'Hunting for Souls': A Newly Discovered Middle English Lyric

Abstract

OXFORD, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 26 is made up of five booklets bound together, but is primarily known for its third section, dating to the fourteenth century, which contains theological works such as Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum Ecclesiae (ff.183v–204v), and Richard Rolle’s De conuersione peccatoris ad Dominum (ff.167–183r).1 Little attention has been given to the rest of the manuscript.2 However, the fourth section of the manuscript (ff.205–231), dated to 1234 in a chronological note on f.212v, contains two Middle English lyrics written in available spaces on f.211r3 and f.229v. Both are written in the same thirteenth-century protogothic hand.4 The latter lyric has hitherto gone unnoticed.5 Although the lyric initially appears secular in its original purpose and content, the surrounding text lends insight into the poem’s possible use in preaching. The lyric, written out as prose, occupies four lines in the bottom margin of the leaf, and the final line is largely illegible owing to severe rubbing. It follows a religious marginal note in Latin, and the word ‘Anglice’ introduces the shift into English. I have added line breaks and imposed modern word divisions in my transcription. Curled brackets indicate where the ink is faded or a graph is unclear but probable, and ellipses indicate that the word or graph is illegible due to rubbing. The lyric reads: