The Old English Epic of Waldere, and: Old English Minor Heroic Poems (review)

Only sixty or so lines remain to us of the Old English heroic poem Waldere. These lines share much in common with those of the Old High German poem Hildebrandslied: fortuitous circumstances of preservation, epic subject matter and style, and above all, a fragmentary form and obscure passages that present perplexing puzzles and ensure contrasting interpretations. New editions of such incomplete and damaged texts must strike a careful balance between fresh insight and scholarly rigor. In this respect, Jonathan Himes's new edition of Waldere falls short.

The most recent edition of Waldere was produced by Arne Zettersten in 1979. Two other single editions appeared earlier in the twentieth century—one by Ute Schwab in 1967 and another by F. Norman in 1933. Schwab's and Norman's editions relied only on photographic or microfilm reproductions of the manuscript, whereas Zettersten's employed ultraviolet light in examining the parchment leaves containing the poem's fragments. This allowed Zettersten, as he wrote in his introduction, to "provide a sounder basis for establishing a good text" (p. 2). But in Himes's view, Zettersten still left "too many textual cruces . . . doubtful or supposedly illegible" (p. xiii). His own edition—based upon a reexamination of the text with ultraviolet light—is intended to rectify this by recapturing "[the poem's] original words and letters" (p. xiv).

Central to this edition is its transcription, and a dependable transcription distinguishes what is visible in the original text from what is not. But although Himes admits in his notes the impossibility of deciphering certain faint or entirely lost letters, he inserts them regardless, as if the transcription were his edited text. For example, at FI, line 6 and FI, line 7, respectively, the words gyt and nu are transcribed in extensu, despite Himes's comment that neither the 't' nor the 'u' are visible (p. 19).

Considering the brevity of the text, there are far too many other inconsistencies and flaws. At the end of FI, line 1, Himes is certain that a 'g' is recognizable, possibly followed by an e, which—together with the first word of the second line—would signify the word geworc. (Given the poor state of the parchment, the usefulness of the photographic reproductions contained in the book is almost nil when it comes to illegible or even barely legible words, so that the reader must accept Himes's claims on faith, and sometimes despite Zettersten's prior and contrary conclusions.) But Himes transcribes the sequence as weland [ge] worc (p. 19)—the only place, oddly, in which brackets are used to indicate problematic or conjectural graphemes. Likewise, the dot under the n in hearne at FI, line 3 (p. 19) and the accent over ær at FI, line 30 (p. 21) are rendered with underlining—a device used elsewhere in the transcription to reproduce various signs of abbreviation—while the dot over a in gedreas at FI, line 4 is unaccounted for (p. 19). Other oversights include missing letters (a second n in habbane at FII, l. 20 [p. 25]), misspellings (rihte for ryhte at FI, l. 26 [p. 21]), and misplaced letters (the last two of FI, l. 2, ða, are transcribed on the following line, and the first two of FI, l. 23, ðe, are transcribed on the previous line [p. 19 and p. 21, respectively]). Here and there, forms abbreviated in the manuscript are expanded without notice (wordum at FI, l. 11 [p. 19]; him at FII, l. 26 [p. 25]). Word divisions often contradict the evidence of the manuscript (for example, wiggesfeta for wigges feta at FII, l...