Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/167

 11 8. IX. FEB. 28, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

161

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 191k

CONTENTS. No. 218.

NOTES : ' Widsith,' 161 John Wilkes and the ' Essay on Woman,' 162 Statues and Memorials in the British Isles, 164 ' King Lear ' : " Clamour moisten'd," 165 " Nigger- ality" "Rome was not built in a day," 168 Relics of London Churches ' Punch,' 167.

QUERIES : The English Church in Rome Elyas the Printer " Within sound of Bow bells," 167 Fox of Stradbroke, 168 ' Marriage,' by Susan Ferrier Paris in 1780 and 1860 Younger Van Heluiont Authors of Quotations Wanted Places in Dickens Rev. Josias Durant, 169 Colonels of the 24th Regiment "A fact is a lie and a half " ' The Stranger ' Purchass, Eighteenth Century City Churches with Round Towers Mrs. Hutchinson : Portrait by Lawrence, 170 The Centumvirate Club, 171.

REPLIES : " Widows' Men "Adjectives from French Place -Names, 171 Anno Domini Shakespeare Second Folio : Milton's Epitaph, 172 Octopus, Venus's Ear, and Whelk The Candle, 173 Thomas Hudson, Portrait Painter Biographical Information Wanted Cromwell and Queen Henrietta Maria -Whitington Arms" Of sorts" Regimental History, 174 " Grains Aims Hay" Rings with a Death's Head Jules Verne London Nursery Grounds Feast of Shells " Throp's wife," 175 Cricket in 1773 Parish Registers of St. Botolph without Aldersgate Colonels of the 24th Regiment, 176 Ilf racombe Major - General Duff John Thomas John Cassell Saffron Walden, 177 Fire and New-Birth The Word "Bill" in Wordsworth Wallace of St. Thomas, 178.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Chronicle of Lanercost' ' Chats on Old Coins' 'Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society ' Catalogue of the Wigan Free Library Reference Department.

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

JI0&S*

' WIDSITH,' LL. 4, 5.

WIDSITH commenced his poem by making certain statements about himself ; in fact, we may say that he very properly intro- duces himself to his audience. But there is much textual confusion. In the second line of the latest edition " monna " is inter- polated, and " maegfa " takes the place of mcer\>a. In the third line " on " is inserted. In the fourth hine is altered to " him," and in the fifth " sepelo " supplants ce]>ele. In fine, in three passages mustering twenty- three words among them, the latest editor has incorporated no fewer than five emenda- tions. I hasten to add that he has laid the evidence of the MS. before his readers. That evidence renders it clear that the scribe of the Exeter Codex, in the passage before us, did not understand either what he was copying or what he was writing.

The late Dr. Sweet wrote of the scribes in 1878 that

" many of them did not understand what they were writing half so well as a thoroughly competent editor."*

We shall presently see that in the case of ' Widsith ' there is not a pin to choose between scribes and editors.

In the two half -lines I wish to deal with the MS. runs :

hine from Myrgingum ofydt onwocon. It is impossible to construe this. The verb onwocon is plural, but it has no subject. It is intransitive, but it has an object, namely, hine. And celpele is really in an oblique case, without any grammatical reason for that being apparent.

Conybeare, Leo, Ettmuller, Kemble, and Thorpe kept the manuscript reading, and the last-named rendered the words thus : Him from among the Myrgings nobles gave birth to. Mr. Sedgefieldf gives :

Him from Myrgingum se>elo onwocon, and in so doing he follows Rieger, Grein- Wiilcker, Kluge, and Holthausen ; cp. Mr. Chambers, ' Widsith,' pp. 188-9. The last- named editor does likewise, but turns the words thus :

His race sprang from the Myrgings. This frankly evades all the grammatical and other difficulties inherent in the passage, and interpolates the word " race," for which there is no textual authority. This is all very unsatisfactory.

Many distinguished scholars, as Mr. Chambers has shown, have puzzled over these five words. But not one of them would appear to have asked either himself or his fellow -workers the question, Are there other difficulties besides grammatical ones, and may there not be a hidden that is to say, a scribal error at the root of all ? I would reply to this question in the affirma- tive, and I would add that not one of the scholars referred to has given that amount of time to the study of the palseographical peculiarities of tenth-century Anglo-Saxon script which must be given before the re- habilitation of * Widsith ' can be undertaken with the certainty of success.

In the tenth century there was a peculiar form of a employed which gave rise to a variety of obscure scribal mistakes. This particular a is actually a u with the top closed by a bar. Good examples of it

1913, p. 135, ' English and Germanic Philology.' -t ' Beowulf,' 1910, p. 139.
 * ' The Collected Papers of Henry Sweet,' Oxford,