The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
The Passion of Our Lord
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About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
About the file:
Other:
| Text name: | The Passion of Our Lord |
| Alternative names: | I-heareth of one little tale that I you will tell; The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ; Ici cumence la passyun ihesu crist en engleys; I-hereþ nv one |
| Content: | The poem The Passion of Our Lord relates the New Testament story of the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ. |
| Genre/subjects: | Passion of Christ, bible, bible paraphrase, New Testament |
| Dialect of original composition: | Unknown The dialect of the original has not been discussed in considerable detail. A northern dialect of composition can likely be ruled out on the basis of verb placement facts, as described in Kroch & Taylor (1997). The (non-negated) finite verb is always placed after a fronted constituent and a subject pronoun, resulting in the pattern 'X-pronoun-verb.' This pattern is typical of more southern texts. "The blind he made look, and the dead arise" (line 54) A more southern dialect is also suggested by rhymes of long o on a new long o from long a. This rounding phenomena occured south of the river Humber. For example, tō rhymes with sō from Old English swā (ll. 471-2). Rhymes are generally unspoiled. This may suggest that the dialects of the original and the West-Midlands manuscript are comparable. |
| Date of original composition: | 1200-1275 The late thirteenth century manuscript date can serve as the terminus ante quem for the composition of the poem. Thus, the text could plausibly fall into PCMEP periods 1b (1200-1250) or 2a (1250-1300). The language seems quite archaic. For example, past participles usually retain the i-prefix (iwryte 'written' l. 476), most masculine object determiners are marked for case (þen heoueliche kyng 'the.accusative heavenly king' l. 672), etc. The piece has therefore been grouped into the earlier period. Linking the mention of a contemporary simony in the poem Hwon holy chireche is vnder uote (in Jesus College 29, ll. 29-33) to attested events in church history, Morris (1872: xi) argues that "the poems in the Cotton and Jesus MSS. were composed before 1250, and probably soon after the year 1244." |
| Suggested date: | 1245 |
| PCMEP period: | M1b (1200-1250) |
| Versification: | couplets, two-line, aa "353 couplets of seven-stress verses with cæsura" (Wells 1916: 409) |
| Index of ME Verse: | 1441 (IMEV), 1441 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 2431 |
| Wells: | 8.37 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | I-hereþ nv one |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Morris, Richard. 1872. An Old English Miscelany. EETS o.s. 49. London: Trübner & Co. 37-57. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Oxford, Jesus College 29, Part II, ff. 144r-155r |
| Online manuscript description: | LAEME (the text itself is not included in the LAEME corpus) Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 1) |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The manuscript comes from the "South-West" (Wells 1916: 409). The scribal dialect has been localized to Herefordshire (McIntosh et al. 1986: 199). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiii-ex The manuscript dates from "c. 1275" (Wells 1916: 409). The manuscript was made in the late thirteenth century (Ker 1963: ix, xvi). The online version of the Middle English Dictionary dates the manuscript as a1300. |
About the file:
| File name: | M1b.PassionLord |
| ID: | PassionLord,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token The line count is replaced by [Title], [Prologue_Title], [Passion_Title] and [Ascension_Title] for the respective incipits. |
| Word count: | 6,249 |
| Token count: | 634 |
| Line count: | 706 Additionally, there are a French title and three incipits for the Prologue (before l. 1), the Passion (before l. 21), and the Ascension (before l. 553). |
Other:
| General notes: | The French title may suggests that the poem is a translation of an unidentified or lost French source. The poem is also contained in Ms. Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 1449 (SC 7554), pp. 163-166. |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow the metre as in Morris' (1872: 37-57) edition. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Ker, Neil R. 1963. The Owl and the Nightingale: Facsimile of the Jesus and Cotton Manuscripts. EETS o.s. 251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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.
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Morris, Richard. 1872. An Old English Miscellany. EETS o.s. 49. London: Trübner & Co. (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)