Page:Disciplina Clericalis (English translation) from the fifteenth century Worcester Cathedral Manuscript F. 172.djvu/9

The present edition of Peter Alphonse's Disciplina Clericalis is intended to be a preliminary study for the fuller treatment of the subject which I promised several years ago to give in one of the volumes of the publications of the Early English Text Society, but which has not yet been completed. At the outbreak of the war I was in England reading and collecting materials from every possible source. But this work, necessarily broken off in the very midst of things, could not be taken up again during the last five years: so the matter rests where it was left in the summer of 1914. I hope, however, that it will be possible to resume the necessary search after analogues and originals of the various tales of the collection in both ancient and mediaeval literatures at no distant date and to carry it to a successful conclusion in the prospective EETS edition. The edition which is now presented will in the nature of things reach only a limited number of students and readers. But it will be of great practical value, I hope, to all who are interested in the study of mediaeval folk-tales generally, as well as of Peter Alphonse's collection in particular, since it offers a convenient and, it is intended, reliable text of the Middle English version as a much needed basis for all further editorial work.

My interest in the Disciplina began some years ago while I was engaged in collecting materials for the EETS edition of the Middle English Harrowing of Hell and Poetical Gospel of Nicodemus. But the identification of this unheralded, unrubicated piece in the Worcester Cathedral Ms. was immediately due to the interest and suggestion of Mr. J. A. Herbert (at that time Assistant in the Department of Manuscripts, now Keeper of Manuscripts, in the British Museum), to whose kindness and courtesy I have so frequently been a debtor in recent years.

Since the EETS edition will be amply provided with Introduction, Notes, and Glossarial Vocabulary, in addition to, in all probability, a reprint of the Latin version of the Cambridge University Library Ms. li, 6, 11 in parallel columns with the Middle English, the "critical apparatus" has been for the most part omitted from this edition. Besides, the lack of space in these publications makes it incumbent on the editor to compress the introductory materials into the smallest practicable compass. No attempt has accordingly