The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)

PCMEP Text Information



Meidan Maregrete

Back to PCMEP texts


About the text:
Text name: Meidan Maregrete
Alternative names: The Life of St Margaret; Olde ant yonge ipreit on oure folies for to lete; Vita Sanctae Margaretae
Content: The poem Meidan Maregrete narrates the martyrdom of Saint Margaret of Antioch. Margaret is raised by a nurse as a shepherd. She embraces Christianity and a celibate lifestyle. Olibrius, ruler over the land, desires Margaret as his bride. Refusing to marry him, Margaret is subject to a series of terrible tortures. For instance, she is put in a prison, where the Holy Ghost rewards her faith with a piece of the Cross, which Margaret uses to banish demons. Margaret then endures many other, cruel torments. Eventually, an assassin is charged with killing her, but he converts to Christianity in light of Margaret's miracles and refuses to carry out his orders. Upon receiving a vision from God, she commands him to slay off her head anyway. The assassin obeys and Margaret ascends to Heaven accompanied by thousands of angels.
Genre/subjects: saint's legend, saint's life, Margaret legend, martyrdom, religious tale, woman saint, hagiography, lay, ballad
Dialect of original composition: Unknown
The dialect of the original composition has not been discussed in detail.
Date of original composition: 1175-1250
The latest possible origin of the text falls some time before the late thirteenth century date of its manuscript because this record has already been substantially spoiled by textual transmission. Willich (1798: xxxiii) suggests that it was "written about the time of the crusades" (c. 1095–1291), Godfray (1842: 32) that it "was probably written about the year 1200," Horstmann (1881: 489) that "the original should be set far earlier [translated from the German original]" than the manuscript date. The author of the most recent edition of the text (Clark 1972) seems to concur with these traditional dates.
The poem includes too many French loan words to make a twelfth century composition likely. Furthermore, these loans resemble those of other early thirteenth century documents, for instance the writings of the Katherine Group (e.g. like Meidan Maregrete, St. Juliana includes vie 'saint's life', ciclatuns 'fine silk, ciclatoun', St. Katherine has lei 'religious law', St. Margaret includes warant 'protector, warrant', merci 'mercy', Hali Meidhad has nurice 'nurse' etc.). The evidence from French loans thus corresponds better with a thirteenth than a twelfth century origin and the poem has consequently been grouped into PCMEP period 1b.
Suggested date: 1215
PCMEP period: 1b (1200-1250)
Versification: rhyming quatrains, aaaa, in long lines of seven and six stresses
Index of ME Verse: 2672 (IMEV), 2672 (NIMEV)
Digital Index of ME Verse: 4248
Wells: 5.52(2)
MEC HyperBibliography: *St.Marg.(2)


About the edition and manuscript base:
Edition: Horstmann, Carl. 1881. Altenglische Legenden: Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen. Heilbronn: Gebrüder Henninger. 489-98.
Manuscript used for edition: Cambridge UK, Trinity College B.14.39 (323), ff. 20r-24r
Online manuscript description: LAEME
Manuscripts of the West-Midlands (item 5)
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.
McIntosh et al. (1986: 250) place the scribe in Worcestershire, LAEME in neighboring East Herefordshire.
Manuscript date: s. xiii-ex
Horstmann (1881: 489) dated the manuscript to "the first half of the thirteenth century [translated from the German original]". 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: M1b.Maregrete
ID: Maregrete,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token
Title and "Amen" explicit have [Title] and [Explicit] instead of a line number
Word count: 2,915
Token count: 316
Line count: 312
78 stanzas at 4 lines with an additional title and "Amen" explicit.


Other:
General notes: The life of Saint Margaret was a popular topic in medieval English. Numerous versions of the legend are extant.
- For Old English renditions, see Clayton and Magennis (1994).
- The monastic alliterative prose saint's lives of the "Katerhine Group" from the early thirteenth century include a version of Saint Margaret. A parsed file of this text is included in the PPCME2.
- There are two very similar early Middle English verse versions: Meidan Maregrete (IMEV 2672, discussed here) and Seynt Mergrete (IMEV 203). The two versions are so closely related that Wells (1916: 314) and the MED do in fact consider them variants of the same text. Perhaps the two share a common source or the latter is a reworking of the former. For a detailed analysis of similarities and differences in the plot and literary presentation, see Wolpers (1964: 187-195).
- The late thirteenth century saint's life collection "South English Legendary" includes a version of Saint Margaret in most of its extant manuscripts.
- Additional versions of the legend exists from after 1400.
The Index of Middle English Verse lists five manuscript witnesses for Meidan Maregrete. Three of them remain unedited.
Anglo-Norman was the dominant language of hagiography in twelfth and thirteenth century England. Hence, Meidan Maregrete, along with the texts of the "Katherine Group", may in fact be the earliest extant Middle English saint's life (Millett 1990: 127).
It is unknown whether Meidan Maregrete has a direct or indirect Anglo-Norman source, but the assumption of such a source may not be implausible (see Wolpers 1964: 187, fn. 40, 41).
Another edition of the poem is Cockayne (1866: 34-42).
Remarks on parses: The line breaks follow the metre as in Horstmann's (1881: 489-98) edition.
The parses are generally unproblematic. Some difficult words and interpretations are explained as CODE comments in the parsed file.


References

Clark, Ardath Sue McKee. 1972. Seint Maregrete and Body and Soul: An Edition from the Trinity College Cambridge MS. B.14.39 with variant texts in parallel. PhD thesis University of Michigan.
Clayton, Mary & Magennis, Hugh. 1994. The Old English Lives of St. Margaret. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cockayne, Oswald Thomas. 1866. Seinte Marherete: The Meiden and Martyr, in Old English. EETS o.s. 60. London: Trübner & Co. (available online)
Godfray, Thomas. 1842. 'Ancient English Poetry.' The Church of England Quarterly Review 12. 27-49.
Horstmann, Carl. 1881. Altenglische Legenden: Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen. Heilbronn: Gebrüder Henninger. (available online)
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.
Millett, Bella. 1990. 'The Audience of the Saints' Lives of the Katherine Group.' Reading Medieval Studies 16. 127-156.
Skeat, Walter W. 1907. The Proverbs of Alfred. Oxford: Clarendon. (available online)
Willich, Anthony Florian Madinger. 1798. Three Philological Essays. London: Longman.
Wolpers, Theodor. 1964. Die englische Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters: Eine Formgeschichte des Legendenerzählens von der spätantiken lateinischen Tradition bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Niemeyer.