§ 1. _The MS. and Halliwellâs edition_, p. v.
§ 2. _Metre and Versification_, p. vi.
§ 3. _Dialect_, p. x;
_short vowels_, p. xi;
_long vowels_, p. xii;
_inflexions_, p. xiii.
§ 4. a. _The contents of the Romance_, p. xvi;
b. _its character_, p. xx;
c. _Origin of the story of Torrent_, p. xxi;
d. _Legend of Eustache or Plasidas_, p. xxii;
e. _Sir Isumbras_, p. xxiv;
f. _Romances of Octavian_, p. xxv;
g. _Sir Eglamour_, p. xxvi;
h. _Comparison of Torrent and Eglamour_, p. xxvii;
i. _the 2 Romances independent_, p. xxx.
§ 5. _Arrangement of this Edition_, p. xxxii.
§ 1. The manuscript from which the following romance of _Sir Torrent of
Portugal_ is taken, is a folio volume on paper, of the fifteenth
century, preserved in the Chetham Library at Manchester.
A description of this volume is given by Halliwell in his _Account of
the European MSS. in the Chetham Library at Manchester_, Manchester,
1842, page 16, and by Prof. Koelbing in his _Englische Studien_, vii.
195. The only edition of this romance that we have hitherto had was done
by Halliwell. As he had, besides his own transcript, another copy made
by Madden, his text is a pretty accurate one, and therefore the results
of Prof. Koelbingâs collation, printed in his _Englische Studien_, vii.
344 ff., concern, for the most part, things of little importance, except
one very curious passage, l. 88, where Halliwell renders the quite
correct reading of the MS., _p la more de dewe_ = _par lâamour de dieu_,
by _Pericula more bedew[n]e_. Also, from l. 1720, the counting of the
lines is wrong by 100 lines.
A few short fragments of a printed edition were found by Halliwell in
the Douce Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, and added to his work as
an Appendix. They contain the following passages of the MS.:
Fragment III. = lines 462-489.
â II. = â 492-520.
â VI. = â 820-851.
â V. = â 917-948.
â IV. = â 949-970.
â I. = â 1807-1866.
A seventh fragment, of which not much more than the rhyming words are
preserved, was omitted by Halliwell, and was printed for the first time
in Prof. Koelbingâs collation.
This Chetham MS. contains the romance in a very debased and corrupt
form, so that the original reading in many passages can hardly be
recognized.[1] The scribe, who copied the poem from an older MS., lived
(no doubt) at a far later period than the poet; he did not therefore
understand a great many old expressions, and these he used to supplant
by words of his own; he also transposed and even omitted many lines, and
spoiled the rhyme, because he had not the slightest idea of the nature
of the stanza in which the poem is composed. Halliwell did not trouble
himself about the restoration of the true readings; he merely reproduced
the traditional text, even where it would have been very easy to do
more, though many passages are hopelessly corrupt; still worse is the
fact, that he did not recognize the metre as the tail-rhymed twelve-line
stanza, for he prints six-line stanzas.
[Footnote 1: Halliwell says, Preface v f.: âIt is very incorrectly
written, and the copy of the romance of Torrent of Portugal, which
occupies 88 pages of the book, contains so many obvious blunders
and omissions, that it may be conjectured with great probability
to have been written down from oral recitation.â]
In consequence, the whole of the philological work on the text had still
to be done, and a new edition was plainly necessary; the more that this
poem, though not written in the best period of romance poetry, treats of
a legendary subject widely spread in the Middle Ages, and is nearly
related to another poem, _Syr Eglamour of Artois_.