237-8. The cotton plant has already given us the vegetable lamb (l.
142). This more prosaic account is taken from the _Eþistola Alexandri ad
Aristotelem_: '_in Bactriacen... penitus ad abditos Seres, quod genus
hominum foliis arborum decerpendo lanuginem ex silvestri vellere vestes
detexunt_' (Julius Valerius, ed. B. Kübler, p. 194). From the same text
come the hippopotami, the bitter waters (Kübler, p. 195), and the
griffins (Kübler, p. 217). The _Letter of Alexander_ was translated into
Anglo-Saxon in the tenth century.
254 ff. _talouns_ etc.: In the 1725 edition there is a reference to 'one
4 Foot long in the Cotton Library' with the inscription, _Griphi Unguis
Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi sacer_, 'griffin's talon, sacred to St.
Cuthbert of Durham'. This specimen is now in the Mediaeval Department of
the British Museum, and is really the slim, curved horn of an ibex. The
inscription is late (sixteenth century), but the talon was catalogued
among the treasures of Durham in the fourteenth century.
260. _Prestre Iohn_: Old French _Prestre Jean_, or 'John the Priest',
was reputed to be the Christian ruler of a great kingdom in the East. A
rather minatory letter professing to come from him reached most of the
princes of Europe, and was replied to in all seriousness by Pope
Alexander III. Its claims include the lordship over the tribes of Gog
and Magog whom Alexander the Great walled within the mountains. Official
missions were sent to establish relations with him; but neither in the
Far East nor in Northern Africa, where the best opinion in later times
located his empire, could the great king ever be found. The history of
the legend is set out by Yule in the article _Prester John_ in the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
261. _Yle of Pentexoire_: to Mandeville most Eastern countries are
'isles'. _Pentexoire_ in the French text of Odoric is a territory about
the Yellow River (Yule, _Cathay_, vol. i, p. 146).
262 ff.: For comparison the French text of the Epilogue is given from
MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 83 a, the words in < > being supplied from MS.
Sloane 1464:
'Il y a plusours autres diuers pais, et moutz dautres meruailles par de
la, qe ieo nay mie tout veu, si nen saueroye proprement parler. Et
meismement el pais en quel iay este, y a plusours diuersetes dont ieo ne
fais point el mencioun, qar trop serroit long chose a tout deuiser. Et
pur ceo qe ieo vous ay deuisez dascuns pais, vous doit suffire quant a
present. Qar, si ieo deuisoie tout quantqez y est par de la, vn autre qi
se peneroit et trauailleroit le corps pur aler en celles marches, et pur
sercher la pais, serroit empeschez par mes ditz a recompter nuls choses
estranges, qar il ne purroit rien dire de nouelle, en quoy ly oyantz y
puissent prendre solaces. Et lem dit toutdis qe choses nouelles
pleisent. Si men taceray a tant, saunz plus recompter nuls diuersetez qi
soyent par de la, a la fin qe cis qi vourra aler en celles parties y
troeue assez a dire.
'Et ieo, Iohan Maundeuille dessudit, qi men party de nos pais et
passay le mer lan de grace mil cccxxiide; qi moint terre et moint
passage et moint pays ay puis cerchez; et qy ay este en moint
bone compaignie et en molt beal fait, come bien qe ieo <ne fuisse
dignes, et> ne feisse vncqes ne beal fait ne beal emprise; et qi
meintenant suy venuz a repos maugre mien, pur goutes artetikes qi
moy destreignont; en preignan solacz en mon cheitif repos, en
recordant le temps passe, ay cestes choses compilez et mises en
escript, si come il me poet souuenir, lan de grace mil ccc.lvime,
a xxxiiiite an qe ieo men party de noz pais.
'Si pri a toutz les lisauntz, si lour plest, qils voillent Dieu prier
pur moy, et ieo priera pur eux. Et toutz cils qi pur moy dirrount vne
_Paternoster_ qe Dieu me face remissioun de mes pecches, ieo les face
parteners et lour ottroie part dez toutz les bons pelrinages et dez
toutz les bienfaitz qe ieo feisse vnqes, et qe ieo ferray, si Dieu
plest, vncqore iusqes a ma fyn. Et pry a Dieu, de qy toute bien et toute
grace descent, qil toutz les lisantz et oyantz Cristiens voille de sa
grace reemplir, et lour corps et les almes sauuer, a la glorie et loenge
de ly qi est trinz et vns, et saunz comencement et saunz fin, saunz
qualite bons, saunz quantite grantz, en toutz lieus present et toutz
choses contenant, et qy nul bien ne poet amender ne nul mal enpirer, qy
en Trinite parfite vit et regne par toutz siecles et par toutz temps.
Amen.'
274. _blamed_: The Old French verb _empescher_ means both 'to hinder,
prevent', and 'to accuse, impeach'. But here _empeschez_ should have
been translated by 'prevented', not 'blamed'.
284-306. This passage, which in one form or another appears in nearly
all the MSS. in English, has no equivalent in the MSS. in French so far
examined: and, as it conflicts with ll. 313 ff., which—apart from the
peculiarities of the Cotton rendering—indicate that the _Travels_ were
written after Mandeville's return, it must be set down as an
interpolation.
The art of forging credentials was well understood in the Middle Ages,
and the purpose of this addition was to silence doubters by the
_imprimatur_ of the highest authority, just as the marvel of the Dancers
of Colbek is confirmed by the sponsorship of Pope Leo IX (I 246-9). The
different interpretation of the latest editor, Hamelius, who thinks it
was intended as a sly hit at the Papacy (_Quarterly Review_ for April
1917, pp. 349 f.) seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that the
passage belonged to the French text as originally written.
The anachronism by which the author is made to seek the Pope _in Rome_
gives a clue to the date of the interpolation. From the beginning of the
fourteenth century until 1377 Avignon, and not Rome, was the seat of the
Pope; and for another thirty years there was doubt as to the issue of
the conflict between the popes, who had their head-quarters at Rome and
were recognized by England, and the antipopes, who remained at Avignon
and had the support of the French. The facts were notorious, so that the
anachronism would hardly be possible to one who wrote much before the
end of the century, even though he were a partisan of the Roman court.
From internal evidence it would seem that the interpolation first
appeared in French. The style is the uniform style of translation, with
the same tags—_and ȝee schull vndirstonde_ = _et sachiez_; _ȝif
it lyke ȝou_ = _si vous plest_; and the same trick of double
rendering, e.g. _of dyuerse secte and of beleeve_; _wyse and discreet_;
_the auctour ne the persone_. More decisive is an example of the
syntactical compromise explained in the note to l. 329: #be# _the whiche
the Mappa Mundi was made_ #after#. With so many French MSS. of
Mandeville in use in England, an interpolation in French would have more
authority than one that could not be traced beyond English; and it can
hardly be an insuperable objection that no such French text exists
to-day, since our knowledge of the Cotton and Egerton versions
themselves depends in each case on the chance survival of a single MS.
The point has a bearing on the vexed question of the relations of the
English texts one to another. For brevity we may denote by D the
defective text of the early prints and most MSS., which is specially
distinguished by a long gap near the beginning; by C the Cotton text
(ed. Halliwell, Pollard, Hamelius); by E the Egerton text (ed. Warner).
Nicholson (in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_) and Warner give priority
to D, and consider that C and E are independent revisions and expansions
of D by writers who had recourse to the French original. Their argument
seems to be this: There is precise evidence just before the gap that D
derives direct from a mutilated French text (see _Enc. Brit._), and if
it be granted that a single translation from the French is the base of
C, D, and E, it follows that C and E are based on D.
A fuller study by Vogels (_Handschriftliche Untersuchungen über die
Englische Version Mandeville's_, Crefeld 1891) brings to light a new
fact: the two Bodleian MSS., E Museo 116 and Rawlinson D 99, contain an
English translation (say L) made from a Latin text of the _Travels_.
Vogels also shows that E is based on D, because the characteristic
lacuna of D is filled in E by a passage which is borrowed from L and is
not homogeneous with the rest of E. So far there is no conflict with the
view of Nicholson and Warner. But, after adducing evidence in favour of
the contention that C, D, and E are at base one translation, Vogels
concludes that D derives from C, arguing thus: There is good evidence
that C is a direct translation from the French, and if it be granted
that a single translation from the French is the base of C and D, it
follows that D derives from C.
In short, the one party maintains that C is an expansion of D, the other
that D is an abridgement of C; and this flat opposition results from
the acceptance of common ground: that C and D represent in the main one
translation and not two translations.
To return to our interpolation:
(1) Vogels's first piece of evidence that C, D, and E are at base one
translation is the appearance in all of this interpolation, which is
absent from the MSS. in French. But a passage so remarkable might spread
from one to the other of two independent English texts; or if the
interpolation originated in England in a MS. of the French text since
lost, it might be twice translated.
(2) Vogels assumes that the interpolation first appeared in type C. But
C is the form in which it would be least likely to originate, because
here the contradiction of statement is sharpest owing to the rendering
at ll. 313-14: _and now I am comen hom_, which is peculiar to C (see the
French).
(3) If, in order to eliminate individual peculiarities, we take two MSS.
of the D type—say Harley 2386 and Royal 17 C. XXXVIII—we find that
their text of the interpolation is identical with that of E. This is
consistent with Vogels's finding that the body of E derives from D; and
it confirms the evidence of all the defective MSS. that the
interpolation in this particular form was an integral part of the D
type.
(4) But between the text of the interpolation in D and that in C there
are differences in matter, in sentence order, and in phrasing, which,
while they do not exclude the possibility of interdependence, do not
suggest such a relation. In D the passage is a naked attempt at
authentication; in C it is more artfully though more shamelessly
introduced by the touch of piety conventional in epilogues. And as the
signs of a French original that appear in C are absent from D, it is
unlikely that the text of the interpolation in C derives from D.
(5) Again, in D and E the addition follows the matter of ll. 307-20.
Unfortunately, though the balance of probability is in favour of the
order in C, the order intended by the interpolator is not certain enough
to be made the basis of arguments. But such a difference in position is
naturally explained from the stage when the interpolation stood in the
margin of a MS., or on an inserted slip, so that it might be taken into
the consecutive text at different points. And an examination of the
possibilities will show that if the interpolation originated in French,
the different placing is more simply explained on the assumption that C
and D are independent translations than on the assumption that one of
them derives from the other.
To sum up: the central problem for the history of the English texts is
the relation of C and D. Taken by itself the evidence afforded by the
text of the interpolation is against the derivation of C from D; it
neither favours nor excludes the derivation of D from C; it rather
favours independent translation in C and D.
For the relations of the rest of the text these deductions afford no
more than a clue. Against independent translation of C and D stands the
evidence adduced by Vogels for basic unity. Much of this could be
accounted for by the coincidences that are inevitable in literal prose
translations from a language so near to English in vocabulary and word
order; and a few striking agreements might be due to the use of French
MSS. having abnormal variants in common, or even to reference by a
second translator to the first. The remainder must be weighed against a
considerable body of evidence in the contrary sense, e.g. several places
where the manuscripts of the French text have divergent readings, of
which C translates one, and D another.
It is unlikely that any simple formula will be found to cover the whole
web of relationships: but any way of reconciling the conclusions of the
authorities should be explored; and the first step is an impartial
sifting of all the evidence, with the object of discovering to what
extent C and D are interdependent, and to what extent independent
translations. The chief obstacle is the difficulty of bringing the
necessary texts together; for an investigator who wished to clear the
ground would have to face the labour of preparing a six-text
_Mandeville_, in the order, French, C, D, E, L, Latin.
301. _Mappa Mundi_: OFr. and ME. _Mappemounde_, was the generic name for
a chart of the world, and, by extension, for a descriptive geography of
the world. It is not clear what particular _Mappa Mundi_ is referred to
here, or whether such a map was attached to the manuscript copy of the
_Travels_ in which this interpolation first appeared.
329. _fro whom all godenesse and grace cometh fro_: cp. 24-5 _the lond
of the whiche on of the þre Kynges... was kyng offe_; 76-8 _þei... of
whom all science... cometh from_; and 301-2 _be the whiche the_ Mappa
Mundi _was made after_. The pleonasm is explained by the divergence of
French and ME. word order. In French, as in modern literary English, the
preposition is placed at the beginning of the clause, before the
relative (_de qui_, _dont_, &c.). ME. writers naturally use the relative
_that_, and postpone the preposition to the end of the clause: e.g. _þat
all godenesse cometh fro_. The translator compromises between his French
original and his native habit by placing the preposition both at the
beginning and at the end.
X
#Dialect#: Northern (Scots): the MS. copy was made in 1487 more than a
century after the poem was composed.
#Vocabulary#: Note _till_ 'to' 4, 77 (in rime); _syne_ 'afterwards' 35,
112; the forms _sic_ 'such' 135, _begouth_ 94, and the short verbal
forms _ma_ (in rime) 'make' 14, _tane_ (in rime) 'taken' 19.
#Inflexions#:
VERB: pres. ind. 3 sg. _has_ 76.
3 pl. _has_ 52, _mais_ 72; but _thai haf_ 16.
pres. p. _rynand_ 17, _vyndland_ 129 (in rime).
strong pp. _gane_ 84, _drawyn_ 124.
PRONOUN 3 PERS.: sg. fem. nom. _scho_ (in rime) 80;
pl. _thai_ 1: _thair_ 28; _thame_ 3.
#Sounds#: OE. _ā_ remains: _brynstane_ (in rime) 20, _sare_ 51.
OE. _ō_ (close _ọ̄_) appears as _u_ (_ǖ_?): _gude_ 36, _fut_
57, _tume_ 143.
Unaccented _-(e)d_ of weak pa. t. and pp. becomes _-(i)t_: _passit_ 2,
&c.
#Spelling#: _i_ (_y_) following a vowel indicates length: _weill_ 10,
_noyne_ 'noon' 67.
OE. _hw-_ appears as _quh-_ (indicating strong aspiration): _quhelis_
'wheels' 17, _quhar_ 18.
_v_ and _w_ are interchanged: _vithall_ 9, _behevin_ 163, _in swndir_
106.
* * * * *
Book XVII of _The Bruce_ begins with the capture of Berwick by the Scots
in March 1318. Walter Stewart undertakes to hold the city, and is aided
in preparing defences by a Flemish engineer, John Crab. Next year King
Edward II determines to recapture the stronghold by an attack from both
land and sea. He entrenches his forces and makes the first assault
unsuccessfully early in September 1319. In this battle the Scotch
garrison capture a clever engineer (see note to l. 71 below). King
Robert Bruce meanwhile orders a raid into England as a diversion, and on
20 September 1319, an English army, led by the Archbishop of York, is
disastrously defeated by the invaders at Mitton. Our extract gives the
story of the second assault on Berwick, which was also fruitless. The
fortress fell into English hands again as a result of the battle of
Halidon Hill in 1333: see XIV _a_ 35-6.
* * * * *
5-6. 'They made a sow of great joists, which had a stout covering over
it.' The _sow_ was essentially a roof on wheels. The occupants, under
shelter of the roof, pushed up to the walls of the besieged place and
tried to undermine them. For an illustration see Cutts, _Scenes and
Characters of the Middle Ages_, Pt. VI, chap. vi, where other military
engines of the time are described.
15. _Crabbis consale_: John Crab was the engineer of the garrison. He is
no doubt the same as the John Crab who in 1332 brought Flemish ships
round from Berwick to attack the English vessels at Dundee. There was an
important Flemish colony at Berwick from early times.
36. _Schir Valter, the gude Steward_: Walter Steward, whose surname
denotes his office as Steward of Scotland, was the father of Robert II,
the first king of the Stuart line.
42. _Rude-evyn_: September 13, the eve of the feast of the Exaltation of
the Cross.