A Note on the Owl

Abstract

In reply to Professor Tupper's article on the Owl in PMLA 49 (1934), which reached me as late as April 12th of this year (1935), I beg to state certain points which are fundamental to my position. I read unnderpat knows, in 1. 1091, because no other reading yet proposed makes either good sense or good grammar. Furthermore, paleography condemns the -yat of the Jesus MS., the y being in a late hand. wen (p) certainly occurred in the original MS., but even the Cotton scribe has, in thirty-one places, substituted a w which appears to have been his personal usage. Much more frequently he substituted thorn (p), as in the passage under discussion. custom of praying for the soul requires further elucidation. Says Professor Tupper (p. 407): Let us substitute for recent opinion with its scant foundation the convincing evidence of medieval documents. I am well aware that the evidence as yet adduced for any theory is fragmentary; but I fail to see that Professor Tupper has presented convincing evidence for a single one of his contentions. Apparently he assumes, as perhaps Atkins did before him, that the word merci indicates that the king prayed for is dead, but certainly this is not proved. I know of no pontifical or ecumenical decree prescribing the conditions or forms of prayer for the soul, and wonder whether the custom did not originate among the laity, or even in some non-Christian sect of the late Roman empire. It is even possible that the poet wrote merci merely because he wanted a rime with Henri. Professor Tupper points out further (p. 413): The frequency of underyat (Stratmann-Bradley) and the nonappearance, in Middle-English or Anglo-Saxon, of preteritepresent underwat, which Hinckley, following StratmannBradley, seeks to support by 'continental cognates.' Why fashion a hapax to fit an obviously false theory of date, when the natural interpretation of underyat, ' discovered,' 'perceived,' is in keeping with the unimpeachable evidence of the formula?