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Notes
Lincoln Cathedral Library MS. 91, fol. 98v. The line cited here is in a hand different from that of Robert Thornton himself. This hand is found in only one other place in the MS, in the explicit of "The Preuite off the Passioune" and incipit of the "Tractatus Willelmi Nassyngton" on fol. 189. I would like to express my obligation to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral for allowing me to study the MS at length some years ago (before it was rebound), and to the staff of the Lincolnshire Archives Office, The Castle, Lincoln, for providing facilities and helpful advice.
The text's alliterative irregularities led early commentators to propose an extraordinary number of emendations to increase alliteration. The edition of Erik Björkman (Morte Arthure [Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1915]) conveniently summarizes these proposals and puts many of them to use. The problem was clarified by J.L.N. O'Loughlin, "The Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure," M Æ, 4 (1935), 153-168, who showed that the poet's use of alliteratively grouped lines allowed him divergences from regular patterns in individual lines.
The scribe's identity was established by Margaret Ogden in her edition of the Thornton Liber de Diversis Medicinis, EETS 207 (1938), pp. x-xvii. See also Derek Brewer, "Introduction," in The Thornton Manuscript, rev. ed. (1977), pp. vii-xi, and George R. Keiser, "Lincoln Cathedral Library MS. 91: Life and Milieu of the Scribe," SB, 32 (1979), 158-179, as well as his "More Light on the Life and Milieu of Robert Thornton" in the present SB.
For a complete account of the contents of the MSS, see The Thornton Manuscript, pp. xvii-xx, and Karen Stern, "The London 'Thornton' Miscellany: A New Description of British Museum Additional Manuscript 31042," Scriptorium, 30 (1976), 214-218. Both MSS are also described in Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Middle English Romances (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Vorlag, 1976).
Keiser, SB, 32 (1979), pp. 162, 164, 179. Keiser's search through Yorkshire wills of the period (pp. 165-177) demonstrates the regional availability of many of Thornton's texts, particularly the religious ones, among families of similar social status or clerics. But clearly Thornton must have had to spread his net wide to gain access to them.
Stern, pp. 210, 213-214, and A. S. G. Edwards, "'The Whole Book': Medieval Manuscripts in Facsimile," Review, 2 (1980), 24-25.
See Brewer, p. viii, A. E. B. Owen, "Note to the Second Edition," The Thornton Manuscript, p. xvi, and George R. Keiser, "A Note on the Descent of the Thornton Manuscript," TCBS, 6 (1976), 346-348.
L. F. Casson, ed., The Romance of Sir Degrevant, EETS 221 (1949), p. xxix, finds the Thornton version of the romance "a remarkably clean text"; Frances E. Richardson, ed., Sir Eglamour of Artois, EETS 256 (1965), p. xvi, finds Thornton's text "worthy of high respect"; M. Y. Offord, ed., The Parlement of the Thre Ages, EETS 246 (1959), p. xv, finds the Thornton text having "few obscurities" and "not far removed from the original"; James A. H. Murray, ed., Thomas of Erceldoune, EETS 61 (1875), p. lvii, says, "a very careful and accurate text."
Angus McIntosh, "A New Approach to Middle English Dialectology," ES, 44 (1963), 9. McIntosh cites here his earlier article, "The Textual Transmission of the Alliterative Morte Arthure," in English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Norman Davis and C. E. Wrenn (1962), pp. 231-240. In the article on Morte Arthure (hereinafter "Transmission"), McIntosh identifies two previous dialectal stages of transmission: a scribe (M1) whom he localizes in "southwest Lincolnshire . . . somewhere between Sleaford and Grantham" (p. 233), who was also responsible for Thornton's text of The Preuite of the Passioune; and M1's source for the poem (M2), localized in "Lindsey rather than Kesteven," in "the general neighbourhood of Louth" (p. 237). For each previous stage (M1 and M2), McIntosh cites a few characteristic forms or spellings that will figure later in this study.
For upties 'ropes or chains by which yards are suspended,' see OED, s.v. "uptie" sb. Naut. The error vpcynes is a simple one, involving c/t confusion and a mistaken nasal suspension. Bilynge is more difficult; the emendation to bilyge was first proposed by Mary M. Banks, "Notes on the 'Morte Arthure' Glossary," MLQ, 6 (1903), 64-65, and adopted by the most recent editor, Valerie Krishna, The Alliterative Morte Arthure (1976). See OED, s.v. "bilge" sb.; although bilge is described as "a corruption of bulge (OF boulge)" the earliest citation of "bulge" in the nautical sense is 1622, while the earliest besides this for "bilge" is 1513 (in Douglas' Aeneis). See also Bertil Sandahl, Middle English Sea Terms, I, Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature 8 (Uppsala, 1951), pp. 28-29.
An example is tachesesede for tatterede (821), an error which may have resulted partly from unevenness in the lines of the scribe's copy-text (see comment on cyruswitrye 2616 below); the unevenness may have lifted the long r far enough above its context to create a puzzle for the scribe, who resolved its down and up strokes as a doubled long ss. The -ses- spelling is reflected elsewhere in the text: cf. Thornton's correction of forssy to forsesy 3300.
See Stern, pp. 201-214, for an analysis of the variation in script size and evenness which supports the conclusion that only one scribe was responsible for the London MS.
Stern, however, briefly surveys self-corrections in the London MS, reaching the conclusion that Thornton generally tended to reinstate copy-text form (pp. 33-37).
George Kane has identified these five tendencies as being characteristic of fifteenth-century scribes, Piers Plowman, pp. 126-128.
Primary dependence in this study has been on Eugene J. Crook's updated translation of Richard Jordan's 1934 Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik: Richard Jordan's Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology, trans. and rev. Eugene J. Crook (1974). Also useful (although the evidence is a little early for this text) is Gillis Kristensson, A Survey of Middle English Dialects 1290-1350: The Six Northern Counties and Lincolnshire, Lund Studies in English 35 (1967).
On the possibility that the <th> and <þ> graphemes came to be used to symbolize the voiceless and voiced consonants respectively, see A. J. Bliss, "The Spelling of Sir Launfal," Anglia, 75 (1957), 275-289. See also Crook, Richard Jordan's Handbook, p. 203 (hereinafter "Jordan").
McIntosh identifies the 30fe form as belonging to stage M2, the Lindsey scribe: "Transmission," p. 236. See also OED, s.v. "Y."
The edition of Valerie Krishna has a number of c/t transcription errors that demonstrate this difficulty.
According to the New Paleographical Society, "It is doubtful whether fifteenth-century scribes attached any definite meaning to [such flourishes], though e is doubtless sometimes correct," Facsimiles, 45. M.B. Parkes calls them "otiose strokes" in English Cursive Book Hands 1250-1500 (1969), pp. xxix-xx. See also Offord, Parlement, p. xiii.
Or perhaps his overlooker's; this is one of the two corrections in a hand different from that of the text.
The ON root was actually first identified by Edmund Brock in the glossary of his edition of the poem, Morte Arthure, EETS 8 (1871); Franz Mennicken's emendation-proposal ("Versbau und Sprache in Huchown's Morte Arthure," Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, Heft 5 [Bonn, 1900], p. 141), as Banks said, "does not help" ("Notes on Glossary," p. 65).
See Mennicken, p. 110, and Banks, p. 65. This is the first of two lines alliterating on /k/, and alliterative regularity is the real basis of Mennicken's emendation-proposal. I would conjecture that chare(n) v. is related to char n. 'a hearse' (see MED, s.v. "char" n. [2], sense 1d) as carte(n) v. 'to load (sthg.) in a cart' is to cart n. (see MED, s.vv.).
See McIntosh, "Transmission," p. 233, on the dialectal characteristics of the copytext's scribe (M1).
According to McIntosh, the syche form is characteristic of Thornton's copy (M1), while the swyche form belongs to the next previous stage of transmission (M2): "Transmission," pp. 233n., 236. The corrected form is an end-of-line insertion in the MS, and may have been the same in M1—that is, Thornton very likely reproduced here his predecessor's correction. The -enge form of the verbal, as in the corrected form beryenge, is also identified by McIntosh with Scribe M1 (p. 233n.). The corrected form wenge (from the error wyenge, 4002) is also ascribed to Thornton's exemplar because the vowel in this Scandinavian loanword (ON vœngr) was raised to i earlier in more northerly texts (Jordan, §34). The -e- spelling prevails elsewhere in this text.
See Robert J. Gates, ed., The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne (1969), pp. 46-49, on the problem of "formulaic variants" in that text.
At least, nakyng, a possible inverse spelling, may testify to the late ME fronting of /η/ to /n/ in unstressed syllables (Jordan, §175).
It may be worth remarking that three of the omitted r's are in positions in which, in more southerly dialects than Thornton's, r had a tendency to assimilate with a following s or dental (Jordan, §§166, 302). See also Archibald A. Hill, "Early Loss of [r] before Dentals," PMLA, 55 (1940), 308-359.
According to Jordan and Crook, such ch spellings reflect the phonological change from /&c.aron;/ to /š/ in French words spelled with this digraph (§§17, 181, 257 Rem. 4). Perhaps relevant is McIntosh's finding that the spelling cho for "she" had a limited range, the occurrence of which in MA he attributes to scribe M1 ("Transmission," p. 233n.).
Thornton's use of the Northern sign of length in kneys is unique among the corrections. Elsewhere the text has knees(s), and one may suppose that the exemplar had knes at this point.
According to Kristensson, i/y spellings in unstressed syllables of place-names are "well attested" in the North Riding in the earlier 14th century but "practically negligible" in Lincolnshire in the same period (although they do occur). "It should however be noted that in all the counties examined forms in [e] by far outnumber those in [i]" (Survey, pp. 186-187). I nevertheless assume in this discussion that i/y spellings would have been Thornton's preference, that e-spellings were more likely his exemplar's.
I have been unable to find any other unequivocally closed-syllable examples in several hours of determined searching. One other Thornton text, the Prose Life of Alexander, however, does record the spelling feftene (14/31). The situation with this sound-change is less clear than with the open-syllable change. R.J. Dobson (English Pronunciation 1500-1700, 2nd ed., II [1968], 570-571) records closed-syllable forms with e from the Northern orthoepist Levins (1570): ench, frenge, spet, and resh 'rush.' If the lowering of i to e in closed syllables was indeed a late Northern change rather than an earlier Midlands and Southern one, then these corrections agree with the first group in restoring copy spellings against the scribe's own. Nevertheless, during the fifteenth century such spellings were far more likely to be found in Midland texts such as the Paston Letters; see Jordan, §271, for examples.
Eyne occurs only once (3282) and is presumably the exemplar's form; eghne is preferred in other Thornton texts, including the "Medical Book."
Not all a-spellings in the text are necessarily Thornton's. Kristensson's analysis of northern place-names in the early 14th century shows that the southeasternmost boundary of OE ā > a and OE a + lengthening group > a was the Witham rather than the Humber River (Survey, pp. 30-32 and Maps 9 and 17). Thus the dialect of Scribe M2, the Louth scribe, must have included this feature—though how consistently in an early fifteenth-century text one cannot say. It ought perhaps to be remarked that the scribe's corrections conceal no specifically Northwest Midland forms. S. O. Andrew's argument for a NWM original ("The Dialect of Morte Arthure," RES, 4 [1928], 418-423) was finally disposed of by McIntosh, "Transmission," pp. 239-240.
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