The Tale of Zeus and Dame Ragnelle

No, it will make sense. Bear with me.

So, I’ve a conference next week at which I’m speaking on The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, a mid-15C analogue of the Loathly Lady tale that also appears in, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. The fact that the conference theme is “Intimacy: Family, Friendship and Fealty” means that I can’t just go haring off after the diversion that occurred to me last night, so: once more unto the blog!

The history of the Loathly Lady figure relative to Irish sovereignty tales (in which the lady represents the country) has been well established.  I have no citations by me, as I am writing this on the bus, but I believe Frederick Madden had something to say about it in his collection of Gawain stories, and it goes on from there according to the usual patterns of late 19-early 20C myth-discovery.  That is, therefore, the accepted mythical ancestor of the figure, and as hunting out mythological precedents is rather out of fashion and the genealogy is well traced I don’t believe  anyone has thought to dispute it, or posit any additional ancestor.

But surely the obvious classical precedent is the god-who-comes-to-dinner? Zeus, or some other god (usually Zeus as the patron of hospitality), disguises him/herself as some ugly, poor old beggar and asks for shelter and food. Or, of course, for help crossing a river, etc.  This is a test, the protagonist responds according to their moral stature, and the god suddenly sheds his unprepossessing exterior to reveal himself in all his glory to pass judgement on the protagonist, along with appropriate reward or punishment.  I don’t recall offhand whether any examples of that trope appear in Ovid, but it’s entirely in keeping with the system of virtue and reward evident in the Aeneid, to consider just two of the most culturally influential classical texts extant in the Middle Ages.

The main linking device is, of course, the transformation: a disguised stranger who appeared unworthy according to the ideals of the genre – poor and old and helpless in Greek mythology, disgusting and unmannerly and often old in romance – is suddenly transformed into the epitome of those ideals. In addition:

• the transformation is in direct response to the actions of the protagonist towards the stranger,
• in entering the narrative, the stranger will, explicitly or otherwise, initiate a kind of test for the protagonist, in which their response demonstrates (and thereby establishes) their virtue,
• the stranger retains to him/herself the authority to pass judgement on the protagonist’s actions after the return transformation (rather than delegating that task to the narrator), claiming the status of moral arbiter of the narrative,
• similarly, the stranger him/herself dispenses punishment or reward.

The trouble with this is that it’s a bit of a jump from Greek mythology to mediaeval romance.  And there is a good deal of cultural filtering and reconditioning that must take place there to make any Greek story (or figure) have any relevance to a late-mediaeval audience.

So where else can we find a more immediate precedent to this figure, a precedent that provides a type of bridging device between classical myth and late-mediaeval readership? a precedent in a tradition that is entirely accustomed to absorbing classical and/or pagan stories and recasting them to its own set of moral values?

Well:

... whanne Seint Iulian reste hym aboute midnyght al forweried [weary] and the wedyr colde and a gret froste, he herde a vois that wepte piteously and cried: 'Iulian, helpe me ouer for Goddes loue or ellis I perische for greuous colde.' And whanne he herde that voys he arose al sodenly [immediately] and passed the colde water and founde that pore creature that deied nigh for colde, toke hym up and bere hym to his hous and light the fere and dede al his diligence to warme hym. And as he myght in no wise make hym take warmthe he toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde... And a litell after he that apered to be so sike and as a foule lepre stied vp shinyng into heuene, saieng to his oste: 'Iulian, oure Lorde hathe sent me to the, sendyng the to saie that he hathe receiued thi and ye bothe shull reste in oure Lorde witheinne a litell tyme' And anone he vanished awaye... (Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer, EETS 2006; v. 1, 144)

Appropriately enough, that comes from the story of St Julian Hospitaller, Zeus’ descendant in the role of protecting the sacred laws of hospitality and defending the safety of guests.  But it works perfectly well in a Christian context, thus refigured – well enough that throughout the Gilte Legende (and elsewhere), saints and even Jesus himself regularly pop up where they’re not expected, mysteriously disguised, usually as someone helpless, and initiate a test of some kind or another.  Quite of a piece with the popular belief that saints really could interfere in a very material way with everyday life – all your big brothers are watching you.

So, if Dame Ragnelle has cross-genre precedents in, for example, St Julian and others, can we expect that her contemporary audience might have recognised them and picked up on the currents? I think so – if nothing else, Ragnelle seems to deliberately play with the collision of genre, pushing herself forcibly into society, conscious of her own incongruity and playing it for all it’s worth with her fine clothes and horse.  If so, the audience could expect her at her appearance to make demands which would set up a challenge as a moral test – apparently for both Arthur and Gawain. And she does, tests which Gawain passes and Arthur fails (largely by fobbing responsibility off on his nephew).

But if she refers to or recalls testing figures in hagiography, does this have an effect on what is being tested? Courtly virtues? Christian ones?  The story of St Julian explicitly opposes the life of the court (and its values) with the humble Christian values that  attend helping mysterious sick strangers (for which you have to live in an isolated hut beside a ‘flode’). The Wife of Bath’s nameless loathly lady gives a pillow-lecture that could be read as being in opposition to ‘courtly’ virtues. And Gawain, when his ugly wife has become beautiful, thanks God for her deliverance from a curse (and presumably for his from the equally horrible fate of having to look on her all the time). Perhaps Arthur’s failure is that he tries to adhere to courtly virtues which are (or could be read as) so dependent on appearance as reflective of personal status.

Cleopatra D IX: MS V, ff. 118-168. South English Legendary.

A fragment of an otherwise unknown manuscript of the South English Legendary.

 

Description.

Parchment, 51 ff., 265 x 165 mm with the text block 205 x 112 mm. Written in one column of 40 lines. Folios in twelves, with ff. 1-5 of the first quire lost and the final quire in eight. The last leaf is blank. Written in two hands, both Anglicana approaching textura, very clear. B is rounder with smaller strokes. A writes ff. 118-149v (John Evangelist, Thomas of Becket), B ff. 149v-166 (Theophilus/Virgin, Cecilia, Gregory). No decoration save the “traditional blue initials flourished in red with marginal extensions”, not filled in (Görlach, Textual tradition 112). All folios but the last numbered in modern foliation.

 

Contents.

The end of a manuscript of the South English Legendary, lacking at least five leaves from its first quire and probably several other quires containing a more complete collection of the poems. The South English Legendary is a popular collection of saints’ lives in vernacular verse, surviving in many manuscripts, originating in the Worcestershire/Gloucestershire region in the late thirteenth century. Görlach observes that it seems to have been confined to this region “for the first 50-80 years of its existence, spreading into the Midlands only in the second half of the 14th century” (Revision 9). The legends contained in this manuscript are (Brown 267-68):

- 118r: The final eight lines of St John the Evangelist (Him sende here his ringe a3en & þonked him also...). ½ p.

- 118r-149v: St Thomas of Canterbury, followed by his Translation (Gilberd was Thomas fader name þat trewe was & god...). 32 ff.

- 149v-155v: St Theophilus, with Miracles of the Virgin (Seint Teophle was a gret man & gret clerk also...). 7 ff.

- 155v-158v: St Cecilia (Seint Cecile of noble kinne ibore was at Rome...). 4 ff.

- 158v-166v: St Gregory (All þat beoþ in sinne i-bounde / And þencheþ godes merci to abide...). 9 ff.

 

Origin.

Görlach’s study of the dissemination and variations of the Southern English Legendary, together with the dialect and orthography of this version, led him to place it in the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire region (Görlach, Textual tradition 112). Its acquisition by Prise may suggest a religious house in Gloucestershire, as he enacted the dissolution of many houses there and apparently none in Oxfordshire (cf. Pryce; Ker, Sir John Prise), although there is no evidence that he acquired it directly from its original location rather than from another collector.

 

Date.

Görlach judges both hands in this manuscript as belonging to the middle of the fourteenth century.

 

Later provenance and position within codex.

At some point during the sixteenth century the manuscript, or possibly its remains, fell into the hands of Sir John Prise, employed by Henry VIII during the 1530s to close down monasteries in the west of England (Ker, Sir John Prise 5). Prise’s aversion to altering or rebinding the manuscripts in his collection (ibid) suggests that it would have passed on to Cotton (presumably via one or more intermediaries) alone, unbound with any other manuscript within the codex. The gap in foliation between the previous manuscript and this, however, suggests the presence of two blank leaves, possibly used by Prise to enclose this fragile fragment to prevent the loss of further leaves (if indeed it was fragmented at this point).

While Prise may have been more concerned with the preservation of the original state of his manuscripts than many of his contemporaries, his attitude was not entirely reverent. Ker mentions the “numerous, strongly Protestant and anti-Becket” notes in Prise’s hand written in the margin by that legend: “What arrogance is this! of one that had spent his tyme more in merchandize hauking and hunting than in lernyng” (qtd. in Ker, Sir John Prise 21). Precious his books may have been to Prise, but ultimately utilitarian.

There is also the possibility that Prise may have received the manuscript intact. This is perhaps more likely: history was his subject, not the vagaries of poetic saints, and a mere fragment of such a text might have not seemed worth preserving. If, then, it passed on to Cotton as a whole and was fragmented by him (see introductory post), he may have bound it with another two leaves to distinguish it from the ‘serious’ matter of the volume, or to hold it together pending proper binding. This is another question on which the manuscriptitself could shed light, as the age and wearing of the outer leaves of the manuscript and of the sheltering leaves ought to give some clue as to how long each has spent unprotected.

 

Lacunae.

Perhaps fittingly, considering its position as the final manuscript in the codex, this manuscript’s value as a witness lies less in its contents than in its later history. The poems it contains, with minor variations, survive in more complete manuscripts and have been published several times, while their cousins and progeny live on in texts such as the Canterbury Tales and the Gilte Legende. On the other hand, its treatment at the hands of Prise (and possibly Cotton) stands with the fate of the psalter in Royal 13 D I in testimony to the likely fate of a good many such manuscripts at the hands of the Protestant antiquarians. The violence visited on the ‘body’ of this manuscript seems to evidence a need to correct and subdue a recalcitrant creature amongst the diligent, precious subjects better beloved of their keepers. As such, the mystery of its missing leaves and the firm rebukes written in its margins form an appropriate counterpart to the quiet survival of the Brief Chronicle, and to the repeated studying and reproduction of the Liber Alani de Ashbourne.

 

 

Cited.

Brown, Carleton. A Register of Middle English Romance and Didactic Verse. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1916.

Görlach, Manfred. The textual tradition of the South English Legendary. Leeds: University of Leeds, 1974.

----- An East Midland Revision of the South English Legendary: A Selection from MS C. U. L. Add. 3039. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1976.

Ker, Neil R. “Sir John Prise”, The Library 5th series 10 (1955): 1-24.

Pryce, Huw. “Prise, Sir John (Syr Siôn ap Rhys) (1501/2–1555).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004. 03 Dec 2009.

Structure and symmetry in the Gilte Legende (1): St Julian

So, a couple of weeks back I discussed the disjointed nature of some of the vitae in the Gilte Legende (ed. Richard Hamer, EETS OS 327-8, 2006-7). I also mentioned the plethora of stories of Julians that the author tells under the entry for St Julian (v. 1 pp. 141-47) just to make sure we know which St Julian is the right St Julian; but despite the generally confused nature of that entry, the story of St Julian itself is beautifully symmetrical, and his saintly functions relate perfectly to the events of his life.

Briefly, the story is this. Fleeing a prophecy that he will kill both his parents (laid on him as punishment by a hart he was hunting), he moves away, marries and conveniently gets set up as a lord in a nicely feudal castle, as happens to so many unconnected vagabonds. When his parents find his castle, his wife invites them in, realises who they are, lavishes hospitality on them and gives up her bed to them, going to sleep elsewhere for the night. Returning home, he sees a man and a woman in his wife’s bed and kills them both in a fit of jealousy. As he emerges from the bloody chamber he meets his wife emerging, pointedly, from the chapel, and is slightly chagrined to hear her explanation. Realising that “whan I wende to eschewe this sorifull dede I most cursed haue fulfelled it” (144), he flees his castle and society and goes hermit – with his wife, who refuses to desert him. “And thanne they went togedre besides a grete flode where many men perisched, and there besides in that desert thei made a litell hospitall for to do there penaunce and for to bere ouer all tho that wolde passe” (ibid), until one day a horrible slimy smelly old leper turns up and says HELP ME ACROSS THE RIVER. Well, given the Greek-myth heritage of this story which has already been so obvious I didn’t even bother to use the word Oedipus anywhere, we know how this bit goes. He helps the leper, takes him in and feeds him and, because he's dying of cold, “toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde and hilled hym diligently” (ibidetc). And lo and behold, the leper is secretly an angel sent by God to receive his penance and promise him that he will be taken to God soon. Incidentally, that “hilled” is probably “healed” but could also mean “cover, wrap” and possibly “embrace”. So perhaps it’s not surprising that if he was cuddling a leper (who probably had flu, and also fleas) in his bed, it was only “a litell after” that he and his wife both “slepten in oure Lorde Ihesu Crist”.
Just like Sir Gawain, this story invites diagrams. So:

No, I'm not procrastinating, why do you ask?

The story is driven by three revelations, each following an action of Julian’s. Pursuit of the hind leads to a prophecy, the murder of his guests is followed by the revelation of their identity and charity to the leper is followed by the revelation of the angel. In turn, each revelation leads to a journey:

I COULD continue to elaborate this picture and add all the other little structural things mentioned below and more, but I don't think Paint would let it be legible after another two lines or so.

Interestingly, the first two journeys are principally away, fleeing a prophecy and his shame respectively. It is only the third journey, instigated by God, that is a journey to a specific destination. Also, the first journey would seem to be in an upwards direction: socially, he ascends, and topographically he ends up in a nice tall castle which is presumably on some sort of a hill. But the folly of this social and earthly ascension is revealed by the consequences of his (newly acquired?) social pride, when his jealousy leads him to murder. The next journey is deliberately downwards, through the social scale and to the banks of “a grete flode”, and it is here that the spiritual state is reached which allows him to ascend correctly in the end. Or, to put it another way, his initial quest is away from his birth identity, now revealed as dangerous, to one which is more socially pleasing and validated by the community but leads to grave sin through a lack of his own self-knowledge (failing to recognise his parents), and thence towards social obscurity that leads him to discover a purer and truer identity in God.
There are other pleasing little contrast-dualities happening in the structure:

• Most obviously, Julian’s attitude to his guests changes from the initial monstrous misunderstanding of his duties as host (and son) to his parents, to the self-sacrificing devotion he shows to an unfamiliar leper (who stands in for his spiritual father). There are shades of a similar guest in the hart, not recognised by Julian even as human until it speaks, and thereby foreshadowing his slaughter of his parents.
• Wilderness vs. culture, where the first (initial forest, final flood) bracket the second and seem to be places of truth and self-knowing, while the second causes obscurity of the soul and blinds with frivolous things.
• More specifically, the bedroom vs. the church. Note that, while Julian was in his bedroom being murderous, lustful, prideful, greedy et al, his wife was in the church, dutifully at her morning prayer after being beautifully hospitable and giving up her bed to the guests. Both emerge from their respective spaces of darkness and light at the same moment, and it is the sight of her that initiates the revelation of Julian’s error (“and whanne he seigh her he hadde mervaile”, 144), removing his blindness.
• His wife has a pleasing sense of symmetry also, promising to stay with him in good time and in bad, “for sethe I haue parted with you in ioye I shall be partener of your sorw”. Their impending departure (and de-part in Middle English could also mean divide) “parts” the story into two, and there is a sense that her presence and her “part” in his fate will be a decisive factor in making this a clean break, providing a sort of rebirth.
• The initial promise of the hart is echoed and laid to rest in the promise of the angel, the first predicting dire acts and bloody division from his parents, the second imminent peace and reunion with his heavenly father.

So, all in all, a very clever little example of certain elements from classical legend rewritten comprehensively enough to a) not feel patchy and disjointed and b) seamlessly rewrite the messages to a mediaeval Christian moral setting.

Querela divina and Responsio humana in BL Add 37049 (transcription)

For reference, this is the full text of the poetic exchange on the page discussed in the last post (BL Add 37049 20r).  Couplets are compressed onto one line for space, line breaks indicated with /.  The only punctuation is an occasional medial punctus, transcribed as a full stop.  Maiuscules follow the manuscript.  Abbreviations are expanded with italics.  The scribe made a few errors in the final lines (were they obscured in his original?) and has crossed them out, possibly with some attempt at scraping or rubbing – it’s hard to say on the colourless image.  On the first two occasions he crossed the letters out before completing the word and continued on the same line, while on the third he completed the line before realising his mistake and inserted a superlinear correction.

Querela diuina

O man vnkynde / Hafe in mynde

My paynes smert

Beholde and see / Þat is for þe

Percyd my hert

And yitt I wolde / Or þan þu schuld

Þi saule forsak

On cros with payne / Scharp deth agayne

Ffor þi luf take.

Ffor whilk I aske / None oþer taske

Bot luf agayne

Me þan to luf / Althyng abofe

Þow aght be fayne

 

Responsio humana

O lord right dere / Þi wordes I here

With hert ful sore

Þerfore fro synne / I hope to blynne

And grefe no more

Bot in þis case / Now helpe þi grace

My frelnes

Þat I may euer / Do þi pleser

With lastyngnes

Þis grace to gytt / Þi moder -eh- eke

Euer be –þry- prone

Þat we may alle / In to –þat- \þi/ halle

With ioy cum sone

Amen.

 

The words around the wound in the heart: 

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þat our / Jhesus crist sufferd for oure redempcoun [sic – I just can’t make out an i anywhere in there!]

 

Christ’s words:

Þies woundes smert. bere in þin hert and luf god aye. / If þow do þis . þu fil haf blys with owten delay

Incidentally, the scribe originally started writing this verse higher on the page, stopping when he realised that the words would run into Christ’s halo.  There seems to be an attempt at scraping the first attempt away, and the line enclosing the text banner is thicker over the half-erased words in an attempt to hide them.  It’s probably not to much of a jump to hazard that the scribe was also the illustrator, and didn’t do anything very elaborate in the way of plotting out his page layout beforehand.  I think we also have an indication that he was thinking about the illustrative rather than the poetic side of things when copying out the second line of this couplet, in that he (automatically?) added the usual “en” to “withowten”: it rather destroys the rhythm, and could have been omitted.