copyright 2000 by SEENET
CD-ROM edition first published in 2000 by
The University of Michigan Press
for The
Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts
Web edition first published in 2014 by
The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic
Texts
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S. xv1. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson assign this manuscript to
the first quarter of the fifteenth century, a dating with which the late Dr. Jeremy Griffiths
concurred. Dr. Griffiths, who was kind enough to supply us with his draft description of the
manuscript in the summer of 1994, was of the opinion that it is "probably earlier rather than
later even within this dating" (Private communication, 4 August 1994).
The manuscript is made up of ninety-three vellum leaves bound within four paper end leaves
with a watermark of pot design. Cf. Briquet, No. 12691, dated 1580. The vellum is of uneven
quality, and a number of folios (e.g., fols. 22r.
iii (end leaves)
i8+2 (+3, +8), ff. 1-10; F1.1-F4.177
ii8+2 (+2, +9), ff. 11-20; F4.178-F5.461
iii8+2 (+4, +7), ff. 21-30; F5.462-F6.89
iv8+2 (+3, +8), ff. 31-40; F6.90-F8.46
v8+2 (+4, +7), ff. 41-50; F8.47-F10.55
vi6+2 (+5, +7), ff. 51-58; F10.56-F10.675
vii8+2 (+3, +8), ff. 59-68; F10.676-F12.76
viii6+2 (+3, +6), ff. 69-76; F12.77-F14.86
ix8+2 (+4, +7), ff. 77-86; F14.87-F15.388
x10+1 (+7, -8, -9, -10, -11), ff. 87-93; F15.389-F16.383
i (end leaf).
Several facts suggest that the manuscript was copied in at least two different stints. The
colored parasigns generally alternate between red and green in the first six quires. The
opening with the last leaf of quire six and the first of seven has red and green parasigns on
fol. 58v and red and blue on fol. 59r, and this
combination of red and blue parasigns continues. Fol. 58vquod
from using a <q> abbreviation over 75% of the time before folio 59 and a <qd>
abbreviation 90% of the time after that point. At the same juncture, he also abruptly stops
drawing exaggerated ascenders on the top line of each page. Before folio 59 they appear
touched with red ink on over half of the pages. Finally, the Roman numerals in the incipits
and explicits to passus are spelled out before folio 58v and expressed
thereafter only as numerals.
There are no extant quire or leaf signatures and no catchwords. Foliation in modern pencil, 1-93, is followed in this edition.
Size: 295 x 175 mm. One column, with pricking for column ruling with line and column ruling in silverpoint. The pricked frame area is c. 240-250 mm x 110-112 mm, with the text copied generally below the top line of ruling.
The average number of lines per page is about thirty-nine. Up to the end of the third quire as many as forty-six lines may appear. After the end of the fourth quire the average is closer to thirty-seven or thirty-eight lines per leaf, and in the last quires the hand is noticeably larger and the interlinear space greater. Seventy-eight sides appear with thirty-nine to forty-one lines. Another forty sides have over forty-one lines, while of the sixty-six sides containing fewer than thirty-nine lines, sixty appear after the fourth quire.
The Middle English text is copied throughout by one hand in a current anglicana script in
dark brown ink, with the Latin text in v-47rr)þese wordis had been erased, but the scribe failed both there and
at 14.15 (fol. 76r)vr),
The scribe uses four marks of punctuation—the paraph, the punctus, the punctus
elevatus, and the virgule (or solidus). The caesura is steadily marked with a virgule or
(less frequently) with a punctus elevatus. Occasionally the same marks appear within the
half-line to indicate phrasal junctures. Beginning at the top of fol. 2r
nearly every line closes with a punctus, and there is reason to think that the scribe
intended so to end every line, though some dozens are omitted. Paraph markers appear in the
left margin to mark both verse paragraphs and changes of speaker in dialogues. It is also
possible, as David Benson and Lynne Blanchfield have argued, that they serve as the
equivalent of marginal v-68r and 84v-85r. On a few openings, the scribe neglected to supply blue or
green paraph markers, though marginal virgules mark the places where they would have
appeared.r-v the scribe
steadily put a punctus at the end of virtually every line of verse, occasionally adding a
missing one in red ink as he was supplying rubrication in an opening. Now and again a punctus
appears at syntactic junctures within the half line, though rarely and without apparent
pattern. In a few instances the scribe supplied both virgule and punctus to mark the caesura,
but we see no pattern for that activity. He steadily supplied a virgule (less often a punctus
elevatus) at the medial half-line boundary, but that he intended neither the virgule nor
punctus elevatus exclusively to mark the metrical caesura is shown by their infrequent
appearance at phrasal junctures.
With the exception of the opening of folios 2v and 3r, the first letter of each line is regularly highlighted in red, and the first line of
most pages before folio 59 is ornamented with exaggerated ascenders touched in red ink.
Within the line, some proper nouns are written, and a few are underlined, in red ink.
Important words are highlighted in red, frequently only on the first letter but from time to
time with all or most letters highlighted. Passus divisions and some major intra-passus
divisions are marked with ornamented capitals, pen-flourished in various combinations of red,
blue, and green ink with sprays. Passus divisions exhibit more extensive marginal flourishes
and sprays than those for intra-passus divisions. Ornamental capitals for intra-passus
divisions appear at 4.158,
Marie-Claire Uhart describes the decorational scheme in F as "characterized by enthusiasm
rather than professionalism" and as "highly erratic, with variation in colour and extent of
flourish at passus heads."
On fol. 1r inside a historiated initial <A>, a male figure,
"yrobed in russet," seated "vpon a brood banke" with his head resting in his left hand and
wearing a hat and a three-fingered (laborer's? gentleman's?) glove on his right hand, appears
to represent the dreamer asleep.Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval
Reading of the B-Text of Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of the B-Text of Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of the B-Text of
At the top of fol. 11r, the beginning of the second quire, the
ascenders are flourished more elaborately than usual and embellished with a crude line
drawing of a male face on the left and a lion's head on the right.
A similar crude pen-and-ink drawing of two human heads and two grotesques elaborated from
the ascenders appears at the top of fol. 76v.
Following the conclusion of the text of fol. 93r is a pen and ink
drawing with colored wash, probably dating from the late seventeenth century, of a pelican,
the emblem of Corpus Christi College, with a blank banderole around its neck and clutched in
its raised right foot.
Dimensions: 305mm high x 185mm wide x 27mm deep. The manuscript is bound in a
sixteenth-century limp vellum with four slip stations. It was rebound in 1989 by L. J. Lee,
who noted that "There is evidence of a previous sewing with six sewing stations and
endbands."
The manuscript was given to the College by a fellow, William Fulman, M.A.r reads
"r, read "No. 1668. 201. D.3.10." The entry in Edward
Bernard's
Dr. A. I. Doyle has recently discovered in the collection of Ushaw College, Durham, two binding fragments written by the F scribe. The fragments, Ushaw College MS 50, consist of upper and lower portions of the first leaf of the Southern Recension of the
Fol. 1r Upper portion of the Ushaw fragment recto
Fol. 1r Lower portion of the Ushaw fragment recto
Fol. 1v Upper portion of the Ushaw fragment versorv.
Fol. 1v Lower portion of the Ushaw fragment verso
Sean Taylor has pointed to what may be a third instance of the same scribe's handwriting, a
rubric entered into another B manuscript of
We were fortunate in choosing F as our first text since it immediately challenged our initial assumptions about the kind of text we wanted to present by putting before us some difficulties that less complicated physical documents might have spared us. Initially, we had intended to make digital facsimiles from black and white microfilms of each
High quality color digital images enable access to manuscript texts in ways previously unimaginable. We have experimented with two different ways of making color digital images. For experimental purposes, Dr. Andrew Prescott in the spring of 1994 provided color images made on the British Library's then newly acquired Roche/Kontron ProgRes 3012 digital camera. Full leaves (or details) could at that time be scanned at resolutions of 2000 x 3000 pixels per inch in 24-bit color with truly astonishing fidelity to the originals, often making it possible to see clearly what cannot be seen with the naked eye. We also produced quite satisfactory digital images from 35mm slides. Using a Nikon LS-3510 Slide Scanner attached to a Macintosh Quadra 800 running Adobe PhotoShop, we experimented with scans at input resolutions varying from 635 to 3175 dpi and output resolutions between 72 and 1000 dpi. These JPEG and TIFF files varied in size from a low of 168 KB to just over 35 megabytes. It should go without saying that the largest of these files are expensive to store and slow to call to the screen and to manipulate. We found that a rational compromise between the highest and lowest grades, producing facsimiles more than adequate for most manuscript leaves, involved input resolutions of 1587 dpi, output resolutions of 500 dpi, and JPEG files of 750-1000KB. Such images may be doubled four times without pixillation, and they run very efficiently on most 486 and Pentium machines, on upper-end Macs, and on RISC stations.
The original digital images of CCC 201 were made at the Bodleian Library by Dr. David
Cooper using a Dicomed 7520SE digital back on a Sinar process camera at an input resolution
of 600 dpi in TIFF format. Files average between 75 and 95 megabytes per leaf. Those image
files are archived in Oxford at the Bodleian Library. High quality JPEG reductions are
available on the World Wide Web in the "Early Manuscripts at Oxford" archive at the following
URL: http://www.image.ox.ac.uk
We provide in this
edition a set of smaller JPEG images of around 400 to 550K by means of hypertextual links in
our transcriptions. As with every other aspect of this edition, our policy is experimental,
and we are eager to have comments about these images.
Except in those rare instances in which the scribe is also the author, medieval manuscripts
are like palimpsests. Each surviving copy represents the work of its immediate copyist. Each
also reflects traces of the efforts of a usually indeterminant number of scribes whose work
separates the immediate copy from the author's original text. The evidence suggesting the
possible number of copyists is inferential, derived from collation of variant readings or, as
is the case of texts surviving in single copies, from analysis of the language.B witnesses, it is usually impossible—except in clear
instances of homeoteleuteon or other form of mechanical error—to determine with
confidence that the omission reflects the decision of F-Redactor or an error by the immediate
or an intermediate scribe in the tradition. On the other hand, since F-Redactor's revisions
represent the intentions of an intelligent medieval reader/editor, it seems worthwhile to
offer as close an approximation of his text as the technology permits while at the same time
offering a close rendering of the immediate scribe's achievement. To that end, we now offer a
lightly edited reading version of the text to accompany the literal transcription and
facsimile edition of the immediate scribe's work. In spite of our inability always to
distinguish in individual lections the level from which each derives, we nevertheless think
that there were layers of scribal copies. We attempt to lay out immediately below what we
take to have been the determinable layers of inscription in this manuscript.
We know next to nothing of William Langland, the man who wrote these poems, for the life
of fictional Long Will, the dreamer-narrator of the poem, cannot be assumed to correspond to
the life of the poet. The linguistic evidence in the surviving witnesses tends to
corroborate his identity as a Southwesterner, and many descriptive details in all three
versions demonstrate that he must have lived for at least a while in London. We cannot claim
more than that. Though The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive ultimately
aims to determine and restore the authorial texts, we do not attempt at this level of the
Archive systematically to distinguish the work of scribes from his.
At the second level F reflects the work of a scribe who produced the already defective
manuscript copy from which all extant B manuscripts descend. Detailed
reconstruction of the Bx-scribe's work lies outside the primary
concerns of this edition of F. It will then appear paradoxical that we nevertheless cite in
our textual notes the readings of Bx. When we refer, as we will
numerous times in this edition, to the readings of Bx, those lections
represent a preliminary working hypothesis about that text, constructed from analysis of the
variants provided in the Kane-Donaldson edition. Having already transcribed some thirteen
B manuscripts, we have had many occasions to check the Athlone
collations, and we have found them remarkably accurate. Moreover, preliminary collations by
Adams and Hanna in the years before the Archive began have suggested the
essential correctness of the now conventional view that there are two major manuscript
families in the B tradition, alpha and beta.Bx is at issue, in general it is a simple matter to determine the Bx reading, at least in the light of present evidence. We expect that in a
number of details our working hypotheses about Bx will require
correction, and it is one advantage of the electronic text that it so readily permits that
kind of adjustment.
Though our reconstructions of the readings of Bx must appear
logically circular, a moment's thought should suggest that some such provisional
reconstruction is inevitable and need not be logically vicious. In one sense, we are
beginning the editorial project ab ovo, editing each manuscript witness
afresh with the goal of working inductively to construct from the corpus of variant lections
the intermediate hyparchetypes, archetypes, and eventually the critical texts of the three
canonic versions. A critical question at once poses itself: if we already know the readings
of Bx sufficiently to cite them for understanding the relation of this
manuscript to others, what is the point of laboring to transcribe documentary editions or of
doing either elaborate collations or complex thinking about the relationships among the
manuscripts? The fact of the matter, however, is that we are not starting
at the beginning, that we come to this task in the middle of a long-standing scholarly
project and after more than a century of editorial work on these poems and these
manuscripts. A great deal of careful and reliable work by a variety of scholars has been
done, and a number of theories about the work exist which, in the light of presently
available evidence, we take to be valid. Though we must reconsider the most basic issues in
the light of new evidence, we necessarily use those theories we have found persuasive until
such time as we have reason to think them wrong. We begin our editorial project with
fundamental hypotheses about the author, the number of versions, the relations among the
manuscripts, the governing features of the poet's metrical rules, as well as a number of
assumptions about what it is that editors ought to do. We are aware that all of these are
contestable, some of them hotly. Like scholars in other fields, we can only attempt to
revise our hypotheses in the light of the data, as fresh data becomes available. That is,
the process of editing a textual archive such as this will consist of a series of
provisional passes through the evidence, and we anticipate that at least some of the
hypotheses we have formulated now will require revision at a later date when we have more
precise and full data to bring to bear on the reconstruction of Bx.
Therefore, our citations of Bx are offered as provisional, and we do
not devote annotations in this edition to the still-to-be-constructed text of the
archetype.Bx, we cite the spellings of other manuscripts when W's forms are improbable. One such
instance occurs at 13.19 where we give HmCrYOCBmBoL's more probable reading, wiþout, rather than W's unmetrical wiþouten.
At the third level F contains the work of a scribe whom we, following Schmidt, will call
"alpha."B and C versions.
For discussion, see his "On the Versions of Bx, our ad hoc reconstructions in our notes of the text of alpha
are also provisional. They are based upon our detailed comparison of F's lections with those
of its sister manuscript R, a task made easier by the careful work of Kane and Donaldson in
their edition of the B text.Archive—but we have incorporated into our apparatus numerous textual
notes calling attention to readings in the text of F that are owed to the efforts of alpha.
At the fourth level F contains the work of a scribe whom we call "F-Redactor." The F-Redactor's work is conceivably the product of several scribes at different stages in the ancestry of CCC 201. However, we think it more likely that the bulk of the work was done by a single revising editor-scribe who rationalized the dream structures and converted Langland's twenty-one passus to sixteen. That is, it seems to us probable—though not certain—that the medieval "editor" who made the macro-changes was also responsible for most of the hundreds of apparently intentional, unique substantive micro-revisions in this manuscript. Many of these revisions bear no clear evidence of motive beyond the occasional hint of a need for semantic adjustment or the lure of metrical whimsy. But a significant number of whole lines, phrases, and even omissions in CCC 201 appear to reflect A-version influence and may result from the use of an A-version manuscript (probably related textually to M and the VH family) at some point to correct the scribe's primary exemplar. Such interversional correcting, if it occurred, is not unparalleled and might have been regarded by the scribe as mere prudence since he is unlikely to have shared our acute sense of the distinctive identities of
The most remarkable contribution of F-Redactor to the poem is his revision of the passus
and dream-vision structure of the poem. Weldon is correct to claim for this scribal response
to the B text that it represents a
sophisticated, intelligent, and consistent mediaeval reading of
Whoever F-Redactor may have been, he made striking changes in the
architectonics of the poem, converting Langland's prologue and twenty passus into sixteen
and his eight dreams with two dreams within dreams into ten separate dreams. Click
hereexisting formal elements in a conventional way. While we may
lament his textual distortions, we can also admire Reader F's interpretative guidance for a
poem whose only verifiable authorial structure rests on passus division and dream vision
sequence.[emphasis his]Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of the B-Text of ordinatio and the "more than 100 original readings" they find uniquely in F:
"There is a striking contrast between the apparent rigor with which they discuss various
explanations for F's authentic readings, and their failure to investigate the most obvious
one, that F may represent a separate, authorial strand of the B tradition." For the
Kane-Donaldson discussion of authorial readings uniquely preserved in F, see pp. 165-73 in
their edition of B. That position retracts the argument made earlier by
Donaldson in "MSS R and F in the B-Tradition of B manuscripts.Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of
the B-Text of
Finally, the manuscript also contains the work of a person (or collection of persons) whom
we call "F-Scribe." Ordinarily, such references can be taken to mean the immediate Essex
scribe who copied the Corpus 201 manuscript. However, because an indeterminate number of
copyists separates the Essex scribe from the editorial F-Redactor, and him, in turn, from
the alpha scribe, we also use the "F-Scribe" label in a more comprehensive way to describe
all the producers of unintentional textual variation that accumulated both before and after
the exemplar left the hands of the F-Redactor. Unfortunately, the work of the F-Scribe (or
group) is neither in logic nor in practice always separable from the F-Redactor: the latter,
for all of his sophistication, presumably introduced at least a few inadvertent errors and
inherited others from copies between his own and alpha, whereas the immediate scribe of our
present manuscript, a fairly careful and modest copyist, may intentionally have introduced
some semantically equivalent phrasal variants without appreciating their textual uniqueness.
Likewise, he may have imported some conflated A-version readings under the mistaken
impression that he was simply correcting. Though most commentators on the poem have
projected onto the immediate scribe their sense of the eccentric high-handedness of
F-Redactor—Elsie Blackman, for instance, described his work as "so bad that it is
useless"—there is a good bit of evidence that he intended to copy his exemplar
faithfully.ordinatio and decoration. As James Weldon aptly notes, W. W. Skeat's notion
that the copying of this document was "rather loose and hurried" is an unwarranted extension
from the eccentricities of the earlier revising scribe.Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of
the B-Text of Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval
Reading of the B-Text of
At the margins of probability, then, our labels and claims for these two (or more) sources of textual input necessarily seem hypothetical, circular and non-historical: if the evidence for the F-Redactor consists of the apparently intentional editorial changes wrought in the text after the work of the alpha scribe, F-Scribe is our name for the source of apparently unintentional divergences from the work of alpha. To say this, however, and to make these two strata available in the form of separate style sheets, is not to imply that we think such a tidy distinction reflects the temporal reality of F's text in more than a broadly accurate pattern.
In addition to scribal copies of the text, the manuscript contains the work of a small
number of marginal annotators. These readers, beginning in the fifteenth century and
continuing in late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century secretary hands, added some
marginalia, mainly notae, crosses, and pointing hands. Though potentially
interesting as indicators of what some readers found noteworthy, their significance is, in
general, remarkably opaque. We have treated these additions to the margins of the text
exclusively in our notes.
These six levels of inscription must have occurred in this sequence, but we do not
consider them steadily distinguishable. A number of unique alpha lections, for instance,
probably reflect authorial readings. F-Scribe may conceivably be F-Redactor working at a
later date, though dialectal evidence suggests that is improbable. Certainly, it is almost
inevitable that some of the erroneous lections (which we take to be unintended and thus the
product of F-Scribe) will have been introduced by the F-Redactor. Kane and Donaldson argue
that the scribal editor we have called F-Redactor had access to a manuscript superior to Bx, while Schmidt thinks that improbable.B manuscripts for the B
archetype.
Starting from this understanding of "F," we conceive our editing project in the following ways. First, we attempt to present the scribal text of F in as unmediated a form as is practical. To that end we are providing high quality color digital images of the manuscript. At this least speculative level of our interpretation, we provide as well an electronically readable, searchable, and analyzable transcription of F, supplemented occasionally by notes which will communicate information about F-Scribe's work which is not fully captured in the images. Such an "objective" level of interpretation is likely to be useful to scholars working on a wide variety of questions. However, it is unlikely that we can anticipate all of the specific needs of these scholars. Paleographers, for instance, may well wish to add markup to our base text that would distinguish allographic variants, or linguists might wish to identify dialect forms, or metrists the patterns of stress. The electronic text permits future users to build upon textual work without fresh transcription.
Second, using both notes and SGML tagging, we attempt to interpret both these physical
products and the mass of indirect evidence concerning the work that went on in the F textual
tradition for which we have no direct physical evidence. In general, that consists of
identifying various features of the manuscript and asking about them: "At what level of
copying did this feature originate?" For the most part, this question is answered through our
knowledge of the products of the other 1) Using SMGL markup and five different style sheets in the Multidoc Pro browser, we
distinguish, where it is possible to do so, those lections which are likely to be the work
of the F-Redactor from those of the F-Scribe as well as from those added by the 2) We provide textual notes to call attention to or to explain various aspects of
the scribal text in relation to earlier levels of inscription, though we have made no
attempt to represent every difference between the lections of this highly eccentric
manuscript and those of the 3) In matters of 4) Where the manuscript is physically defective, we supply, to the best of our
knowledge, what had been lost. However, in the case of this manuscript, all of the holes in
the parchment were originally present, and there is no loss of text.B scribes, who presumably had
direct and indirect access to some of the products we would like to describe. Our analysis of
the physical evidence and inferences from the textual tradition has led us to formulate the
following policies:
intended to have written and thus to
approximate the text of F-Redactor. Emendations displayed in the "F-Critical" style sheet
appear in the conventional square brackets. Since the text displayed in the "F-Critical"
style sheet is a reconstructed, putative text, it lacks the color features that appear in
the more nearly diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscript. We have supplied line
references to the Athlone B-text both for the convenience of readers and to provide a basis
for later machine collation of documentary texts.B archetype. A number of textual notes are
intended to supply the texts of lines omitted from Bx either by alpha
or F, or to identify lines uniquely attested in F or alpha. We provide a few notes
interpreting difficult words and passages. Other linguistic notes provide notice of
ambiguous relict forms or of the appearance of nonce words as well as of letters corrected
by the original scribe. A lemmatized glossarial concordance is under construction, and we
expect with future documentary editions to be able to supply full glossaries. Except in a
handful of lines where they were required to make a textual point, we have not supplied
interpretive historical or literary notes but will supply them at other levels of the Archive. Many notes at this level of the Archive are
concerned with discussion of physical features of the manuscript or the scribal hand, which
many readers may well find footling. Those readers whose interest in seeing detailed comment
on otiose curls, oddities of letter forms, malformed letters, marginal notae and pointing
hands, etc. is limited might well choose to avoid using the "F-Scribe" style sheet,
selecting instead the style sheet labelled "NoPalTags" which displays the transcription of
the manuscript but with all codicological and paleographic notes made invisible.
Most problems appear in connection with item 1 above, with determining the intentions of
F-Scribe. For instance, the scribe at 14.135 wrote the following words: Withoutyn wem in-to þis world / a kaue child she broghte.
"She" in
this case is the Virgin Mary, and it is obvious that the scribe intended to write "knaue
child." The diplomatic text displayed in the F-Scribe style sheet retains the scribal
reading, though it is marked as defective, while the edited text reads "a k[n]aue child she
broghte." To suggest that the "correct" reading here must be knaue is not
to claim that it is Langland's reading, nor even the reading of Bx or
alpha. The edited text at this level in the Archive is the text the
F-Scribe intended to write, and the combination of <SIC> and <CORR> tags offers a
"correction" only in relation to the intentions of the F-Scribe and possibly those of
F-Redactor. That is, it seems to us very likely that alpha's reading was different from
F-Redactor's and not dissimilar to Bx's defective verse "Wiþouten wem
into þis world she broȝte hym." Kane and Donaldson are possibly correct to emend to
supply wommene before wem.C manuscripts for the most part have either singular wommane or genitive singular womanes.Archive. At this
level, correctness is a function of the intentions of either the F-Redactor or the F-Scribe.
F-Scribe's writing kaue is an unconscious, unintended error and thus
properly corrected in the edited text.
Determining scribal intention is not always so straightforward. A typical problem arises in
the first lines of the text. F uniquely begins the first line "Al in somer sesoun . . . ." We
may speculate that F-Scribe's motive for revision lies in his (or his supervisor's) desire to
begin the text with a historiated capital letter containing a portrait of the Dreamer. An
<A> provides more scope for such illustrative work than an <I>, so we may assume
that F-Scribe intended to begin the poem with Al in spite of the fact that
Bx begins "In a somer sesoun."Al to reflect scribal intention, though we cannot be sure that intention is to be
identified with the immediate scribe, the F-Redactor, or some intermediate scribal copyist.
Was F's omission of the indefinite article in this first half-line also intentional? Or had
the loss occurred by accident in the tradition of copying between alpha and the immediate
scribe? It soon becomes obvious in the first dozen lines that this scribe's treatment of
articles is distinctively problematic. For instance, his lection for the second line lacks
Bx's article before sheep: I shoop
me in-to shrowdes / as y [a] sheep were.
Two lines below that, we encounter a similar
instance of F's omitting an article in Bx: & on [a] May morwe / on malverne hillis.
The expected articles
appear in lines 5, 7, and 8, but then the indefinite article in line 9 is absent from F: I slumbrede in-to [a] slepyng / it swyȝede so
merye.
Articles appear then in lines 10 and 11, but the idiomatically required definite
article is absent from line 12: I beheld in-to [þe] Est
/ an heyȝ to þe sunne.
Which (if any) of those omissions are intentional? Which (if
any) should be marked for correction in the edited text? We could have achieved the
appearance of consistency by marking all of F's differences from Bx, but
then many divergences from Bx reflect F-Redactor's intentional revisions
of his exemplar. The decision as to which article omissions we would mark turns out, of
course, to be a matter of judgment. In these cases, it has seemed to us likely that the
omission of the article is intentional in lines 1 and 9 and unintended—because less
idiomatic—in lines 2, 4, and 12. Eventually, when all of the B
witnesses have been transcribed and collated, it will be easy to see in detail all the
readings unique to F. However, at this stage in the creation of the Archive we wanted to create a reading text of this scribal copy as well as an accurate
diplomatic rendering of its readings. Doubtless we will have been guilty of some
inconsistencies in the presentation of such variation, but that seems a chance worth taking
in order to present an edited reading text of this important and eccentric alpha witness.
We make no effort to mark all of F's changes from Bx. For instance,
the unique inversion in 1.5 of Bx's Me bifel to By-fel me goes without notice, since it represents either F-Scribe's or
F-Redactor's intention. The same may be said in 1.7 of F's substitution of Vpon for Bx's Vnder or similar substitution in
1.8 of wawys for watres. Again, we have not sought
utter consistency in this respect, and in some dozens of lines we have called attention with
textual notes to some of F's more interesting or characteristic revisions.
Frequently F reflects the activity of alpha; those lections which are unlikely to represent
Bx are flagged in textual notes. At 10.805 F reads "Synne scheweth vs
good semblaunt / & sory gan he wexen." In this case, erroneous scheweth is owed to alpha. Beta reads "Synne seweþ vs euere quod he and sory gan wexe."
F revises patently erroneous alpha to supply an appropriate direct object for the verb. In
such a case where F has taken a defective reading from alpha and then attempted to make sense
of it by adding grammatically appropriate words, we use a textual note to convey this
information. The F-Scribe is not responsible for the initial error, and a <SIC> tag
would be inappropriate since he has obviously intended the revision.
As we have noted, distinguishing intentional revisions of the text from unintentional
failures of attention is a matter of judgment, and decisions frequently are required for
which inadequate evidence exists. We have, for instance, usually taken F's unique omission of
an alliterating word to have sprung from unconscious error except in those instances in which
we could perceive in context a reason for revision. We claim no infallibility in marking with
<SIC> tags what we take to be unintended scribal substitutions in such cases as 1.66,
where lawhte appears for correctly alliterating rawhte.
We think that the scribe in such cases would probably have corrected the error had it been
called to his attention, but certainty is not possible.
Our edited text attempts in a modest way to open new territory in textual editing. An
edition of a lost text at an indeterminate remove from the extant document, but not an
edition of the poem that provides its Bx, and from alpha. The kind of inversion noted above in 1.5, where we have chosen not
to annotate, or the substitution of wawys for Bx's
watres ought, one might reasonably argue, to be recorded in the apparatus
or at least mentioned in a note. However, consistency in this regard involves begging too
many questions, requiring us to edit Bx and alpha before we have
accumulated the data on which such editions must be based. What we have attempted now is less
ambitious, but more consistent with the long-range goals of the
To summarize, readers may choose, by selecting the appropriate style sheet, to view one of
five versions of the text. The F-Scribe style sheet offers a diplomatic transcription of the
manuscripts together with a set of descriptive and explanatory notes. It presents the scribal
text with all of its corruptions and incompetences so that the reader will need to click on
the
We have two major goals in creating documentary editions. Since we intend ultimately to
produce critical editions of the authorial texts, we look at each manuscript text and its
documentary edition as a step toward restoration of an authorial text. From that perspective,
much of what interests us in a manuscript lies in its relations to other witnesses and to the
texts that lie between it and the archetype. Because each documentary text will be
electronically collated with all the other texts, we have transcribed a few more aspects of
the manuscript than has become the fashion in editing vernacular texts in the late twentieth
century. We are also aware that these manuscript texts are often of considerable interest in
their own right. As George Kane has argued, the recent trend in literary criticism to speak
of such manuscript versions as medieval "readings" of the poem tends to sentimentalize the
scribal role.passim.
In the interest of reflecting as accurately as possible the features of the scribal
document, we mark with SGML tags all changes in hand, style of script, or color of ink. We
retain scribal punctuation, introducing none of our own. Except those entered by the later
marginal annotators, which we mark with codicological notes (symbolized by the Bx or where the erased text is still legible. We record our
resolutions of all abbreviations, suspensions, and brevigraphs, sometimes including material
of dubious significance. The F-Scribe tends, for example, to put what appears to us to be a
meaningless curl over various letters throughout the manuscript.
The scribe's fere textura
Our edited pages are not intended to reproduce literally the manuscript
page, only to represent abstractly its salient features. For those who want to see the
manuscript page, color images of each page are readily available with a click on the icon at
folio breaks. For that reason we have taken advantage of color in our display to mark in the
diplomatic transcription a small number of other features, most notably oddities in scribal
word division (presented in lime), scribal insertions (presented in aqua), or errors in the
scribal text (presented in purple). Needless to say, the manuscript is not lime, aqua, or
purple at those points. In the edited text the corrected errors are represented more
conventionally by displaying the emended words or phrases in square brackets, while the
regularized word divisions are not marked at all. For example, at line 1.2b, the diplomatic
text read through the F-Scribe style sheet renders the manuscript lection "as y sheep were"
with the word sheep appearing in purple. A reader reading the edited text
through the F-Critical style sheet will see the display: "as y [a] sheep were."
Transcription into an electronic medium is quite as interpretive an activity as that into
printed texts, though the electronic edition offers greater flexibility. Extensive as our
present markup of the text is, it would have been possible to provide an even more
fine-grained transcription than we have chosen to do. The scribe, for instance, offers three
distinctive letter forms for <r>.
The scribe highlighted some characters, words, and phrases throughout the manuscript. He
wrote most of the Latin text in red ink, further emphasizing the Latin with a change of hand
from bastard anglicana to textura, though not always maintaining consistency in letter forms.
On most leaves the parasigns are done in red, green, or blue ink, though tell-tale ticks
appear in the left margins on those leaves where the rubricator failed to achieve his
intentions. Similarly, though he clearly meant to mark every initial character in every line
with a touch of red ink, he infrequently failed to make the touch in one line or sometimes
several in a row. On folios 2v-3r, he began the red touches on the first several lines, then
neglected to finish them on that opening. We think these lapses to be of no significance.
Also, throughout the manuscript he emphasized words and phrases by underlining them or
touching them with red ink. A few words are treated to both red touches and underlining. In
general, we have tried to represent as closely as possible what is on the page, but because
this is a handwritten document, we have sometimes disagreed about whether the scribe intended
to underline the whole word or to touch in red every graph. For instance, when the ligature
<st> appears with a red touch between the characters, do we take the <s> or
<t> alone to have been emphasized or the full ligature? We think in such cases that the
rubrisher intended to highlight the ligature, and we have tagged both characters as "touched
in red." Generally, we have taken a word partially underlined to have been underlined wholly,
since we assume that the scribe intended to emphasize a word rather than a collection of
graphs. When ascenders on the first line are extended and touched in red, we have marked the
red touches, though we take them to be only decorative. We do not imagine that we have
achieved utter consistency in rendering these points of emphasis and decoration, and indeed,
had we done so, such consistency would better reflect our concerns than those of the scribe
or his readers.
Word division in handwritten documents is irregular. This text is no exception, and we have
not attempted to represent in detail irregularity in word spacing, rendering both large and
small spaces with single spaces. We mark with <gap> or <damage> or <del>
tags only those instances in which a larger than usual space is created by an erasure or
damage to the manuscript.for ever is a phrase, while
US publications will print the single word forever. We have in ambiguous
cases taken the headword of the
In addition to marking abbreviations with superscripted letters, the scribe also tended
simply to supply the vowel above the line. In such instances, we initially transcribed about
one-third of the manuscript recording those superscriptions and then analyzed the data to see
whether the difference between, say, þ e and þe or w as and was is
graphemic. Since they appear in free variation and carry no distinction in meaning, we
concluded that the difference is not graphemic and took no notice of that graphetic
difference. Words most commonly so written include brouhte, nou, nout, þe,
þoru, what, and was. Barred single and double <l> are
ambiguous, and we have resolved them according to context either as <-le> and
<-lle> or as <-les> and <-lles>/<-llis> depending upon the usual
spellings of the words in which they appear. Barred <ll> is frequently a meaningless
ornament in late medieval vernacular hands, but by searching for the scribe's treatment of
<ll> in words where the inflection was spelled out, we could determine from both the
words in which it appeared and the distribution of its appearances that it is a genuine
abbreviation for this scribe. A suspension following word-terminal <d>quod. Other abbreviations and suspensions are typical of late
medieval vernacular hands and require no special comment, though as we have noted above,
readers interested in studying the scribe's forms may readily search for <EXPAN> tags
in our text and then consult the facsimile. For thumbnail images of the most common
abbreviations and suspensions in the manuscript,
The scribe tends to write a curled down-stroke after word-terminal <-f, -g, -k, -s,
-lle -t> and the <-st> ligature. On some occasions, as at 1.67,
2.29, 2.38, 2.137, 14.338,will eyfdep artyngPekookInp arfyghtlustlong and at a phrasal
juncture within the a-verse, the mark is thoroughly ambiguous. It also occurs in some dozens
of instances at the end of an a-verse and where the solidus is still written, suggesting that
the scribe sometimes used it to indicate a solidus and sometimes a flourish.
As we have noted, the rubrishing scribe failed occasionally in some openings to make the color parasigns. Since the places where parasigns should go were marked when the text was written with small virgules in the left margin, we have in the "F-Critical" style sheet provided the parasigns inside square brackets.
Line numbering in the printed editions is not consistent from edition to edition. In
general, Sister Carmeline Sullivan's tripartite division of the Latin quotations and tags
provided a basis for the Athlone and other modern editors for deciding when to provide serial
line numbering and when to treat the Latin materials as supplementary to the English
text.C is essentially that of modern editors: "The practice here is to number
Latin lines which contain any word of English or which are integral to the syntax of the
surrounding English lines. The remainder, mostly biblical quotations, are unnumbered and
indented."B. The Kane-Donaldson
numbers are displayed immediately following the F passus and line number in parentheses, but
only under the F-Critical style sheet. F, of course, has a number of lines rejected in the
Kane-Donaldson text, and these are designated by the number for their last line before the
added material followed by a decimal and numbers for each additional line. For instance,
F7.286 is labelled "KD10.272.1."
We have used <MILESTONE> tags to provide readers an indication of foliation and the
differences between F's passus divisions and those of the B text.
In the following account of the immediate scribe's language, we have given attention
primarily to those features of the scribal language likely to be of assistance in localizing
the language of the immediate scribe and in determining what can be recovered from relict
forms of traces of anterior copyings. In the case of vowels, we have concentrated primarily
on the development of native sounds and have relatively neglected words of romance origin.
Forms occurring rarely are listed in parentheses. All the features we list and discuss below
are consonant with an East Anglian provenance, while features listed in paragraphs 13, 14,
16, 30, 32, 38, 41, and 44 tend to identify the text as broadly East Anglian. Relicts more
consonant with Norfolk than Essex appear as minority forms in paragraphs 6, 34, and 45. As M.
L. Samuels has noted, F was "thoroughly translated" into the immediate scribe's dialect,
showing "very few signs of relict forms."B archetype, from the alpha
hyparchetype, and from the scribe we have called the F-Redactor. The process of determining
these layers is to a degree speculative, but because of the recent work of M. L. Samuels and
others on Langland's dialecte," B tradition. In this instance,
it would have been especially useful to have completed analysis of the language of Rawlinson
Poetry 38 (R), the other alpha family witness, before we attempted to disentangle the layers
of copying in F. It should eventually be possible to draw some conclusions about at least
some of the features of the dialect of the scribe who copied alpha, but definitive analysis
must await our collation and analysis of R.
In the case of the F-Redactor, the scribe who restructured Langland's passus divisions and made hundreds of revisions at every level, our preliminary study in relation to
a-brood 3.178; aloone 4.495; cloþ(e) 5.210 ~ clooþ 15.290; a-roos
15.53; froo 5.284; goost (22x) 2.38 ~ gost (1x) 7.248 ~ gast (1x) 3.213; groone
5.1140 ~ grone 5.913; hoot 5.965 ~ hote 1.216; pope 1.102 ~ poppe-holy (1x)
10.293; soor(e) 10.586; stoon 11.502 ~ stones 3.15; wones 4.224 ~ woones 14.271; wore "were" (2x) 7.235, 13.174 <ON váru; woot 1.39; etc.
slowhȝ "slow" 10.419; sowle (65x)
2.39 ~ soule (25x) 2.128 ~ sowhle (1x) 5.1110;
etc.
wan 5.464; can 1.105; fram (85x) 1.122 ~ from (2x) 13.8, 13.106; game
5.415; man 2.113; name 1.101; shame 4.374; etc.
a-mong 1.188; hond (15x) 5.590 ~ hand (7x) 13.221;hand with <a> appear only in a brief passage beween
13.221 and 13.271, and in the compound hand-mayde 12.102. Spellings with
<o> are more evenly distributed. Both F and R prefer hond except
in the short passage in which the Trinity is compared to a hand.hange (12x) 1.163 ~ honge (5x) 1.170; longen
3.46; lo(o)mb 5.563, 16.36 ~ lambren 11.222; stonde (10x) 5.355 ~ stande (2x) 13.50; etc.
drank 5.177 ~ dronk 10.104; sank 14.69; þank- 6.104 ~ þonk- 3.150;
etc.
barefoot 14.11; blood 2.152; book (40+x) 1.95 ~ boke (5x) 5.238; dome (8x) 3.207 ~ doom(e) 4.310; flood 6.267 ~
flodis (1x) 10.520; foode (15x) 1.38 ~ fode (2x) 5.673; looke (25x) 2.207 ~ loke (15x)
2.143; oþer(e) 1.47 ~ oyþer (3x) 2.173 ~ oiþer 7.283; weet-shood 10.638 ~ wetschod 14.1; etc.
apostl- (12x) 7.35 ~ apoostlis 12.169,
13.29; box 11.230 ~ boox 5.650; borwe 4.451; corps 2.135 ~ koors 10.9; cros (16x) 5.10 ~ croos (4x) 6.92;crois (1x) 7.438 and
croys (1x) 6.55 reflect reborrowing from OF.folk 1.16; foox 16.44 ~ foxes 5.682; god (244x) 1.39 ~ goode 7.345;god and one instance where "god" is spelled good. Capgrave served as his own copyist, and Lucas thinks he mistook the word to
have been "good" instead of "god."holpe 4.511; look 2.200 ~ lokkys (n.) "lock(s)" 10.379; moos
"moss" 11.303; northȝ 14.168; ofte 3.19; pekok 9.366 ~ pekook 9.348; poot-
5.839 ~ pot 10.261; spottys 10.284 ~ spoot 10.285;Spoot,
written in error for "plot," is probably the immediate scribe's form, having been picked up
from the end of the preceding line.stook "trunk" 12.7; top 4.129; etc.
The doubled <oo> spellings do not appear necessarily to reflect lengthening of OE
/o/. The spellings apoostlis, boox, foox, look, and pekook are not otherwise
recorded, and
bold (7x) 1.179 ~ boold (3x) 13.13; gold (20x) 1.69 ~ goolde (2x) 4.25; moolde (13x) 1.58 ~ molde (4x) 1.202; word-
(65+x) 2.144 ~ woord- (29x) 2.13; etc.
a-bowte (30+x) 1.28 ~ abowhte (16x)
3.11; clowdes 14.418 ~ clowhde 4.181; clowtys 10.61; doun 4.434; how (70x) 1.96 ~ hou (8x) 7.92; mous 1.193 ~ mows
1.173; prowd(e) (7x) 4.167 ~ prowhd(e) (4x) 10.56 ~
prouhde (1x) 7.75 ~ proud- (1x) 8.244; etc.
botere 5.446; curse 4.131; flyx 5.179 ~ fluxes 16.81; ful (107x)
1.16 ~ fulle (6x) 4.53; love 4.282; pulle 9.379; etc.
found 10.543; hound 5.365 ~ hownd 5.261; moorne 4.17; tunge (40+x)
4.120 ~ tonge (1x) 16.162; etc.
beelis 16.84; fyȝr 5.1039 ~ feer 7.433; her(e) 5.560 ~ hyȝre
(n.) 5.566; heren 5.767 ~ heere (v.) 5.848 <OE hýrian; keen 5.794 <OE cýna; wyȝshede 10.81 ~ wischede 16.194 ~ wysshed 5.354; etc.
ken (5x) 2.190 ~ kyn (5x) 10.389 ~ keen "kin" (2x) 4.192, 6.259 (Bx=kynde) <OE cynn; dyde (21x) 2.28 ~ dide (14x) 4.188 ~ dede (8x) 5.508; gylt- (10x) 4.97, 6.273 ~ gelt- (3x) 7.273; gilt- (9x) 1.74, 4.443; hedde 7.452; heddyn
9.30; hellys 1.206 ~ hillis 1.4; kyll- (11x) 12.145 ~ kulled 15.144; lyft 3.5 ~
left 5.590; mychil (32x) 1.173 ~ myche (28x) 4.134 ~ mychel (7x) 2.37 ~ meche
(2x) 9.251 ~ michil (3x) 4.518 ~ miche 10.742;muche to myche at 4.408 suggests the latter is the scribe's own form.synne (60+x) 2.141 ~ sennys (2x) 10.663; þenne "thin" 15.408 <OE þynne [cf. OFris þenne (
The unrounding of OE /y/ and /y:/ to /i/ and /i:/ and subsequent lowering is
characteristic of spellings in East Anglian manuscript spellings in LME.keen "kin" 4.192, is puzzling in suggesting an unaccountable lengthening
of the tonic vowel. The same spelling in deene 14.64, is more readily
explicable by the change of /y/ to /e/ and its subsequent lengthening in an open
syllable.
beurde 14.120buerde,
a more probable relict form. See Richard Jordan, beerde 4.15; keende (26x) 3.78 ~ kynde (16x) 1.112; meende
(5x) 8.264 ~ mynde (4x) 11.311; etc.
blythe 3.159; chyde 4.166 ~ chyȝde (1x) 7.321 ~ chide (1x) 5.973; knyf 5.81; lyf (111x) 1.116 ~ lif- (4x) 2.27 ~
lyȝf (4x) 4.415; pyȝk- 5.756, 16.261 ~ pyk 5.480; ryde (7x) 4.351 ~ ryȝde (1x) 4.202; syȝd(e) (8x) 5.81, 5.197 ~ syde (4x) 1.7 ~ side (1x) 5.378; styf
11.513 ~ stef 6.28;stef is, according to the stēf and MDu stēvich." tyme (84x) 1.78 ~ tyȝme (15x) 4.212; wyȝd(e) (9x) 5.543 ~ wyde (4x) 1.3; wyȝn (10x) 2.31 ~ wyn (1x)
1.219; wise (9x) 7.8 ~ wyȝs (7x) 1.199; wyȝsdom (7x) 4.370; etc.
bitterly (2x) 14.408 ~ betterly (1x)
5.111; (by)twixe 5.98 ~ by-twexe 4.119; lyȝnde 2.153; lyve (36+x) 4.533 ~ lybbe(n)
(12x) 4.215 ~ leve (1x) 15.214; neme 12.72; wyȝnd (4x) 4.324 ~ wynd (7x) 6.26; wyght (13x) 2.64 ~ whyȝt (6x) 5.117 ~ wyȝht- (2x) 4.215 ~ wyȝght (1x) 6.65 ~ wyht (1x) 9.145 ~ wyȝt (1x) 7.177 ~ whyht
(1x) 6.145; wyke 5.911; y-wrete (1x) 2.198 ~ y-wryte(n) (2x) 5.1104; wrete 9.378; etc.
This feature is consonant with East Anglian, though it is common in other northerly dialects. See Norman Davis, "A Paston Hand,"
be (400+x) 1.47 ~ by "be" (3x) 5.1080;
bedeman 4.47 ~ beedemen 11.221; beech 5.592; brede 9.347; crede 5.743; deme 4.520; feede (8x) 1.84 ~ fede
(1x) 8.193; feet 4.428; grene 5.936 ~ greene 9.1; heede 7.206 ~ hede 5.667;heed,
without the final -e.kene 1.216 ~ keene
15.309; keep(e) 3.47 ~ kepe 1.69 ~ kep (1x) 10.281; meede (80+x) 3.19 ~ mede (1x)
4.234; meet(e) 8.26 ~ mete 5.100; seeke 5.1162 ~ seke 4.341; spede 4.263 ~ speede 4.159; sweete 13.211 ~ swete
1.80; etc.
Some spellings of "fed" (pret. and ppl.) indicate the expected shortening before a long
consonant (Jordan, §§ 23, 33.1); e.g., fed 12.132 (pret. sg.), fedde 11.301 (pret. pl.), but two spellings with <ee> suggest
retention of length: e.g., feede (pret. pl.) 11.431,
y-feed (ppl.) 11.318.
best(e) 7.388 ~ beest(e) 5.22 (adj.);
dowel (64x) 5.1108 ~ doweelis 10.803; fedre 15.420 ~ feedre 4.380; fellyn 2.120 ~ fyllyn 2.117; feestrid 13.190; goweel
6.146; ieestys 3.86 <OF geste ~ iestys 7.20; rek(e)ne (5x) 10.585 ~ ryk(e)ne
(3x) 8.129; web(be) 5.199 ~ weeb 5.112 <OE web(b); weed 10.371 <OE wed(d); wel (100+x) 1.63 ~ weel (15x) 2.198; etc.
beende 5.577; beendiþ 5.175; beerne "barn" 4.403;bleenden "blind" 14.141 ~ ablendiþ 7.282; elde
(16x) 5.193 ~ eelde (2x) 10.365 ~ heelde 8.53; feld(e) (3x) 2.2 ~ feelde (2x) 4.489; seelde(n) (11x) 5.413, 5.128 ~ selde(n) (10x) 7.419; send- (11x) 5.980 ~ seende (4x) 14.395; etc.
deele 13.308 ~ dele 2.199 ~ deyle 5.729; drede (20+x) 1.145 ~ a-dred 15.22 ~ adrad 15.310 ~ dreede (3x)
3.210; heele 10.353 ~ hele 9.350; hees "hest" 5.66; lasse (18x) 3.46 ~ lesse (4x)
5.224; laste (v.) 4.29 ~ leste 10.343; leene "lend" 1.84 ~ lene 5.669; see 4.471; swete 10.269; weet- 5.543, 10.648 ~ wet- 14.1; whete (5x) 4.403 ~ wheete (1x) 4.41;
etc.
bak (7x) 4.184 ~ baak (1x) 5.1087; bathed 13.192; craft 2.135; dale 1.14;
fadir 2.65; smale 12.84; wasshe
5.580; etc.
beem 7.282; betyn 9.110; breed 5.173; chepe 5.326; deed(e) 10.803, 14.64
~ ded(e) 2.184, 14.66; dreme 8.4 ~ dreem 12.22; ere 4.357 ~ eere 11.420; gret(e) 1.67 ~ greet(e) 5.388; hed
5.195 ~ heed 3.34; heep 5.329 ~ hep 5.233; leef 2.153; leep(e) 15.127 ~ lepe 1.191; reed(e) 3.14 ~ rede 3.11;
etc.
heyȝ(e) (10x) 1.12 ~ hey(e) 1.134,
9.158 ~ hy 11.87 ~ hyȝ 2.170 ~ hyȝe 2.74; ne(e)yhe- (5x) 2.178 ~ neyȝh(e)- (4x) 13.156 ~ neyȝ (3x) 5.94 ~ neeyh 4.134 ~ neyghe- 5.262; þeyhȝ (22x)
4.149 ~ þeyȝ (6x) 4.343 ~ þey 10.716, 11.405 ~
þeih 10.506 ~ þeyh 5.559 ~ they
1.176;þeah, see Richard Jordan, Þowh and þowhȝ also appear in this manuscript, but they are derived from ON þó.
al 1.1 ~ alle 1.49; barn 3.3; calf 5.942; falle 1.56; flex 5.665; salte 10.39; shafte 9.76; vnfelde 13.264weex 13.287 (n.);
wex(e) (27x) 4.324 ~ wax(e) (3x) 4.293; etc.
beden 15.145 ~ beedyn 4.28; brest (4x) 5.399 ~ breest (1x) 11.205; cleve 8.228; creepe 16.44 ~ crepe 2.194; depe (6x) 1.15 ~ deep (2x) 1.14; feend- (13x) 6.38 ~ fend- (9x) 2.41; flee (6x)
3.211 ~ fleyȝ (5x) 3.212 ~ fley (1x) 13.186; frend- 11.191 ~ freend- 10.151; leem
14.128; syke 5.414; sykness (7x) 5.782 ~ seknesse (4x) 5.422; spewen 7.42; theef 9.309 ~ thevys 10.163; etc.
cherl 5.363 ~ chirlys 15.56; derk(e) 3.104 ~ dirk 2.60; erl 6.85;
fele (44x) 1.22 ~ feele "many" (2x) 8.328; feer "far" 6.75; herte 2.139; hevene
1.97; leerne 5.45 ~ lerne 2.134; -selue (180+x) 5.496; sterre 14.234; sterve
9.111; werk 1.155 ~ wirkis 5.1196; worchepe 2.8; world 1.3; etc.
blewe 15.343 ~ blewh 5.352; brewh 5.219 ~ brew- 15.404; rewe
12.150; sew (7x) 10.385 ~ seew (1x) 15.348; trewe 1.114; etc.
clergyȝe (6x) 7.178; doweelis
10.803; drapeer "draper" 5.255; drunkelewhȝ
6.80; fysyȝk 16.376 <OF fisique; grasees "grasses" 10.522; inparfyȝt 11.106; ioyneen "to join" 14.257; lovyȝe 8.182; lusyfeer 14.407 ~ lucifeer 14.310, 14.356; mateer 11.81; meryght 2.180; morteer 15.329;
pereyl (8x) 5.771 ~ pereil 5.746; pylgryȝm 5.755; profyghte 10.241 ~ profyȝht 4.465; sodoom 10.555; vn-lowkeeþ
14.263; etc.
qwhyle 4.324; wan "when" 5.767, 16.196;
where "were" 1.59, 2.135, 3.65, etc.; where "wear"
1.158; wyt "white" 11.425; wyche "which" 5.302; whythyes wyse "like a withy" 5.531; whont "accustomed"
16.368; whonen "dwell" 3.76; whot "wot" 3.79, 3.123,
5.784; etc.
Since Langland himself alliterated words that historically began with /hw/ with words
beginning /w/, this feature does not distinguish the scribal dialect from the poet's.
However, it is very clear that /hw/ has become /w/ in this scribe's dialect.Bx reads "And ouþer while þei arn elliswhere as I here telle."
The scribe appears to take the alliteration to fall on /w/, uniquely supplying
"weyȝes." For discussion of the treatment of <wh-> in East Anglian texts, see
Richard Beadle, "The Medieval Drama of East Anglia: Studies in Dialect, Documentary Records
and Stagecraft" (D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1977), 51-54; M. C. Seymour, "A
Fifteenth-Century East Anglian Scribe," qwhyle, "while," is probably
a relict form from the Norfolk redactor.
The evidence of inverse spellings suggests that initial aspirate /h/ has been lost in the
dialect of the immediate scribe. The phenomenon is common in East Anglia in late Middle
English.
er-of 5.986 ~ here-of 7.255; hagews "agues" 16.84; hax "ax" 9.233; hetyn "eat" (pres. pl.) 7.10; herly "early" 5.308 (a reading not
in Bx), 5.329; hers "arse" 7.328; hews "use" 1.93;
evy 16.2; evynesse 14.249; huttyrly 6.232; etc.
Neutralization or loss of /h/ may well have been nearly complete in all contexts in the scribe's dialect. At least, his spellings of reflexes of OE /u:/ or OF <ou> with <owh> and OF <au> with <awh> or OF <eu> before dentals suggest near complete neutralization of <h> in the scribal dialect:
agewh 10.347; baw wawh 15.404; bewh "beau" 5.1161; blewh 5.352; brewh
5.219; corlewh 10.521; drowh "drew" (5x) 5.359; Iewh 7.137; knewh 10.190, 15.421; lowh
(3x) 5.140 ~ lowhȝ (3x) 5.602; lowhly (2x)
5.563; Matthew (3x) 5.892 ~ Mattheu (3x) 4.244 ~ Mathewh (1x) 15.266 ~ Mattheuh (1x) 8.253; nowh (2x) 5.863 ~ nowthe (4x) 5.858; ouer-threwh 5.360; rewhliþ 6.139; etc.
The series he ~ hey ~ hyȝ ~ hyȝe for "high" supports the
hypothesis that the velar has disappeared in virtually all contexts in the immediate
scribe's dialect, as does weyȝ for "wye." If further evidence of
the loss of the velar in the scribe's dialect were needed, these inverse spellings would
prove the case: lyth "light" 6.153 and lythlokere
5.581.
Many spellings using <ȝt> are conventional, predictable on the basis of
etymology—fyȝt(e), hyȝt(e), knyȝte, etc. Others are explicable on grounds that the <ȝ>
appears after front vowels as a lengthening graph: apetyȝt
(stressed /xx) 5.919; byȝte 16.359; coueyȝteþ 15.309; delyȝte 7.383; disseyȝt 14.333; fayȝten 5.1088; feyȝth 14.15; petyȝt (/x) 5.1044; and whyȝt "white" 5.791. The <y> following <e> is itself already a
lengthening graph, and in apetyȝt and petyȝt the stress is not on that syllable. At 12.106 we have treated the single
instance of fytȝ, "fight," as scribal error, but as East Anglian
scribes sometimes wrote <-tȝ> in such contexts, the spelling may have been
intended.
These spellings appear in unstressed syllables in a number of words in which they never
appeared historically, suggesting that the velar spirant /x/ had been completely lost
before /t/: en-habyȝtid 10.294; hermyȝtis
5.799, 5.840; meryght 2.180 ~ meryȝt 5.387,
8.182; spyryȝt 13.354; tyȝhtly 8.53. In a
dialect in which the velar spirant before syllable-terminal /t/ had been spelled
<-ht>, its loss would lead to spellings such as awhter (3x) 4.52,
bawhde 5.725; cawhdel 5.364; defawhte (10x) 3.141; defrawhdiþ 5.1056; sawhter (9x) 4.226; bewhte 9.169; lewhte 1.120;
sewht 5.496; abowhte(n) (20x) 3.11; clowhde 4.181; cowhde (18x) 1.173; dowhte (3x)
9.111; lowhde (5x) 1.123; lowhtede 4.105; prowhd (3x) 10.287; rowhte (9x) 1.166; etc.
dunk "dung" 4.302;B manuscripts
in using this form, but Kane listed no such variants in the equivalent line in A when he was recording such spelling variants. Cf. F4.489,
F11.124.dunkele "dung hill" 5.76; and þynk
"thing" 10.405. The form dryng "drink" 10.796 is an inverse spelling. A
West Midlands phenomenon, it is perhaps surprising to find F as the only witness among B manuscripts to such spellings in each case. There is no reason to think
these can be relict forms, but they are not usually taken to be features of East Anglian
dialects.
by-qwache 14.250; chafte "shaft" 6.155;
felachepe 3.195; fychȝ 16.45 ~ fys(s)hȝ 5.391 ~ fysch- 6.50 ~ fyssh
5.177; florcheþ "flourisheth" 10.773; lordchepe (10x)
3.46 ~ lordschepe (1x) 10.738; marchal 4.189; punche(n) "punish" 10.766, 15.198 ~ punshe (4x) 3.49,
7.286; werkmanchippe 13.262; worchep- (18x) 2.8;
etc.
The evidence suggests that this form is inherited by the scribe and is not his usual
form, since at 10.561 he corrected cheltroum to sheltroum. At 4.67 he corrected punschyn to punsshyn and at 4.195 lordchepe to lordshepe.
Perhaps contradictory evidence appears at 5.1054 where some scribe in the tradition has
written shapman, intending chapman (itself an error).
The form schapmen appears in the N-town cycle, also written in East
Anglia.
englyȝs (3x) 5.39 ~ englysch (2x)
11.27 ~ englyshȝ (3x) 5.1100 ~ englyschȝ
(2x) 11.394; manshid(e) 3.40, 9.210 ~ manschid 16.221
~ manshede "mansed" 7.299; sordych "Shoredich"
10.351; wysse 5.565 ~ wisshe "wisse" 5.148, 5.546,
6.108, 7.163, 7.406; etc.
byȝte "bite" 16.359; lyȝk
"like" 15.8; nyghne 13.156 ~ nyhȝne "nine"
5.379; paradyȝs "paradise" 7.485; wyȝnys
"wines" 7.383; wyȝse "wise" 13.340; etc.
Before a voiced stop, yogh steadily appears as a lengthening graph after
front vowels: abyȝde 3.214; by-tyȝde 3.119;
hyȝd(e) 15.463; leyȝd(e) 7.51, 5.244; priȝd(e) 6.114; seyȝd(e) 6.162; syȝd(e) 5.81; etc.
a-cursethȝ 14.110; dethȝ
14.145; feythȝ (8x) 2.183; forfeetythȝ
16.25; forthȝ 13.288; frythȝ (2x) 9.42; furthȝ (2x) 1.213; kepithȝ 11.366; lyȝthȝ 14.388; morderythȝ 13.337; mowthȝ 15.291; nazarethȝ 15.139; northȝ 14.168; schryuethȝ 16.288; wernethȝ 16.12; etc.
There is little reason to think the spelling indicates any unusual pronunciation of
/θ/, though it is possibly related to other East Anglian spellings in which a
word-terminal <t> is followed by <ȝ>.
englys(c)hȝ 11.394; fys(s)hȝ
10.93 ~ fychȝ 16.45; fles(c)hȝ 10.775; Frenchȝ 5.239; freshȝ 5.965; pars(c)hȝ (3x) 5.44; and weschȝ 13.62.
borghȝ 3.89; borwhȝ 5.1073;
bowhȝ "bough" 5.30; drunkelewhȝ 6.80; y-nowhȝ 10.510 ~ y-nowh 5.1078; lowhȝ 5.602 ~ lowh 5.140; plowhȝ
5.755 ~ plowh 1.19; þeyhȝ "though" 4.149 (but
also "they" 7.313); þor(g)hȝ 1.67; þowhȝ
"thou" 6.68 and "though" 11.199.
Though most of these are explicable historically, the scribe's writing "thou" as þowhȝ and "they" as þeyhȝ suggests strongly,
especially in light of the evidence in other contexts above, that the velar spirant had
been lost in the scribe's dialect, that he wrote yogh in various places where it had never
indicated the velar (e.g. after <th> because <th> came to be written for
<ht> in dialects where /xt/ > /t/).
Cf. agewh "ague" 10.347; bewh "beau" 5.1161; blewh "blew" 5.352; brewh "brew" 5.219; corlewh "curlew" 10.521; Iewh 7.137; knewh
"knew" 10.190, 15.421; and Mathewh 15.266 for corroboration of spelling
neutralization.
slewte "sloth" (1x) 5.458 ~ slewhte
16.158 ~ slewhthe (2x) 5.443 ~ slewthe (7x) 1.41 ~
slewþe (5x) 4.302; mowht "mouth" 1.207, 10.57;
etc.
These spellings, though possibly simple scribal error, are consonant with a dialect in which the velar spirant had been lost before a syllable-terminal /t/.
Two instances appear in F, the first in 7.459 in an OF word quantȝ, "when," and another at 12.106 where "fight" is written fytȝ. The latter possibly reflects simple scribal error, and we have marked it
with a "sic" tag. See the discussion in
The scribe writes spalm(es) (4x) 5.904 for "psalm(es)" and speudo for "pseudo" 11.522.
lych "like" (4x) 5.119; machamet(h)
(7x) 4.322 ~ makameþ 11.424; patriarch(is) (3x) 9.242
~ patriark(is) (10x) 10.170; etc.
At 16.237 cheve is written for Bx's chewe. The a-verse is repeated almost verbatim at 14.203. Since cheve makes at least a modicum of sense in context, it is possible the scribe
intended to write that word. However, at 11.489 scheven is written for
shewen. At 4.286 and 16.172 howe is written for OE
hūfe, spelled howfes at 1.202. Instances of
<u> for <w> appear in luscheburue 11.368 and stroued 10.48. <w> is written for customary <v> or <u> in lowe "love" at 10.145, while lowlyest appears at 10.304
where Bx reads louelokest. Note also chewsaunce at 16.16. It seems very likely that these are relict forms from the
revising Norfolk scribe. See Jacob Bennett, "The Language and Home of the 'Ludus
Coventriae',"
Parentheses indicate optional elements. When Bx appears after a
reading, it attests not necessarily the spelling, but the feature: i.e. <-ith> (Bx) means that the <-th> form for the plural verb inflection is in
the archetype, but the vowel might be <e, i, y>.
46. The Status of Final <-e>:
Since we are dealing with a scribal copy, the metrical evidence that might provide a clue
to whether <-e> was sounded is not relevant, and we are, therefore, dependent upon the
distribution of spellings. Such evidence suggests that the immediate scribe has preserved at
least some systemic remains of the grammatical system in which final <-e> was sounded,
but it is curiously mixed. A good bit of evidence suggests that <-e> was
systematically written on the stressed stems of weak and plural adjectives, but not steadily
on the unstressed syllables of dissyllabic adjectives: his grete grace
9.392, his owene grace 13.285, hise manye talys 3.219,
hise leve seyntys 4.385, hise lawe-ful doomes 8.144,
hise wikkide werkis 16.368, for siluerene plates
12.151;Bx.his cheef lyflode 5.89, hise chef chyldryn 5.631, and fele fals be-hestis 16.118) or with unhistoric <-e> (as in &
false doome 14.29, grete wisdom 7.416, of grete
god 6.186.grete and god itself seems to be systematically represented with
<-e> on the adjective. See 3.29, 5.1005, 6.152, 15.447. Unhistorical <-e> also
appears on grete modifying hors and Roome, "Rome," 11.484.
The analogical formation in which hise/hyse appears before plural nouns
and his before singular is carried through with remarkable consistency.
However, the same pattern is not manifested in hir(e), "her," myn, nor our(e). Though the four instances of myne all modify plural nouns, myn modifies both singular
and plural nouns in free variation, while in the case of our(e) the form
with <-e> modifies both singular and plural nouns.
Abraham-is 13.11; adam-is 14.224; Cayn-is 6.259; Iesu-is 14.103; Iohan-is
14.324; mannys (22x) 7.496 ~ mannis (1x) 5.497 ~ manne (1x error?) 15.440; meme[n]to-is 5.474; Peers 14.21 ~ perses 14.26 ~ Peersis
(5x) 14.23 ~ Peersys (2x) 15.268; Penitencia-ys 5.480;
and pharao-is 5.1163.
The B archetype at 5.480 reads "penitencia his pik." Such a "his"
genitive, which tends to be a feature of Southwest Midlands texts, may well have meant
little to the Essex scribe, though it is perhaps remarkable that he has in so many cases
retained the space between stem and inflection. We have in each case treated the
<is>/<ys> as an inflection and hyphenated. The "his" genitive was not completely
unknown in East Anglia, since the reading "to haue mynde of cryste es Passion" appears in
Julian of Norwich's
Abraham 13.216; addir 5.88; broþir 7.281; chirche 7.267;Bx.Constancius 7.344; hevene (Bx) 10.636; Prioresse 5.158; sowle
5.544, 7.266 ~ soule 14.370;s and s-less forms from Bx.trewþe
11.102; etc.
blamegeris 10.92; bodijs 2.193 ~ bodies 12.131; childryn 1.33 ~ children
7.345 ~ childur 13.28; clerkys 10.11 ~ clerkis 10.136; dettys 10.10; dysshes 10.82; dubbler(e)s 10.82; eyȝen 5.359 ~ eyes 10.806; erys 4.488 ~ eryn 1.71;Bx has eris.ferlijs 1.56; flappis 10.64; foon 5.96; frydaes 10.462; grasees 10.522; infynytis 10.129; Iewis
10.212; ladijs (7x) 1.90 ~ ladies (2x) 11.338 ~ ladyes (2x) 8.17; londys 10.211; men
10.36; menstralis 10.232; morterelis 10.108; pesys 5.848;Bx
has pesen.pylgrimes 10.22; preestys 10.11; prentyȝs "prentices" 5.321; Sarsynes 10.212; schoos 16.219 ~ schoon 10.812;
scyenses 10.126; sones 10.123; thevys 10.163; wafres 10.272; weyȝes 5.1011
~ wyȝen 9.390; werkis 10.148 ~ werkys 10.320; wordis 10.148; ȝeer(e)
5.196, 8.16 ~ ȝeeris 1.56; etc.
bisschopis 11.464; kyng(g)ene 2.104
(< Bx.) 15.81; mennes 4.139 ~ mennys 15.385; wyfene (< Bx) 5.27; etc.
bygger(e) 7.326; blessedere 8.258; clennere 10.305; cursedere 15.425; deppere 7.193; feblere 11.367; frenlokere 7.237;
geltyer(e) 9.205; hastlyere 15.475; leuere 5.155; lythlokere 5.581 ~ lyghtlokere
9.277; lyghtere 10.725; needfullere 2.21; plentevousere 7.85; etc. Though <re> is the most common comparative for
bettre, it does not otherwise appear. F uniquely has double comparatives
at 2.189 averouserere, and at 10.203 and 14.419 leuerere.
be(e)st(e) 1.156, 5.22; brunneste 5.961;
derrest 3.12; dowhtyest(e) 15.136; lowlyest 10.304; mervylokest 6.64; neest 13.345.
The multiple superlative at 10.521 most klennest is archetypal.
Non-finite forms:
asken 10.706 ~ aske 4.445; bere 16.91; faren 7.100 ~ fare 5.1092; fecchen 10.383 ~ fecche 3.182; helpen
10.682 ~ helpe 2.17; kennyn 10.445; lystne 6.62; pleesen 10.698 ~ plese 1.29; seen 5.542 ~ see 4.55; techen 11.424 ~
teche 2.142; etc.
a-bydynge 13.103; beggyng(e) 4.207,
15.233; beryenge 8.72; doenge 11.520; dysyryng 10.367; etynge 9.17; iang(e)lyng(e)
3.86, 6.298; lawhyng 12.163; lyenge 10.333; lookenge 8.324; slepyng 1.9; tayl-ende
6.78 (< Bx); wenyng 16.33; etc.
abydynge 15.297; dryvende 16.100;etynge 7.109; hippynge 13.157; lawhenge 4.495; lurkende 3.218;
pleyende 13.90; slepynge 14.299; syttynge 4.338 ~ syttende 12.149waggynge 6.26; wenynge 10.289; etc.
The forms for both gerund and present participle are remarkably consistent. The dominant
form by far, with over 350 occurrences, is <-yng(e)> for both. The
<-ende> in five of its six occurrences marks a present participle,
and tayl-ende as a gerund is a pun retained from Bx.
The form <-eng(e)> appears on gerunds in all but six of its twenty-five occurrences.
There are no instances of -ing(e), -ind(e), or -ynd(e).
y-armed 15.146; a-basshid 7.305; y-blessed 15.392 ~ y-blessid 11.47; a-cumbred 2.201 ~ a-cumbryd 2.34 ~ a-cu[m]brid
2.194; bowht 1.167; browht 4.141;
i-callid 11.245; cast 10.251; clepid 7.432 ~ clepd 4.103; for-beete 16.198; y-huslyd
15.403; lent 5.247; mawngid 5.913; peyed 10.399 ~ y-payed 4.417; y-qwit 13.364; sent 1.72; triȝed 2.205; went (Bx) 4.273; etc.
A few instances of participial adjectives appear with a final <-de>, but usually on
strong or plural adjectives or when the adjectives are used as nouns. Otherwise only finite
forms have final <-e>, except for callide 16.280, where the
suspension is possibly an error. For weak and plural participial adjectives, see crabbide 9.276; crownide 8.323; cursede
5.814; hokede 16.226; (y-)le(e)rnede 4.39, 6.10,
15.88; lettride 7.418; etc.
bakyn "baked" 5.846; bownde 10.724 ~ bownden 10.726; broke 5.1012 ~ brokene
1.62; chose 8.113 ~ chosene 8.114 (serving as a
nominal); dryve 5.623; faren 5.3; y-feed 11.318; for-getyn 5.406; gyve 3.122; holpe 4.511, 11.147; knowe 9.93; shryve
"shriven" 5.313, 5.422; seyȝ 9.113; wasshe 10.475
~ waschen 14.394; wrete 8.229 ~ wretyn 7.475 ~ wryten 13.118; wrooke 3.196,
14.392; etc.
Both weak and strong past participles are frequently marked with initial <y-> or (less often [5x]) <i->:
y-bakyn 5.834; i-blessid 8.163; y-born 14.236; i-boterased 5.600; y-broke 15.349; y-fownden 11.246 (varies with the weak form y-fownded 11.341); i-paraylid 5.529; y-seyn 13.359; etc.
Finite forms:
Indicative:
Present
com(e) 7.232; deme 5.115; for-gyve 4.443; heyȝle 5.101; leve 1.32;
sey 1.193; stumble 4.498; swere
5.228; walke 5.148; warne 1.199; wysshe 2.43; etc.
dotyst 2.136; dryest 2.25; gredist 15.433; leernyst 4.355; lyvyst 3.126;
lyxt 5.164;Bx, appearing only in this verse.myghtyst 1.206 ~ myght 5.875; seest 2.5; wyrchist 4.63; woost 4.168; etc.
a-faytethȝ 10.775; akeþ 5.911; beryþ (10x) 4.403; bit (Bx) 5.1055;
bryngþ (3x) 6.281 ~ bryngeþ(1x) 11.84; coueryth 15.299; fareþ (9x) 6.33 ~ faret 10.46;
fynt (3x, all Bx) 4.473 ~ fyndes
5.1126 ~ fyndis 11.193, 15.450;Bx or R have "fynt" in
each case.folweth 3.187; for-fret 12.30; gyfþ 4.127 ~ gyveþ 4.327 ~ gyviþ
10.800; halt (Bx) 13.203, 13.243; lykþ 14.32; lyþ 9.299; longeþ 7.143; makþ (9x) 4.112; seyþ 4.224; sekþ
10.574; sleeþ 10.570; smyt (Bx)
9.114; spekþ 7.469 ~ spekeþ 5.1032 ~ spekiþ 11.62; stant (Bx) 14.45; stynkþ 7.317; takþ (13x) 3.34; tellyþ (15x) 1.93
~ telliþ (9x) 1.95 ~ telleþ (6x) 2.88 ~ tellyt 4.244 (1x) ~ tellethȝ (1x) 9.294; þynkþ 5.423; wytnessyþ 3.76; etc.
a-bide 12.28 ~ a-byden 16.79 (Bx); aske 4.211 ~ asken 5.1066; by-tokneþ 5.1153; burgoneþ 11.84; crave
4.213 ~ craven 4.210; cropyþ (Bx)
5.685; dwellyþ 6.121; fare 8.65 ~ faren 3.185; fecche 5.811 ~ fecchen 4.397; folweth 4.341; helpe 4.232 ~ helpen
5.632; lystneþ 10.788; makþ (Bx)
(1x) 6.27; nemeþ 5.667; schryuethȝ 16.288; see 15.249 ~ seen 2.52; seweth 1.41;
smerteþ 13.384; teche 7.289 ~ techen 11.104; tristne 4.113; wernethȝ
16.12; etc.
The distribution of these dental suffixes across the text is of some interest. The most common form is <-eþ> with almost 600 instances, most appearing in the last seventy per cent of the text. The others are <-yþ> (162x, mostly in deciles 3-7 of the poem), <-ith> (57x, none in first decile), <-eth> (8x, seven in the first two deciles), <ethȝ> (5x), <-yth> (5x), and <-ythȝ> (3x, all in the last two deciles).
Preterite:
awakid 6.1; a-wakned 15.488; batered 4.187; be-hyghte 14.332; borwede 5.752; clepide 15.9; covrbet 3.1; dyȝede 5.751; drempte 7.503; fawht
14.370; grette 7.231; herde 1.180; kyllyde 4.175; lenede 1.8; lefte 4.185; restid 14.7; wayted 10.354; wente 1.6;
etc.
conseyledist 4.194; dyedist 5.496; eggiddist 14.288; feddyst 5.503; madist
5.232 ~ madyst 5.493; reddist 4.250; seydist 9.279; þoledyst 15.176; wroughtist 4.96;
etc.
a-cordid 8.41 ~ a-cordyd 4.500;a-cordit at 4.433 is possibly
intended by the scribe as a preterite form, Kane and Donaldson (B.4.91) took it to have been
written for 3rd sg. pres. ind. All other B witnesses have the preterite
acorded. The Kane-Donaldson reading is supported by the fact that the
form <-it> is written nowhere else in the manuscript for the preterite.armed 16.123; askyde 5.77; be-sowhte
2.166; bowht(e) 3.3; brouht 8.3 ~ broghte 11.518; callede 2.4; dyȝede 6.55;
enbawmed 13.168; gronede 16.309; hente 5.826; kawht 5.361; lakkede 6.166; parled 5.41; sweltride 16.105; wepte
10.806; etc.
a-mortysyd 11.337; a-noyed 3.168; assentid 1.166 ~ assentide 3.69; belevid 1.63 ~ belevedyn 14.312; carolden
14.433; carpid 7.110 ~ carpedyn 7.112 ~ carpeden 10.223; casten 12.145; helyde 5.845;
kneliden 15.84; openeden 14.322; pulliden 5.764; sente 16.307; etc.
be-come 8.202 ~ by-come 15.39; be-knewen 15.151; chose 16.237 ~ chosen
16.236; come 5.1086 ~ comen 15.153 ~ keme 4.389 ~ kemen 1.64; felle 5.386 ~ fellen 12.112 ~ fellyn 2.120; hongyn
2.170; knew 8.241 ~ knewe 6.12 ~ knewen 9.273; kestyn 3.152; lope 4.495 ~ lo(o)pen 2.114, 14.312; lurn 9.247; mette 3.214 ~ mettyn 14.125; stoden 3.73; sungen 14.324; tooke 4.74 ~ token
4.419; woxen 12.60; wooke 15.158; wopyn 5.1021; etc.
Subjunctive
carpe 13.220; fayle 5.669; folwe 6.45; gyve 5.107; lyke 6.47; rede 4.349; werke 4.488; etc.
aske 5.432; carpyn 7.53; coueyte 16.251; don 5.878; grucche 5.869; haven 10.649; lykyn 10.189; lyve 5.45;
loven 5.574; mettyn 5.823; reuerence 14.258; sewen 2.184; weryn 8.286;
etc.
Imperative
be 16.48; com 5.584; coueyte 5.585; hav 10.528; lakke 3.48; sitte 5.918; etc.
be 3.139; beggiþ 5.1076; byddeþ 5.611; led 11.94; lediþ 3.136; let 5.53; seke 5.59; stynte 5.588; strike 5.589; wadiþ 5.580; weteþ 3.76;
wyrcheþ 3.135; wytnessyþ 3.76; etc.
The first person singular ich does not appear in the manuscript, but
the unique reading But Cheeste with Charyte be / y chylle on ȝow
pleyne (10.110) shows that some scribe in the tradition used that form at least on
occasion. Since R at that point agrees with beta family witnesses, the scribal revision
occurred at some point between alpha and the present manuscript. Though such revision is
consonant with the other changes we have attributed to the F-Redactor, the palatal is not a
feature of his Norfolk dialect. The other spelling suggesting a palatal ich at 5.228, so þeech, is probably to be attributed to alpha,
since it is shared by R as so theich. Curiously, perhaps, the archetypal
and probably original form there is ik in the phrase "so thee ik."
Langland's dialect joke—the same as Chaucer's in
The feminine singular form he is a relict from Langland's dialect as
shown by alliteration in 14.156.He appears for "she" at 3.134, 4.281,
5.199, 7.499, 8.104, 8.107, 14.156, 14.175, 14.178-80 and 15.161-62, usually reflecting an
alpha lection.
The scribe perhaps preserves a for "he" at 5.808, though since most B witnesses read a-bosted the reading is insecure. This
perhaps reflects another occasion when the
The appearance of he for "they" at 3.149 and 6.243 is owed to alpha,
and the scribe at 1.198 appears to have taken it to be singular. See also the note to
10.317.þei for Bx's he at
7.140, 10.615, and 15.33.
The scribe wrote out myn in only four of its 151 occurrences. He
appears to use it in free variation with my since it appears immediately
before consonants as well as before vowels, both conjunctively and disjunctively.
þi and þy appear only conjunctively. Only one of 100
instances appears before a vowel (5.1062). þyn appears both disjunctively
and (far more commonly) conjunctively. In some twenty-eight instances, it appears before a
vowel, though as with the first person myn the two forms are essentially
in free variation.
Of 157 occurrences of hise and 7 of hyse, only one
(1.165) appears before a singular noun. Four appear before the formally singular but
notionally plural collective nouns meyghne (2.106, 11.152), conseyl (5.971), and felachepe (3.195). All others precede plural
nouns or are used disjunctively with a plural reference (10.258, 13.326, 16.61). The
singular form his appears with plural nouns only twelve times in over 590
occurrences, and the nineteen occurrences of hys all modify singular
nouns. Taken together, only thirteen exceptions in over 775 occurrences of his/hys/ys ~ hise/hyse strongly suggest that the scribe intended to
distinguish singular from plural forms.
The neuter forms his and hise appear at F9.375,
F13.303, and F15.213 and are in each case archetypal.
The following list of sigils of the manuscripts of
For descriptions of the B manuscripts see George Kane and E. Talbot
Donaldson, eds.,