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The Gurney Series of Religious Lyrics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Rossell Hope Robbins
Rossell Hope Robbins*
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

In the sale of the large collection of Gurney Manuscripts in 1920 one manuscript was overlooked, and still remains in the possession of Mr. Q. E. Gurney of Norwich, the brother of the former owner. Miss Allen supplies some information in regard to the date and the previous history of this manuscript; and a list of its contents (omitting, of course, the prose Abbey of the Holy Ghost) will be found in Carleton Brown's Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1939 , pp. 369 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 It was on loan and forgotten until the present owner rescued it from an attic!

2 Allen, Hope Emily, Writings ascribed to Richard Rolle (1927), p. 375, n. 6. There is no evidence to support the suggestion made in the Macro Sale Catalogue that this MS “probably belonged to the nunnery of Hampole in Yorkshire.”Google Scholar

3 i, 469–470. In all the following footnotes whenever a number is used in connection with a religious poem, it refers to the First Line Index in the second volume of Brown's Register.

4 Register, No. 2206; the text is not, one may observe, that of the East Midland recension (Register, No. 2207), as one might have expected from the provenance of the MS.

5 I am deeply indebted to Mr. Q. E. Gurney, the owner of the MS, for permission to publish these poems.

6 There is a couplet to the Virgin, written as prose, in a very illegible hand, on f.198b.

[M]arye Blisful Mayde and Mod[er without] pere;
This nyht thy blissyng [send], and thy Sonis dere.
Amen

7 On the flyleaf at the beginning of the MS in a different hand, of the fifteenth century, is an imperfect list of contents: A general confessimi maad to Iesu Cryst of gret devociun in verse (ii); How mannis entenciun should be to loue god and serue wiþ devotiun in verse (vii); Oreyson to þe Holy Trinite in verse (viii); Interpretaciun of þe name of IHS in verse (ix); A deuout preyer unto þe holy Sacrament of þe auteer in verse (x); To the Blessid Virgin (xiii or xiv).

8 vi (No. 1082); vii (No. 1095). See under footnotes to the texts.

9 This applies even to the two texts (vi and vii) which appear in many other MSS.

10 consceyuid, liuid, sinnid, brokin, belokin.

11 EETS, 40.

12 M. P., xiv, 1.

13 Ed. L. T. Smith.

14 EETS, 140.

15 myhttis, fadir, deyid, euil, spokin, euir, Petir, lyuis.

16 qwan, qwoso, qwiche, qwere.

17 ix, 9.

18 E.g., myhttis, ryhtwysnes.

19 viii, 9; ix, 12; ii, 1.

20 The Scandinavian words are not significant, e.g., ille (ii, 46); heyl (iii, 5); calle (viii, 24); sikirly (ix, 41, 44); deyid (ix, 46); betake (x, 17); cast (xi, 28); reysid (xi, 107); askis (xii, 15).

21 As, for example, in the carols of MS. Sloane 2593.

22 Vv. 116–120; 145–148; 153–156; 185–188; 225–228. These verses correspond to stanzas 3, 1, 2, 5, 4 of the text printed by Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1924), pp. 124–125.

23 See Register, No. 1055.

24 Religious Lyrics, etc., pp. 275–276.

25 For a discussion of de Caistre and his hymn (with a printing of ten texts) see the Rev. Dundas Harford in Norfolk and Norwich Archœological Society, xvii, 221–244.

26 As, for example, in Bodleian MS. 2604, f.83a.

27 The MS is beautifully written; Register, No. 1056, English prayer for Levacion; No. 1520 (listed under No. 1037) the first four lines of the very popular prayer to Jesus by the Holy Name.

28 Bodleian MS. 15834: Register, Nos. 1330, 1039, 487, 1036. MS. Harley 210: Register, Nos. 2068, 2076, 1940, and 302 (the prayer by the Seven Joys in Mirk's Festial).

29 MSS. Mostyn Hall 186, f.62a (No. 1136); Berkeley (Nos. 1075, 1435, 2501); Queen's College, Oxford 207 (No. 832); Cambridge University Library Dd.6.1 (No. 206); Bodleian 15799 (Nos. 559, 1055); Bodleian 15839 (No. 2237); also the three Borae mentioned in the text, and the two items in footnote 30.

30 Bodleian MS. 30605 is dated about 1340; the Catalogue states: “The volume was probably made for some one connected with the Court of Edward III.” The sole English prayer is a version of the Hours of the Cross (Register, No. 2067) which is split up over seven pages; a prose translation of the same Latin original occurs in the English Prymer EETS, 105, pp. 15. The other early Horœ is Bodleian MS. 2604, of the second half of the xiv century. It has three rimed prayers in English: No. 1330 from the Speculum Christiani; No. 1082 a Meditation on the Passion in 154 lines found in many MSS including our Gurney MS., and in four prayer books of some sort; No. 1461 a unique prayer of confession.

31 Wilmart, A., Les Auteurs spirituelles et textes dévots du moyen âge latin (Paris, 1932), p. 25.Google Scholar

32 See Brown, Register, i, 440–442; Nos. 1545, 1506, 614, 808, are unpublished.

33 Ibid., i, 196.

34 Four pieces are still unpublished: Nos. 154, 1023, 814, 1224.

35 See for example: MSS Magdalene College, Cambridge 13 (Nos. 659, 1655, 1985, 2626); Corpus Christi College, Oxford 59 (Nos. 454, 975, 1370); Huntington El. 37.8.7, at end of a volume of Latin hymns (Nos. 1462, 1521, 1523, 1574, 2074). See also Durham Cathedral A. iv. 25 (No. 1361); Bodleian 2325 (Nos. 392, 685); English Prymer (No. 2246); Royal 2.B.x (No. 1088); Cotton Tiberius B.iii (No. 571); Harley 2896 (Nos. 703, 985); the York Hours (Nos. 1217, 1230, 1807).

36 Bodleian MS. 21575 with Nos. 1499, 1588, 625, 350.

37 Bodleian MS. 27691 with Nos. 1002, 474, 2661, 1328. The prayers in this MS are exceptionally artistic; the form is rime royal.

38 Royal MS. 17.A.xxvii with Nos. 639, 1330, 566, 832. Like Bodleian MS. 21575 it includes an Arma Christi.

39 See Register, i, 105.

40 But not so marked in the devotions of the average practising Christian as in the monks' books, e.g. B.M. MS. Additional 37049, a Carthusian work. See too my article, “Private Prayers in Middle English,” in SP.

41 See Register, i, 409–411, written later than 1405, the date of MS.

42 See Register, i, under MSS heads.

43 About 60 items appearing in over 70 MSS.