"Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History: An Experiment in Editing

by Fred C. Robinson

A T the close of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People,' following Bede's curriculum vitae and a list of his writings, there appears in all versions of the work, both Latin and Old

English, the author's prayer for his soul's salvation. In some versions of the History (Plummer's "C-type manuscript"2) this prayer is fol- lowed by a request that readers of the work support the author's petition with their intercessory prayers. This second appeal originally appeared as part of Bede's Preface at the beginning of his book but was felt by some redactors to form such a suitable companion piece for the prayer at the book's end that it was displaced thither. All surviving manuscripts of the Old English translation of Bede have the petition displaced to the end of the book. In one of the Old English manuscripts, moreover, a third petition has been added in which Bede continues speaking, apparently, this time addressing himself to any rulers who may read the book, asking that they support with their means the copying and promulgation of the book in the future. By changing Bede's emphasis from simple concern for prayers to a concern for the afterlife of his book, this final addition transforms the supplicatory postlude into a kind of envoi, and I shall refer to the unique, three-part statement henceforth as "the envoi." The author of the third part of the envoi, which is written in Old English allitera-

1 For the Latin version I refer to the edition by Charles Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896). Two editions of the Old English translation will be cited, that by Thomas Miller, The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, EETS o.s. 95, 96, nlo, and ill (London, 189o-8), and that by Jacob Schipper, Konig Alfreds Ubersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte, Bibliothek der an- gelsachsischen Prosa, vol. 4 (Leipzig, 1897-9). These three editions are cited hereafter by the editors' last names.

2 Plummer, pp. civ-cxxxii.

4

? 1981 The University of North Carolina Press. 0039-3738 /81 / 050004-19$01 .6o/o

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Fred C. Robinson 5

tive verse, is unknown. Certainly we have no reason for thinking that Bede composed it, although he may have provided the inspiration for it, since his Preface to the History, which is addressed to King Ceol- wulf, asks the king to promote the dissemination of the book. The composer of the verses could have been following the example of those who had removed the second petition from the Preface to the close of the book when he generalized the petition to Ceolwulf into an appeal to all rulers and moved this generalized appeal to the end of the volume where it now follows the other transplanted petition. The manuscript which alone contains this composite, three-part envoi is the single most independent or revisionist version of the Old English Bede, the eleventh-century codex Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 41 .3 The purpose of the present essay is to provide an edition of the envoi, a text of composite authorship and mixed form, prose followed by alliterative verse.

Readers who have noticed my subtitle may well ask how such a routine editorial task as this could warrant the description "an experi- ment in editing." To answer the question we must review the pub- lishing history of the envoi, a history which shows that the text has never been allowed by editors to stand as the composite unit which it was intended to be. In the two modern editions of the Old English Bede which use C.C.C.C. MS. 41, both editors have carefully de- tached the verse-passage from its context and printed it hundreds of pages away from the text of which it was meant to be a part: Miller prints it near the end of his volume of "Various Readings" (p. 596) rather than with the edition proper, while Schipper prints it in his "Einleitung" (pp. xxv-xxvi). Scholars concerned primarily with Old English verse, on the other hand, have consistently printed the allit- erative portion of the envoi in isolation, giving no indication that it was composed as the third part of a tripartite valediction.4 The invari-

3 An examination of the "Various Readings" listed in Miller's edition, Part 2, EETS o.s. nio and 111 (London, 1898), pp. 1-597, will reveal how individual are C.C.C.C. 41's divergences from the other manuscripts. Raymond J. S. Grant discusses these in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, "MS. C.C.C.C. 41, with Special Regard to the B Version of the Old English Bede" (1970). Professor Grant is preparing a study of this subject for publication.

4 Editions containing the verses alone include F. Holthausen, "Altenglische Schreiberverse," Anglia Beiblatt XXXVIII (1927), 191-2; E. Sievers, "Altenglische Schreiberverse," Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literaturen LII (1928), 310-11; The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 6 (New York, 1942), pp. cxvii-cxviii, 113, 203-4. The text of the verses is transcribed by Humphrey Wanley in Librorum Veterum Septentrionalium ... Catalogus,

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6 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History able dismemberment of the envoi has taken place, I believe, because of two modern editorial assumptions: first, the assumption that whenever one medieval author expands or completes the work of an- other the editor has a responsibility to disengage the two writers' contributions and present them to readers as two independent com- positions; second, the assumption that verse texts are normally to be studied separately from prose texts.

For reasons which I have recently set out in some detail,5 I do not believe these assumptions to be valid for medieval English literary texts. In an age when authorship had not yet attained that high degree of self-consciousness which it has in the modern profession of letters, unified texts might develop quite naturally by accretion, one writer humbly and anonymously adding his mite of wisdom to the words of a precursor, strengthening a point here, expanding a point there.6 Writers like Bede or kIlfric may express anxiety on occasion over the bad copyist who idly corrupts their texts, but there was also a feeling that if a later writer could improve the work of a predecessor, he was free to do so. A notation in a tenth-century manuscript recently described by N. R. Ker states this conviction succinctly: "A scael gelaered smiM, swa he gelicost maeg, be bisne wyrcan butan he bet cunne." (A learned artificer must always work from his exemplar as closely as he can, unless he knows how to work better.)7

The assumption that verse texts should always be studied apart from those in prose is an odd one to apply to a literary culture in which alternate prose and verse composition within the same text was a common practice. The interchanging prose and metrical sec- tions of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy are the most obvious example, and we may recall that the Anglo-Saxons not only translated this popular text, reproducing the prose-verse alternations of the original (in B.L. MS. Cotton Otho A.vi), but they seem to have

vol. 2 of George Hickes' Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium . . . Thesaurus (Oxford, 1705), p. 114.

5 "Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Context," in Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles (Bury St Edmunds, 198o), pp. 11-29, 157-61. The edition promised in n. 3, p. 157, is the one I am presenting here.

6 Nor were medieval writers hesitant to assume the voice and authority of the man whose work they were expanding: for a discussion of this practice and its relevance to our reading of the present text, see "Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Con- text," pp. 22-5.

7 "A Supplement to Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon," Anglo-Saxon England V (1976), 127.

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Fred C. Robinson 7 imitated its prose-verse form in such works as the Solomon and Saturn, the Chronicle (where verse texts appear amid the prose entries), and some homiletic texts. Several manuscripts (e.g., the Vercelli Book) are made up of prose compositions alongside verse compositions (often looser in meter than the strict verse of, say, Beowulf), although editors are careful not to allow modem readers to see these texts in their original juxtapositions. That Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to read- ing texts in which prose merges into verse and verse back into prose again seems clear from the way modern scholars keep discovering verse excerpts embedded in what had previously been taken as pure prose texts.8 Nor is the Corpus version of the Old English Bede the only "Alfredian" translation provided with a metrical conclusion: most manuscripts of the Old English Pastoral Care contain a verse epilogue as well as a preface composed partly in prose and partly in verse. And in the Cotton Otho C.i manuscript of Gregory's Dialogues the main text is introduced by a twenty-seven line poem.9 We should perhaps also note that the metrical conclusion to the Corpus version of the Old English Bede may not be the only alliterative verses in that work.'0

The experiment in this edition, then, is to present a text of complex authorship and prose-verse form in the composite, integral state that its last shaper intended it to have. If this seems too banal to be called an "experiment," I can only point out that it has never been done before with this text and that it has rarely been done with similar texts from the Anglo-Saxon period. My hope is that this specimen edition along with my recent argument for reading Old English literature in its medieval manuscript context rather than in modem fragmented texts (see note 5 above) will encourage future study of Old English literature in the integral form in which it has come down to us. I should add that the envoi I am editing here is of course itself part of the entire Old English Bede (Corpus version), a fact which readers must keep in mind as they read the text presented here. That I have not reprinted the entire History here will perhaps require no explana-

8 A number of these are mentioned in Madeleine Bergman, "Supplement to A Con- cordance to The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records" forthcoming in Medievalia.

9 See the recent reconstruction of the text of this poem in David Yerkes, "The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Waerferth's Translation of Gregory," Speculum LV (1980), 505-13.

10 See Fr. Klaeber, "Die altenglische Bedaubersetzung und der Denkspruch auf Os- wald," Archiv CXLIV (1922), 251-3, and "King Oswald's Death in Old English Allitera- tive Verse," PQ XVI (1937), 214.

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8 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History tion. It may be consulted in the edition by Schipper, who prints the Corpus version in parallel columns with other manuscripts of the Old English Bede.

INTRODUCTION

The manuscript in which this text is preserved is dated by N. R. Ker to the first half of the eleventh century.'1 Like the preceding History as a whole, the envoi, including the verse additions, is thoroughly West Saxon. (Spellings like waldend and aldor alongside weard and geweald in the poem cannot of course be taken to signify dialect mix- ture.12) The lateness of the entire manuscript is reflected in spellings like synum and (perhaps) drihten in the metrical section and -ian, -an for -ien, -en in the prose part.'3

The three sections of the text are closely integrated, both visually and verbally. They are copied in the same elaborate hand, and each section is introduced by capital letters. The last of the three sections differs from the others in having altemate lines in red gilt and dark brown ink.14 The three sections are linked verbally by repetitions like ic bidde . . . ic ea;Ymodlice bidde . .. bidde ic and eac swylce . .. eac fbonne ... eac. The three-part envoi has considerable thematic coherence as well. The author begins by acknowledging that he has written the book with the support of God's wisdom and closes by saying that fu- ture production of the book will be a form of continual praise to God. (See the critical note to line 27 for a discussion of the monastic ideal of work as a form of prayer honoring God.) Within this framework the author asks successively for God's support, his readers' support, and the support of powerful rulers. The last petition specifically requests support for the writre, and the poet exploits, I believe, the lack of dis- tinction of sense which inheres in the word. The obvious meaning is

11 Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), pp. 43-5. Miller, Part 2, pp. x, xxii, accepts a date of 1030-40 for the manuscript and attempts through a study of place-names to establish a Hampshire provenance.

12 E. G. Stanley, "Spellings of the Waldend Group," in Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, ed. E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill (Austin, Texas, 1969), pp. 38-69.

13 Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), pp. 132, 157. 14 One might conclude that the aural ornament of meter is here artfully com-

plemented by the visual ornament of colored ink; but note that in other Bede manu- scripts (e.g. Leningrad State Public Library MS. Lat. Q. v. I, 18, fol. 16jr) closing col- ophons are written in alternate lines of red and black ink.

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Fred C. Robinson 9 "scribe," but writre could also mean "author," and forms of (a)writan referring to authorial composition occur not only in the immediately preceding petition but also repeatedly in the long list of Bede's writ- ings which precedes the envoi. In the Corpus version, moreover, this repetition of the verb is further emphasized by having ic wrat occur twice where the other manuscripts lack it. In view of this verbal con- text, writre in line 26 of the poem would seem to suggest both "scribe" and "author," and since Bede describes himself as having served in both capacities ("ipse mihi dictator simul notarius et librarius"'5), we may suspect that the writer of the verse section-a scribe, most likely, who is speaking in Bede's voice-may be humbly following Bede's august example (after an interval of three centuries) in both capacities. For the royal audience the implication of such literary pietas is that support for the scribe is also support for the author, that scribal work and authorship are equally worthy ways of extolling the Lord, and that both are deserving of support from God, readers, and rulers.

The innovations in the main text of the Corpus version have long been recognized. Thomas Miller observed that "this scribe, or editor, has a turn for rhetoric and often recasts whole passages,'16 while Dorothy Whitelock suggests that he was given "to deliberate altera- tions in order to replace archaic or dialect words and archaic syn- tax.'"17 The revisionary bent of "this scribe, or editor," may have extended to his adding the verse petition which gave final shape to our envoi. He could have adapted the verses to his purpose after finding them in another context, or he may have composed them himself, stumbling occasionally in his handling of the meter. What- ever the case, he clearly was not inclined to "be bisne wyrcan" when "he bet cunne." For this reason I have not treated his deviations from the other manuscripts of the Old English Bede as blunders, automati- cally emending his first two petitions into conformity with those in the other versions. His independence of thought throughout his copying of the History would seem to require that an editor retain variant readings whenever they make sense on their own terms or at

15 Bedae venerabilis opera exegetica in Lucam et in Marcum, Corpus Christianorum vol. 120, ed. D. Hurst (Turnhout, 196o), p. 7.

16 Miller, Part i, p. xxxi. 17 "The List of Chapter-Headings in the Old English Bede," in Old English Studies in

Honour of John C. Pope, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving (Toronto, 1974), p. 266.

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10 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History least that the possibility of intentional change be acknowledged in the critical notes.

The meter of the verse passage requires a special word. Ferdinand Holthausen in 1927 remarked that several verses in the poem "me- trisch nicht in Ordnung sind,"'8 and he presented a heavily emended text to restore the presumed metrical regularity of the original, which he thought the Corpus scribe had either miscopied or misremem- bered. Eduard Sievers, on the other hand, doubted whether the poem ever had metrically regular form: "Was er [i.e., Holthausen] in seinem text fur verse halt, sind keine wirklichen verse. . . . Das stuckchen um das es sich handelt, ist namlich in ganz glatten, in ublicher weise nur unregelmassig alliterierenden sagversen abge- fasst,"19 and he proceeds to lineate the poem in conformity with his theory of "sagvers." E. V. K. Dobbie also rejects Holthausen's version, but on the grounds that we should not expect "too good a metrical form for a poem of the eleventh century."20

In fact, the meter of the verses is not as loose as these scholars would lead us to believe. Aside from a jarring lapse in the opening verse (which will not scan at all) and two rather clumsy half-lines later on, the poem is regular. The irregularity of the opening verse, moreover, is easily rectifiable by a simple transposition of words to Ic eac bidde, which scans as a C-line and alliterates properly with the off- verse. Line 25a, in which a finite verb in second position alliterates instead of the noun in first position, invites more drastic revision. If bredu (which presents problems of interpretation on other grounds, as the critical note to this line explains) could be replaced by fell (neut. plur.) "hides, skins" (referring to parchment leaves), then all would be well: and ,ba fell befo. But the word for parchment leaves is bocfell; there is no evidence that the simplex fell meant the same thing as the compound, and so this reconstruction is dubious. The last trouble- some line is 26a (fixt gefyr;6rige tone writre), which can be regularized only by radical emendation of the kind practiced by Holthausen. This being the case, and bearing in mind that all the bad verses make good sense and grammar as they stand, we should probably conclude that the poem is the work of an inattentive metrist rather than an origi- nally smooth text corrupted by a scribe with a tin ear. But clearly it is

18 "Altenglische Schreiberverse," p. 191.

19 "Altenglische Schreiberverse," p. 310.

20 The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, p. 204.

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Fred C. Robinson 11

not as formless as Sievers and Holthausen would have us believe. I suspect that the poet was a man familiar with vernacular verse and somewhat knowledgeable about it but not very practiced in it. He was probably more at home in the world of Latin learning and religious instruction than the world where scopas plied their craft. But like many another, he had some knowledge and appreciation of both.2'

In the text that follows punctuation and capitalization have been silently modernized. I have ignored the scribe's punctuation as well as his occasional accent marks, as in geunne, mote, and wisd6mes (once thus, elsewhere wisdomes). The standard nota for and is represented thus (always in italic), and the abbreviation for fat is expanded thus: Pxt. The nasal stroke over a vowel is represented by an italic m fol- lowing the vowel. I have not recorded in the textual notes previous editors' failures to indicate these abbreviations. Brackets around let- ters indicate that these are editorial insertions; changes of manuscript forms are printed in italic and explained in the textual notes.

In lieu of a glossary, I have provided a literal translation of the text in parallel columns.

The editions referred to by editors' last names in the course of the textual and critical notes have all been cited in full above: Miller, Plummer, and Schipper are cited in footnote l; Dobbie, Holthausen, Sievers, and Wanley in footnote 4.

21 My analysis of the meter has benefited from a discussion of the poem's prosody with Professor John C. Pope, but since he has not seen what I have finally written on the subject, he is not responsible for any of the conclusions I have reached. I have drawn heavily on learned and helpful criticism by Professor E. G. Stanley of Pembroke College, Oxford University, and have been saved by Professor David Yerkes of Colum- bia University and Dr. Bruce Mitchell of Oxford from more than one error.

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12 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History

TEXT AND TRANSLATIQN

(p. 482) [A]nd ic bidde be nu goda Halend Pat Pu me milde forgeafe swet- lice drincan Pa word t5ines wisdomes Pat Pu eac swylce forgyfe Jxt ic aet

5 nyhstan to be, Pam wylle ealles wisdomes, becuman mote symle aetywan beforan Pinre ansyne;

(p. 483) [elac Ponne ic eabmodlice bidde PJt on eallum bam Pe 5is ylce

1o staer tobecume ures cynnes to raedenne oMe to gehyrenne, Jat hi for minum untrumnessum modes and lichaman gelomlice and geomlice Pingian mid baere upplican arfaestnesse Godes

s aelmihtiges and on gehwylcum heora maegbe Pas mede heora edleanes me agyfan Pet ic be be syndrigum maeg5um o5[e] Pam hyhrum stowum, 5a Pe ic gemyndelice and Pam bigengum Pancwyr5lice gelyfde

20 geomlice ic tilode to awritenne Pat ic mid eallum Pingum Pone westm arfaestre 7ingunge gemete;

[b]idde ic eac aeghwylcne mann, bregorices weard, Pe Pas boc raede

1 [A]nd] MS Nd (with a space five lines deep for a large capital A) 8 [ejac] MS AC (with a space three lines deep for a large capital E)

10 cynnes] MS cynnnes 17 Pe be] MS be Pe 19 Pancwyrhlice] MS Pamcwyrblice (with first c written over final minim of m) 20 geornlicel MS Geornlice 23 [blidde MS IDDe (with a space four lines deep for a large capital B);

Wanley Bidde eac; Holthausen supplies (to) eac(an)

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Fred C. Robinson 13

And I beseech Thee, Good Savior, now that Thou hast graciously granted me to drink sweetly the words of Thy wisdom, that Thou also grant that I may come at last to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom, to appear eternally before Thy face;

also, I humbly beseech further that among those to whom this same history of our nation may come, either to be read or heard, that they will frequently and zealously intercede with the celestial mercy of God almighty for my weaknesses both of mind and of body, and that in each province of theirs they will bestow on me this meed of their reward, so that I, who strove zealously to record whatever I thought memorable and worthy of the inhabitants' contemplation concerning various provinces or the more important places, might obtain the fruits of their pious intercession in all things;

I also beseech each man-ruler of a realm, lord of men-who might read this

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14 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History

25 and Pa bredu befo, fira aldor, Pat gefyrIrige Pone writre wynsum[uml craefte Pe bas boc awrat bam handum twam, (p. 484) Poet he mote manega gyt mundum synum geendigan, his Aldre to willan;

30 and him Paes geunne se be ah ealles geweald, Rodera Waldend, PJet he on riht mote ob his daga ende Drihten herigan.

Amen. Geweorpe Pxet.

Yale University

25 befo] After befo Holthausen supplies (burgum on innan) 26 Pone] Wanley, Holthausen, Schipper, Sievers bone writre] Hol- thausen writ(e)re 27 Pe] Wanley b5e 28 synuml Sievers sinum 29 his] Holthausen deletes 30 and] Holthausen, Sievers Paet 31 on riht] Wanley unriht 34 Geweorpe] Wanley geworpe

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Fred C. Robinson 15

book and hold the covers that he support with kindly power the writer who wrote this book with his two hands so that he may finish with his hands yet many more according to his Lord's desire; and may He Who has power over all, the Lord of the Heavens, grant that to him, so that he may properly extol his Lord until the end of his days.

Amen. May it come to pass.

2 All other manuscripts have present subjunctive forgife where Corpus has forgeafe. I originally assumed that a relative pronoun was missing after fbx t tu (see p. 19 of the article cited in footnote 5, where I supply the translation, "that Thou [Who] hast graciously permitted me . . ."). But since the word-order in the Corpus version is different from that of the other manuscripts (ic bidde Se nu rather than nu ic fie bidde), it may be that nu (and the following faxt) has here been inter- preted as a conjunction correlative with /,at . . . eac swylce. (See translation for the syntax.) Possibly more attractive, however, is the translation suggested to me by Professor Stanley, who doubts that a correlative construction is intended here: "And I now beseech Thee, Good Savior that hast graciously granted me to drink sweetly the words of Thy wisdom, that Thou also grant . . ." But cf. I. L. Gor- don's note to 11. 33b-35 of The Seafarer (London, 1960), pp. 37-8. Cor- pus's forgeafe, it should be noticed, is in closer conformity than the other manuscripts with Bede's tenses in the Latin original, which has donasti. . . dones.

6 In all other manuscripts the conjuction and appears after mote, and it is possible that the Corpus scribe, who elsewhere omits and where it seems indispensable (e.g., Miller, Part 1, p. 404, 1. 19 and "Various Readings:" p. 505, and Part 1, p. 441, 11. 4-5 and "Various Readings," p. 557) overlooked the nota for and in his exemplar. But sometimes the Corpus scribe seems to reduce the number of ands as a stylistic revision, and so I have rendered the passage as it stands in the manu- script, assuming for atywan the sense "to be present" rather than "to come into view."

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16 X"Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History io The standard Old English dictionaries record no verb tobecuman, and

Miller and Schipper read to becume where I have read tobecume. The word tobecuman is documented, however: Helmut Gneuss, "Ergan- zungen zu den altenglischen Worterbuchern," Archiv CXCIX (1962), 22, records the verb as a gloss to Latin advenire. In the Latin Bede pervenire is the verb translated by Corpus's tobecume.

13-16 The verbs kbingian and agyfan are subjunctive plurals with late -an for -en. Other manuscripts have Pingien . .. agefe, ,bingien . .. agife, tin- gian . . . agife.

17-18 The Corpus reading oY tam hyhrum stowum (where all other manu- scripts have oMie tam ... ) could be a deliberate alteration ("as far as the more important places"), but it is difficult to see the purpose of such a revision, and the grammar is suspicious since o;Y with dative object is unusual. Earlier in the Corpus manuscript we find oY i5a bryttas where other manuscripts have o;Y6e brytta (Miller, Part :, p. 120, 1. 4, and "Various Readings," p. 109), and the present o5 is prob- ably just another blunder of o;5 for oYYe. In either case, the reference here to "more important places" (Latin locis sublimioribus) provides a subtle transition to the final section's address to those who occupy the miore important places, the rulers.

23 See the Introduction, p. lo, for comment on the metrical problems in this line.

24 All editions except that of Sievers read brego as a simplex noun syntac- tically parallel with rices weard. That Sievers' bregorices is correct seems confirmed by bregorices fruma in Genesis 1633b. (The compound bre- gorice also occurs in the Lambeth Psalter glossing Ephrata in Psalm 131:6.) Bregorices weard and fira aldor (1. 25) are accusatives apposed syntactically with xghwylcne mann (1. 23). lEghwylc followed by ap- positives specifying only some members of the class modified by xghwylc occurs also in Meters of Boethius 27:9-11: ". . . he symle spyre/aefter aeghwelcum eorZan tudre, diorum and fuglum." To as- sume the same syntactical structure here seems preferable to reading bregorices weard and fira aldor as vocatives with a different referent from xghwylcne mann. The latter is grammatically possible but less logical in context.

25 To what does fia bredu refer? One would expect the reference here to be to vellum pages, but the expected noun in that case would be leaf "folio, leaf,' tramet "page,' ymele "leaf," boga "folded parchment leaf;' or bocfell "parchment, vellum." As was noted in the Introduc- tion above, the neuter plural fell in place of bredu would improve both

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Fred C. Robinson 17

sense and meter if fell could be used synonymously with bocfell, but there is no firm evidence that it could. The common meanings of bred, on the other hand, are "board, panel, (wax) tablet." One could posit a semantic development from the last of these meanings to "book" (a sense development parallel with that of Latin tabellae and codex), but there is no documentary evidence that bredu ever came to mean "book." If bredu is retained, it must refer to the board covers of the book. (Note that the Riddles of the Exeter Book make reference to a book's being bound in hleobordum: see the discussion of this passage in the editions of the Riddles by Frederick Tupper [Boston, 1910], pp. 126-31, and by Craig Williamson [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977], pp. 211-15.) But the book in our verses would not have been bound at the time the scribe was finishing his job of copying and writing his closing verses. One must therefore assume that he was thinking ahead to the form that the book would have after it left his desk and passed through the hands of the illuminator to the binder. That he was in- deed thinking ahead to the book's future state when it would be bound within boards is evidenced, perhaps, by the contrasting de- monstratives in the sentence: Pas boc "this book" refers to the text which the versifier has just completed and has before him; pa bredu "those boards" refers to the board covers which the versifier assumes will be covering the book by the time the bregorices weard is holding it in his hands. (Compare the way that the writer of the Metrical Preface to Wxrferth's Translation of Gregory's Dialogues thinks forward to the time when his reader will actually be holding his book: "5as boc ... Pe ) u on Pinum handum nu hafast and sceawast" [11. 16-17].) If the present interpretation is correct, then we must add to the semantic range of bred the specific meaning "book-cover," a meaning elsewhere expressed by hleobord and spelt in Old English.

26a Contrary to C. L. Wrenn's interpretation in A Study of Old English Lit- erature (London, 1967), p. 192, the request here is not for prayers but for material support. The verb (ge)fyr5rian is commonly used in refer- ence to men of high estate promoting the faith or giving support to deserving subjects. E.g., "Da caseras woldon 5a cenan men ... fyr5- rian" (Homilies of Elfric, ed. J. C. Pope, vol. 2, p. 730); "Eadgar cynincg Pone Cristendom gefyr5rode" (AElfric's Lives of the Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, vol. 1, p. 468); "Cristenum cyninge ... gebyre5, Jaet he . .. Godes cyrcean aeghwar fyr5rie" (Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. A. Napier, p. 266). That the meter of this verse is inept was mentioned above in the Introduction. It could be construed, perhaps, as type A

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-i 8 "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History

with anacrusis, but its unaccented syllables seem uncontrolled, and the alliteration on the second stressed syllable rather than the first is awkward. Holthausen, p. 192, divides this half-line into two verses and composes another verse (see the textual note to 1. 25) to even out the long lines.

26b The scribal error of wynsum for wynsumum is a typical instance of haplography. That the intended reading was wynsumum seems espe- cially likely when we notice that this scribe has a marked propensity for using -um to signal the instrumental singular of adjectives where the other manuscripts have -e. For example, he has innlicum hete, gerxdum worde, missenlicum metere, mid godcundum maegene ge mid men- niscum, sarlicum wale and earmlicum where the other manuscripts have inlice hete, geraxde worde, missenlice metre, mid godcunde mxgene ge mid mennisce, sarlice wxle ond earmlice (see Miller, "Various Readings," pp. 586, 590, 594, and 595). Surprisingly, every previous edition of the poem retains the manuscript's wynsum, either through oversight or, conceivably, because the editors tacitly assumed wynsum to be nominative singular modifying mann, weard, and aldor. Disturbingly awkward under any circumstances, this reading seems especially un- likely when we recall that (ge)fyr;Yrige would almost routinely call for an accompanying instrumental: cf. "eallum magene . . . Godes cyr- cean aeghwar fyrbrie" (Homilies of Wulfstan, p. 266), "mid heora ful- tume us gefyrbriun" (Homilies of AElfric, ed. Pope, vol. 1, p. 423), and "hi sind mid gifum and gestreonum gefyrprode" (King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius, ed. W. G. Sedgefield [Oxford, 1899], p. 46). Wynsumum crafte may be translated either "with cheerful virtue" or "with joyous, kindly power."

27 Schipper's theory (pp. xxv-xxvii) that bam handum twam signifies that an ambidextrous scribe copied the manuscript fails to take account of the scribal formula discussed on pp. 14-15 of the article cited above in footnote 5. Notice also that mid baxm handum and mid his handum twam occur, respectively, in Elene 804 and Instructions for Christians 68, in neither instance with reference to ambidexterity. The phrase may have had a faintly Biblical ring (Deuteronomy 9:15-17, Micah 7:3), but our poem's peculiar emphasis on work with the hands (bam handum twam ... mundum synum) being a way of praising God (see 11. 31b- 2b) would seem to require a more specific context for this topos. This context is provided, I suspect, by the old Benedictine ideal of "opus Dei ... opus manuum" (see Chapter 48 of the Benedictine Rule "De opere manuum quotidiano"). A passage in Defensor develops

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Fred C. Robinson 19 the topos appropriately: "Cor enim cum manibus levat qui orationem cum opere sublevat.... Quisquis orat, et non operatur, cor levat et manum non levat." (For the full text along with the Old English translation, see Defensor's Liber Scintillarum with an Interlinear Anglo- Saxon Version, ed. E. W. Rhodes, EETS o.s. 93 [London, 1889], pp. 34-5.) That the precept was a commonplace before Defensor used it seems clear from the earlier occurrences cited by E. Marshall, Notes and Queries, 6th series, vol. 1i (1885), 477-8, while its survival late into the Anglo-Saxon period is attested in Instructions for Christians 7ff. ("an is monnes geswinc, ober [is] mubes gebede"). Bede's deep commitment to this monastic ideal has been eloquently described by Father Genadio Sanmiguel in his "San Beda el Venerable en el XII centenario de su muerte," Monasticon 2 (1935), 114: "Uniendo en con- sorcio estrecho el trabajo y la oracion, [Bedal logro plasmar el tipo acabado, el ideal perfecto del monje, cuyos trazos encontramos en su vida con mayor realce y exactitud que en ninguna otra figura de la his- toria monacal."

28a Manega gyt refers, perhaps, to further copies of the Old English translation of Bede. Cf. Bede's Preface to the History where he tells King Ceolwulf he is sending him a copy of the book so that it may be transcribed and promulgated. "In this lending of copies for purposes of transcription consisted the medieval process of publication," ac- cording to Plummer, vol. 2, p. 1.

29b Holthausen's deletion of his causa metri is unnecessary. Anacrusis in the off-verse is permissable in A-lines with the caesura falling as it does here. See A. J. Bliss, The Metre of Beowulf (Oxford, 1958), pp. 40-1.

33-4 Dobbie, Miller, and Schipper, print "Amen geweorpe Paet" as part of the poetic text, where the words are an extrametrical embarrassment. Holthausen and Sievers delete "geweorpe PJet" but include "Amen" in the last half-line, where it will not scan. But the words are not part of the verse text at all: they are the conclusion to the entire three-part envoi.

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