Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/20

2 that it must have been made in Italy towards the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, i.e. during the rule of the Goths under Theodoric the Great. It was, indeed, a version of the Gospels in the language of the Goths. Toward the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, Count Königsmark, having captured Prague, carried off the MS. to Stockholm. Thereafter it had further adventures, having been for a time in Holland, but it was ultimately restored in 1669 to the royal library at Upsal, where it still remains. It contained the Gospels in 339 leaves, of which 177 are preserved, and is known as the Codex Argenteus. While in Holland it was printed for the first time at Dort, 1665, by Francis Junius, well known to literary students as the first to give the Anglo-Saxon poem of Cædmon to the world, just as Milton was meditating his great epic. Junius prepared types which were a close facsimile of the Gothic characters. These types he afterwards presented to the University of Cambridge, where they are still preserved.

What was the origin of this unique relic? The early Church historians throw some light, unfortunately obscure, on its author. His name is variously spelt, but is best known as Ulfilas or Ulphilas, the Græcised form of the genuine Gothic Wulfila or Wolf-ling, showing the common diminutive suffix—ila as in att-ila, little father (atta, father); barn-ilo, bairnie (barn, child); maw-ilo, maiden, girlie (mawi, girl, Ger. Magd, our Maisie), the talitha or damsel, addressed to Jairus' daughter. The parents of Wulfila had been carried off from Cappadocia, near the end of the third century, in a raid of the Goths into Asia Minor, and formed part of a small colony that appear to have introduced Christianity among their captors. Born 311