The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Mary Swan and Owen Roberson

Oxford, Bodleian, Bodley 297 (2468)

Bede’s Death Song, and boundary list

Date: s. xiimed

Summary:

Old English text of Bede’s Death Song is part of Cuthbert’s letter De obitu Bedæ, which itself is part of a chronicle to the year 1131. An Old English list of boundaries is written at the same time, but in a different hand, with a Latin charter recording the grant of lands to Bury St Edmunds by King Edmund. Ker notes that ‘the manuscript was at Bury St Edmunds not long after it was written’ (1957, p. 360).

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: p. 281

   Title (A.33.3): Bede's Death Song: West Saxon Version

   Text Language: English

   Note: Occurs in the course of a chronicle extending to the year 1131, next to A.D. 734.

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 306

2. Item: pp. 328-29

   Title (B.16.5.1): Bury: Boundaries of Land

   Incipit: (p. 328) This synden tha landgemæro. the ædmund kyng gebocade into sancte ædmunde

   Text Language: English

   Note: According to Ker 1957, this is inserted into the lower margins of a Latin charter in which King Edmund grants lands to Bury St. Edmunds, A. D. 945.

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 306

Administration Information:

Description by Mary Swan and Owen Roberson with the assistance of Hollie Morgan, with reference to published scholarship (2010; 2013).

Bibliography:

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 306