Die Glossen der Hs. British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A. III: Phonologie, Morphologie, Wortgeographie. (Reviews).

Die Glossen der Hs. British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A. III: Phonologie, Morphologie, Wortgeographie. (Europaische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XIV, Angelsachsische Sprache und Literatur 347.) By Wolfgang Kittlick. Frankfurt: Lang, 1998. Pp. 279.

Almost a century ago Jordan (1906: 12, fn. 1) asked for a detailed investigation into the language of the Cleopatra Glossaries contained in MS London, British Library Cotton Cleopatra A. iii (Cl). There has been quite a long wait, but now we do have a Berlin dissertation on that subject (directed by Klaus Dietz), and in many ways it has been worth the wait. It is almost certainly more thorough than anything Jordan could have reasonably expected at the time. Until the appearance of K.'s investigation researchers like Schabram (1965: 55-56) could only, more or less, repeat Jordan's (1906: 12) brief remark on Cl's heterodialectal nature. Whether, for instance, this was true of all the identifiable component parts of the glossaries remained unclear.

Cl (Ker 1957: No. 143) contains an incomplete alphabetical glossary A-P followed by glossae collectae entered by a different scribe not much later. The alphabetical glossary has independently drawn on these glossae collectae and used additional material from other sources. Dated by Ker "s. x med.", Cl has more recently been moved backward into the 930s. We are now certainly closer to Alfredian West Saxon, the languages of the Hatton manuscript of the Cura Pastoralis, the Lauderdale Orosius and the first hands of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, than to the later AEthelwoldian variety. It is generally accepted that Cl is a product of St Augustine's, Canterbury. The only printed edition is Wright (1884: Nos. VIII, XI, XII) who is not entirely reliable and lacks proper annotation. Stryker (1951) and Quinn (1956), both unpublished Stanford dissertations, concentrate on sources, but are again somewhat unreliable and only intermittently annotated. Rusche (1996), in an unpublished Yale dissertation directed by Fred C. Rob inson, is more ambitious and even has some good things, but is even less reliable than his predecessors and still without adequate commentary. The edition is a slipshod production full of errors and unacknowledged debts and is furthermore marred by preconceived ideas. K.'s quotations are from Stryker (1951) and Quinn (1956) (with occasional corrections to the text). Rusche's (1996) edition has been consulted.

A prerequisite for any inquiry into the linguistic status of the manuscript is, of course, the identification of the constituent parts and their possible relationships to other extant gloss material in as detailed a manner as possible. Building on previous research K. is able to present a concise and very useful overview (pp. 41-49) that identifies 23 layers (S1-23) or source batches ("Schichten") in the alphabetical glossary with only a comparatively small number of entries remaining without a source assigned. Here and in the later discussions the layers are numbered consecutively which may be somewhat confusing for readers, but then other solutions that might suggest themselves are probably equally hard on the uninitiated. At least initially there will be a lot of thumbing back and forth to consult the overview. I am also not quite sure whether I am entirely happy with the term Schicht in this connection. It suggests horizontal (or diachronic) entities when, in the first instance, we are dealing with materi al in largely identifiable batches brought together here for the first time. It is these individual batches that may (or may not) have extended transmission histories and may have been, for instance, partially translated at different times into other dialects, added to or modernized at various stages.

After the preliminaries (pp. 15-49) K. enters into the discussion of the phonology, graphemics, morphology and vocabulary (pp. 51-195). The exposition quite rightly concentrates on diachronically or diachronically relevant criteria, so no complete phonology, for instance, is to be expected here. Individual sections first offer concise descriptions of given criteria (largely based on the standard handbooks) and their usefulness and then proceed to present relevant forms and their distribution in the various batches. The presentation is almost invariably lucid and judicious, a model of its kind, as are the discussions of problematic items. The section dealing with the vocabulary lists words in Cl identified as dialect indicators by the more reliable word-geographical studies from Jordan (1906) on. In the first part of the results chapter (pp. 197-211) items previously discussed are grouped according to their diatopic and diachronic relevance, while the second part contains the important discussions of the indiv idual batches (S1-23). It turns out that indeed most batches are of Anglian origin and to a greater or lesser extent Westsaxonized. This does not come as much of a surprise in the case of the entries Cl has in common with the Epinal, Erfurt and Corpus Glossaries which are commonly held to be of Mercian origin, but this is also true of all the extensive Aldhelm material. Only three (minor) batches are of probable West Saxon origin, one may be Kentish. And the presence of material shared with Epinal (written in the last years of the 7th century) along with a rather archaic-looking Isidore batch gives an idea of the diachronic dimension of Anglo-Saxon glossography. Some Cl spellings are even of a more conservative aspect than their counterparts in Epinal. K.'s discussions of the diatopic and diachronic make-up of individual batches are again exemplary, the evidence being carefully sifted and weighed. A bibliography of works used (pp. 257-270) and Latin and Old English indexes (pp. 271-279) conclude the book. Pro of-reading has been very thorough: I was almost relieved to notice a roman G that should by rights be italic (p. 144, 1. 6). It should not go unmentioned that there are occasional suggestions (e.g., 53, fn. 48, 99, 116, fn. 100) that might be of use to the Toronto Dictionary of Old English.

With so much ground covered by K. there is bound to be occasion for minor criticisms. In a small number of cases relevant corrections in the manuscript might have been taken account of in the discussion. In the section on the palatal diphthongization of Germanic ae (p. 96), for instance, A 277 gearlice is quoted without reference to the fact that in the manuscript Anglian/Kentish-looking gerlice has been altered to gearlice by insertion of a. In section 3.1.6.3.3 (p. 71) (early West Saxon /ie/ (> /i (~ y)/, Late West Saxon /y/) ~ Anglian, Kentish /e/ (~ Northumbrian /ae/ < pre-Old English *a before /r/ + consonant + i-umlaut) D 31 cierde is corrected in the manuscript from earlier cerde (Westsaxonization > ie in the 930s?). C 547 hearges might have been mentioned in section 3.1.4.3 (p. 62; Southumbrian /ea/ (partly > Anglian, Late West Saxon /e/) ~ Northumbrian /a/ < pre-Old English *a before /r/ + consonant) as a has been inserted (again Westsaxonization of an Anglian form?). In the same section (p. 61) 135, 2 ungeberde is discussed and considered a possible Northumbrian form (the possibility of scribal error is admitted by K.). In point of fact, a in the manuscript is quite suspect: What exactly has happened here I have been unable to determine, but some sort of inept correcting has been done. N 40 hearma is altered from hearma by insertion of a and should possibly have received a mention in connection with ea-diphthongs (by breaking) that have apparently lost their second elements (p. 62, still in section 3.1.4.3). K. only adduces occurrences in early glossaries written by Continental scribes, but this phenomenon appears to occur occasionally elsewhere, cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A s.a. 633 hwerf for hwearf (Bately 1986: 28). He might also have referred to the parallel loss of the second element of co discussed by him in section 3.2.1.3 where Continental scribes are not mentioned. (Here and also in connection with lachen 'coat' (p. 135), which looks quite Old High German, the idea of Continental influence is int riguing.) In section 6.1.3 (p. 129; <u(u)> for <w>) 18, 4 lauwerce is altered from lawerce by insertion of u. In section 9.1.8 (p. 168) of the morphology the two instances of the plural preterite indicative ending -en (for the usual -on/-an) in Cl are cited. In one of them, P 57 gelumpen, the e of the ending (superscript in the manuscript) replaces earlier a. With the exceptions of N 40 hearma and the rather odd a in 135, 2 ungebarde, the above manuscript corrections are reported by Rusche (1996).

A possible diachronic diagnostic that might have been employed by K. is the variation -lic ~ -lec- in the adjective suffix. Fulk (1992: [sections]225 and fn. 59) points out that -lec- "seems to be confined to texts composed before the tenth century." (He mentions Cl as a text with -lec-forms and correctly assumes that the material in it may not be of recent origin.) There is a heavy concentration of this variant in SI (13 occurrences) with two occurrences in S12 and three in S18/19. A 10 Anagogen: gastlecum and gite (S1) weighs heavily against Gretsch's (1999: 11,223, 378) suggestion that gastlic andgit 'spiritual sense' may have been coined by /Ethelwold (born 904x9). K. (pp. 222-227) demonstrates that SI is of ultimate Anglian origin.

Whether the variation between -od- and -ad- in the preterite/participle ending of second class weak verbs is one of the most important morphological dialect criteria, as K. has it (pp. 174-175), is doubtful and in later discussions (e.g., p. 239, 247) the presence of -ad- in Early West Saxon is usually admitted. K. does mention the Lauderdale manuscript of the Old English Orosius with its prevalence of -ad-. He might have also referred to the Fonthill Letter where that variant predominates almost totally, see Gretsch (1994: 69-70). I do think that Gretsch (1994: 94-98) is right in assuming that the document is original (datable to the first quarter of the 10th century) and written in Wessex by a West Saxon. Similarly useless as a dialect marker in the context of the early 10th century is the presence of o (instead of a) before a nasal (pp. 52-53). Again reference might have been made to the Fonthill Letter and Gretsch (1994: 59-60). In the same letter early (the earliest?) examples of the loss of r in sprecan 'speak' and related words are to be found and again early instances of syif 'self' (for self) and syllan 'give' (for sellan) (Gretsch 1994: 64-65, 67-68). Although these forms appear far more frequently in Late West Saxon, the sound changes themselves should not be labeled "late" as is done by K. (p. 78. 134). Nothing in CI is "late" Old English.

I do not wish to embark on an extended (and in the end fruitless) discussion of the possibility or impossibility of Old English dialectology (nor on one of the politics of Old English sound change). I do not necessarily agree with the strong opinions voiced by Kitson (e.g., 1995) and I suspect that my position on these matters is probably broadly the same as K.'s, but be that as it may, there are some problems that just will not go away. What exactly constitutes (Early, Late) West Saxon, Altwestsachsisch or Strengwestsachsisch, for instance? There are, of course, no watertight definitions to be expected from the author (nor from anybody else for that matter), but I wish there were more of an awareness of the problematic nature of concepts like these in the book. But to close on a more upbeat note: the author has given us a careful and painstaking study of a manuscript that is by no means easy to deal with. For this he deserves our warmest congratulations.

REFERENCES

Bately, Janet M. (ed.)

1986 The Anglo-Saxon chronicle: A collaborative edtion. Vol. 3: MS A: A semi-diplomatic edition with introduction and indices. Cambridge: Brewer.

Fisiak, Jacek (ed.)

1995 Medieval dialectology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Fulk, Robert Dennis

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Gretsch, Mechthild

1994 "The language of the 'Fonthill Letter'", Anglo-Saxon England 23: 57-102.

1999 The intellectual foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 25.) Cambridge: CUP.

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Ker, Neil R.

1957 Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kitson, Peter R.

1995 "The nature of Old English dialect distributions, mainly as exhibited in charter boundaries", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 43-135.

Quinn, John J. (ed.)

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Schabram, Hans

1965 Superbia: Studien zunz altenglischen Wortschatz: Teil I: Die dialektale und zeitliche Verbreitung des Wortguts. Munich: Fink.

Stryker, William G. (ed.)

1951 The Latin-Old English glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A III. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.]

Wright, Thomas (ed.)

1884 Anglo-Saxon and Old English vocabularies. (2 edition revised by Richard Paul Wulcker.) London: Trubner.