THE ORMULUM Uontron HENRY FHOWDK OXFOBD UNIVERSITY PKESS WABEHOUSE 7 PATKRNOSTER ROW THE WITH THE NOTES AND GLOSSARY OF DR. R. M. WHITE EDITED BY REV. ROBERT HOLT, M. A. CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD VOL. I [All rights reserved] PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. The Ormulum was first edited from the original Manu- script in the Bodleian Library, and enriched with Notes and a Glossary by Robert Meadows White, D.D., late Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen College, and formerly Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford. In this new edition the Editor has carefully corrected the Text by col- lation with the MS. in the Bodleian Library : he has revised, and added somewhat to, the Notes both those to the Homilies and to the Glossary : he has verified every single reference in the Glossary; corrected very numerous it additions errors in ; and, he trusts,' has made some useful to it. But, chiefly, he has spared no time or labour in 1 revising the cognate words in Anglo-Saxon and other 1 The following are among the chief authorities which he has availed himself of for this purpose : Dr. Diction- 1866. Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Heliand ; Heyne. aries, including the New Edition [not PIatt.-Deutsch Dictionary; J. F. Dan- yet published] as far as completed at the neil. 1 859. time of the learned Professor's death. Lexicon Frisicum ; Halbertsma (Justus). Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum ex Poetarum Hagz Com. 1874. Scriptorumque Prosaicorum operibus M. H. Ger. ; Benecke (G. F.) 1854-61. necnon Lexicis Anglo-Saxonicis collec- O. H. Ger. ; Graff's Sprachschatz. edit turn, a Ludovico Etmullero, Ph. Glossary to Ulfilas ; Gabelentz und Dre. Quedlingburgii et Lipsiae. 1851. L5be. der Dich- Sprachschatz Angelsachsischen Danish-English Dictionary ; Ferrall og ter bearbeitet von C W. M. Grein, Dr. Repp. 1861. Phil. Cassel und Gottingen ; Georg Swedish- English Dictionary ; Widegren. H. Wigand. 1861-64. 1788. Parvulorum vols. ed. Promptorium ; 3 Icelandic-English Dictionary ; Vigfusson. Way. 1869-74. vi PREFACE. languages, and largely adding to them; thus endeavouring to make this part of the work as perfect and complete as possible. How far he may have succeeded in what he has proposed to himself, he must leave to the judgment of others. In many places additions made by himself have been inclosed within square brackets, generally with his initials added; so that the Editor of the former edition might not be held responsible by any one for what was really his own : but the corrections throughout the whole work, and the additions to the Glossary, were so numerous and extensive, that it was found impossible to follow this plan in every case, at least without quite disfiguring the book. Rather than do this, he preferred leaving the alterations and additions made in this edition to be fully seen only by comparing it with the original edition. The Editor desires gratefully to record his obligations to his much-valued friend Dr. Bosworth, the late venerable Professor of Anglo-Saxon, for assistance cheerfully rendered him with respect to several of the cognate words added to the Glossary : and also to the Rev. John Earle, M.A., now a second time Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University, for kindly revising, and adding somewhat to the complete- ness of, the continuation of Dr. White's History of Anglo- Saxon Literature, which in this edition is brought down to the present time. HILLESDEN VICARAGE ; Oct. n, 1878. PREFACE. IT has been the fate of Anglo-Saxon learning, since the earliest undisputed facts of its revival in this country, to have had alternate periods of cultivation and neglect. The pos- session by the monks of Tavistock of a fount of Saxon type, and the issue of books from a Saxon press, would appear to rest on tradition alone, there being no surviving "evidence of the quality, extent, or even existence of their productions. The honours of the first revival of Anglo-Saxon learning at the commencement of the Reformation appear to be justly shared between the royal antiquary John Leland, and his friend Robert Talbot, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and Matthew Parker, raised to the primacy on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. The two former take the lead as collectors of MSS., and the latter in giving to the world the first 1 of and the first book known to specimen Anglo-Saxon , have been printed in that language in England. The well- directed exertions of the Archbishop, through his agents 1 ' A book entitled The Defence of Priests' Marriages,' written, as Strype supposes, either by Sir Rd. Moryson or John Ponet Bishop of Winchester, both of whom died in exile at Strasburg, was printed with a preface by Parker in 1562. In a few copies of this work, intended probably for presents, are 'enlargements in which some- of the alle- ' gations,' according to Strype, are set down in the Saxon tongue.' v. Strype's L. of Abp. Parker, b. iv. c. xlv. vol. ii. pp. 445-452. 8vo. Oxford, 1821. viii PREFACE. both in this country and abroad, led, as is well known, to the discovery and preservation of many invaluable monu- ments and remains. While securing these from further dispersion by providing for their being deposited in the at public library, and in that of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, his employment and patronage of contemporaries produced important fruits. To the labours thus encouraged of John Joscelyn, the Primate's secretary, of William Lam- barde, record-keeper of the Tower of London, and of Foxe the Martyrologist, we owe the first editions respectively of 2 with his two to JElfric's Paschal Homily , Epistles Wulfstan, * The Paschal Homily and Epistles of JE\fnc, with the Lord's Prayer from the 6th chap, of St. Matthew, preceded by w. 7, 8, 9, and followed by the Creed -and nine commandments from the Decalogue, as prefixed to the copies of Alfred's Laws, the whole being accompanied with an English translation, are contained in a book which bears this title, ' A Testimonie of Antiqvitie, shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, and also receaued in the Saxons tyme, aboue 600. yeares agoe. Jeremie 6. Goe into the streetes, and inquyre for the olde way : and if it be the good and ryght way, then goe therin, that ye maye finde rest for your soules. But they say : we will not walke therein. Imprinted at London by John Day, dwelling ouer Aldersgate beneath S. Martyns. Cum priuilegio Regise Maiestatis.' The book is printed without date, but Wanley in his Catalogue, p. 326, places it in 1567, and Strype about 1566. The following title at p. 19 is prefixed to the Homily, ' A Sermon of the Paschall Lambe, and of the sacra- mentall body and bloud of Christ our Sauiour, written in the olde Saxon toungue before the Conquest, and appoynted in the reigne of the Saxons to be spoken unto the people at Easter, before they shoulde receaue the Communion, and now first translated into our common Englishe speche.' The authorship of the preface is attributed by some to but to Parker it contains Joscelyn, by Strype ; however a passage scarcely consistent with that peculiar reserve and humblemindedness which distinguished the Archbishop. We are told at fol. 3. a. that 'diuerse of these bookes (of sermons) haue bene deliuered into the handes of the moste reuerend father, Matthewe Archbyshop of Canter- burye, by whose diligent search for such writings of historye, and other monumentes of antiquitie, as might reueale vnto vs what hath ben the PREFACE. ix Archbishop of York, and Wulfsine, Bishop of Shirburne, of the of several 3 and of the in Laws Saxon kings , Gospels Saxon and English *. The selection of these works for the state of our church in England from tyme to tyme, these thynges that bee here made knowen vnto thee, do come to lyght.' The learned President of Magdalen College, in his notes on JElfric's Epistles, ' printed in his Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Opuscula,' considers Foxe to have assisted in the composition of the preface. His words are, ' Cum vero in Martyrologio Joannis Foxi, quod pleraque horum ^Elfrici excerptorum prsestat, res eaedem narrentur, et in rebus narrandis ratio congruat cum hac praefatione, nulla tamen facta ejus mentione, fert mea opinio, ipsum Foxum, qui favente archiepiscopo anno 1571 Evangeli- onim interpretationem Saxonicam typis imprimendam curavit, prae- fationem quidem partim conscripsisse. Quin et extant in Martyrologio " haec verba Foxi is one certain a ; There yet remaining piece, fragment of an Epistle of Elfricus, in the library of Worcester, wherein so much as maketh against the matter of transubstantiation we found (nos invenimus) in the middle of the said Latin Epistle utterly rased out, so that no letter nor piece of a letter doth there appear." Foxi Martyrolog. vol. ii. p. 378. edit. ann. 1684. Confer verba Prsefationis ' Testimonii Antiquitatis, fol. 4. b. et fol. 5. a.' The editor of the Testi- monie,' in stating at the end of the book that he took the commandments from the laws of Alfred, notes the omission of the second, but it is remarkable that he does not add the 2jrd ver. of the 2Oth chap, of Exodus, which appears in the Archaeonomia and in subsequent editions of Alfred's laws as the tenth commandment. John Day, a native of Dunwich in Suffolk, the printer, having been employed by the Arch- bishop to cut Saxon types in brass, till then unknown, probably used them for the first time in the pages of this book.