-so that he may very well have been abbot during the time there was no queen to be prayed for. The ritual changes that were made in this manuscript to adapt it for use in the monastery have been pointed out.(1) In respect to the dialect, as might have been expected in a Yorkshire Abbey, it is unquestionably northern as to the verbal and participial endings, though there are many indications of the change that was taking place in northern literary English by the adoption of southern forms. For example, though we have at (C 278), the preposition to(2) sometimes replaces till, fro is used as well as fra, gode and gude; boke and buke, oon and noon (3) as well as a, ane, and nane; so and also, with swa and alswa. Sere is retained for the rhyme, though many replaces it in the middle of the line, as ever does ay, but both words were perhaps becoming obsolete. Mr George Parker of the Bodleian copied this text from the manuscript and also collated the proofs with it. MS. D. This MS, GG. 5. 31, No. 1 of the University Library, Cambridge, is a 4to. on parchment, and the handwriting is said to be of the earlier part of the sixteenth century. It is of the revised form and generally agrees with our text C, except in respect to what I have described as the monastic modifications, but the dialect is a purer northern, or rather, not modernized as that is, though written more than fifty years later.(4) TEXT E. This text is copied from a MS. which is one of several on paper and parchment that are bound up in a folio volume in the library of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and catalogued MS. 84(2). This is on paper, pages 173-179 of the volume, two columns on a page, badly written in a hand of the middle of the fifteenth century; and that it is so, is confirmed by an entry (page 195 of the volume) in a (1) Ante, p. lxiii. (2) The scribe overdoes his adaptation by writing to (C 91) for till or until. (3) Note, p. 400. (4) In places it preserves the true reading, where it has been changed in text B. See note (2), page 53. calendar in the same handwriting: "This Kalender hath his begynnyng in the yere of oure Lorde Jhesu a MiH cccc xl. and iij.”(1) This MS. contains the same matter as text B, but is derived from an independent transcript of the original; and in some cases preserves evidence of the original reading where it has been lost in B. The dialect is West Midland of a very broad type. The scribe has made many mistakes, some of which are pointed out in the notes, from ignorance of northern or archaic forms. He has also made the most unaccountable transpositions,-not at the beginning of a page, for there are catch-words throughout-and apparently without any suspicion on his part that they are utterly destructive of the sense. For the sake of comparison I have arranged the text according to the proper order as in B, but it is written as follows, the references being to the corresponding lines in B as numbered in the print. 1-4, 39-48, 5-38, 49-260, 336-397, 261 -337, 398-621, and this is followed by the last line (E 615, as printed), which is not found in text B. TEXT F. This text is from a manuscript the property of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson of Thingwall, Liverpool, Vice-President of the Holbein Society, and was copied by Professor Skeat. He not only placed his transcript at my disposal, as I have already mentioned in the preface, but also corrected the proof of the text. He informs me that it is written on eleven blank pages at the end of the MS. of Piers Plowman, which he has collated for the text B of his edition. He considers that the Piers Plowman was written early in the fifteenth century, and the Mass Poem in a later hand of about the year 1450.(2) The rubrics are written in red, and it is the only one of our texts which has them complete. It is of the later revised form, but differs from the other copies by transferring the prayer (F 15-38) which in them occurs after the (1) For this information I am indebted to the Revd Dennis Hall, of the University Library, who procured the transcript for the Society and collated the proof with the manuscript. (2) See also his description of the manuscript. Piers the Plowman, Text B, p. xiv. mutual confession of priest and people to the beginning, in order to be used whilst the priest is vesting. (1) It also, to the damage of the meaning, trans-metres the confession (F 43-60) from versus caudati, or cowee to rhyming couplets. The scribe was West-Midland, and uses Southern forms to a very great extent, though it is not difficult to read the northern original between the lines; and like the scribe in B, he often leaves it unmutilated for the rhyme.(2) He uses fyndest, ert (2 sing.), maketh, doth on (3 sing.), hereth, lasteth, beth (3 plur.), and so forth. Sometimes he is tolerably successful in his attempt to get rid of unwelcome rhymes: "And gif thame grace to laste and lende In by servyce to pere last ende."-C 206-7. "Grace euere-lasting thu ham sende In thi seruice to here laste ende."-F 183-4. "Fra alle pyne and fra alle kare Into þe joye pat lastes eueremare."-C 267-8. "Fram alle paynes to heuuene blis, With angeles to dwelle euere endeles."-F 245-6. but for the most part he alters very much for the worse. The following are some of the northern or archaic words which the scribe has got rid of; kyd, lende, loute, mot, þir, wissed. He changes the following words: He is not, however, equally successful in every instance. He renders halowes here (army of saints) by halwes dere; sere by i-fere in one place (F 236); and he has entirely missed the meaning of fremd, a word still in every-day use here in the north, and, instead of it, writes frend. (1) See Note, p. lxii. (2) Ante, p. lviii. The Lay Folks Mass-Book. FOUR TEXTS. B. BRITISH MUSEUM-ROYAL MS. 17 B. XVII. ~1375 C (Rievaulx). CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD-MS. 155. WITH VARIOUS READINGS FROM A. MS. ADVOCATES' LIBRARY, EDINBURGH-19, 3, 1. ART. 7. D. MS. UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, Cambridge-GG. 5. 31. No. 1. 141-15 |