n g o - a x o n r o s e Edited and translated by Michael Swanton Reader in Medieval English Studies, University ofE xeter Dent, London Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J. 3 2106 01432 4401 • :Q:: _,j (i? _ S_A_N_T_A_ C_ R_U_ Z_ .I __ • • •. 1. I ){)nated 13] : ..... .l <> ll N I .. HAl ,Vl · l{SC >N c z - < m ~ u..- - (/) 0 -1 -< I • • SANTA CRUZ I • Univ. Library, UC Santa Cruz 1998 CJ. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1975 All rights reserved Made in Great Britain at the Aldine Press • Letchworth • Herts for J. M. DENT & SONS L'l'D Aldine House• Albei11arle Street· London First published 1975 First published in the United States 1975 by ROWMAN AND U'l"l'LEFIEID, Totowa, New Jersey This book if bound as a paperback is subject to the condition that it may not be issued on loan or otherwise except in its original binding This book is set in 9 on 10 point Times New Roman Dent E:dition Hardback ISBN 0 4liO 10809 3 Paperback ISBN 0 4liO 11809 9 Rowman and Littlefield edition Library of Congrea Cataloging in Publication Data Swanton, Michael, comp. Anglo-Saxon prose. and Littlefield university Ll"brary) (Row11~an Bibliography: p. I. Anglo-Saxon prose literature-Translations into English. 2. English prose literature-Translations from Anglo-Saxon. I. Title. PRIS08.S9 829 74-5762 ISBN 0-87471-545-8 ISBN 0-87471-544-x (pbk.) Contents vii Pref~ Introduction ix &lect Bibliography llV LEGAL PROSE: The Laws of Wihtr&d, 695 1 An Anglo-Danish Peace-Treaty, 878 4 s Trial by Ordeal The Laws of £thelred, 1008 6 :>clJMl!NT:A.RY PROSE1 Two Crediton Documents 11 Two Exeter Donations 14 Two :Estate Memoranda 21 A Writ of Edward the Confessor 27 A Witch Drowned 28 A Letter to Brother Edward 29 ALFRED2 Preface to Gregory's Pastoral Cant 30 Two Northmn Voyages 32 Preface to St Augustine's Sollloqulu 37 nm LIFE OF ST GUTHLAC 39 nm BUCKLING HOMIUST1 An 'Easter Day Sermon 63 A Michaelmas Sermon 70 JELFRIC Sermon on the Epiphany 76 Se:ln1on on the Greater Litany 83 Sermon on the Sacrifice on Easter Day 88 The Passion of St Edmund 97 The Festival of St Agatha 103 Ailfric's Colloquy 107 v vi WULFSTAN: The Sermon of •wolf' to the Enalish 116 Sermon on False Gods 122 The Institutes of Polity 125 THE GOSPEL OP NICODEMUS 139 APOLLONIUS OP TYRE lS8 A COI.I.EC110N OP PROVERBS 174 BALD'S 180 B 186 Preface The act of translation needs no apology. The circumstances which made it desirable for Alfred and lElfric in the ninth and tenth cen turies are no less pressing in the twentieth; and the attendant problems are no less great. The difficulties that confront the trans lator are innumerable; whole books have been written about them. Only those who have subjected their translations to the scrutiny of a number of others will readily appreciate how a dozen different readers will make a dozen different demands on a translation at any one time. It is simply not possible to satisfy every point at all times; of its nature, translation is unsatisfactory. The number of possible interpretations, not simply of substance, but of style and tone, is often large. And the decisions which must be taken are more often than not purely subjective. Ultimately translation cannot reproduce, or even adequately reflect, the style of an original without departing from its substance considerably. I have tried to supply as close a rendering as possible without being awkwardly over-literal. And I have thought it important not silently to 'improve' the original in those cases where I felt it to be at all clumsy, repetitive or obscure. To do so would be to present as unreal a picture as it would be to reduce all the varied styles of Old English prose to my own personal style, or to the 'colloquial Modem English' beloved of the university • exam.mer. In the strictly limited space available, I have tried to furnish the general reader with a representative selection of some of the very different kinds of Old English prose. It would have been possible to include everyone's favourite passages only by an anthology of excerpts. But wherever possible I have chosen works which are complete in themselves, eschewing extracts in the belief that these are inherently misleading. What might at first seem a bold step in excluding passages from both Bede and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -both of which are in any case already available in inexpensive editions-allows space for less familiar material which would otherwise have had to be omitted. I have tried to include a body of •• vu ••• Preface V1ll such less accessible pieces as the estate memoranda, as well as such high-spots as the Sermo Lupi, which could scarcely be avoided; and to include examples of such ephemeral documents as land-grants and wills, as well as works of persistent influence, like the Gospel of Nicodemus. It was clearly desirable not to repeat more than was inevitable material already included in Professor Whitelock's English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, and to make cultural rather than purely historical documents available, providing supple mentary material of 11se to students both of Anglo-Saxon history and Old English literature. Within the limits laid down, at least some of their needs are met. But should others better versed in the subject ever have occasion to peruse these pages, the translator can only plead with King Alfred }'ret he for hine gebidde, and him ne wite gif he hit rihtlicor ongite ponne he mihte, f relc mon sceal be his andgites or}'rem~e and be bis remettan sprecan he spree}' and don }'ret mre~e ~ret }'ret he dep. Exeter 1974 M. J. SWANTON Introduction The Anglo-Saxons have left us the earliest, largest and most varied body of vernacular literature to have survived from medieval Europe. But its remains are both arbitrary and uneven. While there is evidence for the extensive copying of many works, the greatest number of Old English prose writings, like the verse, are known only from 11nique copies which were often made centuries after the work was composed; scarcely any is the author's own manuscript, or even an immediate copy of it. And beca11se the medium of their preservation has been that of monastic or cathedral libraries, no work has had much chance of survival unless it was of interest to a church librarian. It was mere chance that the Old English Apolloniu3 of Tyre should have been copied into the back of an eleventh century collection of homilies and laws; without it we could only have guessed at the existence of an Old English romance genre. If only the library of a lay magnate could be reconstructed in the way that Bishop Leofric's can, our picture of Old English literature might have been more balanced. But even ecclesiastical libraries have had little chance of survival. The magnificent eighth-century library Alcuin knew at York must have been sadly depleted by Viking and other ravages by the end of the tenth century. And whatever Archbishop Wulfstan could then have restored would be destroyed once more when York Minster was burnt down again during the reign of William. In any case, even during the Anglo-Saxon period itself the processes of natural wastage may have meant the loss of many works. With considerable changes in language, spelling and handwriting conventions, old-fashioned manuscripts must often have been considered of no great value. Some may have been revised and re-written then; others scraped clean for the sake of the vellum, others still, discarded altogether. The older contents of many libraries must have been continuously dispersed and destroyed. Even the fine new books of the Benedictine Renaissance would appear old-fashioned and even unreadable by the thirteenth century. Certainly by the early 1300s the fine collection • IX