The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato

Clitheroe, Stonyhurst College, 69

Bede's Death Song

Date: s. xii1

Summary:

A collection of texts written in s. xii and xiii. Old English is included in Cuthbert's letter of Bede's Death-Song on fol. 15. Ker notes: 'This copy of the letter belongs to the 'Digby group', but the abnormal word-divisions, characteristic of the Death Song in other manuscripts of the group, do not occur here' (1957, pp. 456-57).

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: fol. 15

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

   Bibliography:

   Dobbie 1937, p. 77

   Ker 1957, item 386, p. 456

Physical Description:

Object Description:

Form: Codex

Support: Parchment

Hand Description:

Number of hands: 1 for Old English

Hand: Main text
• Scope: Major
• Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
• Summary of the characteristics of the hand: According to Ker 1957, Old English letter-forms differ from the Latin's ones, he then reports the following characteristics:
• d is rounded in Old English.
• g is insular in the last two and a half lines.
• h is insular in the last two and a half lines.
• Long-tailed Caroline r in Old English.
• ð is not used.
• y is dotted.
• descenders are short and turn sharply to the left at the end.

History:

Origin: Unknown.

Acquisition: Ker 1957 observes: 'The manuscript was given to Stonyhurst College by the Rev. John Middlehurst, S. J. Previously it had been bought from a pedlar for 2s. 6d'.

Additional Information:

Administration Information:

Manuscript described by Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato, with reference to published scholarship (2010; 2013).

Bibliography:

Dobbie, Elliott van Kirk, The Manuscripts of Cædmon's Hymn and Bede's Death Song, with a Critical Text of the 'Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae', Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 128 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937)

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 386