The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. Vol. 6. The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems

406 Pages·1942·16.016 MB·English

by  Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (ed.)

THE
ANGLO-SAXON
MINOR POEMS
EDITED BY
ELLIOTT VAN KIRK DOBBIE
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1942
Copyright, 1942
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK
Manufactured in the United States of America
PREFACE
THIS VOLUME, numbered Volume VI of the Anglo-Saxon
Poetic Records, contains the many verse texts, most of
them short, which are scattered here and there in manu­
scripts not primarily devoted to Anglo-Saxon poetry. The title,
The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, seems the most convenient one
available, although a number of the poems, notably the Battle
of Maldon and Solomon and Saturn, are not “minor” in the
ordinary sense of that word. As a general rule, only those poems
have been admitted which are written in the regular alliterative
verse; but the Death oe Alfred, which has rime instead of al­
literation, is included with the five other Chronicle poems, follow­
ing the practice of earlier editors, and the metrical charms are
printed in their entirety, though most of them are only partly in
verse and their metrical structure is often far from regular. The
only poem included here which has not previously been published
is the Seasons eor Fasting, discovered not many years ago in a
British Museum manuscript. With the publication of this volume
only the two poems in MS. Cotton Vitellius A.xv, Beowulf and
Judith, remain to be edited; they will appear together in Volume
IV, now in preparation.
In its general arrangement, this volume is intended to conform
as closely as possible to the earlier volumes of the series. But with
fifty-three poems to be edited, from seventy-two separate manu­
scripts and several other sources, it was necessary to modify the
plan to some extent. The Introduction has become a series of
introductions to the several poems, with descriptions of the manu­
scripts; these, though placed together, are more or less independent
of each other. These introductions are necessarily much com­
pressed, and problems of selection of material have been difficult;
but it is hoped that nothing of importance has been omitted.
Wherever possible, poems from the same manuscript are discussed
v
vi PREFACE
as a unit. In a few cases, however, this was not feasible; for
example, the poems in MS. 41 of Corpus Christi College, Cam­
bridge, have been dealt with at three different places in the book.
The Bibliography, which follows the Introduction, is presented in
a more compact form than in the earlier volumes; to save un­
necessary repetition, editions and periodicals frequently cited are
abbreviated according to the list of abbreviations on pp. cxlix-cl.
The texts and notes are printed in the usual way. A list of the
accent marks in the manuscripts is given on pp. cxxxix-cxlv, im­
mediately after the Introduction. The contents of the folios in
the manuscripts are listed in the footnotes to the Introduction,
instead of being placed together at the end; the list of small capitals,
a feature of the earlier volumes, is omitted here, as impracticable
for so many different manuscripts. Attention is called to the ana­
lytical Table of Contents on pp. ix-x, which will facilitate the
finding of material on any desired poem.
No special virtue is claimed for the order in which the poems are
printed in this volume. All that can be said is that the order
adopted seemed a natural one from the beginning, and that no
better order suggested itself. The texts, except those of the Leiden
Riddle and the Hague manuscript of Bede’s Death Song, are
based on photostats, supplemented in each case by a first-hand
examination of the manuscript. For reasons stated in the in­
troduction to the Leiden Riddle, it seemed best to base the
text of that poem on the readings of earlier editors. As in The
Exeter Book, words or letters which are illegible or lost from the
manuscript are indicated by points within brackets; no attempt has
been made to restore such losses in the text, but the suggested
restorations are recorded in the notes.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to Professor Robert
J. Menner, of Yale University, for his generous help on the intro­
duction and text of Solomon and Saturn; to Professor Francis
P. Magoun, Jr., of Harvard University, for the loan of some mate­
rials illustrative of the Rune Poem; to Professor Philip W. Souers,
of Newcomb College, Tulane University, for lending me the photo­
graphs of the Franks Casket which are reproduced in this volume,
and for criticizing my introduction to the Franks Casket; to Pro­
fessor Harry Morgan Ayres of Columbia University, for reading the
PREFACE vii
Introduction and making a number of very helpful comments;
and to all those who, at one time or another, have expressed the
conviction that this volume would some day be finished. I wish
also to thank Messrs. Methuen and Co., Ltd., for permitting me to
reproduce the drawing of the Ruthwell Cross, and the Trustees
of the British Museum, for authorizing the reproduction of the
two photographs of the Franks Casket.
E. V. K. D.
January 30,1942