The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers, and: Ælfric's Prefaces (review)

Reviews 213 regional shifts. H e concludes that in Denmark regions specialised in different products, predominantly live steers and grain; that there was a division of labour between the nobles and the peasants in the production of these goods in which both profited even though the greatest benefit accrued to king and noble. In Bothnia, however, the terms of trade moved against the region in the sixteenth century which led to a return to self-sufficiency not reversed until from 1610 onwards renewed demand for pitch and tar led to widespread changes in the commercial structure and the establishment of towns. While other regions had somewhat different experiences, the two studied, in Dr Maarbjerg's view, represent the extremes within which the others fall. Dr Maarbjerg's study is based on a painstaking analysis of numerical data drawn from the central archives of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. He has been able to reconstruct the differing fortunes of the peasant, merchant and noble classes and to offer at least a partial explanation for the shifts in social relations. While the presentation is pedestrian, the argument is clear and well sustained. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Magennis, Hugh, ed., The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers (Durham Medieval Texts 7), Durham, Durham Medieval Texts, Department of English Studies, University of Durham, 1994; paper; pp. iv, 128; R.R.P. £4.00. Wilcox, Jonathan, ed., /Elfric's Prefaces (Durham Medieval Texts, Number 9), Durham, Durham Medieval Texts, Department of English Studies, University of Durham, 1994; paper; pp. viii, 202; R.R.P. £7.00. These books are useful additions to the Durham Medieval Texts series, which has supplied accessible editions of texts in Old and Middle English and Old Norse since 1978. The series, which appears to beflourishing,with the publication of five new volumes between 1993 and 1995, is designed primarily to provide texts and apparatus for the use of students. Within this frame of reference, however, volumes may serve different levels and purposes, as a comparison of the books under review demonstrates. The legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, rooted in myth and folklore, may have originated in a Greek version close to the time of the events it describes as a Christianised adaptation of legendary material 214 Reviews carefully developed for doctrinal purpose: namely, to reinforce the dogma of the resurrection of the body. The legend isfirstattested in Syriac narratives of the late-fifth or early-sixth centuries, and became widely disseminated throughout the Near East and Europe. The anonymous Old English homily, like the independent short account by iElfric, derives from a Latin version (L), based on a Greek narrative, which is one of two major Latin sources for European versions; the other is Gregory of Tours' Passio Septem Dormientium. The anonymous homily is preserved in the principal manuscript of Mine's Lives of Saints, B L Cotton Julius E.vii (J), and fragmentarily in another £ilfrician collection, along with other non-jElfrician lives of saints, Cotton Otho B.x (O). In Skeat's edition (JElfric's Lives of Saints, Early English Text Society O.S. 76, 82, 94, 114. London, 1881-1900) the work is presented as jElfric's own. O n stylistic and linguistic grounds, however, it has been recognised as another writer's. Magennis's edition is the first published to treat the text in its ownright,though R. J. Alexander edited the text in his unpublished dissertation: 'A Critical Edition of the Old English Seven Sleepers Homily,' (University of Wisconsin, 1973). With its detailed introduction and apparatus Magennis's will no doubt prove to be the standard edition for some time to come. Magennis's Introduction begins with consideration of the origins and development of the legend of the Seven Sleepers, the manuscript context of the Old English version, and the source (L) identified by P. M . Huber (Die Wanderlegende von den Siebenschlafern: Eine Literargeschichtliche Untersuchung. Leipzig, 1910). Magennis further refines Huber's work by identifying manuscripts of L whose Latin most nearly mirrors the translator's source. In an appendix he prints the text of one of four such manuscripts (BL, Egerton 2797: an eleventh-century manuscript...