ΤΟ

DR. JAMES A. H. MURRAY

WHOSE NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY' WILL BE ONE OF THE

GLORIES OF ENGLAND

AND IS THE

ADMIRATION OF HER CHILDREN BEYOND THE SEAS

IN RECOGNITION NOT LESS OF HIS QUALITIES AS A MAN

THAN OF HIS EMINENCE AS A SCHOLAR

PREFACE

THIS first instalment of a reasonably complete collection of the Biblical extracts scattered throughout the Old English prose texts has been undertaken in the interest of the Biblical scholar, the professional student of English speech, and the person who desires to gain in the easiest possible manner a slight reading knowledge of Old English prose. For this volume the two representative prose authors of the two chief epochs, Alfred and Elfric, have been chosen; and the Latin originals, the indispensable medium of interpretation and comparison, have been printed at the foot of the page.

The Biblical scholar should know that in his domain I am the merest amateur, and that I leave to him the task of determining the precise readings which have been followed. by our translators, when a choice of readings was possible. That the Vulgate was not always strictly followed is probable, and in some cases, as now and again in the Alfredian translation of the Cura Pastoralis, is certain. Elfric may have followed the Latin homilists whom he adapts, and thus may have been led to deviate here and there from the Vulgate text; but his relation to these sources has as yet been too little investigated to admit of a present determination of the amount of this variation. The exact decision will always be rendered difficult by the paraphrastic nature of the version in some cases; by the tendency of Old English writers to vary their expression in different places, even when rendering the very same original; and by the frequent impossibility, in the case of the Gospels, of deciding which of the Evangelists the translator had in mind. Under the last head, a kind of

'contamination' is not unusual, showing that the translator is making or following a kind of harmony of the Gospels, and accordingly producing a composite narrative, in which the exact shares of the several Evangelists cannot always be ascertained with precision.

Where I have adduced the so-called Itala, my dependence has been upon Sabatier.

The professed student of English speech should know that I have followed the best printed texts of each work, taking no liberties with them save as respects punctuation and capitals, the use of diacritical marks for quantity, &c., and to some extent in the joining or separation of words. Thus for the Pastoral Care and Orosius I have followed Sweet; for the Ecclesiastical History, Miller; for the Laws, Schmid's second edition; and for Ælfric, Thorpe's edition of the Homilies. In the slight changes referred to, I have studied consistency and the ready apprehension of the text. To this end, I have not scrupled to change the traditional punctuation of the Vulgate, partly because I have not found entire uniformity in the various impressions, and partly because I have no superstitious reverence for the received usage when uniform, since it is not seldom at variance with grammar and sense. Accordingly, the punctuation of the Old English and that of the Latin have been brought into some degree of conformity, though there are instances where this has proved impracticable.

In the marking of quantity, and of derivative e and o, there are, I trust, but few oversights not corrected in the Errata. The words which geminate an originally single consonant after a long vowel have given me most trouble, and here I shall no doubt seem inconsistent, and in some cases am no doubt really so; in general, I have omitted the macron, but have retained it where the sonancy of the following consonant may probably have favoured the retention of length. Proper names have been left unmarked, since as yet there is no general agreement among scholars as to the quantity of the syllables in even the commonest Scriptural names.

I have no doubt exposed myself to criticism by the use of

the hyphen for joining words left separate in the standard editions, and, in the case of a few common conjunctions, by actually writing two or three words (like for pon pe) as one. In these cases I must be content to receive the censure of those who are otherwise minded.

The use of brackets and parentheses is most frequent in the Pastoral Care. Here I have followed Sweet (see the Table of Abbreviations), except that I have indicated the chief variant readings of the Hatton MS. by a parenthetical word followed by H.

The beginner in the study of Old English will find in the present volume a convenient chrestomathy, with the matter of which he is already acquainted, and which can almost be read from the outset, without grammar or dictionary, by the help either of the modern English version, or, better, by that of the Latin. He will likewise, by a comparison of the different renderings of the same passage, acquire a sense of the variations which the same translator permitted himself, the idiosyncrasies of each translator, and the changes in the language between one and another.

Here, indeed, is considerable material for the study of Old English semasiology, a study which, like that of English semasiology in general, has been too much neglected. What is an author's range of synonyms for a given idea? What is the range of his vocabulary, as distributed among such categories of synonyms? What are the peculiarities of his diction, as determined by these tests? Wherein does the diction of a given period, again, as judged by these standards, differ from that of another given period? It is evident that these inquiries are by no means otiose, and that the easiest and most promising introduction to the subject is through the medium of successive translations from the Latin, preferably from the same Latin text. Now there is no Latin text which fulfils the obvious conditions so well as the Vulgate. It is a tolerably unchanging document, and, directly or indirectly, in fragments of various length, it has been translated or paraphrased over and over again. The study of these renderings would occupy a large number of capable students of semasio