The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
The Simonie
Back to PCMEP texts
About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
About the file:
Other:
| Text name: | The Simonie |
| Alternative names: | On the Evil Times of Edward II; Symonye and Covetise; Why war and wrack in land; Why werre |
| Content: | The Simonie is a description of suffering in England in the first half of the fourteenth century after the Great Famine (1315-1317). There is a lot of violence and hunger. The clergy are vicious. The nobility is untrue to their profession. The judiciary is rogue. Merchants are cheats. The reason for these afflictions is sin and falseness leading God to curse the land. The piece has "value as a document of economic and social history," as "the earliest surviving Middle English evil-times complaint" and as inspiration for subsequent poems, such as "a substantial number of short passages in Piers Plowman" (Embree and Urquhart 1991: 60). |
| Genre/subjects: | evil times complaint, historical poem, social protest, politics, evils of the times, history, famine, divine punishment |
| Dialect of original composition: | East Midlands Embree and Urquhart (1991: 24-7) discuss the dialect of the original with reference to localizable rhyming forms. For instance, before ending in n in the rhyme corn : beforn (lines 405-6) points to the Midlands, especially Norfolk and the Isle of Ely. They conclude "that The Simonie was composed by a poet from the Fens" (ibid.: 25). |
| Date of original composition: | 1320-1330 Wright (1839: 323-45, 399-402) regards the mention of a famine that caused a bushel of wheat to soar to "foure shillinges or more" (l. 393) as a reference to the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and uses subsequent mentions of historically attested crises to conclude that the "poem was probably composed in 1321" (ibid.: 399). Ross (1966: 50-55) dates the poem to 1318-1326. Embree and Urquhart (1991: 22-3), listing additional historical references, such as "the events of 1321-22 [...] the focus of the author's attention for some six stanzas [...] [or] the tax of 1322" (ibid.: 22), conclude that the original can be dated to "between 1322 and 1326-30" (ibid.: 23). |
| Suggested date: | 1325 |
| PCMEP period: | 2b (1300-1350) |
| Versification: | The poem has eighty-five stanzas of six lines each with the rhyming scheme aabbcc. The lines have six or seven stresses except for the fifth line, which is typically a single foot (Wells 1916: 231). For additional comments on style, see Embree and Urquhart (1991: 28-30). |
| Index of ME Verse: | 4165 (IMEV), 4165 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 6677 |
| Wells: | 4.35 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Why werre |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Embree, Dan & Urquhart, Elizabeth. 1991 The Simonie: A Parallel-Text Edition. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. 64-109. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates' 19.2.1 [Auchinleck manuscript], ff. 328r-334v Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 48 (SC 1885), ff. 325v-330v Cambridge, Peterhouse 104, ff. 210r-212r |
| Online manuscript description: | Manuscript [A], Auchinleck manuscript: Manuscripts Online: Written Culture 1000-1500 eLALME Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 44) Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries (item 6) |
| Manuscript dialect: | Manuscript [A], Auchinleck manuscript: The production of the large Auchinleck manuscript was a major undertaking requiring the efforts of six copyists. "[T]his enterprise would most likely have been located in the city [of London]" (Embree and Urquhart 1991: 11). Hence, the scribes, irrespective of their origin, would have resided in London at the time of manuscript compilation. McIntosh et al. (1986: 88) have localized hand 2 of the six scribes collaborating on the Auchinleck manuscript, who was responsible for copying the text of The Simonie, to the West-Midlands, the Gloucestershire / Worcestershire border. However, the diagnostic forms listed in Embree and Urquhart (1991: 25-6), for instance each written as vch, are compatible not only with the West-Midlands, "Hereford, northern Gloucestershire, and southern Worcestershire" but also the East-Midlands, "London and the adjacent parts of Middlesex and Essex" (ibid.: 26). Ross, too, assigned the manuscript dialect to "East Midland" (1957: 176, fn. 8). Embree and Urquhart (1991: 26-7) analyses orthographic forms that are indicative of scribal dialect, for instance full written as fol, fole. They conclude that the scribal dialect is either West-Midlands, "Herefordhsire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Gloucestershire" or Southern, "Surrey, Sussex, and Kent" (ibid.: 27). Ross (1957: 175-6) believes that "[t]he dialect of the Bodleian text would appear to be East Midland, though there is perhaps some evidence that the writer's dialect could be localized somewhat farther west." "Dr Jeremy Smith of the University of Glasgow has privately written that he would provisionally localise the B scribe in northeast Gloucestershire" (Embree and Urquhart 1991: 27, fn. 34). The scribal dialect of manuscript Cambridge Peterhouse 104 has received little scholarly attention. Embree and Urquhart (1991: 27) analyse diagnostic forms, such as yet once written as ȝut, to conclude that they "coexist in a large number of locations" (ibid.). Ross (1957: 176, fn. 8) suggested that the manuscript dialect is "possibly Kentish." "Dr Jeremy Smith has privately written that he would very provisionally localise the C scribe in the West Midlands […]. [H]e would not be surprised if the scribe had moved to London before copying the MS" (Embree and Urquhart 1991: 27, fn. 35). |
| Manuscript date: | Manuscript [A], Auchinleck manuscript: The Auchinleck manuscript is conventionally dated to c. 1330-40: "On palaeographical evidence, the manuscript is now unanimously assigned to the period 1330-40, and this date is confirmed by the addition, at the end of the text of the The Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle (item 40), in this manuscript only, of a reference to the death of Edward II and a prayer for 'þe ȝong king edward' (f. 317rb), who succeeded in 1327" (Pearsall & Cunningham 1977: vii). The online version of the Middle English Dictionary lists the manuscript date as "c1330". "The manuscript can be dated on palaeographical grounds to the second quarter of the fifteenth century" (Embree & Urquhart 1991: 14). "It can be dated on palaeographical grounds to the last quarter of the fourteenth or first quarter of the fifteenth century" (Embree & Urquhart 1991: 17). The online version of the Middle English Dictionary gives the date of the manuscript as "c1400." |
About the file:
| File name: | M2b.Simonie |
| ID: | Simonie,y.z: y= token, z=line |
| Word count: | 4,476 |
| Token count: | 349 |
| Line count: | 428 |
Other:
| General notes: | The Simonie exists in three manuscripts: [A] Auchinleck, [B] Oxford, Bodleian Library 48 and [C] Cambridge, Peterhouse 104. Embree & Urquhart (1991: 46-48) reconstruct the stanzas of the original text from these three witnesses. Their structuring of the original stanzas is used for the electronic parsed file. Specifically, the parsed file includes: stanza 22 from [C] (ll. C.127-132), stanzas 23-41 from [A] (ll. A.127-240), stanzas 42-45 from [C] (ll. C.259-288), stanzas 46-beginning of 66 from [A] (ll. A.241-276), end of stanza 66 from [B] (ll. B.431-432), stanzas 67-85 from [A] (ll. A.355-468). The Simonie's witness [B] MS Bodley 48 was not discovered until the 1950s (Ross 1957) and does therefore not appear in Wells (1916). There are a few stanzas found in [C] that are not included in the parsed file (e.g., attacking the gluttony of monks (ll. C.205-210)). They are very late additions (perhaps added between 1380-1420). [C] also omits material probably because the reader would no longer be familiar with their references. See Embree & Urquhart (1991: 53-6) for comments on the C-redactor. |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow Embree & Urquhart's (1991: 64-109) edition. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Dean, James, M. 1996. Medieval English Political Writings. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. (available online)
Embree, Dan & Urquhart, Elizabeth. 1991. The Simonie: A Parallel-Text Edition. Heidelberg: Winter.
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Pearsall, Derek A. & Cunningham, Ian C. 1977. The Auchinleck Manuscript. London: Scolar Press.
Ross, Thomas W. 1957. 'On the Evil Times of Edward II: A New Version from MS. Bodley 48.' Anglia 75.2. 173-93. (available online)
Ross, Thomas W. 1966. A Satire on Edward II's England. Colorado Springs: Colorado College Studies.
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)
Wright, Thomas. 1839. The Political Songs of England from the Reign of John to that of Edward II. London: Camden Society. (available online)