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New Light on ‘Pearl’ 690

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Isabel E. Rathborne*
Affiliation:
Hunter College

Extract

One of the cruxes of Pearl is the defective line 690, which occurs in a passage discussing the salvation of the righteous man. In the manuscript and in the earliest printed editions (ed. R. Morris, EETS, 1864, 1869), lines 689–692 read as follows:

      Of pys ryztwys saz salamon playn
      How kyntly oure con aquyle;
      By wayej ful streyt he con hym strayn,
      And scheued hym pe rengne of God awhyle.

Type
Miscellany
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 La Perla, Italian translation by Federico Olivero (Torino 1926).Google Scholar

2 Both translate, ‘How Wisdom obtained honor (for him).’ Gordon notes (p. 70) that both sense and metre would be improved by the insertion of hym after onoure as indirect object, but he does not make the change in his text. Google Scholar

3 Glossa Ordinaria on Sap. 10.1, PL 113.1174.Google Scholar

4 The Prymer or Lay Folk's Prayer Book. ed. Henry Littlehales, EETS, Orig. series, 105 (1895) 15. Cf. Chaucer, ‘Prioress's Prologue,’ VII.472. Gollancz's parallel from Patience 39 is somewhat dubious. Cf. Bateson, H.'s glossary under quoyntyse in his second edition of Patience (Manchester 1918).Google Scholar

5 Academy 38.223. There are very close verbal parallels between this answer to Bradley and Gollancz's note to line 690 in the 1891 edition of Pearl (pp. 122–3) even to the repetition of the same mistake — “the scribe's omission of the words kyng him between [sic] con and aquyle.‘ The note would have had to be revised anyway to include a reference to Bradley's discovery of the source, but it looks as though the substitution of ‘kyng’ for ‘lord’ occurred to Gollancz at the same time — after the work had gone to press — and that the original reading, Tord,’ was inadvertently left in the text and in the heading to the note. Since G1 (1891) is now somewhat rare, it is perhaps worth pointing out that Osgood's ap-. paratus criticus contains an error here: ‘ “Oure [lord him]” G in note, “oure [kyng him]” G in text.’ Chase takes his references to G1 from Osgood. Gordon omits the reading ‘oure lord’ entirely. The error in the text of G1 (1891) was corrected in the privately printed edition of 1897, which is unmentioned by Osgood and listed as ‘not available’ by Gordon, p. liii. There is a copy in the British Museum (11611 f. 30), Perle: the Text of the Poem (revised by Gollancz, I.). It contains only the Middle English text with variant readings in the margin. The reading ‘oure kyng’ appears in 1 ne 690 (stanza 58, p. 21) with the manuscript reading in the margin. (Information on this edition was kindly supplied by Professor Eleanor Rosenberg of Barnard College.)Google Scholar

6 P. 91. Google Scholar

7 In the facsimile edited by Gollancz, EETS 162 (1923), the letters n and u are virtually indistinguishable. Line 690 appears on fol. 48b. The Probable Order of Ockham's Non-Polemical Works Google Scholar

8 Breviarium ad usum ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Proctor, F. and Wordsworth, C. (Cambridge 1879) 2.409, 429, 431; Breviarium ad usumecclesiae Eboracensis, S(urtees) S(ociety) P(ublications) 75 (1883) 2.49; Hereford Breviary, HBS 26 1.67.Google Scholar

9 Higden, , Polychronicon 7.3 (Rolls Series 41: vol. 7, p. 94); Brightman, F. E. English Rite (London 1915) I, xvii; Wickham, J. Legg, Sarum Missal (Oxford 1916) v.Google Scholar

10 Sarum Missal 373; Missale ad usum Ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, ed. Legg, J. W., HBS 5 (1893) 2.1080. This ‘Westminster Missal,’ which is also a Sarum book, contains the lesson printed in full, including ‘Dominus Deus Noster’ at the end. Cf. also Missale ad usumEcclesiae Herfordensis (Leeds 1874) 387; Westminster Missal, 2.817.Google Scholar

11 Sarum Missal 239, 269, 299, 331, 335 n., 338, 346, 347 n., 348; Westminster Missal 2.817Google Scholar

12 Missale ad usumecclesiae Eboracensis, SSP 60 (1874) 39, 89, 132, 139.Google Scholar

13 On this practice of quoting Scripture not directly from copies of the Bible but from liturgical books embodying biblical material, cf. Ogle, M. B., ‘Bible, Text or Liturgy?Harvard Theological Review 33 (1940) 191224 and ‘The Way of All Flesh’ ibid. 31 (1938) 41–51.Google Scholar