Anglo-Saxon Prose

216 Pages·1975·49.672 MB·English

by  Michael Swanton (editor)

n g o - a x o n
r o s e
Edited and translated by
Michael Swanton
Reader in Medieval English
Studies, University ofE xeter
Dent, London
Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J.
3 2106 01432 4401
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Univ. Library, UC Santa Cruz 1998
CJ. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1975
All rights reserved
Made in Great Britain
at the
Aldine Press • Letchworth • Herts
for J. M. DENT & SONS L'l'D
Aldine House• Albei11arle Street· London
First published 1975
First published in the United States 1975
by ROWMAN AND U'l"l'LEFIEID, Totowa, New Jersey
This book if bound as a paperback is
subject to the condition that it may not
be issued on loan or otherwise except in
its original binding
This book is set in 9 on 10 point Times New Roman
Dent E:dition
Hardback ISBN 0 4liO 10809 3
Paperback ISBN 0 4liO 11809 9
Rowman and Littlefield edition
Library of Congrea Cataloging in Publication Data
Swanton, Michael, comp.
Anglo-Saxon prose.
and Littlefield university Ll"brary)
(Row11~an
Bibliography: p.
I. Anglo-Saxon prose literature-Translations into English.
2. English prose literature-Translations from Anglo-Saxon.
I. Title.
PRIS08.S9 829 74-5762
ISBN 0-87471-545-8
ISBN 0-87471-544-x (pbk.)
Contents
vii
Pref~
Introduction ix
&lect Bibliography
llV
LEGAL PROSE:
The Laws of Wihtr&d, 695 1
An Anglo-Danish Peace-Treaty, 878 4
s
Trial by Ordeal
The Laws of £thelred, 1008 6
:>clJMl!NT:A.RY PROSE1
Two Crediton Documents 11
Two Exeter Donations 14
Two :Estate Memoranda 21
A Writ of Edward the Confessor 27
A Witch Drowned 28
A Letter to Brother Edward 29
ALFRED2
Preface to Gregory's Pastoral Cant 30
Two Northmn Voyages 32
Preface to St Augustine's Sollloqulu 37
nm
LIFE OF ST GUTHLAC 39
nm
BUCKLING HOMIUST1
An 'Easter Day Sermon 63
A Michaelmas Sermon 70
JELFRIC
Sermon on the Epiphany 76
Se:ln1on on the Greater Litany 83
Sermon on the Sacrifice on Easter Day 88
The Passion of St Edmund 97
The Festival of St Agatha 103
Ailfric's Colloquy 107
v
vi
WULFSTAN:
The Sermon of •wolf' to the Enalish 116
Sermon on False Gods 122
The Institutes of Polity 125
THE GOSPEL OP NICODEMUS 139
APOLLONIUS OP TYRE lS8
A COI.I.EC110N OP PROVERBS 174
BALD'S 180
B 186
Preface
The act of translation needs no apology. The circumstances which
made it desirable for Alfred and lElfric in the ninth and tenth cen
turies are no less pressing in the twentieth; and the attendant
problems are no less great. The difficulties that confront the trans
lator are innumerable; whole books have been written about them.
Only those who have subjected their translations to the scrutiny of a
number of others will readily appreciate how a dozen different
readers will make a dozen different demands on a translation at any
one time. It is simply not possible to satisfy every point at all times;
of its nature, translation is unsatisfactory. The number of possible
interpretations, not simply of substance, but of style and tone, is
often large. And the decisions which must be taken are more often
than not purely subjective. Ultimately translation cannot reproduce,
or even adequately reflect, the style of an original without departing
from its substance considerably. I have tried to supply as close a
rendering as possible without being awkwardly over-literal. And I
have thought it important not silently to 'improve' the original in
those cases where I felt it to be at all clumsy, repetitive or obscure.
To do so would be to present as unreal a picture as it would be to
reduce all the varied styles of Old English prose to my own personal
style, or to the 'colloquial Modem English' beloved of the university
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exam.mer.
In the strictly limited space available, I have tried to furnish the
general reader with a representative selection of some of the very
different kinds of Old English prose. It would have been possible
to include everyone's favourite passages only by an anthology of
excerpts. But wherever possible I have chosen works which are
complete in themselves, eschewing extracts in the belief that these
are inherently misleading. What might at first seem a bold step in
excluding passages from both Bede and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
-both of which are in any case already available in inexpensive
editions-allows space for less familiar material which would
otherwise have had to be omitted. I have tried to include a body of
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vu
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Preface
V1ll
such less accessible pieces as the estate memoranda, as well as such
high-spots as the Sermo Lupi, which could scarcely be avoided; and
to include examples of such ephemeral documents as land-grants
and wills, as well as works of persistent influence, like the Gospel of
Nicodemus. It was clearly desirable not to repeat more than was
inevitable material already included in Professor Whitelock's
English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, and to make cultural
rather than purely historical documents available, providing supple
mentary material of 11se to students both of Anglo-Saxon history
and Old English literature. Within the limits laid down, at least some
of their needs are met. But should others better versed in the subject
ever have occasion to peruse these pages, the translator can only
plead with King Alfred
}'ret he for hine gebidde, and him ne wite gif he hit rihtlicor
ongite ponne he mihte, f relc mon sceal be his andgites
or}'rem~e
and be bis remettan sprecan he spree}' and don }'ret
mre~e ~ret
}'ret he dep.
Exeter 1974 M. J. SWANTON
Introduction
The Anglo-Saxons have left us the earliest, largest and most varied
body of vernacular literature to have survived from medieval
Europe. But its remains are both arbitrary and uneven. While there
is evidence for the extensive copying of many works, the greatest
number of Old English prose writings, like the verse, are known
only from 11nique copies which were often made centuries after the
work was composed; scarcely any is the author's own manuscript,
or even an immediate copy of it. And beca11se the medium of their
preservation has been that of monastic or cathedral libraries, no
work has had much chance of survival unless it was of interest to a
church librarian. It was mere chance that the Old English Apolloniu3
of Tyre should have been copied into the back of an eleventh
century collection of homilies and laws; without it we could only
have guessed at the existence of an Old English romance genre. If
only the library of a lay magnate could be reconstructed in the way
that Bishop Leofric's can, our picture of Old English literature
might have been more balanced.
But even ecclesiastical libraries have had little chance of survival.
The magnificent eighth-century library Alcuin knew at York must
have been sadly depleted by Viking and other ravages by the end of
the tenth century. And whatever Archbishop Wulfstan could then
have restored would be destroyed once more when York Minster
was burnt down again during the reign of William. In any case, even
during the Anglo-Saxon period itself the processes of natural wastage
may have meant the loss of many works. With considerable changes
in language, spelling and handwriting conventions, old-fashioned
manuscripts must often have been considered of no great value.
Some may have been revised and re-written then; others scraped
clean for the sake of the vellum, others still, discarded altogether.
The older contents of many libraries must have been continuously
dispersed and destroyed. Even the fine new books of the Benedictine
Renaissance would appear old-fashioned and even unreadable by
the thirteenth century. Certainly by the early 1300s the fine collection
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