Lexical Choice and Poetic Freedom in the Old English Menologium

The Menologium, which survives uniquely in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.i, fols 112r–114v,¹ is an Old English calendar poem composed in southern England probably in the late tenth century.² It displays one linguistic feature of late poetry, the separation of velar and palatal g in alliteration,³ but it has generally been regarded as otherwise conservative, adhering closely to classical Old English poetic tradition.⁴ When examined more closely, however, the Menologium shows several peculiarities in the interrelationship between meter, phraseology, and style.⁵ As I shall argue, the Menologium poet can be flexible and experimental at the same time in his lexical choices. Thus, conventionality and poetic license (or rather prosaic license) coexist, in part due to the poet’s tolerance of unpoetic or prosaic expressions, and in part due to his somewhat limited skills as a versifier. Among other rare words that I will discuss below, stige (64b) and wisse (70b) provide good examples of the poet’s simultaneously conservative and flexible technique. From this perspective, I shall also compare the Menologium with the four Chronicle poems in order to see whether, as some suppose, their affinities are remarkable enough to attribute them to the same poet.

I. UNPOETIC EXPRESSIONS AND THE NONCE PHRASE DRIHTNES STIGE

The Menologium poet, though basically adhering to Old English poetic tradition, is occasionally somewhat unpoetic or prosaic in the choice of words and phrases, adopting expressions attested chiefly or otherwise exclusively in nonpoetic texts such as prose works, glosses, and glossaries (for convenience I shall regard these kinds of works as prose in the sense that they are not poetry). Many of the unpoetic words in the Menologium are ecclesiastical or computistical technical terms required by the context of a calendar poem such as the following:

apostol (apostle, 122b)⁶diacon (deacon, 145b)⁷emniht(e) (equinox, 45b, 49a)emnihtes dæg (the day of equinox, 175a, 180b)⁸halige dagas (holy days, feasts, 68a)⁹ hlafmæssan dæg (Lammas Day, 140a)¹⁰kalend (the first day of the month, 7a, 31a)¹¹martira (of martyrs, 69a)¹²martyrdom (martyrdom, 126a, 145a)¹³midne sumor (midsummer, summer solstice, 119a, 124a)¹⁴midne winter (midwinter, winter solstice, 2a)¹⁵mynstre (minster, cathedral, 106a)¹⁶circule (cycle [of movable feasts], 67a)¹⁷reliquias (relics, 73a)¹⁸rimcræftige (skilled in reckoning, 44b)¹⁹twelfta dæg (Twelfth Day, 13a)²⁰wintres dæg (winter’s day, 202a)²¹

Latin and Old English names of months may also be classified in this category.²² Prosaic expressions signalling the intervals of two consecutive entries, such as And þæs embe ane niht (and then after a night, 19a), are also common.²³

Unpoetic or prosaic expressions of a less technical nature include to tune (to town, 8b, 16a, 34b, 89b, 108b, 219b) and on tun (into town, 28a, 78a, 138a, 183a, 195a), which are otherwise attested only in prose (recorded eleven times and fifteen times, respectively). The adverb ealling (always, 153b, 173b), recorded thirteen times in prose, is attested nowhere else in poetry.²⁴ The word gewisse (with certainty, certainly, 124b) is also attested otherwise only in prose.²⁵ The word fostorlean (reward for fostering, 152a) seems originally to have been a legal term, and is otherwise attested only in the legal text Be wifmannes beweddunge, Chapter 2, and in its Latin translation, “De sponsalibus” in the Quadripartitus.²⁶ The phrase drihtnes ærist (the resurrection of the Lord, 58a), attested five times in prose and never elsewhere in poetry, may also be regarded as prosaic, although a very similar phrase, þæm æriste/æreste ures dryhtnes (the resurrection of our Lord) is used in Seasons for Fasting (104 and 180). Similar expressions consisting of the term for Christ/God in genitive and ærist are likewise never found in poetry: þæs Hælendes ærist (the resurrection of the Savior) is attested six times, while Cristes ærist (the resurrection of Christ) 22 times.

In these cases, the Menologium poet uses unpoetic words and phrases just as they are used in prose, but in...