Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/168

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [u a ix. FO. a, 191*.

appear in the first plate of Thorpe's fac- similes. The A.-S. Chron. A is assigned to Hyde Abbey, Winchester. It is now No. CLXXIII. in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The page of it lithographed in Thorpe's edition of the Chronicles contains annals 922-4, and was written by scribe No. 7 in about A.p. 930. Instances of carelessness in writing or reading this a are indicated by the scribal errors it, ti, u, and um. These are found for the most part in proper names, but they sometimes appear in common words also.

Now -myrging- occurs seven times in 'Widsith,' namely, in 11. 4, 23, 42, 84, 85, 96, and 118. In 1. 96 it is in the gen. pi. : sc. frea myrginga. In 1. 118 also it is in the gen. pi. : sc. gedryht wift myrginga (MS. wi]>). In all other instances it is found in the dat. pi. In one of these, however, namely, in 1. 42, it ought to be in the gen. : sc. merce. . . .wffi myrginga. Editors mis- read here, and reproduce the MS. without emendation, though they are quite aware that there is obscurity. They evade the difficulties by separating wift from its con- text and construing it as a preposition, which is what the scribe of the Exeter Codex supposed it to be. The line is thus made to mean that Offa " drew the boundary against the Myrgingas," whereas it actually means that Offa "drew the boundary of the WitJmyrgingas." When the scribe of the Exeter Book wrote merce gemcerde wffi myrgingu, he misread the peculiar a we are concerned with, and supposed that the bar was an m- stroke.

The error in 1. 4 is identical with that in 1. 42 : the scribe had a badly closed a before him, and he read myrgingu instead of felt constrained to tamper with his text.
 * myrginga. The consequence was that he

Hine from Myrgingum sej^ele onwocon cannot mean

Him from the Myrgingas the nobles sprang. Editors believe that it does, and some humour the scribe by supposing that onwocon was just transitive enough to require a dative.

Now the first, second, fourth, and fifth sentences of 'Widsith' have "Widsith," "he," "he," and he understood, for their subject, respectively. We know that on- wocon is not transitive, hence W T C may reject hine and " him," and replace both by he. Moreover, the plural form onwocon is due to the scribe, who, like Thorpe and many others, supposed that ce]>ele indicated a nom. pi., and provided it with a plural verb.

Our emendations run thus :

Editors alter ce]>ele to ce]>elo, -u, and suppose- that this is the pi. nom. of the abstract noun, which has the same form as the- sing. nom. But Prof. Wright not only specially warns us that " few nouns belong- ing to this class [of abstract fern, nouns- in I] have a plural " ; but also points out that the use of the nom. sing. " for all forms of the sing, and for the nom. ace. plural " does not belong to the oldest period of the dialect ; cp. ' O.E. Grammar,' sec. 382. What, then, is ce]>ele ? It is simply efeZe, the instrumental, or dat., after from, of tho noun c^el (native land). Anglian e in some roots corresponds with West Saxon ce, and the scribe who first copied ' Widsith ' out of the Anglian dialect into W.S. knew this,, and wrongly reduced e\>ele to ce\>ele.
 * He from Myrginga sej>ele onwoc.

The true reading, therefore, is : He from Myrginga e]>ele onwoc, i.e.,

He sprang from the e]>el Myrginga. The word e]>el also occurs, correctly spelt,. in 11. 96 and 109.

There is a third instance in * Widsith ' of um <u=a. In 1. 68 Widsith tells us that he was " mid Frumtingum." Such a form as " Frumt- " is impossible in O.E. Editors are much puzzled by it, and Mr. Chambers reproduces three guesses indulged in by Grimm ("a scornful nickname "), Mullen - hoff ("an epic fiction "), and Moller (" push- ing, brave folk"). Now " Frumt- ." = Frumt <*Frut <Frat-, and that is "the- deutero theme in Wil-frat, a witness to a Mercian grant of c. 725 ; K. LXXV. " Frat- " may equal frato (an ornament) ; cp. J. Wright's ' O.E. Grammar,' sec. 54, n. 3* ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

JOHN WILKES AND THE ' ESSAY ON WOMAN.'

(See ante, pp. 121, 143.)

WHAT were the three parodies for the printing and publishing of which Wilkes was convicted in 1764 and fined in 1768,. two having been found by the Lords in January, 1764, to be of his authorship ?

The latter-day apologists of the patriot have endeavoured to shield Wilkes by asserting that no copy of the parodies exists in our time, and that credit ought to be- given to Wilkes and the Wilkites as against Kidgell and the minions of the Ministry.