Some Problems in the Editions of the Menologium with Special Reference to Lines 81a, 184b and 206a

Abstract

THE Menologium is a late tenth-century Old English minor poem uniquely preserved in British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B. i., together with a version of the Old English Orosius, Maxims II and the C-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As far as I am aware, there are no less than seventeen editions of the poem, published or unpublished.1 The most recent edition published is O’Keeffe’s contained in her semi-diplomatic edition of the C-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.2 As far as the Menologium is concerned, her edition seems rather problematic, primarily because her editing policy seems often inconsistent. She sometimes faithfully follows the scribe’s (manuscript) readings rejecting alternative, and seemingly more plausible readings suggested by many editors (see lines 55a, 107a, 134a, 188a, 218a),3 while she sometimes follows earlier editors’ debatable readings with (often seemingly unnecessary) emendations rather than the original text (see lines 101b, 146b, 151a, 156a, 206a). Similarly, her criteria in recognizing half-lines does not seem to be quite consistent; as seems reasonable for a semi-diplomatic edition, she often follows the metrical punctuation given by the scribe (see especially line 41), but she sometimes follows earlier editors rather than the scribe (see lines 68b, 71b, 79b), and in one case (line 230), follows her own criteria disregarding the alliterative/metrical tradition of OE poetry.4