CIVIL SERVICE LITERARY CULTURE AND MEDIEVAL ENGLISH IN IRELAND: THE BACKGROUND

Ever since the pioneering work of R. H. Robbins, scholars have known that Franciscan friars were largely responsible for collecting and often composing many of the Early Middle English lyrics recorded 1220–1350. For Ireland's Early Middle Hiberno-English (EMHE) poems, the case for Franciscan agency is even more compelling, indeed, assumed to be nearly absolute, especially since survivals before the famous BL MS Harley 913 lyrics (c. 1330) are scant. However, a closer look at pre-Harley EMHE manuscripts changes some of these assumptions. In fact, the Franciscans were not alone in their interest in the nascent Hiberno-English lyric, and as I will argue here, some betray bureaucratic or civic origins, either in poetic content, or in scribal treatment, having been recorded in documentary hands. Given the distinguished contributions our honouree, Linne Mooney, has made to present understanding of the role of civic writingoffice culture in Middle English literature, it seems appropriate in tribute to her to bring this lesser known corner of the civic literary world into view.

Despite its famous and iron-clad Franciscan credentials, even Harley 913 itself contains lyrics with detailed civic and bureaucratic content. Moreover, in a recent survey of Middle Hiberno-English literary texts, John Thompson quotes M. R. James's catalogue descriptions of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 405 and London, Lambeth Palace Library (LPL), MS 557, noting that both had lyrics recorded ‘in a charter hand’. More recently, I examined these ‘charter hand’ lyrics as part of the corpus of EMHE texts, noting that neither of these manuscripts is Franciscan. In Corpus 405, the content of one of the lyrics even relates directly to the documents copied by the same scribe nearby, and may be his own rough composition. In LPL 557, perhaps a diocesan manuscript, the charter hand copied two lyrics of stunning quality. So, this essay takes up the question of what role early bureaucrats might have played in the copying, composing, reading and owning of some of Ireland's very earliest English lyrics.