the adjective are s. n. f. bicumeliche 116, holie 45, 51; s. d. m. bicumeliche 93, eche 125, f. bicumeliche 93, 94, 183, eorðliche 72, faire 64, lude 28, wise 66; s. a. m. endelese 181, rihte 143, sehte 55, f. eche 181; but holi s. d. m. 184, soð 183, fair s. a. m. 12 are not inflected. The weak form has mostly -e in the singular, holie 24 (9) , but holi 47 (9) , lift 69, riht 68 are not inflected. Adjectives in the plural have -e; as also comparatives and superlatives, loðere 116, hegeste 176, but biterest 178. Adjectives used as nouns are bitere pl. g. ”

“ The plural of masculines ends in -es, n. þeynes 1, d. wrenches 257, a. acres 79: neuter nouns with masc. terminations are n. wordes 24, a. sedes 59, þinges 21, wyttes 40, but the normal þing, pl. a. 143; treowe 202, pl. n. represents trēowu; þinge 250 is an isolated pl. a.; worde 300 is probably pl. g., an OE. construction after vale; worde 301 is pl. d.: englene pl. g. 6, &c. (Engla) , iwriten pl. a. 67 are weak forms. Of the strong feminines, ayhte 125, blisse 31, 282, 310, lone 126 (read lon) , neode 141, vnhelþe 73, youþe 105 have added e in the s. ”