Walter William Skeat

“ After Alexander had slain Porus, king of India, he came to the country of the Oxydracae, the people of which go naked, and are called Gymnosophists. Their king sends a letter to Alexander, representing that he has nothing to gain by subduing them. Alexander offers them peace, and promises to grant them a boon; upon which they ask him, by way of taunt, to give them everlasting life. He replies that he cannot do that, but must fulfill his destiny. Next he sees the wonderful trees which only grew during sunlight, and at sundown disappear. These trees were guarded by birds that spat deadly fire. ”

“ I have little doubt that, in modern English, the precentage of French and Latin words under each letter has, in some cases, undergone a considerable change. To take an example, this is particularly the case with the letter A. Whilst the number of English words beginning with A remains much the same as it was, we have received a large number of additions to the French and Latin ones; the result being that the latter are now in a considerable majority. This change is due, in particular, to the very great influence of the Latin ad as a prefix. ”

“ If the English scribe had before him a long English poem, we should have been more obliged to him if he had preserved for us more of it; but, as it is, we are thankful that he has given us a part of it. It is not difficult, by a probable conjecture, to account for the present state of things. It would appear that the English scribe, for some reason or other, set some store by the portion of the story which includes the letters of Alexander to Dindimus, and of Dindimus to Alexander. ”

“ One difficulty in the way of studying the dialect of an old poem is that, when it presents mixed forms, we cannot well tell whether some of its peculiarities may not have been due merely to the scribe. ”

“ And I am prepared to maintain, as always, that even the chief-letter in the alliterative poetry of our forefathers sometimes fell on wholly unaccented and unimportant syllables, such as schal in l. 330 adn sire in l. 967l So much the worse for the poetry, no doubt, but we must not shut our eyes to plain facts by pretending that poets could not err. Besides, it is easy to see why these unimportant syllables sometimes received the rime-letter. ”

“ He sees men on the other side of the river, and sends a message by boat to their king, who is called Dindimus. The rest of the poem concerns the five letters which pass betweeen him and Alexander.
First letter; Alexander to Dindimus (p. 8–10) . Tell me some of your customs; it is good to impart knowledge; for a torch whence another is lighted loses none of its own brilliance thereby. Second letter; from Dindimus (p. 10–30) . I comply with your request. We live a simple life; we neither plough, fish, nor hunt. We live frugally, and die at a fixed age. ”

“ The French romance is all printed, as explained above, and may now be dismissed, as we have nothing more to do with it. The three English fragments are all connected, and are founded mainly on the same Latin version. Repeating from p. xxxvii of my Introduction to William of Palerne and Alisaunder, I may remind the reader that the principal basis of these fragments is the Greek text known as the Pseudo-Callisthenes, whence three principal Latin versions are derived. These are (1) that by Julius Valerius; (2) the Itinerarium Alexandri (relating to Alexander's wars) ”

“ On the alliteration of the poem
§ 24. I note here a few peculiarities of alliteration. [14] Perhaps the most remarkable is the run upon vowels, which is also a marked feature of the Alexander A-fragment; see'll.22, 27, 230, 240, 268, 290, 415, 461, 498, 500, &c. of that text. So here, we find an alliteration of different vowels in'll. 3, 15, 24, 157, 251, 338, 343, 345, 440, 442, 468, 506, 526, 568, 718, 720, 754, 812, 851, 936, 975, &c. We also find alliteration of the same vowel in many instances. Ex: a, a, a ”

“ The third personal pronoun is he, gen. his, is, dat. and acc. him; though in one instance (l. 703) the acc. is written hin, more likely by an error of the scribe than by a preservation of the n in the A.S. hine. The feminine of the third person is hue (as in Alexander A.) , but sche occurs once in l. 309; acc. hure. The neuter is commonly hit. The plural nom. ”

“ An investigation of this particular question is not without a certain interest, and it is of some use to the young to be told that K, W, TH, and SH, regarded as beginning a word, are essentially English, whilst J, V, P, and CH are essentially un-English. And the remark, as regards K, W, and TH, is almost equally true, in whatever part of the words those letters [21] be found. It is a good plan, with beginners, to learn the alphabet; which is not quite so easy a matter as it is commonly said to be.
↑ See also p. xxx of my Preface to William of Palerne, &c. ”

“ God has decreed for you misery in this life, and pain hereafter. Your deeds are a woe to you. After the letters are ended, Alexander erects a pillar of marble to mark the furthest spot which he had succeeded in reaching. His men then begin their homeward journey; and the fragment ends.
§ 15. It thus appears that the poem is principally concerned with the correspondence that passed between Alexander and the king of the Brahmans. This correspondence really has nothing to do with the story of Alexander's adventures, but is a mere execrescence. ”

“ Hales and Furnivall, I have explained that there are no less than three poems (all fragmentary) in alliterative verse on the subject of the Romance of Alexander the Great. These I denote by the letters A, B, and C; they are as follows. [1]
A. A fragment preserved in MS. Greaves 60, in the Bodleian library, beginning—"Yee þat lengen in londe · Lordes and ooþer." This was edited by me for the E.E.T.S. in 1867, being printed in the same volume with William of Palerne, pp. 177-218. It has never been printed elsewhere. ”

“ It is, perhaps, worthy of remark, that in the plural of the present tense of the verb signifying to be, we find both arn and ben. Both forms are due to the author, as is proved by the alliteration. In ll. 333, 423, 904, we find ben, as the alliteration requires; whilst in ll. 338, 345, 506, 1007, we find arn, also as required. A similar peculiarity occurs in Piers the Plowman. In ll. 446, 634, we have examples of the verb worþen, to become. Some peculiarities of spelling may be noted. For fish, we have the curious forms, fihcs, fihs, fihch, fihches. For strength, we find strenke ”

“ There is nothing else to be learnt from the story of it.
On the name "Dindimus"
§ 16. Though the poem deals with India, and attempts an account of the Brahmans, there is little that is eastern about it. Bisse has pointed out the references to the Gymnosophists that occur in Strabo, lib. 15; in Plutarch's Life of Alexander; in Arrian, De Expedit. Alexandri, lib. 7; in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, lib. 3; in Porphyrius, De Abstinentia, lib. 4; in Philostratus, Vita Apollonii lib. 3, capp. 4 and 5; and in other authors. The chief point of interest is in the name Dindimus ”

“ A man is rowing across the stream in a boat (168) ; two others, both naked, stand a little back from the stream, one of them bearing an offering of fruits (165) .
II. A tent. Alexander receiving a letter from a man who kneels before him (248) .
III. Two naked men, of whom one is Dindimus, who bears a crown, and sits at the mouth of a cave, writing. The other, half hid in the cave, is the messenger to whom he is to entrust his letter.
IV. King Alexander before his tent. Before him stand four naked men, of whom the foremost, bearing a crown, is Dindimus. ”

“ The pl. of 'fish' appears as fihs, fihcs, fihch, and fihches. The genitive singular also commonly ends in -us, as in godus (315) , catelus (370) , licamus (555) . The genitive plural is found ending in -ene, as in haþelene, briddene, bestene, ludene; cf. wommenus (1016) .
As regards adjectives, we find plurals in -e, as meke, pore; and e is commonly added to past participles in the plural, as in clene-mindede, corsede, bannede; though it is also wrongly added to past participles of weak verbs in the singular, a mark of the lateness of the transcription or of ignorance of spelling. ”

“ The poem has been printed before, as I have said, by Mr. Stevenson, for the Roxburghe Club, in 1849; but the number of copies printed was limited, and the book is scarce; for which reason it is now reprinted for the Early English Text Society. Mr. Stevenson's text is not free from faults; it would seem to have been printed from an imperfect transcript without collation of the proofs wit the MS. itself. The MS. itself also has several faults. [12] In the following list of the variations from the MS. in Mr. Stevenson's edition, the former of the two forms gives the word as it stands in the MS. ”

“ This neglect of the prefix is, of course, right; as it brings the accented syllable into play. But we sometimes find a very objectionable variation, viz. cases in which, contrary to the whole spirit of alliterative poetry, the rime-letter begins an unaccented syllable.. Examples of this occur, not only in the present poem, but (as I have before observed) in other alliterative poems also. ”

“ Examples of past participles of weak verbs are listned, i-eged, y-sustained, ydemed, ending in -ed; wastid, ending in -id; also i-kid, tend, iput, iset, kild, maad, contracted forms. In two cases we actually find the ending -eþ; viz. ”

“ Stevenson's edition. ↑ Only 5678 lines in Mr. Stevenson's edition, which omits two lines. ↑ That is, at first sight. But there is a gap after l. 722, where some leaves of the MS. have been lost. ↑ I have to thank Dr. Trautmann for his courtesy in sending me a copy of his paper. ↑ For numerous examples of this in fragment A, see the Notes in my edition of it. ↑ I.t. stream; not strand. ”