: Early English Alliterative Poems in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century by Morris Richard Editor - English poetry Middle English 1100-1500 Early English Text Society

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The Pearl Cleanness Patience

Notes Glossarial Index

PREFACE

The following poems are taken from a well known manuscript in the Cottonian collection, marked Nero A. x, which also contains, in the same handwriting and dialect, a metrical romance, wherein the adventures of Sir Gawayne with the "Knight in Green," are most ably and interestingly described.

The manuscript from which Mr. Halliwell has taken his text is not the original copy, nor even a literal transcript of it. It exhibits certain orthographical and grammatical peculiarities unknown to the Northumbrian dialect which have been introduced by a Midland transcriber, who has here and there taken the liberty to adapt the original text to the dialect of his own locality, probably that one of the North Midland counties, where many of the Northumbrian forms of speech would be intelligible.

But, in the present poems, the uniformity and consistency of the grammatical forms is so entire, that there is indeed no internal evidence of subsequent transcription into any other dialect than that in which they were originally written. However, the dialect and grammatical peculiarities will be considered hereafter.

Again, in the course of transcription into another dialect, any literary merit that the author's copy may have originally possessed would certainly be destroyed. But the poems before us are evidently the work of a man of birth and education; the productions of a true poet, and of one who had acquired a perfect mastery over that form of the English tongue spoken in his own immediate locality during the earlier part of the fourteenth century. Leaving out of consideration their great philological worth, they possess an intrinsic value of their own as literary compositions, very different from anything to be found in the works of Robert of Gloucester, Manning, and many other Early English authors, which are very important as philological records, but in the light of poetical productions, cannot be said to hold a very distinguished place in English literature. The poems in the present volume contain many passages which, as Sir F. Madden truly remarks, will bear comparison with any similar ones in the works of Douglas or Spenser.

I conclude, therefore, that these poems were not transcribed from the Scotch dialect into any other, but were written in their own West-Midland speech in which we now have them.

A TEMPEST ON ?E SEE.

A STORME ON THE SE.

The poems in the present volume, three in number, seem to have been written for the purpose of enforcing, by line upon line and precept upon precept, Resignation to the will of God; Purity of life as manifested in thought, word, and deed; Obedience to the Divine command; and Patience under affliction.

Of her death he says:

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