Abstract
In the Towneley Mactacio Abel and in N-town, the text specifies a jawbone as the murder weapon, and there is some evidence that this weapon was also used in other cycles in England. In Towneley (11. 323-24), With cheke-bon, or that I blyn,/ Shall I the and thi life twyn; in N-town (1. 149) With J)is chavyl bon I xal sie ]эе.2 In the York cycle, the crucial two pages covering the murder of Abel are missing from the manuscript, yet there is strong likelihood that the jawbone had been featured here also. The Cursor Mundi, which had been written not long before the presumed date of composition of the earliest York plays (1340-50), is recognized as a source for material in the plays with similarities in style, meter, and language; and the editor of the Middle English metrical paraphrase of the Old Testament (c.1400) writes that this poem was in turn influenced by some of the York plays. In both of these long poetic narratives, Cain uses a jawbone, further identified as the jawbone of an ass:
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