COUNCIL OF The Percy Society. President. THE RT. HON. LORD BRAYBROOKE, F.S.A. THOMAS AMYOT, Esq. F.R.S. TREAS. S.A. WILLIAM HENRY BLACK, Esq. WILLIAM CHAPPELL, Esq. F.S.A. Treasurer. J. PAYNE COLLIER, Esq. F.S.A. T. CROFTON CROKER, Esq. F.S.A., M.R.I.A. PETER CUNNINGHAM, Esq. REV. ALEXANDER DYCE. WILLIAM JERDAN, Esq. F.S.A., M.R.S.L. CAPTAIN JOHNS, R.M. T. J. PETTIGREW, Esq. F.R.S., F.S.A. LEWIS POCOCK, Esq. F.S.A. E. F. RIMBAULT, Esq. F.S.A. Secretary. WILLIAM SANDYS, Esq. F.S.A. WILLIAM J. THOMS, Esq. F.S.A. THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq. M.A., F.S.A. PREFACE. THE curious poem of The Owl and the Nightingale has already been printed by the Roxburghe Club, in 1838, under the title, "The Owl and the Nightingale, a poem of the twelfth century." It is found in two manuscripts, both of the thirteenth century; one in the British Museum, MS. Cotton. Calig. A. IX., from which the present text is printed; the other in the library of Jesus College, Oxford. The date of the composition of this piece is a matter of some doubt. Mr. Stevenson, the editor of the Roxburghe volume, believed that it was written in the reign of Richard I, and that the king Henry, whose death is alluded to at p. 38 of the present edition, was Henry II. On the other hand, Sir Frederick Madden (note on Warton's History of English Poetry, new edition, 1840, vol. i. p. 25), thinks the king alluded to was Henry III, and that our poem was composed early in the reign of Edward I. I confess that I am inclined to think the king referred to was Henry II. The Cottonian MS. is the one which contains the earliest copy of Layamon, which is followed by a brief chronicle brought down only to the beginning of the reign of Henry III. These English poems appear to be written in the same, or a contemporary hand, and I have little doubt that the whole MS. was written (perhaps early) in that reign, so that Henry III could not be spoken of as dead. At the same time, it does not appear to me, from a perusal of the passage in which king Henry is mentioned, that it must necessarily have been written soon after his death,-it may have been composed late in the reign of John. I consider the frequent quotations from the proverbs of king Alfred (which appear to have been popular during the twelfth, and earlier part of the thirteenth centuries, and are not, I think, alluded to in any writers of the end of the thirteenth), a proof of the antiquity of this poem. These proverbs are mentioned by Ailred of Rievaux, in the first half of the twelfth century. But it is very singular that, although one copy of the Proverbs of Alfred* is found in the same MS. in Jesus College, Oxford, which contains the Owl and the Nightingale, yet not one of the quotations in this latter poem is *The two existing texts of the Proverbs of Alfred are printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 170. taken from the texts of the Proverbs of Alfred now extant; they seem to have been taken from a poem written in a different metre and style. The propriety of ascribing this poem to the pen of Nicholas de Guildford, appears also to be doubtful. John de Guildford is said to have been mentioned in a lost leaf of the Jesus College MS. to have been the author of a religious poem in that volume, and he has been supposed to be the brother, or a near relation, of Nicholas de Guildford, and the author of the other poems in the same volume. This however is not a necessary consequence; and the way in which Nicholas de Guildford is mentioned in our poem, leads rather strongly to the presumption that he. was the author. He is represented as residing at Portesham in Dorsetshire, and appears to have been smarting under the disappointment of some ambitious views. I have added to this edition of the Owl and Nightingale, seven smaller poems, preserved in the same Cottonian manuscript. They are all curious, either for their language or for the sentiments they contain; and they are by no means unfavourable specimens of the English lyric poetry of the thirteenth century. The sixth is a collection of political adages which were in vogue through several centuries, and of which a partial |