Anglicized word order in Old English continuous interlinear glosses in British Library, Royal 2. A. XX

Abstract

The Old English interlinear glosses in the prayerbook London, British Library, Royal 2. A. XX frequendy render certain Latin verb phrases and noun phrases into Old English with English word order rather than Latin, in contrast to almost all other surviving Old English interlinear glosses of the same prayers. Investigation of the occurrences of similar syntactic tendencies in all other Old English continuous interlinear glosses (the thirteen Old English interlinear glosses to the psalms, the eleven glosses to canticles of the psalter, the two interlinear glosses to the gospels and the thirty other numbered entries under 'continuous interlinear glosses' in Angus Cameron's 'A List of Old English Texts' 1 ) reveals that such anglicization is restricted to relatively few texts from various centuries and places. Analysis of the features and conditions of these few witnesses reveals that neither scribal education, region, century nor other particular of situation is a factor common to all witnesses. The scribe of the Old English glosses in Royal 2. A. XX appears to have had deficiencies in Old English grammar, yet confidence in Old English phrasings of the prayers. His gloss "was probably not made for students learning Latin grammar; it was more likely intended simply to help laypeople or less-than-well-educated religious persons to understand the Latin prayers. The context is clearer when we consider the Latin prayers in the margins (and a few interlinear glosses in Greek) that were added by the same hand.London, British Library, Royal 2. A. XX, a Latin prayerbook of the last quarter of the eighth century or the first quarter of the ninth 2 contains Old English 'glosses, 1 In A Plan for The Dictionary of Old English, ed. R. Frank and A. Cameron (Toronto, 1973), pp. 25-306, at 224-30. 2 E. A. Lowe dated the Royal prayerbook to s. viii 2 , in Codices Latini Antiquiores II. Great Britain and Ireland, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1972), no. 215. D. Dumville dated it as c. 800, in Liturgy and the EcclesiasticalHistory of Late Anglo-Saxon England(Woodbridge, 1993), p. 101. J. Morrish argued for 818-30 on the basis of its common elements with the Book of Cerne, in 'Dated and Datable Manuscripts Copied in England during the Ninth Century: a Preliminary List', MS b (1988), 512-38, at 512-14. M. P. Brown has found Royal 2. A. XX and British Library, Harley 2965 to represent a stage of development between BL, Harley 7653 (s. viii/ix) and the Book of Cerne 123 Joseph Crowley titles, notes and scribbles' in one hand that Neil Ker dated as probably of the first half of the tenth century. 3 Two-thirds of these Old English additions (abbreviated as RoyGt) are interlinear glosses to the Pater Nosier, Credo, Magnificat, Benedictus andCanticum triumpuerorum. On the basis of the Mercian character of these glosses, the script of a twelfth-century addition on fol. 52, and the ownership of the manuscript in 1649 by John Theyer, Ker thought the book was one catalogued by Patrick Young among the Worcester Cathedral manuscripts of the Middle Ages. 4 That s...

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“…Finally, my findings confirm Crowley's (2000) distinction within the Rushworth Gospel of Matthew between chapters 2-6 and 26-27 on the one hand, and chapters 8-23 on the other. The former show a more anglicised word order, with a higher percentage of preposed genitives (84%), whereas the latter tend to follow the Latin original and have a preponderance of postposed genitives (81.66%).…”

“…Although both patterns (preposed and postposed genitives) seem to be in free variation in the gloss, the choice of one or the other may have to do with the particular chapter or section in which they are found. Thus, in his comparative study of word order in several interlinear glosses, Crowley (2000) establishes a distinction within the Rushworth Gospel of Matthew between chapters 2-6 and 26-27 on the one hand, which show a more anglicised word order, and chapters 8-23 on the other, which tend to follow the Latin original. The remaining chapters (1, 7, 24, 25 and 28) show a mixture of both patterns (2000: 134).…”