The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
A Good Orison of Our Lady
Back to PCMEP texts
About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
About the file:
Other:
| Text name: | A Good Orison of Our Lady |
| Alternative names: | Christs Mother mild Saint Mary; Cristes milde moder; On god ureisun of ure lefdi |
| Content: | The poem is a praise of, and prayer to, the virgin Mary in Heaven. Mary is great and glorious, the poet's love and life. The poet asks for her mercy and love. |
| Genre/subjects: | prayer to the virgin Mary, religious praise |
| Dialect of original composition: | East-Midlands "[I]t is quite certain that the dialect of the present Ms. does not represent that of the original. [...] schrude l.139, OE. scrydan [long y] rhymes with wide, OE wide [long i]. This and many other similar rhymes show that the original dialect was not western or south-western. [...] The dialect was obviously E.Midl. [...] S.E. Midl. in preference to N.E. Midl." (Parker Oakden 1930: 103). Earlier, Marufke (1907: 16-49) and subsequent scholars (e.g. Wells 1916: 536) had assumed Berkshire or Wiltshire as the place of origin for the poem. |
| Date of original composition: | 1175-1225 "The male-voiced On god ureisun of ure lefdi was [...] composed probably in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. [The poem] reflects the imagery of twelfth century courtly romance and exhibits the formal veneration of the cult of the Virgin Mary, an earlier form of devotion than that found in the later Wooing Group prayers" (Innes-Parker 2015: 28). "The date of composition is presumably about 1200" (Parker Oakden 1930: 103). "We thus seem to be justified in situating the origin of Ureisun in the first quarter of the 13th century, roughly between 1200 and 1220 [translated from German original]" (Marufke 1907: 16, see ibid.: 7-16 for detailed discussion of the date of the composition of the original). |
| Suggested date: | 1205 |
| PCMEP period: | 1b (1200-1250) |
| Versification: | couplets, aa, with a lot of alliteration for comments on the metre, see Hall (1920: 536-7) |
| Index of ME Verse: | 631 (IMEV), 631 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 1031 |
| Wells: | 13.207 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Cristes milde moder |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Morris, Richard. 1868. Old English homilies and homiletic treatises (Sawles warde, and þe wohunge of Ure Lauerd: Ureisuns of Ure Louerd and of Ure Lefdi, &c.) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. EETS 29,34. London: N. Trübner & Co. 191-99. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.14, f. 120v-123v |
| Online manuscript description: | LAEME British Library: Archives and Manuscripts Descriptions |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The language of the Cotton Nero A.14 manuscript was "placed in W[est] Worc[ester]s[hire]" (Laing 2004: 78). "The language of Nero A.xiv is somewhat more southerly [than Herefordshire or Shropshire]" (Millett et al. 1996: 19). "The Orison in its present form agrees substantially with the copy of the Ancren Riwle in the same manuscript; both are in the dialect of the scribe, that of the Middle-South" (Hall 1920: 535). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiii-mid The manuscript is generally agreed to date from the early to mid thirteenth century (e.g. Day 1952: ix, Thompson 1958: xi-xv, Renevey 1997: 41, Innes-Parker 2015: 18). The online version of the Middle English Dictionary lists the manuscript date as a1250. The manuscript was "written in the second quarter of the thirteenth century" (Hall 1920: 355). |
About the file:
| File name: | M1b.Ureisun |
| ID: | Ureisun,x.y.z: x=token, y=page number, z=line number |
| Word count: | 1,501 |
| Token count: | 108 |
| Line count: | 171 |
Other:
| General notes: | Another edition of the poem is Brown (1932. It is no. [3] in that book. "U[reisun]U[re]L[efdi] has close resemblances to two of the meditations in Stephen of Sawley’s Triplex exercitum" (Innes-Parker 2015: 34). The poem occurs in a manuscript along with three prayers of the so-called Wooing Group. It is therefore frequently discussed in relation to these prayers (e.g. Inness-Parker 2015). However, Ureisun itself is not generally considered a part of the Wooing Group (e.g. Thompson 1958: xvi, Innes-Parker 2015: 20) because (i) most texts of the Wooing group were likely written in the West-Midlands whereas Ureisun probably did not originate there (e.g. Parker Oakden 1930: 103), (ii) the Wooing Group is written as alliterative, rhythmical, lyrical prose while Ureisun is versified in rhyming couplets (e.g. Wells 1916), and (iii) the Wooing Group texts are probably linked to an order of female anchorites whereas the original audience for Ureisun was unlikely to be anchoritic (e.g. Renevey 1997: 48, footnote 47). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks in the electronic file follow Morris' (1868: 191-99) edition. The Middle English text is printed in Morris' (1868) edition on the odd page numbers 191-199. The facing, even page numbers give a translation. The parse is based on the interpretation provided there. The parses are largely unproblematic. |
References
Brown, Carleton F. 1932. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon.
Day, Mabel. 1952. The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle British Museum MS. Cotton Nero A.xiv. EETS o.s. 225. London: Oxford University Press.
Hall, Joseph. 1920. Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250. Oxford: Clarendon. (Part I: Texts - available online), (Part II: Notes - available online)
Innes-Parker, Catherine. 2015. The Wooing of our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers. Calgary: Broadview Press.
Laing, Margaret. 2004. 'Multidimensionality: Time, Space and Stratigraphy in Historical Dialectology.' In: Dossena, Marina & Lass, Roger (eds.) Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology. Bern: Peter Lang. 49-96. (available online)
Marufke, Willy. 1907. Der Aelteste englische Marienhymnus "On god ureisun of Ure Lefdi." Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer. (available online)
Millett, Bella, Jack, George & Wada, Yoko. 1996. Ancrene Wisse, the Katherine Group, and the Wooing Group. Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English Literature Vol. 2. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
Morris, Richard. 1868. Old English homilies and homiletic treatises (Sawles warde, and þe wohunge of Ure Lauerd: Ureisuns of Ure Louerd and of Ure Lefdi, &c.) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. EETS o.s. 29, 34. London: N. Trübner & Co. (available online)
Parker Oakden, James. 1930. Alliterative poetry in Middle English. 2 Volumes. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.
Renevey, Denis. 1997. 'Enclosed Desires: A Study of the Wooing Group.' In: Pollard, William F. & Boenig, Robert (eds.) Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 39-62.
Thompson, Meredith W. 1958. Þe wohunge of Ure Lauerd. EETS o.s. 241. London: Oxford University Press.
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)