The Weak Verb in the Work of the 'Gawain'-PoetAuthor(s): Mabel DaySource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1919), pp. 413-415Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4623506 .

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

THE WEAK VERB IN THE WORKS OF THE 'GAWAIN'-POET.

A striking peculiarity of the poems of Cleanness and Pearl, and, in some degree, of Patience and Gawain, is the occasional omission, in certain connexions, of the final -d of weak preterites and past participles. In the four poems I have noted 30 cases, 21 of which occur before a vowel or unstressed h, or unstressed voiced th, the stems of the verbs in

question ending in 1, n, r, i.e. a dental continuant, or a vowel (or in Pearl, in p). The cases are as follows:

(1) before a vowel or unstressed h:

For, marre oper madde, morne & mype, Pearl 359; Ho wyrle out on Pe weder, Cleanness 475 a; He sy3e Per swey in asent, Cleanness 788 a (according to NED.

(see under sway), this verb was conjugated both strong and weak, but all the examples of the strong conjugation it quotes come from these poems, i.e. this line, the next example, and Gawain 1796, quoted below);

Swe aboute sodamas, Cleanness 956 a; & Pay forloyne her fayth, Cleanness 1165 a; & tome hit to grounde, Cleanness 1234 b; & walle al aboute, Cleanness 1390 b; & quos deth so he de3yre he dreped als fast, Cleanness 1648; Hef & hale vpon hy3t, Patience 219 a; & 3et I say as I seet, Patience 313 a; He were a bleaunt of blwe, Gawain 1928 a (cp. wered, 2037).

In a marginal note to Cleanness 1327, 'pat he ful clanly bi-cnv his

carp bi pe laste,' Morris says that the MS looks like 'bicuver.' If this were so, it would give an additional example, but 'bi-cnv' gives better sense, and also appears to me to be the reading of the MS. On the other hand, Cleanness 69 b, 'sower hym Pe pryd,' where the defective allitera- tion demands some emendation, can most economically be altered by taking 'sower' as = 'so wer' = 'so wer[n],' 'so denied.'

In nearly all these examples the loss of final -d causes the loss of a

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414 Miscellaneous Notes

syllable in the line. Not only are none of the lines thereby made defective in scansion, but in a great number the addition of -d would destroy the 2-syllable mid-dip which is characteristic of ME. alliterative verse, e.g. Cleanness 788, 956. This suggests that the omission is not due to the scribe, but to the poet himself. To test this, let us remove final -d in other places where the change would result in the loss of a syllable. Taking the first 100 lines of Cleanness, the poem where this omission is specially common, we get the following cases: 19, 24, 59, 62, in which the scansion is equally correct; 55b 'arn bayted & slayne,' 87 b 'swyed on blonke3,' 92 b 'dressed his seete,' where the line is made defective; 65 a 'Anoper nayed also,' 66 a 'I haf 3erned & 3at,' 69 a '& I haf wedded a wyf,' 85 a 'pen pay cayred & com.' where the line, though not defective, becomes of a much less common type than before. None of the lines are brought nearer to the prevailing type, as are practically all where -d is omitted in the text.

(2) before unstressed voiced th: I hope pat mote merked wore, Pearl 142; I hope Pat gostly wat3 Pat porpose, Pearl 185; A py3t coroune 3et wer Pat gyrle, Pearl 205; For mony ben calle, pa3 fewe be myke3, Pearl 572; Of carpe Pe kynde Pese properte3, Pearl 752; so marre Pise oper, Cleanness 279 b; & pay nay pat pay nolde, Cleanness 805 a; sware Pe noyse, Cleanness 1415 b; & he nay Pat he nolde, Gawain 1836.

In these and the following examples the metre gives no help. There are a few other cases in Gawain : 1796 a 'Sykande ho swe3e

doun' (? swe3 adoun; cp. Cleanness 953 a 'Pe rayn rueled adoun,' Gawain 254 a 'Li3t luflych adoun'); 1595 b '& 3edoun Pe water' (probably a scribal error for '3ede doun'); 1729 a '& 3e he lad hem, bi-lag men'; 194 b 'a pwarle knot alofte' (cp. NED. thwerl); also Patience 141 b 'wrastel togeder.'

At the end of the line there are four cases: '3ark,' Cleanness 652; 'chaunge,' 713 (these two being probably mere scribal errors); 'mynne' (rhyming with 'Per-inne'), Gawain 1769; 'fleme,' Pearl 1177. This also occurs in rhyme:

Me payed ful ille to be out fleme So sodenly of at fayre regioun.

NED. takes 'out fleme' as a compound noun = exile. The compound is

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Miscellaneous Notes 415

not found elsewhere. The simple noun is not given in NED. later than 1305, and stands by itself without any following preposition. The verb, on the other hand, is common in alliterative poetry, and is followed by the prepositions from, of, out of; cp. Pearl 334 'Ne how fer of folde Pat man me fleme'; Cleanness 596 '& harde honyse3 rise oper & of his erde fleme3'; 31 'For he ?at flemus vch fylJe fer fro his hert'; and other

examples noted in the Glossaries of the alliterative poems of Troy Book, Morte Arthur and Alexander; cp. also Hoccleve De Reg. Princ. 2788 'Lawe is nye flemede out of this contree'; Merline 426 (Percy Folio I. 435) 'that hee had fleemed out of the Land.' The adverb 'sodenly' is much more natural in connexion with a past participle than with a noun; cp. Troy Book 12435 'And othir fuersly be flemyt,' Morte Arthur 2738 'And fremdly o Fraunce be flemede for euer.'

It seems to me that these examples point to some dialectal or other

peculiarity in the language of the poet, which is more conspicuous in the presumably early poems of Pearl and Cleanness than in Gawain, occurring generally, though not exclusively, in connexion with certain sounds, and found in rhyme, as in the exacting rhyme-scheme of Pearl. I have not noticed this peculiarity elsewhere, except possibly in two cases of the verb 'forsloth': 'I haue for-sleupe pi seruyce' (Metrical Version

of the 51st Psalm, 141, EETS. 15, where other Mss. read' forslowpid '), 'Ich....... For-sleuthe in my seruice' (Piers Plowman, C-Text, viii. 52). Here the final consonant of the stem is again a dental continuant, and it is followed in one case by voiced th, in the other by a vowel.

MABEL DAY. LONDON.

THE DECEMBER ' EMBLEME' OF ' THE SHEPHEARDS' CALENDER.'

The emblem 'Vivitur ingenio: caetera mortis erunt,' supplied by Hughes in his edition of 1715 to the December Eclogue of The Shepheards Calender, appears to have passed without remark, except by Professor de Sl1incourt (Spenser's Minor Poems, Oxford, MCMX, p. 515). The existence of the gloss for an emblem would seem to justify the attempt to rectify the apparent omission from the Quartos and the Folio, but we have no evidence for the authority of Hughes's suggestion. The November emblem, however, gives a possible clue to the missing emblem, if it ought to be supplied.

The November and the December Eclogues are both adaptations from Marot, the name 'Colin' being taken over with the rest of the

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