Yet even in this period, as Forshall and Madden have pointed out, the Anglo-Normans had trans- lated into their own dialect, before the year 1200, the Psalter and Canticles of the Church in prose.§ More remarkable still, they are said to have exe- cuted in this country a prose translation into their own tongue of the entire Bible.|| Metrical para- phrases of Scripture stories, such as are found in the Ormulwm,1 would help to keep alive a knowledge of Holy Writ.
It will suffice, however, here to give a short account of two works, both belonging to the first half of the 14th cent. ; of one of which it is said that it is ‘the earliest version in English prose of any entire book of Scripture.’ Both are prose versions of the Psalms. The author of the first is
‘commonly believed to be the William of Shore-
ham (de Schorham), of whom we have a number of English poems remaining. William himself was probably a monk of the priory of Leeds in Kent. Shoreham, presumably his native place, is between four and five miles from Sevenoaks. When the rectory of Chart Sutton, in Kent, was impropriated by Walter Raynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1313 to 1327, to Leeds priory, William of Shoreham became its first vicar.** In this capacity, like an earlier George Herbert, he poured forth his
* See Bosworth and Waring’s Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gos- pels, 1865, p. Xvil.
+ Moulton, The English Bible, p.9. See also Bosworth and Waring, as before, Pref. p. x, where examples are given.
t See Traill’s Social England, vol. ii. (1894) p. 538, and Free- man’s Norman Conquest, v. p. 508.
§ Preface, p. iii. They refer, in evidence, to Cotton MS Nero CO. iv., Trinity Coll. Camb. MS R. 17. 1, and others.
|| Ib. The editors refer to the Catalogue des MSS francois de la Bibliotheque du Roi, by M. Alexis Paulin Paris; in vol. i. pp. 1-3 of which is a description of a MS (No. 6701) entitled Traduction littérale de la Sainte Bible. M. Paris thinks that the writing and dialect of the MS, which is assigned to the 14th cent., prove it to have been ‘exécuté en Angleterre.’ The other two MSS referred to by Forshall and Madden contain, accord- ing to M. Paris (Catalogue, t. vii. pp. 183, 200), only ‘ traductions en vers’ from the Bible.
4{ The Ormulum, so called from its author Ormin, or Orm, an Augustinian canon of the 12th cent., was edited by R. M. White (2nd ed. 1878). Notes on its spelling will be found in an edition of the History of the Holy Rood, by A. 8. Napier (Early English Text Society), 1894. Re
¥* These particulars are taken from the Preface to The Religious Poems of William de Shoreham, edited for the Percy Society by Thomas Wright, 1849. Wright’s text is criticised in many passages by Konrath in his Beitrige zur Erklérung wnd Text- kritik des W. von Schorham, Berlin, 1878.
238 VERSIONS (EN GLISH)
soul in verse. So far as is known, his poems are contained in one solitary manuscript,* which also contains a prose version of the Psalter in English of this period. Whether the two productions are to be referred to the same author, has been made a matter of question. That the poems are the work of William of Shoreham, is not doubted. His name is found in the colophon to some of them. And it might be thought sufficient evi- dence of unity of authorship, under the cireum- stances, that the handwriting is the same through- out. But Konrath argues, on the other side, that the dialect in which the version of the Psalter is written is not Kentish, as ‘Schorham’s’ would naturally be, but Midland.+ 4 The subjoined extract, containing the opening verses of Ps 56 (in the Latin Bible 55), will enable the reader to judge of the style of the version :— Miserere mei, deus, quoniam conculcautt me homo ; tota die impugnans diabolus tribulauit me. Hane mercy on me, god, for man hap defouled me. Pe fende trubled me, fe3tand alday o3aynsme. Conculcauerunt me inimici mei tot die, quoniam multi bellantes erant aduersum me. Myn enemys defouled m{e] alday, for many were fe3tand o3jains me. 4b ascendine diet timebo te: ego wero in te sperabo. ¥ shal drede be fram be he3t of be daye: Y for sobe shal hope in be. In deo laudabo sermones meos in deo speraui: non ttmedbo quid faciat michi humanacaro. Hii shal hery my wordes, what manes flesshe dob tome. Tota die mala uerba mea execrabantur : adwersum me omnes cogitaciones eorum in malum. Alday be wicked acurseden myn wordes o3ains me: alle her poutes ben in iuel. IJnhabi- tabunt in inferno & abscondent se ibi. ipsi caleaneum meum obseruabunt. Hii shul wonen in helle, and per hii shul hiden hem, and hii shul kepen mid fouleinges. Sicut sustinuerunt i. temptauerunt animam meam, pro illo saluos faceres eos & in tra tua populos istos constringes i. aduersabis. Ag hii tempteden my soule for nou3t, pou shalt make hem sauf and 30u shalt
bringe to nou3t pes folkes in byn ire. Deus, witam meam Ha,
annuntiaui tibi: posutstt lacrimas meas in conspectu tuo. god, ich telde my lyf to be : pou laidest min teres in by sy3t.t
Whatever doubt there may be as to the author- ship of the version of the Psalter known as Shoreham’s, there is none regarding that assigned to Richard Rolle of Hampole (+ 1349). Richard was a native of Thornton, near Pickering, in Yorkshire, and was sent to Oxford by Thomas de Nevile, archdeacon of Durham. At the age of nineteen, obeying an inward impulse, he left the university, and became a hermit at Hampole, near Doneaster.§ His commentary is devotional and mystical, and, as such, is often quoted by Adam Clarke in his notes on the Bible. The following Specimens will show his method, which is to set down, after each verse of the Latin in order, a literal rendering of it, and then to add his own comments. :-—