‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 172: A new edition of a Middle English-Latin lyric, with commentary

ABSTRACT

This article presents a new and extended edition of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’, with a full translation and commentary. This Middle English-Latin bilingual lyric of the fourteenth century is written haphazardly in the upper margin of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 172, fol. 55 r, and is annotated with alterations and variants indicative of compositional and perhaps compilational activity. Through literary analysis of the lyric’s prosodic form and homiletic context, and through a careful assessment of its mise-en-page and palaeographic features, this article produces a dynamic edition which preserves the layers of accretion and revision present in the manuscript text.

KEYWORDS:

• Middle English
• Latin
• manuscript
• lyric
• edition

I. An edition and translation of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’.

This article presents an edited version of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’, and a Modern English translation. It is almost impossible to produce the poem as it appears on the manuscript page in a readable print format, and this edition presents a version of the manuscript text which is mediated by the analysis of poetic style and graphic layout in the article above. It identifies a central text, and variant readings have been placed in the critical apparatus. Lines have been visually re-arranged in accordance with the apparent direction indicated by the insertion of a diagonal line in the text. Modern lineation has been introduced, deletions and insertions have been indicated in the critical apparatus, and manuscript punctuation has been retained. Collectively and individually, these changes necessarily fix the text in a less dynamic form than that of the original in situ, but the retention of variant readings in the critical apparatus points to the layers of composition and revision present in the manuscript. Crucially, the edition can only present a single reading of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’, but the text of the manuscript remains open to radical re-evaluation. Both Macray’s edition (Macray, Hunt & Watson, 1999, col. 180) and that of Furnivall (1880) were consulted in the production of this edition, and I follow Macray’s reading for a number of the less clear manuscript readings of abbreviated Latin in lines 2 and 3.

I. Edition

God send vs þe dew of heuene · gratiam spiritus sancti ·and Reyn · fro þe cloudes of he-uene · per doctrinam divini verbi, And þirle þe our erþe and open our land · ad contricionem animi et confessionem peccati ·mocionem cordis humani · stiringe of mannes souleid est ihesum filium dei vivi   comynge of goddes soneand bryng forth a blome of sich feng and sich fuysoun ·þat be our bote and our sauacioun ·Critical Apparatus₁ us þe] ^vs þe^₃ And þirle] And open and þirle₃ þe] ^þe^₆ a blome] with a fruit below₆ of sich feng and sich fuysoun] with and a borioun · below_6–7 and bryng forth] with and bryng forth a blome and a bursoun³³ · of hele and sauacioun · below₇ bote] with –bones below and following₇ sauacioun ·] followed by displaced l. 5a, and then in hiis verbis desideravit propheta dei³⁴· quattuor ·

II. Modern English Translation

God send us the dew of heaven · by the grace of the holy spirit·and Rain from the clouds of heaven · through the teaching of the divine word ·and pierce you our earth and open our land · for contrition of the soul and the confession of sin ·through the motion of the human heart · stirring of man’s soulthat is through Jesus son of the living God  coming of God’s sonand bring forth a bloom of such profit and such plenty ·that be our help and our salvation ·

Critical Apparatus

₁ us the] ^us the^

₃ and pierce] and open and pierce

₃ you] ^you^

₆ a bloom] with a fruit below

₆ of such profit and such plenty] with and a bud · below

_6–7 and bring forth] with and bring forth a bloom and a shoot · of hell and salvation · below

₇ help] with –petitions below and following

₇ salvation ·] followed by displaced l. 5a, and then in these words the prophet of God desired³⁵ · four ·

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 172, fol. 55 r (upper margin)

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Daniel Wakelin, Julia Boffey, Niamh Kehoe and Winfried Rudolf for their comments and suggestions on draft versions of this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader for their helpful and generous feedback. Research for this article was initially developed with the support of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ On the thematic and prosodic features of the lyric genre, see for example Burke (1951: 174), Langer (1953: 159), Woolf (1968: 1–3), Greentree (2001: 13).

² Editions in Furnivall (1880) and Macray, Hunt & Watson (1999: I. col. 180). Gray (1972: 261 n. 39) briefly discusses ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ in a note, on which see further below, nn. 4, 14. Quotations from ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ in this article are taken from the edition and translation produced here, unless otherwise indicated. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. The use of italics within quotations from ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ indicates expansion of manuscript abbreviation, unless otherwise indicated.

³ Further to the studies cited above, see also Boffey (2005), Fletcher (2005), Schendl and Wright (2011).

⁴ The link between ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ and Isaiah 45:8 is noted by Furnivall (1880), and also by Gray (1972: 261 n. 39)  in the context of Annunciation poetry and the lyric ‘I Syng of a Mayden’, on which see further below. On the relationship between the poem, the Annunciation tract and the rorate coeli, see below, especially pp. 227–231.

⁵ See also, Hunt (1991: 26–27) and Laing (1993: 131). On the manuscript’s physical composition, see ‘MS. Digby 172’, Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries. On the manuscript’s ownership, see Watson (1978: 290) and Macray, Hunt & Watson (1999: II. 1–5, 77).

⁶ Macray’s catalogue dates this text to the thirteenth century or end of the twelfth century, but Hunt and Watson argue that a ‘reference to an opinion of “Lincoln”, i.e. Grosseteste, on fol. 60^V’ precludes a twelfth-century dating (Macray, Hunt & Watson 1999: I. col. 180, II. 77). The writing is above top line, and continues in this way throughout the booklet (Ibid: II. 77). Writing did not move to below top line until about 1230, after which it quickly became dominant (Ker & Watson 1985: 71–74).

⁷ The hand is difficult to assess, the text being both marginal and possibly a draft under revision by the author. Many features archetypal of anglicana are present: distinctly rotund modules; two-compartment a; figure-8 g; looped d; split r with short descender below the baseline; the pen is held at an upright angle, such that the 45-degree strokes on d are not strongly accented, which in combination with the heavy upper lobe of a (see ‘and’, second line) and the sub-baseline limb of h (see ‘heuene’, first line) suggests that the script is post-thirteenth-century, and potentially some way into the fourteenth (on these features of anglicana script, see Parkes (1979: xiv–xvi)). Further evidence for the dating of the text and for the process of its encoding on fol. 55 r can be found in the other marginal notes: in the upper margin are two titles, one over each column of the tract: ‘de anunciacione’ and ‘beate virginis’. Such titles continue on the following leaves of the booklet. The b of ‘beate’ exhibits a large umbrella bifurcation, a feature which can be dated between approximately 1270 and 1340 (see ibid). The titles predate the poem, for the second line of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ is broken after the ‘he-’ of ‘heuene’ in order to avoid collision with ‘de anunciacione’. The brokenness of a number of strokes hints at the earliest influence of secretary hand (see h of ‘sich’, fourth line; a of ‘gratiam’, first line), but this is not pronounced (see ibid.: xxii–xxiii).

⁸ On the terminology of sentential code-switching, see Schendl (2003: 306–307).

⁹ Emphases here have been added by me.

¹⁰ ‘God send us the dew of heaven by the grace of the holy spirit / and Rain from the clouds of heaven through the teaching of the divine word / and pierce you our earth and open our land for contrition of the soul and the confession of sin’. Italics in this footnote indicate the Latin segments of the original text being translated, and not expansion of abbreviations.

¹¹ Further on the rhyme scheme, see below.

¹² On this, and further on the antiphonal context of Isaiah 45:8, see below, pp. 229–231.

¹³ The tract’s lemma is recorded in Macray, Hunt & Watson (1999: I. col. 180).

¹⁴ On the link between Isaiah 45:8 and ‘I Syng of a Mayden’, see Raw (1960); Gray (1972: 105), who also links the biblical verse and 'I Syng of a Mayden' to 'God send vs þe dew of heuene' through the image of falling dew (261 n. 39); Steffes (2002). Steffes (2002: 69) also draws attention to another connection between the rorate coeli and the Feast of the Annunciation in the Spicer’s play, The Annunciation and the Visitation, of the York mystery cycle.

¹⁵ On the ‘central’ singularity and significance of the simile in ‘I Syng of a Mayden’, see Gray (1972 : 104–105).

¹⁶ For an overview of variant styles and approaches within lyrics categorised as ‘Marian’, see Saupe (1997: Introduction) and Whitehead (2005: 116–18).

¹⁷ On the flower as a Marian symbol, see Saupe (1997: Introduction).

¹⁸ Christiania Whitehead discussed this lyric at the Workshop on Middle English Lyrics: Form, Focus, Function (Department of English, Queen Mary University of London, 21 Feb 2014).

¹⁹ On the use of Isaiah 45:8 as antiphon and versicle see Steffes (2002: 69, 71–72 n. 4).

²⁰ As expressed in Luke 1:35, ‘ei Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te’ (‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you’); Vulgate quotation here from Weber and Gryson (2007). Note Machan’s comparable comments above, p. 4.

²¹ On fourfold exegesis and the senses of scripture, see Cousins (2000: 122–123).

²² Schendl (2003: 307) discusses the terminology of ‘embedded’ and ‘matrix’ or ‘base’ languages in bilingual and multilingual texts.

²³ On which, see Fisher (2012: pp. 1–31, esp pp. 15–16). Fisher says also that scholars must challenge the assumption that ‘Revision and alteration can be distinguished from composition’ (p. 18).

²⁴ The metre of ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’ is irregular, on which see further directly below. Duncan (2005: esp. 20) discusses ‘the hypothesis … that the number of syllables per line may be a crucial poetic constraint in some Middle English verse’.

²⁵ Lines 1 and 2 each comprise two trimetrical half-lines; in each case the first  half-line is in Middle English and has medial rhyme (‘heuene’), while the second half-line is in Latin and carries alliteration (‘spiritus sancti’; ‘doctrinam divini’) and end-rhyme through -i inflections. In line 3, both the English and the Latin half-lines are extended to accommodate four metrical stresses each, with c-alliteration in the Latin, and end-rhyme of the -i inflections, but no English medial rhyme. In Lines 4 and 5, the order of the bilingual half-lines is inverted: the Latin half-lines participate in medial rhyme of -i inflections; the English is again trimetrical, without rhyme but with echoed -ynge/-inge and -es / -e inflections between the lines. Lines 6 and 7 form a rhyming couplet of tetrametrical lines, line 6 with alliteration on b- and f-, and line 7 with more limited alliteration on b-.

²⁶ Of these, Furnivall (1880) represents only Alternative 4 in his edition.

²⁷ In these two alternative lines, the standard two-compartment a is replaced on four occasions by an a formed of a single lobe and a small ‘tick’ on the upper-right (both a graphs in ‘sauacioun’ in Alternative 1; the a graphs of ‘and a’ in Alternative 3). In the main poem, half of the d graphs have incomplete loops, while all loops are fully joined in the alternative lines. Alternatives 1 and 3, in addition to significantly paler ink, have much larger modules and a slightly greater occurrence of broken strokes. For example, compare the d of ‘and’ in Alternative 1, which has a broken stroke on the top of its loop, with the rounded d graphs in the first line of the poem; also compare the g of ‘bryng’ in Alternative 1 with that of ‘bryng’ directly above in the main poem, the former exhibiting a more pronounced serif on the top compartment, and three breaks in the bottom compartment. The b graphs of the main poem all include unusual concave ascenders (‘bryng’ and ‘blome’ have especially deep concavity), which is also noticeable in Alternative 4; in Alternative 1 and 3 all three b graphs have much straighter ascenders, but when magnified a very shallow concavity is still visible in the middle of each ascender.

²⁸ On the importance of ‘duct and aspect’ in identifying hands, see Horobin (2009: 371–372). Neither duct nor aspect are consistent in ‘God send vs þe dew of heuene’. Sometimes this is due to spatial limitations imposed upon the writer: in the second line of the poem, the Latin half-line ‘per doctrinam divini verbi’ is vertically compressed as it is diverted to pass underneath the reader’s title of ‘de anunciacione’. The causes of other inconsistencies are less clear: in the second line of the manuscript poem the letters are well-spaced, while the fourth line has much greater connectivity between its graphs. Both of these lines have twenty-three letters within the first 3.7 centimetres (which is the full length of the second line before it breaks during ‘heuene’), but in the fourth line, the writer has prioritised creating large gaps between words (seventeen of the letters are touching at least one other letter), whereas in the second line, the writer has spread the space more evenly between letters (only ten of the letters are touching another letter). The spacing of letters in the alternative wordings beneath the main lyric text appears to be similarly variable.

²⁹ Wakelin (2014: 293–297) reviews metrical and prosodic revisions made to a collection of late fifteenth-century songs by a copyist, with the nature of these revisions indicating that the copyist was also the author of the songs.

³⁰ Sourced from Capelli (2011: esp. pp. 162, 166, 167, 176, 285–86, 386), and also drawing on the reading of these words in Furvinall (1880: 74). A final abbreviation follows this line, and I follow Furnivall’s transcription of ‘4or’ ('quattuor').

³¹ Translation of Furnivall’s text is my own.

³² The abbreviation here expanded as ‘inhumanatus’ is not represented precisely in Cappelli’s dictionary of Latin abbreviations, and alternative expansions from other comparable abbreviations are ‘inhumanus’ and ‘ihesus’ (Cappelli 1961: esp. 165–66). The preference here for ‘inhumanatus’ arises from the elaborate macron over the ‘u’, and the relevance of the idea of ‘incarnation’ to the tract on folio 55 r .

³³ ‘bursoun’ in note 3, for which I have found no definition, perhaps should be amended to ‘borioun’ or ‘burioun’; the two distinguishing letters in the manuscript, ‘u’ and tall ‘s’ are not dissimilar in appearance to an open-topped ‘o’ and a tall ‘i’. N.B. That Furnivall (1880) reads this word as ‘burioun’, and it has been translated as such below.

³⁴ Or, ‘inhumanatum verbum desideravit prophecia dei’.

³⁵ Or, ‘the prophecy of God desired the word incarnate’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel A. Burns

Rachel Burns is a Departmental Lecturer in Old and Early Middle English at Oxford University. She works on medieval literature, with particular focus on Old English verse, manuscript studies, materiality, and verse metre.