The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)

PCMEP Text Information



Penitence for Wasted Life

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About the text:
Text name: Penitence for Wasted Life
Alternative names: Leuedi sainte marie; Lady Saint Mary mother and maid; A Prayer to Our Lady
Content: The poem Penitence for Wasted Life is "a confession and a declaration of repentance, with prayer for aid" (Wells 1916: 534). First, the speaker implores Saint Mary for advice (Stanza 1). Then he or she shows regret for a life full of sin (Stanza 2), wasting time in sleeping (Stanza 3), not paying enough alms to feel calm at the last day (Stanza 4), laments having become grey-haired (Stanza 5), having drunk too much wine (Stanza 6), not having fed the hungry or clothed the naked (Stanza 7), having sinned with the mouth (Stanza 8) and not having listened to God’s word (Stanza 11). Finally, the narrator implores Saint Mary for restraint of the flesh, love of meekness and of God (Stanza 9) and to send on the message to her son to be protected by him from the pain of Hell (Stanza 10).
Genre/subjects: confession, repentance, lament, contrition, supplication, prayer to Virgin Mary
Dialect of original composition: Unknown
The dialect of the original has not been discussed in detail.
Date of original composition: 1175-1275
The text must have been in existence by the late thirteenth century, c. 1275, before it was copied into its extant manuscript witness. That the version in the manuscript cannot be the original becomes clear from scribal errors, such as the misplacement of what is now the final stanza. The poem must have been written after Poema Morale, composed c. 1175, because Poema Morale had a direct influence on conceptualization and some expressions (Ten Brink 1889: 206, Patterson 1911: 165-6). It is difficult to date the original more precisely. However, one conservative linguistic feature is the use of which as a generalizing quantifier (hwuechere wunne 'some, every, any joy', line 8), which the MED (which sense 1b) cites otherwise exclusively from before 1200. Therefore, the text has been placed in PCMEP period M1b (1200-1250), rather than M2a (1250-1300). The proposed date for the original text is 1250, right at the boundary between those two PCMEP periods. Researchers are encouraged to form their own opinion on the date of the poem or to use the manuscript date instead.
Suggested date: 1250
PCMEP period: 1b (1200-1250)
Versification: 11 stanzas of rhyming quatrains, aaaa, in long lines of usually seven stresses (Wells 1916: 534)
Index of ME Verse: 1839 (IMEV), 1839 (NIMEV)
Digital Index of ME Verse: 3029
Wells: 13.200
MEC HyperBibliography: Leuedi sainte


About the edition and manuscript base:
Edition: Brown, Carleton F. 1932. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon. 1-2.
Manuscript used for edition: London, British Library, Additional 27909, fol. 2r
Online manuscript description: LAEME
British Library: Archives and Manuscripts Descriptions
Manuscript dialect: Southern, West-Midlands
The manuscript dialect has been localized to N[orth]W[est] Oxon[ia] / Oxfordshire (LAEME Item 232).
Manuscript date: s. xiii-ex, s. xiv-in
The manuscript was produced in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.
The manuscript is from the "XIII cent[ury]" (Brown 1916: 405).
The online version of the MED dates it "a1300."
LAEME assigns the dates "C12b2–13a1."


About the file:
File name: M2a.Penitence
ID: Penitence.w.x.y.z, w=token, x=line, y=page, z=stanza {[Stanza_1] – [Stanza_11]}
Word count: 394
Token count: 35
Line count: 44


Other:
General notes: It is highly likely that stanza 11 has been misplaced and was originally stanza 7. The scribal error could easily arise because two successive stanzas ended with the same final word, drede. On having copied the word, the copyist then accidentally skipped one stanza, later realized the mistake, and decided to add the skipped stanza at the end of the poem. If the original order is restored, the text ends in the form typical of Middle English penitence lyrics, with an appeal to the Virgin Mary and through her to Jesus (e.g. Duncan 1992: 109-11).
Wells (1916: 534) suggests that the text is unlikely to have originated as a song set to music.
Penitence for Wasted Life was directly influenced by Poema Morale (also included in the PCMEP) in general content and specific expressions (Ten Brink 1889: 206, Patterson 1911: 165-6). The following two instances of verbal parallelism illustrate:
Penitence for Wasted Life, lines 3-4:
vnnut lif to longe ich lede; // hwanne ich me biþenche wel sore ich me a-drede
Poema Morale, lines 5-6:
Vnnet lif ich habbe ilad. and ȝiet me þincheð i lade. // þan i biðenche me þar on wel sore i me adrade
Penitence for Wasted Life, lines 21, 24:
Ifurn ich habbe isunehed mid worke & mid worde, // [...] // [...] // muchel ich habbe ispened, to lite ich habbe an horde.
Poema Morale, lines 11-12:
Alto lome ich habbe igult a werke and a worde. // Alto muchel ic habbe ispend to litel ileid on horde.
Two alternative editions of the text are Morris (1872: 192-3) and Patterson (1911: 59-61).
Remarks on parses: The text is written as one block in the manuscript. The line breaks follow the rhyming scheme as in Brown’s (1932: 1-2) edition.
The edition includes the letter wynn. It has been replaced by a w in the parsed file throughout.
The parses are largely unproblematic.


References

Brown, Carleton F. 1916. A Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse: Part 1 List of Manuscripts. Oxford: Bibliographical Society at the University Press. (avalaible online)
Brown, Carleton F. 1932. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon.
Duncan, Thomas G. 1992. 'Textual Notes on Two Early Middle English Lyrics. ' Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93.1. 109-120. (available online)
Morris, Richard. 1872. An Old English Miscellany. EETS o.s. 49. London: Trübner & Co. (available online)
Patterson, Frank A. 1911. The Middle English Penitential Lyric: A Study and Collection of Early Religious Verse. New York: The Columbia University Press. (available online)
Ten Brink, Bernhard. 1889. Early English Literature to Wiclif. New York: Henry Holt. (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)