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Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
The Assumption of the Virgin
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| Text name: | The Assumption of the Virgin |
| Alternative names: | The Assumption of our Lady; Earliest Version of the Assumption of the Virgin; Merie tale telle ihc þis day; Assumpcion de Nostre Dame |
| Content: | Introduction. The narrator will talk about the assumption of the Virgin Mary (ll. 1-10). Conversation between Jesus and Mary. Jesus has been crucified and talks to his mother Mary from the Cross. He suffers death without any guilt. Mary sorely weeps. How is she supposed to live without her dear son? Jesus orders his disciple John to look after her (ll. 11-52). Mary's life on earth. Mary and John take care of the poor (ll. 53-72). Preparation for Mary's Ascension to Heaven. After ten years, Jesus wants Mary to come to him. He sends an angel, who announces to Mary her impending death. The angel will not betray his name, but bids Mary to be ready in three days and hold a palm leaf. Mary awaits her ascension on the third day holding the palm leaf. An angel arrives. He washes her and clothes her in fresh garments. She prays to her son for protection from the devil. Then, she calls in her friends, asks if she needs to make amends for her wrong-doings, and bids them farewell. Mary says good bye to her friend John (ll. 73-240). (The manuscript witness used for the parsed file breaks off at this point.) |
| Genre/subjects: | Virgin Mary, Assumption, Jesus and Mary, legend, death |
| Dialect of original composition: | Southern Hackauf (1902: xvi-xxiii) investigates sounds and inflections in rhyme positions as indications of the original dialect. He finds, for example, that long o from Old English long a rhymes with old, long o from Old English o, as is the case south of the river Humber (so < Old English swa : to < Old English to, ll. 179-80), transition of Old English æ to e as found in Southeastern or Kentish Middle English (fed : bed 'bade', ll. 123-4) or Southern infinitives in -i (blessi (subjunctive) : herkni (infinitive), ll. 7-8). Hackauf concludes, "[t]he language of the poem is thus essentially that of the South, and specifically the Middle South, with Kentish coloring [translated from German original]" (ibid.: xxii). McKnight (1901: lvi-lvii) largely concurs with this dialect attribution. "The dialect then certainly is of the Southern part of England; but the rimes do not enable one to locate the dialect more exactly." The dialect attribution has been accepted by subsequent scholars (e.g., Wells 1916: 330, Ryan 1950: 490, Wall 1970: 184). |
| Date of original composition: | 1200-1250 There seems to be some consensus that the Assumption of the Virgin was originally composed in the first half of the thirteenth century. The piece was written "at the latest around 1250, but probably already in the second quarter of the thirteenth century [translated from the German original]" (Hackauf 1902: xvi), "not later than 1250" (Wells 1916: 330), "probably not later than 1250" (McKnight 1901: lviii), "probably before 1250" (Ryan 1950: 490), "around the middle of the thirteenth century" (Wall 1970: 184), etc. Some of the evidence concerns (i) the fact that the legend was already known throughout England by 1300 so that the original is likely far older than that, (ii) the mention of St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1240), in two versions of the text (British Library Additional 10,026 and Chetham 8009) and in the Cursor Mundi (ll. 19993-20064), in the latter two as the supposed author of the text, as well as (iii) the retention of fairly conservative spellings in the oldest manuscript, such as unmonophthongized eo (e.g. weop l. 29, treo l. 35). For details, see the references cited above. |
| Suggested date: | 1240 |
| PCMEP period: | 1b (1200-1250) |
| Versification: | couplets, two-line, aa, usually four stresses per line See McKnight (1901: lviii) for additional comments on the poem's versification. |
| Index of ME Verse: | 2165 (IMEV), 2165 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 122 |
| Wells: | 5.78 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Assump.Virg.(1) |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | McKnight, George H. 1901. King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of our Lady. EETS o.s. 14. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. 111-118 (left column). |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Library Gg.4.27 (Part 2), ff. 26r-28v |
| Online manuscript description: | A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, Vol. 3, no. 1526 |
| Manuscript dialect: | Southern The manuscript language has been localized to West Berkshire (McIntosh et al. 1986: 67). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiii-ex The relevant sections of the manuscript were written in a late thirteenth century hand (Hanna 2000: 99). The copy of the text dates from "ca. 1300" (Evans 1995: 17). The online version of the MED dates it to "c1300." Referring to Lumby and Ellis, Hackauf states that the manuscript dates from "the second half of the 13th c. [translated from German original]" (1902: xii). It is "apparently of the latter half of the 13th century" (McKnight 1901: xviii). |
About the file:
| File name: | M1b.AssumpVirg |
| ID: | AssumpVirg,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 1,540 |
| Token count: | 155 |
| Line count: | 240 |
Other:
| General notes: | The poem The Assumption of the Virgin survives in at least seven manuscripts. They are listed below with their approximate dates and customary abbreviations (A-E) (see Hackauf 1902: i-xi, McKnight 1901: liv-lvi, §7, IMEV).
(2) London, British Library, Additional 10,036; a1425 (B) (3) London, British Library, Harley 2382; c1485 (C) (4) Manchester, Chetham’s Library 8009; a1450 (Ch) (5) Cambridge, University Library Dd.1.1; a1450 (D) (6) Cambridge, University Library Ff.2.38; a1500 (E) (7) London, University of London Sterling Library V.17; a1400 There are a number of other English versions on the same theme. The most important ones can be found in the Auchinleck manuscript and in some manuscripts of the South English Legendary. For further English treatments of the topic, see McKnight (1901: lii-liv, §6 "Other English Versions"). The Assumption has some similarities with Middle English romances. It is therefore unclear whether the text was intended for a religious church service or for a secular reading. The romantic qualities of the poem may account for its inclusion in Ms. Cambridge University Gg.4.27, which otherwise contains romances. For details see McKnight (1901: xlix). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow the metre as in McKnight's (1901: 111-8) edition. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Evans, Murray J. 1995. Rereading Middle English Romance: Manuscript Layout, Decoration, and the Rhetoric of Composite Structure. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press.
Hackauf, Emil. 1902. Die älteste Mittelenglische Version der Assumptio Mariae. Erfurt: Ohlenrothsche Buchdruckerei. (available online)
Hanna, Ralph. 2000. 'Reconsidering the Auchinleck Manuscript.' In Pearsall, Derek (ed.) New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays From the 1998 Harvard Conference. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. 91-102.
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
McKnight, George H. 1901. King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of our Lady. EETS o.s. 14. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. (an updated version of an edition by Joseph R. Lumby, 1866) (available online)
Ryan, Noel J. 1950. 'The Assumption in the Early English Pulpit.' Theological Studies 11.4. 477-524.
Wall, Carolyn. 1970. 'The Apocryphal and Historical Backgrounds of The Appearance of Our Lady to Thomas (Play XLVI of the York Cycle).' Medieval Studies 32. 172-192. (available online)
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)