University of Virginia Library

The Corrections

Thornton used three methods to correct his transcription of the poem: first, he might strike out a word or part of a word and (if the error was not simple dittography) immediately thereafter write the preferred form. Second, he might superimpose a preferred letter over a rejected letter in spelling corrections (this habit has led to some problems of legibility) or, in a few cases, convert one letter to another (e.g., r to y). These two methods were obviously part of the immediate process of transcription; the third method, in which corrections were inserted above or at the end of the completed line, may indicate either an immediate review of each completed line or a later proofreading effort. When this method was used for omitted words, the point of omission was marked by short double virgules or the more familiar angled caret-mark slightly below the line, the mark repeated under the word to be inserted (if at the end of the line). Caret marks (in either form) were also used for word- or spelling-changes by the insertion method. Two of these end-of-line corrections, the insertion of ayer in line 455 and the correction of lordez to londes in line 878, were performed in a hand different from that of the text—one more carefully formed, with letters more uniform in size, and with book rather than cursive e.

The text contains no corrections of large-scale error such as omitted or repeated whole lines or garbled passages; presumably if the scribe did recognize and decide to correct such errors he recopied the page. One may infer from the size of his two volumes that he had access to a good supply of paper.

In the following summary, Thornton's self-corrections are divided into two major categories, spelling-changes and word-changes. Within these broad categories items are further subdivided into corrected omissions (in which the scribe has added a letter or word), corrected intrusions (in which he has deleted a letter or word), and alterations (in which he has exchanged one letter or word for another). Within these subcategories, further subdivisions emphasize particular tendencies. A third major category then summarizes corrections involving possible suspension errors. Since this system of classification relies on greater certainty about the actual nature or cause of the error corrected than is sometimes available, a number of items are included in more than one category or subcategory (indeed, a few items show multiple correction); the final "Statistical Summary," however, counts each item only once.

All examples below are cited from the MS without emendation; Thornton's

somewhat erratic capitalization is preserved, except that all line-initial letters are presented as capitals; long i is presented as j except when capitalized as I; y and þ are distinguished; all suspensions are expanded in italics. Although all items are cited from the MS, they are identified for ease of reference by the editions' line numbers rather than by folio. All available editions include notation of folio pages for those who wish to refer to the facsimile. It should be noted, however, that some of these corrections were made in very light ink; for this and other reasons, some corrections may not be visible in the facsimile.

For the examples also, an attempt is made to indicate the method of correction used by the scribe. When a single (right-hand) bracket is used, the element to the left of the bracket was crossed out and the element after inserted, either immediately, above the line, or at the end of the line (the last indicated by an asterisk *). When double brackets include two letters joined by an arrow, the second letter was superimposed over the first (e.g., [r→y]). Double brackets including single elements, in the case of corrected omissions contain inserted material, and in the case of corrected intrusions contain deleted material.

I. Spelling changes

• A. Spelling errors by omission of a letter or letters (77 cases).
• 1. Consonant omissions or omissions from consonant clusters (37 cases). Examples; el] Erledoms 42; child[r→y]ren 3208; filnesql filsnez 881; ch] schotte 2467; vescowte] vescownte 1984; schok[e→k]e 4114.
• Of these errors, thirteen involve omitted liquids (10 r, 3 l); four, the /š/ phoneme; four, omitted nasals; and seven, failure to double consonants after short or lax vowels.
• 2. Omitted vowels (25 cases). Examples: kenly] kenely 1243; berynge] beryenge 2377; br] burneste 3846; malez] maylez 1857; chanse] chawnse 2368.
• Of these, four involve metathesis of liquids; six, the ai/ei digraph; nine, the au/ou/eu digraphs.
• 3. Omitted syllables (9 cases). Examples: wyrp] wyrscheppez 1059; peste] potestate 2327; wre] wandrethe 2370.
• 4. Preterites and participles (6 cases). Example: regnd] regnede 2034. Like the example, most involve the omission of an inflection-vowel.
• B. Spelling errors involving intrusive letters (44 cases).
• 1. Dittography or contamination (19 cases). Examples: swether[w]yke 47 (correction in light ink); Wa[y→w]ayne 1302; hawrawde] harawde 3029; Etten] Eten 'eaten' 2716.
• Of these, five involve doubled consonants after long or tense vowels.
• 2. Other intrusive letters (11 cases). Examples: swyche] syche* 76; charye] chare* 1886; togers] Toges 3189; browndys] brondis 3695.
• 3. False starts (14 cases). Examples: aye] ayers 1259; ti(er?)] title 2363; sha] hade 2472; s] sette 4043.
• C. Spelling errors involving the exchange of letters (108 cases).
• 1. Hesitations between possible variant spellings (76 cases).
• a) e/y hesitations in unstressed syllables (18 cases). Examples: ned[e→y]s 470; capteefes] captyfis 2340; brawnd[e→y]sche 3359; h[e→y]s 384, 3572.
• Four of these involve unstressed function words like the last example above. Of the total, all but three change e to i/y.

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• b) e/y hesitations in stressed syllables (19 cases). Examples: l[e→y]gmane 420; re] ryuer 920; f[e→y]ste 2233; r[e→y]alle 3373; th[e→y]then 4345.
• Again, the scribe's alterations consistently prefer i/y to e. Some of these changes may reflect etymological variants ("liege," "royal"); a substantial proportion of the rest involve open-syllable phonological change, but four cases are closed-syllable.
• c) Special cases: "high" (6 cases), "through" (2 cases), "eyes" (2 cases), "rescue" (3 cases). Examples: h[e→y]e 620; th[o→r]ughe 1857; eyne] eghne 2962; bowez] bowghez 921; resch] rescows 4137.
• d) Others: a/e/ai respellings (6 cases), e.g., heþe] haythen 2974, 3arnes] 3ermys 3911, aventall] aventaile 2572; o/u/w respellings (7 cases), e.g., auke] awke* 13, co] cunvayede 482, trouthe] trowthe 2585; consonantal respellings (11 cases), e.g., seluen] selfen 1210, wynnez] wynes 1028, j] gesserawnte 2892, lik] lygham 3281, schragkys] schragges 3473.
• 2. Misreadings and other errors (32 cases).
• a) Misread letter-forms: e/o, e.g., be] bot 4070; e/sigma-s, e.g., Romayn[e→s] 2234; f/long s, e.g., f] syghte (with sigma-s) 1949; h/b, e.g., he] be 3190; n/u, e.g., 30w] 3one 2726; y/r, e.g., Eyrthe] erthe 527; y/þ, e.g., no yng] nothynge 2442.
• b) Contamination: e.g., Raylide with reche[d→s] 3263 (the sigma-s does not obscure the d, leading to editions' misreading).
• c) Transliteration or metathesis: e.g., ffor] fro 1698 (plus two other line-initial cases); ax] aske 2350; many] man 'main' 4071 (y erased).
• d) Verb forms: e.g., likyde] lykes 140, sai[d→s] 868.
• e) Others: r/l, i.e., her] helpe 346, war] walkes 946; u/y (one example), th[u→y] 4323 (perhaps confusion of þu and þi); anomaly, schikf] skilfull 1561.

II. Whole-word changes (111 cases).

• A. Omitted words.
• 1. In stress position (25 cases). Examples: That Caerlyon was [callid]* : with curius walles 61; The [redyes them stricken] romaynes redyes þan 1427.
• 2. In unstress position (28 cases). Examples: to [þat] alde wyf 986b; I witter þe [þe]* Emperour 1239a; Gawayne the gude : [ha stricken] he has 3706.
• B. Intrusions (22 cases). Examples: j not [watte] watte it ment 977; sir Ewayne [sir] fytz vriene (in light ink) 2066; lady[ne] : ne 3081 (the dele marks read as long -ss- by the editions). Almost all cases in this category are simple dittography errors.
• C. Word exchanges (36 cases). Examples: hyghe] lowde 124; þe] 30w 225 (in light ink); knyghtez] kynges 523; honoure] one 704; treson of lordez] lōnmacrdes 878; Enamellede] ennelled 1294; spourres] speres 2542; full] so 2571; neuen] mene 2869.
• Among these, we might note three cases of "knights/kings" confusion (523, 3687, 4169), all at line-end. Including these, more than a dozen cases apparently involve confusion of alliterative formulas, especially at line-end.

III. Suspensions.

• Of the examples collected in parts I and II, 20 may have involved confusion of nasal suspensions; for example the correction luppe] lumppe] 1814 (I.A.1) may reflect the exemplar's lūppe; the correction chanse] chawnse 2368 (I.A.2), the exemplar's chāūse. Two additional corrections also reflect hesitation over nasal spellings: hemmes] hēmmacres 3253 and reng] rēgmacrne 4005.

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  Six of the corrections discussed above may have involved the -er suspension, and there are in addition two cases in which a superfluous -er suspension was cancelled (e.g., couererde] couerde 3633). Six further cases may have involved the -ur suspension, one the -us, and two general contractions (e.g., peste] potestate 2327, I.A.3). An interesting case is the word-exchange honoure] one 704 (II.B); since the upper limb of the 7-shaped -ur suspension was horizontal, it could be confused with the nasal suspension, and one may infer that the exemplar had onmacre, first interpreted by the scribe as onure.

Statistical Summary

This survey has dealt with 339 cases of corrected error: 229 spelling changes (including suspensions) and 110 word changes (additions, deletions, and alterations); these counts avoid duplication and may differ from those above. These corrections are distributed fairly evenly throughout the text; the only striking imbalance is in word-additions and -deletions, which occur twice as often in the first half of the text (1-2199) as in the second (2200-4346).

Following is a tabulation of corrected errors by position in the alliterative long line; it shows some interesting patterns. In this analysis, A is the first stave, B the second, C the third, and D the fourth, while unstressed words are marked x. In the two or three cases of triple first half-lines (i.e., a a a : a x), the words are identified as A or B according to the principal stresses in the half-line. The x-positions, of course, may include more than one word; although six cases are identified of word-omissions before the first stave, in no case was an initial word omitted.

Statistical Summary

                       

Correction Types	x	A	x	B	x	:	x	C	x	D	x		Totals
I. Spelling Changes
A. Additions	1	15	0	22	0	:	0	24	0	13	1		76
B. Deletions	3	8	3	10	2	:	0	7	1	10	0		44
C. Exchanges	7	27	7	30	0	:	5	12	0	17	0		105
D. Suspensions	0	1	0	1	0	:	0	1	0	1	0		4
II. Word Changes
A. Additions	6	9	14	12	0	:	4	4	4	0	0		53
B. Deletions	3	3	1	2	2	:	1	4	3	3	0		22
C. Exchanges	(3)	1	5	2	0	:	3	6	2	16	0		35
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Totals	20	64	30	79	4	:	13	58	10	60	1		339

In line IA, spelling changes by addition, one may note that all but two of these corrections occur in staves, and of these two exceptions the correction in final position bears secondary stress. Even such function words as wyll (2664) and also (3485) are in stress-position. The middle staves, B and C, appear slightly more liable to this kind of spelling error (omission of letters) than A or D.

Line IC, spelling changes by alteration, shows that such corrections occur more than twice as often in the first half-line as in the second, an

imbalance particularly noticeable in dialectal hesitations. It may be that Thornton was simply more likely to make such changes in the first half-line, rather than that the first half-line was more liable to error.

Line ID includes only those suspension-errors in section III that are not included in other sections.

Line IIA, additions of omitted words, shows that omissions are over three times as likely to occur in the first half-line as in the second. For unstressed words, the position between A and B is particularly vulnerable; for stressed words, the B-stave.

The tabulation for deletion of intrusive words in line IIB is somewhat misleading, for there are five cases of cross-caesura contamination—three in which an A or B stave is repeated at C, two in which an unstressed word occurring immediately after the caesura is prematurely inserted (that is, the caesura is misplaced).

Line IIC, corrections of mistaken words, shows that such errors are three times as likely to occur in the second half-line as in the first; in particular, the number of corrections in the fourth stave (D) is striking. Nevertheless, for unstressed words the position between A and B again shows the highest number of corrections. The three line-initial for/fro metathesis errors, already tabulated in line IC, are included in parentheses here but are not counted in the totals.

Of the long line as a whole, the first half has a slight preponderance of corrected error (58%), with its second part particularly vulnerable. And a stressed word is over three times as likely to show an error of some kind as an unstressed word. Yet the highest incidence of whole-word errors occurs in the vulnerable unstressed position between the first and second stave.