*See the edition of Bede’s works by Plummer, 1896, vol. ii. p. 252, where the question is ably discussed, and F. Graz’s Beitrige zur Teatkritik der sogenannten Caedmonschen Genesis, Konigsberg, 1896. An interesting study of this ‘Milton of our forefathers’ will be found in R. 8. Watson’s Ceedmon, the first English Poet, 1875.
eae
VERSIONS (ENGLISH)
ginning of this century, has been thought to be, in part at least, the work of Aldhelm (+709), bishop of Sherborne. If so, it would be as early as the 7thcentury. There seems, however, no evidence that it is his work, or as early as his time. In this version the first fifty Psalms are rendered into prose, the remainder into verse. It was pub- lished by Benjamin Thorpe in 1835.* Two other versions were published—one edited by Spelman in 1640, and the other by Stevenson in 1843.+
Of the Gospels, in like manner, three Anglo- Saxon versions were published, from MSS—one by Archbishop Parker, in 1571 ; another by Marshall, rector of Lincoln College, in 1665 ; and the third by Thorpe, in 1842.t It had been a complaint of scholars that no proper estimate could be formed, from these detached publications, of the relative value of the original MSS, or their re- lation to one another.§ This cause of complaint has now been removed. In the edition of the Gospels just referred to, put forth by Skeat,|| not only is a larger number of MSS _ brought into requisition, but their comparative date and value are ascertained. Two well-known ‘glosses’ are also included in this collection—the Lindisfarne, or Durham Book, and the Rushworth. In these the Latin is interlined with a verbatim rendering in Anglo-Saxon. The date of the Latin text of the Lindisfarne is, roughly speaking, about A.D. 700 ; that of its ‘gloss,’ the work of a priest named Aldred, some two and a half centuries later. The gloss in the Rushworth MS (so called from its donor) is derived from the Lindisfarne. In a note at the end of St. John’s Gospel the names of the two makers of the gloss (in this case little more than transcribers) are given: Fzermen, or Farman, a priest of Harewood in Yorkshire, and Owun.4 It is obvious that, from the nature of its construc- tion, a word for word gloss can scarcely be called a translation.
Before leaving the Anglo-Saxon period, a brief mention should be made of the metrical version, with many abridgments and omissions, of the Pentateuch, and the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, Esther, Job, Judith, and Maccabees, the work of Hlfric, Abbot of Peterborough in 1004, and Archbishop of York in 1023. What remains of this version was published in 1698 by Edward Thwaites, at Oxford, under the title Heptateuchus, Liber Iob, et Evangelium Nicodemi, etc. It was reprinted by Thorpe in 1834, in his Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, and still more recently by Grein in his Bibliothek. This version, like all those pre- viously mentioned, is from the Latin.**
* See the Preface to Forshall and Madden’s Wyclifite Bible,
. i, and Mombert’s English Versions, p. 9, where a specimen of the translation is given. 4 j
+ See Moulton’s History of the English Bible, p. 8. In 1885 the Vespasian Psalter {an interlinear Anglo-Saxon gloss, so called from its being contained in the Cotton MS Vespasian A. 1) was edited by Henry Sweet for the Early English Text Society. Its date is the first half of the 9th century. The text of a later one, the Eadwine Canterbury Psalter, was also edited for the same Society by F. Harsley in 1888.
¢ Forshall and Madden, as before.
§ Westcott, History of the English Bible, 1872, p. 6, n. 2.
|| The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian versions, ed. by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat . . . 1871- 1877, 4to. , ¥
{| These particulars are taken from Skeat’s edition. See also the Preface of Forshall and Madden. With regard to the MS versions, Skeat considers the C.C.C. Cambridge MS (No. 140), the Bodleian (441), and the Cottonian (Otho C. 1), to be practically duplicate copies of an unknown original. The MS in the Camb. Univ. Libr. (li. 2. 11) is closely akin, perhaps a little later. This evidence is of value as pointing to the exist- ence of a common Anglo-Saxon version. ,
** A specimen of Zlfric’s translation will be found at p. 16 of Mombert’s English Versions. See also Eadie’s Hinglish Bible, yol. i. pp. 15, 16. In the Handbook for the Wyclif, Exhibition, arranged by Sir E. M. Thompson, 1884, p. 4, there is a descrip- tion of an early 11th cent. MS of A‘lfric (Cotton, Claudius B. iv.); and also, at p. 1, a full account of the precious ¢ Durham Book,’ mentioned above.
VERSIONS (ENGLISH) 237
It is a characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon idiom, in the versions described, that it prefers rendering foreign words, even though clumsily, to retaining and assimilating them. Thus ‘ centurion’ becomes ‘hundred-man,’ ‘ disciple’ ‘leorning-cniht,’ ‘parable’ ‘bigspel,’ ‘sabbath’ ‘reste-deg,’ ‘treasury’ ‘gold-hdrd,’ and so on.* It will be borne in mind, also, that the Latin text from which these versions have been made is not the Vulgate as we have it, but in some cases the earliest of Jerome’s revisions, in others the Vetws [tala.t
ii, ANGLO-NORMAN. — During the three cen- turies that elapsed after the Conquest, the changes going on in the national life and char- acter were not favourable, at any rate for a time, to the spread of vernacular translations. Apart from the sudden disruption in government, and the diversion of men’s thoughts to war rather than religion or literature, the infusion of Norman- French, with its swifter current, into the slower English speech, like the influx of the Rhone into the Sadne, would tend to check the formation of a common literary tongue. The native strength of the invaded language prevailed in the long run ; but for a while, as all know, the Norman-French remained the language of the court, the school, the bar, while its rival held possession of the farmhouse and the cottage. A collateral result of this state of things was, that the educated classes were the more readily satisfied with Latin, as the language for religious use ; while the need, or the possibility, of devotional books in one common native tongue was less and less thought of. +