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Page 1: Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne

Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne.'Author(s): H. A. ToddSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan., 1891), pp. 4-7Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2919181 .

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Page 2: Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne

7 January, 189I. MODERN LANG UAGE NOTES. Vol. vi, No. i. 8

initial g. However, in conmmon conversation in North Germany six different sounds are heard for the one g of the written language, according as it is initial, mnedial or final: (i)

initial g has the hard sound of g in good; (2)

medial g after a, o, u and au (back vowels) has a sound not heard in English, being a sonant guttural spirant; (3) medial g after i, e, anld umlauted vowels (front vowels) is a sonant palatal spirant, similar to y in yes; (4) finial g after back vowels, like ch in Back; (5) final g after front vowels, like ch in ich ,- (6) g in the combination nig, when not followed by a vowel, has the sound of k. The sound that is the least general of these is medial g after front vowels. In foreign words, as regier-en etc., and often in German words in declamation and reading, the g is pronounced hard (as a sonant stop), but in ordinary conversation the sound described above under (3) is more common.

GEo. 0. CURAIE Cornell College.

APROPOS OF 'LA NAISSANCE DU CHEVALIER AU CYGNE.'

IN his extended and highly instructive review of ' La Naissance du Chevalier all Cygne' (Ro- mania xix, pp. 3I4-340), M. GASTON PARIS

submits the constitution of the text to a search- ing examination. Most of the emendations there offered need only to be seen to be accepted, several of the most satisfactory elucidations bearing upon difficulties on wlhich I had ill vain exercised my ingenuity; a few, however, of the suggesten emendations are not so obviously convincing, and may warrant some further consideration.'

Into the textual portion of the review hav7e crept a certain number of typographical errors, which it will be desirable to rectify before pro- ceeding to the cases in question. The mis- prinits are as follows:-

Page 328, 1. 28, for 232 read 242.

30 " 238 en carger read encargqer. 3I " 245 read 345. 32 " 365 " 366.

X Not many of the proposed emendations ttorn tipon the correctness of the MS. readings, buLt I have availed myself of an oppor-ttunity of collating qcestionable passages on the original MS. since the appearance of the review.

Page 328, 1. 33, for 430 read 429.

329 " II 1314 " I354. 1370 I 358.

I3 I469 I479.

I5 " Sacie 1. Sacie read sacie' 1. sacie.

i8 " en soni nes g-arder read ens soni mesg,arder.

24 2I85 read 2i86. it 2I87 ' 2189. 25 " le queis, 1. l'egneis read le

g7uels, 1. l'egnteis. 26 " 2220 read 222I. 27 " Quele " Oz'e/e. 36 " 2786 " 2787.

" " " 38 " 2846 "2845. 44 " can/er" can/e.

330 " I " 3380 " 3350. i " u 2 ' enans/es read en ans/es. i " u 3 " Rii read rin.

31 Enbirive;nzen/read Ensbrieze-

A word as to one or two of the more general considerations which controlled the editor in his mode of dealing with the text. It was recognized, in the first place, that the,fnnzc/u- a/ion is one of the most significan-t as xvell as delicate tests that can be applied in criticis- ing the formal side of an edi/io princeps. The reviewer, while commending the "ponctuL1a- tion intelligente" as a whole (p. 328), takes exception to a particular feature of it: " 2550 (et souvent ailleurs) il faut une virgule devant si." Verses 2550 and 255I, with two examples of the case in question, wNell illustrate the issue here raised. It is a point to which especial attenition was giv-en in the work of editing the text. I will qtuote the Iines

2550 Sus lieve si s'en va enls el palais plus grant A son segnior parler, sel troeve la seant Sor une keute painte de paile escarimant.

In this passage a comma was inltentionally set before the si (of se/) in verse 255I, but inten- tionally omitted before si in verse 2550. A similar discriminiationi was ma-iade as carefully as possible throughout the enitire text, to mark respectively the closer or looser co6rdination of a " si clause " with its antecedenit. The distinction is one which seems to me to have been well worth the making.

It is a constant embarrassnmenit to the editor

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Page 3: Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne

9 January, I89I. MODERN LANGUA GE NOTES. [Vol. vi, N\o. I. Io

of an ancienit manuscript to decide how far to normalize the text with which he is dealing. AlIy own preference is to lean toward the con- servative side in cases involving a peculiariiy rather than a mere blunder of author or scribe. Thuis, the author of the ' Naissance ' uses both esperis (Churclh Latin SPIRITus) and espirs

(verbal substantive fromi esfirer SPIRARE),

choosing the one form or the other according to the requirements of the rhythm. In a single instance however (X. I272), the scribe has in- troduced the form esfer-is wvhere hle could by no possihility have intended to use a trissylla- ble, aind wlvere, accorcling-ly, espiirs would have been in place:

Morte est belle Elioxe, 'esteris s'en est ales.

In otlher words, the scribe has so far confouniid- ed the two forms as to treat esperis as if it were a dissyllable. The case is niotewortlly, first becaLlse the word actually became dis- syllabic in AMod. Fr. esprit, and seconidly, because its only occurrence as a dissyllable in this text is in imiimediate proximity to angeles, regularly emnployed in 0. Fr. as a dissyllable. The preceding verse is:

As sains angeles del ciel, se vos en puis proier,

so that it is scarcely strainiing the point to in- fer that the scribe, is he wrote, consciously associated in his minid his dissyllabic esperis with the dissyllabic angeles. In view of all this, I preferred to allow esperis to stand in the text, but in a niote called attention to its peculiar use as a dissyllable. M. PARIS re- marks: " 1271, lespcris corrigez lespirs."- So again, p. 329, 1. 36, M. PARIs remarks: " 2814 il parait inutile de faire un seul mot de 'atire an. Here not only is it the scribe who

has connected the two words, but in so doing he has brought the phrase into a natuiral an- alogy with the similar compounds anlan and ouan.; I accordingly felt justified in " following copy." GODEFROYl has only one citation for the word, in the form ailnianl.-One more instance may be noted. In line 3I06 (cited by M. Paris, p. 329, two lines from below) I have allowed fort paisanl to remain in the text, while inldirectly indicatinig the more correct formi in the notes (1). I I8, 1. 5). GODEFROY cites several inistanices of similar peculiar orthogra- phy of the word.

P. 328, 1. 29, "252 raiiner- n'a pas de sens; je lirais rainuizer (A r-egner)." The passage runs:

Vostre linages ert espandus otitre mer, Et jusqu'en Orient le verra on raliner.

The reading of N is clearly rautner, " your posterity shall be spread abroad beyond the sea, and shall [some day] be seen reuniied in the distant East.'" The sense is doubtless not so good as that of MS. A, but as a natural offset to espandus in the preceding verse, is sufficiently plausible to accounit for N's read- inig.

"75I e il, 1. ci-.-This ernendation requiires tlhe insertion of a comma before cii.

I265 -i sainzs, c. ei sain."-Correct fturther, to accord with this change, Abr-ahais to Abra- hant (genitive limitinig sain).2

1I34I de bor iiu, 1. desor luzi. "-By usinlg the word lisez rather than corr-igez, M. Paris evideintly implies that this is merely a mis- reading of the editor. The MS. however has plainly de bor Iit (xvith the i for Iit iindicated by a stroke). The emenidationi is nione the less valid.

" I566 anons iMs, c. aversile's (la note est A effacer)."-1Ai. PARIS has here overlooked the fact that accor ding to his reading the con- struction wotll(1 require the oblique case avei- site'-a second departure from the reading of the MS. which to my miind still further de- tracts from the probability of this emenidationi. The case is sufficiently interesting to warrant its re-presentationi here. The passage is as follows: "56I " E ! las," ce dist Lotaires, " de grant dolor plenier

A fait mon cors avoir qui go m'a fait nonchier; Or avoie grant joie, or ai grant destorbier. Ne se puet ntis el monde longemenit leecier, Q u'en la fin (te se joie ne l'estuece estancier Aucune auonx zds qui fait son cuier ploier.

In the last line the MS. has acoozsifes, which GODEFROY (who has utilized this unpublished text in the preparation of his ' Dictionnaire') regards as a sinigle word, treating it as a ci?raZ IPstIC,v'ivov', and defining it as aversiI,. On

2 It is cturious that this emendation should not have oc- curred to me, in virw of my own note to 2964, which reads: "i'ort S. Abrahan'. Godefroy, s. v. liort, cites Chanson

I d'Antioche 'Dans l'or S. Abraan.' From the Scripture par- allel of Lazarus in Abraham's bosomiz, S. Luke Xvi, 23, one would expect to find ' le sein S. Abrahant.'"

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Page 4: Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne

II Janzuary, I89I. MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES. Vol. vi, No. I. 12

the contrary, I regard acion;s as aconce and i/es--ite/ls, translating (in the note to the pas- sage): 'No one in the world can long be happy without having, at the end of his joy, to endure some news such as causes his heart to sink." M. PARIS (P. 330) takes exception to this rendering, apparently on the sole ground that aczons for anonce is unwarranted; but it is suggested, in the note, that we may have here a simple case of elision (anonce i/cs). The use of aczoizce in this connection might perhaps seem somewhat unnatural, were it not for verse 1562, where ain unhappy "an- nouncement " is offered as precisely the cause of the king's sad reflection ("qui go m'a fait inonchier"). I prefer still to stand by this ren- dering.

" 1702 Al mnos/r-e 1. Al yes/re.- " an emend- ation so-certainly correct that I ftilly expected to find Al izais/re on reconsulting the MS., anid xvas surprised to discover that it was the scribe, and not the editor, who had misread the word nzais/re.

" 2158 qu'iZ, c. pour la mesure qte ii." The MS., as my collation discloses, has quil e, wvhich is better. Insert comma before q'iZ.

" 2186 rivier, c. vivier."-The MS. has ri- vier, and though v. 2I60 reads les oisiauis del ziivier, yet inasmuch as the same word re- appears 24I1,

Dont en va as fontaines, droit al cor des riviers

Ki la sorgent et corent dessous les oliviers,

where it is used with reference to the same spot as in 2I86, the weight of probability seems to incline in favor of rivier; in otlher words, I take this to be an illustration of the familiar maxim of textual criticism, d:fficilior iectio po/ior, though here it is the scribe, and not M. PARIS, who has avoided the pitfall of the facilior lecio.

" 2459 1i c. /el." The passage reads in the MS.:

Je vos ferai le plait qule mellor recovrier En ar6s vos par moi, car en bien l'ai molt cier.

This I have emended to: "Je vos ferai LI pait." rendering, " I will make a plea for you to him, so that you will have," etc. M. PARIS, in turn, wvould read "Je vos ferai /el plait," and would still, apparently, render zos "for you," "I will make for you such a plea," but in v iexv of the ambiguity of Je vosferai, in this

latter reading, it appears to me preferable to emend as I have done.

"272I en son ciel 1. ens ont ciel."-The em- endation is clearly correct, though the readling of the MS. is so.

"2 989 disf la Pit cele, 1. fo disi ii rois.' My brief note on this clause is, "l la pucele, dative," which I believe M. PARIS will be ready to approve on second consideration. T he passage stands: [Li rois]

Porvint a la pucele et conjoe l'a: " Fille," dist la pucele, " beinois soit qui vos a Nouriejusq'a hui."

"339I ajoutez pour la miesure je avant lune."-Hereje is presumably a misprinit for jo, since Al. PARIS could not have overlooked the fact that in the verse

Et ii. nes dont avrai je l'une a mon devis,

je would stand in the feminiine czesura and would according-ly count for niaught in the measure.

" 3487 riz 1. niia.-Apropos of M. SCHELER'S note on rin (verse 2260 of his edition of BEU- VON DE COMARCHIS elltitleCl 'IBeuves de Coni- marchis '), M. PARIS speaks (Rooti. v, IIS) of " le mot rin, qui est certaiinement a effacer de la langue et a remplacer par riu comme la deajj remarque M. Tobler (Goll. gel. Aizz., I8741, P. 1044) "; and as lately as I889 (Root. xviii, II8), in his review of BARTSCH an-d HORNING, 'La Langue et la litt. fr.,' M. PARIS says : " Rin, ' canal ' ; il faut riu.'" But in the same volume of Ronz. (P. 508, note), at the end of MUSSAFIA's rectifications to the sanme work, he writes: "Je profite de l'occasion pour retracter ina remarque sur rin; ce mot, au sens de ' cours deall,' quelle qu'en soit l'origine, existe reellement en ancien fran?ais et est attest' par des rimes.'3' The word rina 1is apparently not treated in KORTING'S new 'LLateinisch-romanlisches Wdrterbuch,' and I am not aware that any etymology has been proposed. Germanic Rinnie (cf. Anglo-Saxon rinne) inaturally suggests itself.

P. 330, 1. 24 ff., 1I. PARIS remarks, in speak- ing of the editor's attempted explanation of 0. Fr. cazire: "Caitre est explique par CAL6- REAI et chaleur par CALOREAM; c'est ilngellieux,

3. The note last quoted appeared after the publicationi of ' La Naissance.' In the MIS. it is impossible to determine whether the scribe wrote rin or rio.

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Page 5: Apropos of 'La Naissance Du Chevalier au Cygne

Q3 Ja9zuary, I89I. JMODERN LANGUAGE NOTES. Vol. vi, Nlo. I.

mais comment s'expliquerait CALOREMNl? CaU- re, mot propre atu N.-E., represelnte, a mon avis, un lat. vulg. CAL6RA forme sur le type de FRIGC6RA." I believe that the question is in- cidentally solved by SUCHIER in GR6BER'S 'Grundriss ' i, 638: "das Nebeneiinander voln caur e und ca/or im Altfranz6sischen, die frei- lich nicht mehr wie verschiedene Kasus des- selben Worts, solndern wie zwei selbstandige Wbrter fungierein, deutet auf ein Igeres Fort- bestehen der lateinlisclheln Flexion zurfick."4

P. 331, 1. 20. " Ia Taible des nomis fropres n'est pas essez complkte."-This criticism is most just. Being obliged, by unavoidable ex- igencies of publication, to print this vocabu- lary without revision of my cards, I should have imiade a poiInt of begginig indulgenice beforehaind for aniy oimissioins or defects.

In conclusion, I may be pardoned for poilnt- ing ouLt that my doctor's dissertation, the edition of the ' Panthere d'Amours ' for the Societe des ancinis lextes franfais, did not appear in i88o, as AI. PARIS has here, alnd in h-iis ' Litterature franqaise au moyen age ' p. 277, inadvertently remarked, but in I885 (altlhoglh assigned to the "exercice " of I883 in the Society's accounts and bearing the latter date onI the title-page). Nor will it be out of place if I call attention here to an error in M. PAUJL MEYER's report of vol. iii. of MOD. LANG. NOTES in Rout. xviii, i86: " M. Todd avait im- prim6 le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs dans la preface de soni dition de la PanlIhre d'ainoztrs sans se rappeler que ce meme opus- cole avait dejta &tt publi6 par M. de Mont- aiglon." As a matter of fact, it will appear from a reference to the work in question that M. DE MONTAIGLON s editioni was collated by me on the original MIS. in the BibliothEque Nationale, as a resuilt of which comparison various rectifications were made.

H. A. FoDD.

AN EMENDAT(fON IN THE ANGL O- SAXON GOSPELS. Luke i, 5.-

of Albian hlne.

THE meaning of the phrase of Abiaw luue, Luke i, 5 of the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels, slhould be obvious from the record in

4 VAN HAMEL, vocab. to RENCLUS DE, MOILIENS, derives caure from ilifill. CALERE.

I. Chroll, xxixr, of the deternminatioln by lot of the twenty-four courses of priestly service: the eighth course fell to Abijah. However in this instance the translator- did not, as it appears, have this history ivell in mind, for he wvas by some means led to commit a mistrans- latioln, wvhich in its turn has occasioned a train of curious colnsequences in the Anglo-Saxon lexicons. The interest of the matter(, lies in this, that a special definition of 12;'n ('enclosure, town,') extending through a long tradition in lexicography, has been based solely on this isolated occurrence. This special definitioln is 'course, turn,' as first recorded by SOAINER (I659), in v. IDine, who also adds, after his refereince to Luke i, 5, the illtustration " corneed to t1.ide, vicem vel locum obtinet sive capessit; taketlh place, takes his turne." SKINNER

('Etymologicon,' I671) does niot cite this mean- ing of Iozwz; nor does SPELAMAN (' Glossarium,' ed. of I687). although he refers to Luke xvi, 4 and 8, for Ii?nscipe anid fiznge efa. BENSON

(1701) repeats the two themes of SOAINER: ''/z, sepim-lentumii, villa, hortuis, territorium,'" and " miffle, vice, sepes, territoriumn." In the 'Ety- iologicum Anglicantum ' of JUNIus as edited by LYE (1743), OInlY the usuial definitiolns of town are found, but in LYE'S ' Dictioi1ariUm ' (1772) the special meaning 'classis ' is de- duced from the phrase of Abian InnlZe wvith the translation "ex Abi- classe,'" and this is folloxved by an expansion in citations, in the manner of SOMNER, to show how IEin as 'vicis, locus ' is employed in expressions like: " cyniain I 5 vel onz Izz7ne, venire ad vicem, vel in vice sua "; " briingan Id vTel on Izzne, adducere ad vicem, vel in vice sua "; "feran ont Iidn, ire a(l vicem suam "; "sigan Io Itzne, tendere ad vicem sniam"; "dcs de lencten on Idngeliden Izefde, ex quo ver ad vicem suam appulisset." These citations are all from the Anglo-Saxon "Menologium." BOSWVORTH

(1838), under the fourth definition of Ifin, " a class, course, turn," appropriates LYE'S article -without acknowledgment-but inserts the opinion of Mi. CARDALE, that Idn or Idne in the expressions cited from tbe " Menologium" " is a mere expletive." We next come to ETTMftLLER Vorda Vealhst6d,' i85I), to be surprised by another unacknowledged repro- duction of the details in LYE, with no change

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