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Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)

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Lord as Thou art one God

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About the text:
Text name: Lord as Thou art one God
Alternative names: The Fall of the Angels; Adam and Eve; A Trinity Poem on Biblical History; An Old Testament History; Life of Christ; Lord as Thou art one God ever buten end; Louerd asse þu ard on god
Content: The poem Lord as Thou art one God "outlines the main features from the Fall of Lucifer through Adam and Eve, the Old Testament, and the life of Christ, with mention of apostles and saints" (Wells 1932: 1357).
The poem can be divided into the following sections:
Introduction: The poet asks for God's mercy and senses a calling to preach (ll. 1-4).
The Fall of Lucifer: God created angels, the celestial bodies and earth. Lucifer was one of the angels but when he turned evil, the other angels damned him to hell. (ll. 5-36).
Adam and Eve: God forbade Adam and Eve to eat the apple of a tree. But Lucifer, in the form of a snake, tempted Eve to disobey God's command and subsequently both Adam and Eve partook of the apple. God punished them with harsh weather conditions, the need for hard toil to survive, and painful childbirth (ll. 37-65).
Cain and Abel: Cain was born. He was full of malice. His brother, Abel, on the other hand, was well-loved. Cain was a ploughman and Abel a shepherd. Abel's burnt offering was well received by God. Cain's burnt offering was foul and burnt down over the ashes. Jealous, Cain killed Abel with a donkey's jaw-bone. For this wicked deed, Cain and all of his offspring are cursed (ll. 66-96).
Miscellaneous Old Testament stories: Two hundred years after Cain slew Abel, Adam had another son, called Seth. More humans were born, including Enoch, whose death the Bible does not recount, Lamech, and many others, whose names can be found in the Bible. The poet then mentions, among others, Noah's flood, Moses receiving the holy laws, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph's enslavement in Egypt, Samson and Deliah, as well as Solomon. The section concludes with a prayer to the Lord for redemption, and a warning to get shrived. This and the previous passage often refer to God anachronistically as "Christ" (ll. 97-136).
The Birth of Christ: The archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she should be God's mother. Her husband, Joseph, was skeptical at first but an angel convinced him. Thus, Christ was conceived and born (ll. 137-176).
King Herod and the Three Wise Men: A bright, shining star led three kings from the East towards Bethlehem. They asked King Herod for permission to offer their gifts. Herod went to Rome to determine with his learned men where Christ was born. Having come to Bethlehem, the three kings offered Christ gold, incense and myrrh. Herod was afraid that he might lose his kingdom. The passage is fairly incoherent - crucial dialogue seems to be missing; Herod travels to Rome twice; Herod's treason is not explained etc. (ll. 177-224).
Jesus' flight into Egypt: Joseph had a dream vision of an angel who commanded him to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt to escape from Herod's treachery. Herod ordered the slaying of all the children of two years and younger. Subsequently, he was struck by many horrific diseases, died, and devils carried his soul into hell. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, where he became a pious man. This passage, too, is incoherent in places. It talks about King Achelaus, Herod's successor, favorably (Goit forte benne & treues alleþincke "to be good and true in all things") and unfavorably (from þisse kinc is suete sone flet Bi þornes & bi breres. "From this king, his sweet son fled, by thorns and by briers") at the same time. It mentions Herod's baptism, even though it is not clear how he could have followed a baptismal rite. The passage also speaks of Constantine the Great, despite the fact that he would not live for another c. 250 years after the events narrated, and claims that Jesus went to chirchc "church", i.e. presumably a synagogue (ll. 225-260).
Jesus' Ministry and Crucifixion: Jesus received baptism at the River Jordan. The Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove. He turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana. He healed many sick people. He chose twelve apostles, one of which, Judas, betrayed him. The heathens tortured and crucified Jesus. Mary wept tears of blood (ll. 261-292).
Harrowing of Hell and Ascension to Heaven: Jesus travelled to Hell and rescued Adam. Mary Magdalene saw Jesus' resurrection and told Thomas about it, who refused to believe her. Jesus appeared to Thomas and converted him by commanding him to put his hands into the wounds caused by the Crucifixion. Then Jesus ascended to Heaven (ll. 293-316).
Jesus' Apostles and Saints: Jesus ordered his apostles to preach the Gospel to all creatures in the whole world. Many died as martyrs. The poet mentions explicitly several saints, such as St. Stephen, St. John the Baptist, St. Vincent, St. Paul and St. Gregory. Matthias was chosen as a replacement for Judas by lot. It is possible that the poem originally ended here (ll. 317-344).
Prayer to St. Cuthbert: A one-line prayer asks St. Cuthbert for protection against thieves (l. 345).
Easter Computus: The final four lines explain the calculation of the date of Easter starting from St. Benedict's day (ll. 345-349).
Genre/subjects: religious instruction, Biblical history, Bible paraphrase
Dialect of original composition: Unknown
The origin of the archetype is difficult to ascertain.
A northern dialect can be ruled out for two reasons: The first concerns verb placement facts, as described in Kroch & Taylor (1997): The finite verb is always placed after a fronted constituent and a subject pronoun.
ded he sulde beo
"dead, he should be" (line 39)
With non-pronominal subjects, however, the finite verb can also immediately follow a fronted constituent, creating verb-second patterns.
Of bedlehem dauidis sulde an weore wende
"Of David's Bethlehem, a man should come" (line 199)
This pattern is typical of Southern, but not Northern, Middle English texts. Note that constituent fronting as illustrated in the two examples above is quite common in the text.
Secondly, rhymes of Old English long a with Old English long o ((o[v]er)toon (from Old English togen) : nom (from Old English nām), "put on", "took" ll. 25-26) suggests an area of composition south of the river Humber, where southern rounding of long a to long o had already occurred (Brunner 1935: 224).
Date of original composition: 1150-1250
"13th century" (Wells 1932: 1357)
The surviving copy of the poem, dating from c. 1275, is, to a great extent, removed from its original composition. The copyist is not the author of the poem (Brunner 1935: 224). This becomes clear from the following pieces of evidence:
(1) Rhymes:
The copyist often destroys rhymes. The divergence can sometimes be explained as a result of grammatical innovation, which shows that the poem dates from an earlier time than the manuscript date.
For example, indicative forms are used where originally subjunctive forms would have been required. in holi chirreche me redie. & singket // of him þat al þe world. scop wit uten heirdengke (ll. 5-6). The rhyme would force singke "in Holy Church, one should sing of him that created all the world", but an indicative form, singket, has been copied, so the verse now reads, "in Holy Church, one sings of him that created all the world" (Brunner 1935: 224).
Rhymes also show innovations in plural morphology. For example, þenchen : vnwrenches (ll. 17-18) "think : evil-doing" shows a strong plural in -s where the rhyme would require an old weak plural in -n, vnwrenchen (even though unwrenc was usually strong already in the Old English period).
(2) French loan words:
The poet only uses French loan words that are attested early. The following is a comprehensive list of all the French loan words in the text and their earliest attestations according to the Middle English Dictionary:
seruen "to serve" (l. 7) (Ancrene Riwle, MED)
mesterre "master" (l. 15) (Ormulum, Proverbs of Alfred, MED)
maistrie "mastery" (l. 32) (Ancrene Riwle, Katherine Group, MED)
criyede, criþe "cried" "to cry" (l. 87, 340) (The Wooing of Our Lord, MED)
chere "(happy) face, cheer" (l. 153) (Ancrene Riwle, Katherine Group, MED)
turneden "turned" (l. 184) (Vespasian Homilies, Peri Didaxeon, MED)
tresouns "falseness, treason" (l. 214) (The Wooing of Our Lord, Ancrene Riwle MED)
tricherie "treachery" (l. 228) (Ancrene Riwle, MED)
perlesie "paralysis" (l. 237) (Herbarium Apuleii, Bodley Homilies, MED)
dropesie "the diesease dropsy" (l. 238) (*Lord as Thou art one God, Anniversary of Saint Nicholas, MED)
menison "dysentery, severe diarrhea" (l. 240) (*Lord as Thou art one God, MED)
comsede "commenced" (l. 257) (Katherine Group, MED)
colombe "dove" (l. 285) (*Lord as Thou art one God, MED)
deliuerede "delivered, saved" (l. 232) (Ancrene Riwle, Katherine Group, MED)
Only two words, dropesie and colombe are potentially attested first in the poem under investigation (marked with an asterisk). Perhaps this is due to their low frequency. In general, however, the French loans are not incompatible with an early, perhaps even twelfth century, origin of the text, and hence suggest that the original predates the manuscript witness.
(3) Spelling:
The scribe copies the old rune wynn for w (see Brunner's textual apparatus). However, wynn is not commonly used in the manuscript before Lord as Thou art one God. It is possible that the increased use of this letter can be explained as a reflection of its employment in the scribe's source manuscript.
(4) Anecdotal evidence:
- The poem inlcudes the accusative object pronoun hine "him". While this item can still be found in later thirteenth century texts (e.g. "The Fox and the Wolf", "Joseph and Jacob") and even later, Kentish texts ("The Kentish Sermons" c. 1260, "Ayenbite of Inwit" c. 1340), it is far more frequent in early thirteenth and twelfth century texts.
- The text also includes the relativizer þe, which is far more common in the twelfth than the thirteenth century.
All in all, the available evidence, shaky as it is, accords better with an early, perhaps late twelfth or early thirteenth century, than a later, mid-thirteenth century point of origin for the text.
Suggested date: 1195
PCMEP period: 1a (1150-1200)
Versification: four-line — aaaa, aabb
in stanzas aaaa (Wells 1932: 1356)
the last four stanzas in couplets (Brunner 1935: 223)
Index of ME Verse: 1946 (IMEV), 1946 (NIMEV)
Digital Index of ME Verse: 3187
Wells: Supplement 5, 8.1a
MEC HyperBibliography: Louerd asse þu ard


About the edition and manuscript base:
Edition: Brunner, Karl. 1935. 'Zwei Gedichte aus der Handschrift Trinity College Cambridge 323.' Englische Studien 70. 231-43.
Manuscript used for edition: Cambridge UK, Trinity College B.14.39 (323), ff. 36r-42r
Online manuscript description: LAEME
Manuscripts of the West-Midlands (item 23.1)
Trinity College Cambridge: The James Catalogue Of Western Manuscripts
Manuscript dialect: West-Midlands
The orthography of the copyist of the poem is very variable. Following Skeat (1907: xiv), manuscripts with this characteristic were once believed to have been written by Norman scribes, who did not fully understand the English material they were copying. However, this conclusion is no longer considered valid (e.g. Laing 1999). Instead, the variable spelling probably reflects other factors, such as variation in spoken thirteenth century English, pre-existing variation in the source manuscript, or scribal training and preferences.
Brunner finds that "the home of the scribe must be assumed to be in the South-Western parts of England, even if not directly in the territory of Wessex [translated from German original]" (1935: 225). For example, the copyist probably had a rounded o-sound (e.g. boet l. 2, hoerte l. 11, boeren l. 193), which is a feature compatible with a West-Midlands dialect.
McIntosh et al. (1986: 250) place the scribe in Worcestershire, LAEME in neighboring East Herefordshire.
Manuscript date: s. xiii-ex
Brunner (1935: 221) dated the manuscript to the first half of the thirteenth century. The online version of the Middle English Dictionary lists the manuscript date as c1250. However, the manuscript is now usually dated somewhat later because its terminus post quem is fixed at 1253 by a Latin epitaph of Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, who died that year. Laing (1999: 252) describes the manuscript as a "late-13th-century verse miscellany."


About the file:
File name: M1a.LordOneGod
ID: Louerd,x.y.z: x=token, y=page, z=line
Word count: 2,910
Token count: 291
Line count: 349


Other:
General notes: The poem Lord as Thou art one God has received very little attention in terms of professional scholarship. It has been edited in its entirety only once (Brunner 1935: 231-243). Excerpts were printed before, for example as Old Testament History (Brown 1932: 184-5). There is no commentary, glossary or Modern English translation of this text.
Prof. Donald Ringe (University of Philadelphia) helped provide a comprehensive translation and commentary for the text. The creation of the electronic text file would not have been possible without his comments. His help is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
Remarks on parses: The line breaks follow Brunner's (1935: 231-43) edition.
The poem is linguistically challenging. The scribe distorted some passages badly so that they are hard to interpet and parse. The list below discusses some of the most difficult passages and how they were annotated in the parsed file.
l. 51 vt of paradise nuþen mosten fleo Brunner splites nuþen to nu and þen. Perhaps he means to suggest that þen could be the subject of the clause ("they", þeo "those"?). In the parse, nuþen is joined back together as one word, "now" (MED). An empty subject *pro* is added, recoverable from the previous subordinate clause, heo, "they".
ll. 77-78 Abel yef criste clene teuþincke // & and hit ouen on hulle feire he het hem blinken. A literal reading of these lines yields something like, "Abel gave Christ a clean tithing and it, above on a fair hill, he ordered him to abstain." The anachronistic reference to Christ apart, the meaning of the second line is very hard to comprehend. Perhaps blinken should be read brinken "to bring." Then the second line could mean, "And he [=Christ] ordered him [=Abel] to bring it [=the tithing] to a fair hill." This is the interpretation used for the parse in the electronic text file.
l. 87 Goy he criyede vul yerne. The word Goy is an imperative form of "to go". It is used for the exclamation "die!".
ll. 129-130 þe kinc þat on þe treo þuru is pines boute // make us of serewe comin to þine lofte. The verb make is best interpreted as an imperative. However, that makes the previous line hard to understand. It is annotated as a vocative noun phrase, NP-VOC, even though vocatives are not usually definite noun phrases.
ll. 145-146 w sulde ic chil beren // þat neuer of suche deden ne cune ic þene were. The syntax of this passage is inconsistent. The last three words have been cut off from the rest of the token. The lines then mean, "How should I bear a child who never knew of such deeds?" The last three words, ic þene were could read, "I the man." They are annotated as a fragment, FRAG, with X part-of-speech labels. Perhaps the scribe scrambled two different lines.
ll. 175-176 þo herodes heade itict to betlehem ben iwent // þo vunden hei Iesum crist in clences bitrent. The double usage of þo ... þo with verb-second order in the second clause suggests a temporal correlative construction. The presumed subordinate clause is, however, difficult to understand. The verb itict is assumed to be a form of tighten "instruct, persuade" (MED, sense 3) so that the string betlehem ben iwent can be related to it as a non-finite clause. The word heade, probably "shepherds", but mabye "spiritual shepherd, priests" (MED) is regarded as the antecedent of the subject of the non-finite clause. The line then means, "When Herod instructed the shepherds to have turned to Bethlehem", even though this sounds rather awkward in Modern English and makes poor sense within the context of the nativity story.
ll. 195-196 & of þe þerde an blosme wid uten lesingke // þat þe holie gost oune sulde brinken. Following Brunner (1935: 238), oune is parsed as a form of Old English unnan "grant", tagged as VB. It is selected as an infinitive by the modal, MD, sulde and selects a non-finite clause headed by brinken. The intended meaning is, "a blossom ... which the Holy Ghost should grant to bring."
l. 151, l. 213 wonder one brict. The expression modifies a head noun, meaning roughly "wondrously bright." It is annotated as a parenthetical noun phrase, literally translated as "a bright wonder one", (NP-PRN (N wonder) (ONE one) (ADJP (ADJ brict))).
l. 181 þo sulde þe maiden & hire sone inte egipte brinken. The word þo is interpreted as the subject of the clause, "That-one should bring the maiden and her son into Egypt."
ll. 245-247 Herodes þe kinc mid deþe he was numen // Nom þat maiden & þat chil anon ate frume // into þe lond of israel sone aweren icomen. There is an unexpected switch of subject reference from the first to the second line. The subject of the first line is Herodes, but the implied subject of the second line is probably "Joseph." An empty *pro* subject is introduced into the structure. The third line is parsed with the first letter in aweren, a for ha "they", as a pronominal subject. The split between a and weren is indicated as a COMMENT CODE in the text file. The intended meaning of the passage is "Herod the king was taken with death. // [Joseph] took the maiden and that child right away // Into the land of Israel soon they had come."
l. 261 þe on was hoten iudas his louerd he solde. A relative clause with both an empty relative pronoun and an empty relative complementizer is used for the parse of this token. The intended meaning is, "The one [who] was called Judas, his Lord he betrayed."
ll. 296 & heuer buten hende þat liuit hom sonc. The line proved impossible to parse coherently. It is tagged as a fragment, FRAG. The that-clause is tagged as a free relative NP with indeterminate function. The line means something like, "and ever without end, he who lives in song." A COMMENT CODE in the file points out that the parse may be inadequate.
l. 334 God helinde crist þat was here ron. Various readings may be possible for this line, depending on the understanding of ron. The interpretation used for the parse assumes that ron means "poem, song" used metaphorically for "support, strength" etc. provided by God. The intended meaning is, "God Savior Christ, he was their poem (=support)".
l. 338 has a short lacuna in the text. The text in this line is therefore parsed as a fragment, FRAG.


References

Brown, Carleton F. 1932. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon.
Brunner, Karl. 1935. 'Zwei Gedichte aus der Handschrift Trinity College Cambridge 323.' Englische Studien 70. 221-43.
Kroch, Anthony & Taylor, Ann. 1997. 'Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect Variation and Language Contact.' In: Kemenade, Ans van & Vincent, Nigel (eds.) Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 45-68.
Laing, Margaret. 1999. 'Confusion "wrs" Confounded: Litteral Substitution Sets in Early Middle English Writing Systems.' Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100.3. 251-270.
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Skeat, Walter W. 1907. The Proverbs of Alfred. Oxford: Clarendon. (available online)
Wells, John E. 1932. Fifth Supplement to a Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1400. Additions and Modifications to July 1932. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.