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The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton

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The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton THE IRISH LIVES OF GUY OF WARWICK AND BEVIS OF HAMPTON. 4 Men speke of romances of prys, Of Hörn child and of Ypotys, Of Bevis and Sir Gy.' Since the time of Chaucer's 'Birne of Sir Thopas', and eaiiier, the romantic heroes Sir Bevis of Hampton and Sir Guy of Warwick have been familiarly associated in English literature. It is not surprising, then, that the lives of the two should be found side by side in an Irish manuscript, and it is not in- appropriate that they should appear together in the first printed edition of the Irish texts. The only1) existing copy of these texts, so far äs I know, is that preserved in MS. H. 2. 7 in Trinity College Library, a vellum folio in various hands, probably of the fifteenth Century.2) A few passages from both romances were printed by Nettlau in the Revue Celtique X, 187—191. The language, which was long ago characterised by 0' Donovan äs ' pure and of great value to J) Two rouiantic fragincuts in the Franciscan Monastery at Dublin were at one time erroneously catalo^ucd äs containing portions of the 'Bevis'. They are actually fragments of the story of the Holy Grail, and were reported äs such by Nettlau, RC. X, 186. They were afterwards printed in füll (CZ. IV, 381 ff.). 2) A fragment of the Trojan story ending on p. 460 is dated 1479, but the manuscript consists of several distinct parts. See for its contents the Catalogue of MSS. in the Library of Trinity College, pp. 317 ff. Cf. also O'Donovan's manuscript catalogue, p. 167, and his Tribes and Customs of Hy Many (Ir. Arch. Soc. 1843), p. 63, n.; 0'Curry, MS. Mat, pp. 193 and 658, with facsimiles (plate 13); H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, Essai d'un Catalogue, p. LXVII; and Zimmer, Gott. Gel. Anz. 1890, p. 502. Stokes used the MS. for his editions of the ' Fortibras' (RC. XIX, 14 ff.) and of the 'Aidead Muir- chertaig maic Erca' (RC. XXIII; 395 ff.). 10 Ã. Í. ROBINSON, the Irish scholar',J) can doubtless be dated with some definiteness when the verbal forms are fully tabulated and compared with those in other late Middle Irish texts. The 'Stair Fortibrais', a translation in similar style of which a copy exists in the same manuscript, is vaguely assigned by Dr. Stokes, its editor, to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.2) The translation of John Mandeville, on the other hand, is distinctly stated in the manu- script to have been made by Fingin O'Mahoney in 1475,3) and a comparison of the grammatical forms of all these pieces with it and with the translation of Marco Polo4) ought to help in establishing a more precise date for them, and perhaps also to shed some light upon the question of their authorship. But the investigation of these matters cannot be satisfactorily completed while the greater part of the foreign romantic material in Irish, to which Nettlau called attention in his articles in the tenth volume of the Revue Celtique, still remains unpublished. The exact sources of both the 'Guy' and the 'Bevis' are unknown, though there is good ground for believing that they go back to English Originals, s was assumed long ago by O'Donovan5) and 0'Curry.6) The principal evidence for this opinion is to be found in the proper names. Zimmer,7) arguing from those in Nettlau's extracts, pointed this out, and an examination of the complete list practically places the matter beyond doubt. To be sure, many of the names are indecisive and might go back equally well to French or to English. l) O'Donovan's manuscript Catalogue, now in the Trinity College Library, p. 167. a) RC. XIX, 14. 3) CZ. Ð, l ff. *) CZ. 1,245 ff. 6) Manuscript catalogue, p. 167. O'Donovan speaks only of the 'Bevis'. e) MS. Mat., p. 193. 0'Curry calls them (translations from ancient Anglo-Saxon writers of romance'. 7) Gott. Gel. Anz. 1890, p. 502. Although I agree with Zimmer's con- clusion, his argument ahout Bevis, if I understand it correctly, appears to me to prove too much. In a foot-note he compares Ir. Bibus (from Engl. Beves) with the Welsh Bown (from Fr. Bovori), implying that the Irish form could not have come from the French. But Beuves, Bueves, were nominative forms in French alongside of the oblique case Bovon. Compare Otes and Otoun. In the latter instance Otun is the form found in the Irish 'Guy'. Conversely, in the Norse iBevis', which is held to come from a French source, the form of the name is Bevers. THE IBISH LIVES OF GUT AND OF BEVIS. 11 Others are so distorted — like Aimisür Amundae from Amis de la Mountagne*) — that it is difficult to draw conclusions from them. But a number of forms remain which it is easiest to explain by assuming an English intermediary between the Irish and the French. Thus Heront (Eronf), from Fr. Heraut (Herali) is very likely to have got its n äs a result of the errors of English scribes. Compare the way in which Rohand or Eoband was made out of the French Eohaut (Bohalf) in some English versions of the story.2) The Irish Uront shows the same devel- opment in the last syllable and apparently corresponds to Yorauld, a name which I have found in Copland's version alone. (The other English versions have Torold, and the Wolfenbüttel French text Corraud.) Pani (for French Pauie) and Gincadh (for Fr. Guichard) both show the same transformation of u into n, and in these instances Copland's 'Guy' has forms with n (Pani and Gincharde). The Irish form Sision probably rests upon an English modification of Sessoigne*) Finally the constant use of Sir in titles (Sir Gyi, Sir Heront) is plainly modelled on the English, and there are several instances where the English word hing (Ging o Niubie, Ging Herrneis, Ging Caulog) has been taken over intact into the Irish text. All these indications, the last of thern practically decisive, point to an English source for the 'Guy'. In the Bevis fragment, which is much shorter, the evidence is not so clear. There is very little difference between the French and the English forms of the names, but where these disagree the Irish Stands in every case nearer to the English unless it departs from both alike. The Irish name Babüon, too, for the country of Ybor's brother, may be due to the English Dabilent (itself a corruption of Fr. d'Abilent).4) So far äs it goes, then, the testimony of the names in the 'Bevis' is consistent with that of the 'Guy'. *) References for the occurrence of these names may be fouud iii the Index of Proper Names. 2) Eohande and Rohaute are both found in Copland's 'Guy'. 3) On the spellings Sesyone, Cesyone, in the English metrical version of the fifteenth Century see Zupitza's edition (Early English Text Society, Extra Series XXV), p. 367. 4) It may, however, have been suggested by the personal name Babilent, Sibilant, which is given in the Welsh and Norse to the king of Dabilent (in French Baligant), and which may have stood in some English version. 12 . BOBINSON, have not attempted to draw any conclusion from the presence in both texts of a considerable number of loan-words, apparently from English. I have no doubt that words of English origin are more numerous because the author was working with an English romance. But it is obvious that they prove nothing decisively, for the Irish writer need not have taken them from bis source. In fact all, or nearly all, of them occur in other texts. Sometimes, moreover, it is not easy to decide whether a word is of English or French origin. A critical study of the foreign elements in the Middle Irish vocabulary, ascertaining the sources of loan-words and the date of their introduction into the language, yet remains to be made. An analysis of the contents of the Irish 'Guy' and 'Bevis' might be expected to lead much farther toward the determination of the sources. But it does little more than conflrm the results already derived from the study of the proper names. Both romances differ in so many features from all the other versions I have seen that I must assume their immediate sources to be unknown. A brief Statement, however, of their relations to their respective cycles is of interest, particularly in the case of the 'Guy'. I have been unable to compare in detail the Irish 'Guy' with the French versions of the story, since none of these has been published except in summaries or extracts.1) But it is clear that none of the French texts of which I have suceeded in Unding a description Stands in any close relation to the Irish, and I have already shown it to be probable that the source of the latter was English. Of the English versions the most important are easily accessible. Zupitza has published metrical texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,2) and I have *) For the French versions I have used Ward, Catalogue of Romances I, 471 ff. (a summary of the version in MS. Harl. 3775); Schönemann, in Serapeum III (a summary based on the Wolfenbüttel text); Herbing, Über die Wolfenbüttler Hs. des Guy von Warwick; 0. Winneberger in the Frank- furter Neuphil. Beiträge, 1887, pp. 86 ff. (a brief outline of the same text); A.
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