P. 10, B. 95. Cf. prayer for priest, Vernon, ante, p. 133, 11. 192-208; and Lydgate, p. 149, l. 52. C. 51. grete mede. of "Manhede." It is difficult to account for this reading instead The Cistercian scribe must have been familiar with the many pleadings of our Lord's incarnation in mediæval devotions. C. 56. fast thereon. The corresponding line, F. 61 (p. 15), is "folweth soon." Cf. "After pat, fast at hande Comes po tyme of offrande."-B. 241-2. Where C. 102 has "nere," and F. 82 has "nei." Loke pat pou be redy sone."-B. 310-1. Lydgate, ante, p. 150, l. 65. "Beholde this prophete called Jeremye, Toke a chalice, and fast gan hym hye To presse out licour out of the rede vyne." Lydgate, Minor Poems (Percy Soc.), p. 98. The employment of fast, as in the above examples, to express nearness of time, enables us to trace the connection between its opposite senses of immovability, and rapid movement. The first we find exclusively used in cognate languages, and in the earlier stage of English (Icel. fastr; Germ, fest; A.S. fæst), -fast (fixed, immovable) as a post. The other afterwards came to be also used as we too now use it -fast (swift) as the (1) post: "We mowen nought, although we had it sworn, It overtake, it slyt away so fast."-C. T., 12609-10. The nearness of place may have been an intermediate step to nearness of time; (2) as for example: "And þar es pe mount of calvery And be sepulcre of Crist fast þarby." Hampole, P. C., 5187-8.(3) (1) "My days are swifter than a post."-Job, ix, 25. (2) Compare the use of hard: palace of Ahab."-1 Kings, xxi, 1. "Naboth had a vineyard hard by the "Trouble is hard at hand."-Ps. (P. B. V.) xxii, 11. "Who finds the heifer dead, and bleeding fresh, But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter." "The ungodly Henry VI, Part II, iii, 2. And it is easy to see how the sense of quick succession of time, once fully established, passed into that of quick movement necessary to ensure it. (1) P. 10, C. 58. sayinge. This form of the participle, instead of sayand, is an indication of the late date at which the original must have been modified. (2) In addition to the introduction of the Ave into the text, this and the other later MSS. leave out the direction to stand during the prayer, which is clearly supposed to be the rule in B. 84 and 89. The custom of standing at prayer, although not to the extent required by the Nicene canon, lingered on in the west at least till the thirteenth century; and there were traces of it at Orleans in the seventeenth. It may be that the change is to be attributed to the growth of the feeling-which we may trace in the modification of the rubrics, as, for example, the substitution of clerici or ministri for populus-that the appointed services were exclusively a clerical function, and that kneeling was the posture for the private devotions of the people. P. 11, E. 90. seyande. The southern sey for say, with the northern participial ending. P. 12, B. 97-8. Compare the prayer for the presbyters in the Apostolical Constitutions : “ ὅπως ὁ κύριος ρύσηται αυτοῦς ἀπὸ παντὸς ἀτόπου kaì ñоνηρоʊ пρáɣparos.”—Lib. viii, c. 10. Ed. Le Clerc, p. 397. B. 99. fulfille pis sacrament. In the cautels which are to be found in the mass-books according to the several English uses are minute provisions for cases of a priest dying, or otherwise failing to complete the mass he had begun. B. 100. clene hert. Cf. "puris mentibus," ante, p. 92, 1. 27. gode entent. Cf. C. 21, gude entent, where this MS. reads "gode tent." Entent may perhaps refer to the intention of the priest, as held to be necessary to the validity of sacraments in the church of Rome. (3) It was used for intention, as in the Myroure, Pt II, ch. xxiii, of “dressing" the entent in saying or singing holy service :— "The fyfte thynge that longeth to the dew maner of saynge of deuyne seruice is to take hede to what entente ye say yt, . . . yf the entente be good, the dede is good, and yf thentente be yuel, the dede ys yuel.” (4) It was also often used of attention: "I entended to them and gaue them answeres.' Myroure, p. 48. (1) Richardson (s. v.) rejects the "Welsh Ffest, properus, festinus,” as the original of this word in the latter signification, and suggests that it is "a consequential application of fast, close. He comes fast behind, i.e. close behind; to attain which closeness (suppose in a race) speed was exerted." (2) Compare B. 375-6, where we have the participle rynsande, and the verbal substantive rinsynge. (3) Aquin. Summ. III, lxiv, 8 & 10. Concil. Trident. vii, De Sacramentis, can. xi. (4) Myroure, E. E. T. S., p. 60. "Remembre the eke in your inward entent Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 95. "but take to theym entent "Withe blythe vysage, and spiryt diligent." Babees Book, p. 3, 1. 69-70. id., p. 180, l. 936. "And euer when he clepithe, wayte redy & entende." Hampole uses it to render "diligentia": "And þarfor says Saynt Bernard right : Si diligenter consideres.. If þow wille, he says, ententyfly se."-P. C. 619-624. Chaucer uses it of endeavour :— "Wel oughte we to do al oure entente Lest that the fend thurgh ydelnesse us hente." C. T. 11934-5. P. 12, B. 102. "is." The MS. here retains the northern is of the second person singular, which E. and F. change into art and ert. B. 103. to pi modir, that is, to her honour, and that of all saints. Cf." in honore tuo et beatæ Mariæ et omnium sanctorum tuorum." -Ante, p. 98, 11. 30-1. B. 104. bi-dene. So the Ormulum of Job losing his children in addition to other trials: "Annd off, þatt he forrlæs his streon Onn an da33 all bidene.”—ll. 4792-3. And IIampole of removing mountains and the earth besides : B. 105. heres. "pai salle mow remowe at pair wille, Ilka mountayne, and ilka hille, þat ever was in þe world sene, And if þai wild, alle pe erth bidene."-P. C. 7965-8. The midland scribe here retains the northern -s of the third person plural. E. changes to the midland -n; and F. to the southern -eth. B. 105-6. hele-wele in F. become "helthe" and "welthe." B. 108. fremd, which is still in daily use as a north-country word, becomes "frend" in F.; and "halouse " becomes "seyntes." B. 108. bi ony kynde. By, or in respect to, any relationship, natural or spiritual. Cf. the "secundum quodlibet" of the schoolmen. It will be noticed that this use of the preposition seems to have been strange to the scribe (E. 108), who writes "or any kynde,” but Chaucer uses it exactly as in the text : "Of what hous be ye, by your father kyn."-C. T. 15417. And we still speak of relationships "by the father's or the mother's side." ון P. 12, B. 112. soules passed away. E. reads "passe and," and suggests what may perhaps have been the reading of the northern original "passand," and that prayer was made at this place for the dying and not for the dead. Cf. the many prayers for a passing soul in Primers and Horæ, and the direction to toll the passing bell, "when any is passing out of this life."-Canons (1604), lxvii.(1) C. 66. ille wild. Qu. ill-willed, malevolent. C. 71. And to pe, moder, maiden clene. It will be observed that in punctuating the text I had put a comma after pe, as if þe had been a personal pronoun (thee), as it is in the invocation of the blessed Virgin, C. 46, and elsewhere in this MS., C. 94, &c. As a matter of fact such direct forms of address are not uncommon, but on looking at this place again, I think that " pe " must be merely a dialectic variation of the possessive. Two lines above, we have "pe honour," where "be" is as unquestionably used in this sense as the "thy" and "py" of ten lines lower down. It may be noted as an illustration of the uncertainty of the spelling of this date that we have these three forms of the same word written a dozen lines (pe, thy, þy), and a fourth, þi (1. 59), within twenty lines farther back, P. 14, B. 115. On hegh-festis. See rubrics, Miss. Sarum., col. 3, 383; Ebor. (Henderson), 166; and Manipulus Curatorum, 1510, fol. 34. F. reads On Sunday. Sunday, as we gather from the laws, both secular and ecclesiastical, before the Conquest, was held in especial reverence in the Church of England. We find Robert of Brunne giving a very marked expression to this feeling in the following passage, which is one of the many additions he makes to the original in translating the Manuel des Pechiez : "Of al pe festys þat yn holy chyrche are, Holy sunday men oughte to spare; þat euere zyt were, or euere shal be. þarfore pe Sunday specyaly Ys hyest to halew, and most wurþy." Handlyng Synne, 11. 805-820. (1) Mabillon (Acta Sanctorum, O. S. B., Præf. in Sæc. I, § 103) proves from Bede, &c., the antiquity of the English custom of ringing a peal after death, as also directed in this canon. P. 14, B. 116. men singes or sayes. I do not include this among the places where the midland scribe had retained the northern forms of the original text. Sayes is not necessarily the third person plural to agree with men in the plural; for the indefinite men was used as if singular like the German mann and the French on. And see note, p. 171. B. 117. Gloria in excelsis. See ante, p. 94, 11. 6—19. B. 118. es. The midland scribe elsewhere writes is, but retains the northern es to rhyme with mes. B. 119. Ioy is used to render gloria here, and throughout the hymn; in the Gloria Patri in the York Hours of the Cross (p. 82, 1. 7), and so in many other places,(1) which is all the more curious, as the French joie (from the Latin gaudium, or rather gaudia) does not appear to have been used in this sense. The word occurs as we now use joy in 1. 561, and in the York Bidding Prayer, p. 71, l. 30, and Hampole uses it of the joys of heaven: "Alle manere of ioyes er in þat stede."-P. C. 7813. B. 120. This is one of the lines with which the hymn is farced (stuffed), as it was called in this country; or brodé, as the French ritualists called it. It will be noticed that there is also a farsure in the Apostles' Creed (p. 20). There were similar additions to the Latin of the mass in the Kyries, the Sanctus, the Pax, the Agnus Dei, and the Ite, &c., and these interpolations were sometimes of the most incongruous character. The rubric of the Sarum Missal (col. 585) directed that this canticle should be sung cum sua farsura" at the principal mass (in choro). At the reform of the Roman Missal in 1570, farsure were altogether abolished by authority of Pope Pius V. Martene (2) mentions that the epistle in some French churches had been "barbara voce.... .... farcita." The barbarous French of which he gives a specimen is merely the old French of the time; and this farce was most probably a relic of an older custom of translating the portions of holy scripture read in the service into the vulgar tongue. He says that he has heard that Archbishop Le Tellier had abrogated the practice as it had existed in certain parishes in the diocese of Rheims. I have happened to meet with the text of his Ordonnance, dated at his chateau at Louvois, the 5th October, 1686. The custom, whatever may have been its former extent, appears to have been confined to St Stephen's day, two deacons singing the epistle alternately in Latin and (1) "Thou sittist on goddis rizt side in the ioie of the fadir.”—Te Deum, Maskell, M. R., II, 14. "To knowe the ioye of the endeles trinity."-Collect for Trinity Sunday, [ante, p. 94, 1. 27], ib. II, 28. (2) De Ant. Eccles. Rit., I, p. 102. See also III, 39, and III, 35, where he speaks of the "ornatura seu farcitura prophetiæ." |