Textual Histories Readings in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

TEXTUAL HISTORIES: READINGS IN
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE

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Textual Histories
Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
THOMAS A. BREDEHOFT
U N I V E R S I T Y OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4850-1
©
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bredehoft, Thomas A.
Textual histories : readings in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8020-4850-1
1. Anglo-Saxon chronicle. 2. English prose literature - Old English,

ca. 450-1100 - Criticism, Textual. 3. Great Britain - History -
Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066 - Historiography. 4. Great Britain -
History - Norman period, 1066-1154 - Historiography. I. Title.
DA150.B742001 942.01 C2001-901769-3
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing

program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing
activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VI1
LIST OF PLATES JX
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi
Introduction 3
1: The Common Stock Genealogies 14

1.1 The Metrical Form of the Genealogies 15
1.2 The Manuscript Presentation of the Common Stock Genealogies 23
1.3 The Historiographic Function of the Common Stock Genealogies 30
2: Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the Context of the Common Stock 39

2.1 Variation and Innovation in Annal 755: Orality and Literate
Practice 41
2.2 Structural Indicators and the Meaning of Annal 755 within the
Common Stock 53
3: The Post-Alfredian Annals 61

3.1 The Dynastic Continuations 63
3.2 The Northern Recension 67
4: The Chronicle Poems 72

4.1 Manuscript Presentation and the Identification of the Chronicle
Poems 73
4.2 Metre and the 'Poems of Irregular Meter' 91
4.3 The Place of Poetry in the Chronicle 99
vi Contents
5: Latin in the Chronicle 119

5.1 Latin in the Old English Chronicle 120
5.2 Asser and ^thelweard 126
6: Conclusions 137
6.1 The Ends of the Chronicle and the End of Anglo-Saxon History 138
6.2 Reading the Chronicle and Its Record 147
APPENDIX 155
NOTES 171
BIBLIOGRAPHY 213
INDEX OF ANNALS AND MANUSCRIPTS 221
SUBJECT INDEX 225
Illustrations follow page 100

AcknowledgmentsS
This project (I am somewhat mortified to discover) has occupied nearly a dec-

ade of my life, and the debts I have incurred during that time deserve more
than these brief paragraphs can encompass. Nevertheless:
To this project's earliest readers, Nicholas Howe, Alan K. Brown, and
Andrea Lunsford, I owe a debt of gratitude for their patience and attention.
Nick Howe, especially, has proved more than willing to read draft upon
draft, until I have come to suspect he knows this project somewhat better
than I do myself. Geoffrey Russom and Dan Donoghue read early versions
of a portion of chapter 1; their comments were enormously helpful in my
thinking about the metrical structure of the genealogies and their place in the
Chronicle. Portions of chapters 1 and 6 have been presented at conferences
(the Modern Language Association [1993] and the International Society of
Anglo-Saxonists [1995, 1999]); my thanks to the organizers of these confer-
ences and panels for the opportunity to try my early ideas out upon informed
audiences. Paul E. Szarmach and Timothy C. Graham gave me the opportu-
nity to participate in their NEH Summer Seminar in 1997; there I first began
to grapple effectively with the question of the formal identity of late Old
English verse.
This project would have been physically impossible without the gracious
access to manuscripts allowed me at the British Library in London, at the
wonderful Parker Library at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, and at the
Bodleian Library in Oxford. At the latter, I owe an especial debt to Martin
Kauffmann, who made it possible for me to consult the Peterborough manu-
script of the Chronicle. For permission to reproduce photographic images,
I am happy to thank the Trustees of the British Library and the Master and
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
For financial support at various stages of this project, it is my pleasure to
viii Acknowledgments
thank both the Ohio State University (and its English Department) and the
University of Northern Colorado (and its College of Arts and Sciences).
Having the support of my colleagues and institutions has been a wonderful
experience; having their financial support has been even more rewarding.
Plates
Plate I BL Cotton Vespasian B vi, fo. 109r

Plate II CCCC 173, fo. Ir
Plate III CCCC 173, fo. 13r
Plate IV BL Additional 34,652, fo. 2v
Plate V CCCC 173, fo. lOr
Plate VI BL Cotton Tiberius A vi, fo. 12r
Plate VII BL Cotton Tiberius B i, fo. 140r
Plate VIII BL Cotton Tiberius B iv, fo. 53r
Abbreviations
BL (in citations of manuscripts) British Library, London

Bodleian (in citations of manuscripts) Bodleian Library, Oxford
CCCC (in citations of manuscripts) Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
CUL (in citations of manuscripts) Cambridge University Library
/Ethelweard The Chronicle of AZthelweard, cited from the edition of

Campbell
ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
ASE Anglo-Saxon England
ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record
Asser Asser's Life of Alfred, cited from the edition of Stevenson
fo./fos folio, folios
HB Historia Brittonum, cited from the edition of Morris
HE Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, cited by book and chapter from
the edition of Colgrave and Mynors
OEG Campbell's Old English Grammar
WSRT West Saxon Regnal Table
TEXTUAL HISTORIES:
READINGS IN THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE
Introduction
One should, perhaps, respond to my title as Shakespeare's Benedick responds

to Beatrice's invitation to dine: 'There's a double meaning in that.' For indeed
there is a double meaning: the readings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle I offer
here concern both the textual history of the Chronicle's texts and the textuality
of history as embodied in the Chronicle. The force of my argument, as a con-
sequence, has a double thrust. On the one hand, I investigate the textual pres-
entation of the Chronicle manuscripts, frequently examining neglected textual
features such as pointing, layout, and capitalization in order to interpret the
function and significance of the Chronicle's generically diverse contents. On
the other hand, I simultaneously explore the broader significance of the tex-
tual strategies employed by the chroniclers in the writing of their history. As
my conclusions indicate, the two processes are inseparable, for as I argue, the
Chronicle has interest not only as a record of historical events but also as a
record of the development of historical writing in Anglo-Saxon England. It
reflects, and even helps to construct, a developing Anglo-Saxon national iden-
tity, an identity that continued, like the Chronicle itself, even beyond the Nor-
man Conquest.
The Chronicle's existence as a primarily vernacular history is, perhaps, its
most remarkable feature. The use of Old English as a medium of historical
expression, however, was only one of the features that contributed to the cul-
tural power of the Chronicle. The use of traditional alliterating genealogies in
the Chronicle's original composition and the later, archaizing use of classical
heroic verse in The Battle of Brunanburh offer two different, but equally pow-
erful, means for basing a national identity upon a heroic past. It is important to
note, however, that the Chronicle shifts from one strategy to the other; as
political conditions and the conditions of historical writing changed during
the Anglo-Saxon period, the Chronicle (and its chroniclers) responded by
4 Textual Histories
employing different textual and historiographic strategies. The Chronicle's,

continued cultural presence (as it was copied, updated, augmented, and
revised across a span of more than two and a half centuries) is likewise testi-
mony to its continuing cultural significance. The textual strategies that
allowed the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers to continue to produce such a work
demand our attention if we are to understand what we read in its pages.
The complexity of the Chronicle's textual record, however, makes it neces-
sary for me to offer, at this point, some account of the various books and texts
that fall under the broad and inclusive rubric 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.'
Such an account is offered immediately below, in the spirit of a quick
refresher course on the Chronicle's complex interrelations.
It is both conventional and convenient to begin with the Parker Chronicle

(manuscript A), that version of the Chronicle preserved in Corpus Christi Col-
lege, Cambridge, manuscript 173.' The Parker Chronicle itself saw irregular
use for more than two centuries; its first hand (commonly dated to the 890s)
records all of the annals through 891, which roughly comprise the Common
Stock.2 The last contributions to the Parker Chronicle are the twelfth-century
(or late-eleventh-century) revisions and additions attributed to the scribe of
manuscript F, and the Acts ofLanfranc, a Latin annalistic continuation extend-
ing from 1070 to 1093. In between, the Parker Chronicle seems to have
received irregular updates and supplements, with major interventions or addi-
tions probably to be dated in the 920s, the 950s, around the year 1000, and
around 1070.3 The Parker Chronicle is prefaced by a copy of the West Saxon
Regnal Table (WSRT); in the tenth century, a copy of the Laws of Alfred and
Ine seems to have been added to the codex.4 An important manuscript for both
its early date and its continued use, the Parker Chronicle is available in fac-
simile in an Early English Text Society volume, and was edited most recently
by Janet Bately.
The B manuscript of the Chronicle (BL Cotton Tiberius A vi, fos 1-35 and
Tiberius A iii, fo. 178) is, by contrast, far less complicated, from both paleo-
graphic and codicological standpoints. Written all at one time, B extends from
the Chronicle's beginning to 977. A copy of the WSRT fills the detached folio
now found in Tiberius A iii; it had originally stood at the end of B, separated
from the end of the Chronicle by two blank leaves.5 The B Chronicle is unu-
sual among the Chronicle manuscripts in that a great number of its annal num-
bers are not present at all (they appear only sporadically between 652 and
945). It is possible that these numbers were originally intended to be inserted
by a rubricator. B was first edited in its own right in 1983 by Simon Taylor.
Manuscript C occupies folios 115v-64 of BL Cotton Tiberius B i; it is pre-
Introduction 5
ceded by a copy of the Alfredian translation of Orosius and by the poems now
known as The Menologium and Maxims II. Although a change of hands occurs
at annal 491, the C text appears to have been written up at one time in the
1040s and continued in a roughly contemporary fashion through 1056. The
annals for 1065 and 1066 likewise appear to be roughly contemporary, except
for eight lines added to 164r in the twelfth century. B and C are very closely
related textually; it is possible that portions of C were copied directly from B.6
C was edited separately by Rositzke in 1940; a new edition by Katherine
O'Brien O'Keeffe has just appeared as well.
The D version of the Chronicle (fos 3-86 of BL Cotton Tiberius B iv) is, in
many ways, the most puzzling of them all. Like C, D exhibits apparent signs
of contemporary writing in the middle of the eleventh century.7 Perhaps two
gatherings had already been lost from D when Joscelin owned it; annals 262-
692 (and the beginning of 693) are represented here only by Joscelin's colla-
tions from other books on sixteenth-century leaves. A further gathering had
apparently been replaced much earlier: annals from 1016 to 1051 appear to be
preserved on 'supply leaves written in the 1070's or 1080's' (Ker, Catalogue
254). The D Chronicle extends to annal 1079, with a brief twelfth-century
addition dated 1080, although this latter date is probably an error for 1130.
G.P. Cubbin's recent edition of D will probably supersede the earlier edition of
Classen and Harmer.
The Peterborough Chronicle (manuscript E) is found in Oxford (Bodleian
Laud Misc. 636). It was copied up to 1121 by a single scribe and extends, ulti-
mately, to 1154, the furthest extent of any surviving Chronicle manuscript.
Unlike the other manuscripts, the Peterborough Chronicle also differs in the
extent of its localization: the original scribe interpolated into the text a number
of Peterborough charters and documents under the relevant annals. Because of
its completeness and extent, the E Chronicle has often (with A) been seen as
one of the most important Chronicle manuscripts: with A, E served as one of
Plummer's base texts, and E was published in facsimile (with an introduction
by Dorothy Whitelock) in 1954. Plummer's text of E remains the standard,
although Cecily Clark has edited annals 1070E to 1154E in a separate edition.
Like E, the F manuscript also appears to have been a twelfth-century pro-
duction. Preserved as folios 30-70 of BL Cotton Domitian viii, the F Chroni-
cle is unique for its pervasive bilinguality. Further, F stands primarily as a
synopsis of the Chronicle, especially in the earlier annals, which are often
greatly reduced. In F, each Old English annal is followed immediately by a
Latin version. The F scribe seems to have been working from A (which he
heavily annotated) and the immediate ancestor of E; his product seems to have
been a working copy, if we are to judge by the frequent crowding, interlinear
6 Textual Histories
insertions, corrections, additions, and even an added leaf (fo. 60). F breaks off,
incomplete, at the end of a gathering in annal 1058. Although the Old English
entries were printed in Thorpe's parallel-text edition of 1861, and the Latin
entries were printed by Magoun in 1947, the portions of F had not been edited
together until Peter Baker's edition was published in 2000. F was also pub-
lished in facsimile (with a brief introduction by David Dumville) in 1995.
The G manuscript of the Chronicle (in BL Cotton Otho B xi) was almost
entirely destroyed in the Cotton fire of 1731. The current folios 39-47 of Otho
B xi contain portions of seven charred and fragmentary leaves. A single leaf in
BL Additional 34,652 (fo. 2) seems to have been a copy of the West Saxon
Regnal Table originally associated with G; it survives unburnt. G was a tran-
script of A completed in the early years of the eleventh century, and it origi-
nally accompanied a copy of the Old English Bede. Perhaps because of its
fragmentary nature and its status as a transcript of A, G has been unjustly
neglected, although only A and B are older. Fortunately, G was transcribed by
Laurence Nowell before the Cotton fire; his transcript (now BL Additional
43,703) was one of the resources that allowed Angelika Lutz to complete her
reconstructive edition of G.8
Finally, there remains the single leaf that has been designated as 'manu-
script H': folio 9 of BL Cotton Domitian ix. Hardly a manuscript at all, this
lone leaf is nevertheless of immense importance, as it preserves portions of
annals for 1113 and 1114 which are independent from those in the Peterbor-
ough manuscript. In preserving a record of twelfth-century chronicling, then,
the survival of this leaf was fortunate indeed.
Such a survey of the Chronicle manuscripts must be brief and selective; other
details will necessarily emerge and be discussed as they relate to my further
arguments in the chapters that follow. Even this short sketch, however, allows
us to make some interesting observations. For example, the circumstantial
evidence of the Chronicle manuscripts themselves suggests that the Anglo-
Saxons felt the Chronicle to be an Alfredian production, at least in its origins.
Where the Chronicle is associated with other texts, they are almost always
Alfredian texts: the West Saxon Regnal Table (associated with manuscripts
ABG); the Old English Bede (also frequently felt to be Alfredian, associated
with G); the Laws of Alfred and Ine (AG); Alfred's translation of Orosius (C).9
These associations seem to have been made most frequently in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, and they seem to insist upon a traditional and continuing
identification of the Chronicle as an Alfredian work throughout the Anglo-
Saxon period.10
Further, the summary confirms just how extensively and continually the
Introduction 7
Chronicle was augmented and revised throughout the period of its existence.
Each manuscript, with the exceptions of F and G, includes the earliest record
of at least some annals; although not explicitly noted above, independent com-
position of annals can be seen in manuscripts ACDEH. What we refer to by
the simple name 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' is in fact a complex and chal-
lenging collection of works based upon a common root but branching in a
bewildering variety of directions.
Taken together, these two observations mark the Chronicle as a truly excep-
tional set of documents. The contemporary association of the Chronicle with
the reign of Alfred means, of course, that later Anglo-Saxon readers and (per-
haps even more importantly) Anglo-Saxon chroniclers must have been aware
that post-Alfredian annals were, in fact, not a part of the original composition.
This knowledge that later chroniclers had contributed to the Chronicle surely
authorized the continuing composition of annals; the well-recognized collabo-
rative and accretive nature of the Chronicle encouraged continuous additions.
Further, it is virtually certain that such readers and chroniclers were well
aware that the copy of the Chronicle they had before them was not the only
copy, and that the annals in that copy might well have differed from those in
other copies.11 The Chronicle was therefore probably unlike most other tex-
tual items in the manuscript culture of the Anglo-Saxons, such as the Old
English Bede or the Laws of Alfred and Ine: the Chronicle was recognized to
be something more than a single, coherent composition reflected (perhaps
imperfectly) in various physical books. In short, the Chronicle was clearly
understood to be a cultural document quite literally larger than any one of its
manuscripts.
The existence of this notion of a 'larger' Chronicle (something akin to what
we mean by 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle': a diverse and varied collection of
Chronicles) makes the process of reading the Chronicle especially challeng-
ing. For example, the recent critical trend of reading Anglo-Saxon texts within
their 'most immediate context' is obviously problematized when the context is
a Chronicle manuscript. The 'immediate context' paradigm implicitly accepts
manuscript context as being of primary importance. 12 Yet the most useful
context for interpreting a poem such as the 1086E poem on William the
Conqueror may not be Bodleian Laud Misc. 636, where it uniquely occurs,
since this manuscript contains very few of the Chronicle poems. Indeed, no
manuscript of the Chronicle contains all of the Chronicle poems, yet because
the Chronicle was a cultural document larger than any one of its manuscripts,
the Chronicle poems as a group define a context in which the 1086E poem can
be usefully interpreted. My reading of the 1086E poem, in chapter 4, consid-
ers it within this broader context. But in principle, each manuscript of the
8 Textual Histories
Chronicle must be read not only as it stands (as its original readers would have
encountered it) but also in the context of the Chronicle as a whole, for this
context, too, would have applied to contemporary Anglo-Saxon readers and
chroniclers.
Indeed, my method in this book is to balance readings based upon immedi-
ate manuscript context with readings of the Chronicle's texts in their larger
cultural contexts. But even the notion of 'immediate context' needs further
investigation. When Fred C. Robinson published his famous 'Most Immediate
Context' essay, he presented his reading of CCCC 41's Metrical Epilogue as a
useful corrective to earlier readings that (often basing their readings on printed
editions) had interpreted that poem as merely a scribal colophon. Similarly,
the whole of the 'back to the manuscripts' approach appears to take a similar
stance: manuscript context and manuscript evidence must be taken into
account to avoid misreadings which might otherwise spring from modern edi-
tions that normalize, regularize, and in other ways alter their texts.13 The
implicit interrelationship between the 'back to the manuscripts' movement
and the question of editorial mediation can be seen in the recent flurry of
books and essays on editorial theory in Old English texts.14
Yet the notion that editorial mediation can lead to misreadings must be sup-
plemented by the realization that this is not the only sort of mediation opera-
tive when modern readers encounter Old English texts. To the degree that our
literacy tradition and our paradigms of reading differ from those of the Anglo-
Saxons, we are also at risk of importing reading practices from our own con-
text into the act of reading Anglo-Saxon texts, even when we read them in
their manuscript context. Our very habits of reading mediate our experience of
Old English texts. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (in one of her essays on edito-
rial practice) approaches an understanding of this phenomenon when she
writes The most distinguishing hallmark of literate ideology is the unspoken
assumption that literacy is a unitary phenomenon whose shape is defined by
the modern conditions of literacy' ('Texts and Works' 58; emphasis in origi-
nal). O'Brien O'Keeffe should probably note that this is a particular literate
ideology; the Anglo-Saxons themselves presumably had an ideology of liter-
acy, though it may not have included this notion. And where O'Brien
O'Keeffe notes this sort of mediation as a phenomenon that should inform our
editorial practice (our preferred method of mediation), I believe that our very
reading (and interpretive) practices should be explicitly informed by an
awareness of and attention to possible influences from our own literacy tradi-
tion and practices.15
But where a 'back to the manuscripts' approach seems designed as a correc-
tive to misreadings based upon editorial mediation, it is not obviously suffi-
Introduction 9
cient to counter the mediating effects of our own literate practices.16 Indeed, I
believe we must develop what might be called a 'historicized literacy': a
scholarly understanding of Anglo-Saxon literate practice as it originally func-
tioned. The process of developing a historicized literacy, however, will be at
best a process of successive approximations.17 In such a process, of course, a
reading of a medieval text such as the Chronicle through the lens of our mod-
ern reading practices becomes a valuable first approximation. But a first
approximation must be followed by further approximations.
In the following chapters, I attempt to historicize our understanding of
Anglo-Saxon literate practice (at least where the Chronicle is concerned) in a
variety of different ways. At times, I will consider types of evidence familiar
from studies that take a 'back to the manuscripts' approach: evidence of point-
ing, capitalization, spacing, and page layout. I assume that, even where the use
of these textual features differs from our own, they nevertheless served a pur-
pose for Anglo-Saxon readers, writers, and scribes. At other times, I consider
questions of form. Modern understandings of Anglo-Saxon poetic form, for
example, draw the boundary line between verse and prose at a point different
from where the Chronicle seems to draw it, and to understand the Chronicle's
record demands that we pay attention to topics such as metrical form. Further,
I shall sometimes consider copying practices and the scribal paradigm; scribal
activity is a central feature of Anglo-Saxon literate practice, and, as it does not
feature in modern literacy, it is all too easy to misread. Throughout, I proceed
from the position that Anglo-Saxon texts are constructed for (and, indeed,
help to construct) ideal Anglo-Saxon readers; by learning to accommodate our
reading practices to those imagined for these texts' ideal readers, we can learn
something about what Anglo-Saxon writers expected of their readers. In this
way, a practice of historicized literacy can make us more sensitive to the sub-
tleties of Anglo-Saxon texts.
Crucially, the evidence gathered in the process of historicizing Anglo-
Saxon literacy (from formal considerations, copying strategies, and textual
habits such as pointing) must be brought to bear on the interpretive task.
While a greater understanding of historical literate practice is itself a sufficient
goal, a product of such understanding can be a greater understanding of histor-
ical texts. Thus, my analyses of textual practices serve here as introductions to
interpretive arguments. My chapters are, then, readings of the Chronicle in at
least two senses: literal readings, in which I examine the physical, visible
presentation and effects of the texts involved, and interpretations, where I
explore the significance of these texts, in the immediate context of their manu-
scripts, in the broader context of the Chronicle as a whole, and in the context
of Anglo-Saxon England itself.
10 Textual Histories
The sheer extent of the Chronicle, in its various manifestations, makes it

impossible for me to read it closely in its entirety. In some ways, then, the
readings that follow may seem like little more than the gathering up of the
Chronicle's 'usual suspects,' as in my analysis of the Chronicle poems or of
annal 755, which contains the famous story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. Yet
what draws my readings together is my attention to the Chronicle's moments
of greatest textual tension: the use of genres different from prose, for example;
the exceptional nature of the 755 annal; the problem of Alfred's death; the end
of the Chronicle itself. My investigation of these textual moments, I believe,
opens the door for an understanding of the developing textuality of both the
Chronicle and its readers and writers. Previous scholars' focus on the poems,
the genealogies, and the 755 annal confirms both the textual and historical sig-
nificance of these moments.
My investigation begins, of course, with considerations of various elements
of the Chronicle's Common Stock. Chapter 1 focuses on the alliterating gene-
alogies that appear repeatedly, from the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon invasion
in the sixth century to vEthelwulf's genealogy in annal 855. Although the
genealogies have long been associated with the Old English verse tradition, no
detailed examination of their form has been attempted, and I begin by using
the evidence of the early Vespasian manuscript to identify the structural prin-
ciples of the traditional genealogical form. Though the geneologies are clearly
different from classical Old English verse, I show that the genealogical tradi-
tion also had well-recognized standard forms and patterns. The details of the
incorporation of genealogies into the Chronicle and the West Saxon Regnal
Table show, however, that a single Alfredian scholar must have worked on
both texts, perhaps even as primary author of both. This scholar's innovations
in the genealogical form are of enormous interest because their characteristic
patterns suggest that he modelled his own genealogical contributions on the
metrical patterns of Old English verse rather than on the traditional genealogi-
cal forms seen in the earlier records. His signature forms give us information
about the composition of these Alfredian texts as well as about the state of Old
English metre during the Alfredian period.
Then, by comparing the form and layout of the Chronicle genealogies both
with tabular genealogies (such as those found in BL Cotton Vespasian B vi,
CCCC 183, and elsewhere) and with non-tabular genealogies in the West
Saxon Regnal Table, I show that the regular pointing tradition that developed
for the genealogies arose in response not to a transition from orality to literacy
but to the problem of textual space itself. A further comparison of the tradi-
tional alliterating form of the genealogies with the forms used in Latin works
such as the Historia Brittonum suggests that the form of the alliterating gene-
Introduction 11
alogy is especially well suited to the task of indicating political legitimacy: the
Common Stock's focus on West Saxon genealogy can confirm the Chronicle's
political investment in the West Saxon descendants of Êthelwulf.
Chapter 2 investigates the most famous single annal of the Common Stock,
the 755 annal recording the struggle between Cynewulf and Cyneheard. The
extraordinary record of textual variation and innovation in this annal suggests
that Anglo-Saxon scribes had a considerable degree of freedom when
approaching Anglo-Saxon texts and that their primary goal must have been
the production of a smooth, readable text rather than a mechanical, word-for-
word reproduction of their exemplar. That the scribal task was not merely
mechanical, however, suggests that scribes functioned as readers (even as
interpreters) as well as copyists: their responses may well point towards con-
temporary understandings of the texts they copied. Indeed, my reading of the
755 annal investigates the use of prominent letters ('litterae notabiliores,' in
Parkes's term) to mark out the structure of the annal. This evidence suggests
that (contrary to most modern readings) the annal's narrative sympathies lie
with the doomed Cyneheard and his men. My reading of the annal suggests
that it functions within the Common Stock to promote the notion of a nar-
rower pattern of succession; the tragedy of Cynewulf and Cyneheard stems
from the fact that Sigebryht was succeeded by the distantly related Cynewulf
rather than by Sigebryht's own brother. In an Alfredian context, such a mes-
sage supports the maintenance of the West Saxon dynasty seemingly envis-
aged by Alfred's father, yEthelwulf. Finally, I suggest that the textual variation
seen in the 755 annal cannot be tied to the supposed origin of the annal in an
oral tradition. The 755 annal's unique status as an extended narrative contrib-
utes to the degree of variation; other long prose annals in the Common Stock
appear to exhibit less variation because of their repeated use of 'frozen' (for-
mulaic) expressions.
In the third chapter, I move beyond the Common Stock to the post-
Alfredian annals. Post-Alfredian chroniclers, I suggest, were confronted by a
serious historiographic problem: the Common Stock itself had had an abiding
and powerful Alfredian telos, and the continuation of the Chronicle after
Alfred's death necessitated a revision of the Common Stock's structuring prin-
ciples. One response, I suggest, was the compilation of the Northern Recen-
sion, which seemingly replaced the Common Stock's West Saxon focus with a
northern, perhaps specifically Northumbrian, focus. A second response
involved a focus on Alfred's descendants. The Mercian Register (focusing on
Alfred's daughter /Ethelflaed) and the Edwardian Chronicle represented most
clearly in the A, B, and C manuscripts provide two examples of this response.
In the early tenth century, I suggest, the Chronicle was subject to complex and
conflicting forces, and the localized concerns of the Chronicles that followed
the careers of Alfred's offspring competed with the nationalizing efforts of the
Northern Recension.
Chapter 4, then, examines the record of poetry in the Chronicle as stem-
ming from a mid-tenth-century re-envisioning of the Chronicle's purposes and
effects. Because the Chronicle verse tradition seems to include both classical
and non-classical verse forms, I begin with the conclusion drawn in chapter 2
that the use of formulas (in prose or verse) contributed to textual stability.
Looking at the copying strategies employed by the various scribes as well as
at the record of manuscript pointing, I show that scribes treated virtually all of
the passages printed as verse by Plummer as poems. This conclusion allows
me to investigate the tradition of 'Chronicle poetry' as a genre, and the second
section of the chapter offers a metrical account of the non-classical Chronicle
poems, suggesting that their metrical form and their increasing use of rhyme
can be understood as more or less predictable outgrowths of changes in classi-
cal metrics. Finally, I argue that (beginning with Brunanburh) the tenth-
century Chronicle poems serve to recentre the Chronicle's narrative on the
West Saxon dynasty, linking the development of an Anglo-Saxon nation to the
fortunes of the West Saxon royal line. The poems of the eleventh century, of
course, then respond (in various ways) both to the historical events they
recount and to the historical vision embodied so powerfully in Brunanburh
and the other poems of the tenth century; and the remarkably conservative
classical form of the 1065 poem can itself be understood as an invocation of
the Chronicle poems' traditional historiographic effects in response to the
Norman Conquest.
In chapter 5, the Chronicle's relationship to Anglo-Saxon Latinity is
explored. Beginning with an investigation of the use of Latin in the Common
Stock (chiefly in the annal indicators and the 855 genealogy), I then also
briefly investigate the use of Latin in the twelfth century in manuscripts E, F,
and A. In the second half of the chapter, I explore the Anglo-Saxon transla-
tions of the Chronicle in the works of Asser and yEthelweard. In their own use
of genealogies and poems especially, these Latin translations transform the
purposes and effects of the largely vernacular Chronicle. Ultimately, I suggest
that a full understanding of the Chronicle in Anglo-Saxon England demands
that we pay attention to the changing role of Latinity and bilinguality both in
the Chronicle and in Anglo-Saxon culture at large.
In my final chapter, I conclude my survey of the Chronicle by examining
the ways in which the various Chronicle manuscripts end. Building on obser-
vations made in previous chapters, this concluding chapter argues that the
endings of the Chronicle manuscripts demonstrate the cultural significance of
Introduction 13
the Chronicle's historical record. The record of the Norman Conquest and of
the cultural changes it brought makes this a fitting place to end my survey; the
various Anglo-Saxon responses to those changes, reflected in the manuscripts
of the Chronicle, witness nothing less than the end of Anglo-Saxon history.
The continuing vitality of the Chronicle into the twelfth century, however,
seems to indicate that the end of the Anglo-Saxon period did not come as early
as we might otherwise surmise.
Throughout, I interweave discussions of manuscript presentation with
observations on and analysis of genre and form. Both analysis and intepreta-
tion intertwine with my investigations of the Chronicle's changing purposes
and effects. The Chronicle that emerges from this study is a complex set of
documents deeply and constantly invested in the political state of Anglo-
Saxon England, though the form and expression of that investment necessarily
change and evolve. For two hundred and fifty years, Anglo-Saxon chroniclers
negotiated the history of their nation and their own places within that history;
likewise, they negotiated the complex interrelations of prose, verse, alliterat-
ing genealogy, and Latin. The Chronicle that emerged from that work was
nothing short of the record of a developing Anglo-Saxon national identity.
And along the way, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is clear, played its own role
in the forging of that identity.
1
The Common Stock Genealogies
One of the most remarkable features of the Common Stock of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle is its inclusion of a large number of alliterating genealogies.
Twenty separate genealogical passages were entered into the Common Stock
in nineteen separate annals; the fact that ten of these passages record West
Saxon genealogies must urge us to think about their presence in political
terms.1 To understand the genealogies of the Common Stock, however, we
must investigate the role of the genealogies in the historical documents that
precede the Chronicle. In this chapter, then, I investigate not only the Com-
mon Stock, but also the genealogies included in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica
(HE), the Historia Brittonum (HB), the West Saxon Regnal Table (WSRT), and
elsewhere. This chapter, in fact, falls quite readily into three parts: an investi-
gation of the metrical form of the genealogies, an examination of their manu-
script presentation, and, finally, a discussion of their historiographic function
within the Alfredian context of the Chronicle's Common Stock.
Although the genealogies have long been recognized as alliterating, no pre-
vious scholarly attempt to describe their metrical form has been attempted, as
far as I am aware. Yet the attempt is clearly worth the effort, and I show that
the earliest collection of Old English genealogical lore enables us to develop a
fairly precise description of the metrical forms that were allowed in the tradi-
tional alliterating genealogies. Further, formal innovations seen in the geneal-
ogies recorded in the Alfredian period (e.g., in the West Saxon Regnal Table
and the Chronicle) allow us to date the composition of new genealogical
'verses' to precisely this period of time. More importantly, the formal innova-
tions seen in the Alfredian-era genealogies involve alterations in the classical
genealogical form that bring the new passages more in line with the forms of
classical verse. The metrical description of the genealogies I undertake here
thus has value for understanding both the genealogical tradition itself and how
The Common Stock Genealogies 15
the genealogies are related to the poetry. Finally, the apparent Alfredian-era
composition of genealogical material for both the Regnal Table and the
Chronicle not only suggests that both were composed by the same Alfredian
scholar but also seems to confirm that the genealogies were included within
the Chronicle for deeply political purposes.
In the second section of the chapter, I explore the record of manuscript
pointing in the Chronicle genealogies. I argue that the highly regular metrical
pointing seen in the later records of the genealogies arises not from any anal-
ogy to Old English verse, or from a transition from orality to literacy, but
rather simply from the problem of presenting the genealogies in a running
account, rather than in columns. By the time of the Common Stock's composi-
tion, the genealogies had already passed primarily into the realm of liter-
ate discourse; their placement, form, and function within the Chronicle will
be best understood, then, as resulting from conscious and literate textual
strategies.
The final third of the chapter explores the significance of the genealogies'
form in the Chronicle, noting that the genealogies present in the Old English
Rede are not put into the metrical, alliterating form but rather are presented in
simple prose. By considering genealogical form and presentation in Bede's
Historia ecclesiastica, the Historia Brittonum, and the Chronicle itself, I sug-
gest that the traditional alliterating form is especially relevant to the Common
Stock's political purposes. Further, by a consideration of the formal innova-
tions discussed in the first section of the chapter, I offer a series of revisions to
our understandings of the textual histories of the genealogical records. In the
end, I argue that the Common Stock genealogies are carefully selected, sup-
plemented, and incorporated into the Chronicle to give it an implicitly 'histor-
ical' Alfredian telos: the Common Stock, and the Chronicle as a whole, is
'Alfred's history,' in more than one sense. Moreover, the Alfredian perspective
generated by the Common Stock genealogies is one designed to provide imag-
inative ideological associations among the West Saxon dynasty, the Saxon
invasion of Britain, and the tradition of heroic poetry.
1.1 The Metrical Form of the Genealogies
The textual (or even oral) sources used by the compiler of the Chronicle's
Common Stock have often been debated. The chronological epitome
appended to Bede's Historia ecclesiastica is a well-recognized source,2 but
beyond this, scholars usually move quickly into the realm of hypothesis and
speculation. Michael Swanton's recent commentary can stand as a summary
of typical ideas about the Common Stock's sources:
there seem to have been a set of annals extending Bede's work into the early ninth
century; lists of Northumbrian and Mercian kings together with their genealogies
(cf. annals 547, 560, 626 etc.); a list of the bishops of Wessex down to 754; and a
set of West Saxon annals extending from the invasions to the middle of the eighth
century. It is not impossible that some entries may have incorporated oral tradi-
tions first committed to writing in the seventh century. (Swanton xix) 3
Most of these sources, of course, can only be hypothesized from the contents
of the Chronicle itself; they survive neither on their own nor in later contexts
or copies. Too frequently ignored or underplayed in such considerations, how-
ever, is the surviving early-eighth-century collection of royal genealogies and
episcopal lists found in BL Cotton Vespasian B vi, fos 104-9.4 While this
manuscript is perhaps not a direct source for the Chronicle, it is virtually cer-
tain that the original compiler had access to a collection much like the Vespa-
sian manuscript.5
The existence of the Vespasian collection, in fact, is of paramount impor-
tance. The Old English genealogies it contains stand as the only demonstrable
(and surviving) vernacular source for the original Chronicle. The Common
Stock compiler's use of such genealogies has much to tell us about his work-
ing habits, I believe, especially since the compiler also seems to have com-
posed genealogical material of his own. The present section of chapter 1
explores the implications of the formal characteristics of the Common Stock
genealogies, beginning with a much-needed examination of the metrical struc-
ture of the Vespasian genealogies. This analysis is crucially necessary for, as I
show, the Common Stock compiler's genealogies exhibit identifiable formal
innovations in comparison to those in the Vespasian collection. The specifics
of which genealogical passages were composed or altered by the Common
Stock compiler provide powerful insight into the purposes and effects of the
Common Stock.
The formal characteristics of the traditional genealogical genre can be
inductively derived from the evidence of the Vespasian manuscript. A consid-
eration of the careful columnar layout of the Vespasian genealogies (con-
sidered in more detail in the next chapter) indicates a scribal recognition that
the basic element of genealogical structure was the single generation, consist-
ing of name and patronymic. A small number of examples should be sufficient
to show the basics of the form:
Eduine Aelling
Aelle Yffing
Yffi Uufcfreaing (Dumville, 'Anglian Collection' 30)
As Dumville's own layout suggests, each genealogy in Vespasian is written in

two adjacent columns, nominatives in one, patronymics in the other. This two-
word structure, of course, has an obvious similarity to the two-foot structure
frequently identified as the basis for Old English verse, and I will refer to each
genealogical generation as a 'verse.' While it is clear that the traditional gene-
alogical form differed from classical Old English verse, the parallels are
nevertheless significant. 6
Indeed, borrowing elements of formalism from Geoffrey Russom's account
of Old English verse (an account that argues for verse patterns as resulting
from the juxtaposition of two separate word patterns), the following typical
structures can be identified in the Vespasian material. 7 I present these verse
forms in order of decreasing frequency of attestation, along with necessary
comments and observations.
Group 1: Ss/Ssx (D*). 33 occurrences (plus I exact repetition)

Example: Uihtred Ecgberhting
This form is the most commonly attested of the Vespasian forms, although
the scansion I employ is one seemingly excluded from the classical verse tra-
dition. 8 Alliteration patterns within this group support the scansion, as sec-
ondary stress seems to appear in both the nominatives and the patronymics.
Twenty-two Group 1 verses show double alliteration on syllables with pri-
mary stress (SS alliteration); five of these verses likewise show alliteration of
the secondary name elements (ss alliteration). 9 A further three verses, 'Liod-
uald Ecgualding' (twice) and 'Cuduine Liodualding' show only ss allitera-
tion, while a single verse shows sS alliteration: 'Wegbrand Bernicing.' 10
Such a pattern of alliteration on secondary name elements appears too pow-
erful to ignore, and it seems best to conclude that, in the genealogies at least,
secondary elements did regularly maintain a relatively prominent level of
stress."
Group 2: Ss/Sx (A2a). 26 occurrences (plus 1 exact repetition)

Example: Cudberht Bassing
Nearly all Group 2 verses feature contraction in the patronymic, apparently
caused by the addition of the -ing suffix to a name with an unstressed second
syllable. 12 The only verses that do not result from such contraction feature pat-
ronymics based on the monosyllabic names 'Finn,' 'Hryp' and the somewhat,
uncertain 'Ocg' (which fails to match the patronymic form 'Ocgting'). 13 For-
mally, contracted forms appear to be employed in preference to having patro-
nymics of the form *Sxx;14 the spelling of the Vespasian manuscript clearly
prefers contraction to any of the alternatives that might be hypothesized for
uncontracted forms: *Ss/Sxx, *Ss/Ss (with resolution of secondary stress in

the patronymic), or *Sx/Sxs, with -ing on an 's position.' 15 Twenty-one Group
2 verses show SS alliteration; there are two examples of sS alliteration, includ-
ing the example verse quoted above.
Group 3: Sx/Ssx (D*). 18 occurrences (plus 5 exact repetitions)

Example: Offa Uermunding
The scansion here seems straightforward; these verses would clearly be
acceptable in the classical verse tradition. Eleven Group 3 verses feature SS
alliteration, while one ('Bubba Caedbaeding') features Ss alliteration. All five
repeated verses are examples of the form 'Uoden Frealafing' with only insig-
nificant orthographic differences.
Group 4: Sx/Sx (A). 15 occurrences (plus 1 exact repetition)

Example: Aelle Yffing
Again, the structure of these verses seems clear. Eight Group 4 verses have SS
alliteration. All sixteen of these verses result from the same contraction pro-
cess outlined above in Group 2.
Group 5: Hypermetric verses

a. Ss/Sxsx. 6 occurrences; example: Ecgberht Erconberhting
b.Sx/Sxsx. 1 example: Alusa Ingibranding
All seven of these verses exhibit SS alliteration. The example verse from
Group 5a includes the only example of ss alliteration. The scansion of 'Alusa'
as Sx involves treating the first two syllables as a resolvable sequence; such a
possibility seems justified by the fact that the Vespasian data do not include
any clear examples of Sxx sequences. A unique example of triple (SSs) alliter-
ation seems to be exhibited in the verse 'Uilgils Uestorualcning.' 16 Notice
that, unlike in much classical verse, the genealogies do not clump these hyper-
metric verses together. Apparently, the two-word structure is sufficiently
unambiguous to prevent confusion. 17
Group 6: Sxs patterns

a. Sxs/Ssx. 2 examples: Ingibrand Wegbranding, Erconberht Eadbalding
b. Sxs/Sx. 4 occurrences; example: Weodulgeot Wodning
Both members of Group 6a feature ss alliteration, and five of the six Group 6
verses have SS alliteration. Although the first foot in these verses is notably
heavy, they appear to be perfectly acceptable within the traditional genealogi-
cal genre. Verses of this form are excluded from classical verse.18
Group 7: Unusual verses

a. S/Ssx. 2 examples: Finn Goduulfmg, Hryp Hrodmunding
b. Sxsx/Sx. I example: Uestorualcna Soemling
c. S/Sx. I example: Ocg I ding
Each of the four remaining verses includes some unusual features. Those in
Groups 7a and 7c include the only three monosyllabic names to appear in the
Vespasian manuscript. 'Ocg,' as noted above, is an unexpected form, given
that the preceding patronymic reads 'Ocgting': we would expect a nominative,
perhaps, of the form '*Ocgta.'19 The possibility of a copying error is at least
worth considering here. The form corresponding to 'Hryp' in the Historia
Brittonum is 'Rippan' (HB 77), suggesting the possibility of an early form
such as '*Hryppa.'20 Finally, the third verse with a monosyllabic nominative
('Finn Goduulfing') is remarkable for occurring in a genealogical passage that
extends beyond Woden and Frealaf.21 All three monosyllabic names, then, are
accompanied either by some uncertainty or by the likelihood of being late and
possibly non-traditional. In the case of 'Uestorualcna Soemling,' we have a
verse of unparalleled form. 22 The verse is unique, but there is no clear reason,
in this case, to suspect that it is non-traditional or to exclude it as unmetrical in
the genealogical tradition.
To summarize, we might note that these metrical groupings can be character-

ized (for the most part) as stemming from a very simple conceptual scheme:
the royal names recorded here take three primary forms: Ss, Sx, and Sxs (with
only the exceptions collected in Group 7). The contraction process identified
in Groups 2 and 4 reduces potential Sxx patronymics to Sx, and the addition
of the patronymic suffix to the other name forms yields Ssx and Sxsx. Thus,
we can schematize the construction of genealogical verses as follows:
Nominative Patronymic
Ss Ssx
Sx Sx
Sxs Sxsx
Note that I have simply ordered the elements according to their frequency of
occurrence; the ordering of the first six groups seen above is a natural conse-
quence of the frequency of the three name forms.23 The fact that 113 of the
Vespasian manuscript's 117 genealogical verses fit into such a scheme would
seem to mark these forms as the norm; royal names were apparently con-
strained, in general, to take the form Ss, Sx, or Sxs. Significantly, mono-
syllabic names (or resolvable disyllables) seem to have been excluded as
appropriate royal names, since metrical genealogical verses would result only
if Ss fathers bestowed such names.24 The existing monosyllabic names in the
Vespasian genealogies are probably best understood as resulting either from
errors or from the conscious invocation of the legendary tradition, where
monosyllabic names seem more widely attested.25
The preceding digression into the metrical analysis of the Vespasian genealo-
gies has been necessary simply because the compiler of the Common Stock
seems clearly to have had different ideas about proper genealogical form. If
we consider the records of late-ninth-century genealogies found in BL Addi-
tional 23,211 (West Saxon Regnal Table; East Saxon genealogies) and CCCC
173 (WSRT, Chronicle), we can make the following startling observation:
genealogies corresponding in form (and distribution) to those of the Vespasian
manuscript appear everywhere except for a handful of very specific areas: (1)
the final two generations of the Additional East Saxon genealogies; (2) the
Cerdic-to-Wodening passage in the WSRT and the Chronicle; (3) the added
offspring of Cenred in the Parker WSRT; (4) the Geata-to-Sceafing portion of
jEthelwulf's genealogy in the Chronicle's annal 855; and (5) the initial verses
of genealogical passages in both the Chronicle and the WSRT. Examining the
genealogies in each of these areas will allow us to determine the characteristic
forms used by the Common Stock compiler.
East Saxon Genealogies. Here the two innovative genealogical verses (and
their scansions) are:
Ants[ecg] Gesecging Ss/(x)Sx

Gesecg Seaxneting26 (x)S/Ssx
The extrametrical syllable in the one case and the use of anacrusis in the other
(both caused by the Ge- prefix) are not evidenced in Vespasian. Note that both
forms are acceptable (if somewhat rare) in verse.
The Cerdic-to-Wodening passage. This passage has been noted and studied
repeatedly, but it is worth reprinting here, lineated as verse:
Cynric Cerdicing, Cerdic Elesing,

Elesa Esling, Esla Giwising,
Giwis Wiging, Wig Freawining,
Freawine Fribogaring, Fribogar Branding,

Brond Baeldaeging, Baeldaeg Wodening.
(Bately, MSA 45-6; relineated)27
Verse forms appearing in this passage, but unattested in Vespasian, include

those with the Gi- prefix: 'Esla Giwising' (Sx/[x]Sx) and 'Giwis Wiging'
(x/Ssx). Note also the two unexpanded D verses, one of which ('Wig Frea-
wining') Sisam suggests is caused by the importation of names from 'heroic
legend' ('Royal Genealogies' 164-5). Notice also the form 'Wodening,' in
which the contraction rule seen in Vespasian appears not to apply. Finally,
note the much-remarked alliteration pattern, which replicates the alliterative
pattern of poetic verses. The use of AAAX alliteration and C and D verses
suggests that the use of a poetic model here leads the genealogist to innovate
on the traditional forms as they were seen in Vespasian.
Additions to the Parker WSRT. In the genealogy of /Ethelwulf in the Parker

WSRT, we read the following genealogical verses, not present in the Addi-
tional WSRT:
1 ine Cenreding, (x)Sx/Ssx

7 Cubburg Cenreding (x)Ss/Ssx
7 Cuenburg Cenreding (x)Ss/Ssx (Bately, MS A 1-2; relineated)
As my scansions indicate, we might interpret these genealogical comments

as using non-classical anacrusis (involving the conjunction 'ond') before
expanded D verses.
The Geat-to-Sceafing passage. Because a line seems to have slipped out of the
Parker manuscript in this passage, I quote from the A manuscript so far as it
goes, and then from manuscript B:
Geat Taetwaing S/Sxx

Taetwa Beawing Sx/Sx
Beaw Sceldwaing S/Sxx
Sceldwea Heremoding - Sx/Ssx
Heremod Itermoning Ss/Ssx
Itermon Hrabraing Ss/Sxx (Bately, MS A 46; relineated)
Hadra Hwalaing Sx/Sxx

Hwala Bedwiging Sx/Ssx
Bedwig Sceafing Ss/Sx (Taylor, MS B 33; relineated)
TABLE 1.1
Metrical form of initial genealogical verses
Verse form Location/Annal Scansion
Ond se /EfQelwulf] waes Ecgberhting Additional WSRT (xx)Ss/(x)Ssx28

7 se Cerdic waes Elesing Parker WSRT (xx)Sx/(x)Sx
[Ida waes Eopping] [547A]29 Sx/(x)Sx30
se waes Cubaing 597A xx/Sxx
[Cynegils waes Ceoling] [611 A] Ss/(x)Sx
Se Cubred waes Cuichelming 648A (x)Ss/(x)Ssx31
7 se Oswio waes /Epelferping 670A (xx)Sx/(x)Ssx
se wes Cenfusing 674A xx/Ssx
Se Ceadwalla was Coenbryhting 685A (x)Ssx/(x)Ssx32
Se Ecgfer|D was Osweoing 685A (x)Ss/(x)Sxx33
Ponne waas se Ine Cenreding 688A (xxxx)Sx/Ssx
/Edelbald waes Alweoing 716A Ss/(x)Sxx
Se Offa waes Pincgferping 755A (x)Sx/(x)Ssx
Again, we see that the contraction rule in Vespasian fails to apply, leading to
Sxx feet in the patronymic. Further, the spellings here are not purely ortho-
graphic: three-syllable verses would result if contraction applied in 'Geat Taet-
waing' and 'Beaw Sceldwaing.' The lack of contraction in the Chronicle
genealogies will be discussed further below.
Initial verses. Genealogies in the Chronicle and the WSRT are generally given
a full-fledged clause structure by the addition of the verb 'wags' and other par-
ticles in the first verse.34 Characteristic examples are listed in Table 1.1.
The verses in Table 1.1 can frequently be scanned as otherwise regular
genealogical verses with an extrametrical syllable before the second foot and
one or two (in one case, seemingly, four) syllables in (non-classical) anacrusis,
before the first foot.35 The use of 'ond' in anacrusis should be compared to the
verses added to the Parker WSRT discussed above. Two of the verses in the
table scan as C verses, unexampled in Vespasian, but also appearing in 'Giwis
Wiging.'
It is important to note the lack of contraction seen in these verses as well.
The forms 'Cubaing,' 'Osweoing' and 'Alweoing' are all unattested in Vespa-
sian, though their appearance here might recall the uncontracted forms in
855A verses such as 'Geat Taetwaing.'36 As with the use of non-classical
anacrusis and C verses, the lack of a contraction rule serves to indicate a com-
mon origin to the various groups investigated here.
Indeed, two crucially important conclusions can be drawn from this exami-
nation of the innovative genealogical forms seen in BL Additional 23,211 and

in CCCC 173. First is the probability that all the innovative forms are the
handiwork of a single scholar: the use of extrametrical 'waes' is shared by the
Chronicle genealogies and those in the WSRT; the use of anacrusis is seen in
the initial verses from both of the preceding texts, in the additions to the
Parker WSRT, and in the otherwise anomalous form 'Gesecg Seaxneting' in
the Additional East Saxon genealogies. C verses appear in both the regularly
alliterating Cerdic-to-Wodening passage and in the Chronicle's initial verses.
Unexpanded D verses (unusual in Vespasian) appear in both the Cerdic-to-
Wodening passage and the Geat-to-Sceafing passage. Because the Cerdic-to-
Wodening passage appears in an apparently earlier form in Asser and the
name 'Cuba' and the names between Scyld and Scef do not appear in ./Ethel-
weard's genealogy of vEthelwulf, it seems appropriate to conclude that these
Latin texts (seemingly based on early versions of the Chronicle) do not record
the Chronicle's genealogies in their final form. That is, the Chronicle genealo-
gies were still in the process of being composed when the texts used by Asser
and yfcthelweard were copied. The conclusion that all of this evidence seems
to point towards is that we can be fairly sure that both the WSRT and the
Chronicle's Common Stock were either composed or put into the shape in
which we now know them by a single scholar, whom we should probably
identify as the Common Stock compiler.37
The second major conclusion that needs to be drawn is that the compiler of
these genealogies regularly used a verselike model for his innovations. Not
only do we see the regularly alliterating Cerdic-to-Wodening passage, but vir-
tually all of the forms used in the compiler's genealogies that are not seen (or
are rare) in Vespasian have analogues in the verse tradition. The primary
exception to this general rule is the chronicler's use of non-classical anacrusis,
although even this, as I will show below in chapter 4, is quite typical of the
later, non-classical verse. The appearance of this non-classical feature here, it
seems, may well suggest that changes to the classical verse form occurred ear-
lier than has frequently been realized. The possibility of a further relationship
between verse and alliterating genealogy is discussed in the next section,
where I examine the pointing and layout of the genealogical verses in the
Chronicle and the WSRT; in the final portion of the chapter, I investigate why
the chronicler chose to use the alliterating genealogical form in the first place.
1.2 The Manuscript Presentation of the Common Stock Genealogies
As a look at even a single manuscript such as the Parker Chronicle will show,
the inclusion of alliterating genealogies within the Common Stock raised
important questions of layout and presentation for the Chronicle scribes. Sig-
nificantly, however, the problem of textual space seen in the record of the
Chronicle genealogies cannot be explained in terms of an orality/literacy
dynamic, since the existence of the Vespasian manuscript confirms that the
problem of how to record genealogies in writing had been solved long before
the composition of the Chronicle's Common Stock.38 Instead, the history of
the genealogies' presentation is a literate (even textual) history, one in which
we can read developments in Anglo-Saxon literate practice.
To understand the layout and presentation of the Chronicle's genealogies, it
is necessary to begin by considering the presentation of the genealogies in the
Vespasian manuscript. The genealogies begin on folio 109r (Plate I) with a
brief Latin heading: 'Haec sunt genealogiae per partes brittaniae regum reg-
nantium per diuersa loca.'39 And while the two rightmost columns of folio
109r begin the genealogical collection, the first lines of folio 109v will pro-
vide an even clearer picture of the Vespasian manuscript's layout.
Item nordan-*
Ceoluulf cuduining Item merc[..] Cantwara
cu5[...] liodualding Adelbald alwing AeSelberht uihtreding
[.]iod[.]ald ecgualding alwih eowing uihtred ecgberhting
ecguald edelming eowa pybbing ecgberht erconberhting
edhelm ocgting Item mercna erconberht eadbalding
ocg iding EcgfriQ offing eadbald edilberhting
Eadberht eating offa dincfri\5i/ng edilberht iurmenricing
eata liodualding SincfriS eanuulfmg iurmenric o[...]
lioduald ecg[.]alding eanuulf osmoding oese ocging40
This layout continues, in the longest column, through some thirty-five lines.
The spatial features here are complex and regular. Six carefully ruled columns
are used to present three sets of vertically organized genealogies, with each
'verse' occupying space in two adjacent columns. In general, the end of each
genealogy is marked by the intrusion of a word or phrase indicating the
nationality of the next genealogy, although even in the case where such a
heading is missing, the beginning of the new genealogy is clearly marked by
the use of a capital letter.41 An even clearer indicator of the boundaries
*In citations from manuscripts, the symbol '-' following a character is used to indicate a manu-
script abbreviation. Old English manuscripts regularly use a horizontal line or macron placed over
the last character before the omitted letters to indicate such abbreviations.
between genealogies is the fact that each of these initial capitals extends a
small distance beyond the left-hand ruling of the column; most of these capi-
tals are also rubricated.
The elegance and utility of this layout as a method of presenting alliterating
genealogies in writing is arresting. Within the double-column format, each
line corresponds to a single generation; each line is linked to the one that fol-
lows by the identity of the patronymic in one line with the nominative in the
next. The succession of fathers itself can be read simply by reading down the
first column alone.42 The power of this method of writing genealogies is
attested by the fact that this columnar layout continued to be used (with occa-
sional small modifications) for Anglo-Saxon genealogical material even in
relatively late books such as the Textus Roffensis.43 The features of the layout
in BL Vespasian B vi carry a portion of the meaning of the text: the physical
organization of the lines in columns reflects and reinforces the structure of the
text and the relationships between the names in the text. The complexly effec-
tive integration of columns, capital letters, headings, and rubrication here sug-
gests that the maker of this manuscript had a sophisticated sense of the powers
and benefits of an effective utilization of textual space; it has little (if any) of
the look of a beginning effort.
Late in the ninth century, however, the Common Stock compiler responsible
for placing genealogies within the Chronicle and the West Saxon Regnal Table
(WSRT) was faced with the challenge of integrating the information that was
encoded in the spatialization of the columnar genealogies into a non-columnar
layout. In the prose contexts of the Chronicle or the WSRT, ruling columns and
writing genealogies into them would be not only difficult and time consuming
but disruptive for readers as well. Instead, the genealogies needed to be writ-
ten in long lines across the page. At the same time, they were themselves
transformed into narratives, rather than simple lists of names, by the addition
of the verb 'waes' to the first (and occasionally subsequent) pairs of fathers
and sons in the various pedigrees.44 The history of the punctuation of these
narrativized genealogies is precisely the record of how scribes responded to
the challenge of transferring the information encoded in the columnar layout
into the linear text. Fortunately, genealogies from both the Chronicle and the
WSRT survive in a variety of manuscripts from Alfred's reign to the Norman
period, enabling us to trace the history of the genealogical pointing in some
detail. Considering that the evidence presented in section 1.1 above suggested
that the compiler innovated in verselike directions, a comparison between
verse pointing (as discussed in Visible Song by O'Brien O'Keeffe) and the
genealogical pointing seen in the Chronicle is worthwhile. The remainder of
this section explores this issue.
As discussed above, two ninth-century manuscripts (BL Additional 23,211

and CCCC 173) include alliterating genealogies that have been incorporated
into prose texts. In BL Additional 23,211, all of the genealogies (even those
East Saxon genealogies that are not a part of the WSRT) are written in long
lines rather than in columns, and they are almost entirely unpointed. The gene-
alogy of jEthelwulf from the WSRT has been partially cropped, but it is repre-
sentative of the manuscript's usage. It appears as follows:
Ond se aed[
waes. ecgberhting ecgberht ealhcmunding ealh[
eabing eaba eopping eoppa ingilding ingild c[
ing coenred ceolwalding ceolwald cuduulfing cu5[
cudwining cuSwine ceaulniing ceaul\i/n cynri[
cynric crioding criodo ceardicing (BL Additional 23,211, fo. lv)45
This genealogy uses only a single point; significantly, the point appears after
the inserted verb 'waes,' as if marking the point at which the genealogy actu-
ally begins. The transformation of this genealogy into narrative has perhaps
resulted in a small misunderstanding regarding the boundary of the genealogi-
cal passage. The other genealogies on this leaf are similarly unpointed,
although the East Saxon genealogy of Offa that follows the WSRT here does
feature three points in the thirteen father-son pairs.46
The pointing of the WSRT genealogies in CCCC 173 is, by contrast, quite
heavy. The passage (roughly) corresponding to the quoted material from BL
Additional 23,211 is shown in Plate II, and it appears as follows:
Se aepelwulf waes ecbryhting ecg

bryht. ealhmunding. ealhmund. eafmg. eafa. eopping. eoppa ingil
ding, ingild. cenreding. 7ine. cenreding. 7cupburg. cenreding. 7cuen
burg, cenreding. cenred. ceolwalding. ceolwald. cupwulfing. cubwulf
cupwining. cubwine. celming. celm. cynricing. cynric cerdicing.
(CCCC 173, fo. lr)47
Here a point is used after almost every name, patronymic or otherwise. Such
regular pointing does effectively recapture some of the spatial features of the
columnar genealogies, where each name is spatially isolated from the others.
Unfortunately, such heavy pointing not only makes passages such as this one
somewhat difficult to read, it also conveys little (if any) more information than
word spacing alone. Pointing every word lessens the communicative power of
the points by making them, in a regularly spaced text, superfluous.
The scribe of the Parker Chronicle seems to have realized the ineffective-
ness of such heavy pointing, for he abandoned it in the genealogies of the
Chronicle proper. Within the Parker Chronicle, points are never used at all
within genealogies and only occasionally precede or follow them (cf the 855A
genealogy seen in Plate III).48 The unpointed presentation of genealogies
within the Parker Chronicle and in BL Additional 23,211 does not appear to
preserve very much of the relational information encoded in the layout of the
columnar genealogies; these scribes must expect readers to bring this informa-
tion to the text themselves, presumably from a knowledge of the alliterative
genealogical form.
By the end of the tenth century, however, a method of pointing the genealo-
gies had arisen that more successfully recaptured the relational information
encoded in the layout of the columnar genealogies. This method was the
familiar 'metrical' pointing of the genealogies, where a point was used after
each patronymic, corresponding to the metrical structure of the genealogy as
described above. This manner of pointing genealogies when they were written
in long lines was employed by a large number of scribes: this system appears
in Chronicle manuscripts B (including the WSRT text from BL Cotton
Tiberius A iii), C, and G (but not in the associated WSRT from BL Additional
34,652), and in the versions of the WSRT found in the Textus Roffensis, CUL
Kk 3. 18, and CCCC 383. In the earliest of these texts, the tradition does not
seem fully developed: in both manuscript B and manuscript G of the Chroni-
cle, there is evidence for the gradual conventionalization of this method of
pointing. A typical passage from the early part of the B Chronicle, for exam-
ple, reads as follows:
aelle wass
yffing yffe uxfreaing uxfrea wilgisling. wilgils
westerfalcing westerfalca saefugling saefugel sae
balding, saebald sigegeating sigegeat swebdaeging
swebdaeg sigegaring sigegar waegdaeging. waegdaeg wodening
(BL Cotton Tiberius A vi, fo. 5v)
The pointing here is not heavy at all: only three out of eleven pairs of names
are pointed. It is important to note, however, that the points are used only after
the patronymics, never elsewhere. Later in the manuscript, the pointing is
much more regular: all fifteen patronymics in the genealogy of Offa in 755B
are pointed, and thirty-two of the thirty-four patronymics in the lengthy 855B
pedigree are pointed. Significantly, the regular pointing of the genealogies in
the Tiberius version of the WSRT corresponds to the B scribe's practice at the
end of the manuscript (in 755B and 855B, for example) rather than his prac-
tice at the beginning.
The evidence from the texts of the Chronicle and the WSRT copied from
CCCC 173 are equally interesting and instructive. The leaf in BL Additional
34,652 containing the WSRT is seen in Plate IV; it presents the genealogy of
jEthelwulf (quoted from the Parker version above) as:
Se aebelwulf
waes ecbyrhting. ecbyrht. ealhmunding. ealhmund.
eafmg. eafa copping, eoppa ingylding. ingyld. cenred
ing. \7 ine/ cenreding. 7cupburhg cenreding. 7 cwenburhg
cenreding. cenred. ceolwalding. ceolwald. cupwulfing[
cupwulf. cupwining. cupwine. celming. celm. cynricing[
cynric. cerdiceing.49 (BL Additional 34,652, fo. 2v)
Here the scribe follows the heavily pointed Parker exemplar quite closely,
although occasionally pointing only the patronymics.50 Fortunately, however,
fragments of one of the genealogies from the largely burnt version of the
Chronicle in BL Cotton Otho B xi also survive, allowing us to compare the G
scribe's practice in the Chronicle with his work in BL Additional 34,652. The
surviving genealogical material from G consists of portions of the 855G gene-
alogy on folio 42v. The legible portions of three consecutive lines read:
cupaing. cupa cupwining. cupwin[

lin cynricing. cynric cerdicing[
ele[.]a esling. esla giwi\si/ng. giwis wigin[ (BL Cotton Otho B xi, fo. 42v)
The G scribe's exemplar in the Parker manuscript, of course, is completely

unpointed in this passage (Plate III). Here the G scribe clearly alters the punc-
tuation of his exemplar, presumably to correspond to a pointing convention
that had developed in the interval between the copying of the Parker text and
the copying of BL Cotton Otho B xi in the early part of the eleventh century.
By the middle of the eleventh century, the scribe of the C version of the
Chronicle responsible for copying the genealogies uses this convention of
pointing quite regularly: points appear after approximately 95 per cent of the
patronymics in the C genealogies. However, the remaining genealogies in the
roughly contemporary manuscript D of the Chronicle are somewhat inconsist-
ently pointed, with points sometimes used after only the patronymics and
sometimes after each separate name. This passage from 855D is fairly repre-
sentative of this scribe's habits:
gewissung. wig freawining. freawine. freobe

garing. frobegar. branding, brand beldas
ging. baeldaeg. wodening. woden frealafing. (BL Cotton Tiberius B iv, fo. 32r)
This heavy pointing may be a survival of the sort of heavy pointing seen in the
Parker version of the WSRT, or it may simply be a case of overenthusiastic
pointing on the part of this scribe. A third possibility might be that a tradition
of pointing such as that seen in the columnar genealogies in the Textus Roffen-
sis (where points appear sometimes after one or both names in a generation)
may be influencing this scribe. It does not appear to be possible to choose
among these alternatives; what is clear, though, is that even the D scribe sees
this genre as demanding heavy pointing, rather than light.51
This tradition of 'metrically' pointing the alliterating genealogies, as noted
above, invites comparison with the metrical pointing of Anglo-Saxon verse,
especially since the scribes of manuscripts B and C copied both alliterating
genealogies and verse. In both of these manuscripts, in fact, these scribes point
their genealogies somewhat more regularly than they point their verse. Kather-
ine O'Brien O'Keeffe, in her valuable examination of the pointing of Brunan-
burh and the other poems of these manuscripts, draws the following
conclusion about the pointing of verse in the Chronicle manuscripts:
the differences in pointing which the four records of the Chronicle poems pre-
serve are temporally distributed, from the earliest records in A (and, by inference,
*B) with very light pointing, to those in B and the portions of C which were prob-
ably copied from B, which tend to point the b-line, to the late practice in C and D,
which generally tended to mark both a- and b-lines. (Visible Song 137)
The structural analysis of the genealogical genre showed clearly, however, that
there is (in general) no 'long-line' structure for the genealogies; there is no
meaningful distinction between a-lines and b-lines, so any comparison is natu-
rally strained.52 But a comparison of the pointing of Brunanburh in B and C to
the pointing of the genealogies in these manuscripts is instructive: in
Brunanburh, the B scribe (according to O'Brien O'Keeffe's count) points 62
b-lines and 12 a-lines (or 74 out of 146 total half-lines), while the C scribe
points 59 b-lines and 33 a-lines (92 out of 146). Apparently the genres of
genealogy and poetry were considered to be distinct enough by these scribes
to demand different patterns of punctuation, with genealogies receiving heav-
ier, more consistent pointing.53 Of course, while copying manuscripts B and
C, the scribes concerned had already demonstrated their use of a pointing sys-
tem that marked out each generation of a genealogy before they were faced
with the task of punctuating any of the Chronicle poems.54 The genealogies,
we must conclude, are heavily pointed not because they are metrical (in the
sense of being identified as classical verse) but because a separate tradition of
pointing the genealogies after each patronymic had developed. It seems appro-
priate to conclude that the motivation for this tradition stemmed from the
process of converting the highly spatialized columnar genealogies (as seen in
the Vespasian manuscript) into the Chronicle's (and the WSRT's) running
'proselike' format. Although the genealogies must have been perceived as
metrical (and at least sometimes as poetic, as the regularly alliterating portion
of Cerdic's genealogy suggests), the pointing tradition that developed for them
seems to be specific to the genealogical genre rather than having arisen
through an analogy to (or as an example of) the pointing of poetic texts.55
The probability that the 'metrical' pointing of genealogies arose from the
problem of textual spatialization is worth noting: the use of points in tenth-
and eleventh-century genealogies serves to mark out their structure, where, in
the columnar genealogies, carefully ruled and controlled visual space was
used for the same purpose. Where this genre is concerned, at least, changes in
spatialization and pointing can be attributed to purely textual processes;
regardless of the ultimate origins of the genealogical form, the genealogies
seen in the Chronicle must be considered to be literate productions.56 The
choice to use the traditional genealogical form, then, must be understood as
responsive to more than simply the existence of a genealogical tradition; I
examine the implications of this choice in the next section.
1.3 The Historiographic Function of the Common Stock Genealogies
It is important to recognize that the alliterating genealogical form was not the
only available choice for the Common Stock compiler. The ninth-century
translator responsible for the Old English version of Bede's Historia ecclesi-
astica, for example, represents the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa as follows:
Waeron da aerest heora latteowas 7 heretogan twegen gebroSra Hengest 7 Horsa.

Hi wEeron Wihtgylses suna, [)aes faeder waes Witta haten, baes faeder wass Wihta
haten 7 [)aes Wihta faeder waes Woden nemned (Miller, Old English Bede I, i, 52)57
The chronicler's inclusion of the genealogies in their alliterating form, then,

must be seen as a conscious choice.58 To understand the implications of that
choice, however, we need to look at the genealogical tradition in Anglo-Saxon
historical writing as it existed before the composition of the Chronicle.
The earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon genealogies, of course, are those re-
corded in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, finished in 731. Bede includes three

genealogies: those of Hengist and Horsa (HE i, 15), jEthelberht (ii, 5), and
Raedwald (ii, 15). The first of these is the most famous, of course, appearing in
Bede's well-known account of the Saxon invasion; the genealogy of Hengist
and Horsa is traced back to Woden, of whom Bede writes: 'de cuius stirpe
multarum prouinciarum regium genus originem duxit' (i, 15).59 The other
genealogies, we might note, are introduced by Bede in order to explain tribal
names: the genealogy of vEthelberht is supplemented by the comment that the
people of Kent are called 'Oiscingas' after Hengist's son Oisc (ii, 5), and
(likewise) Raedwald's ancestry reaches to Wuffa and ends 'Uuffa, a quo reges
Orientalium Anglorum Uuffmgas appellant' (ii, 15).60 Bede's use of genealog-
ical information to account for tribal and family names, however, differs
markedly from both the way in which such information is used in the Chroni-
cle and the way it is used in other Latin works such as the Historia Brittonum.
In the Historia Brittonum, genealogical lore has a remarkably prominent
role, at least when contrasted to Bede. The author of the Historia Brittonum
clearly had access to a collection of Anglo-Saxon genealogies similar to the
Vespasian collection: not only does he include a similar range of genealogies,
but his Latin translations occasionally preserve the -ing suffixes of the Old
English patronymics.61 But even more intriguingly, the Historia Brittonum
includes a group of British genealogies, most prominently the genealogy of
the mythical Brutus himself, placed in the context of a series of eponymic
genealogical comments:
Tres filii Noe diviserunt orbem in tres partes post diluvium. Sem in Asia, Cham in
Africa, Jafeth in Europa dilataverunt terminos suos. Primus homo venit ad Euro-
pam de genere Jafeth Alanus cum tribus filiis suis, quorum nomina sunt Hessitio,
Armeno, Negue. Hessitio autem habuit filios quattuor: hi sunt Francus, Romanus,
Britto, Albanus. Armenon autem habuit quinque filios: Gothus, Valagothus, Gebi-
dus, Burgundus. Negue autem habuit tres filios: Wandalus, Saxo, Boguarus. Ab
Hisitione autem ortae sunt quattuor gentes: Franci, Latini, Albani et Britti. (HB
63)62
Significantly, this catalogue of the eponymous ancestors of the various Euro-

pean nations is followed immediately by the genealogy of Alanus, traced
through Japheth to his father Noah, and thence on back to Adam himself (HB
63). The tracing of jEthelwulf's genealogy through Noah and back to Adam in
the Chronicle, then, has an explicit precedent in the Historia Brittonum,
though, as I will note again below, it is not accomplished without its own inno-
vative forms and consequences.
The Anglo-Saxon genealogies in this Latin text, then, are given a context by
the extensive genealogical lore that stretches even to Adam. By contrast, at
least, they fail to extend backwards in time to a very impressive degree. Inter-
estingly, however, as with the family of Alanus, the Anglo-Saxon genealogies
collected at the end of the Historia Brittonum are largely presented with the
remotest ancestor first.63 In chapter 59, for example, we read, 'Woden genuit
Casser, genuit Titinon, genuit Trigil, genuit Rodmunt, genuit Rippan, genuit
Guillem Guechan' (HB 77). Such a presentation, of course, is precisely oppo-
site to the presentation of the Vespasian genealogies, where the most remote
names appear last.
It seems appropriate to identify the form of the Vespasian genealogies as
that of 'ancestral' genealogies, which start with the latest descendant and
stretch backwards in time towards more remote ancestors. The Historia Brit-
tonum, on the other hand, tends to present the Anglo-Saxon genealogies as
'descentuaF or 'originary' genealogies, in which remote ancestors (usually
Woden) begin the lists and are followed by their descendants.64 Yet, since the
preservation of several -ing patronymic suffixes indicates that the Historia
Brittonum relies on a source similar to Vespasian, we must conclude that the
descentual form was used intentionally in the Latin text. Sisam comments on
this presentational feature: 'The more natural form of Vespasian B vi makes it
easy to add names at the remote end of a pedigree, the more artificial order
usual in the Historia is convenient for adding recent names' ('Royal Genealo-
gies' 151). Sisam's characterization of one form of genealogical record as
'natural' and one as 'artificial' seems needlessly prejudicial;65 it seems more
useful to me to ask what differences in emphasis or effect arise from the use of
the differing forms. Fortunately, the difference in emphasis seems relatively
clear: ancestral genealogies tell about the family history of a particular indi-
vidual; descentual genealogies tell about the origins of a particular family or
race. The Historia Brittonum, then, seems to present the Anglo-Saxon geneal-
ogies primarily (as with the European eponyms) as a genealogical account of
the larger 'Anglo-Saxon family.' The very presentation of the genealogies in
this text as descentual emphasizes the unity and coherence of the various
Anglo-Saxon tribes, perhaps as a result of the Historia author's own perspec-
tive as a Briton.
At least in comparison, then, the ancestral genealogies of the Vespasian
manuscript and those of the Chronicle and the WSRT have the contrasting
effect, emphasizing the descents of the individuals named: the more or less
obvious conclusion that the alliterating ancestral genealogies were used to
indicate political legitimacy in these contexts seems difficult to avoid. As
noted at the beginning of the chapter, the prominence of the West Saxon gene-
alogies in the Common Stock thus asserts the depth of the Common Stock's
politically motivated interest in Alfred's West Saxon rule: fully half of the
Common Stock genealogies are West Saxon, including the last and longest of
them, jEthelwulf's 855 genealogy.
But more can (and should) be said about the form and effect of the Com-
mon Stock genealogies. As noted above, the use of the alliterating genealogi-
cal form was not the only choice available to the original chronicler, as the
genealogies of the Old English Bede show. Despite the difficulties posed by
the problem of transferring, even translating, the metrical, columnar genealo-
gies as presented in the Vespasian manuscript into his texts, the chronicler
chose to use this form (if not the layout) in the prose documents of the WSRT
and the Chronicle. And at the risk of oversimplifying the Common Stock's
record, I believe a careful reading of jEthelwulf's 855 genealogy can indicate
what motivated the Common Stock chronicler to employ this form so exten-
sively.
Kenneth Sisam's well-known essay, 'Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies,' of
course, includes a lengthy analysis and discussion of the construction of
Aithelwulf's genealogy; my observations here are primarily intended to sup-
plement the arguments of Sisam rather than supplant them. Sisam identifies
six major stages in the composition of the genealogy: (1) the primarily histori-
cal record from Êthelwulf to Ingild; (2) the passage from Ine to Cerdic;
(3) the Cerdic-to-Wodening material (its alliterative form apparently to be dated
later than a shorter, non-alliterative version); (4) Woden-to-Geating; (5) Geat-
to-Sceaf (again in a short form preserved in yEthelweard and the later longer
form seen in the Chronicle); and (6) from Noah to Adam, added at or near the
end of the whole process ('Royal Genealogies' 179). However, if my analysis
above is correct, we can draw a handful of additional important conclusions.
Consider, for example, the two forms of the Geat-to-Sceaf material: in
jCthelweard, the sequence is Geat-Tetuua-Beo-Scyld-Scef (Campbell,
/Ethelweard 33) while the Chronicle's version adds the names 'Heremod-
Itermon-Hadra-Hwala-Bedwig' after 'Sceldwa' (855B). As my metrical
investigation above showed, even the names recorded in Êthelweard here
imply genealogical forms unparalleled in Vespasian (e.g., 'Geat Taetwaing');
the conclusion that even the yEthelweardian version of this passage is not tra-
ditional seems hard to avoid. Instead, the metrical analysis above suggested
that the innovative forms were all to be attributed to the chronicler himself,
which in turn suggests that the jEthelweardian version of this passage has
more of the character of an early draft than of a truly earlier version.66 That is,
the chronicler himself appears to be responsible for both versions of the Geat-
to-Sceaf material, since both versions employ his characteristic metrical
forms. The fact that Êthelweard leaves out 'Cuba' in a different genealogical
passage thus can be understood as suggesting that the name 'Cuba' was
another detail that showed up only in the chronicler's later revision.67 The con-
clusion that jEthelweard's version of the Chronicle preserved an early draft of
the chronicler's genealogy of ^thelwulf may well indicate that the other most
notable feature of Êthelweard's genealogy (its failure to identify Scef as a son
of Noah and to extend the genealogy back to Adam) also reflected the state of
the earlier draft.68 Even if this cannot be demonstrated, the record of Êthel-
weard's Chronicle (with its underlying exemplar) is invaluable for the glimpse
it gives us of a chronicler who continued to revise and update jEthelwulf's
genealogy, even within the context of a relatively complete Chronicle.
The other passage in which the chronicler's revising hand is most clearly
evident is the Cerdic-to-Wodening passage. Here, too, however, even the 'pre-
revision' forms cited by Sisam exhibit the chronicler's peculiar forms:
Cerdic Alucing
Aluca Giwising
Giwis Branding
Brand Baeldaeging
Baeldaeg Wodning
(CCCC 183, fo. 67r, quoted from Dumville,
'Anglian Collection' 34)69
The West Saxon genealogy from which this passage comes is appended to a
collection otherwise clearly parallel to the Vespasian collection; nevertheless,
it includes the problematic form 'Giwis' and the unusual unexpanded D verse
'Brand Baeldaeging,' itself otherwise unrecorded until its appearance in the
Chronicle's genealogies in annals 547 and 552. The conclusions of Sisam and
Dumville that this passage is traditional would seem to be invalidated by the
metrical arguments presented above; this West Saxon genealogical passage,
too, must be a production of the Alfredian chronicler, though it, too, was later
supplemented by the further revisions that brought it to its classically alliterat-
ing form.70
At this point it is worth noting precisely where the shorter versions of these
later passages first appear: the short version of the Geat-to-Sceaf material
appears in £ithelweard's Chronicle; the short version of the Cerdic-to-
Wodening material appears (in slightly different forms) in both Asser and in
CCCC 183. Yet CCCC 183 is almost certainly the book given by jEthelstan to
the congregation of Cuthbert, as recorded in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto
(Dumville, 'Anglian Collection' 26). Since Êthelweard himself recounts his
own descent from Êthelwulf, all three of these sources have fairly close ties to
the West Saxon dynasty. Sisam seems inclined to conclude that these family
sources might preserve authentic family traditions, but it seems just as possi-
ble that they stem from early drafts (of either the genealogies or the Chronicle
itself) kept in the family rather than distributed (as the final version of the
Chronicle seems to have been) for wider, public consumption. The very agree-
ment of the Chronicle manuscripts in these passages suggests that they all
stem from a single archetype, one clearly at odds with those versions of the
Chronicle used by Asser and Êthelweard.
To summarize, then, the fact that neither passage (in either short or long
form) is preserved anywhere from before Alfred's reign combines with the
various non-traditional name forms and genealogical verse forms to suggest
that all of the passages' unusual and non-traditional forms are due to the activ-
ities of the Alfredian chronicler. Monosyllabic and xS names ('Brand,' 'Geat,'
'Beaw,' 'Giwis') occur frequently enough to call into question these passages'
age; the necessary metrical use of non-contraction ('Geat Taetwaing'; 'Beaw
Sceldwaing'), likewise a characteristic of the chronicler, seems implied even
in îthelweard's short version of the first passage in question. Clearly, the
Alfredian chronicler was responsible for a remarkable flurry of genealogical
activity, including even the East Saxon genealogies of Additional 23,211 and
(presumably) the original West Saxon genealogy of Ine appended to the
'Anglian Collection' as copied into CCCC 183.71
Remarkably, the chronicler's use of the unusual form 'Giwis' is accounted
for relatively easily: Asser writes of this name 'Geuuis, a quo Britones totam
illam gentem Geguuis nominant' (Stevenson 2; 'Geuuis, from whom the Brit-
ons name all that people "Geguuis"'). As in both Bede and the Historia
Brittonum, Asser here identifies an eponymous ancestor in the course of the
genealogy. Such uses of genealogy, it seems, were part and parcel of the his-
torical tradition available to Asser, and thus almost certainly available to the
chronicler as well. It seems likely that the use of the form 'Giwis' thus stems
from an effort to provide the West Saxons with an eponymous ancestor.72
The chronicler's revision of the Cerdic-to-Wodening passage that includes
'Giwis,' however, provides additional insight into his methods and intentions.
This passage, after all, is the very passage so famous for its regular allitera-
tion: the chronicler's use of poetic models for the composition of his genea-
logical verses here finds its fullest expression, as the verses are carefully
arranged to result in A A AX alliteration. We can conclude that the chronicler
first wrote this passage to include the West Saxon eponym; the further revision
brought it into poetic alliterative regularity. Presumably, the effect was rhetor-
ically motivated. In comparison to the Woden extensions of the Bernician,
Deiran, and Mercian genealogies recorded in annals 547, 560, and 626, the
West Saxon version of the same span is rhetorically heightened by its poetic
form: at the time of the composition of the Chronicle, when these earlier gene-
alogies no longer served a contemporary purpose of political legitimation,
they none the less functioned within the Chronicle to allow the West Saxon
genealogy to stand out in even greater relief.
The poetic rhetoric, of course, has another valence all its own: Cerdic and
Cynric are highlighted by the poetic qualities of their own genealogy and are
also the heroes of the Common Stock's account of the Saxon invasion. Signif-
icantly, however, the very genealogy most remarkable for its absence from the
Common Stock is the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa, which is otherwise
associated so closely with the invasion (appearing in both Bede and the Histo-
ria Brittonuni). Hengist's genealogy, itself seemingly associated with the
heroic/poetic tradition by the copyist responsible for the passage 'Finn, filii
Fodepald' (HB 67), is excluded; a poetic genealogy is instead supplied for
Cerdic and Cynric, identified as West Saxons as early as annal 514. The collo-
cation of poetry, genealogy, and the narrative of the Saxon invasion functions
in the Common Stock to link the West Saxon line to the heroic age itself.
A similar link, of course, is provided by even the shorter version of the
Geat-to-Sceaf material, for the names 'Beaw,' 'Scyld'/'Sceldwea,' and
'Sceaf'/'Scef themselves seem likely to have been familiar from heroic
verse.73 The logic is inescapable: the extensive genealogy of ^thelwulf found
in the Chronicle insists, with an almost suspiciously anxious zeal, on a heroic
West Saxon ancestry, one linked to the heroic age of the Saxon invasion and
portrayed (in the Common Stock) as more central in that invasion than even
Hengist and Horsa themselves. The connection must surely have had a politi-
cal force in the Common Stock; Alfred's rule over southern England was
surely authorized ideologically by such a heroic ancestry. But it is significant
to notice that the chronicler uses poetic rhetoric to accomplish this imaginative
connection between the West Saxon royal line and the heroic past: we see both
names familiar from heroic verse and poetic verse forms intruding into the tra-
ditional genealogical genre. Such a method certainly seems to indicate a West
Saxon familiarity with heroic poetry, or else the connection would seem to
have little force.74
Finally, the revision of the Geat-to-Sceaf material may allow us one more
important observation: as the shorter version of this passage (preserved in
jEthelweard) consists of only five generations, the fullest version includes ten
generations: the added names ('Heremod,' 'Itermon,' 'Hadra,' 'Hwala,' 'Bed-
wig') include at least one name from the heroic/poetic tradition ('Heremod')
and possibly a second ('Hwala'; cf Widsith 14). The other three are otherwise
unknown (cf Sisam, 'Royal Genealogies' 174). Here, the unique names may
simply point to a desire to expand the genealogy: the sixteen generations
between Woden and Noah may well be intended to correspond to the seven-
teen (or nineteen) generations seen between Noah and Alanus in the Historia
Brittonum's genealogy of Brutus (HB 63). Certainly, the extension of ./Ethel-
wulf 's genealogy back to Adam may have been inspired by the similar exten-
sion of Brutus's genealogy. The innovation of the 'ark-born son' of Noah (cf
Hill) may even have originated as a counterpoint to the Historia Brittonum's
extensive eponymic tracing of the ancestries of the nations of Europe: the
Anglo-Saxons, virtually left out of the Historians catalogue of mythological
eponyms, here assert a separate, but equally ancient, ancestry.
A reconsideration of the genealogies of the Common Stock, as this chapter

has shown, demands a lengthy journey through the records of early English
historical writing. At the level of form, the extensive and early genealogical
record of the Vespasian manuscript allows us to reconstruct the chief features
of the genealogical genre's metrical form, a form that varies in clear and
understandable ways from the forms of classical verse. The discovery of gene-
alogical verses that (a) innovate in comparison to Vespasian precisely by the
inclusion of forms seemingly derived from poetry and (b) are recorded only in
Alfredian or later texts with West Saxon associations suggests that a single
Alfredian scholar (whom I have called 'the chronicler') must be responsible
for all such innovative forms. Such a conclusion has powerful consequences
both for interpreting the textual histories of the various genealogical collec-
tions and for understanding the role of the genealogies in the Common Stock.
Despite the influence of poetic forms on the Chronicle genealogies, the
record of the various Chronicle manuscripts is remarkable for its suggestion
that the genealogies continued to be read as a genre that differed from poetry.
Scribal pointing practices developed that led to the regular 'metrical' pointing
of genealogies, but such pointing was far more regular than the pointing of
verse, even in the hands of the very same scribes. Further, such metrical point-
ing, I argue here, developed as a consequence of a strictly textual process;
although the genealogical genre may well have been traditional, 'orality' does
not appear to have played a significant role either in the composition of genea-
logical verses or in their pointing. The significance of this conclusion may
well complicate our understanding of the development of pointing in the verse
tradition.
The chronicler's use of verselike genealogical forms nevertheless provides a
powerful opening for interpreting the record of the Common Stock genealo-
gies. Unsurprisingly, the genealogies propagandistically show themselves to
support the West Saxon dynasty of Alfred's family; but the use of names and
forms derived from the heroic poetic tradition suggests that one of the effects
of the Common Stock is to provide the West Saxon ruling family with a set of
heroic ancestors who played a pivotal role in the Saxon invasion. Such a read-
ing helps also to explain the more limited role the Common Stock assigns to
Hengist and Horsa. Finally, the chronicler's apparent invocation of an epony-
mous West Saxon ancestor ('Giwis') and the extension of Êthelwulf's geneal-
ogy to Adam may well best be explained as resulting from the influence of
both Bede and the Historia Brittonum; the Common Stock, by supplementing
and responding to these earlier English historical documents, takes its own
place within the tradition of historical writing they represent. In the terms of
contemporary historiography, the Common Stock of the Chronicle is more
properly a 'history' than a 'chronicle'; the Common Stock embodies a clear
narrative structure, one designed to culminate, as it in fact does, with the rule
of Alfred himself.75 The Common Stock, we can surely say, is Alfred's history
of Anglo-Saxon England.
2
Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the
Context of the Common Stock
The well-known 'Cynewulf and Cyneheard' narrative contained in the Com-

mon Stock's 755 annal has long been subject to two complementary strands of
critical response. On the one hand, the narrative is generally read for its politi-
cal force, as taking some position on the potential for conflict between family-
based loyalties and comitatus loyalty. On the other, the narrative's exceptional
length (in comparison to other annals of the eighth century), its prose style,
and its placement (in 755, rather than 784, where the same events are recorded
a second time) have led to its being identified as an interpolation consisting of
material from an earlier, perhaps oral, source.1 These critical trends are com-
plementary precisely because the identification of the Cynewulf and Cyne-
heard narrative as exceptional, even misplaced, within the Chronicle has
allowed critics to respond to the story as if it stood separate from the Chroni-
cle. This 'oral' story, the logic would seem to go, 'has plainly been added to
an annal which once existed without it' (Whitelock, ASC xxii), and it survives
in the Chronicle only by happenstance. As such, apparently, it need not be
read in the context of the larger Chronicle as a whole. In this chapter, I will
relocate the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story within the Chronicle, first by
examining the usefulness of 'orality' as a critical term for such a text, and sec-
ond by offering an interpretation stemming from manuscript indications of the
annal's structure.
We might begin a reading of the 755 annal by noting one of its most cru-
cially important features: the presence of the genealogy of Offa, the second-
to-last and second longest of the Common Stock's genealogies. Offa's geneal-
ogy (like most of those of the Common Stock) appears at the notice of his
accession, and the annal includes reference to both his thirty-nine-year reign
and the later accession of his son, Ecgferth. We might note that the 'interpola-
tion' of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard material, then, looks forward to a lesser
degree than other material within the very same annal. But further, we must
note that the Mercian succession that led to Offa's accession was itself trou-
bled. The Parker version of this portion of annal 755 reads as follows:
7 by ilcan geare mon ofslog ^belbald Miercna cyning on Seccandune, 7 his lie lib
on Hreopadune; 7 Beornraed feng to rice 7 lytle hwile heold 7 ungefealice. 7 by
ilcan geare Offa feng to rice 7 heold .xxxviii. wintra, 7 his sunu Ecgfer\b/ heold
.xli. daga 7 .c. daga. (Bately, MS A, 37-8)2
The death of /Ethelbald, the troubled and brief reign of Beornred, and the ulti-
mate success of Offa might in fact remind us of the events of the Cynewulf
and Cyneheard story; at the least, the story of the successful transition of
dynastic power at the end of Offa's reign might usefully be compared to that
of the troubles caused at the deaths of both jEthelbald and Cynewulf. Further,
the fact that the well-known chronological dislocation of the annals in this
section of the Chronicle places this narrative exactly one hundred years prior
to vEthelwulf's genealogy may imply that we should draw an additional com-
parison.3 At the very least, the close textual association of the Cynewulf and
Cyneheard material with the genealogy of Offa suggests that, within the Com-
mon Stock, the Cynewulf and Cyneheard material is usefully contextualized
by the complex of relationships linking genealogical lore and West Saxon
political legitimation examined in the previous chapter.
Yet, in a remarkable number of critical investigations (and even editions) of
the Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative, the genealogy of Offa is often entirely
ignored or suppressed.4 As I suggested above, it may well be that such over-
sights are prompted by the identification of the narrative as being interpolated
into the annal from some pre-existing, possibly oral, source. To put it another
way, critics seem to have taken the apparently composite nature of the annal as
justifying the separate treatment of the component parts rather than as an
occasion for asking what brought those parts together in the first place.
Especially considering the frequency with which the narrative's style is tied
to an oral origin, it is also remarkable how often critics and editors have mis-
represented another feature of the 755 annal: its remarkable degree of textual
variation from one copy to the next. While most critics take the Parker version
of the annal as edited by Plummer for their main text, the student editions of
Whitelock and of Mitchell and Robinson also commonly stand as the basis for
scholarly interpretations.5 Scholars occasionally note one or two textual vari-
ants where it suits their arguments, but these editions are otherwise generally
treated as authoritative, and the Parker text as well is granted implicit author-
ity, presumably because of its early date.6 Yet (as I show in more detail
below), the Parker version of the annal stands alone (or is supported only by
Cynewulf and Cyneheard 41
the G text, a direct copy) in at least eight separate places, and these three most
commonly cited editions fail to note the actual degree of textual variation.
Mitchell and Robinson simply print the Parker version (with one emendation;
see below), while Whitelock states that 'Variant readings are given in the tex-
tual notes when of special interest, or when they could represent the original
text, altered by A' (Sweet's 1). Nevertheless, Whitelock prints variants at only
thirteen points, while Plummer's edition, printing both the A and E versions,
includes variant readings from BCD at only eight points.7 In fact, however, as
I will show in this chapter, there are no fewer than ninety points where there is
a substantive variation in one or more of the manuscript witnesses to this
annal, excluding orthographic variations, which would, of course, push the
number even higher (see the Appendix).
Considering that recent critical trends have tended to associate manuscript
variance with the continuing influence of orality, it seems appropriate to
investigate the variation in the 755 annal in just such terms. Such an investiga-
tion makes up the first portion of this chapter, although I ultimately argue for
an understanding of the transmission of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story
based solely in textual processes. The second half of the chapter investigates a
second crucial textual feature, the record of structural marking in the manu-
scripts, a record that can help us understand the effect of the annal in its Com-
mon Stock context more effectively.
2.1 Variation and Innovation in Annal 755: Orality and

Literate Practice
The 755 annal, including those final portions often excluded from analysis of
the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story, is barely longer than 450 words. As noted
above, substantive variations appear at no fewer than ninety points. Yet even
this number fails to reflect accurately the true extent of the textual variation;
nearly one-fourth of these ninety points preserve three or more separate read-
ings, and at four points in the annal, the six manuscripts record five separate
readings. The actual number of textual variants thus exceeds 130 (see Table
2.1, below). The sheer quantity of variation is surprising, and the processes
that lead to such numbers are well worth investigation.
When confronted with such textual variation, medievalists have generally
resorted to one of two methodological positions from which a response can be
articulated. The more venerable position has been to identify variation as the
result of 'scribal corruption.' The portion of Whitelock's comment cited above
that concerns variants possibly 'representing] the original text, altered by A'
is typical of this 'scribal corruption' perspective. The 'corruption' view imag-
ines authorial activity as paramount, and scribal deviations from authorial

originals as either mistakes or wilful alterations. Implicitly, this perspective
envisages paradigmatic scribal activity as attempting to produce a word-for-
word copy of an authoritative exemplar. This viewpoint simply brushes aside
as irrelevant or inappropriate any scribal or readerly values that may have had
a different response to the notion of word-for-word copying.
More recently, textual variation has been identified as stemming from
variance, the French term adopted primarily from the work of Bernard Cer-
quiglini. 8 In a 1990 essay that brought Cerquiglini's perspective on variance
to a broad audience of American and Anglophone medievalists, Suzanne
Fleischman wrote that The editor of a medieval text is typically confronted
with manuscript variation. In such a situation, Cerquiglini insists, it cannot be
decided - nor is it interesting to ascertain - which variant is closest to the elu-
sive Urtexf (25). Such variance is linked, in most formulations, to an 'oral
residue,' a complex of perspectives or habits of language use derived from
spoken language and imported into the literary situation. 9 This perspective of
variance values scribal and readerly activity in its own right, as evidence of
process and performance; authoritative 'Urtexts' are either unavailable or
non-existent, and variance itself constitutes the 'life' of 'the text.' Further,
Cerquiglini identifies variance as especially vital in the vernacular: 'Variance
is the main characteristic of a work in the medieval vernacular ... This vari-
ance is so widespread and constitutive that, mixing together all the texts
among which philology so painstakingly distinguishes, one could say that
every manuscript is a revision, a version' (Cerquiglini 38-9; ellipses mine). In
the context of the vernacular Chronicle, faced with the degree of variation
between the versions of the 755 annal noted above, we may begin to find the
concept of variance an appealing critical notion.
The evidence of the Chronicle's 755 annal, however, suggests that we must
define a middle position in which scribal activity frequently includes what I
will call innovation, the apparently active or intentional alteration of an exem-
plar's text. Although the variation in the 755 annal's text ranges from clear-cut
examples of 'corruption' to complex sets of readings that can usefully be
described as cases of variance, the bulk of the textual variations seen here
seem to be best understood as examples of innovation, and, insofar as a usus
scribendi can be discerned for the Chronicle's scribes, it seems to have sanc-
tioned textual innovation to a surprising degree.
The most obvious examples of innovation in the Chronicle's record of annal
755 are those cases where the G record differs from the A manuscript, its
immediate exemplar. Although the G manuscript has been largely destroyed
(including all portions of the 755 annal), its use by Wheelock in his 1644 edi-
tion and Nowell's transcript in BL Additional 43,703 allow us to reconstruct

its contents with a relatively high degree of confidence, as Lutz has done (Die
Version G). Comparison of the G text with A shows that G (as reflected in
Nowell's transcript) innovates in eleven places (see Table 2.1 and the Appen-
dix). For example, where A begins Offa's genealogy with 'waes se offa
pincferping,' the reconstructed G ('G*') reads 'se waes offa pincferping,' with
a transposition of the first two words (45c).'° At least at the level of the G
scribe's own activity, we can be certain what the 'original' text read, because
G's exemplar survives in manuscript A; while the variant reading of G here
might be considered as typical of mouvance or variance, it is also demonstra-
bly an innovation in the text.
Unfortunately, because the exemplars do not survive for any of the other
Chronicle manuscripts, the identification of examples of innovation quickly
becomes more complicated. Considering both the textual history of the Chron-
icle manuscripts as a group and the evidence of this annal, however, we can
nevertheless identify (with a fair degree of confidence) many places where a
particular manuscript appears to innovate. The well-recognized affinities of the
BC and DE manuscript 'families,' for example, allow us readily to identify cer-
tain innovations." Thus, the BC reading, 'pa burh' for ADEG*'s 'bone bur'
stands as an innovation in the BC ancestor (lOd); the E reading 'ofslagene
waeron' for the simplex 'laegon' (or an orthographic variant) 12 in the rest is an
innovation in E (20a).13 While other textual features such as spelling or the use
of enlarged letters may sometimes also reflect meaningful textual relationships,
they are not included in my account of innovations in annal 755.14
Of course, the concept of innovation cannot account for all of the textual
variation seen in this annal. Consider the passage that reads as follows in the
various manuscripts:
7 him cy[)don baet [hiera maegas him mid waeron] 755A: 28b
7 heom cybde baet 755B: 28b
7 him cyadon b~ 755C: 28b
7 him cydde baet 755D: 28b
7 heom cydde b~ 755E: 28b
7 hi- cyddon b~ 755N: 28b
Here, A, G*, and C share the plural verb, while B, D, and E share the singular.
Of the three primary families (AG*, BC, DE), two have one of the readings
each, and the third is split; there is no way at all to determine which reading is
'original.' 15 The evidence of innovation is inconclusive, and we might con-
clude that such variation is in the realm rather of variance.
Yet, as Table 2.1 suggests, such examples of indeterminate innovation are

far outnumbered by cases where 'innovation' does seem usefully to describe
the variations observed. Further, it is important to note that, to a greater or
lesser degree, all of the Chronicle manuscripts exhibit such innovation. Pre-
sumably, the forces that led to such innovation continued throughout the
period.
Obviously, a large amount of data has been compressed into Table 2.1. Never-
theless, by consulting the table, and the texts themselves as they are presented
in the Appendix, we can make a few preliminary observations about the habits
of the scribes involved and about the nature of the innovations observed.
1 The B text is highly innovative. The B scribe in particular seems concerned

to write a smooth, flowing text. As a result, more than half of his innova-
tions involve clausal transitions and connectors: five times he deletes '7'
from the transitional phrase '7 pa'; the abbreviation 'b~' is used (perhaps
even misused) to replace 'op' (twice), 'oppaet' (three times), 'se' (once),
and even 'ser' (once).16 Twice, the B scribe also adds 'p~' for clarification
of reference and deletes pronominal subjects ('he') he apparently sees as
redundant. As Simon Taylor has noted, 'B displays a degree of sophistica-
tion in its use of grammar and syntax at 755 (p. 26/27-30) when it omits
ond, thus creating one subordinate and one main clause from two paratac-
tical clauses' (xcii). Taylor also notes other omissions and additions that he
sees as stylistic improvements (omissions: Ixxxix-xc; additions: xc-xci).
The scribe of B clearly seems to take an active role in attempting to
improve the text.
2 The E text is noticeably innovative, but for different reasons. The late E
manuscript's version of the 755 annal is the second most innovative; pre-
sumably this tendency is, in fact, due to the date of the manuscript. The
number of alterations of inflectional endings in E is certainly noteworthy,
suggesting perhaps that the concentration of this sort of innovation in man-
uscript E results from the breakdown of the Old English inflectional system
late in the period. Likewise, three of the innovations of E involve the addi-
tion or deletion of the ge- prefix, perhaps to bring the E manuscript into
line with early-twelfth-century usage. Except for the remarkable number of
substitutions made by E, however, E's practice otherwise is hardly distin-
guishable from the rest.
3 Additions to the text are only slightly less common than deletions. The table
shows twenty-one additions and twenty-eight deletions. The difference is
perhaps not statistically significant, and the similarity of the numbers seems
TABLE 2.1
Textual innovation in the texts of Annal 755
A(G) BC B G(N) DE C
Substitution
inflectional endings 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 6
prefixes 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2
other 1 3 9 4 4 3 1 6
Deletion
'7' ('ond ') 0 1 5 0 0 0 0 1
probable eyeskip 0 0 0 2 0 1 2 0
other 1 2 5 2 2 0 1 3
Addition
ge- 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 2
other 1 3 5 1 3 2 0 0
Rearrangement 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 1
Rewriting 0 1 3 0 0 1 1 2
Totals 8 14 30 11 12 9 5 23= 112
In addition, there are nine places where innovation is indeterminate:
755: 8b (4 readings)
755: 18a (3 readings)
755: 21 a (3 readings)
755: 44c (3 readings)
Assuming that one reading in each such group is 'original' (i.e., that if a passage pre-
serves four different readings, then at least three must be due to innovations), we are still
left with at least twenty-two additional innovations.
Note: Manuscripts and families are placed in roughly chronological order; the DE family
is placed before C simply out of the likelihood that the DE ancestor originated more than
a dozen years before the initial copying of D; Plummer would place the Northern Recen-
sion soon after the Common Stock (see comments on the Northern Recension in chapter
3). At the least, the well-recognized divergence of D and E after annal 1031 suggests
that the DE ancestor does most likely predate C, which was apparently copied at one
time up to 1044 or so.
to suggest that we cannot assume that either type of innovation is inherently

more 'natural' than the other.
4 The D text has relatively few innovations. With only five innovations, D is
noticeably conservative. It is striking, moreover, that two of D's five inno-
vations are apparently eyeskip errors. A third innovation, the example of
rewriting, is clearly anomalous, as D includes the verb 'waes' twice within a
single clause, perhaps through a sort of dittography. Thus three of manu-
script D's innovations might reasonably be described as 'scribal errors.'
5 Lexical rearrangement seems more common early than late. This may sug-
gest that (possibly in conjunction with the weakening inflectional system)
word order was becoming more rigid. On the other hand, late manuscripts do
not generally seem to alter word order to suit more recent practice; instead it
appears that scribes may simply have felt freer to alter word order in the ear-
lier texts. This might suggest that a standard of exact word-for-word copying
began developing during the period (cf D's general conservatism).
Beyond these observations, however, the most striking features of the tex-
tual variations in the 755 annal are the relatively small numbers of variations
that fit most clearly into either the 'corruption' paradigm or the variance para-
digm. Of all the textual variants noted here, there are only one probable case
of dittography and five probable examples of eyeskip. But even some of the
cases of eyeskip are less clear than we might wish; consider the following
passage from 755 A and the corresponding passage from 755G*:
7 pa on paes wifes gebaerum onfundon paes cyninges pegnas pa unstilnesse 7 pa

pider urnon swa hwelc swa ponne gearo wearp 7 radost 7 hiera se aepeling geh-
welcum feoh 7 feorh gebead 7 hiera naenig hit gepicgean nolde:- (755A: 15-19)17
7 pa on paes wifes gebaeru- onfundan. paes cyninges pegnas pa unstylnesse 7 pa

pider urnon swa hwelc swa ponne gearo waes 7 radost 7 hiora naenig hit gepingian
nolde. (755N: 15-19)18
Lutz, in her edition of G*, reinserts the missing passage into the annal,
although she acknowledges that the G* text would work fine without it
('gebingian, ganz ahnlich geschrieben wie gepicgean, passte deshalb rechte
gut in den Kontext von G' Die Version G, 158-9). Nevertheless, in context,
this passage should almost certainly be seen as a case of variance: the combi-
nation of missing material and lexical substitution here serves to provide an
entirely new version of the material, and neither 'innovation' can be definitely
identified as the 'original' first variant that caused the second.19
An equally intriguing example of innovation occurs in the same passage in
manuscript B, where the first clause has been rewritten. In B, we read 'pa
onfundan \p~/ paes kinges geferan on paes wifes unstilnesse' (755B: 15c;
Then, by the woman's unstillness, the king's companions discovered that').
Here, the very words of the clause are radically reorganized; 'unstilnesse,' for
example, now refers to the woman's cries, rather than the clash of the battle.
Yet B's text is still coherent. I am inclined to agree with Taylor's assessment
of this passage: 'B's version is too different from the others, and too coherent
in itself, to be due entirely to careless copying. It is possible that B's version
did in fact begin life as a copying error which the scribe corrected almost
immediately. He then made an intelligent and successful attempt at rectifying
without having to erase' (MS B Iv-lvi). Indeed, it appears likely that the B
scribe may have (eye)skipped from an exemplar's 'on paes wifes gebaerum' to
'onfundan,' written the phrase 'onfundan paes kinges geferan,' and then real-
ized his trouble (presumably as his gaze returned to the exemplar). The inter-
linear insertion of the abbreviation 'b~' (as Taylor notes [Ivi]) and the
following text certainly hint that this sort of process may have lain behind the
genesis of B's text here. Taylor suggests that the B scribe may have been try-
ing to avoid the necessity of erasure. But surely this interpretation is not nec-
essary; as the most innovative of the Chronicle scribes in this annal, the B
scribe clearly demonstrates a willingness (even a wish) to alter and improve
the text before him. This particular innovation may indeed have stemmed
from a brief eyeskip, but his solution to the difficulties caused by this momen-
tary slip merely confirms that his primary goal was the production of a smooth
and readable text, rather than the production of a text identical to its exemplar.
These are not the only places in the 755 annal where one innovation on the
part of a particular scribe has subsequently led to another innovation. Indeed,
this process of linked innovations seems to be more prevalent than the alterna-
tive, which would be to go backwards and 'fix' the problem caused by the ear-
lier innovation as soon as it became clear that an innovation had altered the
structure or syntax of the passage.20 In all of the manuscripts (except perhaps
the relatively conservative manuscript D), it seems clear that scribes felt quite
comfortable about altering their texts.
Yet, even so, such cases are certainly no more frequent than the cases where
innovation is clearly and easily determinable. Quite the opposite is the case, in
fact: simple 'innovations' far outnumber examples of both 'corruption' and
'variance.' Most frequently, in fact, cases which might well be identified as
typical of variance seem to stem (as the just-cited examples suggest) from
multiple or linked innovations. Perhaps simply because of the survival of so
many closely related texts of annal 755, we find it necessary to adopt the
notion of innovation as a middle ground between those of corruption and
variance.
As far as the evidence from annal 755 suggests, then, scribes of the Chroni-
cle were free to engage in innovation, altering the text, usually in small ways,
but occasionally going so far as to rewrite entire clauses. Two consequences
immediately come to mind. First, it is clear that these scribes were generally
paying attention to the syntax and meaning of the texts they copied, so that,
where their activities might point towards interpretation, modern scholars
ought to take their responses seriously. Second, if variance has been conven-
tionally linked to the influence of orality, the question of the relationship
between innovation and orality still needs to be defined. I will take up the first
issue in the second portion of this chapter and turn to the question of orality
here.
As outlined above, recent critical trends in medieval studies in general have
tended to suggest that features of medieval textuality that come under the
rubrics of variance or mouvance can be ascribed to the continuing influence of
'oral' thought processes in a literate context. Orality, as it is commonly under-
stood, does not accommodate itself well to the idea of a 'fixed' text, and so
texts that fail to remain fixed are commonly characterized as showing evi-
dence of oral ways of thinking or of some other oral 'residue' lingering within
a literate culture. The most powerful expression of this tendency in Anglo-
Saxon studies is surely Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's influential book Visible
Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse. In this work, O'Brien
O'Keeffe argues powerfully for a continuing performance of Anglo-Saxon
poetic scribes as participants in an 'oral-formulaic' compositional/transmis-
sional process. Yet while O'Brien O'Keeffe's argument is carefully conducted
(and her attention to the ways in which mechanisms of orality might influence
written texts is exemplary) the version of orality she employs is specifically
linked to the oral-formulaic tradition and has no obvious relevance for a prose
text such as the Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative.
The Cynewulf and Cyneheard material is nevertheless frequently inter-
preted as having originated in an oral context or having been influenced by
one. Studies that link the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story to a hypothetical
Anglo-Saxon saga tradition (Wrenn, McTurk) seem implicitly to invoke a sort
of oral tradition besides the poetic one, a tradition of saga-like prose story-
telling, although the evidence for such a tradition in Anglo-Saxon England is
disturbingly thin. 21 Nevertheless, for most scholars, the assertion that orality
of some sort lies somewhere in the 'textual' history of the Cynewulf and
Cyneheard story seems to have reached the status of a critical commonplace.22
Considering the prevalence of this viewpoint, the suggestion that innovation
in the 755 annal is linked to the annal's 'oral' origins might seem to be a
straightforward conclusion.
Yet the textual innovations in annal 755 continue to occur in sections of the
annal that are not part of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard material proper but
belong rather to the more conventional 'annalistic' portions of the entry. Such
an observation would seem to be a serious problem for any causal link
between innovation and the 'saga' tradition, since the 'annalistic' portions of
the annal would seem to have no saga-like origins at all. If orality plays any
role, then, it must be related not to the form of the material but to the practice
of the scribes, in the form of an 'oral residue.'
Yet the scribal practice of innovation, I believe, may have nothing to do
with orality at all, unless we choose to define every difference between our
textuality and that of the Anglo-Saxons as derived from orality: such a posi-
tion, of course, exposes what O'Brien O'Keeffe has called a 'literate ideol-
ogy' in which 'the unspoken assumption that literacy is a unitary phenomenon
whose shape is defined by the modern conditions of literacy' prevails ('Texts
and Works' 58; emphasis in original). Such a 'literate ideology' simply
explains textual difference as stemming from no literate or textual process at
all, but rather from 'orality,' which, in turn, is usually vaguely or obscurely
defined, if at all. What is clear is that innovation occurs; to suggest that inno-
vation occurs in this literate tradition because of the influence of orality
explains only by stepping outside the institution of literacy. In fact, I think the
degree of innovation seen in annal 755 can be accounted for through a better
understanding of purely literate and textual processes.
As a point of comparison, it is instructive to turn to one of the longer ninth-
century annals, such as the 871 entry recording Alfred's accession to the West
Saxon throne. Here, too, careful comparison of the various manuscript texts
reveals a great deal of innovation, as the following numbers show:
Innovation in A 10
Innovation in BC 3
Innovation in B 12
Innovation in G* 0
Innovation in DE 1
Innovation in C 3
Innovation in D 4
Innovation in E 7
Indeterminate innovativeness 1 (3 readings in 4 manuscripts).
Interestingly, however, there is only one passage in the 871 annal where we
have what we might call variance, where it is procedurally impossible to
determine where the innovation lies. Likewise, the total number of innova-
tions in the 871 annal is significantly smaller than in the 755 annal. Here we
find barely forty innovations in about 380 words of text (about one for every
nine and a half words) as opposed to more than 130 innovations in just over
450 words of text in the 755 annal (about one for every three and a half
words). The evidence from the 871 annal (if we can take it as fairly typical)
indicates that scribal innovation is the norm (rather than the exception) in the
annalistic annals as well as in the Cynewulf and Cyneheard passage, although
it is equally clear that the degree of innovation in the 755 annal is far greater
than that in the 871 annal.
Again, we might be tempted to say that it is the genre of the writing that
prompts the difference in scribal treatment: that the Cynewulf and Cyneheard
passage's 'oral roots' lead to the greater freedom on the part of the scribes to
alter the text. However, this response, too, I believe, is untenable. In fact, a
better explanation can be found.
A brief glance at the 871 annal will show that, despite the historical impor-
tance of the events narrated, the annal is fairly typical of the longer late-ninth-
century annals. It is replete with repeated phrases and formulaic expressions.23
Consider the following formulaic phrases from the 871 annal:
7 paes ymb X niht 4 occurrences

7 paes ymb X monab/monbas 2 occurrences
On four occasions, one of these two formulas is linked to the following

phrase:
gefeaht N wib (alne) pone here 4 occurrences
and we can also see the following formulas:
pa deniscan ahton waelstowe gewald 3 occurrences

ba deniscan sige namon 1 occurrence
aebered cyning 7 aelfred his brobur 4 occurrences
paer wses micel wael geslegen on gehwaepre hond 1 occurrence
paer wearb micel waelsliht on g~hwaebere hond 1 occurrence
7 N wearb ofslaegen 1 occurrence
7 baer wearb N ofslaegen 2 occurrences
7 baer wearS feala busenda ofslegen 1 occurrence (ms B)
These formulaic expressions alone account for more than 120 words of the
871 annal; almost a full third of the annal consists of only these phrases. And
significantly, almost all of these formulas have fairly close parallels in other
ninth-century annals.24 It certainly appears as if these formulas are part of the
normal, perhaps even conventional, phraseology of the ninth-century annals.25
The degree to which these phrases are formulaic in the sense that they are
somehow 'frozen' expressions can be confirmed by two very different exam-
ples from 87IB. In the first, the B scribe (who we concluded from the evi-
dence of the 755B annal was greatly interested in producing a smooth-reading
text) seems consciously to avoid some of the repetitiveness caused by the
dense use of formulas in the text. Of the four places where the other manu-
scripts read 'aebered cyning and aelfred his brobur' (871 A), the B scribe pre-
serves this reading twice, and twice alters it to 'aepered king 7 his bro5or
aelfred' (87 IB), shifting the word order in an apparent attempt to vary the oth-
erwise mechanically repetitive phrasing.
Yet the B scribe himself is not immune to thinking (consciously or uncon-
sciously) in formulas: at a different point in 871, he alters the relatively long
clause that appears in the A manuscript as '7 baer wearb sidroc eorl ofslaegen
se alda 7 sidroc \eorl/ se gioncga 7 osbearn eorl 7 fraena eorl 7 hareld eorl 7 ba
hergas begen g~fliemde 7 fela pusenda ofslaegenra' (871 A; 'And there were
slain Jarl Sidroc the old, and Jarl Sidroc the young, and Jarl Osbearn, and Jarl
Fraena, and Jarl Hareld, and the armies both put to flight and many thousands
of slain'). B makes this long clause into two clauses by altering the final por-
tions: '7 hie pa hergas begen geflymdon. 7 baer wear<3 feala pusenda ofslegen'
(87IB; 'And they put both armies to flight, and there were many thousands
slain'). Here the B scribe appears to have inserted a subject pronoun (necessi-
tating the subsequent alteration of the verb form), but his treatment of the
remaining segment of the passage suggests how comfortable he is with such
formulas. When faced with a somewhat more difficult rewriting task than add-
ing the plural ending to an existing verb, the B scribe here simply enters the
appropriate, related formula into his text, even though his exemplar seems to
have featured a less formulaic reading.
In these two examples from 87 IB, the B scribe shows both a realization that
formulaic writing can be troublingly repetitive and also the understanding that
formulas nevertheless serve a useful purpose, in that they can function to reg-
ularize the text by providing certain well-defined and well-known patterns of
expression that can be easily used and employed when needed. Indeed, formu-
las seem to have been seen as eminently useful, at least by the Chronicle's ear-
liest compilers. In fact, I think that the higher degree of textual innovation in
the 755 annal stems from the fact that it is so atypical of the Chronicle's
entries: despite the structural parallels within the Cynewulf and Cyneheard
passage, the annal in general is noticeably less formulaic than much of the rest
of the Common Stock. The density of formulaic expressions in many of the

Chronicle's annals serves to help limit scribal innovation: the utilization of
'frozen' expressions contributes to the fixity of 'the text' through successive
copies.
The conclusion that formulaic expression contributes to textual stability
rather than textual innovation, however, seems to be plainly at odds with the
conclusions drawn by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe in her examination of the
transmission of Old English poems. In the poetic corpus, she suggests, there is
evidence for a scribal practice of 'formulaic reading' in which scribes,
employing their (perhaps unconscious) knowledge of the Old English oral-
formulaic style, occasionally substituted appropriate alternative readings into
their texts. As she writes in the conclusion to Visible Song, 'In my view, the
evidence of these [textual] variants indicates that early readers of Old English
verse read by applying oral techniques for the reception of a message to the
decoding of a written text. Specifically, I have argued that in the cases where
variants are metrically, semantically and syntactically appropriate, the scribe
has read "formulaically" and has become a participant in and a determiner of
the text' (191).
Again, however, since O'Brien O'Keeffe relies on the configurations of the
oral-formulaic tradition to explain the introduction of textual variants into the
manuscript texts of Old English poetry, her explanation cannot account for tex-
tual variation in prose texts. Indeed, in her investigation of variants in Brunan-
burh, O'Brien O'Keeffe examines eight places where 'formulaic reading'
might be said to have occurred (although she acknowledges that there are other
variants as well - ibid. 116ff). R.M. Liuzza goes a step further, identifying
'twenty-six variants, twenty of which are metrically significant' ('Dating'
293). By my count, there are thirty-eight places where innovations occur in
Brunanburh (according to the criteria outlined in the Appendix). It is impor-
tant, however, to note that the Brunanburh poem is just over 370 words long,
almost identical in length to the 871 annal. In this context, it is interesting to
note that in the four manuscripts of Brunanburh, there are approximately the
same number of 'variants' in the poem as there are innovations in the same four
manuscripts of the 871 annal, although the comparison is necessarily some-
what strained, since we are not dealing with the same scribe in 871A and 937A.
The observation that the degree of innovation in Brunanburh and in the
highly formulaic prose of the 871 annal is roughly of the same order of magni-
tude, while the degree of variation in the less formulaic 755 annal is so much
greater, seems significant. The conclusion that a high degree of formulaic
expression contributed to the stability of the text (in either prose or verse)
seems difficult to avoid. Such a conclusion makes good intuitive sense as

well. In Old English poetry, acceptable variations are under the triple con-
straints of metre, syntax, and semantics, while in prose only two constraints
are generally operative, those of syntax and semantics. Highly formulaic
prose, it would seem, occupies a sort of middle ground, perhaps not as (rela-
tively) stable as poetry, but characterized by noticeably less textual innovation
than the kind of prose observed in the 755 annal.
My investigation of textual variation in the surviving records of the 755
annal, then, suggests that neither 'orality' nor 'variance' need be invoked to
account for the bulk of the observed variants. Instead, at least where the
Chronicle is concerned, the operative principle seems to be one of scribal
'innovation,' where scribes felt free to alter the surface form of texts, although
they seem to have generally worked to maintain the spirit of their exemplars.26
Likewise, acceptable innovations in these prose texts needed only to make
good sense without too radically altering the meaning of a passage. Where
formulaic expressions are prevalent, however, innovation seems to have been
hindered: in prose or verse, frozen or formulaic expressions were less likely to
be varied by scribes than non-formulaic prose. Understanding the scribal hab-
its on display in this annal, then, urges us to accept innovation as within the
range of allowable scribal activity and to understand better the interactions
between formulaic expression and scribal innovation.
2.2 Structural Indicators and the Meaning of Annal 755

within the Common Stock
If the Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative stands out from the rest of the Com-
mon Stock on account of its length and its form (as a long narrative not char-
acterized by formulaic expression), it also stands out for its more 'literary'
qualities: its heroic characters and their actions and the juicy (even grisly)
details of the transfer of political power. Yet some of the very formal features
that seem to point to an 'oral' origin have often frustrated readers, who fre-
quently lament its 'ambiguous grammatical structure' (Wilson 312) or its
'wealth of pronouns [that] do not have clear referents' (Ferro 18). Neverthe-
less, the broad outlines of the story are well understood: Magoun's 1933 essay,
with its suggestion that the annal concerns 'the Old Germanic tradition of the
unwavering loyalty of the comitatus to its overlord' (362), has served as the
basis for what has come to be seen as a 'traditional reading' (Battaglia) in
which the loyalty of Osric and his men to the dead king Cynewulf stands at the
ethical centre of the narrative.
To be sure, not all critics subscribe to this 'traditional reading.' Wilson, for
one, suggests that the annal evidences 'the tragic theme of the fall of great
men [Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard]' (317), while Ferro boldly states,
'The author presents Cynewulf as a hero, a king who founded his reign upon
good intentions and ruled in a just and humane manner' (26), although the evi-
dence for her conclusions sometimes appears a little thin. Even these critics,
however, acknowledge the central role played by the problems of (potentially)
conflicting loyalties: family relationships and political loyalties are so clearly
foregrounded in this annal that they simply cannot be ignored.
The question of how the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard fits into the
larger text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is one rarely discussed by these crit-
ics.27 But since, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Common Stock's
extensive inclusion of genealogies seemed designed to legitimate the rule of
jEthelwulf and his descendants, the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story, con-
cerned as it is with problems of succession and legitimacy in an earlier period
of West Saxon history, seems clearly connected thematically to the purposes
of the Common Stock genealogies, especially since one of those genealogies
appears in this very annal, as I noted above. Surprisingly, though, the emi-
nently appropriate question of who is to succeed Cynewulf is rarely if ever
addressed by the critics of this annal. Even when annal 784 (which announces
the death of Cynewulf) is cited, it is usually cited only partially, with the
notice of Beorhtric's succession silently omitted (Waterhouse 640; Battaglia
174, n7).28 Yet Beorhtric is indeed a key figure in the West Saxon succession,
as he is succeeded, in turn, by Ecgbryht, Êthelwulf 's father.
The 'traditional reading' of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story from the
755 annal takes Osric and the other members of what Magoun styles the 'roy-
alist party' (366) as the 'heroes' of the narrative, in the sense that their loyalty
to Cynewulf is apparently applauded, while Cyneheard and his followers are
felt to be in the wrong.29 Yet if this is the case, it is apparent that the virtue of
Osric's loyalty must be its own reward, for we are certainly given no indica-
tion that he receives any other. At the end of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard
passage in annal 755, Cynewulf lies dead with no successor in sight: the death
of Cyneheard has ended his claim to the throne, but surely we are left to imag-
ine that there is another (perhaps less violent) battle for the succession yet to
be fought.
This apparent difficulty with the 'traditional reading' of the Cynewulf and
Cyneheard passage, I believe, can be resolved by taking a closer look at the
records left by the earliest identifiable readers of the 755 annal, the Chronicle
scribes. As the previous section argued, the scribes responsible for copying
this annal clearly paid attention to its content: the scribal habits of 'innova-
tion' (as opposed to 'corruption') indicate a sensitivity to grammar and con-
tent on the part of the scribes. The scribal response to the annal, however, also
included the use of litterae notabiliores ('more noticeable letters') to indicate
the annal's structure.30
In the hands of the Chronicle scribes concerned here, these litterae notabi-
liores took the form of either capitals or enlarged letters, and were employed
(sometimes in conjunction with punctuation) to mark off sections of the 755
annal. Thus, the genealogical section at the end is so marked in A and B
(755AB: 45), and the return to 'annalistic' prose, with the comment on
Cynewulf's regnal length, is marked in B and C (755BC: 38). As these sec-
tional breaks indicate, such letters seem frequently to mark 'innovations': the
agreement on the placement of litterae notabiliores in 755AB: 45, in fact,
exemplifies indeterminate innovativeness of the sort I described above as
approaching variance. Yet the use of these letters as structural markers should
probably not be attributed to any 'oral residue'; rather, A and B presumably
agree here as a result of a shared perception that this point in the annal corre-
sponds to a major structural break.
A and B, as it turns out, share litterae notabiliores at two other points
within the annal: at 755AB: 19 and 755AB: 21.31 The large a in 755A: 19 is
particularly impressive, and it is preceded by the triple mark of punctuation
usually reserved in this version of the Common Stock for annal endings (see
Plate V). The appearance of this letter (and the fact that it is the first such let-
ter to appear since the beginning of the annal) serves to mark this point as
the beginning of the story's 'second act.' Modern editors and readers, on the
other hand, tend to take the beginning of the 'second act' as coinciding with
the litterae notabiliores in 755AB: 21, where, on the following morning,
Cynewulf's supporters learn of the attack.32 Regardless of the precise point of
the break, it is important to note that both A and B seem to identify a signifi-
cant break in structure around this point. That a 'second act' begins near this
point is seemingly confirmed in 755DE: 23, where another pair of litterae
notabiliores are seen.
In the B manuscript, prominent letters also seem to indicate the importance
of the various offers of safety and freedom (755B: 29 and 755B: 33; see Plate
VI. The degree to which these letters are perceptibly larger than those around
them is sometimes difficult to assess, as the plate will show; the enlarged d at
755B: 33 seems fairly certain, that at 755B: 29 perhaps less so). The last of the
offers is especially clearly highlighted, and it is worthwhile to cite all five
major manuscripts at this point:
A: pa cuaedon hie paet hie \hie/ paes ne onmunden pon ma be eowre geferan ...
B: da cwaedon hie p~ hie bass hie sylfe ne amundan be ma be heora geferan ...33
C: ba cwaedon hi p~ hie baes ne amundon be ma be eowre geferan ...
D: Da cwaedon heo baet hi hit baes ne onmunden pon ma be heora geferan ...
E: Da cwaedon hi b~ b~ hi baes ne gemundon ponn- ma be heora geferen ...
Manuscripts BDE all highlight this passage by the use of a notable initial let-
ter; significantly, A and C also highlight this very passage by the much re-
marked occurrence of 'direct discourse,' in which the narrative (in A and C)
quotes the actual words of Cyneheard and his men.
Once again, the distribution stretches the usefulness of the concept of inno-
vation to the very brink of variance', the notion of variance, after all, would
provide a perfectly reasonable account of the alternation between direct and
indirect discourse. Yet it is difficult to understand how variance might explain
such a distribution of litterae notabiliores, since they have no clear analogue
in oral discourse. Nor does it seem that a variance perspective could explain
why the very texts to use indirect discourse (and only those texts) set this sen-
tence off with these prominent letters.
But if neither critical position is much help in explaining how the observed
state of textual affairs came about, it is nevertheless crucial to note that this
point in the annal is given a great deal of prominence through one strategy or
the other: either a prominent, structure-marking letter or the use of direct dis-
course. The passage marked so insistently is the refusal of Cyneheard's men to
accept the offer of safe passage, and it is difficult not to conclude that this pas-
sage must be one of the most important in the whole annal. Yet the suggestion
that it is Cyneheard's men who are here foregrounded goes somewhat against
the grain of 'traditional' readings.34 If Cynewulf and his followers (such as
Osric) are indeed the heroes of the tale, why would such steps be taken in the
manuscripts to call our attention to the heroic but doomed response of Cyne-
heard and his men?
The answer, I think, is the obvious one: Cynewulf and his followers are not
the heroes of the tale. The evidence of the litterae notabiliores (or direct dis-
course, depending on which text we are reading) seems to suggest that it is
Cyneheard's men - especially those who had kinsmen among Osric's compan-
ions - whose actions are being highlighted for the readers. To the degree that
readers are apparently supposed to sympathize with any of the figures in the
tale, it seems that Cyneheard's followers are the most likely candidates for our
sympathies: of the three refusals of life or safe passage in the annal, theirs,
apparently, is the most important.
The suggestion that the decision of Cyneheard's men to refuse the offer of
safety proposed by their kinsmen in Osric's party constitutes the key moment
in the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story has important consequences for our
understanding of the 755 annal and its place in the Alfredian Chronicle in gen-
eral. Traditional' readings suggest that one of the chief features of the annal is
its implication that loyalty to one's lord supersedes one's kinship ties; the sug-
gestion that the loyalty of Cyneheard's followers is especially important (in
one way or another) ought to make us at least re-examine the functioning of
these potentially conflicting loyalties within the 755 annal. Even more impor-
tantly, we might ask why the Chronicle itself should apparently praise the
doomed Cyneheard and his men.
The issue of comitatus loyalty versus family loyalty is central to almost all
discussions of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story: Magoun, Battaglia, Tow-
ers, Waterhouse, and White all explicitly couch at least part of their discus-
sions in precisely these terms. Battaglia makes the clearest argument that
Cyneheard's followers are acting honourably in rejecting the offer of safety;
moreover, he suggests, 'It is no inconsistency when the kinsmen later upheld
the principle of the comitatus. They were, in fact, upholding their blood-ties as
well. The rejection by the kinsmen of the offer of safe conduct is not proof that
comitatus ties superseded those of blood' (177). Generally, however, a distinc-
tion is drawn between the motives of Cynewulf and Cyneheard (and their
men) in terms of their culpability or honourableness.35 More recently, White
has reconsidered the evidence of the annal and suggested that previous inter-
pretations have relied too heavily on questionable assumptions about the his-
torical developments regarding 'the decline of kinship and family; the rise of
contractual lordship; and the rise of the state' (18). Instead of reading the
actions of the various figures in the annal as conforming to legalistic responsi-
bilities of loyalty and revenge, White suggests that we consider 'eighth cen-
tury norms about kinship and lordship merely as guides to proper behavior
that were not integrated into a complete, coherent, and authoritative system'
(17). The actors in the drama, White suggests, acted according to political
choices informed by customary norms, rather than formalized (and hence, in
principle) inescapable duties and responsibilities.
Yet the annal clearly raises the issues of kinship and political loyalties:
White's commentary is a useful reminder not to make unwarranted assump-
tions about the realities of eighth-century political life, but the ninth-century
chronicler certainly seems to want us to interpret the annal in terms of these
loyalties. Regardless of what the motives for the followers of Cynewulf and
Cyneheard might really have been, the chronicler foregrounds the issues of
kinship and loyalty to the lord: nowhere is this clearer than in the response of
Osric's party to Cyneheard's offer, where they claim 'past him naenig maeg
leofra naere jsonne hiera hlaford' (755A: 29-30; 'that no kinsman was dearer
to them than their lord'). It is possible, even likely, that the annal's apparent
privileging of loyalty to one's lord over loyalty to one's kin might have served
an identifiable political purpose in the late ninth century, when the Chronicle
was first compiled.
As with the genealogy of Êthelwulf, I think the import of the Cynewulf and
Cyneheard story lies in an attempt to promote a West Saxon dynasty of Êthel-
wulf's line and, even more importantly, a dynasty organized according to sim-
pler rules of succession than had previously existed. In principle, throughout
the Anglo-Saxon period, any West Saxon cetheling had a claim to the throne,
although there were certainly stronger and weaker claims. In Alfred's time,
however, it seems that a principle of patrilineal descent comes into operation:
certainly throughout the tenth century every ruler could count Alfred among
his direct-line male ancestors.36 It is almost as if descent from Alfred, rather
than descent from Cerdic, has become the key criterion for the kingship.37 The
Cynewulf and Cyneheard story, I think, can be understood as implicitly sup-
porting a principle of dynastic succession whereby the strongest claim to the
throne springs from the claimant's close relationship to the previous king.
In annal 755, after all, we know that both Cynewulf and Cyneheard are
descendants of Cerdic: 'hiera ryht faeder\en/cyn gaeb to cerdice' (755A: 40;
'their proper paternal ancestry goes to Cerdic'), we are told, just after the
notices of their respective resting places. Of course, Sigebriht was also
descended from Cerdic: he was Cyneheard's brother (and the WSRT explicitly
tells us that he is a descendant of Cerdic). The relationship between Cynewulf
and Sigebriht, however, is difficult, perhaps impossible, to determine.38 It is
clear, though, that Cynewulf must be a more distant relative in comparison to
Sigebriht's own brother, and perhaps a very distant relative indeed.39 For a
chronicler interested in suggesting a simpler criterion for the succession than
descent from Cerdic, however, the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story is particu-
larly apt: it illustrates quite vividly the complications caused when the succes-
sion is somehow uncertain. Here Cynewulf replaces his distant relative as
king, apparently passing over the king's own brother in the process. Unsur-
prisingly, the situation eventually ends up in open conflict, leaving both claim-
ant and king dead and the succession to be determined once more. The
narrative sympathy for Cyneheard in this case, seen not only in the record of
prominent letters and direct discourse but also in the recording of his resting
place, suggests that, from the perspective taken by the chronicler, Cyneheard
(as Sigebriht's brother) may have had the better claim.
The value of a narrower pattern of succession lies precisely in limiting the
potential number of claimants to the throne. When there are too many viable
claimants (as in the Cynewulf and Cyneheard affair), the potential for conflict
is high; if, on the other hand, there is a clearer, more restricted range of poten-
tial successors, the kingdom as a political entity is less susceptible to internal
struggles. But there is a second consequence as well: when the succession is
held firmly within a particular (and narrow) line, political loyalties rather than
kinship loyalties naturally come to the fore. Any thegn, after all, is in one of
two situations: either unrelated to the ruling family completely or equally
closely related to any possible claimants. In order for Alfred to institute (or
even continue) a dynastic pattern of succession based in his family rather than
simply within the necessarily broad group of Cerdicings, he needed to empha-
size the superiority of lordship loyalty as opposed to kinship loyalty. The 755
annal, with its textual hints that Cyneheard and his men lie at the centre of the
narrative, and with its insistence that the heroic characters on all sides of the
conflict treated their loyalties to their lord as more important than their kinship
ties, can be read as a late-ninth-century attempt to argue for the importance of
these attitudes, a piece of subtle propaganda favouring a narrower dynastic
succession and the supremacy of political loyalties. It is perhaps not going too
far to suggest that the effort to promote a narrower pattern of succession
reflects Alfred's continuing interest in building and maintaining political and
educational institutions.
The suggestion made in the first portion of this chapter that higher degrees of
formulaic content in Old English texts should contribute to textual stability
(regardless of whether or not it is intuitively plausible) goes against the grain
of current scholarly opinion. To take just one example from a recent essay,
A.N. Doane suggests that we can observe in Old English poems 'very high
rates of verbal variation in the few cases where two or more copies have been
preserved' ('Scribal Textuality' 55). But the evidence considered here sug-
gests that the conclusions that have previously been drawn about rates of vari-
ation in Old English verse become far less convincing when the variation in
Old English prose texts (such as the 755 and 871 annals) is considered.
Although a modern critical perspective (influenced by the conditions of mod-
ern literate practice) may find the variation in Old English verse to be at a
'very high' rate, the rate for at least some prose texts (in the hands of some of
the very same scribes) is apparently much higher. I should hasten to note that
O'Brien O'Keeffe's argument about the mechanism by which formulaic sub-
stitutions appear in verse texts has not been challenged by my investigation;

rather this look at innovation in prose texts suggests that textual innovation is
a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon literate practice, in both prose and verse,
although both the constraints upon and the mechanisms of that innovation
may well vary. The situation of innovation and formulaic expression in the
Chronicle poetry will offer a second perspective on this particular textual mat-
ter; I take up the various problems posed by the Chronicle poems in chapter 4.
In the second half of this chapter, however, I suggested that the record of
structural indicators within the 755 annal might be useful in interpreting the
Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative's place within the Common Stock. Indeed,
I think that the strategic textual emphasis placed upon the heroic refusal of
safety made to Cyneheard and his men suggests that the annal serves to high-
light the problems of royal succession. Such a reading may help us to under-
stand the location of this narrative in annal 755 in the first place, since there it
is not only juxtaposed to Offa's genealogy but also stands exactly one hundred
years prior to jEthelwulf's genealogy. The pattern of the Common Stock gene-
alogies themselves, then, and the Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative in annal
755 both serve to promote an Alfredian West Saxon dynasty: the Chronicle
itself seems to have been a historical document with a powerful political
force. Yet the Common Stock's political valence focused almost exclusively
on the figure of Alfred: the question of how later chroniclers ensured that the
Chronicle would survive the death of its central figure is taken up in chapter 3.
3
The Post-Alfredian Annals
As I have suggested in chapters 1 and 2, the Common Stock of the Chronicle

was a pervasively Alfredian production, one deeply influenced by contempo-
rary political concerns. The extensive collection of genealogies and the
Cynewulf and Cyneheard material worked together to define for the Chronicle
an abiding concern with West Saxon political legitimacy and the West Saxon
succession. The degree to which these concerns pervade the Chronicle might
well be read as deriving from an anxiety about the West Saxon succession dur-
ing Alfred's time. If so, such anxieties would appear to have been well
founded. At Alfred's own death, the West Saxon succession was indeed in
doubt, and the rebellion of Alfred's nephew Êthelwold proved troublingly
difficult to quell. But the terms in which the Chronicle narrates the beginning
of the rebellion in the 900 annal are nothing short of astounding.1 To quote
from the Parker Chronicle's version of the annal,
Her gefor Alfred Ajxilfing ... 7 ba feng Eadweard his sunu to rice. f>a gerad
^delwald his faedran sunu bone ham act Winburnan 7 aet Tweoxneam butan baes
cyninges leafe 7 his witena. t>a rad se cyning mid firde [baet he] gewicode aet Bad-
danbyrig wi5 Winburnan; 7 ^delwald saet binnan baem ham mid baem monnum
be him to gebugon 7 haefde ealle ba geatu forworht in to him 7 saede baEt he wolde
oder odde baer libban o6N3e baer licgan. Pa under baem ba bestael he hine on niht
onweg 7 gesohte bone here on Nordhymbrum; 7 se cyng het ridan aefter, 7 ba ne
mehte hine mon ofridan. t>a berad mon baet wif baet he haefde aer genumen butan
baes cynges leafe 7 ofer bara biscopa bebod, fordon 5e heo wass aer to nunnan
gehalgod. (Bately, MS A 61-2; ellipses mine)2
We might first note that the form of the Chronicle's obituary notice implicitly
links Alfred to the genealogy of /Ethelwulf by the use of the patronymic:
when Edward is later identified as 'his sunu,' the Chronicle's position on the
legitimacy of Edward's succession seems clear. But the actions of Êthelwold
seem to be narrated in precisely such a form as to call to mind the events of
the Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative: the West Saxon 'witan' is mentioned
(according to Plummer's glossary, this word occurs in the Common Stock
only in 755 and 868), jEthelwold locks the gates at Wimborne in upon him-
self and his men, he makes heroic proclamations, and (we find out near the
end) there is a woman involved.3 That Êthelwold fails to live up to his heroic
claims only highlights (from the Chronicle's perspective) the illegitimacy of
his own claim to the throne. But the chronicler's method here, to paint the
battle for the West Saxon throne in terms of historical events previously nar-
rated in the Chronicle, represents a remarkable transformation in English his-
toriography: the Chronicle itself has apparently become an authoritative
document of English history, and the composition of post-Alfredian annals
(as here) can extend the Common Stock's narrative precisely by intepreting
more recent events in terms of the Chronicle's own historical record. In chap-
ter 4,1 discuss the use of this method in the Chronicle poems, where the strat-
egy is used to its most powerful effect. In the present chapter, however, I
investigate the origins of this historiographic move in the earliest post-Alfre-
dian chroniclers' responses to the problem of continuing Alfred's history after
his death.
Significantly, of course, the Common Stock was completed in the early
890s and was already being supplemented before Alfred's death. The 'Wars of
Alfred' annals (893-6A) seem to have had the status of a more or less official
continuation of the Common Stock, written all at one time.4 Evidence for this,
of course, comes from both these annals' departure from the norm of begin-
ning annals with 'Her' and the fact that these annals are not present in manu-
script E: the Peterborough Chronicle, it appears, descends from an original
version of the Chronicle that seems not to have received this continuation (see
the comments below on the Northern Recension). Yet after the 'Wars of
Alfred,' chronicling activity suffers a brief hiatus: the annal after the 'Wars'
group is an annal notably brief in comparison to those that immediately pre-
cede it, and no manuscript has annals for 899 or 900 (since Alfred's death is
regularly assigned to 901, as noted above).5
The annal that records the death of Alfred, then, stands at the beginning of a
renewed span of annals. But the backward-looking effect of the narrative strat-
egy employed in the passage quoted above seems to have a paradoxical conse-
quence: the earliest tenth-century annals might seem almost more focused on
the troublesome jEthelwold than on Edward the Elder himself. Yet the ^thel-
woldian material does in fact end up serving as the basis for a set of annals
The Post-Alfredian Annals 63
focusing on Edward, and (as it turns out) the strategy of continuing the Chron-
icle by following the activities of Alfred's descendants was one of two major
strategies employed by chroniclers of the early tenth century. The alternative
strategy seems to have been revision: another version of the Chronicle, appar-
ently based in the north, evidences a thoroughgoing revision of the Chroni-
cle 's purposes and effects. The so-called Northern Recension appears to have
revised even the Common Stock itself, removing some of the West Saxon
focus by adding much of northern interest.6 The result was a less localized
Chronicle, and this chapter examines these two responses to the problem of
how to take the Chronicle into the tenth century. As much as the Chronicle
was an Alfredian accomplishment, it also owes its continuation to the imagi-
native contributions of these early-tenth-century chroniclers.
3.1 The Dynastic Continuations
The contents of the Parker Chronicle's third gathering give us a valuable

glimpse of the state of the Chronicle at the end of the first quarter of the tenth
century. Where the first Parker scribe finished his stint on 16r (and added the
annal number 892 near the bottom of the page), the second scribe began at the
top of 16v. Scholarly opinions differ on the extent of the second hand: Ker
identifies one hand as far as annal 924A (Catalogue 58); Parkes identifies two
hands, with the changeover occurring at annal 912A ('Palaeography' 154-6);
Dumville identifies one hand writing at two separate times (apparently writing
the Lauderdale Orosius in between; Wessex 67-8); Bately identifies three
principal hands, with breaks after folio 17v and annal 911A (MS A xxv ff).
Dumville's argument involves the suggestion that scribe 1 and his scribe 2
were working simultaneously and in collaboration, but, as Bately suggests,
even this clever explanation 'leaves a number of important questions un-
answered' (Bately, MS A xxxi).
Even if we accept Bately's position, that three principal scribes are active
between 16v and 25v, we can still make several important observations. First,
it should be noted that the earliest post-Alfredian additions to the Parker
manuscript are not entered until 911 at the earliest, and possibly not until sig-
nificantly later (Bately's hands 2a and 2b seem to have been working in con-
cert, since both contribute to the 'Wars of Alfred' annals). Additions to the
Parker Chronicle in this section have the character not of yearly updates but of
relatively infrequent and extensive additions. Second, the third gathering is
ruled for only twenty-six lines of text, while the first scribe used thirty-six or
thirty-seven lines (thirty-nine lines on fo. 16). Space was apparently at less of
a premium for the third gathering, perhaps because of a change in perception
about the importance of the Chronicle. Third, it may be significant that the
very first annal after folio 25v reads 'Her Eadweard cing forbferde, 7
Êbelstan his sunu feng to rice' (Bately, MS A 69). The entire booklet, from
16v to 25v, may well have been structured (either from its start or in its com-
pletion) as the 'annals of Edward.'7
Remarkably, the Edwardian annals from 901 to 915 are present not only in
A but also in B and C (for D, see below). How this state of affairs might have
come about is well worth considering. If we accept Bately's reading of the
Parker manuscript, the material from 892 up to 911 was entered at one time,
and the succeeding material to 924 was added later. But the BC witnesses treat
901-15 as if they made up a single unit and show no evidence of the 916-24
annals present in A. As we have noted, A was not kept up to date regularly and
neither, it seems, was the BC ancestor. But both were kept up at somewhat
lengthy intervals, and from 901 to 915 their sources were in remarkable agree-
ment, as a comparison of the annals in question will show. We probably ought
to conclude that both texts rely upon a single source that was, in fact, kept up
to date at relatively brief intervals, and that that source had something like the
status of an official copy, having been transcribed into A and into the BC
ancestor at different stages of its own development.8
The existence of official or semi-official continuations of the Chronicle in
this period is of great importance, for, if we can ascribe the Edwardian contin-
uation of the Chronicle to Edward's own court, then we have remarkable evi-
dence of a kind of ideological continuity linking Alfred and his son. Yet, as the
sporadic updates in A and the BC ancestor indicate, the 'official' record of the
Chronicle was not regularly disseminated. If anything, in fact, the access of
these early texts to the Edwardian material seems to bespeak these early texts'
simultaneous closeness to and distance from Edward's court. The evidence of
these texts' infrequent or partial continuations should be compared to the
apparent lack of access to this same material seen in the E ancestor and the
ancestor of Êthelweard's Chronicle. The haphazard inclusion of this material
in the various living branches of the Chronicle appears to suggest that the
'Edwardian continuation' (if we can call it such) was never published in the
way the Common Stock seems to have been: in the early tenth century, the
Edwardian continuation to the Chronicle seems still to have been a hit-or-miss
proposition, uncertain of finding a lasting audience.
While the A manuscript preserves the fullest version of the Edwardian
annals, B and C preserve them only partially (through 915). But B and C also
contain a second set of post-Alfredian annals, those of the so-called Mercian
Register, a series of annals chiefly concerned with Mercian events and includ-
ing events dating from 902 to 924. The Mercian Register obviously has a tex-
tual unity all its own: it is entered in a block in both the B and C manuscripts,
and we can conclude that it probably appeared as such in the BC ancestor.9
Yet the manuscript presentation of the Mercian Register in B and C sug-
gests another conclusion: the 'empty' annal numbers that precede the Mercian
Register in both B and C are written in both texts across the length of the writ-
ing space (see Plate VII for the beginning of the Mercian Register in manu-
script C). Paul E. Szarmach suggests that this fact is 'major, hitherto
unnoticed, layout evidence for the coherence' of the Register (108). Yet
Szarmach appears to back away from the most obvious conclusion, suggesting
that the conjecture that the Register may derive from 'Elfledes Boc' (as
hypothesized by Plummer ii, Ixxii-lxxiii) may well be correct.10 Yet there
seems to be a more straightforward conclusion: the empty annal numbers pre-
ceding the first entry of the Register are compelling evidence that the Mercian
Register once stood as a continuation of the Chronicle, one that (in the Com-
mon Stock at least) was essentially in agreement with the main text used by
the BC compiler.
That the sequence of annal numbers preceding the Register begins with 896
itself is probably significant." The first entry of the Register, dated 902,
includes reference to the battle of the Holme (which ended the threat posed by
^thelwold), but this battle is dated in A to 904. Whitelock suggests that the
events took place after 24 September 902, leading to a split date 902/903,
depending on when the chronicler started the year (ASC 59, n i l ) . At the least,
however, there seems to be a one-year (or even two-year) discrepancy
between A and the Mercian Register: the empty 896 annal in the Register
would presumably correspond to the 897A annal. In other words, the Mercian
Register presumably originated as an extension (or series of extensions) to an
existing Chronicle that concluded with the 'Wars of Alfred' annals and that
may itself already have had a one-year dislocation in its annal numbering.
The BC ancestor, it seems, must have collated two Chronicle manuscripts,
with separate post-Alfredian extensions, though perhaps sharing the 'Wars of
Alfred' material. 12 Significantly, the two extensions followed the careers of
two of Alfred's children: the Mercian Register follows vEthelflaed as closely as
the annals in the A manuscript follow Edward. In different centres, then, two
chroniclers (or groups of chroniclers) pursued virtually identical historic-
graphic strategies: the extension of the Alfredian chronicle into a dynastic
chronicle following the fortunes of Alfred's offspring.
Strikingly, even the otherwise unique record of Aithelweard's Chronicle
includes a hint of such dynastic chronicling activity, although jEthelweard had
no access to either the Edwardian annals or the Mercian Register. Indeed, his
lack of access to these continuations is worth noting in detail. Êthelweard's
divergence from the surviving Old English Chronicles begins as early as annal
893, and Campbell's summary of the contents of this portion of Êthelweard's
Chronicle is both telling and succinct:
[TEthelweard's] account of the events of 893 appears to be based on a revision of

the OEC annal for the year (A894), made to meet political conditions in the reign
of Eadweard the Elder, and to glorify that king and his supporter .flithelred of
Mercia, while completely suppressing the part played by Alfred in the fighting of
the year. This revised text of OEC seems to have discontinued after 893 in the MS
used by îthelweard, but a concise chronicle dealing largely with northern affairs
was inserted, much as the Mercian Register was inserted in the exemplar of MSS
B and C. (Campbell, ALthelweard xviii)
Certain features of jEthelweard's text might be noted in particular: Êthel-

weard's Chronicle contains no mention of the rebellion of Êthelwold that
concerns the Edwardian chronicler in annals 900A, 903A, and 904A;13 he
seems to date the battle at Holme at 902 rather than 904 (agreeing in this detail
with the Mercian Register, though including details not seen there but pre-
served in the Edwardian annals); Êthelweard's comment on the mild winter
of the year 914 seems to have no analogue in the Edwardian annals or the
Mercian Register. jEthelweard's agreements and disagreements with both the
Edwardian annals (as recorded in ABC) and the Mercian Register (as seen in
BC) suggest that he translates an independent set of annals in this stretch. The
existence of such a set of independent annals has its own interest, of course,
but more significant for my argument here is the fact that Êthelweard's text
for this section appears (as Campbell notes) to begin with an Edwardian revi-
sion of the first annal of the 'Wars of Alfred' group, although this beginning is
not followed up with any further Edwardian material. Indeed, immediately
following jEthelweard's revised version of the 893 annal, we see evidence of
his text's 'northern' interests: events at York in 894 and the death of 'Guthfrid,
rex Northhymbriorum' (jEthelweard 51) under annal 895. Neither of these
details appears in any of the surviving vernacular annals.
jEthelweard's record in this section of annals is important precisely for the
way his text indicates the production of independent annals (with a northern
interest) grafted onto a version of the Chronicle that appears to be an incom-
plete Edwardian Chronicle. Êthelweard's exemplar, it seems, was a hybrid
creation: at the level of its earliest supplements to the Common Stock, it was
Edwardian in its orientation, but its later annals suggest independent chroni-
cling, at either a location in the north or one where a wider view on English
affairs was taken than that of the Edwardian chronicler. In its Edwardian con-
nections, /Ethelweard's text shares affinities with A's Edwardian annals and
the Mercian Register; in its northern interest, it compares to the Northern
Recension, considered below.
The Edwardian and /Ethelflaedian continuations of the Chronicle, however,
indicate one powerful response to the death of Alfred. Where the Common
Stock's dynastic and political focus was clearly centred on the person of
Alfred himself, these early continuations continued the personal aspect of that
focus by attending to Alfred's descendants. Yet the act of collation that pro-
duced the BC ancestor illustrates a crucial problem with the dynastic continu-
ations: the BC ancestor, after all, collated two types of continued chronicles,
one Edwardian and one vEthelflaedian. Both, however, appear to have been
moribund at the time of their conflation; the BC ancestor never had access to
the end of the Edwardian annals, and the final annal of the Mercian Register
breaks off in mid-sentence. The dynastic continuations succeeded in negotiat-
ing the historiographic problem occasioned by Alfred's death by focusing on
Alfred's offspring, but the problem itself was repeated at the deaths of Edward
and /Ethelflaed and, in the case of the Mercian Register at least, this second
difficulty seems to have been fatal. Elsewhere, however, a different solution
seems to have been offered: the Northern Recension, which I consider in
detail in the following section.
3.2 The Northern Recension
The evidence of the A manuscript, the BC ancestor, and Êthelweard's exem-

plar suggests that the common supposition that the Chronicle was copied and
disseminated 'soon after 890' must be accurate (Whitelock, ASC xxi). But the
evidence of jfithelweard's text, with its informed perspective on northern
affairs, may suggest that Whitelock's additional claim, 'There is no evidence
that any version of the Chronicle reached the North early, and it may well have
first come there in the later part of the tenth century' (ASC xv) may not be
equally secure.14 Whitelock's position, we might note, demands that we see
the Northern Recension as a relatively late production; I believe, however, that
it might be worthwhile to revive Plummer's conviction that the changes to the
Common Stock that characterize the Northern Recension 'must have taken
place very soon after the reception of the southern Chronicle' (ii, cxix). 15
The task of identifying just what constitutes the Northern Recension, how-
ever, is no easy one. The Recension is generally characterized as consisting of
additions of material from Bede and of specifically northern (perhaps espe-
cially Northumbrian) interest. Such additions, of course, might have been
made at any time after the production of the Common Stock, and although the
lack of agreement between D and E in the immediately post-Common Stock

annals might seem to be strong support for Plummer's position, it is probably
not as strong as he believed.16 But the Northern Recension may well also have
included deletions from the Common Stock, and my investigation of the
Northern Recension here will attempt to examine this possibility as well as
additional evidence that might augment our understanding of the Northern
Recension. Ultimately, I suggest that our familiar name for the Northern
Recension obscures the degree to which it stands as the beginning of a more
comprehensively national chronicle: rather than replacing the West Saxon
focus with a northern focus, the Northern Recension supplements the Chroni-
cle's West Saxon perspective through the addition of northern material. Where
the dynastic extensions seem to have become more or less localized (cf the
Mercian Register), the Northern Recension responded to Alfred's death by
bringing more of a national (instead of personal and local) focus to the Chron-
icle.11
The best representatives of the Northern Recension are the D and E manu-
scripts, whose late dates unfortunately complicate the picture, since the fea-
tures shared by these manuscripts might stem from any period of their long
shared textual history.18 D's status as a conflated text (Cubbin identifies it as
relying on ancestors of C and E) causes additional uncertainty.19 Nevertheless
(as noted above), there is general agreement on the two most basic features of
the Northern Recension: it added a preface drawn from Bede,20 and it added a
great deal of material (new annals and sections of annals) of northern interest
to the Alfredian Common Stock (much of this material also drawn from
Bede). Material possibly deleted during the revision that led to the Northern
Recension is less well identified.
G.P. Cubbin's recent edition of the Chronicle's D manuscript identifies D as
a conflation of manuscripts from two traditions through virtually all of its
annals: a 'Northern Recension' manuscript such as the E ancestor and an
'Alfredian' ancestor (with the Mercian Register) that must have been like the
BC ancestor (though extending beyond the end of B itself). Whitelock points
to signs of conflation between C-type and E-type manuscripts in annals 801-
2D, 855D, and 910D (Peterborough Chronicle 28-9); Cubbin points to annal
731 as further confirmation of conflation, although his summary of the con-
tents of the E version of the annal seems misleading: 731D contains virtually
all of both the A-like version of this annal and the E-like version, and the A-
like material is (somewhat crudely) inserted between portions of the annal as
seen in E. Notably, the conflations seen in 731 and 855 (Cubbin's two primary
examples of such conflation within the Common Stock) involve the reinser-
tion of genealogical passages into E-like annals that fail to include the genea-
logical material.21 Since there is no reason to suppose that conflation does not
account for the appearance of genealogies in 694D and 728D as well, it seems
reasonable to conclude that the wholesale removal of genealogies occurred in
the common ancestor of D and E, and that the D compiler made a semi-regular
attempt to reinsert them into his version of the Common Stock.22 The geneal-
ogy in 716 is not reinserted by the D compiler, nor is the 755 genealogy of
Offa given in full. The deletion of the genealogies, then, seems to be a feature
of the Northern Recension that was later (and only partially) rectified by D.
It is important to note that this sort of conflation continues beyond the D
record of the Common Stock. Whitelock notes conflation in annal 910D, and
Cubbin writes that The first sentence in 901 appears in a briefer version in E
than in ABC, and D has the version found in E' (MS D xxvii). Though Cubbin
does not say it as clearly as one would wish, 90ID continues with the annal as
seen in ABC, indicating that here, at least, the D compiler still seems to be fol-
lowing his E-type source first, then supplementing it with material from his
C-type source.
What can we conclude from all of this? First, the extensive acts of confla-
tion seen in the activities of the D compiler should remove any question that
the D and E manuscripts are representative of an early split within the North-
ern Recension. D's inclusion of the 'Wars of Alfred' annals and other (tenth-
century) annals such as those in ABC must stem from his collation of a C-type
manuscript. The Northern Recension is reflected in D but seems to be far
more clearly reflected in E, at least for these passages. Second, the Northern
Recension must have more or less systematically removed the genealogies
from the Common Stock. But third, the dates for the production of the North-
ern Recension are still in doubt: Cubbin argues that D conflates a Northern (E-
type) Chronicle with a C-type Chronicle pretty much through the early elev-
enth century: but the question of where the Northern Recension ends and the
Northern Chronicle picks up is never clearly addressed.
The key, I think, lies in the treatment of the genealogies. The evidence of
the E manuscript indicates that while the Common Stock genealogies were
largely removed during the production of the Northern Recension, two others
were added: the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa in annal 449E and that of
Êthelferth, king of Northumbria, in 593E.23 The nature of these additions (a
Northumbrian genealogy and one derived from Bede) marks them almost
without question as features of the Northern Recension. The Bedan genealogy
itself is of interest, since the Old English version of this passage in the Old
English Bede does not use the traditional alliterative form, though the Recen-
sion's genealogy of Hengist and Horsa does (Miller I, i, 52; see also chapter 1,
above). Clearly, the translations are independent: but the northern chronicler's
use of the alliterative genealogical form indicates that he has no antipathy

towards it but rather has a desire to remove the Common Stock's genealogies
for some political or rhetorical purpose. Presumably, it is the obvious West
Saxon orientation of the Common Stock genealogies that is not to the taste of
this northern chronicler and that leads to their removal from his Chronicle.
But further, the 449E annal powerfully indicates one of the purposes of the
Recension as a whole: as I noted in chapter 1, the non-inclusion of the geneal-
ogy of Hengist and Horsa in the Common Stock was a part of the Common
Stock's effort to create an ideological link between the West Saxon dynasty
and the heroic age of the Saxon invasion. By reinserting the genealogy of
Hengist and Horsa (and the narrative of their part in the invasion), the Recen-
sionist responds to the Common Stock's revisionist history by reclaiming this
powerful narrative moment. One of the key effects of the Recension was thus
to eliminate (or at least weaken) the imaginative link between the West Saxon
dynasty and the heroic age; the removal of most of the Common Stock geneal-
ogies and the insertion of the 449E genealogy can be seen as resulting from a
single motive.
The period in which this sort of anti-West Saxon revision could have taken
place is limited, almost certainly, to before the middle of the tenth century, and
(I suspect) is likeliest early in that span. The DE manuscripts, for example,
include a poem at 975 that celebrates the reign of a West Saxon king and that
differs in form and content from the ABC poem on the same topic. Such a cir-
cumstance suggests (as I argue below in chapter 4) that the Northern Chroni-
cle, at this point in time, was already familiar with a tradition of Chronicle
poems, even though the 937, 942, and 973 poems appear never to have made
it into the Northern Chronicle. By 975, it seems, the West Saxon bias of the
Chronicle (and the power of the link between the West Saxon dynasty and
poetry) had become an accepted fact, and thus the deletion of the genealogies
from the Common Stock would seem to be irrelevant at that point in time. But
at an earlier point, perhaps especially before the nationalistic efforts of vEthel-
stan and Edmund, such seemingly anti-West Saxon activity would have had a
far more powerful effect.24
It is important to note, however, that the removal of the Common Stock
genealogies from the Northern Recension was not accompanied by the
removal of other bits of West Saxon-oriented material. For example, while the
755 genealogy is drastically shortened in the revision, the Cynewulf and
Cyneheard narrative remains in E in its entirety, despite the ties it has to the
issue of the West Saxon succession, ties so clear that (as described above) the
Edwardian annalist narrated the rebellion of jEthelwold in terms that recalled
the 755 annal. Likewise, the lengthy annals that make up the end of the Com-
mon Stock, narrating the acts of Alfred, are reflected in the Northern Recen-
sion in full.25 The production of the Northern Recension, then, was not really
the production of a version of the Chronicle that replaced a West Saxon focus
with a northern focus; instead, the Northern Recension largely supplemented
the West Saxon perspective of the Common Stock with northern material, giv-
ing the resulting Chronicle a more broad-based, even national, perspective. In
other words, while the Northern Recension may well have been produced in
the north, it is crucial to note that it does not attempt to replace the Common
Stock's dynastic focus with a focus on a competing northern dynasty; rather, it
replaces dynastic politics with national politics: in this respect, it employed a
strategy for the continuation of the Chronicle of which Alfred himself might
have approved.
In the first decades of the tenth century, then, different chroniclers in different
places employed different strategies for their continuations of the Chronicle.
There seems, for example, to have been a relatively official Edwardian contin-
uation, from which A and the BC ancestor drew primarily West Saxon annals.
Likewise, a Mercian Chronicle seems to have given rise to the Mercian Regis-
ter, as seen in B and C; this version, too, may have had an official or semi-
official status in Mercia. These texts utilized the Alfredian origins of the
Common Stock to authorize their dynastic continuations: such a strategy,
however, was not available to other chroniclers. The northern additions to the
Chronicle (seen in both yEthelweard's Chronicle and the Northern Recension)
indicate a broadening of the Chronicle's interests, a nationalization of the
Chronicle. And, as I have argued here, the specific form of the Northern
Recension, which downplays but does not erase the Common Stock's Alfre-
dian focus, helps us date the Recension: an early date seems most likely for
the removal of the Common Stock genealogies, especially since the late tenth
century sees the Northern Chronicle adopting what seems to be a West Saxon
perspective. But, perhaps most significantly, the textual and historiographic
strategies for the continuation of the Chronicle investigated in this chapter
themselves proved remarkably influential, as I indicate in chapter 4, where I
examine the Chronicle poems. Thus, these early-tenth-century contributions
to the Chronicle played a powerful (if previously underappreciated) role in the
continuance of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
4
The Chronicle Poems
The inclusion of The Battle of Brunanburh within the pages of the Chronicle
has frequently been seen as the remarkable intrusion of one genre into
another: the insertion of a (literary) poem into a (historical) chronicle. The ini-
tial verse of Brunanburh, 'Her yEpelstan cyning' (937A, 1) has been seen as
metrically suspect at least since the edition of Campbell, and the entire poem
has often been identified as an interpolation into the Chronicled Yet the strate-
gies employed by the Brunanburh poet resonate powerfully with the textual/
historiographic strategies employed by preceding chroniclers, and the poem
itself is best read in the context of the Chronicle.
Like the 900A annal in which the events of vEthelwold's rebellion were
recounted in terms designed to recall the Cynewulf and Cyneheard story, Bru-
nanburh, too, functions by invoking the Chronicle's own earlier strategies. It
begins by identifying the genealogical descent of the protagonists: .Êthelstan
and Edmund are identified as 'afaren Eadweardes' ('sons of Edward') in line
7a. Such a claim links the poem more or less explicitly to annal 900A (and
those like it in BCD), which (as described above in chapter 3) identifies
Edward as the son of 'Alfred Apulfing.' But further, the very use of the heroic
poetic idiom fulfils the promise of the Common Stock's genealogies: the poet-
ically structured genealogies of the Common Stock, as I argued in chapter 1,
served to link the house of Alfred with heroic origins in the migration era, and
Brunanburh makes the equation explicit in its final lines:
Ne weard wael mare

on pis eiglande aefre gieta
folces gefylled beforan pissum
sweordes ecgum, paes pe us secgaS bee,
ealde uSwitan, sippan eastan hider
The Chronicle Poems 73
Engle and Seaxe up becoman,

ofer brad brimu Brytene sohtan,
wlance wigsmibas, Wealas ofercoman,
eorlas arhwate eard begeatan (65b-73)2
The slaughter at Brunanburh is the greatest since the migration, the Angles
and Saxons are characterized as acting in unity, and books such as the Chroni-
cle itself are invoked as authorizing the historical comparison. But the pres-
ence of these strategies in The Battle of Brunanburh indicates how masterfully
the poet coordinates the various textual and historiographic effects of the
Common Stock and the early-tenth-century annals: the focus on West Saxon
dynastic genealogy, the use of poetic rhetoric to link the West Saxons to the
age of the migration, the focus on the descendants of Alfred, the nationalizing
perspective, and the interpretation of historical events in terms of the history
already recorded in the Chronicle. If The Battle of Brunanburh was not, in
fact, written for the very pages of the Chronicle, it was written by a poet inti-
mately familiar with (and influenced by) the vision of history promoted by the
Chronicle. From such a perspective, it seems unnecessary, even undesirable,
to continue to imagine that the Chronicle is not Brunanburh's intended con-
text. 3
In this chapter, I take up the various questions posed by the presence of
poetry within the Chronicle. First, I explore the manuscript context of the
Chronicle poems in order to determine whether those passages often consid-
ered to be verse but excluded from the ASPR were considered to be poetic by
the Chronicle scribes. Although the manuscript evidence is less conclusive
than we might wish, it does suggest that we should treat these passages as
verse, if of non-classical form. In the second section of the chapter, I under-
take a brief metrical examination of the non-standard poems, suggesting that
their form can, in fact, be understood as having evolved from the classical
verse form. Finally, in my third section, I investigate the literary effects and
strategies of the entire tradition of Chronicle poems, suggesting both that they
exhibit a previously unrecognized generic coherence and that they become the
most centrally important annals of the Chronicle in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies for understanding the position the Chronicle took within Anglo-Saxon
culture.
4.1 Manuscript Presentation and the Identification of

the Chronicle Poems
The role of poetry within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has proved to be a matter
of much dispute, as scholars have rarely agreed on even basic questions, such
as how many poems the Chronicle contains. The ASPR, as the standard collec-
tion of Old English verse, prints only six passages from the Chronicle, while
Plummer's edition of the Chronicle (itself a long-surviving standard) prints
seventeen passages as poems.4 Considering its varied nature, the history of the
critical response to the Chronicle poems is worth reviewing in some detail, if
only to clarify the historical context of the most recent perspectives. To a large
degree, the modern uncertainty about the Chronicle's poetic contents, as we
shall see, reflects earlier uncertainties.
Going back to the beginnings of Chronicle study, it is clear that, by the time
of Abraham Wheelock's 1644 edition of the Chronicle,5 scholars had not iden-
tified the verse nature of any of the Chronicle poems, though Wheelock's
identification of the diction of Brunanburh as archaic points to an early aware-
ness of the differing textual status of the verse. Half a century later, Edmund
Gibson's 1692 edition correctly identified Brunanburh and other passages of
the Chronicle as poems; Gibson's use of metrical points to mark out the verses
suggests that he may have been influenced in his identification by Franciscus
Junius's work on the poems of the so-called Caedmon manucript (Junius 11).
The next edition of the Chronicle after Gibson's did not appear until 1823, when
James Ingram published an edition accompanied (for the first time) by a mod-
ern English translation. Here, a number of passages are printed as poems (with
one half-line per line of type): the poems in annals 937 (under 938), 942, 959,
973, 975ABC (the 975DE poem is in a footnote, the 975D poem in the Appen-
dix), 1011, 1036, 1065 (including a brief passage now not considered poetic in
a footnote on p. 253), 1075, 1086 (under 1087), and 1130 (a brief-perhaps pro-
verbial - phrase). Though we might feel that Ingram was occasionally over-
enthusiastic in identifying passages as verse, his identifications are largely in
agreement with those of later nineteenth-century editors of the Chronicle.
Thorpe's 1861 edition, for example, differs only slightly from Ingram's in
its treatment of the Chronicle poems, printing the 1036CD and 1086E annals
entirely as prose, printing the 1067 poem as verse, and treating the brief pas-
sages that Ingram lineates poetically in 1065 and 1130 strictly as prose.
Thorpe's parallel-text format likewise helped clarify certain issues relating to
the Chronicle poems, such as the reduced records in the F manuscript's annals
958, 979, and 1011. Plummer's revision of Earle's 1865 edition of Two of the
Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1892, 1897) has served as the standard edition of
the Chronicle until the recent publication of several editions in an ongoing
'Collaborative Edition'; Plummer's identification of seventeen poetic pas-
sages has made his edition the most visible proponent of a broad and inclusive
definition of Chronicle poetry for the past century.
Almost simultaneous with the publication of Plummer's text volume in

1892 was the publication of Eduard Sievers'sAltgermanische Metrik in 1893,
and the descriptive power of Sievers's account of Old English metre has had
important consequences for subsequent perceptions of the Chronicle's, poems.
Although Daniel Abegg's discussion of the Chronicle poems in 1894 made lit-
tle or no explicit use of Sieversian metrics, his grouping of the Chronicle
poems into 'learned' and 'folk' subdivisions on the basis of metre and the use
of traditional poetic diction served to identify the 937, 942, 973, 975 ABC, and
1065 poems as heirs to the classical tradition of Old English verse. A decade
later, Sedgefield's edition of Maldon and poems from the Chronicle (1904)
cited Abegg's work with approval, and the only Chronicle poems printed in
the main body of this edition are those that Abegg feels are 'learned' and the
1036 poem. The rest of the passages printed as poetry by Plummer are
described by Sedgefield as 'poems of irregular meter' (except the brief pas-
sages in 1075E/1076D and 1104E, which he ignores), and only the two 'most
perfect examples ... found under dates 959 and 1086' (xxi; ellipses mine) are
printed in an appendix. Sedgefield's choices, in turn, influenced Debbie's
1942 edition of the Chronicle poems in the ASPR: Debbie's dismissive com-
ment about the 1036 poem ('[It] is partly prose and partly irregular rimed
verse. It is, however, included here following the practice of earlier editors
[Wiilker and Sedgefield]' - Krapp and Dobbie, Vol. VI, xxxii) makes it clear
that he includes it in spite of its irregularities. By Debbie's metrical criteria
(ultimately deriving from the work of Sievers), the 1036 poem ought to have
been excluded from the ASPR; its inclusion serves only to make the ASPR's
selection conform to earlier editions rather than to indicate anything about the
1036 poem as being somehow 'more poetic' than the passages that were not
printed in the ASPR.
Remarkably, regardless of Dobbie's concerns about the metrical irregularity
of the 1036 poem, his choice to include it in the ASPR has itself had powerful
consequences. This poem's half-lines, for example, are included in the mate-
rial that forms the basis for the Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Records (Bessinger and Smith), and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's 1990
examination of the Chronicle poems includes a discussion of this poem, even
though its extensive use of rhyme instead of alliteration suggests that it may
not be strictly relevant to her project.6 Richard Schrader's recent book on Old
English poetry and history examines only those Chronicle poems included
in the ASPR, implicitly accepting Dobbie's selection as definitive despite
Dobbie's own hesitation about including the 1036 poem.
Other recent scholars, however, have clearly held differing opinions about
how many poems are included in the Chronicle. Robinson and Stanley's mon-
umental collection, Old English Verse Texts from Many Sources, for example,
includes all of the ASPR's selections, as well as the 975DE and 1086 poems.
Mildred Budny suggested in 1994 that the Chronicle 'contains seven poems
among its annals' (21), though she does not indicate exactly which passages
she is counting. Michael Swanton's 1996 translation of the Chronicle follows
Plummer's edition in the same page-by-page fashion as did Garmonsway's
1953 translation, but Swanton lineates as verse only the passages from annals
937, 942, 973, 975ABC, 1036, 1065, 1075E/1076D, 1086, and 1104; the other
passages printed as verse by Plummer are described somewhat cryptically as
merely being 'marked by poetic rhetoric' (123, note 16).
Given the continuing critical uncertainty about the status of the Chronicle's
poems, it seems that the time is ripe for a detailed re-examination of all of the
relevant passages and their significance to the Chronicle as a whole. The key
axes of my investigation in this section are the questions of metrical pointing
and the suggestion made in chapter 2 that the formulaic status of Old English
poetic texts was likely to have contributed to their textual stability through
successive copyings. Drawing on my observations of the 755 and 871 prose
annals at the end of chapter 2, I suggest here that formulaic variation was
likely to be a less pervasive process than what we might call the 'prosaic vari-
ation' seen in the records of the 755 annal. Formulaic language (in prose or
verse) served as a conservative force, being relatively resistant to alteration.
Of course, poetic formulas could have such an effect only if scribes actually
recognized poetic passages as poetry when they encountered them. If, for
example, a scribe failed to recognize a particular passage of the Chronicle as
poetic, then he or she would presumably perform the task of copying only
under the constraints of producing a syntactically and semantically appropri-
ate text, while copying a poem that was recognized as such would involve the
additional constraint of metrical appropriateness. To put it another way, if a
scribe failed to recognize a passage as poetic, we can assume that he or she
would treat it as if it were prose.
Because many of these passages have frequently been read as prose by
some modern readers (while others have seen them as poetic), it seems crucial
to determine, if we can, how the Anglo-Saxon scribes responsible for their
copying read them. I have argued elsewhere that there is no contemporary evi-
dence upon which to exclude these poems from the canon of Anglo-Saxon
verse ('Boundaries'), and it appears that their exclusion on purely metrical
principles serves only to preserve the illusion of a relatively stable (indeed,
nearly static) tradition of versification in the Anglo-Saxon period that the evi-
dence does not support. In this section, I examine the degree to which the var-
ious Chronicle scribes seem to have identified and treated these passages as
poetry and suggest that, in most cases, scribes clearly treated these poems as
verse. In only one or two cases can we see relatively clear evidence that a
poem was copied as if it were prose.
Visible Song, Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's outstanding examination of the

manuscript records of Old English poetic texts, must stand as a starting point
for any investigation of the scribal role in the copying and transmission of Old
English verse. And though a brief summary of O'Brien O'Keeffe's conclu-
sions can hardly do justice to the subtlety and sensitivity of her observations,
one must be attempted. Basing her argument largely on poems that survive in
multiple Anglo-Saxon copies, O'Brien O'Keeffe suggests that the manuscript
record can be used to show that literacy (and literate traditions) were in transi-
tion during the Anglo-Saxon period, and that there are two main features of
poetic texts that indicate the nature of that transitionality. The first of these
features has to do with the punctuation of verse: O'Brien O'Keeffe argues that
the metrical pointing of verse developed in a two-stage process. The earliest
poetic texts featured little or no metrical pointing; those from the later tenth
century are generally pointed after b-lines, and the mid-eleventh century was
largely characterized by a tradition of pointing every half-line. Such patterns,
of course, were only trends, and there was a certain amount of slippage in all
periods. The second feature of poetic transmission that O'Brien O'Keeffe
identifies comes under the heading 'formulaic reading,' described briefly at
the end of my second chapter. In this process, earlier scribes (more often than
later ones) occasionally substituted metrically, syntactically, and semantically
acceptable readings into the texts they were producing, rather than copy-
ing their exemplars with word-for-word accuracy. In both cases, O'Brien
O'Keeffe ties these developments to a particular cultural transition: the much-
debated transition from orality to literacy. For O'Brien O'Keeffe this means
that her interest is in poems springing from an originally oral-formulaic tradi-
tion: the development of metrical pointing and the decline in 'formulaic read-
ing' are both seen as stemming from a decline in the ability of scribes and
readers to bring a knowledge of oral-formulaic poetry to bear on the task of
reading and copying poetic texts.
Since the 'poems of irregular meter' from the Chronicle are precisely those
that students of Old English metre would distinguish from the mainstream of
Old English verse, it is necessary to point out that we should probably hesitate
to assert that 'orality' played any role in either their composition or their trans-
mission. To the degree that 'classical' metrical standards are linked to an orig-
inally oral-formulaic tradition, these 'metrically irregular' or rhyming verses
plainly depart from that tradition. An investigation of the 'irregular' passages
must therefore proceed on terms at least slightly different from those

employed by O'Brien O'Keeffe. Scribes might very well have treated poetry
and prose in different manners when copying them; however, as far as the
'non-classical' poems of the Chronicle are concerned, orality probably played
little or no part in the distinction. Instead, we can understand the transmission
of these poems as occurring within a strictly literate tradition, though one that
might itself have been in transition. Considering the kinds of textual variation
seen in examples of formulaic and non-formulaic prose, we can look for simi-
lar examples in these poems: if variations are introduced that destroy a pas-
sage's metricality, then we have evidence of proselike copying. If, instead, the
copying of these 'poems of irregular meter' is performed with a clear degree
of effort to preserve poetic structures, we ought to conclude that they have
been copied with a clear understanding of those structures. In addition, fea-
tures such as pointing or the use of litterae notablliores and spatial layout
might indicate scribal identification of verse passages. These three criteria -
transmission, pointing, and layout - will stand as the basis for my examination
of these poems, and the evidence, I believe, will show that we ought to read
them as poems and not as prose, even if they belong to a metrical system that
differs in significant ways from that described by Sievers and his followers.
O'Brien O'Keeffe's work on the Chronicle poems canonized by the ASPR
has an obvious relevance here, although the fact that she emphasizes the
records of the A, B, and C manuscripts, while the later poems I am concerned
with here are concentrated in the D and E manuscripts, frequently makes
drawing direct comparisons somewhat difficult. 7 It is worthwhile, then, before
proceeding further, to identify which poems are copied into the Chronicle
manuscripts by which scribes, in order to facilitate comparisons both between
O'Brien O'Keeffe's observations and my own and between the copying of
prose passages considered in the last chapter and the copying of poetic pas-
sages considered here. Table 4.1 summarizes the relevant information.
Several points might be drawn from Table 4.1 about the distribution of
poems and scribal stints in the surviving Chronicle manuscripts. First, there
are thirty-six total poetic passages, corresponding to the seventeen different
poems (not including the records from manuscript F, also to be considered
below). Second, although the 937 and 942 poems appear in four manuscripts
each, no other poetic passage appears in more than three manuscripts, and
twelve of the seventeen poems appear in only one or two manuscripts. Also, at
least nine scribes are responsible for the thirty-six poetic passages (the 1057D,
1065D, and 1067D poems may all have been copied by scribe D3; Ker is
somewhat unclear on this point). Such a large number of scribes makes draw-
ing generalizations about their individual practices difficult, to say the least.
TABLE 4.1
Scribes responsible for poetic passages in the Chronicle manuscripts
Annal MSA MSB MSC MSD MSE MSF
755 (prose) A1 B1 C2 D2 E1 F1 (reduced annal)

937 A3 B1 C2 D2
942 A3 B1 C2 D2
959 D2 E1 F1 (reduced)
973 A5 B1 C2
975ABC A5 B1 C2
975DE D2 E1
975D D2
979 D2 E1 F1 (reduced)
1011 C2 D2 E1 F1 (reduced)
1036 C2 D3
1057 D(1056-6b)8
1065 C(1065) D(1065b-6e)
1067 D(1066-6f)
1075(1076D)a D3 E1
1075(1076D)b D3 E1
1086 E1
1104 E1
The fact that the 1057D, 1065C, and 1067D poems were all copied in parts of
their manuscripts that appear to have been written discontinuously poses par-
ticularly difficult problems: such discontinuous writing must make us ques-
tion the degree to which these scribes were employing their 'normal' habits.
Finally, five of these passages appear in only one manuscript (975D, 1057D,
1067D, 1086E, 1104E), making cross-manuscript comparisons impossible in
these cases.
Despite these difficulties, however, a good deal of evidence can still be
brought to bear on the question of whether or not these scribes identified these
passages as poems. This evidence stems from scribal practices of pointing and
layout, as well as from the apparent attempts to preserve poetic metre. In one
or two cases (especially the 979E poem and the 1011 poem) it seems likely
that scribes copied some of these passages as if they were prose; but in many
other cases there seem to be clear indications that scribes identified a number
of the passages 'of irregular meter' as verse.
Pointing and Lavout as Indicators of Verse
As I have suggested elsewhere, Old English poems that appear in prose con-
texts are frequently (but by no means always) set off from the surrounding
prose by means of prominent letters and what I have called 'meaningful
space.'9 Such devices serve to call readers' attention to the boundary points
between passages of prose and poetry; readers themselves are often, it seems,
then expected to manage the task of identifying and responding to the separate
genres (once the boundaries are defined) on their own. A second feature of
manuscript presentation that can also serve to help readers identify passages
of poetry within prose contexts is metrical pointing, which calls readers'
attention to the internal metrical structure of a poem. A number of the Chroni-
cle's poetic passages are set off by scribes through the use of one or both of
these techniques.
Taking up the issue of pointing first, we can see that O'Brien O'Keeffe
identifies metrical pointing (of either the b-line, or of both the a- and b-lines)
in the following poems: 937BC (largely b-lines, but also thirty-three of
seventy-three a-lines in C); 942BC (b-line); 973BC (b-line); 975BC (b-line);
937A (a- and b-lines, although some time after the original copying); 975A
(a- and b-lines); 1065C (a- and b-lines).10 She finds no evidence of metrical
pointing in the D manuscript, nor in the 942A and 1036C poems. There is
equally convincing evidence for metrical pointing in a number of the passages
O'Brien O'Keeffe does not consider, however.
The clearest examples of pointing in these later poetic passages occur in the
poems that feature rhyme most prominently. The most outstanding example of
the practice of pointing rhymes occurs in the 1086E poem on William the
Conqueror, where three succeeding poetic lines read as follows:
he forbead f>a heortas. swylce eac t>a baras.

swa swide \he/ lufode Ipa headeor. swilce he waere heora fasder.
Eac he saette be jjam haran. \>oet hi mosten freo [.Jfaran."
Such pointing is used with a high degree of consistency throughout this poem;
of the seventeen pairs of apparent rhyming words, fifteen pairs appear to be
pointed after each member. The key example of an unpointed pair is in the
line
ac hi moston mid ealle J?es cynges wille folgian12
where neither of the half-lines is followed by a point. B.J. Whiting has argued
that this line represents an example of how scribal orthography might obscure
a phonological rhyme, suggesting that 'folgian' here represents a pronuncia-
tion such as 'folê' (95). But the El scribe's treatment of this poem as a whole
gives us little confidence that this interpretation is correct; the consistency

with which this scribe points rhyme words suggests that he simply did not
hear (or see) a rhyme in this line. The rhymes that are pointed in this poem
likewise give us an indication of the generosity of the late Anglo-Saxon con-
ception of rhyme, one that appears to have included not only pure rhymes
('haran'/'faran'), but inflectional rhymes ('heortas'/'baras'), root rhymes
(where inflectional endings differ: 'befeallan'/'ealle'), off rhymes ('headeor'/
'faeder'), and assonance ('ahebban'/'tellan'). And though it may simply have
been seen as a case of inflectional rhyme, the final root consonants in 'libban'
and 'habban' also appear to participate in the rhyme. This poem, then, is a cru-
cial witness to Anglo-Saxon poetic rhyme, especially since its scribe points its
rhymes so consistently: the types of rhymes found in this passage can be used
to help identify rhyme words in others of the 'poems of irregular meter.'
Significantly, in the brief 1067 poem, we can see a very similar pattern of
rhyme, and of the pointing of rhyme words. Here, the first two full lines of the
poem rhyme with one another, ending respectively with 'habban wolde' and
'geunnan wolde'; both are pointed after the (rhyming) b-lines. Lines 3 and 5
of this poem rhyme together: 'drihtne'/'mihte'; both words are pointed. Line 4
features internal rhyme -
mid lichoman heortan. on bisan life sceortan.13
- and is pointed on both half-lines; it is the only line of the poem so pointed.14
Like the 1086 poem, then, this brief poem (copied at least a generation before
the activities of the El scribe) features the same careful pointing of rhyme
words, even though here full lines frequently rhyme with one another, instead
of half-lines. Though their brevity makes conclusions about general pointing
patterns difficult, the rhyming passages in 1104E and 1076D (both passages)
may also fit into this pattern of pointing. 15 In the 1036D poem (which differs
in some important ways from 1036C), eleven of twenty apparent rhyme words
are pointed, including a run of three poetic lines (11 7-9), where six consecu-
tive rhyme words are pointed; while less consistent than in the other examples
here, even this degree of pointing seems important. The evidence for a fairly
consistent pattern of pointing rhyme words in this many texts and in the hands
of two (or possibly three) scribes would seem not only to justify our reading
these passages as poetic but also to indicate the existence of a tradition of
pointing rhyme words in poetry in this manner.
At least one more of the Chronicle poems appears to have featured metrical
pointing: the poem in 975E. In this brief, nine-line poem, seven b-lines are
pointed, and one of the two unpointed lines occurs at the end of a manuscript
page. Only one other point appears in the poem; it falls after the rhyming word
'rang' in line 7a. Though one other rhyming a-line (in line 5a) remains
unpointed, the El scribe appears to intend metrical pointing here, with the
only pointed a-line coinciding with the use of rhyme as a poetic feature. Here,
too, we might usefully draw a comparison to the pointing of the 1067D poem,
where b-lines were pointed and the only a-line to be pointed featured a rhyme
word.
The late tradition of metrical pointing in the Chronicle, then, ought to con-
firm the opinion of Plummer and other editors that the passages in question in
annals 975DE, 1036CD, 1067D, 1075E/76D, 1086E, and 1104E are, in fact,
poetic, even if they exhibit forms uncharacteristic of the 'classical' Anglo-
Saxon verse form. The evidence of these scribes is too consistent and compel-
ling to ignore. The form of this late pointing tradition, which points rhyme
words or, in the case of the 975E text, b-lines only of non-rhyming poetic
lines, is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the tradition of metrical pointing
described by O'Brien O'Keeffe. It is possible that the record of 975E pre-
serves the pointing of a late-tenth-century exemplar (which would then allow
it to fit within O'Brien O'Keeffe's scheme), but this must remain conjectural.
Whether the pointing in 975E conforms to tenth-, eleventh-, or twelfth-cen-
tury practice, it certainly attests to a recognition of this passage as a poem; the
details of the relationship between the pointing of alliterative verse and the
pointing of rhyming verse may never be known, since the corpus of rhyming
poetry is relatively small.
The use of metrical pointing, of course, was only one possible indicator in
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of ways in which prose and verse were treated dif-
ferently by scribes. Scribes also frequently marked out poetic passages within
prose contexts by the use of capital (or simply large) letters and (sometimes
also) the use of meaningful blank space. Such graphic markers apparently
served to identify poetic passages as major subsections of works. And, indeed,
we can see the use of such markers within the Chronicle poems, though
chiefly in the alliterative poems of the classical form in 942BC and 1065CD.
But, additionally, we can see that space and the use of prominent or capital let-
ters apparently function to separate at least the first passage of verse in 975D
from the following prose (see Plate VIII). After this passage, a significant gap
the size of two or three letters appears, followed by an enlarged H in the word
'Her.' The space, the more noticeable letter, and the repetition of 'Her' after
the poem seem to mark the poem out as an important subsection of the annal;
it seems reasonable to conclude that it is the verse/prose boundary that is
being marked here.16
It is possible that a similar use of space marks the beginning of the Wulfsta-
nian passage in annal 975D. The poem begins with a relatively large and
prominent capital O at the very top of folio 53v; however, since the preceding
material goes right to the end of 53r, the evidence of the capital is of uncertain
value. In most other cases, there is little evidence to suggest that the Chronicle
scribes intentionally marked the boundaries between verse and prose. In the D
manuscript's use of visual markers to set off the 975DE poem from the fol-
lowing prose, however, we can see another scribe treating this passage as
verse, confirming the significance of the E manuscript's use of metrical
points. Between metrical points and the use of prominent letters and space, six
of the eleven passages printed as verse by Plummer but excluded by the ASPR
can be shown to have been treated as poems by their scribes. The exclusion of
at least these poems from considerations of the role of poetry in the Chronicle
would thus seem to be unjustified.
Verselike Copying and Proselike Copying
In passages where neither pointing nor prominent letters and space are used by
scribes to differentiate poetry from prose, we might still determine how
scribes read these passages according to whether or not they seem to have
been operating under the triple poetic constraints of sense, syntax, and metre
or merely under the simpler prose constraints of producing text that is syntac-
tically effective and conveys the appropriate meaning. Several examples of
verselike copying serve to confirm that scribes using metrical points or space
and capitals to distinguish poems from prose also treated these passages as
poetic in their copying habits. For example, in the D manuscript's record of
the 975DE poem, we come across the following line:
Cynegas hyne wide wurSodon swide17
The analogous passage in the Peterborough manuscript reads as follows:
cyningas hine wide wurdodon side.18
Clearly, one or the other of these versions has an innovation in the final word
of the line. A close look at the D manuscript (see Plate VIII) suggests where
the innovation lies: the word 'swide' is noticeably crowded, and it appears
that the tall s that begins this word may have been squeezed in before the wyn.
The D2 scribe here has quite possibly written in 'wide' and then altered the d
to d while squeezing in the s.19 If indeed the D scribe had originally written
'wide' here, the alteration to 'swioV presumably resulted from the presence of
'wide' in the a-line: the repetition would simply have been too close. But a
reading of 'wurdodon wide' for an original reading (as in manuscript E) of
'wurdodon side' certainly appears to be a relatively clear-cut case of uncon-

scious (and because of the repetition of 'wide,' inappropriate) 'formulaic read-
ing.' Likewise, the probable alteration of the troublesome 'wide' to 'swide'
evidences the D2 scribe's desire to maintain the poetic integrity of the pas-
sage: 'swi3e' probably still rhymes with the a-line's 'wide,' the meaning is
hardly altered, and the metre is preserved as well. Indeed, within the poetic
tradition, 'wide' and 'swide' have a great deal of semantic similarity, as both
function as largely conventional adverbs of degree. Here, at least, the D2
scribe seems very much aware of (and concerned for) the poetic structure of
the passage he is copying.
Later examples of poetic passages shared by the D and E manuscripts
appear to confirm the importance of this sort of process in the transmission of
the Chronicle poems. Specifically, the two poetic passages found in annals
1075E and 1076D show variations that suggest the desire to preserve their
poetic form, even while one or both texts introduce quite extensive innova-
tions. Comparing the D and E versions of the first passage, we can see that
there is a great deal more variation than in the line from the 975 poem cited
above:
Jjaer wass \tcet brydealo. \)tet waes manegra manna bealo. (manuscript D)20
and
\>sr wes \>tzt brydeala mannum to beala. (manuscript E)21
Both seem to be clearly intended both to rhyme and to alliterate (though we

must allow fourth-stress alliteration; see section 4.2, below). Determining
which version is closer to the presumed original, however, is probably impos-
sible. Both versions appear to have features that make them attractive: the E
version has a b-line of a quite familiar metrical form, while the D version
appears to feature an extra, ornamental alliteration on m in the b-line. Cer-
tainly, without a far better understanding of the possibilities offered by the late
verse form featured in the Chronicle poems, choosing between these readings
is a pointless task.
The passages found at the ends of these annals offer equally intriguing pos-
sibilities. In the D manuscript, we read the following:
sume hi wurdon geblende. and sume wrecen of lande.

and sume getawod to scande.
|)us wurdon f>as kyninges swican genyflerade.22
The E manuscript's version, on the other hand, is much different:
sume hy wurdon ablaende and sume of lande adrifene.

swa wurdon Wille/mes swican genidrade.23
Once again we are faced with separate readings, both of which have a certain
poetic effectiveness. The D manuscript's version of this passage has the more
effective rhyme by far, extending across three consecutive half-lines, though
there is no apparent rhyme or alliteration in the final line (it may, however, be
just possible that assonance between the root syllables in 'kyninges' and
'genyderade' is intended to function as a poetic linking device). In the E ver-
sion, on the other hand, no rhyme appears to be present, resulting in an appar-
ently greater reliance on alliteration: now 'sume' in the first of these two lines
seems to alliterate (non-classically), and we either have sw- alliteration in the
second line, or more probably AAXX alliteration (on w). An attempt to recon-
struct an 'original' reading from these passages is almost certainly doomed.
On the one hand, the D version's use (and pointing) of rhymes clearly sug-
gests that the scribe of this portion of the D manuscript read this as a poem; on
the other, it seems equally possible that the E text's apparent preference for
alliteration here represents a poetic rewriting that privileged alliteration.24
The evidence of other poetic passages is frequently intriguing, though often
far from being as clear-cut as we might like. In the Wulfstanian passage
entered under annal 959, for example, we might note that the D and E records
of this long poem are in remarkable agreement. There are a handful of ortho-
graphic variants present between the two texts but only one substantive inno-
vation (according to the definition used in chapter 2): manuscript E reads
'gode daeda' for D's 'goddsda.' Further, the two records agree in capitalizing
the initial letters of the same five words in this passage. Such agreement is not
unheard of in prose texts (D and E also agreed on the placement of litterae
notabiliores in the 755 annal, for example), but the co-occurrence of such
agreement in capitals alongside the relative stability of the text certainly
seems to suggest a scribal effort of conservatism here. The 959 poem is more
than one-third the length of the 755 annal, but the one innovation separating
the D and E texts here cannot approach the twenty-three innovations observed
in 755E. To be sure, the 959 poem and the 755 annal do not have the same tex-
tual origins, and this fact might account for some of the disparity, but it is dif-
ficult to deny that the text of the 959 poem was highly stable. In such a case, it
seems quite likely that scribal recognition of its poetic nature contributed to
this poem's textual stability as a result of the greater constraints operating dur-
ing the copying of poetic texts.25
Though the 979 poem is also contained in both the D and E manuscripts,
the same degree of textual stability is certainly not present. Indeed, this poem
is significantly shorter than that in 959, yet there are at least four textual inno-
vations (again, not counting simple orthographic variants). One of these (in
the E text) certainly seems to interfere with the metre: where the D manuscript
includes what has been read as a half-line 'eordlic cyning,' the E version has
only 'eordlic cing,' which is clearly metrically inferior, having only three syl-
lables.26 Also unlike the 959 poem, the D and E versions of the 979 passage
do not agree on their use of prominent letters.27 Where the stability of the 959
poem seems to have marked a recognition of its poetic nature, the 979 passage
did not get the same treatment in the D and E manuscripts. Instead, this pas-
sage's rhetorically balanced antitheses may well have been perceived merely
as heightened prose, in one or both manuscripts.28
The treatment of the poetic passages in 959 and 979 by the scribe/compiler
of the F manuscript is very much worth considering at this point as well. Both
passages are much reduced in F's shortened Chronicle, but in quite fascinating
ways. Indeed, the F scribe's treatment of verse in general is worth noting: for
example, the differing 975 poems that were present in the F scribe's exemplars
(the E archetype and the A manuscript) are both replaced in F by a simple
prose statement ('Her Eadgar cing forpferde. 7 Eadward his sunu feng to rice.'
'Here King Edgar died and Edward his son seized power'). In 958F and 979F,
however, we see another type of reduction entirely. At the top of folio 58v, for
example, manuscript F reads as follows:
On his dagu- hit godode georne. 7 god hi- geude p~ he wunode on sibbe |?a hwile
da he leouode. butan gefeohte eal he gewylde p~ he sylf wolde. 7 he dyde swa hi-
pea\r/f was. he wurdode godes naman georne. 7 godes laga smeade oft 7 gelome.
7 godes lof raerde wide 7 side. 7 wislice raedde eal\r/e his peode for god 7 for
worulde.
We might arrange this in verse as follows (more or less as Thorpe does in his
edition):
On his dagum hit godode georne.

and god him geude fycet he wunode on sibbe
pa hwile 5a he leouode. butan gefeohte
eal he gewylde \>cet he sylf wolde.
and he dyde swa him bea\r/f was. he wurSode 5
godes naman georne. and godes laga smeade
oft and gelome. and godes lof raerde
wide and side, and wislice raedde

eal\r/e his beode for god and for worulde.
Such an arrangement is, in fact, quite effective, giving possible assonance or

off rhymes in lines 3, 4, and possibly 9; alliteration in 4, 6, 7, and 8; and allit-
erative linking of lines in 1-2, 2-3, and 6-7.29 In addition, although the F
scribe conventionally uses a point before the abbreviation for 'and' (here at
Ib, 4b, 6a, 7a, and 8a), he avoids doing so in this passage when the abbrevia-
tion appears within half-lines (7a, 8a, 9b).
When we compare this version of the passage to the DE version, we notice
that this poem's lines 3b-4b appear much later in the DE version and are here
placed between sections of the poem that are, in the DE version, contiguous.30
Likewise, the half-lines in this version's line 9 are reversed when compared to
their order in the DE text. Clearly, the activities of the F scribe here encom-
pass more than simple reduction; this is rewriting. Such rewriting, with its
apparent attention to metrical structure (evidenced by both the final form of
the rearranged passage and the avoidance of non-metrical points) certainly
seems to suggest that the scribe of manuscript F both recognized this passage
(as it appeared in the E ancestor) as poetic and produced a new version of it
that also must be considered to be poetic.
The additional fact that the capital O that began the 958F poem at the top of
folio 58v is set partially in the margin has consequences also for our reading
of the reduced passage in 979F. The capital ;V that begins the reduced version
of the 979DE poem is also set into the margin, here even farther to the left
than the annal number, two lines above. Like the passage in 958F, the 979F
passage is also greatly shortened in comparison to the 979DE text, though
oddly. Where the D and E passages rely upon balanced antitheses, the F scribe
here cuts away one-half of one such antithetical pairing and fuses it to the fol-
lowing pair. In the passage in question, E reads as follows:
ba eordlican banan woldon his gemynd

on erdan adilgian.
Ac se uplica wrecend hafad his gemynd
on heofenum ond on eordan tobrsd
ba be nolden <cr
to his libbendum lichaman onbugan
pa nu eadmodlice
on cneowum abugad to his daedum banuw. 31
F, by contrast, reads as follows:

ac se uplica drihten hafaS his gemynd

on heofonan. ond on eorSan tobraed.
for dan 5a be noldan aer
to his libbendum lichaman abugan.
da nu eadmodlice
on cneowum abugad to his deadum banum.32
With such radical cutting and revising, it is difficult to tell whether the F
scribe saw this passage as verse or prose. The sweeping nature of his revisions
suggests that he saw this material as prose, which he frequently altered more
or less radically; the capital in the margin, however (which seems to be quite
exceptional in this part of the F manuscript), calls to mind not only the mar-
ginal capital at the beginning of the 958F poem but also the use of such spatial
features in other poetic contexts.
Because of the F scribe's methods of reducing his text, it is difficult to be
certain how he interpreted the passages in the E-archetype exemplar that
served as the source for his material in 958F and 979F. The use of capitals
placed in the margins for both of these passages in his text, however, suggests
that even if his cuts resulted in non-poetic material, he may well have recog-
nized these passages as poems in his exemplar. The specific nature of the rear-
rangements in 958F, I think, suggests that he was interested in producing a
revised version that could still scan as poetry; his alterations of the 979 pas-
sage, on the other hand, indicate his willingness to alter the effectiveness of
the rhetorical balance found in both 979D and 979E. At the least, the excep-
tional use of capitals in the margins in both passages suggests that the F scribe
treated these passages unusually; the conclusion that he viewed either these
passages themselves or their exemplars as poetic seems to be a reasonable
one.33
Because of the F scribe's cuts, E's reduction of 'cyning' to 'cing,' and the
lack of the sort of agreement shown between 959D and 959E, the record of the
979 passage in particular gives us little confidence that its scribes perceived it
as poetry, though the D scribe may have done so. The remaining poems to be
considered here have even more difficult records to decipher, however: the
poem appearing in 1057D and that found, in various forms, in 1011CDEF.
The beginning lines of the 1057 passage in particular might give us pause:
Her com eadward aebeling to englalande

se waes eadwardes brodor sunu kynges
eadmund \cing/
irensid waes geclypod for his snellscipe.34
The genealogical relationships are somewhat confusing: the Edward aetheling

of the poem is, indeed, the son of Edmund Ironside and thus the nephew of
Edward the Confessor. Here, however, Edmund's relationship to the two
Edwards is far from clear, and the interlined 'cing' (with its noticeable differ-
ence in spelling from the nearby 'kynges') makes us ask just what sort of tex-
tual deficiency the scribe was attempting to rectify. It does seem that the
metrical form of this poem has been disturbed in some way; 'eadmund \cing/,'
with only three syllables, suggests at the least that the insertion of 'cing' was
not motivated by a concern for metre.
This passage in 1057D appears in a portion of the D manuscript that was
apparently written up at more or less contemporary intervals; this scribe is not
obviously to be identified with other scribes of the D manuscript. It is tempt-
ing to conclude that the interlined correction may be intended to 'fix' a prob-
lem originally cause by eyeskip (we might like to imagine a full line that
clarified the genealogical relations more effectively), and such a conclusion
might allow us to conclude that this scribe read the passage as prose, not
poetry, since the correction seems unconcerned with re-establishing metrical
form. But this line of argument is necessarily speculative, since we cannot be
sure of the motive for the interlined word, and little else in this singly occur-
ring poem gives much indication of either proselike or verselike copying.
The 1011 poem, on the other hand, clearly seems to have been treated as
prose by most (possibly all) of its scribes. This brief poem is printed in Plum-
mer's edition of the Chronicle as follows:
Waes da raepling. se pe aer wses

Angelcynnes heafod. 7 Xpe~ndomes.
pasr man mihte pa geseon earmde
paer man aer geseah blisse
on paere aerman byrig. panon us com aerest
Xpe~ndom. 7 blisse for Code. 7 for worulde.
(Plummer, I, 142; in a footnote, Plummer mentions that
manuscript E reads 'raewling') 35
Here, I think Plummer's use of the E manuscript as a base text has had critically
important ramifications for the understanding of this passage, because the evi-
dence of the passage shows that the E scribe may not have had a clear under-
standing of either the passage or its metrical structure. If nothing else, the
reading 'raswling' for 'raepling' suggests that the E scribe's sense of the passage
may not have been sufficiently subtle to inspire our confidence in his reading of
it. A comparison of Plummer's edition with the actual manuscript text, how-
ever, points to another difficulty with Plummer's version: despite Plummer's

general practice of retaining manuscript points (which he distinguishes in his
printed text from the punctuation he adds), Plummer here ignores the point that
appears two words before the beginning of this passage, before the words 'mid
him.' The presence of this point in the E manuscript might be taken as suggest-
ing that 'mid him' belongs with the following clause rather than the preceding
one. And, indeed, I think this is right, for if the 'raewling' reading suggests that
the scribe is none too reliable on the sense of this passage, we might conclude
that his points are not inserted according to his sense but are instead imported
from an exemplar. The fact that the 'easier' reading takes 'mid him' as part of
the preceding clause ('7 [hi] laeddon bone arceb- mid him'; 'and [they] led the
archbishop [away] with them') likewise might give us pause.36 There are cer-
tainly enough questions about this passage that an examination of it as it
appears in manuscripts C and D is definitely in order.
Taking the D manuscript first, we can see that the D2 scribe certainly takes
the phrase 'mid him' as belonging with 'laeddon bone arcebiscop' rather than
with 'waes': a point follows 'mid him' in the D text. Significantly, however,
we might note that the D manuscript originally lacked one of the temporal
adverbs in the first line: D reads 'waes ba raepling se be \aer/ waes heafod angel-
cynnes.' ('then [he] was a captive, he who \earlier/ was head of the English').
The interlineation appears to be in the hand of the main scribe (as the form of
his mark of insertion shows), and so this initial bit of miscopying - and its
accompanying correction - is probably best interpreted as evidence of the
scribe's wish to preserve the adverbs marking the contrast between Alfheah's
earlier and later conditions. The reading 'heafod angelcynnes,' on the other
hand, marks a different kind of innovation, one with real consequences for our
understanding of this passage's metrical structure, as I argue below.
In the C version of this passage, it is important to note that there is no point
either before or after 'mid him.' In this respect, we are unable to determine
just where the C2 scribe felt the syntactic break to be. Yet the C version shares
with D the word order 'heafod angelkynnes' (as opposed to E's 'angelcynnes
heafod' - a reading that also appears in F).37 Taking the C version (as the ear-
liest), and taking 'mid him' as part of the poem (as the E manuscript's punctu-
ation suggests), we might lineate the 1011 poem as follows:
mid him waes 5a raepling se 5e aer waes heafod

angelkynnes am/cristendomes.
paer man mihte da geseon yrmde paer man oft aer geseah blisse
on baere carman byrig.
panon com aerest cristendom and blis
for gode and for worulde.38
The poetic structure here seems fairly clear: lines 1 and 3 share a balanced
structure built around the temporal adverbs 'da' and 'aer,' and line 3 at least
appears to alliterate, with the repeated 'geseon' verbs functioning not only to
build the parallelism in the line but also to alliterate. Lines 2 and 5 appear to
alliterate on the c sound, and line 4, which may be alliteratively linked to 3b,
is followed by a point (in all three of the CDE texts, a point appears here), per-
haps marking the metrically anomalous lone half-line.39 Even line 1 might
seem to alliterate on 'him' and 'heafod' if we are again willing to allow
fourth-stress alliteration and other 'irregular' features of alliteration. It even
seems likely that lines 3 and 5 are intended to rhyme.
The E archetype's reversal of 'heafod' and 'angelkynnes,' then, would
clearly seem to be an example of 'proselike' copying in which an original
metrical structure is disturbed. Likewise, the point in D that serves to separate
'mid him' from the rest of this passage would seem to interrupt the possible
alliteration between 'him' and 'heafod,' suggesting that D also may not have
recognized this passage as poetic. Finally, F's version of this passage has
mostly the character of a straightforward simplification: words and phrases
are cut, but nothing is rearranged, as portions of the 958F and 979F passages
seem to have been. Nothing in C makes clear that the C2 scribe read this pas-
sage as poetic; the major C innovation (reading 'panon co~aerest' for DBF's
'banon us com aerest' [D]) does not seem to disturb the metre sufficiently to
suggest that the C2 scribe treats this passage as prose.
The proselike copying of the passage in 1011, then, stands in marked con-
trast to the copying habits evidenced in passages such as the 975DE poem and
the 959DE poem. The sorts of variations seen in the 1075E/1076D passages
and the F scribe's revisions of his passages in 958F and (perhaps) in 979F
might well be taken as evidence for poetic rewriting. Given these poems' (pre-
sumably) non-oral-traditional form, however, their evidence seems best inter-
preted as indicative of patterns of written transmission. Like the evidence of
pointing and spatial layout, the evidence of copying strategies, too, seems to
favour considering the 'poems of irregular meter' as poems, although cases
such as the 1011 poem certainly ought to urge us to proceed with caution: at
least some eleventh- and twelfth-century readers may have failed to recognize
poetic structures in some of these passages.
4.2 Metre and the 'Poems of Irregular Meter'
If the evidence of pointing and layout suggests that contemporary scribes per-
ceived as verse virtually all of the passages that Plummer printed as verse,
then our modern sense of the possibilities of the Anglo-Saxon verse form must
be revised. After all, modern metrical theories that identify these poems as
'unmetrical' or as 'rhythmical prose' should not take precedence over the con-
temporary testimony of the Chronicle scribes. Yet even the most regular of the
non-canonical poems, that in 975DE, earns only the designation 'debased
verse' from a scholar such as Angus Mclntosh, though Robinson and Stanley
do find this poem sufficiently 'poetic' to be included in their photographic
anthology. As the most nearly 'regular' of the Chronicle's non-classical verse,
it can stand as a useful starting point for an investigation of the Chronicle
poems' form. It is worthwhile, therefore, to quote the 975DE poem in its
entirety here:
Her Eadgar gefor Angla reccent

West Seaxena wine 7 Myrcene mundbora.
Cud waes J)aet wide geond feola f>eoda.
ID- aferan Eadmund[es] ofer ganetes bad
cyninges hine wide wurdodon side. 5
bugon to cyninge swa waes him gecynde.
Naes se flota swa rang, ne se here swa strang.
\)~ on Angelcynne aes him gefetede.
f)a hwile {?e se aepela cyning cynestol gerehte. (Plummer I, 119-21; relineated)40
Without even considering questions of scansion, we find that classical allitera-

tion seems to fail completely in lines 2, 3, 4, and 7 and alliterative patterns are
(at best) unusual in lines 5, 6, and 9.41 Rhyme appears to supplement or
replace alliteration in 5 and 7, a phenomenon also seen in Maldon, but not to
this extent. Unusual anacrusis seems to be featured in 2b, 4a, and 8a. Only line
1 would be acceptable in 'classical' verse, and the exclusion of this poem (and
others like it) from the classical tradition seems, for the reasons described
here, to be completely justified.
Yet a closer look is in order. A line like '7 Myrcene mundbora,' we might
recall, seems to have an explicit precedent in the genealogical verses dis-
cussed in chapter 1, where 'ond' also seems to have been used anacrustically
before forms corresponding to expanded D verses.42 And, indeed, I believe
that the verse forms present in the 975DE poem can be seen as evolutionary
developments from classical norms.43 Two primary changes appear to have
taken place: first, the metrical subordination rules that characterized classical
verse appear no longer to be in effect, and second, resolution is no longer
effective. I will discuss these two developments in order, using the 975DE
poem as a touchstone text.
Metrical subordination is the conceptual notion that Geoffrey Russom uses
to explain the alliterative patterns of Beowulf, and his explanation is a power-
ful one.44 In it, each line is paradigmatically conceptualized as being divided

into four units or 'feet' (two in each half-line) with rightward elements gener-
ally subordinated to leftward elements. Thus a line of Old English verse with
two A-type half-lines can be schematized as:
a-line (strong) b-line (weak)
strong node weak node strong node weak node
Sx Sx Sx Sx45
Russom's concept of the workings of positional subordination defines allit-

eration as being mandatory on the strongest S position of each verse, with
alliteration optional on singly subordinated S positions and excluded from
doubly subordinated positions. Certain well-known features of classical verse
are a natural consequence of such subordination in Russom's system, espe-
cially single and double alliteration patterns in the a-line and restrictions on
alliteration in the b-line. Specifically, Russom's formalism allows single or
double alliteration in the a-line and alliteration only in the first foot of the
b-line.
The 'breakdown' of metrical subordination that I hypothesize here, how-
ever, would seem to have equally identifiable consequences. First, b-lines
would no longer be subordinated to a-lines in the same way: alliteration, for
example, would not necessarily be excluded from a second S position in the b-
line. Further, positions of individual feet could no longer be identified as
'strong' or 'weak.' To put it another way, if I am right that metrical subordina-
tion 'broke down,' we would expect the alliterative requirements operative in
classical verse to have been reinterpreted. Presumably, at least two alliterating
stresses would still be required, but their positions might no longer be ordered
by subordination rules. The XAAY alliteration pattern seen in lines 5 and 9
can thus easily be seen as resulting from the breakdown of subordination.
Likewise, the AAXX (line 4) and AABB (line 2) patterns in this poem seem
equally explainable, the latter as an example of supplementary alliteration
analogous to 'cross alliteration' in classical verse.46 Presumably, the use of a
light A3 verse in 6b is also allowed here, as the classical exclusion of such
verses in b-lines seems tied to the rules of subordination.47
The appearance of rhyme as a poetic device linking half-lines may also
result (in a somewhat roundabout fashion) from the loss of metrical subordi-
nation. If loss of subordination sanctions AAXX lines (as I suggested above),
rhyme can be understood as a device that reasserts the linkage between half-
lines in the absence of linking alliteration. Rhyme had been a secondary poetic
effect in classical verse, but here it seems to have been promoted to the status
of a primary effect (e.g., in line 7). Line 5 indicates that linking alliteration
and linking rhyme are, nevertheless, both allowed in a single line.
Since all theories of Old English metre have taken as a given that allitera-
tion must link half-lines, poetic features such as linking rhyme and AAXX
alliteration have generally been understood as being excluded from the Old
English metrical system. But if Russom is right that classical alliteration pat-
terns result from a principle of subordination operating on Old English verses
and feet, then a poem such as the 975DE poem can be seen as largely metrical
- with the understanding that it represents a stage of metrical development
where metrical subordination has ceased to be observed. Given that Old Eng-
lish was undergoing more or less continual linguistic change, we should antic-
ipate that the metrical system would likewise undergo change. Considering
the structures seen in the 975DE poem as resulting from the breakdown of
metrical subordination provides an extremely powerful perspective: where a
classical analysis of alliterative patterns could identify only one line of this
poem as metrical, the 'post-subordination' perspective I employ here leaves
unaccounted for only the alliterative/rhyme pattern of line 3. The loss of met-
rical subordination thus seems to be an easily identifiable change that can
account for the alliterative/rhyme patterns seen in the 975DE poem.
If loss of subordination can account for the alliterative and rhyme patterns
of such verse, the scansion of individual lines in this poem nevertheless
remains largely intractable from a Sieversian perspective. Yet I believe a con-
sideration of resolution (and its loss) can help account for most of the verse
patterns we see here. The breakdown of resolution as a productive poetic
process, however, is much harder both to identify and to explain than the loss
of metrical subordination, although it is likely that the loss of resolution is also
linked to linguistic changes. To begin looking at the issue of resolution, it is
useful to compare the following two half-lines and their scansions, according
to Russom's formalism:
8a: b~ on Angelcynne (xx)Sx/Sx
9a: ba hwile be se aebela cyning (xxxx)x/Sxs
In 9a, the scansion depends upon occurrence of resolution in both 'lifts' (the S
and s positions), and the metrical pattern is a regular one for even classical
verse (although the number of initial unstressed syllables makes the type
somewhat unusual). In 8a, on the other hand, the apparent anacrusis is of a
form unusual, at best, in classical verse. The occurrence of non-classical

anacrusis, of course, is a well-recognized feature of 'late' Old English verse,
and I believe it is connected to the loss of resolution.
If we imagine resolution as no longer productive, for example, then 8a and
9a must be scanned as follows:
8a: b~ on Angelcynne (xx)Sx/Sx
9a: ba hwile be se aebela cyning (xxxxx)Sxx/Sx 48
Nothing seems to change in the scansion of 8a, but this scansion makes 9a
look like an A verse with a very long series of syllables in anacrusis, and the
two verses suddenly seem to have quite similar structures. At this point, it is
crucial to notice that the first two words of 8a, 'paet on,' unusual as they might
be in anacrusis, would be perfectly acceptable as the initial unstressed ele-
ments in a classical C verse. I might point to Beowulf 274a: 'pact mid Scyl-
dingum' as a parallel example of a classical C verse with the form facet +
preposition + tribal name.
If we start from an understanding of such classical C verses, we see scan-
sions such as the following:
Beeowulf214i\: bast mid Scyldingum xx/Ssx
Widsith 63h: ond mid Heaboreamum xx/Ssx
In the verse from Widsith, resolution applies to 'Heapo-' and Russom's scan-
sions (like the Sievers scansions of these verses) are otherwise identical. If we
imagine resolution as no longer applying, however, and again replace the
resolved 'S' with 'Sx,' we would get a scansion such as the following:
Widsith 63b: ond mid Heaboreannum xx/Sxsx
This discussion of these classical C verses seeks to suggest, of course, that line
8a from the 975DE poem is not 'an A-verse with non-classical anacrusis' at
all, but rather a C verse modelled more or less directly along the lines of these
verses from Widsith and Beowulf, but at a point in time when resolution was
no longer poetically functional. The key to understanding the verse is to real-
ize that, if resolution fails to persist in Old English verse, long syllables
become acceptable in positions where only short syllables were allowed in
classical verse. While 'Heaboreamum' and 'Angelcynne' are not equivalent in
classical verse because their first syllables differ in length, they do appear to
be rhythmically equivalent if resolution no longer applies.
Although the dating of this shift in Anglo-Saxon poetics is very difficult to
trace, the non-classical anacrusis seen in 2b, 4a, and 8a may well have been
initially motivated by perceived parallelism between such 'unresolved' C
verses and the otherwise similar A verses: because of the resulting overlap
of patterns, the breakdown of resolution would have had the natural conse-
quence of loosening restrictions on what kinds of syllables could be used in
• 49
anacrusis.
To the degree that these changes in classical metrics (loss of metrical subor-
dination and loss of resolution) are losses, I suppose Mclntosh's term for the
metre of this poem, 'debased verse,' might seem justified. But it seems more
evenhanded simply to treat these changes as poetic shifts: the new metrical
possibilities opened up by these changes altered the form of Old English
poetry, but the scribal recognition of this passage as verse seems indisputable,
and (as I hope to have shown) the metre of this poem is almost entirely expli-
cable, despite its difference from the classical forms.
A brief look at the metrical forms of some of the other Chronicle poems is
valuable as well. For example, lines from the 1036 poem, The Death of Alfred,
confirm the observations made regarding the 975DE poem. Although this
poem uses rhyme to a greater extent than it uses alliteration, alliteration still
has a poetic usefulness in it, and certain metrical observations can still be
made. First, the restriction against alliteration in the final lift of a line is
clearly no longer in effect:
23: ful wurSlice swa he wyrSe waes x/Ssx xx/Sxs50
Anacrusis is used extensively, and in ways excluded or uncommon in classical

verse:
6a: Ac Godwine hine ba gelette (x)Ssx/(xxxx)Sx
8b: sume hreowlice acwealde (xx)Sxx/(x)Sx
25b: seo saul is mid Criste (x)Sx/(x)Sx
24a: aet bam sudportice (xx)S/Sxx
But further, changes in rules of metrical subordination seem to have resulted in

a more radical shift involving at least one verse that appears to have three lifts:
16a: Se adding lyfode ba gyt (x)Sxx/Sxxxs
If we imagine the finite verb as completely unstressed, we might suppose we

have a hyperexpanded B verse, but it seems more likely that this verse is pat-
terned on a classically acceptable expanded D verse with (unusual) anacrusis
([x]Sx/Sxxs). The (off) rhyme linking 16a and 16b certainly seems to suggest
that the final syllable receives noticeable stress, and such verses may well
have three full stresses. The rules of metrical subordination (which say that a
verse may have three stresses if one is subordinated) may give way here to a
verse that has three full stresses, and henceforth I will generally scan such
three-stress verses with three S positions.51
Wulfstan's early-eleventh-century contribution on the expulsion of monks
(in annal 975D) is also largely amenable to the sort of analysis I am proposing
here. In full, this poem reads as follows:
On his dagum for his iugode

Codes wibsrsacan Codes lage braecon.
/Elfere ealdorman. 7 obre manega.
7 munucregol myrdon. 7 mynstra tostaencton.
7 munecas todraefdon. 7 Codes beowas fesedon.
be Eadgar kyning het aer bone halgan biscop
Apaelwo[l]d gesta[de]lian. 7 wydewan bestryptan
oft. 7 gelome. 7 fela unrihta.
7 yfelra unlaga. arysan up siQdan.
7 aa aefter bam hit yfelode swide. (Plummer I, 121; relineated)52
Eight of the ten lines appear to be linked by alliteration, although frequently

not in classical modes. Inflectional rhyme (which also appears in the 1086E
poem; see above) links halves of two lines, while a more impressive sort of
rhyme applies in line 2. Only line 1 shows no evidence of linkage between
half-lines. The passage is, it must be admitted, replete with the 'five-position'
verses that Cable argued were characteristic of prose (on the basis of identify-
ing the Wulfstanian passage in 959DE as prose; see Meter and Melody, chap-
ter 3). But, again, it seems probable that the appearance of such five-position
verses may stem from the loss of functional resolution (see note 49, above).
Indeed, the alliterative irregularities of a line such as 6 are counterbalanced by
the powerful poetic effect of lines such as 2, 3, and 7.53 Each of these lines, in
fact, deserves careful attention.
Again using my modifications to Russom's formalism, we might scan these
three Wulfstanian lines as follows:
2: Codes wi^sersacan Codes lage braecon. Sx/Sxsx Sx/Sx/Sx
3:/Elfere ealdorman. 7 obre manega. Ssx/Sxs (x)Sx/Sxx
7: Abaelwo[l]d gesta[5e]lian. 7 wydewan bestryptan Sxs/(x)Sxx (x)Sxx/(x)Sx
In line 2, we see the use of a three-position verse, but the a- and b-lines are
linked by both initial alliteration and half-line rhyme. In line 3, we seem to
have an example of cross alliteration, where the vocalic alliteration is supple-
mented by a secondary alliteration on '-man' and 'manega.' Likewise in line
7, the second element of /Ethelwold's name provides the alliterating syllable,
while the st- cluster causes the second components of the two half-lines to
alliterate with one another.54 This complex and effective alliteration is proba-
bly sufficient to confirm that the seemingly anomalous alliteration of 'het' and
'halgan' in line 6 is probably functional despite its non-classical effect. Such
use of both primary and secondary poetic effects as are seen in lines 2, 3, and
7 surely suggests that this entire passage was intended to be received as poetry
rather than 'rhythmical prose,' as Wulfstan's characteristic compositions are
regularly styled.55
Finally, it is worthwhile to look at a portion of the post-Conquest poem on
William the Conqueror, from annal 1086E. While some portions of this poem
are less metrically regular than others (especially if one follows Plummer's
lineation), others fit well within the scheme outlined here:
Det he nara be wihte. 7 mid mycelan unrihte

of his landleode, for litte[l]re neode.
he was on gitsunge befeallan. 7 graedinesse he lufode mid ealle.
he saette mycel deorfrid. 7 he laegde laga paer wid. (Plummer I, 221; relineated)56
Though half-line rhyme is the primary poetic structural feature here, allitera-
tion still plays a powerful (albeit secondary) role, linking some half-lines
together (e.g., the second and third lines quoted), but also sometimes appear-
ing as double alliteration in a single half-line (as in 'of his landleode' or in the
last-quoted half-line).57 As these lines also show, the 1086E poem uses non-
classical anacrusis and appears to use verses with three 'feet,' or at least with
three relatively powerful stresses. Both, of course, are features also observed
in the previously examined poems.
Although my examination of the metrical form of these non-canonical
Chronicle poems cannot pretend to completeness, I hope I have shown that a
great deal of their metrical form may be understandable as developing from
the classical forms through an evolutionary process. A more or less simultane-

ous breakdown of metrical subordination and metrical resolution would lead
to many (if not all) of the innovative metrical features seen in the Chronicle
verse: relaxed restrictions on alliterative patterns; non-classical anacrusis;
increased prevalence of 'five-position verses' and verses with three stresses;
and increased reliance on rhyme. Rather than identifying these passages as
'debased verse' (Mclntosh) or 'rhythmical prose,' we ought to understand and
describe them as their authors and scribes saw them: as verse.
Metricists have tended to despair of accounting for the form of the lines
seen in the late Chronicle verse. Yet the realization that the Old English verse
tradition could not have been static in the midst of linguistic change can (as I
hope to have shown) open the door to seeing this late verse as having devel-
oped from classical forms. Such a perspective has powerful consequences. To
take just one obvious example, the fact that even the Wulfstanian passage
examined here shares formal verselike structures with these other Chronicle
poems confirms that he must have intended at least his contributions to the
Chronicle as verse. From the perspectives both of manuscript presentation and
of metre, the Chronicle verse tradition seems to have been both well recog-
nized and culturally powerful; the remainder of this chapter examines the lit-
erary effect of that tradition and its place within the Chronicle as a whole.
4.3 The Place of Poetry in the Chronicle
The arguments regarding poetic presentation and poetic form made in the pre-
vious two sections of this chapter suggest, of course, that our understanding of
the genre of 'Chronicle poems' must be supplemented by the realization that
the Chronicle's 'decanonized' poems nevertheless functioned as poems for the
Chronicle's, original readers and writers. Further, as I suggested at the very
beginning of the chapter, the likelihood that The Battle of Brunanburh was
indeed written with the Chronicle in mind suggests that the inclusion of poetry
serves identifiable and important historiographic purposes in the Chronicle, at
least at its beginning.
Here, I attempt a reading of the Chronicle's collection of poems, suggesting
that they fall most naturally into three distinct groups, based upon the history
of their composition and entry into the Chronicle. First, there is a group of
tenth-century poems, including those in annals 937, 942, 973, 975ABC,
975DE, and 979. The second group, much smaller, includes the poems in 959,
975D, and 1011; these poems all date from the early eleventh century and
make up what might be designated the 'Wulfstanian' group of Chronicle
poems. The final group includes all the rest of the Chronicle poems, which
1 00 Textual Histories
might be designated as 'late eleventh century,' though the 1036 poem may
actually date from before mid-century. This group's defining characteristic is a
general proximity to the Norman Conquest: the cluster of verses in annals
1057, 1065, 1067, 1075E/76D, and 1086 is matched in density only by the
cluster of poems in the 970s.
The key features of the Chronicle poems as a group, I show, are largely
those already present in Brunanburh: a concern with English nationalism, an
explicit focus on the royal succession in the West Saxon line, and a tendency
to make historical comparisons, writing about relatively current happenings in
comparison to more remote events. The presence of these elements in Brunan-
burh was intimated at the beginning of the chapter, but a closer reading of the
poem can focus my reading of the tenth-century poems.58
After the opening passage of Brunanburh, where the genealogical and
dynastic relationships of Êthelstan and Edmund are delineated, the poem
accomplishes additional political work in its characterizations of the opposed
forces. On one side are Anlaf, king of the Dublin Vikings, and Constantinus,
king of the Picts and Scots. Their troops are variously styled Scotsmen (lla,
19b, 32a), Northmen (18b, 33a, 53a), and seamen (lib, 32a). Twice (lla-b,
32a) such names are poetically paired to suggest that Êthelstan's enemies
were a combined force: seamen and Scots. On the other side, however, Êthel-
stan's forces are also a combined group, as the following passage indicates:
Wesseaxe ford
ondlongne daeg eoredcistum
on last legdun labum beodum,
heowan hereflyman hindan bearle
mecum mylenscearpan. Myrce ne wyrndon
heardes hondplegan haeleba nanum
baera be mid Anlafe ofer aera gebland
on lides bosme land gesohtun (11 20b-27)59
Here West Saxons and Mercians operate in complete complementarity;

stan's force has a unity explicitly opposed to the apparently temporary alliance
of the Scotsmen and the seamen, whose very mobility marks them (and their
alliances) as transient. Further, while Anlaf and his men seek out their
homeland in boats, the winners of the battle (synecdochically identified as
'pa gebrodor begen aetsomne': 'Both the brothers together'; 1. 57) seek out
'Wesseaxna land,' exulting in the victory (1. 59). By implication, then, Wessex
thus becomes the familiar homeland of both West Saxons and Mercians, at
least as Brunanburh presents things. '
Figure I: London, British Library Cotton Vespasian B vi, folio 109r.
Figure II: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 173, folio Ir.
Figure III: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 173, folio 13r.
Figure IV: London, British Library Additional 34,652, folio 2v.
Figure V: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 173, folio lOr.
Figure VI: London, British Library Cotton Tiberius A vi, folio I2r.
Figure VII: London, British Library Cotton Tiberius B i, folio 140r.
Figure VIII: London, British Library Cotton Tiberius B iv, folio 53r.
A further claim to national unity, however, seems to be made in the Parker

version of the poem's final passage, where the adventus Saxonum is invoked
as a point of comparison to the events at Brunanburh. Here, we read in manu-
script A:
ne wearS wael mare

on pis eiglande aefre gieta
folces gefylled beforan J)issu/n
sweordes ecgum baes be us secgaS bee
ealde udwitan sibban eastan hider
engle and seaxe up becoman
ofer brad brirnu brytene sohtan
wlance wigsmibas weealles ofercoman
eorlas arhwate card begeatan. (11 65b-73; CCCC 173, fo. 27r)60
The force of the comparison serves to suggest that vEthelstan (as leader of the
West Saxons and the Mercians) is the fitting heir to the Anglian and Saxon
invaders of the fifth century.61 The traditional enemies of the invaders, the Brit-
ish, are invoked through the name 'Britain'; the apparent reference to the Welsh
in the next-to-last line hints at the (partial) identity of the invaders' enemies and
^thelstan's. But the exceptional reading of 'weealles' in manuscript A (as
above) seems to suggest that scribe A3 identifies the protagonists (both during
the migration and at Brunanburh, presumably) through the inclusive first-per-
son plural pronoun, 'we.'62 The end of the poem thus suggests that the victory
at Brunanburh is a fitting resumption (or inversion) of the Migration-age con-
quest, this time directed by /Ethelstan; the poem's repeated emphasis on yEthel-
stan and Edmund's descent from Edward (11 7, 52), when read in the context of
the preceding Chronicle genealogies, reminds readers that ^thelstan is the lit-
eral descendant of at least some of the invading Saxon leaders as well as the heir
to their martial spirit. More specifically, the figuration of the Anglo-Saxon
migration as a shared element of history works to support the notion of a coher-
ent English nation. The Chronicle's account of the migration and settlement
(accompanied by many of the Chronicle's early genealogies) can, of course, be
read as a series of national (or kingdom-level) origin stories, but no hint of such
multiplicity is present in Brunanburh's invocation of the migration. Instead, the
invocation of the adventus Saxonum in Brunanburh serves to collapse the
Chronicle's migration narratives into a single 'master narrative.' If the publica-
tion of the Chronicle's Common Stock had the effect of presenting the West
Saxon supremacy of Alfred and his family as the culmination of the earlier
Saxon invasion, Brunanburh clearly functions to further such a perspective.
Significantly, this final passage of Brunanburh also invokes the power of

textual authority for allowing such comparisons between Brunanburh and the
Saxon invasion to be made in the first place. Through the poetic variation
(and grammatical apposition) of 'bee' and 'ealde uoSvitan,' history books
themselves are identified as 'old authorities'; Brunanburh thus insists upon
the power of books and texts for preserving historical knowledge. At this
moment in the history of the Chronicle's textual development (certainly at
some point near the middle of the tenth century), the Chronicle itself receives
the text of Brunanburh, a poem that serves to validate the Chronicle as a
historical record nearly as obviously as it praises Êthelstan for his military
victory. The inclusion of Brunanburh within the Chronicle suggests the exist-
ence of a mid-tenth-century perspective that valued the Chronicle for the
manner in which it could place the West Saxon dynasty in historical perspec-
tive; the very inclusion of material relating to the later West Saxon kings
serves to indicate that their place in Anglo-Saxon history is as firm as that of
earlier figures, such as Cerdic and Cynric, in the Common Stock's narrative,
the leaders of the Saxon invasion itself. Brunanburh's explicit link between
the textual nature of historical authority and the invocation of the adventus
Saxonum serves to identify the Chronicle itself (with its detailed narratives of
the fifth-century conquest) as a central cultural document, precisely because
it offers the possibility of a continuing narrative of English history.63 As Bru-
nanburh appears to suggest, the existence of the Chronicle allowed the later
Anglo-Saxons to see themselves as the culminating figures of their own
history.
In an important sense, then, Brunanburh indicates how the disparate histori-
ographic strategies of the early-tenth-century chroniclers examined in chapter
3 were ultimately combined. Brunanburh continues the dynastic focus of the
Edwardian annals and the Mercian Register, but in the broader context of a
nationalizing narrative. Wessex is still the Chronicle's homeland, but the
victory at Brunanburh is portrayed as a victory not just for Wessex but for all
the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Even further, Brunanburh explicitly links its own
textual strategies to a textual origin in the Chronicle's own record of history.
Brunanburh's apparent reference to the Chronicle strongly suggests the
Chronicle's own role in the creation of the national identity that the poem so
clearly celebrates.
The record of the Chronicle poems that succeeded Brunanburh confirms
that the interest in the West Saxon dynasty and in the functioning of history
(and history books) remained a central concern. The remainder of the Chroni-
cle poems written in the tenth century (under annals 942, 973, 975ABC,
975DE, and 979)64 allow us to see the directions in which these concerns
developed. In the 942 poem, The Capture of the Five Boroughs, for example,
we can see in particular the focus on dynastic succession and English national-
ism. In a striking example of the use of a rhetorical 'envelope,' the first and
last lines of this poem call our attention to Edmund's dual roles as king of the
English and son of Edward: line 1 reads 'Her Eadmund cyning, Engla peoden'
('Here King Edmund, ruler of the English') and line 13 reads 'afera Ead-
weardes, Eadmund cyning' ('son of Edward, Edmund the king'). The Mer-
cians (whom we might recall as being supporters of Edmund and his brother at
Brunanburh) are quickly conquered ('Myrce geeode' 1. 2b), but the end of the
poem consists of the following remarkable passage:
Daene waeran aer

under NorSmannum nyde gebegde
on haebenra haerteclommum
lange brage, ob hie alysde eft
for his weorbscipe wiggendra hleo,
afera Eadweardes. Eadmund cyning. (118b-13)65
Here the Danes are explicitly opposed to the harassing Northmen; the settlers
of the Danelaw are identified as being under the protection of the English
king, in need of his efforts to release them from the fetters of the heathens. If
Brunanburh hinted at the significance of cooperation, alliance, and even
national identity as linking West Saxons to Mercians, this poem goes a step
farther and includes the Danes of the Five Boroughs within that polity.
Edmund's designation as 'Engla peoden' subtly reinforces such a perspective,
of course, since his heritage is strictly West Saxon, while the Mercians are his-
torically Anglian. 66
In the poems on Edgar, entered at his coronation in 973 and at his death in
975, we see further developments on both fronts. The 973 poem begins with
Edgar being described as 'ruler of the English':
Her Eadgar wees, Engla waldende,

cordre mycclum to cyninge gehalgod (11 1-2)6
He is later more explicitly identified as 'Eadmundes eafora' (1. 17; 'son of

Edmund'). Once again, we see the insistence on identifying the West Saxon
king - within his genealogical context - as ruler of 'the English'; the contin-
ued identification of the kings of Alfred's line as rulers of the English func-
tions to assert a unity of national identity. The calculational passage in the
middle of the poem is even more striking in its effects:
And 9a agangen waes

tyn hund wintra geteled rimes
fram gebyrdtide bremes cyninges,
leohta hyrdes, butan daer to lafe ba get
waes wintergeteles, baes 5e gewritu secgad,
seofon and twentig; swa neah waes sigora frean
dusend aurnen, da ba 5is gelamp. (11 10b-16)6
Such calculations may be clumsy, even dull, as poetry, but here we see
Edgar's coronation being precisely placed within a well-defined thousand-
year span, indicating (if nothing else) the very relevance of such chronological
thinking to the poet. It seems to be of crucial importance to note that the
Chronicle itself is structured according to the very chronological perspective
invoked here: the Chronicle, too, begins its stretch of consecutively numbered
years with the year one, in which Christ's birth is recorded. Even more
remarkable, it seems, is the poem's claim to textual authority in line 14 ('paes
5e gewritu secgad'), which identifies the chronological calculation as being
based upon textual foundations. But the document that most clearly places the
coronation of Edgar twenty-seven years before the end of the thousand-year
span must surely be the Chronicle itself: The Coronation of Edgar thus seems
to be characterized by a certain self-referentiality in which the poem invokes
its own position within the Chronicle as guaranteeing its historical authority.69
At the same time, the form of the calculation involves a sense of history as
something that extends into the future as well as encompassing the past.
The 975ABC and 975DE poems on Edgar's death allow us an interesting
glimpse of two different perspectives on what is appropriate within the genre
of "Chronicle poems.' The 975ABC poem continues the Chronicle poetry's
concern with the genealogy of the West Saxon dynasty: the first one and a half
lines read:
Her geendode eordan dreamas.

Eadgar, Engla cyning (11 l-2a)7
Further, this poem indicates that Edgar's son, Edward, immediately took the
throne himself, in a passage that makes the genealogical connections quite
explicit (11 10b-12). The roundabout manner of identifying the day of Edgar'
death as the eighth of July (11 4b-9b) may remind us of the calculational pas
sage from the 973 poem, but the final two-thirds of the poem seem to consti-
tute a departure from the tradition of Chronicle poetry as it has so far been
seen. Here we read about neither the doings nor the genealogy of the West
Saxon kings, but rather all the other events of the year: an expulsion of monks
in Mercia (11 16-19a); the exile of Oslac (11 24-28b); the appearance of a
comet (11 29-33a); and the great hunger (11 33b-35a).
Notably, the 975DE poem relegates this later material to the prose portion
of the annal following the poem.71 Instead, the 975DE poem focuses only on
Edgar himself, beginning by stressing the various groups over which he rules:
Her Eadgar gefor Angla reccent

WestSeaxena wine. 7 Myrcene mundbora. (11 1-2; Plummer I, 119; relineated)72
Edgar is here (in contrast to the 975ABC poem) poetically linked to his father:
he is described as 'aferan Eadmund[>,s]' (1. 4a; 'son of Edmund': cf 973ABC,
1. 17), and the poem celebrates the degree to which Edgar's political and mili-
tary powers were respected:
Naes se flota swa rang, ne se here swa strang.

\)~ on Angelcynne aes him gefetede.
\)a hwile be se aêla cyning cynestol gerehte.
(11 7-9; Plummer I, 121; relineated)73
Notably, the date of Edgar's death is entered in the D manuscript immediately

before the poem (immediately following the year), and so the events of the
poem are indicated as taking place on 8 July 975, and the poem, quite natu-
rally, does not concern itself with other events of the year.74
The differences in form and content between the 975ABC and the 975DE
poems are of fascinating import. The 975DE poem, which is of postclassical
form, nevertheless seems to evidence a clear contemporary sense of what was
and was not appropriate for a Chronicle poem: material relating to a ruling (or
recently deceased) king certainly seems to have been appropriate; other annal-
istic material such as is found in the final two-thirds of the 975ABC poem is
explicitly excluded from the 975DE poem. The 975DE poem, after all, is
either an entirely separate composition from the 975ABC poem (in which case
it testifies to a different sense of what was appropriate material for a Chronicle
poem) or else it was a conscious rewriting of the 975ABC poem, which would
suggest even more strongly that the later material in the longer poem was felt
to be inappropriate.75 In either case, however, the poem that is less metrically
regular (from the perspective of classical verse) nevertheless features content
more representative of the tradition of Chronicle poems seen so far. Regard-
less of the fact that the 975DE poem is the first to appear in manuscripts of the
Northern Recension, it clearly seems to have been composed by a poet who
was aware of the traditional content of the earlier Chronicle verse, despite the
fact that he composed in a less traditional verse form.
The last of the tenth-century Chronicle poems confirms my observations
about what was seen as appropriate material for poetic expansion in the
Chronicle. Like the 975 poems, this poem also takes the death of the ruling
Anglo-Saxon king as its subject matter. In this case, the poem concerns the
violent murder of the young Edward, who was referred to as succeeding his
father in the 975ABC poem. Remarkably, however, this poem makes no
explicit mention of Edward by name and includes no genealogical information
at all. Indeed, this passage obscures genealogical relationships, such as those
which might serve to remind readers that Edward's successor was his own
brother, ^thelred. It is also important to note that this poem must have been
entered into the Chronicle some time after the events it describes, since it
describes Edward as a 'heofonlic sanct' ('heavenly saint'). Yet despite these
divergences from the concerns of the earlier tenth-century poems, the 979
poem opens with a historical comparison that must call to mind the invocation
of the adventus Saxonum at the end of Brunanburh:
Ne wearS Angelcynne nan waerse daed gedon,

bonne beos waes.
sySdon hi aerest Brytonland gesohton. (11 1-3; Plummer I, 123)76
Once again, despite the even more radical departures from classical metrical
form, we see the concern with historical precedent that seemed so important
not only in Brunanburh, but also in the calculational passage in 973. The iden-
tification of this murder as a national tragedy likewise serves to assert a
national identity, and the fact that the last of the tenth-century Chronicle
poems employs the same strategy as the first ought to indicate to us how
important it is to read these poems within the tradition of Chronicle poetry in
general and not only within the 'immediate context' of a single manuscript.77
The eleventh-century responses to this tradition of Chronicle poems likewise
confirm the necessity of reading all of these poems in context.
The 'Wulfstanian' Poems: 959, 975D, and 1011
Some time near the beginning of the eleventh century, probably after his ele-
vation to the position of archbishop of York in 1002 (and perhaps as late as the
second decade of the eleventh century), Wulfstan saw fit to supplement the
Chronicle's record of the previous century with two passages in his signature
style. These appear as the 959 and 975D poems. And although Wulfstan's
style has generally been perceived to be prose rather than any kind of verse, it
seems that Wulfstan's specific intent in these compositions was to supplement
the pre-existing Chronicle poems of the tenth century. Angus Mclntosh's
comment about the critical acceptance of these passages as poetic ('such a
description has been accepted implicitly for two compositions of Wulfstan,
the Chronicle poems of 959 and 975' 117), then, can serve as a reminder of
the possibility that Anglo-Saxon readers, too, may have accepted these pas-
sages as poetic, even if Mclntosh did title his own essay 'Wulfstan's Prose.'78
My own metrical analysis in the previous section also strongly suggests that,
for at least these passages, Wulfstan was composing verse.
We can turn first to the 959 poem. This poem is entered into the Chronicle
at the accession of Edgar following the death of Eadwig, and thus it parallels
the function of the 973 poem, although the latter celebrates his delayed coro-
nation rather than his accession. An additional difference between the two
poems is the historical perspective that Wulfstan can employ: here he summa-
rizes Edgar's reign and generally praises it, making clear that some time has
passed between Edgar's death in 975 and the composition of the passage. And
though the passage that begins Wulfstan's contribution does not (as so many
of the tenth-century poems do) open by identifying the king in question and
his genealogical relationships, this may be because the single prose sentence
that precedes Wulfstan's passage does this already: the first sentence of the
annal reads: 'Her Eadwig cyning forSferde. 7 feng Eadgar his brodor to rice.'
(959E: Plummer I, 113; 'Here King Eadwig passed on, and Edgar his brother
succeeded to the kingship').
In terms of content, the 959 poem differs in some ways from the tenth-
century poems that preceded its entry into the Chronicle. Most of the Chroni-
cle poems of the 900s function to praise West Saxon kings, at their accession,
coronation, death, or some other significant moment. Wulfstan's 959 poem
does serve this function: it praises both Edgar's piety and his political power,
for example. But it also chastises him:
Ane misdaeda he dyde beah to swide.

b~ he aelbeodige unsida lufode.
7 hasdene beawas innan bysan lande,
gebrohte to fsste.
7 utlsndisce hider in tihte. (11 21-5; Plummer I, 115)79
A note in the third edition of Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England that can almost
certainly be attributed to Dorothy Whitelock proposes a reason for this con-
demnation: 'It may have been Edgar's tolerance of Danish customs in the
Danelaw that caused Archbishop Wulfstan in the next generation to write [this
passage] after a panegyric on Edgar' (371, note 2). Where a poem like The
Capture of the Five Boroughs apparently treated the Danes in the Danelaw as
an important component of the English polity, Wulfstan's early-eleventh-
century perspective is not so tolerant of the Danes and their practices, it
seems. Instead, Wulfstan interprets this acceptance of heathen customs on
Edgar's part as being inappropriate: it is an occasion where Edgar stumbles in
apparently preferring political unity to religious uniformity. Virtually the
entire direction of Wulfstan's career, with his dual concerns for the appropri-
ate practice of the faith and the rule of law, suggests how pervasive Wulfstan
found the connections between religious conformity and social responsibility
to be; Edgar's apparent religious tolerance would undoubtedly have seemed,
to Wulfstan, to be problematic at best.
The 975D poem appears to continue the work that Wulfstan began in annal
959. But here, it seems, we must imagine that Wulfstan writes this poem to
supplement an annal that already contains the 975DE poem. Whether Wulf-
stan simply expands a prose passage such as we find at the end of 975E or
writes substantially new material is, perhaps, impossible to determine.80 Sig-
nificantly, however, the content of Wulfstan's 975D poem parallels, in some
ways, the content of the later passages of the 975ABC poem. The end of the
975 ABC poem recounts the expulsion of monks in Mercia, the exile of Oslac,
and observations on natural history such as the notices of the comet and the
great hunger; Wulfstan allows the prose following the 975DE poem to cover
the comet and the famine, writing his poem specifically about the expulsion of
the monks in Mercia and thus continuing the religious theme he employed in
the 959 poem.81 But regardless of the poem's restricted scope, Wulfstan
makes the effort to make it fit into the Chronicle poem tradition. Specifically,
he begins the poetic passage with the phrase he had used earlier to begin the
959 poem ('On his dagum'). By starting thus, Wulfstan's 975D poem not only
echoes the earlier poem but also stands as a commentary on the happenings
during Edward's reign: this, too, is a poem about a West Saxon king, at least
superficially. The fact that an earlier poem (i.e., that in 975ABC) had treated
the same event may have prompted Wulfstan's composition of this poem: for
Wulfstan, material such as this was certainly appropriate for a Chronicle
poem, even if the 975DE poem suggests that an earlier chronicler had a more
restricted sense of Chronicle poetry as a genre.
The 1011 poem employs none of the stylistic peculiarities that would allow
us to ascribe it to Wulfstan, but the date of the poem (most probably during
Wulfstan's archepiscopacy), its form (with its marked tolerance for unpaired
half-lines and its use of binary expressions), and its content all work together
to suggest that Wulfstan may have had a hand in its composition and its inclu-
sion in the Chronicle. The last bit of the 1011 poem ('for Code. 7 for
worulde.'; Plummer I, 142), for example, echoes a line from the 959 poem,
and although the line itself is neither characteristically Wulfstanian nor specif-
ically poetic, the verbal parallel seems significant. The focus on ecclesiastical
matters (here the capture of Archbishop Alfheah by the Danes) is certainly
shared with the 959 and 975D poems; the balanced antitheses recall the 979
(non-Wulfstanian) poem. Equally significant is the identification of Canter-
bury as the place from which Christianity came to the English: rather than
invoking the arrival of the Saxons, this poem asks readers to recall the Augus-
tinian mission. Even here, then, the 1011 poem both fits itself within the tradi-
tion of Chronicle poetry by echoing previous poems and invoking historical
origins and also marks out new territory in its focus on church matters. Even if
we cannot confidently ascribe it to Wulfstan himself, the 1011 poem does
seem parallel in form and function to the 959 and 975D poems.
As a group, the 959, 975D, and 1011 poems seem to attempt to shift the
emphasis of the Chronicle poems from the secular and royal to the ecclesiasti-
cal. Edgar's accession to the throne in 959 provided Wulfstan with the oppor-
tunity to summarize the details of his reign in terms of both his political
accomplishments and his piety. Indeed, Wulfstan does not hesitate to chastise
Edgar for his apparent tolerance of foreign (and even heathen) customs. In
annal 975D, we find a second Wulfstanian passage that takes the accession of
Edward as an opportunity to summarize his reign, focusing upon the crimes
Edward could not prevent because of his youth and the expulsion of monks
from monasteries previously established by Edgar and £ithelwold. Once
again, Wulfstan moves from the political to the ecclesiastical; both poems,
though, are placed within the Chronicle at the notices of royal deaths and suc-
cessions: traditional places for poems in the Chronicle. Indeed, the existence
of the 975ABC poem in other branches of the Chronicle - a poem that also
mentions the anti-monastic reaction during Edward's time - may well have
motivated Wulfstan to compose poems for the Chronicle text available to him
in the first place. Finally, after the 975D and 979 poems, which deal with
Edward the Martyr and his reign, we find the 1011 poem, which, even if it
bears none of the hallmarks of Wulfstan's characteristic style, may well be due
to him. Here the martyred archbishop of Canterbury is praised in terms that
invoke not the adventus Saxonum but the equally significant adventus Chris-
tianorum. In their concerns, then, these poems seem to make a relatively
coherent group; nevertheless, their entry into the Chronicle was accomplished
through an attempt to make them fit into the already established genre of
Chronicle poems. That Wulfstan was ultimately unable to redirect the focus of
Chronicle poetry as a whole, however, is shown by a consideration of the

eleventh-century Chronicle poems that are grouped around the Norman
Conquest.
Eleventh-Century Chronicle Poetry
While the tenth-century Chronicle poems and the Wulfstanian poems of the
early eleventh century form more or less coherent groups, the Chronicle
poems between 1036 and 1086 might best be considered in three separate sub-
groups.82 The first of these would include the 1036 and 1065 poems, which
take as their subject matter the deaths of Alfred the ^theling and Edward the
Confessor, two important representatives of the West Saxon royal line. The
second major grouping includes the poems from the D manuscript under
annals 1057D and 1067D. Finally, the 1086 poem, William the Conqueror,
stands alone as the last of the major Chronicle poems and as a fitting end to
the tradition.
The 1036 annal, in both its versions, identifies Alfred as 'Aibelraedes sunu
cinges' (1.1; 'son of King jEthelred'), though this occurs in the prose text that
precedes the poem itself. In this sense, this annal fits well into the Chronicle
poetry's concern with West Saxon genealogy. Within the context of the other
Chronicle poems, however, the most remarkable passage within the poem is
surely the following:
Ne weard dreorlicre daed gedon on £>ison earde

syb£>an Dene comon and her fri5 namon. (11 11-12)83
The first of these lines is a close parallel to the beginning of the 979 poem
examined above ('Ne weard Angelcynne nan waersa daed gedon.' 979E;
Plummer I, 123); but the second line invokes neither the arrival of the Saxons
nor the arrival of Christianity (cf 1011) as the basis for historical comparison,
but rather the arrival of the Danes in the early eleventh century. The 1036
poem thus implicitly identifies the murder of Alfred as a greater crime than
anything perpetrated by Cnut and his family since their rise to power. The fact
that the C version of the poem explicitly blames this murder on Godwine and
his party urges us to identify the murder as treason, a kind of national betrayal.
Yet the poet's echoing of the 979 poem and the pattern of historical claims
made in other Chronicle poems (especially Brunanburh, but also the poems in
979 and 1011) give this passage a secondary valence, one that implicitly links
the invasion of the Danes and the earlier adventus Saxonum. A host of familiar
cultural associations are thus linked in order to highlight the depths to which
the English have sunk. Just as Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos had invoked
the adventus Saxonum in order to highlight the decline of English values
(drawing a parallel between Migration-era British corruption and current Eng-
lish corruption), the 1036 poet here draws a similar parallel, depicting at least
some of the English as superior to the Danes only in treachery and disloyalty.
By invoking the eleventh-century Danish conquest in terms designed to recall
the adventus Saxonum, the 1036 poem implicitly lays the blame for the Dan-
ish conquest at the feet of the English and their moral decline. The death of
Alfred is presented as something the English have more or less brought upon
themselves, and this poem emphasizes the betrayal of the English national
heritage precisely by revising the terms of the Chronicle's conventional histor-
ical perspective. Within this poem, the Danes have literally and figuratively
taken over the 'proper' place of the Anglo-Saxons, both as triumphant con-
querors of Britain and as the political leaders in the Chronicle narrative. That
the national tragedy recorded in 1036 is the death of a member of the West
Saxon line, however, serves as an ironic indication of the Chronicle's contin-
ued interest in that line.
By the time the 1065 poem on the death of Edward the Confessor is entered
into the Chronicle, though, the temporary ascendancy of the Danes is long
past. Indeed, it seems that the 1065 poem is most probably a post-Conquest
production, as the flattering references to Harold as having been granted the
kingdom by Edward (11 29ff) might seem to be most apt after Harold's own
death at the hands of the conquering Normans. Nevertheless, The Death of
Edward adopts a somewhat odd position within the Chronicle-poem tradition
regarding the Danes. Edward is (in an utterly conventional manner) identified
as belonging to the West Saxon royal line (he is called 'byre vtdelredes' in
1. lOb), and described as lord of the English ('Engla hlaford,' 1. Ib). Further,
the extent of Edward's realm is indicated as follows:
weold wel gebungen Walum and Scottum

and Bryttum eac, byre Êdelredes,
Englum and Sexum (11 9-1 lb)84
The date of his accession, though, highlights the Danish invasion in the early
decades of the century:
beah he lange aer, lande bereafod,

wunode wraeclastum wide geond eor5an,
sySdan Cnut ofercom kynn ^delredes
and Dena weoldon deore rice
Engla landes XXVIII

wintra gerimes, welan brytnodon. (1116-21) 85
From the perspective of this poem, the Danish conquest can be seen as a portion
of history that is over and done with; the reference here would seem to look both
backward (with the historical perspective of other Chronicle poems) and for-
ward, to the possible end of a (hopefully temporary) Norman rule.86 Neverthe-
less, the 1065 poem's repeated references to jEthelred (in both quoted passages)
take on an especially poignant irony in the context of the preceding Chronicle
poems: while a constant theme of the Chronicle poems had been the genealog-
ical continuation of the West Saxon line, this poem's references to ^thelred's
family also must serve to remind readers that no further kinsman of jEthelred
appears to be available. While the poem's insistence that Edward had entrusted
the kingdom to Harold appears to legitimate Harold, the poem cannot place
Harold in the West Saxon line. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the 1065
poem implies that the end of the West Saxon dynasty will, in fact, coincide with
the end of Anglo-Saxon history. To this degree, the links established in the
tenth-century Chronicle poems between poetry, history, and genealogy have
proved to be enduring; precisely because of these links, the apparent failure of
the West Saxon line (as presented in this poem) leaves post-Conquest readers
(such as we are) with a powerful sense of an Anglo-Saxon ending.
Significantly, the forms of the 1036 and 1065 poems demand our attention.
The passage in 1036, which revises the political and historical perspectives of
preceding Chronicle poems, also stands as the one canonized example of the
Chronicle's 'poems of irregular meter.' At the same time, the 1065 poem's
classical metrics have long been cited as a powerful indication of the continu-
ance of the classical tradition. A closer look at 1065, however, might call such
a perspective into question: in particular, the 1065 poem is notably repetitive,
as if the range of this poet's skills was in fact quite limited.87 We see close
repetition in the following pairs of verses:
weolan britnode (7b) and welan brytnodon (21 b)

hyrdonholdlice(14a) and hyrde holdlice (32a)
byre ^Selredes (1 Ob) and kynn Êdelredes (18b)
XXII1I (6a) and XXVIII (20b)
aedelum kinge (13b) and aebelumeorle(31a)
syddan Cnut ofercom (18a) and Syddan ford becom (22a)
Further, a number of verses in the 1065 poem seem explicitly modelled on

verses in previous Chronicle poems:
Her Eadward kingc (DEd 1 a) Her Eadmund cyning (Capture 1 a)88

Engla hlaford (DEd Ib) Engla beoden (Capture Ib)
Engla waldend (Coronation 1 b)
Englum and Sexum (DEd 1 la) Engle and Seaxe (Brunanburh 70a)89
wintra gerimes (DEd2\a.) waes wintergeteles (Coronation 14a)
XXIIII (DEd 6a; cf. 20b) nigon and XX (Coronation 18a)
Although not all verses in The Death of Edward are anticipated in previous
Chronicle poems, it seems important to note the degree to which the 1065 poet
does seem to recycle material from his own poem and from previous Chroni-
cle poems. The conclusion we probably ought to draw here is that the 1065
poem employs a large degree of conscious archaism, using the traditional
verse form (by now, perhaps, old fashioned, if we are to judge by the poet's
reliance upon previous models) for the very purposes for which it was first
employed in the Chronicle: to make an explicit link between the West Saxon
line and its legitimacy to the heroic tradition. The Death of Edward, then, is in
some senses the last gasp of the particular historiographic perspective initiated
by Brunanburh.
The 1057D and 1067D Poems
Where The Death of Edward implicitly links the Norman Conquest to Edward
the Confessor's position at the end of the West Saxon dynastic line, the 1057D
and 1067D poems (which are almost certainly post-Conquest productions; see
Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle 28) propose an alternative branch of the
West Saxon line as potential rulers. The handwriting of the D Chronicle's
annals from the 1054 annal to its end in 1079 is varied but similar, giving at
least the appearance of discontinuous writing; but if Whitelock is correct that
the 1057 material must have been composed after 1070 (Peterborough Chron-
icle 28), the best explanation for the visual appearance of the end of the D
manuscript may well be that it is intended to look like a Chronicle manuscript
that had been 'written up at intervals.' Ker's and Cubbin's attempts to discern
'changes of hand,' then, may prove to be ultimately fruitless, except insofar as
they may expose the method of the last D compiler's deception.90
What is clear, however, is that the 1057D poem begins, in the conventional
manner of Chronicle poems, by citing the genealogical connections of its sub-
ject:
Her com Eadward aspeling to Englalande.

se waes Eadwerdes brodorsunu kynges
Eadmund \cing/;
Irensid wass geclypod for his snell scipe. (11 1-4; Plummer I, 187, relineated)91
Although (as I suggested above) the interlineation of 'cing' and the elusive
nature of the genealogical connections may not give us confidence in the
scribe's treatment of this passage, we can recognize the poem's conventional
opening. Like the 979 poem's invocation of the adventus Saxonum, the open-
ing of the 1057D poem seems to confirm that (despite any reservations we
may have about its metrical form) we ought to read this passage as belonging
to the tradition of Chronicle poems. Like the 1036 and 1065 poems, the 1057
poem also makes explicit reference to the Danish rule that began some forty
years before the events of 1057: 'Pisne aebeling Cnut cyng hsefde forsend on
Ungerland to beswicane' (Plummer I, 188; 'Cnut the king had sent this sethe-
ling to Hungary to betray [him]'). But the poem also effectively inverts one
feature of the tradition: rather than appearing at the announcement of the death
of the poem's subject, the 1057D poem begins with the 'news' of Edward's
arrival in England, delaying the material on Edward's death until the twelfth
line (out of eighteen). Finally, although Edward must have been very much an
outsider in English politics, his death is presented in the poem as something of
a national tragedy, 'hearmlic eallre bissere beode' (Plummer I, 188; 'harmful
to all this nation'). Considering that the 1057D poem must date from more
than a decade after the events it describes, its composition and placement in
the D mansucript must be understood as serving an end other than simply the
memorialization of Edward. The poem presents Edward the aetheling as a
potential West Saxon heir to Edward the Confessor not so much because
Anglo-Saxons at the time felt him to be so, but for a post-Conquest rhetorical
purpose: the continuing promotion of the claims of this formerly exiled branch
of the West Saxon line. The likelihood that the 1057D poem was placed into
the D Chronicle with an awareness that the 1065 poem would follow it should
remind us not to take too seriously the claim that Edward the aetheling's death
was really a national tragedy; instead, the chronicler here employs the rhetoric
of the Chronicle-poem tradition in order to highlight the more familiar trage-
dies that followed Edward the Confessor's death and to prepare the reader for
the suggestion made in 1067D that a link to the old West Saxon line could still
be forged through the offspring of Edward the aetheling.
The brief poem in 1067D, however, would seem to give us little to work
with when it comes to parallels to other Chronicle poems. Its subject is not a
king but a woman: Margaret, daughter of Edward the aetheling, although her
genealogy is not recounted in the poem itself. Nor does the poem deal with
either of the primary events that have motivated other Chronicle poems: death
or accession. And, finally, the 1067D poem also makes no real reference to the
historical narrative embedded in the Chronicle. Yet (as I will argue in more
detail in chapter 6), elsewhere in the annal we are given information about
Margaret's genealogy, and the annal's account of her resistance to Mal-
colm and her eventual marriage to him might be read as implying the future
continuance of this branch of the West Saxon line. In the context of manu-
script D, where the 1067D and 1065 poems occupy annals bracketing the nar-
rative of the Conquest, it is difficult not to read the 1067D annal as offering a
corrective to the apparent demise of the 'kynn /Edelredes' described in the
1065 poem.
It is important to observe that Plummer believed the 1067D poem (along
with the other material relating to Margaret in the 1067D annal) was com-
posed after 1100, after the marriage of her daughter to Henry I. Whitelock
suggests that the verse passage, in particular, could not have been inserted into
D before 1093: 'the interpolator ... could hardly have had access to a Life of
[Margaret] before her death in 1093' (ASC xvi; my ellipses). Such interpreta-
tions, I think, could well be supplemented by the line of reasoning I have indi-
cated here: the 1067D poem can be read in the context of the Chronicle poems
(and the D manuscript's poems, in particular) without imagining activity quite
so late. 1067D's concern with an alternative branch of the West Saxon line fits
well within the Chronicle's poetic tradition, without our having to hypothesize
either a lost Life of Margaret in Old English verse or a meaningful context
after the marriage of Edith-Matilda to Henry I. The 1067D poem may well
have been written specifically for the Chronicle (perhaps for this very manu-
script) some time in the early 1070s.
' William the Conqueror'
In the 1086E annal (which concerns events properly dated 1087), we find the
last of the major poems from the Chronicle. But where the northern interests
embedded in the D Chronicle continued to emphasize the possibility of a via-
ble West Saxon claim to the throne, the version of the Chronicle exemplified
in this portion of the Peterborough manuscript takes a radically different per-
spective. Here we find, after all, a poem entered into the Chronicle at the death
of the king, even though this king happens to be William. In the context of the
Chronicle as a whole, then, this poem functions to memorialize William as
king of the English.
Yet, like Wulfstan's poem on Edgar at 959, this poem does not simply
praise William, but actively presents negative facets of his character:
Ac he [waes] swa stiQ. f)~ he ne rohte heora eallra nid.

ac hi moston mid ealle |3es cynges wille folgian
gif hi woldon libban. o55e land habban.

land o55e eahta. o55e wel his sehta. (Plummer I, 221 )92
Interestingly, however, where the 959 poem explicitly referred to Edgar's

tolerance (and even importation) of foreign customs and practices, no such
comment about foreigners appears in relation to the 1086E poem. Instead, the
poem is immediately followed by this remarkable passage:
Das ping we habbad be him gewritene. aegder ge gode ge yfele. p~ pa godan men
niman aefter beora godnesse. 7 forleon mid ealle yfelnesse. 7 gan on done weg. be
us lett to heofonan rice. (Plummer I, 221 )93
With its obvious parallels to Bede's comments about the value of history in the
Preface to the Historia ecclesiastica, the 1086E annal surely asks its readers to
place William into the same historical narrative begun by Bede and continued
in the Chronicle. William, it seems, has come to be accepted as an English
king - or perhaps the chronicler merely encourages readers to see him in this
light. Either way, the context of the preceding Chronicle poems (not just those
in manuscript E, but the whole of the Chronicle's, poetic tradition) helps read-
ers interpret the function and effect of the 1086E poem.
Although my survey of the Chronicle poems, their manuscript presentation,

and their metrical form has been necessarily brief, it has been sufficient to
identify some important features of the Chronicle poetry tradition. First, the
manuscript presentation of the Chronicle poems indicates that many of the
passages printed by Plummer but excluded from the ASPR were most likely
identified as poems by their original scribes: metrical pointing marks the
rhyming poems in 1067D and 1086E, as well as the poem in 975E; the parallel
(non-Wulfstanian) 975 poem in manuscript D seems to have been set off from
the surrounding prose by the use of capitals and space; the careful copying of
the 959D and E poems (and the activities of the F scribe) suggest that these
poems, too, were identified as poetic by their scribes. The evidence of these
early readers of the Chronicle thus helps to define the scope of any investi-
gation into the role of poetry in the Chronicle without relying on modern
reconstructions of the alliterative verse form. The consequences both for
understanding the Chronicle and for expanding our notions of Old English
verse forms are significant.
Indeed, a brief examination of the metre of these frequently ignored poems
suggests that late Old English verse developed in recognizable ways. Specifi-
cally, the Chronicle poems provide powerful evidence for the late loss of rules
for both metrical subordination and resolution: loss of these processes results
in the altered alliteration patterns seen in the late verse, as well as the occur-
rence of certain rhythmic variants excluded by the classical tradition. While
the continued use of classical verse models in poems such as The Death of
Edward indicates the survival of classical verse at least as a literary tradition,
the 'non-classical' poems of the Chronicle indicate at least one direction of
change in Old English verse.
By closely reading both the Chronicle's fuller roster of poems and paying
attention to metrical developments, the third section of this chapter argued that
the Chronicle poems as a group tend to focus on the activities of the ruling
West Saxon dynasty. Starting with the tenth-century poems, they record the
West Saxon kings' genealogical relationships, thus effectively replacing the
genealogies of the Common Stock. The appearance of poetry in the Chronicle
thus both continues one of the themes employed by the Common Stock and
probably explains the general lack of additional genealogical passages: where
poetic rhetoric heightened the Cerdic-to-Wodening passage of the 855 geneal-
ogy in order to link ^thelwulf's dynasty to a heroic Migration-era past, the
Chronicle poems make the link even more explicitly, as at the end of Brunan-
burh. Further, the Chronicle poems use historical comparisons to emphasize
both the West Saxon kings' historical significance and the authority of history
books such as the Chronicle manuscripts themselves. Indeed, the very preva-
lence and persistence of these thematic trends may help explain why none of
the 1011 poem's scribes clearly recognized it as poetic: of all the Chronicle
poems examined here, it stands farthest from the centre of the Chronicle's
poetic tradition.
But most importantly, a fuller understanding of the Chronicle poems leads
to a fuller understanding of the cultural functioning of the Chronicle. The
Death of Edward, for example, appears to employ what may well have been
archaic poetic (and metrical) forms in its panegyric, a final tribute not only to
the last effective Anglo-Saxon king but also to the Chronicle's use of (classi-
cal) poetry to valorize the West Saxon kings. Likewise, the (non-classical)
poems we find at the end of the D Chronicle and in 1086E exemplify two very
different responses to the Norman Conquest. The D chronicler, by exploiting
the poetic tradition's focus on the West Saxon royal line, appears to promote
the alternative branch of the West Saxon family led by Edward the astheling as
potential heirs for the English throne, using poetry to buttress the validity of
the claim of Edward's descendants. The E Chronicle, on the other hand, by
straightforwardly incorporating a poem on William in the annal recounting his
death, subtly insists that William, indeed, has a place both in the Chronicle
and in the history of the English people and their kings.94 Though William,
like Harold, could not be placed in the West Saxon line, his memorialization
in a Chronicle poem indicates how securely he had found a place on the Eng-
lish throne.
In looking at the late poems of the D and E manuscripts, though, it is cru-
cially important to observe that these post-Conquest Chronicle poems must
have been written with the context of the Chronicle's poetic tradition in mind.
The themes of the Chronicle and its poems were known and recognized to a
sufficient degree to allow these later chroniclers to manipulate those themes -
and perhaps even the metrics of their compositions - for their separate politi-
cal ends. The modern critical habit of distinguishing among the Chronicle
poems according to their various degrees of classical metricality has, of
course, obscured our understanding of the entire tradition of Chronicle verse,
but these contemporary writers appear to have understood the tradition well.
But perhaps the most important observation we can make regarding the
Chronicle poems is the remarkable degree to which they appear to have
embodied consistent themes over a century and a half of composition. Clearly,
the Chronicle was, during this period, something far more than a haphazard
collection of variously composed annals: the Chronicle and its verse had a
rhetorical and political effect that the chroniclers were able to recognize, con-
tribute to, and even turn to their own ends. The degree to which the later
Chronicle's rhetorical and political effects mirrored those of the Common
Stock (in the emphasis on dynasty, legitimacy, and historical example and
authority) indicates even more powerfully the Chronicle's continued cultural
presence and power from Alfred's day to the Norman Conquest and beyond.
5
Latin in the Chronicle
To a much greater degree than is usually recognized, the Anglo-Saxon Chroni-

cle is a bilingual production, if such a term can can be used to designate its use
of two languages rather than one. At least brief passages of Latin appear in all
of the surviving manuscripts. Three manuscripts have relatively extensive
Latin components: we see thirty-eight annals or parts of annals in Latin in
manuscript E;1 F is thoroughly bilingual, with each Old English annal fol-
lowed immediately by a Latin version of the same material; and the Parker
Chronicle's Old English annal for 1070 is followed by Latin annalistic
material extending to 1093 (frequently treated as a separate document, the
so-called Acts of Lanfranc). In addition, two extensive translations of the
Chronicle survive from before the Norman Conquest: the histories of Asser
and jEthelweard.2 To understand the Chronicle in its Anglo-Saxon context
demands that we pay more attention than is frequently paid to its Latin com-
ponents and its Latin versions.
The pervasive, if subtle, bilinguality of the Chronicle has frequently been
obfuscated in printed editions through the use of Arabic numerals for the
annal numbers (e.g., Plummer, Classen and Harmer, Rositzke, Lutz). The gen-
eral rule throughout the manuscripts, of course, was to begin each annal with
the abbreviation 'an-' followed by Roman numerals indicating the year.3
Most often, this indication of the year was followed by the Old English loca-
tive adverb 'Her,' which served to introduce the productive annals. Such a
system of chronological location makes explicit the Chronicle's debt to the
world of Latin learning. In particular, the Chronicle's chronological scheme
appears to derive more or less directly from that used by Bede in his 'Chrono-
logical Epitome' (HE v, 24). In that text, we can see that the more complex
chronological locators used by Bede ('anno ab incarnatione domini,' 'anno
incarnationis dominicae') are quickly replaced by the simpler 'anno' (HE v,

24; pp 560-2).4
The 'anno' portion of Bede's chronological system remains within the
Chronicle, but the use of the additional locative 'Her' is the Chronicle's own
innovation. The juxtaposition of the Latin 'anno' and the Old English 'Her' is
a powerful one, and it allows us a fascinating glimpse into the complexity of
the interactions between Latin and Old English during the period. We can take
the Parker Chronicle's annal 39 as an example: 'an- .xxxix. Her onfeng gaius
rice:-' (CCCC 173, fo. Iv: 'In the year 39: Here Gaius received the king-
dom'). Such a format, shared by the majority of the Chronicle's productive
annals, raises a remarkable question: are the annal numbers themselves to be
read in Latin or in Old English? Our general habit of translating such material
into modern English obscures the importance of the linguistic difference,
since the meaning is clear enough to us. But the very difficulty of answering
this sort of question should be a reminder of how little we really understand
the practices of literacy in Anglo-Saxon England. In this chapter, I attempt to
illuminate at least some of the relationships between Latin and Old English in
the period, both by examining the Chronicle's use of Latin in the Common
Stock and in later annals and by investigating the production and effect of the
Chronicle's two best-known Anglo-Saxon translations, those of Asser and
jEthelweard.
5.1 Latin in the Old English Chronicle
As I suggested above, the question of how a contemporary Anglo-Saxon

would have verbalized (or vocalized) the annal numbers while reading from a
Chronicle manuscript is a difficult one, and the evidence that can help answer
such a question is surprisingly complex and difficult to assess. It is appropriate
to begin with the 'an-' abbreviation, which is explicitly Latin, apparently
standing for 'anno' ('in the year').5 'Anno,' of course, is the form used in
Bede's 'Chronological Epitome' (as seen above), and the post-Conquest
scribe of manuscript E certainly interprets the abbreviation as standing for
'anno,' as he writes the word out in full no fewer than sixteen times on the E
manuscript's first page of annals (fo. Iv).6 The earlier records of the Common
Stock, however, give no such clear indication of the way this word was read.
When we turn to the numerals themselves, the E manuscript again gives the
most clear-cut evidence. In E, numerals were apparently intended to be read in
Latin, rather than Old English: on folio Iv, we see not only 1ANNO .jcv/.' but
also 'ANNO .xvii0.' (where the superscript o is placed directly above the 'ii').
The latter, of course, must be read as 'Anno septimo-decimo' ('In the seven-
Latin in the Chronicle 121
teenth year'). But even in the E manuscript, the use of such superscript os is
somewhat rare, generally occurring only on the first page of annals (1 v) and in
the annals from 1122 to 1130.7 For annals after 1000, however, the E manu-
script generally begins with 'Millesimo' or 'Mill~mo,' suggesting that all
such numbers are best understood as Latin. This evidence from the E manu-
script, of course, is relatively late, and it may not have much to tell us about
earlier practice.
Where manuscripts C and D extend beyond 1000, however, they also use
'M~' as the most frequent abbreviation for 1000.8 Further, it is the common
practice in manuscripts ACDEF to drop the 'an-' entirely for dates after 1000.
The E manuscript's fuller forms provide the strongest evidence for Latin annal
numbers in the later annals, since 'M~' itself might conceivably be read as
Old English 'busend' (or an inflected form thereof) and the dropping of the
'an-' abbreviation leaves the remaining numerals especially ambiguous.9 In
the earlier records of the A and B manuscripts, however, there simply is no
evidence for a Latin reading of the annal numbers other than the common
'an-' abbreviation. Such a situation, it seems likely, derives from a similar
lack of indicators in the Common Stock's preferred usage. This lack of indica-
tors, however, might be interpreted as having been intentionally ambiguous: a
reader faced with material such as the beginning of the Parker Chronicle's
annal 30 ('an- .xxx. Her waes crist g~fulluhtud') might well have understood
it in any of the following fashions:
Anno tricesimo. Her waes crist gefulluhtud.

Anno britig. Her waes crist gefulluhtud.
Anno britigoda. Her waes crist gefulluhtud.
or possibly,
britig. Her waes crist gefulluhtud.

bam britigodan geare. Her waes crist gefulluhtud.
or even (pace Clemoes - see note 5),
Annus triginta. Her wass crist gefulluhtud.
The very ubiquity of the 'an-' abbreviation (one of the Chronicle's most
productive formulas) would have allowed readers quickly to master its
essential meaning regardless of how they understood it linguistically. What
is probably most significant about the Chronicle's mode of introducing its
annals is that the year indication is extra-syntactic in the sense that a power-
ful syntactic boundary separates the year indicator from the contents of the
annal itself.10
This state of affairs, it is important to note, stands as a radical change from
the Chronicle's probable source for the annal indicators. In the entries of
Bede's 'Chronological Epitome,' the annal indicators are syntactically inte-
grated. For example, we can read in Bede, 'Anno DCV Gregorius obiit' (HE
v, 24: 562: 'In the year 605, Gregory died'). The Chronicle's use of 'Her'
marks a shift from Bede's usage, as it appears to exclude the possibility of
reading the annal indicator as a temporal locative, at least not within the
clauses beginning with 'Her.' What we see in the annal openings of the Com-
mon Stock, then, is not the smooth conjunction of languages seen in maca-
ronic texts but a Latin chronological framework upon which the Old English
annals are somewhat precariously hung. Readers faced with a text of this
nature presumably did have a great deal of flexibility in their readerly task: the
conjunction of the consistent and easily mastered 'an-' abbreviation, the
Roman numerals, and the Old English adverb 'Her' would have allowed read-
ers with varying Latin literacy skills to expand the annal openings meaning-
fully in any of the ways indicated above. Although the form of the annal
numbers might clearly recall the world of Latin learning to our eyes, it is
important to acknowledge that contemporary readers might well have negoti-
ated the Chronicle's chronology with little or no knowledge of Latin numera-
tion.
While the Common Stock set the pattern for annal indicators for most of the
Chronicle's succeeding annals, its use of Latin in the 855 genealogy of ^thel-
wulf gives us a second glimpse into the Common Stock's perspective on
Latin. The end of the 855 genealogy appears in the C manuscript as follows:
Bedwig sceafing. Id est filius noe se waes geboren on baere earce noes, lamech.
matusalem. enoh. iared. malalehel. camon. enos. seth. Adam primus homo. Et
pater noster id est xp~s. (Tiberius B i, fo. 129v)u
Significantly, where the ambiguous Roman numerals of the annal numbers

bridge between the Latin 'an-' and the Old English 'Her,' the Latin passages
in the genealogy also serve as bridges, bracketing precisely the portion of
yEthelwulf 's genealogy that derives from biblical learning. The Germanic por-
tions of the genealogy (featuring the typical Germanic patronymics) are linked
to the biblical portions by the macaronic assertion that Sceaf was the son of
Noah born in the ark.12 The following non-Germanic names have no patro-
nymics, and the later Latin sentence describing Adam caps the entire geneal-
ogy in such a way as to facilitate the reader's transition back to Old English. 13
The careful use of Latin to bracket or envelop the biblical portion of the gene-
alogy cannot have been accidental; in the context of the Chronicle's Common
Stock, this passage most probably receives special emphasis as sacred mate-
rial through the use of the Latin language.14
Although it appears to be defective at the beginning, the A manuscript's
record of this passage deserves an even closer look. The end of the genealogy
appears in the A manuscript as follows (see Plate III):
ada~ prini3 homo

etpat~nr~fxp~sam~:. (CCCC 173, fo. 13r)
With the various abbreviations expanded, we can read 'adam primMs homo et
pater noster id est cristus amen' ('Adam, the first man and our father, that is
Christ. Amen'). The density of abbreviation here is quite unusual for the
Parker Chronicle's first scribe, although occasionally, when attempting to
squeeze material onto a line, he approaches this density (e.g., 878A, fo. 15r, 1.
17). But even more significantly, the sorts of abbreviations and other graphic
forms used here are unusual and remarkable. The superscript macron (the
familiar mark of suspension in almost all Old English manuscript texts) here
serves a wider range of functions than is normal in Old English; the form of
the e in 'et' is quite unparalleled in my reading of the manuscript; the abbrevi-
ation J for '-us' is otherwise used by this scribe almost exclusively in Latinate
names. 15 Further, the abbreviation '-^-' for 'id est' is likewise unseen in the
Old English portions of the Chronicle. It is possible that the density of abbre-
viation seen here is a space-saving measure: the remaining three lines of text
within the 855A annal are quite full, and the three 'n-a' ligatures in these lines
(which take the horizontal space of a single letter) are quite unusual, suggest-
ing that saving space was indeed a concern here. But the range of abbreviation
and the use of forms unique to, or at least unusual in, this manuscript suggest
that the orthography here serves to highlight the difference in language. To put
it another way, the very fact that the passage is in Latin seems to allow the
Parker scribe to use an especially dense textual style.
Two conclusions, I think, should be drawn from these features of the 855 A
genealogy. First, the juxtaposition of the Germanic, alliterative genealogical
form (as discussed in chapter 1) and the biblically derived list of names does
not coincide accidentally with the juxtaposition of Old English and Latin. This
passage, which Craig R. Davis has described as a 'bold imaginative coup
which secured for the West Saxon kings the most prestigious progenitors
available' ('Cultural Assimilation' 30-1), nevertheless highlights the distinc-
tion between the native and biblical traditions through the contrastive use of
Old English and Latin.16 Intentionally or otherwise, it seems that at least this
stage of the composition of the 855 genealogy is textually foregrounded.17 But
secondly, the use of Latin (especially the highly abbreviated and thus difficult-
to-read Latin seen in the Parker text) must have served to mystify the biblical
portion of the genealogy for at least some contemporary readers. The relative
lack of abbreviations in Old English texts (especially in comparison to con-
temporary Latin texts, as here) surely indicates that vernacular textuality was
more reader-friendly, and for such Old English readers as this state of affairs
would seem to imply, the Parker genealogy's text must have posed especially
difficult problems. Where the system of annal numbers (and its highly repeti-
tive 'an-' abbreviation) could be easily mastered by purely vernacular read-
ers, this bit of Latin in the Common Stock is perhaps intentionally difficult.
That such a brief and seemingly straightforward piece of Latin might have
seemed difficult to an Anglo-Saxon audience certainly goes far to suggest that
the original audience for the Common Stock may have had little or no work-
ing knowledge of Latin.18 The apparent degree of Latin literacy available to
the Common Stock chronicler and to his original audience may thus have
diverged quite radically.
These bits of Latin appearing in the annal beginnings and in the 855 geneal-
ogy remained the most prominent usages of Latin in the pre-Conquest Old
English versions of the Chronicle (the translations of Asser and jEthelweard
will be discussed separately below). In the E and F Chronicles, on the other
hand, Latin is used with increasing frequency, though to markedly different
effects. In the E Chronicle, thirty-eight Latin annals (or parts of annals)
appear, most seemingly borrowed from the Annals of Rouen or from 'a source
akin to the Annals of Rouen' (Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle 27). Since
eleven of the thirty-one entries that Whitelock traces to this source text also
appear in manuscript F, it seems reasonable to conclude that an Old English
Chronicle manuscript was supplemented with Latin material from the Annals
sometime between 1054 (the latest of the Latin entries cited by Whitelock)
and 1121 when E was copied in Peterborough. This activity probably occurred
in Canterbury, the probable home of the E exemplar (VE) during this period,
and it probably took place after the Conquest.19 The incorporation of this
Latin material into the E exemplar thus marks an important shift, where it
became acceptable to supplement the Old English annals with Latin entries.
The Latin annals' general concern with Norman, Prankish, and other non-
English ecclesiastical matters (cf Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle 27) sug-
gests that they were added after the Conquest, but the fact that Whitelock's
first group of Latin annals does concern purely English ecclesiastical matters
suggests that the process involved was more than a simple case of Norman
appropriation of the Old English Chronicle.
Indeed, what is probably most significant about the post-Conquest incorpo-
ration of Latin annals into the \E manuscript was the fact that this manuscript
continued to be a primarily Old English text. The Latin annals were supple-
mentary, but no more. This situation should be compared to that seen in the
Parker manuscript, also at Canterbury by the time of the Conquest. In the
Parker text, Old English annals of the eleventh century are few and brief,
until we encounter the relatively extensive 1070A annal, written in two
hands, with the work of the second hand spilling somewhat untidily across
the top of folio 32r. Immediately following 1070A, however, we read again
'i~. Ixx.' (with additional figures apparently erased; Bately suggests 'from
"1076"?' MS A 84, note 12). Immediately following, of course, is the so-
called Acts of Lanfranc, beginning 'Hoc anno Lanfrancus ...' (Bately, MS A
84; 'In this year, Lanfranc ...'). Written in a smaller (and tidier) hand than
either of those seen in 1070A, this material, which was apparently written all
at one time, extends to events in 1093. Dates in the Acts are given in refer-
ence to the year of Lanfranc's archepiscopacy, so that where the Acts reads
'Anno .xi.' on folio 32v (Bately, MS A 86), it refers to events in 1080. The
reuse of the pre-existing annal numbers on folio 32r (cf Bately, MS A xxxix)
to anchor the chronologically organized Latin Acts gives us an interesting
glimpse into one post-Conquest bridging strategy used to link an Old English
and a Latin text. In a remarkable fashion, the Acts of Lanfranc is both inte-
grated into the Parker Chronicle's narrative (by the use of the annal number
1070) and separated from it (by the revised dating scheme as well as the
change in language).
The F manuscript of the Chronicle, yet another Canterbury book, gives us a
third perspective on the post-Conquest use of Latin and Old English in the
Chronicle. Where the E manuscript (and the reconstructed VE) indicates that
Latin was sometimes used merely to supplement an Old English Chronicle
manuscript, and where the Parker Chronicle seems to show Latin replacing
Old English as the language of choice for chronicling activity, the F Chronicle
is deeply and pervasively bilingual. In F, each annal is presented in both an
Old English and a Latin version, with the Old English annals preceding their
Latin translations.20 The significance of the fact that the Old English annals
are placed before their Latin counterparts should not be underestimated: the
F Chronicle thus inverts the linguistic hierarchy seen in other pervasively
bilingual Anglo-Saxon documents such as the Wonders of the East in BL Cot-
ton Tiberius B v, The Enlarged Rule ofChrodegang in CCCC 191, the various
bilingual versions of the Benedictine Rule, and the fragments of The Capitula
ofTheodulf'm Bodleian 865. The F Chronicle implicitly still identifies Old

English as the Chronicle's primary language.
These examples of 'bilingual' post-Conquest manuscripts seem to suggest
that the relationships between Latin and Old English were in a state of flux
during the decades following the Conquest. Although the Parker manuscript
might seem to indicate the ultimate replacement of Old English with Latin (as
do other twelfth-century translations of the Chronicle, such as those by Henry
of Huntingdon and John of Worcester), the evidence of E and its proximate
ancestor VE, F, and the fragmentary H leaf all attest to the Chronicle's contin-
uing identity as a primarily English document. The incorporation of more
extensive Latin texts into these Old English Chronicles, however, does seem
to suggest the existence of a truly bilingual audience: even the example of the
Acts ofLanfranc should probably be read this way, since it is difficult to imag-
ine the value of this post-Conquest addition to the Parker text to an audience
not literate in Old English. To put it another way, one would have to wonder
about the usefulness of placing the Acts at the end of the Chronicle if the Old
English Chronicle itself were unreadable to the imagined audience.
Nevertheless, the use of a Latinate chronological framework had always
given the manuscripts of the Chronicle a more or less explicit textual depend-
ence on Latinity: the later manuscripts' seeming agreement in reading the
annal indicators in Latin (as evidenced by the treatment of the year 1000)
allows us to see the production of at least the later annals as having been writ-
ten in Old English purposefully in distinction to Latin. After the well-known
Benedictine reform of the later tenth century, contributors to the Chronicle
such as Archbishop Wulfstan were not writing Chronicle entries in Old Eng-
lish out of a lack of Latinity but rather because the Chronicle's vernacularity
seems to have been both traditional and functional. Yet, at virtually the same
time, jEthelweard's translation of the Chronicle into Latin suggests that the
relatively persistent monolingualism of the Chronicle manuscripts was not
without its exceptions. In the remainder of this chapter, then, I turn to the
important pre-Conquest Latin translations of Asser and ^thelweard in order
to assess both their relationship to the vernacular Chronicle tradition and what
they can tell us about Anglo-Saxon perspectives on a Latin Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle.
5.2 Asser and ^thelweard
Among the similarities we might point to in the translations of Asser and

jEthelweard is the suggestion made in both cases that the texts were prepared
for a foreign audience: Êthelweard's Chronicle is explicitly directed to his
cousin Matilda in Germany, and Asser is frequently supposed to have been

writing for a Welsh audience (cf Keynes and Lapidge 41; 56f.).21 Yet it is
worth recalling that (from what we can discern about the damaged or
destroyed manuscripts) both histories also found an audience in Anglo-Saxon
England. Likewise, both found post-Conquest historians who were not above
using them as sources: John of Worcester incorporated long passages from
Asser directly into his history, and William of Malmesbury acknowledges that
he consulted /Ethelweard. Without discounting too quickly these authors'
apparent intention to translate the Chronicle for foreign audiences, it is never-
theless important also to consider the continuing appeal of these texts for an
Anglo-Saxon audience.
The relationships between the texts of Asser and ^thelweard and the
Chronicle manuscripts are complex and often confusing: the bulk of Janet
Bately's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Texts and Textual Relationships is devoted
to exploring the textual history of these works (and the Annals of St. Neots).
Rather than replicate or duplicate Bately's careful and detailed work, I exam-
ine here the changes of form, structure, and effect that the translations of
Asser and /Ethelweard brought to the Chronicle. Not surprisingly, then, I end
up looking at the chronology and scope of both translations, at their use of
genealogical material, and (in the case of yEthelweard) at the place of poetry
in the text. That features such as genealogy and verse (features so central to
the cultural functioning of the Chronicle) make their way into the Latin trans-
lations indicates both how central these genres are to the Chronicle and how
traditional these translations are.
Taking things in chronological order, we should begin with Asser. In
generic terms, Asser's text is primarily a vita, rather than a chronicle, as its
familiar title indicates, although Asser uses the Chronicle's annalistic form as
a loose structuring principle. Interestingly, as early as his first chapter, Asser
can be seen adapting the chronological annal openings to the Latin context of
his translation: at the beginning of his chapter 1, we read: 'Anno Dominicae
Incarnationis DCCCXLIX natus est Alfred' (Stevenson 1; 'In the year of the
Lord's incarnation 849, Alfred was born'). Breaking from the Chronicle's
habit of placing the year indicator outside the syntax of the annal's first sen-
tence, Asser here returns to the form of chronological location used in Bede's
'Chronological Epitome.' This usage continues throughout Asser's Life.
Rather than translating the Chronicle word for word at the annal beginnings,
Asser's Latin translation effectively reverses the notable change that was
brought about by the translation of the chronicle format into the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle's usage in the first place.
As I have noted, Asser's use of the Chronicle's annals 851-87 seems pri-
marily intended to provide a rough chronological organization to his biogra-

phy of Alfred: these annals are generally translated and then supplemented
with varying amounts of added material, often quite extensive. The earlier
annals, of course, are largely unused by Asser, since the focus of his text is
Alfred's life. But when Asser does use earlier material, it seems significant,
and the clearest example of his use of earlier annals is in his chapter 2, where
he discusses Alfred's mother and her ancestry.
The passage in question relates to Oslac, Osburh's father (and thus Alfred's
grandfather), who held the office of 'pincerna' (usually translated as 'butler')
of jEthelwulf:
Qui Oslac Gothus erat natione; ortus enim erat de Gothis et lutis, de semine sci-
licet Stuf et Wihtgar, duorum fratrem et etiam comitum, qui, accepta potestate
Uuectae insulae ab avunculo suo Cerdic rege et Cynric filio suo, consobrino
eorum, paucos Britones eiusdem insulae accolas, quos in ea invenire potuerunt, in
loco, qui dicitur Guuihtgaraburhg, occiderunt. (Stevenson 4)22
The reliability of this genealogical information is difficult to assess; Steven-

son devotes a good deal of space in his notes to the apparent (and problematic)
identity of the Jutes and Goths that Asser here asserts, but it seems most likely
that Asser identifies Stuf and Wihtgar as Jutes on the basis of the familiar pas-
sage in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica (i, 15) where Bede claims 'De lutarum
origine sunt Cantuari et Uictuari' ('Of Jutish origin are the people of Kent and
the people of [the Isle of] Wight').23 Discussing this passage, Barbara Yorke
suggests that 'Asser makes it clear that in ninth-century Wessex Stuf and
Wihtgar were believed to be Jutish' and that '[ajlthough it would not have
been impossible for Cerdic to have Jutish nephews, it is not a claim which car-
ries much conviction' ('Jutes' 88). But nowhere in the Common Stock is such
a claim made, and there may be no compelling reason to try to reconcile the
accounts of the Chronicle and of Asser. Indeed, the familial relationship of
Stuf and Wihtgar to Cerdic and Cynric might just as well mark them as Sax-
ons. In this context, the evidence of annal 514 is certainly worth considering:
Her c[u]omon Westseaxe in Bretene mid .Hi. scipum in pa stow pe is gecueden

Cerdicesoran \7/ Stuf 7 Wihtgar, [7] fuhtun wip Brettas 7 hie gefliemdon. (Bately,
MSA 20)24
The erasures and insertions here notwithstanding, the 514 annal does seem to
imply that Stuf and Wihtgar are West Saxons, not Jutes at all.25 Given the
probability that the compilation of the Common Stock took place under
Alfred's auspices, it seems unlikely that Asser has access to material or tradi-
tions unavailable to the chronicler, so the most likely conclusion is that Asser
in his chapter 2 assigns to Oslac (and Osburh) an aristocratic Jutish origin
(perhaps based indeed on a family connection to the Isle of Wight) for which
the evidence is troublingly thin at best. Yorke concludes that 'the story of Cer-
dic and Cynric and Stuf and Wihtgar could be seen as growing out of a desire
on the part of the West Saxons to justify Caedwalla's violent annexation of the
Jutes. For the Chronicle's account stresses that the West Saxons had a prior
claim to the Isle of Wight and that the founders of the royal house of Wight
were kinsmen of the West Saxon rulers' ('Jutes' 95). The case is even stronger
if we follow the Chronicle in seeing Stuf and Wihtgar as (West) Saxons them-
selves. Asser, it seems, accepts the Chronicle's version of history but supple-
ments it with information from Bede, and the result seems to be a set of
confusing and multiple assertions about Stuf and Wihtgar's tribal identity.
Although Asser's version makes sense enough taken on its own terms, it
seems to introduce historical complications that the Chronicle itself managed
to avoid.26 Perhaps because of the mode of his writing (a vita, rather than the
Chronicle) Asser seems to downplay or ignore the political context of the Stuf
and Wihtgar material, making them into Jutes in order, perhaps, to give Alfred
aristocratic ancestors on both sides of his family.
Other points of interest can be seen in the passage where Asser presents
Alfred's genealogy, in a passage roughly corresponding to the genealogy of
îthelwulf from the Chronicle's annal 855. Significantly, in Asser, the geneal-
ogy is explicitly linked to Alfred, not to his father. Such a circumstance appar-
ently confirms my conclusion in chapter 1 that the genealogies function in the
Chronicle as Alfredian propaganda: Asser dispenses with the Chronicle's
polite linkage of this genealogy to Êthelwulf and applies it directly to this
particular son. But other features of this genealogy demand our attention, such
as the Cerdic-to-Woden material, which appears as follows in Stevenson's edi-
tion:
... Cerdic; qui fuit Elesa; (qui fuit Esla;} qui fuit Geuuis, a quo Britones totam
illam gentem Geguuis nominant; (qui fuit Wig; qui fuit Freawine; qui fuit Freo-
thegar;) qui fuit Brond; qui fuit Beldeag; qui fuit Uuoden;... (Stevenson 2)27
As noted in chapter 1, Asser's identification of an eponymous West Saxon

ancestor has important ramifications for understanding the West Saxon gene-
alogy. But, just as importantly, the 'short version' of this passage present in
Asser fails to feature the alliterative regularity seen in the corresponding
passage of the Common Stock genealogy.28 It may be significant that, as I
concluded above, the alliterative passage functioned to highlight the West

Saxon genealogy in contrast to the Woden extensions of the other kingdoms;
in Asser's Latin text, not only would the alliteration be non-functional but the
comparison would fail because the other genealogies are not present. The
chronicler's motives in composing the fuller Cerdic-to-Woden passage simply
do not apply to Asser, and (perhaps as a result) we see only the short version
of the genealogy.
One other passage from Asser's genealogy of Alfred is worth attending to.
When Asser reaches Geata, we read:
... qui fuit Geata, quem Getam iamdudem pagani pro deo venerabantur. Cuius
Sedulis poeta mentionem facit in Paschali metrico carmine, ita dicens:
cum sua gentiles studeant figmenta poetae
grandisonis pompare modis, tragioque boatu
ridiculove Getae seu qualibet arte canendi...
[seven more lines of Sedulius's Latin verse follow, then,]
Qui Geata fuit Taetuua;... (Stevenson 3; my ellipses)29
Here Asser draws a link between the Geata of the genealogy and the Geta
mentioned in Sedulius's poem, whom (as Stevenson points out) Aldhelm
knew to be different from the god Geat, though Asser apparently did not (Ste-
venson 163). Instead of a Germanic god, Sedulius's Geta is a character from
the dramas of Terence; but even if Asser was unaware of the real referent of
Sedulius's Geta, the digression here is significant: by shifting from the world
of Germanic learning implied by the genealogy to the world of Latin learning
implied by the use of Sedulius, Asser constructs a different sort of bridge
between the two than we saw in the use of Latin in the 855 genealogy. Perhaps
because the linguistic shift was unavailable to Asser, who was writing in
Latin, he here indicates (and smooths over) the cultural boundary through this
poetic citation. in
In the end, Asser's use of forms and material from the Chronicle is of par-
ticular interest precisely because he is writing not as a chronicler but rather as
a royal biographer. The information he gives about the tribal identity of Stuf
and Wihtgar, rather than indicating an authentic ninth-century historical tradi-
tion, seems designed to valorize Alfred's maternal descent. The Chronicle's
version of the invasion, in which Stuf and Wihtgar are implicitly presented as
West Saxons, clearly seems to function (as Yorke suggests) within a broader
political realm, and the concerns of that realm do not seem to affect Asser very
powerfully; Asser has an even narrower West Saxon/Alfredian focus. His
treatment of Alfred's paternal genealogy can be understood in similar terms,

as it fails to feature the long version of the Cerdic-to-Woden material, which,
as I have argued, serves a political function specific to the Chronicle and to its
appearance in Old English. If, as I suggested at the end of chapter 1, the
Chronicle was 'Alfred's history,' Asser employs it only insofar as it can be
reshaped as Alfredian biography. But where Alfred is still a historical charac-
ter in the historical narrative presented by the Chronicle, Asser inverts the
order, making history an element of Alfred's life.
In many ways, Êthelweard's treatment of the Chronicle appears to share a

number of concerns with Asser's treatment, though how those concerns are
handled is frequently different. Where Asser limits his translation of the
Chronicle to the annals from 851 to 887, yEthelweard supplements the Chron-
icle's material with brief comments on world history (possibly derived from
Isidore's Etymologiae; see Campbell's edition, xvii) and material from Bede's
Historia ecclesiastica. Where Asser reverted to the system of chronological
location found in Bede's 'Chronological Epitome,' Êthelweard, in general,
dates the events of each year according to how much time had elapsed since
the last reported events (e.g., 'After the lapse often years ... Then after twelve
months ... After a period of four years ...' Campbell 21; ellipses mine). Both
authors' purposes no longer explicitly involve a history of the island of Britain
such as is found in the Chronicle: Asser limits his scope to those years in
which Alfred was alive; îthelweard extends the scope to world history in
general, with a focus on England.31 In other ways, as well, vEthelweard's
translation is quite different from Asser's. In part, the difference stems from
the fact that jEthelweard's version of the Chronicle went well beyond the
Common Stock, including material at least as late as the 975 poem found in
manuscripts ABC. Related concerns in other chapters of this study make it
especially worthwhile here to examine ^thelweard's treatment of the Chroni-
cle's genealogies and his translation of the 973 and 975 poems.
Since /Êthelweard's translations include the whole of the Common Stock,
we would expect to see him include all of the Common Stock genealogies, but
in fact he does not do so. Somewhat strangely, Êthelweard includes genealog-
ical material only in the passages of his history corresponding to the annals
547, 560, 597, 674, 688, 755, and 855.32 Further, except for the genealogies in
755 and 855, yEthelweard gives the rest of the included genealogies only in
abbreviated form. Consider, for example, the genealogy of Êlle (from the 560
annal):
JElle quippe Iffing ad Northanhymbre seriem mittitur, quorum genus usque ad

generalissimum ascendit, id est Vuothen. (Campbell 13)33
This genealogy is the only one in Êthelweard to employ the native -ing patro-
nymic; the elimination of intermediary stages of the genealogies, as here, is
typical of £khelweard's practice.
jEthelweard makes other changes to the genealogies as well. Where Asser
(like the Common Stock) seemed concerned to link the Germanic portions of
the genealogy of vEthelwulf (or Alfred) to the world of classical and biblical
learning, jEthelweard's genealogy of Êthelwulf extends (famously) only to
Scef.34 With some small but interesting variations (the omission of Cuba, the
replacement of Baeldaeg with Balder),35 Êthelweard presents /Ethelwulf's
genealogy in much the same form as does the Common Stock through his
eighteenth ancestor, Scyld. At this point, the Common Stock genealogies
include a number of names beginning with Heremod and (in BC) ending in
Sceaf; these names are not included in Êthelweard's text. Instead, in a pas-
sage famous for its potential parallels to Beowulf, jEthelweard immediately
identifies Scef as the father of Scyld and recounts his arrival on the island of
Skaney 'cum uno dromone ... armis circundatis' (Campbell 33, my ellipses;
'With one light ship ... with arms all round him' - Campbell's translation).
It is important to remind ourselves that, in jEthelweard's translation, the
genealogy of ^thelwulf ends at this point. I suggested in chapter 1 that jEthel-
weard may be working from a copy of the Chronicle in which the genealogy
extended no further. But crucially, unlike the Common Stock (but like Asser),
yEthelweard does not claim that Scef was born in Noah's ark. Sisam suggests
that jEthelweard's 'scholarly friends like Êlfric would not encourage belief in
the fabulous birth in the Ark of an ancestor of Sceaf ('Royal Genealogies'
178). But it seems significant that where the Common Stock includes a maca-
ronic sentence to accomplish its shift between Germanic and biblical genea-
logical traditions, jEthelweard famously summarizes a story so apparently
Germanic that our drawing a comparison to Beowulf is almost irresistible.
Indeed, if the differences between vEthelweard's genealogy of ^thelwulf
and that preserved in the Common Stock indicate that .flithelweard's version
stems from a preliminary version by the chronicler (as I argued in chapter 1),
then vEthelweard's story of Scef becomes his genealogy's most outstanding
feature. The history of Êthelweard's Chronicle, however, gives us little to go
on. The Scandinavian or Danish story of Scef that Êthelweard cites seems to
parallel vEthelweard's use of 'Balder' (for 'Baeldaeg') in giving this version of
the genealogy a specifically North Germanic flavour, and we might recall the
evidence recounted above in chapter 3 suggesting that Êthelweard's exemplar
had had access to Northern (English) material very early in its history, when
Danish influence in the North was still especially strong. Whether Êthelweard
himself is responsible for these features or whether they are inherited from his
exemplar may be impossible to determine; in either case, the incorporation of

North Germanic elements into the genealogy seems likely to have been politi-
cally motivated in an effort to allude to a common ancestry between the
Anglo-Saxons and the Danes of England. We should recall that such a politi-
cal linkage also seems to lie behind the 942 Chronicle poem, The Capture of
the Five Boroughs.
The possibility that the genealogy of Êthelwulf may serve some of the
same political ends as some of the tenth-century Chronicle poems leads us to a
consideration of the poems in ^thelweard's Chronicle. Interestingly, yEthel-
weard's translation of the Chronicle appears to reflect a situation regarding
poetry unparalleled in surviving Chronicle manuscripts: there is no indication
at all under annals 937 and 942 that jEthelweard either translates poems or
simplifies the poems we find in manuscripts ABCD into prose, although
^thelweard's account of the battle at Brunanburh is fuller than we see in man-
uscript E of the Chronicle. On the other hand, the 973 and 975 poetic passages
have clearly inspired the poetic passages that conclude ^thelweard's Chroni-
cle. As Campbell notes, these poems are 'not translations,' although 'they
derive leading thoughts from the OEC poems on the same subjects' (xxxi).
Campbell further notes that the 'leading thoughts' of the Chronicle poems are
distributed unevenly between ^thelweard's poems: Êthelweard's first poem
seems to contain only some of the material from the 973 poem, The Corona-
tion of Edgar, while /Ethelweard's second poem includes material from the
end of the Coronation as well as material from the beginning of The Death of
Edgar (from 975). The prose passage between the two Latin poems seems
to be inspired by the convoluted poetic indication of date in the Coronation
(11 10b-16b).
Considering the Chronicle poems' concern (described above in chapter 4)
with recounting the familial relations of the ruling English kings, it is impor-
tant to note that among the 'leading thoughts' from these poems that ^thel-
weard sees fit to translate are 'Eadmundes eafora' (Coronation, \. 17, rendered
as 'proles Eadmundi') and 'Eadgar, Engla cyning' (Death of Edgar 2a, ren-
dered as 'Anglorum insignis rex Eadgarus'). Further, jEthelweard adds a final
set of titles to Edgar that are not paralleled in the Old English poems: 'Monar-
chus Brittanum / Nobilis, ex stirpe frondens Saxonum / Eadgarus anax'
('Noble king of Britain, arising from the race of the Saxons, Edgar the
king'). 36 The fact that Êthelweard here contributes to the continuing themes
of the Chronicle's poems, using an apparent claim to shared 'Saxon' history
that we might compare to Brunanburh's invocation of the adventus Saxonum,
indicates how accurately he seems to understand the place and function of
poetry in the Chronicle. The fact that he ends his translation of The Death of
Edgar at line 10, before the announcement of Edgar's successor, however,

seems to indicate that vEthelweard is also not above manipulating the content
of his translation for his own ends: here, to finish his work on the high note of
his praise of the exemplary Edgar.37
The contents of the final portions of /Ethelweard's Chronicle, however,
demand additional comment, especially since there is an apparent mismatch
between the chapter headings given at the beginning of Book iv and the chap-
ters actually present in the Cotton manuscript.38 Yet a close look at chapters 7
to 9 of /Cthelweard's Book iv reveals a remarkable circumstance: the only
chronological comment made for the reigns of Eadred, Eadwig, and Edgar is
that Eadwig 'Tenuit namque quadriennio per regnum' (55; 'He held the king-
dom continuously for four years'). In other words, at some point in the late
940s, it seems as if yEthelweard effectively abandoned his previous methods
of chronological location. Rather than chronologically oriented commentary,
jÊthelweard's chapters 7 to 9 appear primarily as a king-by-king account, and
all of the chapter headings from Book iv suggest that this was, in fact, jEthel-
weard's conception of the organization of his fourth book. But through his
chapter 6, at least, vEthelweard maintained his previous system of chronology.
The chapter headings listed at the beginning of Book iv also promise material
for the reigns of Edward and vEthelred; these chapters' non-appearance in BL
Cotton Otho A x may be mysterious, but it must be seen as a flaw in ^thel-
weard, rather than a problem in his Chronicle manuscript, which probably also
lacked significant material for the reigns of Eadred and Eadwig.
What jEthelweard's abandonment of chronological ordering suggests, of
course, is that Êthelweard's exemplar of the Chronicle may not have
extended meaningfully beyond the 940s, with the notable exception of the 973
and 975 poems. This observation is of crucial importance, since it suggests
that jEthelweard's exemplar was far less complete for the tenth century than
any of the surviving manuscripts that extend so far. Further, the fact that
vEthelweard nevertheless had access to the 973 and 975 poems suggests a con-
tinuing habit of publishing more or less official continuations to the Chroni-
cle: these two poems, we can see, served to augment the otherwise unrelated
Chronicle manuscripts A, BC, and ^thelweard's exemplar. The appearance of
these poems in three branches of the Chronicle that are otherwise not closely
related during this period testifies to an apparent effort to include this material
in a broad range of Chronicle manuscripts.39
The record of /Ethelweard's Chronicle for the genres of poetry, prose, and
genealogy suggests that his understanding of the interrelations of these genres
in the political functioning of the Chronicle was complex and subtle. Though
writing for an ostensibly German audience, Êthelweard continues (and even
focuses) the tradition of Chronicle verse explored in chapter 3, highlighting in

particular the issue of Edgar's descent. His abbreviation of many genealogies
focuses attention on what is important about them: Êthelweard frequently
limits his genealogical comments to remarks that various rulers were
descended from Woden, and vEthelweard's understanding that the issue lying
behind the genealogies was political legitimation and descent could hardly be
clearer. The citation of the extensive genealogy of jEthelwulf functions to flat-
ter and inform his specific audience and also to set the stage for the genealog-
ical comments included in the poems. The continued Anglo-Saxon audience
that yEthelweard's Chronicle apparently found, of course, indicates that,
despite the difficulties of /Ethelweard's Latinity, at least some of his contem-
poraries saw his work as a valuable contribution to the Chronicle tradition.
Michael Lapidge's important essay on the 'hermeneutic' style of Latin com-

position in tenth-century England identifies ^thelweard's prose style as char-
acteristic of a whole school of Latin composition. In its use of archaisms and
grecisms (usually derived from glossaries) and neologisms, the hermeneutic
style seems, in /Ethelweard's hands especially, to mark a certain kind of edu-
cational pretension. So far had Latin learning in England come: where the
Common Stock of the Chronicle seems to imply that even a rudimentary
understanding of Latin may have been beyond the grasp of the Chronicle's ini-
tial audience, Êthelweard can attempt to show off his mastery of a most
ostentatious variety of Latin only a century or so later.
What is remarkable, in some ways, is the fact that, despite the very real
resurgence of Latin learning and Latin literature, the translations of Asser and
/Ethelweard failed to make a significant impact on pre-Conquest literary cul-
ture in England. Both texts (as I noted above) were apparently intended for
foreign audiences, but both survived into modern times only in manuscripts
that had apparently remained in England. Yet neither Asser's nor ^thel-
weard's text stood as the basis for any continuation of the Chronicle, even
while Old English versions of the Chronicle were being continuously updated
during the period following the Benedictine reform and even later. The fact
that John of Worcester used Asser and William of Malmesbury used Êthel-
weard indicates that these twelfth-century Latin historians had a use for Latin
translations of the Chronicle; until that time, however, the Old English ver-
sions of the Chronicle seem to have been predominant.
Despite the understanding of the Chronicle's use of genealogy and poetry
exhibited by /Ethelweard, then, the Chronicle's existence as a primarily Old
English document seems to have endured throughout the Anglo-Saxon period:
the precarious survival of Asser's and j£thelweard's books in single manu-
scripts cannot compare to the survival of no fewer than seven versions of the
vernacular Chronicle. Even more remarkably, both Latin authors seem to have
recognized the essentially vernacular nature of the Chronicle as a chronicle:
Asser uses the Chronicle only as a resource for his Life of Alfred, and Êthel-
weard contextualizes Anglo-Saxon history by incorporating material on world
history into his beginning books. If we see the composition of the Chronicle as
a nationalistically motivated component of Alfred's political and educational
program, we could hardly have a clearer indicator of the Chronicle's success:
within a century the Chronicle had established itself as the primary Anglo-
Saxon historical record, and its pervasive vernacularity continued to assert a
powerful Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Yet the Latinate chronological frame-
work continuously employed in the Chronicle should stand as a reminder of
how solidly the Anglo-Saxon vernacular literary tradition was built upon a
Latin foundation. The Chronicle's continued vernacular record, especially
considered alongside the translations of Asser and îthelweard, represents the
expression of a cultural identity none the less marked out as separate from
Latin-based culture. In these terms, the relationships between Latin and Old
English as seen in the Chronicle are indeed complex and revealing. But the
sense of national and linguistic identity fostered by the Chronicle was, of
course, seriously challenged by the Norman Conquest of 1066; my final chap-
ter will examine how the Chronicle manuscripts end and how those endings
exemplify different responses to the historiographic challenge posed by the
reality of the Conquest.
6
Conclusions
When I began this project, I planned to write a book on the Chronicle as a

record of Anglo-Saxon literate practice. The Chronicle's record of Old
English prose, poetry, genealogy, and even Latin across a span of two and a
half centuries seemed to make it a perfect testing ground for discussing the
influence of orality and the influence of Latinity on the remarkable vernacular
literary culture of the later centuries of the Anglo-Saxon period. Yet, as even
this brief summary makes clear, the investigation of literate practice inevitably
led to an investigation of the various genres recorded in the Chronicle; like-
wise the interrelationships among these genres within the Chronicle led me to
investigate their historiographic purposes and effects.
Somewhat to my own surprise, then, the book I eventually produced has
had a more or less constant three-pronged approach. My questions about
Anglo-Saxon literate practice have urged me to incorporate methods and
perspectives from the 'back-to-the-manuscripts' movement that has been so
valuable in recent Old English studies: my examination of pointing, layout
practices, and copying strategies have helped shape most, if not all, of my
chapters. Questions about genre and generic identity have urged me to investi-
gate two very different kinds of text on the margins of the Old English verse
tradition: alliterating genealogies and the Chronicle's late verse. Both sorts of
investigation have shaped my conclusions about the Chronicle as a living his-
torical document.
In keeping with my multi-pronged approach, this final chapter offers a dual
conclusion. First, I look at the endings of the Chronicle, exploring what the
latest chroniclers' activities can tell us about the historiographic responses to
what was probably the Chronicle's greatest challenge: the political reality of
the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the subsequent decades in which Norman
rule was consolidated and institutionalized. Second, I offer a 'reading' of the
Chronicle as a whole, attempting to gather together the various strands that

make up my argument. This section both reviews the textual and historio-
graphic strategies of the Chronicle and examines what conclusions can be
drawn from my study regarding Anglo-Saxon literate practice. The effort to
consider all these things in isolation is, as my argument throughout has
attempted to show, troublingly reductive; in this final chapter I try to bring
back together the various parts of the Chronicle considered so far.
6.1 The Ends of the Chronicle and the End of Anglo-Saxon History
If the degree to which even the Common Stock of the Chronicle employs
Latin and Old English is too rarely remarked upon (as I suggested at the
beginning of the previous chapter), the fact that all of the Chronicle manu-
scripts (except G) received their latest additions in the twelfth century is even
less commonly observed. But as long as we accept that the activities of the F
scribe are best dated after 1100, then there can be little doubt that almost all of
the surviving manuscripts of the Chronicle continued to be read, consulted,
and supplemented well into what is conventionally considered to be the
Norman period. To understand the life of the Chronicle after the Norman
Conquest, we must examine the ways in which the surviving manuscripts of
the Chronicle end; their various endings witness both the end of Anglo-Saxon
historiography and the end of Anglo-Saxon history.
The surviving manuscripts with twelfth-century additions might well be
subdivided into three major groups: those located at Christ Church, Canter-
bury, after the Conquest (A, B, and F) constitute one group; the C and D man-
uscripts (which end before 1080, but have brief twelfth-century additions)
stand as a second group; and the E and H manuscripts, extending well into the
twelfth century, form a third group. Significantly, these three groups exem-
plify three differing historiographic reponses to the Conquest and the changes
it brought. The terminations of the Chronicle manuscripts thus allow us a final
glimpse at some contemporary reponses to the Chronicle and its purposes. At
the same time, the endings of the Chronicle also help us understand the cul-
tural work that the latest chroniclers attempted to put it to.
The 'Canterbury Group'
David Dumville's complex and detailed essay 'Some Aspects of Annalistic

Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries' provides a
remarkable examination of the Christ Church, Canterbury, contributions to
manuscripts A and B of the Chronicle, as well as the composition of manu-
Conclusions 139
script F (also at Christ Church) and the probable Canterbury component of E.

But where Dumville is largely concerned with the textual history of the
Chronicle, my focus here is somewhat different, and although Dumville's
commentary on these manuscripts remains invaluable, I hope to supplement it
here by considering the cultural significance of the Canterbury additions to
these manuscripts. In their general habit of supplementing vernacular annals
with Latin material, the Chronicle manuscripts that end at Canterbury seem to
suggest that by the early twelfth century the vernacular literary culture that
had fostered the continuation of the Chronicle had been profoundly affected
(but not entirely supplanted) by the Latin literary culture supported by the
conquering Normans.
It is convenient to begin with manuscript B. In his edition of the B manu-
script, Simon Taylor reconstructs the order of the medieval contents of manu-
script B as follows: T propose that the original order was, after the main text,
the two blank folios, the Regnal List, then (added, perhaps, early in the twelfth
century) fo 35, its bad condition possibly partly due to the fact that it was an
outside leaf (MS B xxii). The 'two blank folios,' ruled in the same manner as
the Chronicle text, may suggest that the B scribe expected his text one day to
be supplemented by further annals, which would then have been situated
before the B manuscript's copy of the WSRT. Folio 35, which does not appear
to have been part of the B scribe's book (MS B xx-xxii), contains a note (in
Latin) on Pope Sergius and a list of the popes who sent pallia to Canterbury
and the archbishops who received them. In Taylor's opinion, the same hand
responsible for manuscript B's folio 35 also wrote a very similar list of popes
and archbishops on folio 54v of manuscript A (MS B xxi).
The addition of such similar material to two manuscripts of the Chronicle
deserves our attention. Folio 54 of the A manuscript belongs to what Parkes
has identified as the fourth booklet ('Palaeography' 150-1); the evidence from
manuscript G suggests that (at least at the time when G was copied, around
1000) this fourth booklet was placed between the annals and the Laws,
although currently this booklet follows the Laws (Parkes 170). Such listlike
material, it appears, was deemed to be appropriate at the end of manuscripts of
the Chronicle: perhaps the presence of the WSRT at the end of manuscript B
and the papal and episcopal lists following the Chronicle in manuscript A
influenced the decision to add to both manuscripts the list of popes sending
pallia to the archbishops of Canterbury. '
Annalistic compilations and lists of popes and bishops, of course, are simi-
lar in that both (in principle) can be kept up to date as time goes on. Such
similarities might well account for the collocations of annals and lists seen in
manuscripts A and B. Indeed, it is important to note that on folio 54v of the A
manuscript, the list of popes and archbishops has been updated in precisely
this manner.2 Likewise, the incomplete list of popes on folio 53r of the A man-
uscript was updated in the twelfth century, in a hand identified by Taylor as
that of the scribe of the so-called Acts of Lanfranc (MS B xxi).3 Within the
context of the Parker Chronicle, the Acts of Lanfranc, as I argued in chapter 5,
stands as both a remarkable Latin continuation of the Chronicle (through its
annalistic form) and a work which strongly marks the cultural dislocation
brought about by the Conquest (through the Acts' use of Latin and of 1070 as
the key point of chronological reference). The fact that, in CCCC 173, the
addition of list material to the end of the Chronicle was practically contempo-
rary to the addition of the Acts of Lanfranc may help us understand the addi-
tion of the same list material to the end of the B Chronicle. Like the Acts, the
lists of popes and archbishops of Canterbury in A and B both mark their entry
points as the ends of their respective Chronicles and simultaneously imply a
continuity across the dislocation of the Conquest. Although no attempt seems
to have been made to update either the B Chronicle's annals or the papal/epis-
copal list on folio 35 in early-twelfth-century Canterbury, it is hard to avoid
the conclusion that the B manuscript was given an ending that paralleled the
end of the Chronicle in manuscript A. That the papal/episcopal list on folio
54v of the Parker Chronicle was updated, however, suggests that these Chron-
icle manuscripts were not really ended by the addition of such lists, but rather
that they might indeed continue as living historical documents.
At about the same time that the Acts of Lanfranc was appended to the
Parker Chronicle, another Canterbury scribe (with a similar hand) made a
number of major interventions in the Parker text. This scribe was, of course,
the scribe of the F manuscript as well. Dumville argues that the F scribe's
additions to the early part of A are 'directed towards a single aim, namely
bringing the text of A into line with the so-called "Northern Recension'"
('Some Aspects' 43). Working from this conclusion and the fact that this
attempt at revising A was apparently abandoned, Dumville suggests that, 'In
short, he ran out of steam, and we may rather suspect that a new project
engaged his attention. If so, that would have been the compilation of MS F
itself ('Some Aspects' 43). Although this suggestion has a certain appeal, it is
unlikely that we can ever be sure of the chronology of the F scribe's works;
what we can say for certain is that the F scribe seems to have found the pro-
duction of both strictly vernacular and thoroughly bilingual versions of the
Chronicle to be an appropriate use of his time.
It is, as Dumville notes, unfortunate that the F Chronicle ends imperfectly
in the annal for 1058. Certainly, the care and energy invested in F (exempli-
fied by the numerous additions, corrections, and the act of translation itself)
Conclusions 141
suggest that the F scribe was deeply concerned to produce a relatively com-
plete (if abbreviated) version of the Chronicle. If we accept the possibility that
the production of manuscript F replaced the revision of manuscript A as this
scribe's employment, it is tempting to suggest that the production of this bilin-
gual Chronicle supplanted purely vernacular chronicling activity at Christ
Church, Canterbury, in the early twelfth century. Such a conclusion would fit
well with Dumville's argument that the 1081-1121 portions of VE were not
composed at Canterbury ('Some Aspects' 38) and with his overall conclusion:
'We should do well, I think, to consider the chronicling to be part and parcel
of the various major efforts, which were stirring the community in these years,
to recover the Englishness of their house-traditions and, where appropriate, to
unite them, without subordination, with the demands of more recent fashions
and necessities' ('Some Aspects' 54). The activities of the F scribe, parallel-
ing the various Christ Church, Canterbury, contributions to manuscripts A and
B of the Chronicle, can be read as exemplifying an attitude of post-Conquest
cultural reconciliation in which Norman 'fashions and necessities' are, by
implication, grafted onto Anglo-Saxon originals. The fact that the F manu-
script of the Chronicle maintains the priority of its vernacular material by
placing it before the Latin translation may well represent a continuing sense of
English nationalism, expressed, as it had been in earlier centuries, in the
Chronicle itself.
The Endings of the C and D Chronicles
The ending points of the C and D Chronicles are both quite remarkable,
although in different ways: the C Chronicle famously ends with the account of
Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge, with no comment at all about William
and the death of Harold at Hastings. Furthermore, the 1066C annal (ending
incompletely on folio 162v) has been finished in a twelfth-century hand, giv-
ing the equally famous account of a lone and valiant Norse defender stabbed
from beneath the bridge he held. While the D Chronicle includes an account
of the Conquest, extending in a more or less contemporary hand to 1079, it too
was supplemented in the twelfth century by a brief annal for 1130 that was
apparently misnumbered as 1080. In their endings around the Conquest and in
their (much) later final additions, these two manuscripts of the Chronicle
exemplify a different set of responses to the Conquest than the Canterbury
manuscripts discussed above. And considering the time spans involved in the
final contributions to these manuscripts, it is useful to consider separately the
late-eleventh-century endings of these manuscripts and their twelfth-century
postscripts.
Itis, first of all, important to note that the twelfth-century addition to the C
Chronicle occurs upon the final bifolium of the book, suggesting that the addi-
tion of these two leaves may well have been contemporary with the addition of
the twelfth-century material. It is, therefore, possible that the addition was
intended to replace original eleventh-century material that had become
detached, was lacking, or was otherwise defective.4 Even if this is not the case,
the presentation of annals 1065 and 1066 in this manuscript is also remarkable:
1065C is preceded in the manuscript by a page left half blank (163v).5 The
annals for 1065C (containing the notice of the death of Edward the Confessor)
and 1066C (narrating Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge) are visually sepa-
rated from the preceding Chronicle material in a fashion that might suggest
they were intended to cap off the C Chronicle entirely.6 It is certainly possible
that the scribes responsible for annals 1065C and 1066C intended their manu-
script of the Chronicle to end with the 1066 annal, and they may have intended
it to end without mention of the Conquest. Such a possibility would be a strong
indication of a contemporary (or near-contemporary) perception that the
arrival of William entailed irreversible cultural consequences.7
The D manuscript, on the other hand, extends several years beyond the nar-
rative of the Conquest included in it, though only as far as annal 1079 (again,
excluding the twelfth-century addition). As Dorothy Whitelock has suggested,
much of the later material from the D Chronicle must have been written after
1070 (including the poems in 1057D and 1067D; see Peterborough Chronicle
28); reading these annals in particular (and much of the end of the D Chroni-
cle) as responsive to the Conquest seems crucially important. The 1067D
annal is particularly valuable and rewarding for thinking about the ending of
the D Chronicle; annal 1067D includes not only a poem but also a passage of
alliterating genealogy (tracing Margaret's descent from Edgar) and a passage
of Latin (which is glossed in Old English). Thus, this one annal includes all
the various types of text that make up the Chronicle itself. The genealogy and
the poem in 1067D function to invoke the genealogical and poetic traditions
within the Chronicle, both of which are (I have suggested) centred on justify-
ing the political legitimacy of the West Saxon dynasty in its rule over a more
or less united Anglo-Saxon England. The form of the 1067D genealogy is
especially revealing:
hire faeder waes Eadward aebeling, Eadmundes sunu kynges, Eadmund jEbelred-
ing, -flibelred Eadgaring, Eadgar Eadreding, 7 swa ford on paet cynecynn (Cubbin
83)8
This is the first and only alliterating genealogy to appear in annals beyond the
Conclusions 143
Common Stock, and its appearance here seems designed to recall both those
earlier genealogies and their historiographic effects. Margaret's ancestry is
here traced back to what is implicitly identified as the familiar West Saxon
dynastic line. More specifically, that line is traced through Edward the aethe-
ling (memorialized in the 1057D poem) back to the virtuous Edgar, himself
memorialized in a small handful of Chronicle poems (not all of which, it is
important to recall, appear in manuscript D).9 This genealogy in particular,
then, also invokes the Chronicle's own status as a repository of Anglo-Saxon
history.
The collocation of genealogy, poetry, and Latin in the 1067D annal is
unique within the Chronicle', the juxtaposition of all these types of text here
works by invoking all the major textual strategies that I have discussed in pre-
vious chapters. Such a juxtaposition of these strategies, especially placed in
the annal immediately following the narrative of the Conquest, indicates the
import of the annal. The 1067D chronicler pulls out all of the rhetorical stops
in order to identify Margaret as carrying on the West Saxon dynasty itself. The
textual links to earlier annals embodied in the 1067D annal's recapitulation of
the Chronicle's generic contents serve to insist upon a historical (and historio-
graphic) link as well. That the implied link also extends well beyond the Dan-
ish Conquest of the early eleventh century (and beyond the troubled reign of
yEthelred entirely) also subtly argues that the 'present troubles' of the Norman
rule may well prove as temporary as the Danish rule had. The 1067D annal
makes a valiant attempt to ensure a continuing Anglo-Saxon national identity
linked to the West Saxon dynasty.
The limitations inherent in the view of Anglo-Saxon politics apparently
transmitted in the 1067D annal, however, are clear: as William ruled, he was
able to consolidate his position until, by the time of his death (if not well
before), he could ensure that the succession would then pass through the Nor-
man royal line. Indeed, it may be the likelihood of William's success in this
matter that brought about the end of the D Chronicle in 1079. Perhaps by the
1080s the hope for a return to West Saxon rule - a hope that was still possible
in the 1070s - was no longer realistic, and the D Chronicle's optimism could
no longer be sustained. The D Chronicle seems to have linked its position as a
record of Anglo-Saxon history to the fortunes of Margaret and her descend-
ants; as the West Saxon line faded from public view and political viability, the
D Chronicle almost certainly lost its reason for continuing.
Nevertheless, like the C version of the Chronicle, the D manuscript also
received a final, but brief, addition in the twelfth century. In both manuscripts,
the contents of the additions are, perhaps, far less interesting than the fact that
they were entered into these manuscripts in the first place. Like the Latin
material appended to the A and B manuscripts, the vernacular additions to

manuscripts C and D indicate a twelfth-century interest in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. Although neither the C Chronicle nor the D Chronicle can be
described as a 'living chronicle' in the twelfth century, neither were they
entirely moribund: at the very least, these late additions attest to a continuing
audience for the vernacular Chronicle, an audience of readers literate in Old
English and interested in reading about the history of Anglo-Saxon England.
Living Twelfth-Century Chronicles: E and H
Unlike the other surviving manuscripts of the Chronicle, the E and H manu-
scripts (and, indeed, probably the VE text, wherever it was compiled) can use-
fully be described as living twelfth-century chronicles. Though H consists of
only a single leaf, its partial annals for 1113 and 1114 would appear to be con-
temporary compositions. As Ker writes, 'The difference between the 1113 and
1114 annals in manner of writing and colour of ink and a change of ink in the
course of the 1114 annal at "Her aefter he ferde" (Plummer 245/23) give the
impression that these are contemporary entries written up at short intervals'
(Catalogue 188). Like the twelfth-century additions to C and D, the contents
of the H leaf are of less interest than the simple fact of its existence: the H leaf
provides crucial evidence to suggest that the survival and continuation of a
vernacular Chronicle exemplified by the E manuscript was not an isolated and
exceptional case. But where the H Chronicle's fragmentary nature gives no
indication of how (or even if) its version of the Chronicle negotiated the dislo-
cation occasioned by the Norman Conquest, the E manuscript does.
As discussed above in chapter 4, the inclusion of the rhyming poem on Wil-
liam the Conqueror in the 1086E annal suggests one strategy employed in VE
for the continuation of vernacular chronicling. The treatment of William as a
king of the English (through the textual strategy of including a memorial poem
in the Chronicle at his death) was a strategy that had not been employed even
at the death of Cnut; this strategy, however, implicitly seems to acknowledge
the end of the Wessex dynasty that had built the unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
By including this poem on William, then, the VE text effected a remarkable and
significant transformation in the cultural significance of the Chronicle: where
the genealogies of the Common Stock and the poems of later annals continued
to present the history of England as synonymous with that of the West Saxon
dynasty, the 1086E poem insists that the Chronicle's record is (at least now) a
history of the English kingdom and its people, rather than a family history. If the
Chronicle did indeed help to foster an Anglo-Saxon national identity, few more
powerful testimonials to its efficacy could be imagined.
Conclusions 145
Significantly, however, it is worth recalling that when the VE text was

copied in the process of writing the Peterborough manuscript, it was exten-
sively supplemented by documents and charters exclusively concerned with
Peterborough. In a sense, the Peterborough manuscript thus employed a sec-
ond strategy for the continuing composition of the Chronicle: by explicitly
including local documentary sources (a practice unparalleled in the other
Chronicle manuscripts, despite their sometimes detectable local interests),
the Chronicle was, in effect, here transformed into a local history.10 As an
ostensibly local history, a vernacular text such as the Peterborough Chroni-
cle may have been less susceptible to the Latinizing forces that apparently
led to the late additions to manuscripts A and B and the translation repre-
sented by manuscript F. On the other hand, of course, for all the insistence of
the Peterborough Chronicle's localization, it continues to have a kind of
national interest: the famous material about the reign of Stephen (so fre-
quently anthologized in modern collections of Middle English prose) can
hardly be described as being of only local Peterborough interest. To its end,
even this manuscript of the Chronicle concerns itself with the kingdom in
general, using the vernacular to record and comment on the history of the
Anglo-Saxons in their own language.
If the Canterbury additions to manuscripts A and B (and the production of

manuscript F) represent the Latinizing of the Chronicle in the early twelfth
century and the E and H manuscripts represent an alternative attempt to main-
tain a vernacular Chronicle, the C and D manuscripts remain the only versions
of the Chronicle to treat the Conquest and its consequences as a terminal
point. The importance of this fact should not be understated: the C and D man-
uscripts, in their treatment (or non-treatment) of the Conquest and its conse-
quences each imply a particular narrative. The chroniclers responsible for the
endings of these manuscripts do more than record events year by year in clas-
sic annalistic fashion: they tell a story. But, tellingly, the evidence of C and D
belies the terminal narrative these manuscripts attempt to present, since their
later, twelfth-century additions attest to a continuing readership for these
books. Despite modern historical perspectives, then, which often see the Con-
quest as marking the end of one period and the beginning of another, the
Chronicle itself would seem to suggest that Anglo-Saxon history continued at
least into the twelfth century: the cultural changes brought about by the Con-
quest were, apparently, more gradual than instantaneous.
To the degree that the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers saw their task as the record-
ing of their nation's own history (and the Chronicle poetry's investment in a
written historical tradition confirms this perspective), we should, perhaps, date
the end of the Anglo-Saxon period much later than 1066: 1154, the date of the
last entry into the Peterborough manuscript, might serve as a convenient ter-
minal point for the period. But in the apparent efforts to replace the early
Chronicle's focus on the descendants of jEthelwulf (seen in the Common
Stock genealogies and much of the poetry) with a more national focus (seen in
the acceptance of William and even the report on Stephen's reign), the Peter-
borough Chronicle may indicate the ultimate success of the Chronicle (and the
subjects of its narrative) in forging an Anglo-Saxon national identity.11
But the Chronicle succeeds in these ends precisely by having a story to
tell - by having an implicit narrative structure. The twelfth-century continua-
tions, supplements, and additions to the various Chronicle manuscripts indi-
cate the very power of the Chronicle's continuing narrative: the Canterbury
contributions (with their bilingual focus) function, in Dumville's words, 'to
recover the Englishness of their house traditions and ... to unite them, without
subordination, with the demands of more recent fashions and necessities'
('Some Aspects' 54; my ellipses). The C and D Chronicles, despite their
insistence on an ending point at the Conquest, cannot overcome the power of
the Chronicle's narrative, as it continues to function at Christ Church, at Peter-
borough, and at the anonymous home of manuscript H; the twelfth-century
additions to C and D merely indicate the degree to which their attempts to nar-
rate the end of Anglo-Saxon history were premature.
But the narrative of Anglo-Saxon history that the Chronicle embodies (and,
again, it is crucial to recall that I refer to a sense of the Chronicle that is larger
and more encompassing than any single manuscript) was, clearly, set into
motion by the Common Stock itself. The Alfredian Common Stock deter-
mined the Chronicle's focus on political legitimacy and the succession in both
its use of genealogies and the exceptional 755 annal. The early-tenth-century
responses to the Chronicle themselves anticipated the responses to the Con-
quest: the Mercian Register, for example, attempted a localized Chronicle', the
Northern Recension attempted a national Chronicle. The poems of the tenth
century not only merged these two themes but added a third: the reliability of
historical authority itself, the reliability of the Chronicle. In the eleventh cen-
tury, as I discussed above, the Chronicle poems show us how the Chronicle
(and, of course, how Anglo-Saxons) negotiated the challenges to the Chroni-
cle's overriding narrative, challenges brought first by the Danish Conquest at
the beginning of the century and then by the more enduring Norman Con-
quest. The Chronicle's ultimate ability to negotiate these challenges, we might
say with justice, stemmed from the power of an original Alfredian vision: the
idea of the Chronicle, and the idea of the Anglo-Saxon nation.
Conclusions 147
6.2 Reading the Chronicle and Its Record
As should be clear, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's manuscripts are complexly

interrelated, and they contain complicated (and sometimes contradictory)
material. The process of 'reading' the Chronicle is thus always the process of
reading the textual history of the Chronicle. Contemporary readers must often
have agreed: there seems to have been a contemporary notion that the Chroni-
cle was Alfredian, and later readers would have understood post-Alfredian
annals as having a differing textual history. But also, the acts of conflation and
supplementation seen in the Mercian Register, the Acts of Lanfranc, and all
the changes of scribal hand would likewise have signalled the complex textual
origins of the various parts of the Chronicle to contemporary readers. The
nature of the Chronicle prompted these acts of conflation (as I noted in the
introduction) precisely because the Chronicle has always encouraged its read-
ers to become readers of textual history.
But further, the Chronicle's use of varying genres (Old English prose,
genealogy, verse, Latin) encourages readers to read various portions of the
Chronicle in varying ways. Even the difference between the short and formu-
laic annals of the eighth century and the longer, more stylistically complex
755 annal seems to have functioned meaningfully in the Common Stock. With
regard to these sorts of textual differences, the process of reading the Chroni-
cle has also always demanded a careful attention to form: the textual history of
the Chronicle cannot be understood without an accompanying understanding
of the history of forms (or the history of genres) in Anglo-Saxon England. A
brief summary of the arguments I have made in the preceding chapters can
illustrate the interconnectedness of the issues.
In my consideration of the Common Stock genealogies, for example, I
examined not only the textual history of the surviving ninth-century genealog-
ical records but also the formal characteristics of the genre itself. The latter
examination, in fact, allowed me to conduct the former more accurately. The
identification of the 'traditional' forms allowed in the genealogies (using the
Vespasian collection as a database) made it possible to identify the innovative
'poetry-like' forms used by the 'chronicler.' In turn, the appearance of the
chronicler's signature forms helped to explain features of the genealogies'
textual history both within the Chronicle and elsewhere. The probability that
the West Saxon genealogy of Ine was not originally associated with the
'Anglian Collection' before Alfred's time is an important conclusion, but my
readings of the genealogies' form and history also underlie my interpretation
of their historiographic role in the Chronicle. To the degree that chapter 1
exemplifies a method of integrating formal analysis, textual history, and liter-

ary interpretation, it stands as a useful introduction to my method throughout
this book.
In my examination of the copying strategies employed by the Chronicle
scribes in their treatment of the 755 annal, I looked at a different aspect of the
relationship between textual history and form. The famous 'Cynewulf and
Cyneheard' story from this annal has often been associated with 'orality' (and
thus asserted to have a non-literary form, and a non-literate 'textual' history),
and my investigation turned on the question of a connection between textual
variance and orality. But as I argued, the textual variation seen in the 755
annal can be far more accurately described as stemming from 'scribal innova-
tion' rather than 'variance''; the processes that led to the observed innovation,
I showed, were purely textual in origin. At the same time, in the 'literary
interpretation' portions of chapter 2, I relied on previously undervalued evi-
dence from scribal practice (the use of capital letters or other litterae notabil-
iores) and textual history (the association of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard
narrative with Offa's genealogy; the presentation of the story in the Common
Stock itself) to argue that the 755 annal (like the genealogies) was concerned
to promote a West Saxon, even Alfredian, dynasty, one with a relatively nar-
row pattern of royal succession. Such a reading runs against the grain of tradi-
tional scholarly readings of the story, but the 755 annal and the genealogies
can be seen as working together to give the Common Stock a powerful West
Saxon and Alfredian focus. The extensive record of Alfredian events from the
860s to the end of the Common Stock appears to confirm that narrating the
history of Alfred's reign was a central motive for the Common Stock's com-
position.
In my third chapter, I asked how the Alfredian Chronicle described in my
first two chapters was able to negotiate the historical (and historiographic) dis-
ruption caused by the death of Alfred, who had been the focal point of the
Common Stock. Turning again to textual history, I discussed first the evidence
for seeing that two major branches of chronicling activity focused respectively
on Alfred's descendants Edward and vEthelflaed, giving us a brief Edwardian
chronicle and the Mercian Register. But such a move would have occasioned
additional complications at the deaths of these figures, and, in a different cen-
tre of activity, another solution appears to have presented itself. The so-called
Northern Recension appears to have responded to Alfred's death by attempt-
ing to construct a Chronicle with a more national focus, recentring Hengist
and Horsa in the narrative of the Saxon Invasion, for example, and replacing
the politically charged genealogies with a great deal of information on north-
ern figures and events that had been either unavailable or uninteresting to the
Conclusions 149
West Saxon compiler of the Common Stock. While the added material is cer-
tainly northern in orientation, the resulting Chronicle is far less 'northern' than
the Common Stock was 'West Saxon': the 'Northern Recension' was, instead,
the first step towards a truly 'national' Chronicle.
The two strategies (that of nationalization and that of dynastic interest)
appear to have been remarkably and powerfully combined during the reign of
jEthelstan, and The Battle of Brunanburh combines both perspectives in its
often-quoted ending. Even more important, however, Brunanburh uses the
forms and conventions of heroic poetry to accomplish the historiographic con-
nection, fulfilling the imaginative link forged by the Common Stock compiler
in his use of poetic forms in the genealogies. That the ending of Brunanburh
simultaneously invokes both the heroic adventus Saxonum and the power of
texts for the preservation of the historical record indicates the degree to which
the Chronicle itself had begun to affect the Anglo-Saxons' conception of his-
tory: Brunanburh both invokes the Chronicle's preceding historiographic
strategies and self-referentially invokes the Chronicle's historical authority.
My fourth chapter examined the consequences of this remarkable moment
by considering the role of poetry in the Chronicle. Responding to the continu-
ing critical uncertainty about what passages in the Chronicle are and are not
verse, I began by considering again the scribal response to suggest that Anglo-
Saxon readers almost certainly saw the genre of 'Chronicle verse' as being
much broader than the few poems canonized in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Records would suggest. Such a conclusion, of course, led naturally to a recon-
sideration of poetic form, and section 4.2 argued that a great deal of the 'non-
canonical' Chronicle verse might be better classified as 'postclassical' Old
English verse. The chief features of this postclassical verse seem to be a
decreased reliance on metrical subordination and a lack of poetic resolution.
These two divergences from classical verse, in fact, can be used to explain the
majority of 'non-classical' features of the bulk of the Chronicle verse.
The reassessment of the nature of the Chronicle poems, of course, then
demanded a reconsideration of their role in the Chronicle, and the third por-
tion of chapter 4 considered this question. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the major-
ity of tenth-century poems took up the concerns articulated so clearly in
Brunanburh, focusing on the West Saxon dynasty, national identity, and his-
torical recording. But increasingly, just as the classical verse form was being
replaced by postclassical forms, the later Chronicle verse began to reshape the
concerns of Brunanburh; the 1011 poem, for example, referred to the coming
of Christianity, rather than the coming of the Saxons, as the defining historical
moment; the 1036 poem (somewhat ominously) invoked the coming of the
Danes. In their formal differences, the 1065 poem, The Death of Edward, and
the 1086 poem, William the Conqueror, provide a remarkable window into
post-Conquest attitudes. The earlier poem (almost certainly written after the
Conquest) should probably be seen as a consciously archaizing invocation of
the heroic poetic tradition associated with the West Saxon royal line through-
out the Chronicle, while the 'postclassicaF rhyming verse on William seems
tacitly to acknowledge William as a king of the English. The formal (and per-
haps somewhat clumsy) archaic forms of The Death of Edward provide both a
fitting tribute to the last of Alfred's dynasty and an implicit acknowledgment
that that dynasty's era was past.
By considering the Latinity of the Chronicle, chapter 5 somewhat paradoxi-
cally explored the Chronicle's remarkable vernacularity. Although the Chron-
icle's own form descended from and depended upon the world of Latin
learning, the Chronicle's dependence upon the vernacular is surely its most
intriguing feature. And while the Common Stock's use of Latin argues for an
imagined audience with little or no background in Latin, the existence of the
translations of Asser and ^thelweard offered later (and more learned) Anglo-
Saxons the opportunity for continued Latin chronicling activity. Yet even
Asser's 'history of Alfred' failed to generate further annals, as the Chronicle
itself did; despite Asser's and jEthelweard's clear and impressive understand-
ing of the Chronicle's forms and function, neither translation had the cultural
impact (within the Anglo-Saxon period) that the vernacular Chronicle had.
For all they tell us about the textual history of the Chronicle, and for all
their evidence of the bilingualism of Anglo-Saxon learned culture, Asser
and Aithelweard also implicitly confirm that the Chronicle worked to build
an Anglo-Saxon national identity through its own vernacularity. The appar-
ently contemporary perception that the Chronicle had been begun by Alfred
no doubt contributed to the Anglo-Saxon preference for an Old English
Chronicle.
Finally, the first half of this chapter returns to basic questions of codicology,
form, and textual history in order to discuss the ways in which the various
manuscripts end. The twelfth-century contributions to every manuscript but G
attest to the Chronicle's continued relevance to a post-Conquest audience, but
the various manuscript endings nevertheless reflect the forces that brought an
end to the Chronicle. The Canterbury endings tend to indicate a Latinization
of the Chronicle, as if presaging the use that later Latin historians would put it
to. The C and D manuscripts, on the other hand, appear to attempt to draw
Anglo-Saxon history to an end as a more immediate response to the Conquest.
But in the H and E manuscripts, where vernacular chronicling extends nearly
fifty and ninety years, respectively, beyond the Conquest, we can see the
degree to which the historiographic and textual strategies at the chroniclers'
Conclusions 151
disposal were, indeed, able to survive this most difficult test for a remarkable
period of time.
The Chronicle that the readings offered in these chapters allow us to see,
I believe, is still a series of complexly interacting historical documents. But in
the complementary effects of the Chronicle's textual and historiographic strat-
egies we can glimpse even more complex interactions. Poetic (or versified)
genealogies, classical verse, and postclassical poetry all work to continue (and
to develop) the Chronicle's repeated ideological linking of the West Saxon
dynasty to the heroic past and the Saxon invasion. The link itself seems to
have originated in an urge to assert the political legitimacy of the West Saxon
ruling family, as the Common Stock genealogies and their 'ancestral' genea-
logical form seem to suggest. Yet, in the later Chronicle, the link seems to
operate in the opposite direction: the 1067D poem seems to suggest that Mar-
garet of Scotland's descendants would themselves be legitimate candidates to
rule: from the anxious effort to (re)assert the legitimacy of an established
dynasty, the end of the D Chronicle, at least, seems to argue for the illegiti-
macy of competing rulers.
Likewise, the Chronicle's imaginative linking of the West Saxon ruling
family and the unified Anglo-Saxon nation (articulated so clearly in Brunan-
burh) has its own consequences. For Chronicle manuscripts such as C and D,
this linkage seems to have resulted in their virtual demise as a consequence of
the Norman Conquest. But, like the Northern Recension, a chronicle that took
the nation (rather than a single family) as the focus of its narrative could easily
outlast that family's political lifetime. It hardly seems accidental that the two
Chronicles continuing most productively into the twelfth century (VE, extend-
ing at least to 1121, and E, extending to 1154) are precisely those including
the 1086 poem, William the Conqueror, a poem that used the Chronicle's
poetic tradition of royal panegyric to grant William himself a place in Anglo-
Saxon history.
As all these examples should indicate, the textual strategies used by the
chroniclers (such as working with genres different from prose) are inseparable
from their historiographic strategies. To understand the Chronicle as a whole
demands that we understand not only the interrelationships among the manu-
scripts but the significance of the textual choices, variations, innovations, and
alterations as well. The process is complex but rewarding: the process of read-
ing the Chronicle.
The preceding paragraphs have focused on the benefits of my reading of the

Chronicle for understanding its historical record; but a second focus of my
investigation has been to read the Chronicle as a record of Anglo-Saxon liter-
ate practice. In particular, my examination of the Chronicle manuscripts has

helped to clarify a number of issues related to Anglo-Saxon literacy. The treat-
ment of genealogy, prose, poetry, and Latin in the Chronicle manuscripts
gives us a remarkable picture of these genres and languages across the centu-
ries spanned by these manuscripts. Understanding these developments in
Anglo-Saxon literacy and literate practice is of crucial importance for under-
standing the Chronicle's place in Anglo-Saxon culture.
First and perhaps most important, my study of the Chronicle manuscripts
has found no compelling evidence of 'orality' as a feature contributing to the
form of the Chronicle texts as they are preserved. My examination of alliterat-
ing genealogies within and outside the Chronicle suggests that Anglo-Saxon
writers employed a highly sophisticated, visually meaningful format for
columnar genealogies, even in the very earliest surviving genealogical
records. The development of 'metrical' pointing in the Chronicle genealogies
(which might otherwise have seemed parallel to O'Brien O'Keeffe's descrip-
tion of the development of metrical pointing in verse) seems likely to have
stemmed primarily from an effort to recapture information encoded in the
spacing and layout of the columnar genealogies rather than from any possibil-
ity that the genealogies descend from an originally oral form. The fact that a
manuscript such as B features (towards the end of the Common Stock) very
regular pointing of the genealogies but less regular pointing of verse should
suggest that if pointing practices in the two genres influenced one another at
all, the influence may well have passed from the genealogies to the verse
rather than the other way around.
Further, my examination of textual variation in the prose of the 755 annal
provides a crucially important point of comparison for the variation O'Brien
O'Keeffe observes in manuscripts of Old English poetry. Rather than provid-
ing evidence of a 'residual orality' operating through an oral-formulaic pro-
cess, however, the degree of textual variation and innovation seen in the 755
annal must stem from some other source. My analysis, in fact, suggests that
the variation seen in the 755 annal stems simply from a facet of Anglo-Saxon
literacy that differs from our own expectations: the Anglo-Saxon scribes of
the Chronicle apparently felt no implicit or explicit pressure to copy these
texts with word-for-word accuracy. The smaller degree of variation seen in the
871 annal (variation of approximately the same order as seen in Brunanburh)
can be explained by 871's greater reliance upon prose formulas. For both
poetry and prose, the density of formulas contributes to the stability of the text
because the 'frozenness' of formulaic expressions is less amenable to scribal
alteration. For poetry in particular, the added constraint of metre (added to the
prosaic requirements of copying that preserves the meaning of the work and
Conclusions 153
uses effective syntax) means that variation in poetry is actually less extensive
than in prose. And since the variation in prose cannot be accounted for by
processes linked to oral-formulaic formula substitution, it is hard to justify
explaining the lower degree of variation in verse through any mechanism of
orality.
My examination of the manuscript record of the Chronicle poems (includ-
ing those frequently disparaged as being of 'irregular meter') suggests that
many of the Chronicle poems (especially those with well-developed rhyme
patterns) were recognized as verse by their scribes. Indeed, the Chronicle's
evidence for a late-Anglo-Saxon tradition of rhyming verse (seen most clearly
in the poems in 1036CD, 1067D, 1075E/76D, 1086E, and 1104E) challenges
the critical viewpoint that sees the presence of alliteration as the defining char-
acteristic of all Old English verse. A greater understanding of the late tradition
of rhyming verse is necessary to understand both how poetry functions in the
Chronicle and how traditional metrical and alliterative forms of verse devel-
oped in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The very development of a tradition
of rhyming verse might well indicate that traditional alliterative verse was no
longer a powerful cultural presence in a truly oral-formulaic sense: late alliter-
ative verse may well be metrically conservative and formulaic, but that is not
to say that it is 'oral-formulaic.' Indeed, the side-by-side existence of the allit-
erative (and apparently archaizing) 1065 poem and the rhyming 1067 poem
may well suggest that both poems are essentially 'literate' (rather than oral) in
their particular origins.
The lack of evidence for orality as a productive force in the Chronicle man-
uscripts, of course, is in some ways confirmed by the pervasive (if subtle)
bilinguality of the Chronicle. The nearly ubiquitous 'an-' year indicators that
begin so many annals make explicit the Chronicle's structural reliance upon
Latin learning and historical chronology. True, the Chronicle's overwhelming
preference for the vernacular simultaneously distances the bulk of its contents
from the world of Latin scholarship (as does the complexly abbreviated Latin
passage in 855A), but the trace of that background remains, none the less. The
Latinization of the Chronicle in Asser and Êthelweard anticipated the use the
Chronicle would be put to by later historians such as Henry of Huntingdon,
John of Worcester, and others; the fact that Latin translations of the Chronicle
found Anglo-Saxon audiences should remind us not to take the Chronicle's
general preference for the vernacular as an indication of the continuing scar-
city of Latin-literate readers: during the tenth and eleventh centuries, it would
seem, the literary culture of Anglo-Saxon England was almost certainly
remarkably bilingual (even if the same cannot always be said about the indi-
viduals involved). Instead, the key lesson to be taken from Asser and ^thel-
weard is that the existence of Latin versions of the Chronicle did not lead to
continuations of these Latin Chronicles. The norm for Chronicle manuscripts
seems to have been initial copying followed by subsequent composition of
annals (only B and G fail to include subsequent additions), yet Asser and
jEthelweard never served as fruitful stocks for further chronicling.
Finally, although its forms and practices may sometimes seem strange to us,
the Chronicle indicates that a remarkable and sophisticated literate culture
thrived during the final three centuries of the Anglo-Saxon period. From the
composition of the Common Stock to the writing of the final passages of the
Peterborough manuscript, the Chronicle itself existed as both a record of
Anglo-Saxon history and a cultural force in its own right in Anglo-Saxon Eng-
land. In the Chronicle's own self-referential invocations of history books and
historical comparisons, in the chroniclers' clever and effective use and even
manipulation of the Chronicle's traditions of genealogy and poetry, and in the
Chronicle's continuing twelfth-century audiences, we can read the Chronicle
for its record not only of what happened but also of how the Anglo-Saxons
themselves wanted to tell their story.
APPENDIX
The Texts of Annal 755
In this appendix, I attempt to present more or less diplomatic transcriptions of

the surviving witnesses to the full text of the Common Stock's 755 annal.
Manuscript F, having only an abbreviated version of the annal, is not repre-
sented here. The texts are arranged in parallel in order to facilitate comparison
among the various manuscript versions.1 So far as has been practicable, I have
preserved manuscript punctuation and capitalization, although word division
has generally been normalized; manuscript spacing has been freely altered to
allow comparison of parallel passages. Manuscript abbreviations are indicated
(with the symbol '-') rather than expanded; single quotation marks surround
passages entered interlinearly or otherwise supplementarily to the text as orig-
inally written. Line breaks and page breaks in the original manuscripts are
indicated by / and // respectively, and are presented for the sake of complete-
ness, though manuscript lineation is sacrificed for the purposes of comparison
here.2 Rubricated letters are marked by underlining; in this annal they are
restricted to the annal's first word, 'Her.' Litterae notabiliores (as discussed in
chapter 2) are represented here as 'capital' letters, except for the enlarged cte in
manuscript B, which are printed here as enlarged in order to distinguish them
from the letter D.
Horizontal lines below the grouped transcriptions mark and identify sub-
stantive textual variations. Simple orthographic variants are ignored rather
than marked; thus the difference between A's 'hamtunscire' and N's 'hamtun-
scyre' and similar variations are not considered innovations (755AN: 2).
Other spelling variants are not identified as innovations, even where they
seem to reflect manuscript affiliations (for example, places where B and C
stand together with the monosyllable 'cing' where the others have the disyl-
labic 'cyning'). Differences in inflectional endings are considered innovative
only if a change in consonant appears; final -a and -e are treated here as inter-
changeable, as are all endings of the form -Vn, but the variation between 'bryt-
156 Appendix
tiscum' (755B: 20b) and 'bryttiscan' (755C: 20b) and the like are considered
to be innovations. Although I have attempted to minimize their numbers, some
textual variants continue from one line to the next; these are identified accord-
ing to the first of the two lines. Each locus of variation is assigned a letter to
distinguish it from others in the same 'line' of text. In this scheme, then, the
first textual variant in line 1 of the 755 annal is identified as variation 755: la;
the particular reading shared by the D and E manuscripts in 755: la is identi-
fied as 755DE: la. This notation is used throughout chapter 2.
At the end of each line of text stands a capital letter indicating which of the
major Chronicle manuscripts that line represents; 'N' here indicates a line
from Laurence NowelFs transcript of manuscript G in BL Additional 43,703.
Following the transcripts is a list of innovations identified according to the
summary of data presented in Table 2.1.
Annal 755
line 1
Her cynewulf benam sigebryht his rices 7 westseaxna wiotan/ A
Her cynewulf benam sigebrihte his rices. 7 westsexna/witan B
Her cynewulf benam sigebrihte his rices. 7 wessexna/ witan C
Her cynewulf benam sige/bryhte his maege his rices 7 waestseaxna witan/ D
Her cynewulf bena- sigebrih/te his maege his rice. 7 wsstseaxna witan E
Her cynewulf benam sigebryht/ his rices 7 wesseaxna wiotan N
a b
line 2
for unryhtum daedu- buton hamtunscire 7 he haefde J3a o{5 he/ A
for unrihtum daedum butan hamtunscire 7 he/ haefde t>a b~ he B
for unrihtum daedum butan hamtunscire 7 he/ haefde f>a o5 he C
for unrihtum daedum butan hamtunscire./ 7 he haefde J)a o5 he D
for un/rihtum daedu- buton hamtunscyre. 7 he hafde \)aJ od he E
for unryhtum das/du- buton hamtunscyre 7 he haefde t>a o9 he/ N
a
line 3
ofslog t>one aldormon |?e hi- lengest wunode 7 hiene £>a cynewulf/ A
ofsloh bone ealderman {>e him lengest/ wunode 7 hine J3a cynewulf B
ofsloh J3one ealdorman f>e him lengest/ mid wunude. 7 hine \)a cynewulf C
ofsloh J)one ealdorman/ {>e him laengst wunode. 7 hine {)a cynewulf D
ofsloh done ealdorman £>e him lengs wunode./ 7 hine Ipa cynewulf E
ofsloh {Done ealdormon \>Q hi- lengest wunode/ 7 hine J)a cynewulf N
a
Appendix 157
line 4
on andred adraefde 7 h~ baer wunade obbaet hiene an swan ofstang/ A
on andred adraefde 7 he baer/ wunode b~ hine an swan ofstang B
of andred adraefde/ 7 he baer wunode obb~ hine an swan ofstang C
on/ andred adraefde. 7 he baer wunade. o<3 5aet an swan hine ofstang D
on andred adrefede. 7 he baer wu/node od b~ an swan hine ofstang E
on andred adraefde 7 he baer wunode o5 b~ hine an swan ofstang N
a b c
line 5
aet pryfetes flodan 7 he wraec bone aldormon cumbran/ A
aet pryfetes flodan 7 se/ wraec bone ealdormann cumbran. B
aet pryfetes/ flodan 7 he wraec bone ealdormann cumbran. C
aet pryftes flodan. D
aet wryftes 3 flodan./ sae swan wraec done ealdorman cumbran. E
aet pruntes flodan 7 he wraec pone ealdormon cum/bran. N
a
b
line 6
1 se cynewulf oft miclum gefeohtum feaht uuib bretwalu-/ A
7 kynewulf oft mid/ myclum gefeohtum feaht wib brytwealum. B
7 cynewulf/ oft mid miclum gefeohtum feaht wid britwealum./ C
7 se/cynewulf of myclum gefeohtum feaht wi5/brytwealas. D
7 se cyne/wulf oft feaht mycclum gefeahtu- wid britwealas./ E
7 se cynewulf oft miclu- gefeohtu- feaht/ wid brytwealu- N
a b c d
line 7
1 y~b .xxxi. wint- baes be he rice haefde h~ wolde adraefan anne/ A
7 ymb./xxxi. wintra baes be he rice haefde he wolde adraefan ut/ anne B
7 ymb .xxxi. wintra baes be he rice haefde he wolde adraefan// anne C
7 ymb. xxi. wintra baes be he rice// haefde he wolde adrefan aenne D
7 ymb; xvi. wintra baes be he rice haefde. he wolde adrae/fan aenne E
7 ymb .xxxi. wintra baes te he/rice haefde he wolde adraefan aenne N
a_4 b
158 Appendix
line 8
aebeling se was cyneheard haten 7 se cyneheard waes baes sigebryh/tes A
aebeling se waes kyneheard haten. 7 waes baes sige/brihtes B
aebeling se wses cyneheard haten. 7 he waes sige/brihtes C
aebeling se waes/ cyneheard was bass sigebryhtes D
ae<3eling se waes cyneheard gehaten. se cy/neheard wes baas sigebrihtes E
aebelinge/ se waes cyneheard haten 7 se cyneheard waes baes/ sygebryhtes N
a b
c
line 9
brobur 7 ba g~ascode he bone cyning lytle werode on/ A
brodor. ba geahsode he bone king lytle weorode/ on B
brobor 7 ba geahsode he bone cyng lytle werode/ on C
brober. 7 ba ge/ahsode he bone cyning lytle werede on D
brodor. 7 ba acsode/ he bone cining lyt wyrede on E
brobur 7 ba g~acsode he bone cyninc/ lytle werod on N
a_ b c
line 10
wifcybbe on merantune 7 hine baer berad 7 bone bur utan/ A
wifcybbe on merantune 7 he hine baerinne berad./ 7 ba burh utan B
wifcySde on merantune. 7 he hyne baer berad. 7 ba burn/ utan C
wif/cydbe on maerantune. 7 hine baer berad. 7 bone/ bur utan D
wifcyddan on me/rantune. 7 hine baer berad. 7 bone bur uto'n' E
wifcybbe on merantune 7 hine baer berad 7 bone bur utan N
a b c d
line 11
beeode aer hine ba men onfunden be mid bam kyninge waerun/ A
ymbeodan b~ hine ba menn onfundan/ 5e mid bam cinge waeron. B
beeodan aer hine ba menn onfundon. be mid bam/ cinge wasron. C
beeodon aer hine ba men onfunden/ be mid bam cyninge wasron. D
be eodon./ aer hine ba m~ afundan be mid bam cyninge wasron./ E
beeode aer hine ba/ men onfunden be mid ba~ cyninge wasrun N
a b c
Appendix 159
line 12
1 ba ongeat se cyning baet 7 he on \)a duru eode 7 ba unhean/lice A
ba ongeat se cing \>~ . 1 on ba duru/ uteode 7 ba unheanlice B
7 ba onget se cing b~. 1 he on ba duru uteode/7 ba unheanlice C
7 ba ongeat se cyning b~./ 7 he on ba duru eode. 7 ba unheanlice D
7 ba ongeat se cyning b~. 7 he on da duru eode 7 ba/ un heanlice E
7 ba/ ongeat se cyning b~ 7 he on ba duru eode 7 ba/ unheanlice N
a_ b c
line 13
hine werede ob he on bone aebeling locude 7 ba ut raesde/ on hine A
hine werede b~ he on bone aebeling/ locade 7 ba ut on hine raesde B
hine werede. ob he on bone aebeling/ locode. C
hine wae/rede od he on bone aebeling locade. 7 ba ut raesde/ on hine D
hine werode. 06 he on bone aebeling// locade. 7 ba ut resde on hine. E
hine werede ob he on bone aebeling/ locude 7 ba ut raesde on hine N
a_ b
c
line 14
1 hine miclum gewundode 7 hie alle on bone Cyning/ A
7 hine miclum gewundode./7 hie ealle on bone cing B
7 hi ealle ba on bone cing C
7 hyne myclum gewundode. 7 hy ealle/ on bone cyning D
7 hine mycclu- gewun/dode. 7 he ealle on done cining E
7 hine miclu- g~wundade 7 hie ealle on bone cyning N
13b a
line 15
waerun feohtende obbaet hie hine ofslaegenne haefdon 7 ba/ A
feohtende waeron b~ hie hine of/slegenne haefdan. ba B
feohtende waeron obb~ hi/ hine ofslegenne haefdon. 7 ba C
feohtende waeron od bast heo/ hine ofslaegenne haefdon. 7 ba D
feohtende wajron. od/ bet hig hine ofslaegen haefdon. 7 ba E
waerun fe/ohtende ob bat hy hine ofslegenne haefdon II ba N
a b c
160 Appendix
line 16
on baes wifes gebasrum onfundon baes cyninges begnas ba un/stilnesse A
onfundan 'b~' baes kinges geferan on/ 5aes wifes unstilnesse B
on daes wifes gebaerum/ onfundon baes cinges begnas da unstilnesse C
on daes wifes/ gebaerum onfundon baes cyninges begnas ba/ unstilnesse. D
on daes wifes ge/baeron onfundon baes cyningas begnas ba unstilnes/sa. E
on baes wifes gebaeru- onfundan. baes cy/ninges begnas ba unstylnesse N
15c
16a
line 17
7 ba bider urnon swa hwelc swa bonne gearo wearb/ A
7 byder uraan swa hwylc swa bonne/ gearo weard. B
7 baeder/urnon swa hwile swa bonne gearo weard C
7 ba byder urnon swa hwylc swa/ bonne gearo weard D
7 ba bider urnon. swa hwilc swa donne gearo weard/ E
7 ba bider ur/non swa hwelc swa bonne gearo waes N
a_ b
line 18
1 radost 7 hiera se aebeling gehwelcum feoh 7 feorh gebead/ A
7 heora se aebeling aeghwylcum feorh 7 feoh/ bead B
7 him ba se aebe/ling aeghwilcum feoh 7 feorh bead C
radost. 7 heora se aebeling/ gehwylcum feoh 7 feorh bead. D
hradost.7 seaedeling gehwilcan feoh. 7 feorh bead/ E
7 radost/ N
a b
c d e f
line 19
7 hiera naenig hit gebicgean nolde:- Ac hie simle feohten/de A
7 heora nan baes onfon wolde. Ah hie on nine/ symle feohtende B
7 hira naenig bicgan/ nolde. ac hi simle feohtende C
7 heora naenig bicgan nolde. ac hie symble feohtende D
7 heo naenig bicgan noldan. ac heo symle feohtende/ E
7 hiora nasnig hit ge bingean nolde. ac hie N
a b
c d
Appendix 161
line 20
waeran ob hie alle lasgon butan anu~ bryttiscu- gisle 7 se/ A
waeron obb- hie ealle lagan butan anu~// bryttiscum gisle 7 se B
waeron ob hi ealle lagon/ buton anum bryttiscan gisle. 7 se C
waeron ooY heo ealle lagon butan anum brytwyliscum/ gisle. 7 se D
waeron. ob hig ealle ofslagene waeron. buton anum/ brytwyliscum gisle.7 se E
ealle/ legon butan anu~ bryttiscu- gisle 7 se N
19b 20a b
20c_
line 21
swibe gewundad waes. ba on morgenne gehierdun baet baes/ A
waes swibe fordod. 5a on mergen ge/hyrdon b~ baes B
waes forwundod/ ba on mergen gehyrdon b~ baes C
swyde gewundod waes. ba on morgen/ gehyrdon b- baes D
swyde 'ge'wundod waes. ba on/morgen gehyrdon b~ bes E
gewun/dad waes. ba on morgene gehyrdun b~ baes N
a
line 22
cyninges begnas be him beaeftan waerun baet se cyning ofslae/gen waes A
cinges begnas be baeftan him waeron baet/ se cing wass ofslegen. B
cinges begnas be beaeftan him waeron. b- se cing waes ofslegen . C
cyninges baegnas be him beaeftan/ waeron baet seo cyning ofslaegen waes. D
ciniges begnas be him baefton/ waeron b~ se cining ofslagen waes. E
cy/ninges begnas be hi- beaeftan waeran b- se cy/ning ofslegen waes. N
a b
line 23
ba ridon hie bider 7 his aldormon osric 7 wiferb/ his begn A
ba ridan hie byder 7 his ealdorman/ osric. 7 wiferd his begen B
ba ridon hi/ baeder 7 his ealdorman osric. 7 wigferd his begn C
Da ridon/ hi byder 7 his ealdorman osric. 7 wiferd his/ begn. D
Pa ridon bider 7 his/ ealdorman osric. 7 wiferd his begn. E
ba rydon hy bider 7 his eal/dorman osric 7 wiuerd his begn N
a
162 Appendix
line 24
1 ba men be he beaeftan him laefde aer 7 bone aebe/ling A
7 ba men be he aer him baeftan/ laefde 7 bone aebeling B
7 ba/ menn be he aer beaeftan laefde. 7 bone aebeling C
7 ba men be he him beaeftan aer laefde./ 7 bone aebeling D
7 ba men be he hi-/ be aefton laefde aer. 7 bone aebeling E
7 ba men be/ he beaeftan hi- laefde aer. 7 bone aebeling N
a
/we 25
on baere byrig metton baer se cyning ofslaegen laeg A
on Saere byrig metton baer se cing/ ofslegen laeg. B
on baere/ byrig gemettun baer se cing ofslegen laeg. C
on baere byrig metton. baer/ se cyning ofslaegen laeg. D
on baere byrig ge/metton baer se cining ofslagen laeg. E
on bae/re byrig metton baer se cyning ofslegen laeg./ N
a
line 26
1 ba/ gatu him to belocen haefdon 7 ba baer to eodon 7 ba gebead/ A
7 hie ba ba geatu him tobelocen haefdan. 7 hie/ daer to eodan. ba bead B
7 hi/ him ba gatu tobelocen haefdon. 7 hi baer to eodan. 7 ba/ bead C
7 hi j?a gatu him to// belocen haefdon. 7 [)a {?aer to eodon. 7 \)a bead/ D
7 heo ba gatu heo-/ 'to beloce- haefdon. 7 da 5er to eodon. 7 ba bead E
7 ba gatu hi- to belogen waeron. 7 ba baer to eo/dan 7 ba gebead N
a b c
d
line 27
he him hiera agenne dom feos 7 londes gif hie him baess rece A
he him heora agenne dom feos II landes gif hie him baes rices B
he him hyra agenne dom feos 7 landes gif hi/ him baes rices C
he him heora agenne dom feos 7 landes gyf/ hi him baes rices D
he heom'/ heora agene dom feos. 7 londes gif heo him baes rices/ E
he hi- heora agene dom feos./ 7 londes gif hy hi- baesricesss N
Appendix 163
line 28
ubon 7 him cybdon baet hiera maegas him mid waeron ba be/ A
geuban 7 heom cybde baet/ heora magas him mid waeron 5a be B
ubon 7 him cyddon b- hira magas/ him mid waeron ba be C
ubon 7 him cydde baet heora/ magas him mid waeron ba be D
udon. 7 heom cydde b~ heora maga him mid waeron 5a be/ E
ubon. 7 hi- cyddon b~ hiora magas hi- mid waerun ba be N
a b c
/me 29
him from noldon 7 ha cuaedon hie baet him naenig maeg leo/fra A
him fram noldan. da cwaedan hie b- him nan maeg leofra B
him fram noldon. 7 ba cwasdon/ hi b~ him naenig majg leofra C
him fram noldon./ 7 ba cwasdon hie baet him naenig maeg leofra/ D
him fram noldon. 7 ba cweSon hig. b~ heom naenig maeg/ leofra E
hi- fro- noldon./ 7 ba cwaedon hy b- heom nzenig mseg leofra N
a b
line 30
nacre bonne hiera hlaford 7 hie na;fre his banan/ A
nsere bonne heora/ hlatbrd 7 b~ hie naefre his banan B
naere don- hira hlaford/ 7 hi nasfre his banan C
naerre bonne heora hlaford 7 hi nsefre his ba/nan D
naere bone heora hlaford. 7 heo neefre his ba/nan E
na2/re bonne heora hlaford. 7 hy nsefre his banan/ N
a
line 31
folgian noldon 7 ba budon hie hiera maegum baet hie gesund// A
folgian noldan. ba bu/dan hie heora magum b~ hie him gesunde B
folgian noldon. 7 ba budon hi/ hyra magum b~ hi him gesunde C
folgian noldon. 7 ba budon hi heora magu-/ baet hi him gesunde D
folgian noldon. 7 ba budon hi heora magon b~ hi heo~/ gesunde E
folgian noldon 7 ba budan hy heora magu-/ b~ hy gesunde N
a b c
164 Appendix
line 32
fro- eodon 7 hie cuaedon baet taet ilce hiera geferum5 geboden waere/ A
fra- eodan./ ba cwaedan hie b- baet ilce heora geferum geboden waere/ B
fram eodon. 7 hie/ cwaedon b~ b- ilce hiera geferum geboden waere C
fram eodon . 7 hi cwaedon b-/ ilce heora geferum geboden waere D
fram eodon. 7 hi cwaedon b- b- ilce heora geferu-/ geboden waere E
fro- eodon 7 hy cwaedon b~ b- ilce/ heora geferu- geboden waere N
a b
line 33
be aer mid bam cyninge waerun ba cuaedon hie baet hie 'hie' baes A
de aer mid bam cinge waeron. da cwaedon hie b~ hie baes/ hie sylfe B
be aer/ mid bam cinge waeron. ba cwaedon hi b- hie baes C
be aer mid/ bam cyninge waeron. Da cwaedon heo baet hi hit/ baes D
be aer mid ba- cininge waeron. Da cwaedon/ hi b- b- hi baes E
be aer mid bae- cyninge waerun. ba cwaedun hy b- hy hy bass/ N
a
line 34
ne on/munden bon ma be eowre geferan be mid bam cyninge A
ne amundan be ma be heora geferan be mid ba-/ kinge B
ne amundon// be ma be eowre geferan be mid bam cinge C
ne onmunden bon ma be heora geferan/ be mid bam cyninge D
ne gemundon bonn- ma be heora geferen/ be mid bam cininge E
ne onmunden don ma be eowre ge/feran be mid bae- cyninge N
a b
line 35
ofslaege/ne waerun 7 hie ba ymb ba gatu feohtende waeron obbaet hie A
ofslegene waeron. 7 hie ba ymb ba geatu feohtende/ waeron b- hie B
ofslegene waeron./ 7 hie ba ymb ba gatu feohtende waeron obb- hie C
waeron ofslaegene. 7 hy ba/ ymb ba geatu feohtende waeron od hi D
waeron ofslagene. hi ba ymb da gatu/ feohtende waeron od hi E
waeron ofslegene II hy ba ymb ba gatu feohtende waerun ob b- hy/ N
a b c
Appendix 165
line 36
baer/ inne fulgon 7 bone aebeling ofslogon 7 ba men be him mid waerun/ A
baerinne wurdon 7 bone aebeling ofslogan/ 7 ba men be mid him waeron B
baerinne fulgon/ 7 bone aebeling ofslogon 7 ba menn be mid him waeron C
baer inne/ fulgon 7 bone aebeling ofslogon. 7 ba men be/ mid him waeron D
baer in flugon. 7 bone aebeling/ ofslogon. 7 ba men 6e mid him waeron E
baerinne fulgon 7 bone aebeling ofslogon II ba men be hi- mid waerun N
a b
line 37
alle butan anum se waes baes aldormonnes godsunu 7 he his feorh/ A
ealle butan anum b- waes baes/ ealdormannes godsunu 7 he his feorh B
ealle/ butan anum baes duxes godsunu. 7 he his feorh C
ealle butan anum se waes baes ealdormannes godsunu. 7 he his feorh D
ealle buton anu~. se waes bes ealdormannes godsunu. 7 he his feorh E
ealle butan anu~ se/ waes baes ealdormonnes godsunu 7 he his feorh// N
a
line 38
generede 7 beah he waes oft gewundad 7 se cynewulf ricsode .xxxi wint-/ A
generede. 7 beah/ waes oft gewundod. Se cynewulf rixode .xxxi. wintra/ B
generode./ 7 beah he waes oft gewundod. Se cynewulf rixode .xxxi. geara/ C
genere/de 7 he waes oft gewundod. 7 se cynewulf ricsode./ .xxxi. wintra . D
ge/nerede. 7 he waes oft gewundod. 7 se cynewulf rixade/ .xxxi. wintra. E
generede 7 beah he waes oft gewundod. 7 se cy/newulf ricsode .xxx.i. wintra N
a b c
line 39
7 his lie lib aet wintan ceastre 7 baes aebelinges aet ascanmynster/ A
7 his lie lib on wintan ceastre 7 baes aebelinges aet axan/mynster. B
7 his lie lid on wintan ceastre. 7 baes aebelinges at axanmenster./ C
7 his lie liged on wintan ceastre/ 7 baes aedelinges on axanmynster. D
7 his lie ligd on wintan ceastre. 7 bass/ aedelingas on axanmynster. E
7 his lie lib/ on wintan ceastre 7 baes aebelinges aet acscan/mynster N
a_ b_
166 Appendix
line 40
1 hiera ryht faeder'en'cyn gaeb to cerdice 7 by ilcan geare mon ofslog/ A
7 heora riht faederen kynn gaeb to cerdice./ 7 \)y ilcan geare mon ofsloh B
7 heora riht faederen cynn gae5 to cerdice. 7 \>y ilcan geare/ man ofsloh C
7 heora riht/. faedrancynn gaeb to certice. 7 by ilcan geare/ mon ofsloh D
7 heora riht faederan/cyn gae5 to certice. 7 by ilcan geare man ofsloh E
7 heora riht faederen cyn geb to/ cerdice. 7 by ilcan gear mon ofsloh N
line 41
aebelbald miercna cyning on seccandune 7 his lie lip on hreopa/dune A
aebelbald myrcna cing.// on secggandune. 7 his lie lip on hreopandune. B
aepelbald myrcna cing on seccandune. 7 his lie/ lid on hreopandune. C
aepelbald mearcna cyning on sae/candune. 7 his lie raesteS on hreopandune. D
aedelbald// myrcene cining on secandune. 7 his lie restad on reopan/dune. E
aebelbald/ myrcna cyning on seccandune 7 his lie lip/ on hreopandune N
a
line 42
7 beornraed feng to rice A
7 beorn/red feng to rice B
7 beornred feng to rice C
1 he/ ricsade .xli. wintra. 7 beornred feng to rice./ D
7 he rixade .xli. wintra. 7 ba feng beornred to ri/ce. E
7 beornred feng to rice N
b
line 43
1 lytle hwile heold 7 ungefealice 7 by/ ilcan geare A
7 hit lytle hwile heold 7 ungefealice. 7 by/ ilcan geare B
7 hit lytle 'h' wile/ heold 7 ungefealice. 7 by ilcan geare C
7 lytle hwile heold 7 ungefealice. 7 py ilcan geare// D
7 litle hwile heold 7 ungefealice. 7 ba ilcan geare E
7 ly/tle hwile heold 7 ung~fealice 7 py ilcan gear// N
a b_
Appendix 167
line 44
offa feng to rice 7 heold .xxxuiiii. wint- A
feng offa to rice 7b~ heold .xxxix. wintra. B
feng ba offa to rice/ 7 heold .xxxix. wintra . C
offa geflemde beonred 7 feng to bam rice. 11 heold .xxxix. wintra . D
of/fa geflymde beornred 7 feng to bam rice, 1 heold .xxxix./ wintra. E
offa cyning feng to rice 1 heold .xxxix./ wint- N
a b
c
line 45
I his sunu ecg/fer'b' heold .xli. daga. 7 c. daga. Se offa waes bincgferbing A
II ecgferd his sunu .xli. daga. 7 c. daga. Se offa waes bing/ferbing. B
7 ecgferS his sunu .xli. daga. 7c./ daga. se offa waes bingferbing. C
7 his sunu ecgferd heold./ xli. daga. 7 c. daga waes se offa waes bincferbing. D
7 his sunu ecgferd heold .xli. daga. 7. c. daga./ se offa waes bingcferbing. E
7 his sunu ecguerS heold .xl. daga. 7 an hund daga. Se waes offa bincgferbing. N
a b c
line 46
A B C 1>
bincgfer|)/ eanwulfmg bingferfl eanwulfmg. bingferfl eanwulfmg./ bin'c'g/fero 1 eanwulfmg

eanwulf'osmoding eanwulf osmoding. eanwulf osmoding. eanwulf osmoding.
osmod eawing os/mod eawing. osmod eawing. osmod/ eawing.
eawa pybing eawa pybbing. eawa pybbing. eawa pybing.
pybba/ creoding pybba. creoding. pybba/ creoding. pybba creoding.
creoda cynewalding creoda/ cynewalding. creoda cynewalding. creo/da cynewalding.
cynewald cnebing cynewald cnebbing. cynewald cnebbing. cynewald cnebbing.
cnebba iceling/ cnebba iceling. cnebba/ iceling. cnebba/ iceling.
icel eomaering icel/ eomaering. icel eomaering. icel eomaering.
eomasr angelpowing eomaer angelbeowing. eomasr angelbeowing. eomeer angel|>e/owing.
angelbeow offing angelbeow offing, angelbeow/ offing, angelbeow offing,
offa waer/munding offa/ wasrmunding. offa waermunding. offa wasrmunding.
wasrmund wihtlaeging wasrmund wihtlaeging. wajrmund wihtlaeging./ waermund wyhtlaeing.
wihtlaeg wodening:- wihtlaeg wodening. wihtlaeg wodening. wihtlaeg wodening. 6
168 Appendix
Identification of annal 755 innovations as summarized in Table 2.1
Substitutions A(G) BC B G*(N) DE C D E
Inflectional 11a - - - 6d 20b 1b

10a
16a
18d
28c
31b
Prefixes - 1 8 d - - -- - 11c
34a 34a
Other 39a 10d 2a 17b 7a 4a 6b 5b

12c 5b 19a 20b 18c 7a
26b 10c 26d 39b 38c 9c
11a 39a 4la 20a
11b 36a
13a 43b
29b
36a
37a
Deletions A(G) BC B G*(N) DE C D E
T ('ond') - 38b 9a - 35b
12a
26c
29a
31 a
Eyeskip - - - 18b - 13b 5a -

19b 8c
Other 31 c 6a 4b 21 a 35c - 32b 9b
17a 12b 45d 38a 23a
15b 18c
35c
38a
Appendix 169
Identification of annal 755 innovations as summarized in Table 2A-(Concluded)
Additions A(G) BC B G*(N) DE C D E
ge- 18f _ 28a _ 25a 8a

26c 25a
Other 19c 6b 7b 44c 1a 3a _

10b 19d 42a 14a
43a 20c 44a
30a
44b
Rearrangements A(G) BC B G*(N) DE C D E
15a 22a 1 3c 35a 4c _ _ 6c

36b 22b 18e 45c 35a
Rewriting* A(G) BC B G*(N) DE C D E
_ 45a 15c _ 37a 45c 19a

19a 42b
32a
Indeterminate innovativeness: 8b; 18a; 21a;24a;26a;28b; 33a; 34b; 44c
*Note that some examples of rewriting might alternatively be analysed as combinations

of two or more other processes, such as rearrangement plus deletion.
Notes
1 See Amos, Linguistic Means, 171-96, for a similar parallel presentation of Old
English prose materials.
2 The 755 annal begins, in the various manuscripts, on these pages: manuscript A, lOr;
manuscript B, 11 v; manuscript C, 125r; manuscript D, 22v; manuscript E, 22v;
Additional 43,703, 209r. Although slanted brackets are used in the main text to
indicate manuscript additions and interlineations, single quotation marks are used
for this purpose in the appendix to avoid confusion with slanted brackets indicating
line ends.
3 The reading 'wryftes' here is clear, though not recorded even in Plummer's edition.
Nevertheless, since it is an obvious orthographic error, I do not count it as a textual
variant. Nor do 1 count Nowell's apparent misreading of G*'s 'pruutes.'
4 The variants in the numerals here I consider as an innovation in DE and a second in
170 Appendix
E. The likeliest explanation for the surviving numerals is that a common predecessor
had .xxi., which was further altered to .xvi. in E.
5 This word is written into the Parker manuscript in an early modern hand, identified
by Lutz as that of Abraham Wheelock. A hole in the vellum obscures the original
reading.
6 As noted in chapter 1, the 755DE genealogy has been reduced to a single generation;
thus, I do not count the DE genealogy as innovative, since it was probably the result
of a revision in the DE common ancestor (perhaps the Northern Recension). Other
DE innovations such as 755: 42a and 755: 44a may also stem from similar inten-
tional choices (rather than from the process of copying itself), but they are none the
less tabulated in Table 2.1 and in the summary of innovations that follows it.
Notes
Introduction
1 Also contained in CCCC 173 is an eighth-century book containing Sedulius's Car-

men Paschale, partially glossed in Old English. Malcolm Parkes's valuable essay
The Palaeography of the Parker Manuscript' investigates the connections between
these two, originally separate, books.
2 The 'Common Stock' is the name conventionally given to the 'base Chronicle,'1
that version of the Chronicle first put together some time during Alfred's reign, and
perhaps at his instigation. The end of the first Parker scribe's stint in 891 offers one
possible dating for the Common Stock; Audrey Meaney ('Materials and Transmis-
sion') argues for 892, a date with which David Dumville agrees (Wessex and Eng-
land). In Texts and Textual Relationships, Janet Bately argues for an '890
Chronicle.'
3 There are, as well, a number of other, less extensive, contributions to A; see the
introduction to Bately's edition, MS A, for a detailed account of the various hands
and their contributions.
4 The West Saxon Regnal Table (WSRT) is a brief account of the various West Saxon
kings beginning with Cerdic, with regnal lengths and a genealogical account; it was
edited in 1986 by Dumville from all of its witnesses ('Regnal List'). The WSRT in
the Parker manuscript appears immediately before the opening of the Chronicle, in
the hand of the first Parker scribe. The Laws appear to be in a hand of the tenth cen-
tury, and thus seem to have been added to the Chronicle at that time. See Parkes,
'Palaeography.'
5 The Tiberius copy of the WSRT extends to the reign of Edward the Martyr but
does not include his death (recorded in other versions of the Chronicle in 979). A
date for the compilation of B between 977 and 979 thus seems both plausible and
appealing but cannot be certain. Cyril Hart ('B-text') argues that the scribe of B
172 Notes to pages 5-8
was Byrhtferth of Ramsey; such a possibility will also probably remain unde-
cided.
6 Ker suggests that for annals 491-652 (where the regular numbering in B ceases)
and 945-77 (where numbering is resumed), the relationship is 'so close as to sug-
gest a common exemplar, if not direct copying of B. i from A. vi' (Catalogue 252).
7 This contemporary activity begins, perhaps, in 1054: see Ker, Catalogue 254 and
Cubbin xiii ff.
8 G also served as the base text for Abraham Wheelock's 1644 edition of the
Chronicle.
9 Notice also that those manuscripts not associated with Alfredian texts (DEFH) are
completely free-standing, and are not associated with other Anglo-Saxon texts at
all.
10 The Laws were added to A in the middle 900s; G was added to the Old English
Bede at the time of its copying (between 1001 and 1013); C and Orosius were cop-
ied together after 1044.
11 The relatively clear-cut cases of manuscript collation and textual conflation that
took place in the Anglo-Saxon period support this claim. To take only the most
agreed-upon examples, the incorporation of the Mercian Register into BC implies
collation (see further chapter 3, below); and the distribution of the Register's annals
to their proper places in D suggests even further care in integrating annals from
diverse sources. Further, D appears to have reinserted the 855 genealogy into an
annal that had previously lacked it (see Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle 28, and
the discussion of the Northern Recension in chapter 3); the F manuscript collates A
and the ancestor of E; scribe 3 of the Parker manuscript inserts annal 71OA at some
point in the middle tenth century.
12 Fred C. Robinson's essay 'Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Context'
argues that the 'most immediate context [of a work] can sometimes be its most
important context' (29) and explicitly identifies the 'most immediate context' as
'the poem's context within the manuscript in which it is preserved' (11). Robin-
son's essay has surely prompted much of the recent 'back-to-the-manuscripts'
work that has been so prevalent in recent Anglo-Saxon scholarship.
13 As suggested in the previous note, the 'back-to-the-manuscripts' approach was
largely prompted by Robinson's 'Immediate Context' essay; perhaps the most
influential work within this mode has been Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's Visible
Song. Two essays that approach the Chronicle with manuscript context in mind are
Janet Bately's essay 'Manuscript Layout' (the 1988 Toller Memorial Lecture) and
Paul Szarmach's essay on the Mercian Register ('.flidelflaed of Mercia: Mise en
page}.
14 See the essays collected in Scragg and Szarmach, The Editing of Old English, and
Keefer and O'Brien O'Keeffe, New Approaches to Editing Old English Verse. Also
Notes to pages 8-9 173
see the separate essays by Lapidge ('The Edition, Emendation and Reconstruction
of Anglo-Saxon Texts'; Textual Criticism and the Literature of Anglo-Saxon Eng-
land') and O'Brien O'Keeffe (Texts and Works: Some Historical Questions on the
Editing of Old English Verse'). Lapidge's essays tend to urge editors to continue
informed mediation of texts; thus, he often seems opposed to scholars such as
O'Brien O'Keeffe who conceptualize the ideal editorial position as essentially non-
intrusive. The back-to-the-manuscripts approach seems to have led Anglo-Saxon
scholars to conceptualize the editorial task as primarily concerned with the repre-
sentation of the text, rather than with the traditional goal of textual scholarship, the
establishment of 'the text.' But the debate is over matters of degree: how much edi-
torial mediation of texts is appropriate.
15 Carol Braun Pasternack makes a similar point: 'we can try to understand the textu-
ality of other cultures, but we cannot escape our own' (29). Indeed, in her book,
The Textuality of Old English Poetry, Pasternack attempts to provide a new under-
standing of how Old English poetry functions by bringing our attention to the
'movements' that seem to structure many Old English poems as an insufficiently
understood feature of Anglo-Saxon literary expression. Yet Pasternack seems too
quick to identify writing and print: '[Old English poems] do not function in the
same ways as printed texts ... I shall therefore put orality in my circle of reasoning
as an influence on the poetry's textuality' (4; ellipses mine). Later, 'in comparison
to printed texts, Old English verse was considerably more dependent on the ear
than on the eye' (9). Such statements, especially in the very beginning of Paster-
nack's book, where the theoretical basis of her reading is being worked out, seem to
expose an oversimplified view of writing, print, and orality.
16 Note, however, the movement of the movement: from improving readings that pre-
viously relied on mediated editions to improving the mediation of editions: Robin-
son's 'Immediate Context' essay was itself followed by his re-editing of the
'Metrical Epilogue' of CCCC 41 (' "Bede's" Envoi to the Old English History: An
Experiment in Editing'); O'Brien O'Keeffe followed Visible Song with her essays
and the edited collection cited in the preceding notes. As it descends from the back-
to-the-manuscripts movement, the current focus on editing practice thus considers
manuscript evidence as crucial to the process bringing Old English texts into a
form accessible to our literacy tradition; the debate (again, as noted above) centres
on how best to represent Anglo-Saxon texts to ourselves rather than how to change
our reading practices to suit Anglo-Saxon texts.
17 Indeed, compare O'Brien O'Keeffe's formulation: 'acknowledging the historicity
of literacy requires the negotiation of a fundamental difference between ourselves
as readers and the medieval readers for whom the texts we study were produced.
The first step in this process of negotiation lies in our methods of editing' ('Editing
and the Material Text' 149). While, as I suggested above, I believe the 'first step'
requires the very reading of the texts involved rather the editing of them, O'Brien
O' Keeffe's point that the process must be ongoing accords well with my own view.
1: The Common Stock Genealogies
1 West Saxon genealogies are recorded in annals 552BC, 597ABC, 611BC,

648ABC, 674ABC, 676ABC, 685ABC, 688ABC, 728ABCD, and 855ABCDG.
Six Northumbrian genealogies are included: 547BC, 560BC, 670ABC, 685ABC,
731ABCD, 738ABCDE. Three Mercian genealogies (626BC, 716ABC, and
755ABC) and one Kentish genealogy (694ABCD) make up the rest. The Parker
manuscript would include all of these, except for the fact that some have been
erased, probably by the scribe of F. The genealogies included in E under annals 449
and 593 will be discussed in chapter 3.
2 See Plummer II, cxiii, and further chapter 5, below.
3 Compare the similar sets of sources listed by Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
xxii, and Plummer II, cix-cxiv.
4 In his edition of these genealogies, Dumville suggests that this collection has an
'Anglian' origin and should be dated to '805x814' ('Anglian Collection' 24). The
manuscript is old and fragile, but with the aid of ultraviolet light, Dumville was
able to read almost every letter of the genealogies. In this chapter, I cite the Vespa-
sian genealogies from this edition.
5 As Sisam writes, at least the 'non-West Saxon pedigrees are based on the same
materials as those of Vespasian B vi, and most of the differences seem to be due to
carelessness in the Chronicle' ('Royal Genealogies' 156).
6 Hermann Moisl's essay on the genealogies suggests a Germanic tradition of alliter-
ative genealogical composition, though he does not approach the question of metre,
which is my concern here. Geoffrey Russom's recent book, Beowulf and Old Ger-
manic Metre begins with a discussion of the inscription of the Gallehus horn, which
includes the half-line 'ekhlewagastiR: holtijaR' ('I, Hlewagast, son of Holt'; Old
Germanic Metre 1). Since, as Russom notes, the Gallehus horn probably dates to
around 400, the genealogical verses investigated here would seem to have a long
history.
7 See, in particular, Russom's account in Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory.
His more recent book, Beowuf and Old Germanic Metre, is also useful. I will also
use Russom's formalism in chapter 4, where his perspective will allow me to
attempt at least a brief account of the metrical form of the later Chronicle poems. A
Sieversian perspective on metre has led to the virtual decanonization of these
poems, primarily because Sievers's system cannot easily accommodate them.
8 Standard accounts of Old English verse do not allow secondary stress in the expan-
sion of D verses. Thus, a seemingly parallel verse such as Beowulf 53a, 'Beowulf
Notes to page 17 175
Scyldinga' is usually scanned as /x/\x (i.e., Sx/Ssx in Russom's formalism). Here

as elsewhere, verses from Beowulf are quoted from the edition of Klaeber; verses
from other Old English poems are cited from Krapp and Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon
Poetic Records (ASPR), unless otherwise noted. For further comments on second-
ary stress in such verses, see note 11 below.
9 The verses with both SS-alliteration and ss-alliteration are: 'Centwine Cundwal-
ing,' 'Cundwalh Coenwaling,' 'Eadbald Edilberhting,' 'Ceolwulf Cuduining,'and
'Aelfwald Alduulfing.'
10 As the quoted examples indicate, my scansions often include resolution applying
regularly to both the primary stress of the nominative and the patronymic. Resolu-
tion likewise seems to apply in the secondary stress of the nominative, although (as
in the verse) resolution of secondary elements in these types of verses seems not to
apply in the patronymic (i.e., in the second foot). Thus, within Group 1 alone, we
have ten cases where the final half-lift falls on a short syllable. Similar principles of
resolution appear throughout the Vespasian data, but they do not seem to call for
additional comment.
11 Campbell writes as follows of the second elements of compounds (including
names): 'The verse shows that the general rule is that they retain a half stress only
when they themselves are disyllabic ... or have an inflexional syllable added' (OEG
34, §88; ellipses mine). These genealogical verses would seem to suggest the oppo-
site conclusion, that secondary name elements retain secondary stress even when
monosyllabic and uninflected. Also working from classical verse, Fulk suggests
both that 'Campbell's conclusions cannot be so firm as to exclude the possibility
that the Beowulf poet could lend ictus to the second elements of uninflected per-
sonal names at will' (191) and that 'secondary stress in the expansion of type D* is
unknown' (221). The functioning of secondary stress in the genealogical tradition
may be cause for a re-evaluation of the role of personal names in Old English
verse.
12 The contraction rule that applies in the Vespasian genealogies appears to be the
following: with the addition of the patronymic suffix -ing, final short, unstressed
vowels are contracted; also, short vowels in final syllables of the form -VC are con-
tracted. This rule leads to the observed forms: 'Ufcfreaing' but 'Osuing' and 'Blae-
cmoning'; 'Eamering' but 'Wodning.' Note that this contraction rule also appears
to be at work in the Beowulfian 'genealogical' verses 'Higelac Hrebling' (1923a)
and 'Hasdcen Hrebling' (2925a). One patronymic in this group is of particular lin-
guistic interest: 'Alwing' from Alwih + -ing', here we see loss of h as in the so-
called contracted verbs.
13 One genealogy ends with the patronymic 'Geoting'; I take the nominative form of
this name to be something like '*Geota' rather than '*Geot' as the Vespasian man-
uscript generally avoids monosyllables (see below). Forms analogous to '*Geota,'
of course, appear in both Asser and in jEthelwulf s genealogy in 855B. See Sisam's
commentary on 'Geata' 171f, especially note 4.
14 One patronymic might appear to be an exception both to this claim and to the
contraction rule described above: 'Casering,' which we might otherwise expect to
see as '*Casring,' since the nominative form is 'Caser.' However, Fulk identifies
the lexical item 'casere' as generally following his 'rule of the coda,' though also
fitting into a distribution such as that described by Kaluza's law: 'the middle syl-
lable bears ictus in the onset only when the inflection is etymologically long'
(224). Fulk concludes that the evidence of 'casere' is ambiguous, but that it at
least sometimes appears to have tertiary stress; such stress presumably prevents
contraction in 'Casering.' The verse Tyttman Casering' is accordingly included
in Group 1.
15 Cable suggests that -ing can take 'some degree of metrical stress' (Alliterative Tra-
dition 15; see also 148), at least in words such as 'Scyldinga.' But in the genealogi-
cal verses examined here, both the preference for contraction and the existence of
verses such as 'Aelfwald Alduulfing' (where -ing is subordinated to the syllable
with secondary stress) suggest that -ing does not take significant stress.
16 The possibility of triple alliteration here would be, of course, unusual at best in the
classical verse tradition. Note that the records of this genealogy in annal 560 of the
Chronicle manuscripts (BCG; the genealogy has been erased from 560A) do not
show triple alliteration here, reading 'Wilgils Westerfalcing' (560B).
17 Verse boundaries are always unambiguous in the genealogies, since the end of each
generation is marked by -ing. Likewise, the use of double alliteration in all of these
hypermetric examples may reflect another strategy for keeping these verses from
being difficult to identify.
18 See Russom's comment: The long heavy feet Sxs and Sxxs, which correspond
to unusual word patterns, always appear in second position' (Linguistic
Theory 29).
19 The consonant cluster -cgt would probably not end a monosyllable; thus, we should
expect to see at least a following unstressed vowel in the nominative.
20 '*Hryppa Hrodmunding' would fit into Group 3.
21 Bede's genealogy of Hengist and Horsa does not extend beyond Woden (HE i, 15),
and thus we should probably conclude that the Woden-to-Geoting portion of the
genealogy was composed after the Historia ecclesiastica. Sisam seems willing to
date the Woden-to-Geoting portion of the genealogy to the late eighth or early ninth
century: that is, roughly contemporary with the Vespasian manuscript or a bit ear-
lier (Sisam, 'Royal Genealogies' 165ft).
22 We might suspect that the o in 'Uestor-' is a parasite vowel, intruding in an original
monosyllable; even if this were the case, the form of the name would still be
unique: Ssx.
23 The only genealogical verse form implied by this scheme but not actually appear-
ing is the form Sxs/Sxsx, which we would expect to be rare at best. It does not seem
as though it would be excluded in principle, however.
24 It is important to note that, so far as it may have applied to actual people (as poten-
tially different from names in a genealogy), such a constraint may well have been
limited to royal families. Anglo-Saxon names of other forms may have been cur-
rent in non-aristocratic families.
25 At this point it may be worthwhile to note the limited range of monosyllabic names
even in the 'genealogical' verses of Widsith. The only examples are (cited from vol-
ume III of the ASPR): 'Fin Folcwalding' (27a), 'Hn<ef Hocingum' (29a), 'Helm
Wulfingum' (29b), 'Wald Woingum' (30a), 'Wod tyringum' (30b), and 'Hun Haet-
werum' (33a). Likewise note the genealogical verses in Beowulf: 'Oft Scyld Scef-
ing' (4a) and 'Wulf Wonreding' (2965a). The monosyllabic 'Scyld' requires an
additional syllable for the verse containing it to be complete; this name appears as
'Sceldw(e)a' in the Chronicle. 'Hoc,' father of Hnaef, is not used in genealogical
verses in the poem. The possibility that 'Wulf from Beowulf 2965a may serve to
mark the character as non-aristocratic is worth considering; the monosyllabic name
may here serve to indicate a character of undistinguished descent, and the poet sim-
ply gives his father an Ss name to fill out the (unexpanded) D verse. Poets, of
course, can name fathers after sons.
26 I cite the East Saxon genealogies from the edition of Dumville ('Regnal List'), but
reconstructing the missing material.
27 Note that I use ce here for Bately's (and the Parker manuscript's) 'hooked e.' Most
of this passage appears in the Parker WSRT, but not in the Additional WSRT
because of missing material. The WSRT version begins with 'Cerdic wss Elesing'
(Bately, MSA 1)
28 A virtually identical verse begins the 855 genealogy of jCthelwulf.
29 Genealogies from CCCC 173 enclosed in square brackets have been erased from
that book. They are reconstructed primarily from the evidence of manuscript G; I
quote them from Bately, MS A; but see also Lutz, Die Version G.
30 Similar forms are found in [560A]: '|7Elle waes Yffmg]' and [626A]: '[Penda waes
Pybbing].'
31 Similar forms are: '7 Centwine was Cynegilsing' (676A); 'Se Wihtred was Ecg-
bryhting' (694A).
32 Note the unusual Ssx initial foot representing 'Ceadwalla.' Such a foot would be
unusual but probably not excluded, despite its non-attestation in Vespasian. Note
that if 'Uestor-' in Vespasian's 'Uestorualcna' shows parasiting, then that name,
too, should be scanned as Ssx.
33 A similar form is seen in 'se Ceolwulf waes Cuf>aing' (731 A).
34 Occasionally, 'waes' is inserted in other verses besides the initial ones (e.g., the
reconstructed 547A, 855A). These additional cases, however, add nothing to my
analysis.
35 The beginning of one genealogical passage has been excluded here, from
552A: 'Cerdic waes Cynri[ces faeder]': this passage may be intentionally
unscannable as verse. Since the typical form ('Cynric Cerdicing') would begin
the alliteratively regular Cerdic-to-Wodening passage, this generation may be
presented in a non-verselike form to hinder recognition of the verselike charac-
teristics of the rest of the genealogy. If this is the case, then the alliterating
portion of Êthelwulf's genealogy would stand out as even more exceptional
than otherwise.
36 'Cupaing' regularly appears as 'Cuping' in the BC versions of the Chronicle.
37 The Common Stock, of course, may have been a collaborative enterprise, in which
the genealogist currently under discussion was only one member of a larger team.
Yet this genealogist's influence was clearly pervasive, and to identify him as the
compiler does not seem too problematic.
38 The forms reflected in the Vespasian manuscript and analysed above may well (as I
have argued) stem from traditional naming constraints. To this degree, traditionally
structured genealogical verses might be said to stem from an 'oral' tradition
(though 1 would stress the genre's traditionality rather than its orality). As noted
above, Hermann Moisl's essay on the genealogies argues for a Germanic tradition
of alliterating genealogies.
39 'These are the genealogies for the parts of Britain, for kings ruling in various
places.' This material is obscured in Plate I by stains resulting from the application
of a reagent.
40 The cited portions of Vespasian B vi are from my reading of the manuscript rather
than Dumville's edition ('Anglian Collection'), though Dumville (through the use
of ultraviolet photography) was able to read significantly more of the names than I
was. Note that Dumville regularizes the use of capital letters.
41 Note that Sweet (Oldest English Texts) does not print the genealogy of Eadberht as
separate from that of Ceoluulf, despite the presence of the capital (170).
42 Some of the other material in Vespasian B vi, such as regnal lists and lists of
bishops, is organized in simple vertical columns (see Plate I); genealogies, how-
ever, cannot function as simple vertical lists of names because the patronymics
are necessary, in that they allow a reader to distinguish a genealogy from a
regnal list. The two-column format, then, is especially appropriate for these
genealogies.
43 Columnar alliterating genealogies continued to be copied right through the Anglo-
Saxon period: see CCCC 183; Cotton Tiberius B v vol. 1; and the Textus Rqffensis,
Rochester Cathedral Library A. 3. 5. In the Textus Roffensis, the genealogies are
generally written in a single vertical column (most often with a point separating
nominative from patronymic), but the columnar format clearly continued to be use-
ful. It is useful to compare also the complex visual layout used for the genealogies
in a post-Conquest manuscript such as CCCC 92 (though, of course, this manu-

script no longer employs the patronymics).
44 See above, for my comments on the metrical changes accompanying these addi-
tions. And for an intriguing parallel to the insertion of 'wass' into the genealogies,
see Nicholas Howe's discussion of the verbs governing Widsith's second and third
'thulas' (Catalogue Poems 170-3).
45 'And this ^thfelwulf] was the son of Ecgberht' and so forth. Due to their repetitive
nature, I will not translate genealogical passages in this chapter. The brackets at the
ends of lines in the transcription indicate material missing as a result of the crop-
ping of the page.
46 Two of the three points in this genealogy occur after patronymics; the third occurs
between a nominative and the following patronymic.
47 In the preceding section, I noted that the additions to this genealogical passage
appeared to be marked by the forms characteristic of the chronicler's genealogies.
Dumville, in his edition, includes this material, only noting in the textual variants
that this information is omitted from BL Additional 23,211. Yet the variation must
be more significant: BL Additional 23,211 preserves only the genealogy of Êthel-
wulf to Cerdic: to suppose that scribal error (through loss) is responsible for the dif-
ference seems inappropriate (cf Sisam, 'Royal Genealogies' 155). Most probably,
BL Additional 23,211 represents a stage in the development of the WSRT before
this information regarding jEthelwulfs indirect ancestors was added. Notice also
the presumably unusual form of '7cu5burg. cenreding. 7cuenburg. cenreding.'
where female names are supplemented by the patronymic: either we must allow for
the possibility that traditional genealogical lore included more information about
women than the preserved genealogies would indicate, or we have a second justifi-
cation for the conclusion that this material (like the perfectly alliterating passage of
the Cerdic-to-Woden ing pedigree) was a late addition to the genealogical record
and was not in keeping with traditional forms.
48 Points precede the genealogies in 755A and 855A. In the Parker Chronicle, points
follow genealogies only at the ends of annals, except in the case of 855A.
49 The brackets at the ends of the fifth and sixth lines indicate places where the bind-
ing made it impossible for me to determine if points were present or not. The
inserted text '7 ine' is written in the left-hand margin, with a mark of insertion at
the proper point in the text.
50 In the earlier genealogy of Cerdic in this text, the scribe has regularized the Parker
scribe's practice, pointing some names that are unpointed in the Parker exemplar.
By the time he gets to the genealogy of îthelwulf, though, he is beginning to adopt
the standard pointing practice, although still nof completely.
51 In this context, it is worth noting the form of the 449E genealogy (which is not one
of the Common Stock genealogies, but rather is a feature of the Northern Recen-
sion). It reads: 'Heora heretogan waeron twegen gebrodra. Hengest. 7 horsa. P~

waeron wihtgilses suna. wihtgils waes witting, witting witta. wecting wecta. wodn-
ing' (fo. 7r: Their war-leaders were two brothers, Hengest and Horsa, who were
the sons of Wihtgils. Wihtgils was the son of Witta; Witta son of Wecta; Wecta son
of Woden'). This genealogy should prompt a number of interesting observations.
First, it is worth noting that in this translation of material from Bede, Bede's
account of the ancestry of Hengist and Horsa is put into traditional alliterating
form, though the same is not true of the translation of the same passage in the Old
English Bede (see below). Second, the use of manuscript points after every second
name in the genealogy seems to suggest scribal knowledge of the pointing tradition
described above; the fact that the scribe writes 'Witting' twice, however, upsets the
functioning of the points. The E scribe's adherence to this pointing convention can
here be observed in the breach; nevertheless, the 449E genealogy may well suggest
that the twelfth-century Peterborough scribe was none too familiar with the genea-
logical genre.
52 The exception, of course, is the regularly alliterating passage of jEthelwulf's gene-
alogy, as apparently revised by the Common Stock chronicler.
53 It seems that O'Brien O'Keeffe's conclusion becomes all the more remarkable in
light of the genealogical data: the initial tenth-century response (to point b-lines,
primarily) might be seen as corresponding to an identification of the 'long-line' as
the basic unit of verse, as the single generation was the basic unit of the genealogy.
The switch to pointing a-lines as well as b-lines may mark an important shift in
how poetic structure was conceptualized in later Anglo-Saxon England. See further
chapter 4, below.
54 Recall that The Menologium and Maxims II, though immediately preceding the C
Chronicle, are in the C Chronicle's first hand, while hand C2 begins at annal 491. It
is hand C2, then, which is responsible for the pointing of the C genealogies and all
of the C poems except that under 1065C.
55 A second possible explanation for the insistent pointing of the Chronicle genealo-
gies might be that the conjunction of metrical form and syntactical form (where, in
effect, clause boundaries always correspond to the ends of 'half-lines') proved irre-
sistible in these 'genealogical poems.' But the evidence I have presented in this
section for the development of the genealogical pointing tradition (and of 449E,
where the pointing runs counter to the syntax) suggests that the more conservative
interpretation - that the genres of genealogy and poetry were subject to different
pointing conventions - is probably the safest.
56 Of course, the chronicler's use of 'verselike' models for genealogical verses that
included features such as non-classical anacrusis implies the same thing: the chron-
icler's poetic sense must not spring from an in-depth knowledge of an oral-poetic
tradition. Instead the Common Stock chronicler's use of non-classical poetic mod-
els for the composition of genealogical verses strongly argues for the chronicler's
immersion in a highly literate milieu.
57 'At first, then, their leaders and commanders were two brothers, Hengest and
Horsa. They were the sons of Wihtgyls, whose father was called Witta, whose
father was called Wihta, and the father of this Wihta was named Woden.' Transla-
tions throughout are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
58 The Common Stock does not include the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa in the
narrative of the invasion, but when the relevant portion of Bede is retranslated for
the Northern Recension, the traditional alliterating form of the genealogy is used.
For further discussion of the Northern Recension, see chapter 3.
59 'Of whose stock the royal families of many kingdoms draw their origin.'
60 'Wuffa, from whom the kings of the East Angles are called Wuffings.' Note Bede's
use in both the genealogy of îthelberht and Raedwald of the Old English -ingas
forms.
61 For example, 'Eadbalt filius Alguing' (78), 'Soemil genuit Sguerthing' (78),
'... Alhun, genuit Adlsing' (78). See Sisam, 'Royal Genealogies' 150-2 for the sug-
gestion that the Historia Brittonum draws on a document similar to the Vespasian
collection.
62 The three sons of Noah divided the world into three parts after the flood. Sem in
Asia extended his boundaries; Cham in Africa; Japheth in Europe. The first man of
Japheth's family who came into Europe was Alanus with his three sons, whose
names are Hessitio, Armenon, and Negue. Hessitio had four sons; they are Francus,
Romanus, Britto, Albanus. Armenon had five sons: Gothus, Walagothus, Gebidus,
Burgundus, [and Langobardus]. Negue had three sons: Wandalus, Saxo, Boguarus.
From Hessitio are the origins of four races: the Franks, the Latins, the Albans, and
the British.' The passage goes on to identify the other races originated by the
grandsons of Alanus.
63 The same is not true of the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa in chapter 31 of the
Historia Brittonum, which, nevertheless, extends beyond Woden to Geta, while the
Vespasian genealogy extends only to the verse 'Uoden Frealafing' (Dumville,
'Anglian Collection,' 31). Note also that the sequence 'Hors et Hengist... filii
Guictglis, filii Guitta' (HB 67; 'Horsa and Hengist... sons of Guictglis, sons of
Guitta') agrees with Bede against Vespasian, which reads, 'Hengest fitting' and
'Uitta Uihtgilsing' (Dumville, 'Anglian Collection' 31).
64 The use of descentual genealogies in the Historia Brittonum is not entirely consist-
ent in chapters 57-61; the Mercian descendants of Pybba (ch. 60) and the two
wives of the Northumbrian Oswy ('Osguid,' ch. 57) have their ancestries traced,
for example.
65 Sisam ignores the fact, for example, that the 'natural' order for episcopal lists even
in Vespasian B vi is to put the most chronologically remote name at the top of the
list, with more recent names towards the bottom (see Plate I). Such an order is pre-
cisely opposite to the ordering of Vespasian's columnar genealogies. The only 'nat-
ural' feature of the ancestral genealogy in Anglo-Saxon England seems to be that
the traditional alliterative form was itself ancestral. But in a Latin text such as the
Historia Brittonum, both forms seem equally natural, and the choice must be seen
as rhetorical.
66 Sisam suggests that 'His text points to a pedigree of jEthelwulf, possibly contained
in the copy of the Chronicle used by Êthelweard but more likely to be preserved in
a family tradition, from which the five names from Heremod to Bedwig were
absent' ('Royal Genealogies' 175). My suggestion here is that the existence of
forms such as 'Geat Taetwaing' suggests that, while Sisam is undoubtedly right to
hypothesize an earlier form roughly like that recorded in j£thelweard, even the
names preserved there are not traditional and should be attributed to the chronicler.
67 Note Sisam's comment: '[jEthelweard] omits Cutha = Cuthwulf before Cuthwine,
which is a natural slip, since Cutha is a short form for both the compound names'
('Royal Genealogies,' 175, nl). The name 'Cupwulf appears in this position in the
WSRT (including the Parker version) but in none of the Chronicle manuscripts,
where it appears, instead, as 'Cuba.' As noted above, the uncontracted forms
'Cubaing' in the Parker Chronicle seem to belong to the chronicler; the conclusion
that 'Cubaing' was a late addition to the Chronicle's genealogies that was neverthe-
less not present in Êthelweard's copy seems to be unavoidable.
68 Here I depart from Sisam, who suggests: 'Up to Scyld |7Ethelweard's] Chronicle
seems to have had that most developed form of the pedigree which appears in the
Parker MS., and for the part beyond Scyld it is unlikely that the names in Asser and
all extant copies of the Chronicle were unknown to Athelweard and his correspond-
ents' ('Royal Genealogies' 175, n5-176). It is perfectly plausible to suppose that
Athelweard simply relies upon the form of the 855 genealogy in the Chronicle
manuscript he has at hand.
69 The names here, of course, correspond closely to those in Asser: 'Cerdic,' 'Elesa,'
'Geuuis,' 'Brond,' 'Beldeag,' 'Uuoden' (Stevenson 2; eliminating his bracketed
reconstructions). Note that the verse forms of 'Aluca Giwising' (Sx/(x)Sx), 'Giwis
Branding' (x/Ssx), and 'Brand Baeldaeging' (S/Ssx) were all identified above as
boih unusual in Vespasian and typical of the chronicler's genealogical forms.
70 Sisam dates this passage to the reign of Egbert, '802-39' ('Royal Genealogies'
163); Dumville supposes it is original to the Anglian collection's original copy
(39-40), though he does not offer much explanation for its failure to appear in
either Vespasian or the Historia Brittonum. The arguments of both are complex and
difficult; nevertheless, it seems most likely to me that the Alfredian chronicler is
responsible for both this form of the genealogy and its classically alliterating revi-
sion. See below.
71 Notably, all the copies of this collection that include the West Saxon genealogy of
Ine themselves have origins connected to the circles of Alfred and his descendants:
CCCC 183, as noted above, seems to have been commissioned by jEthelstan; BL
Cotton Tiberius B v includes with the genealogies 'material belonging to the West
Saxon tradition of royal records' (Dumville, 'Anglian Collection' 27). Preceding
the genealogies in Tiberius B v is 'an unpublished regnal list for Wessex'; follow-
ing the genealogies is 'an elaborate genealogy of King Edgar' (27). The version of
the genealogies in the Textus Roffensis also includes the genealogy of Edgar. These
West Saxon associations thus limit the power of Dumville's conclusion that the
West Saxon genealogy of Ine was original to the Anglian Collection; it is at least as
likely that the genealogy was appended to an Alfredian copy that later spawned
these other copies. The argument made here about innovative forms, then, is not
necessarily in conflict with other features of the textual history of the genealogical
collection.
72 One wonders if the use of the equally unusual name form 'Gesecg' near the end of
the East Saxon genealogies in BL Additional 23,211 might have been motivated by
a similar eponymic urge.
73 Cf Alexander Callander Murray's essay, 'Beowulf, the Danish Invasions, and Royal
Genealogy,' in the Chase volume, The Dating of Beowulf. Also, Sisam notes about
another pair of names, 'Freawine and Wig, father and son, belong to heroic legend'
('Royal Genealogies' 164).
74 We should probably recall Asser's comments about Alfred's love for 'Saxon songs'
in Asser's chapter 23; for an intriguing reading of this material, see the second
chapter of Seth Lerer's Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature.
75 See, for example, Hayden White's fascinating account of these terms in relation to
their relative degrees of 'narrativity' in chapter 1 of The Content of the Form.
2: Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the Context of the Common Stock
1 Consider Michael Swanton's comment in his recent translation of the Chronicle:

'Notable is the remarkable story of the coup d'etat at Merton (s.a. 755) where the
scribe has incorporated what appears to be saga material complete with exchanges
in direct speech; this seems undoubtedly to derive from oral, perhaps poetic, trans-
mission. The mere mention of the names Cynewulf and Cyneheard had triggered
an anachronistic entry which properly belonged thirty-one years on, s.a. 784'
(xvii).
2 'And the same year, they killed ^thelbald, king of the Mercians, at Seckington,
and his body lies in Repton; and Beornred took over the kingdom and held it but a
little while, and miserably. And the same year, Offa took over the kingdom and
ruled 39 years, and his son Ecgferth ruled 41 days and 100 days.'
3 The two-year dislocation that causes the 755 annal to record events from 757 is
well-recognized (see, for example, Plummer II, cii-ciii). I do not mean to suggest
that the dislocation itself was contrived to bring about the hundred-year spacing,
but it might be significant that the 855 genealogy is not placed at ^thelwulf's
accession (recorded in annal 836). The placement of the 855 genealogy in the same
annal as the record of Êthelwulf's journey to Rome seems appropriate, but it may
be far from insignificant (in the context of annal 755) that the genealogy is delayed
from its expected position in 836 to 855.
4 The genealogy of Offa is missing from the student editions of Whitelock (Sweet's)
and of Mitchell and Robinson. It is likewise missing from the texts or translations
provided in the essays by Waterhouse, Wrenn, Moorman, Magoun, Battaglia, Tow-
ers, and Wilson.
5 Whitelock's student text from Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader is used by Johansen
and Heinemann; Mitchell and Robinson's text is used by S.D. White and Rulon-
Miller.
6 McTurk is an exception to the general lack of attention paid to textual variants; his
essay on the annal includes an edition with 'substantial variants' from manuscripts
ABCDE.
7 Nor does Whitelock truly note all places where A stands alone against the BCDE
group; in three places not noted by Whitelock A uses the ge- prefix where the oth-
ers do not; at one point A reads 'him mid' where the rest have 'mid him.' Obvi-
ously, such differences are minor, but they are worth noting, especially considering
Whitelock's claim.
8 An alternative term, also moving from Old French studies (particularly the work of
Paul Zumthor) into English medievalists' vocabulary is 'mouvance.' Mouvance
appears to highlight the processes that result in variation.
9 'Oral residue' is Walter Ong's term (Fleischman 21, n5); see also, however, the
essay by Albert Lord, 'Oral Composition and "Oral Residue" in the Middle Ages.'
Indeed, the essays contained in this collection (Nicolaisen's Oral Tradition and the
Middle Ages) and in Machan's Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation might
provide useful points of reference for the impact of these perspectives on Medieval
English studies, although their focus tends to be in the Middle English period.
10 'Offa was the son of tnncferth.' Lutz actually prints 'Se Offa waes fnncferping' for
G*, but notes that both Wheelock's edition and Nowell's transcript read 'se waes
offa pincferping' (31). See the Appendix for an explanation of the notation I use
here for locating such quoted readings from the 755 texts.
11 The close relationships between B and C and between D and E have long been rec-
ognized. Janet Bately (Texts and Textual Relationships) has recently suggested that
the BC and DE families together constitute a single, larger manuscript family;
while this may be so, I will identify cases where the AG* group deviates from
BCDE as innovation in A rather than innovation in the hypothetical shared ancestor

ofBCDE.
12 Implied here, of course, is a distinction that can be drawn between 'orthographic'
variations and 'substantive' variations. See the Appendix, where the innovations
are tabulated and identified, for a fuller discussion of this distinction.
13 Of course, the innovation seen in E here may well have taken place in some earlier
manuscript. Nevertheless, for the purposes of my counting of innovations in this
chapter, I label innovations according to the texts they appear in, rather than com-
plicating the issues by constantly invoking potential ancestor manuscripts. I do
treat the BC and DE families as well enough established to justify the assertion of a
single ancestor; the innovations attributed here to BC and DE themselves appear to
justify this procedure.
14 For example, note that the BC family is characterized by monosyllabic 'cing' for
the 'cyning' used most frequently elsewhere. B and C stand against the rest in
every occurrence of this word in annal 755, which might be counted as an addi-
tional nine shared innovations in this annal. I discuss the use of capitals or enlarged
litterae notabiliores in section 2.2.
15 Because of this indeterminacy, a comment such as the following from Mitchell and
Robinson's student edition of the annal seems somewhat misleading, possibly even
disingenuous: The text is that of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 173
except in line 29, where we adopt cyfrde, the reading of most manuscripts, for
cyddon [sic] of our manuscript' (Guide 208). While literally true (if the evidence of
manuscript G* is ignored), this assertion does not take into account the familial
relationships of the surviving manuscripts, relationships that make the judgment
based upon mere numbers irrelevant.
16 It is at least possible that the scribe of B uses the abbreviation 'b~' both for 'paet'
and for 'oppaet.' However, compare 755B: 20c, where B reads 'opp~' for the other
manuscripts' 'op.'
17 'And then, on account of the woman's cries, the king's thegns discovered the
commotion and then ran there as they were then ready and swiftest; and the aethe-
ling offered to each of them life and property; and none of them wished to receive
it.'
18 'And then, on account of the woman's cries, the king's thegns discovered the com-
motion and then they ran there, as they were then ready and swiftest, and none of
them would settle it.'
19 One should compare Cerquiglini's comment: 'the variant is never punctual. Para-
phrastic activity works on the utterance itself, like dough; variance is not to be
grasped through the word; this must be done, rather, at least at the level of the sen-
tence if not, indeed, at the very heart of the complete utterance' (78). In the cases of
rewriting and indeterminate innovation, the record of annal 755 really does
approach to variance', but, as I have noted, cases of innovation outnumber those of

variance, at least for this text. See below.
20 Besides the two examples just given, another case appears to be 755E: 19a, where
the CD texts indicate a non-innovative reading something like: 'heora naenig
bicgan nolde' (755D: 19a), while E reads 'heo naenig bicgan noldan.' The E scribe
here reads 'heo' rather than 'naenig' as the subject, and this leads him to change the
verb form as well. The addition of 'ba' in 755C: 14a likewise may have been
prompted by the eyeskip in 755C: 13b.
21 The primary evidence for any saga-like tradition in Anglo-Saxon England is the
Cynewulf and Cyneheard narrative itself. Note that, in another context, orality has
also been linked to later Anglo-Saxon prose texts; see Andy Orchard's 'Crying
Wolf essay, which investigates the prose of Wulfstan.
22 Here is just a sampling of those who attribute the annal's style, parallelism of
action, or heroic sentiment to the story's supposedly oral roots. Whitelock suggests
that This long account in annal 755 is from some non-annalistic source, possibly
oral tradition' (Sweet's 1); PIummer compares the annal with Icelandic sagas: 'The
annal which most recalls the Sagas is the slaying of Cynewulf and Cyneheard
under 755; and that too may have developed orally before it was written down'
(Plummer II, xx n). Mitchell and Robinson defer to other critics: 'The narration is
so swift and breathless, the selection of detail so adroit, that some scholars have felt
that the chronicler was recording a saga refined by many retellings in oral tradition'
(208). Greenfield and Calder also appear to hedge their bets, writing, 'the story is
detailed in a prose that suggests an oral tradition or an even earlier written source'
(60), but even this seems to imply that an 'earlier written source' would presuma-
bly have more 'oral-like' features.
23 Since I am here considering prose, I use 'formulaic' not in the strict sense in which
it is employed by oral formulaicists, but simply to mean more or less 'frozen'
expressions, repeated with little or no variation from one occurrence to another.
24 Compare: '7 baes ymb .iii. wiecan' (878A); '7 ba denescan ahton waelstowe
gewald' (833A); '7 ba deniscan ahton waelstowe gewald' (837A); '7 ba deniscan
sige namon' (870A); 'aepered westseaxna cyning 7 aelfred his brobur' (868A); '7
baer wearb micel wael geslaegen' (833A); '7 baer was ungemetlic wael geslaegen'
(867A); '7 paer weard ordheh cyninges pegn ofslaegen' (893A); and '7 paer wearp
monig mon ofslaegen 7 adruncen on gehwaepere hond' (853A).
25 As there are many other, even more common, formulaic phrases in the Chronicle:
'Her N forpferde'; '7 py ilcan geare'; 'N waes to aercebiscepe gehadod'; and so
forth.
26 The exception, of course, is the scribe of manuscript F, who radically abbreviates
this annal. The activities of this scribe are discussed in more detail in chapter 5.
27 Wilson, for one, does attempt to historicize his reading by describing the chronicler
responsible for this annal as 'Living under the shadow of the Dane in a period when
monarchs rose and fell with startling suddenness, and aware of a deep-seated long-
ing in the hearts of his countrymen under the leadership of Alfred for stability and
order' (314). Towers also briefly suggests that 'national feeling' in the late ninth
century can account for the appearance of this 'old tale of princely ambition, rebel-
lion, and royal reform' (316) in the Chronicle.
28 Again, Wilson is the exception to the rule, citing Beorhtric's succession from annal
784. Yet, even so, Wilson brings the issue up only to dismiss it: This kinsman
[Beorhtric] is not mentioned in the 755 entry, and, for the purposes of the chroni-
cler, it was not necessary that he be. As far as the development of his exemplum is
concerned, the chronicler gives us Osric as the lone survivor who could take charge
for the time being' (316, n5). Magoun also cites the 784 annal in full, but makes no
further reference to it in his analysis.
29 Magoun's opinion here is particularly blunt: 'Osric is in every sense the hero of the
narrative' (374).
30 For the use of litterae notabiliores across a spectrum of medieval texts, see Parkes,
Pause and Effect.
31 In all five surviving Anglo-Saxon versions (ABCDE), the annal also begins with an
enlarged or capital h, but my focus, of course, is on the internal markers of struc-
ture.
32 The texts or translations of the following critics show paragraph breaks at this
point: Magoun, Towers, Wrenn, Waterhouse. Wilson, Ferro. The student editions
by Whitelock and Mitchell and Robinson likewise include paragraph breaks here,
although the critical editions of Plummer, Bately, Classen and Harmer, Rositzke,
and Taylor do not. Plummer, interestingly, includes within his edition of A the cap-
itals in 'Ac' and 't>a' (which, however, Plummer prints as 'Da') as well as the
heavy mark of punctuation preceding 'Ac.' Bately also includes both capitals and
notes the mark of punctuation in a footnote. Plummer is careful to limit his mod-
ernization of capitals in this annal to proper names; Bately, however, includes other
capital letters in her edition, in addition to proper names, so the significance of
these manuscript capitals in her text is effectively occluded.
33 I underline the first letter in the 755B passage to indicate that it is enlarged; in the
Appendix, I print it in a larger size.
34 Waterhouse suggests that There is a certain admiration implied in their aspiration
to emulate the king's thanes, and there is a kind of envy in the term "eowre" that
they are "yours" and not "ours." ' (639). This interpretation, of course, sees Cyne-
heard's men not only as in the wrong but as knowing (or thinking) themselves that
they are wrong, or at least less heroic than Cynewulf's men. But surely we need
only read their comment as implying that their loyalty and honour are quite the
equal of Cynewulf's men's. Compare Waterhouse's position to Johansen's: 'they
[Cyneheard's men] implicitly accept the conduct of Cynewulf s men as defining

correct behavior in such circumstances. As a result, even when they themselves can
be said to act in accordance with the heroic ethos, they focus our attention on the
greater heroism of Cynewulf's men' (5).
35 See note 34, above. Also see Wilson: 'there may be some question as to the purity
of the motives of Cyneheard' (315).
36 In his study The hireling,' David Dumville conveniently summarizes the succes-
sion of kings from Alfred to Edmund in 1016 (2).
37 If Eric John is correct in maintaining that the Chronicle's reference to Alfred's
papal consecration in 853 is to be understood in the context of Êthelwulf's appar-
ent desire to prevent his kingdom from being divided at his death (Reassessing 71-
4), then we should probably also conclude that >Ethelwulf had managed to ensure
that his kingdom would pass only to his sons (and, certainly, this is what did hap-
pen to Êthelwulf's kingdom). It is /Ethelwulf, therefore, whom we ought to credit
with instituting a West Saxon dynasty; the record of the Chronicle (including the
755 annal), however, indicates that Alfred worked hard to keep the dynastic impart-
ibility of the kingdom in effect. Note that John's argument provides a nice account
of the passage in Alfred's will that effectively disinherits ^thelred's sons.
38 Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr, has recently argued for a familial relation between the two,
though by analogy rather than the direct evidence of the annal: 'the relationship
between Cynewulf and Cyneheard can best be understood as that of paternal uncle
and nephew' (454). Since we know that Cyneheard was Sigebryht's brother,
Cynewulf would seem to have been uncle to both, if this view is correct.
39 The DE innovation in the first clause of the annal, adding the qualifier 'his maege'
to make it read 'Her cynewulf benam sigebryhte his maege his rices' (755D: 1),
explicitly contrasts 'his maege' with the later 'se cyneheard wes baes sigebrihtes
brodor' (755E: 8-9) to suggest that Cyneheard's relation to Sigebryht is much
closer than Cynewulf's.
3: The Post-Alfredian Annals
1 The A manuscript appears to have originally dated this annal as 900, and I follow
Bately's edition in citing annals from A by number in this section. See Bately's edi-
tion, pages xcviii-xcix, for commentary on the dates and their alterations in this
section of the Parker manuscript. The other manuscripts (BCD) date this annal to
901, and the annal is frequently discussed as 'annal 901.'
2 'Here Alfred son of jEthelwulf passed away ... and then Edward his son succeeded
to the kingdom. Then îthelwald his paternal uncle's son occupied the estate at
Wimborne and at Twinham without the leave of the king and his councillors. Then
the king rode out with an army until he camped at Badbury near Wimborne; and
jEthelwald sat in the estate with the men that submitted to him and had all the gates
fortified against them, and [he] said he would either live there or die there. Then
beneath that [cover], he stole away at night and sought the army amongst the
Northumbrians; and the king commanded [the army] to ride after him, and then no
one might overtake him. Then they rode after the woman that he had earlier seized
without the king's leave, and against the order of the bishops, since she was earlier
consecrated as a nun.'
3 Bremmer notes the similarities between the 755 annal and the 901 annal: 'the
Chronicle entry for 901 bears a remarkable resemblance to that of 755: a barricaded
fortification with a rebel inside, a loyal retinue, an immanent clash [sic, for "immi-
nent"?], and a resolve to fight till the end. There is even a woman involved. The
outcome, though, is rather stale as compared to the enduring loyalty which resulted
in destructive violence in the annual [sic] for 755' ('Germanic Context' 453).
Bremmer, however, makes no further comment on the relationship, using annal 901
only to buttress his assertion that Cynewulf and Cyneheard are uncle and nephew,
as are Alfred and Êthelwold.
4 See Clark, 'Narrative Mode' 221-4; also Bately, 'Manuscript Layout' 25 ('the
scribe of annal-numbers *894 to *896 enters them in the centre of the line above
the annal-material').
5 See note 1, above.
6 Whitelock's comment is typical: 'Both [D and E] differ from the versions hitherto
discussed in their inclusion in the early part of the Chronicle of much material of
northern interest, drawn from Bede and from other northern annals' (ASC xiv).
7 Note the powerful point made by Parkes that the Laws of Alfred and Ine originally
followed 25v, as if, at the time the Laws was added, the Chronicle had been consid-
ered to be at an end ('Palaeography').
8 In other words, if A was updated in 912 and the BC archetype in 916, then no
more than four years passed between successive updates of the common source.
Even if Ker is right that 892A-924A are all in one hand, then perhaps ten years
separate the updating of the BC ancestor (after 915) and A (after 924). Obvi-
ously, if Bately is right about the makeup of this section, then A was presumably
updated both around 912 and around 925. Neither vEthelweard's Chronicle nor
the Northern Recension appears to have had access to this possibly 'official' doc-
ument; see below.
9 On the manuscript context of the Register, see now Paul E. Szarmach's essay,
'^Selflaed of Mercia: Mise en page.'
10 Szarmach goes even further in hypothesizing (on the basis of the usage of the Lati-
nate 'dative absolute') that 'Somewhere in the genesis of the Mercian Register is a
Latin account or perhaps poem that offers the gesta Adelfledf (119). While the
dative absolute may indeed mark Latinate influence, I am not convinced that such
structures enter Old English only through translation and not through other pro-
cesses, such as explicit instruction in Latin (and Latinate) composition.
11 In the B manuscript, a 'c' has apparently dropped out: for a presumed 'dcccxcvi'
and so forth, there appears 'dcccxvi' et cetera. Comparison with C suggests, how-
ever, that this is in fact simply a feature of B, and that the BC ancestor did read 896
and the like.
12 The probable date of this collation is worth investigating. The Mercian Register
seems to include annals extending to 924 (the fact that annal 924 appears to break
off in mid-sentence is perhaps best explained if the exemplar of the Register ended
imperfectly at this point). Thus, the BC ancestor was first produced no earlier than
924. If Simon Taylor is correct that 'C was using B as his exemplar... from 947 to
977' (MS B 1), then that might point to the probability that the collation was
accomplished no later than 956 (the first 'fruitful' annal in BC after 946). But the
uncertainty of the relationship between B and C may suggest that we cannot date
the collation with certainty other than to say it must precede the apparent produc-
tion of B in the later 970s. Regardless, it seems that by the middle tenth century the
existence of varying Chronicles was well enough known to prompt this act of colla-
tion.
13 One might recall that Êthelweard traces his descent to king Êthelred, brother of
Alfred, and that ^Cthelwold was himself ./Ethelred's son. The significance (or even
directness) of the familial relationship between the two is not clear, and JEthel-
weard's silence about Mhelwold's rebellion may be due to his source. But then
again, it is tempting to wonder if /Ethelweard's lack of access to the Edwardian
annals and his Chronicle's 'northern' interest during this period might stem from
jEthelwold's association with the Danes. Such a question, however, cannot be
answered, and the Edwardian bias in jEthelweard's 893 annal suggests that the sta-
tus of his exemplar was highly complex, at best.
14 In chapter 5,1 suggest that yEthelweard's Chronicle manuscript may not have con-
tained any annals later than 946, suggesting that if this text was northern it proba-
bly arrived there no later than mid-century, or we would expect to see later annals
added to it along with the existing northern-interest annals in Êthelweard.
15 As I hope is clear (or will become clear) I take the 'Northern Recension' to be the
production of a revised Common Stock, possibly to include further annals up to the
point in time where the revision was accomplished. This Northern Recension might
then have become (as seems clearly to have been the case with the E manuscript)
the 'Stock' upon which a further Chronicle or Chronicles might be based. My argu-
ment here is largely concerned with establishing a date for the act of revision that
resulted in the Northern Recension.
16 Plummer's claim that the 'barrenness of E' after 892 suggested that the Northern
Recension was accomplished before any annals had been added beyond 892 (II,
cxix, n2). But the status of D as a conflation calls this into question, as D's record
of the 'Wars of Alfred' annals (and later annals not present in E) almost certainly
stems from the act of conflation; see below.
17 The notion of preparing a 'local' (perhaps specifically monastic) Chronicle also
seems to have had some currency later in the tenth century. See Patrick Conner's
edition of The Abingdon Chronicle for an argument for such a localized Chronicle.
18 In principle, any date before the much-noted divergence of D and E after annal
1031 might be possible for the act of revision responsible for the Northern Recen-
sion. I will argue here, however, for a much earlier date. The F manuscript is also a
Northern Recension manuscript, although it, too, is a conflation, this time with A.
But the abbreviated contents of F prevent it from adding much of significance to
my argument here, and I will refer to it only when necessary.
19 The material missing entirely from D (the gap from annal number 261 to the sur-
viving portions of annal 693) also complicates the picture.
20 It is very tempting to speculate that this preface (with its geographical opening,
referring to the entirety of the island of Britain) was intended to replace the explic-
itly West Saxon WSRT, which was closely associated with A and B (and, presuma-
bly, the BC ancestor: C's non-use of the WSRT may derive from its association
with the Orosius translation and the poems that precede the Chronicle). Unfortu-
nately, it is probably impossible to determine whether the WSRT was 'published'
along with the Chronicle, although it seems likely to have been. If the 'Brittene
igland' preface of the Northern Recension did indeed replace the WSRT, that would
fit quite well with my general argument that the Recension was intended as a more
'national' document than the West Saxon-oriented Common Stock.
21 Note also that the genealogy of Offa in annal 755 is reduced in both D and E to a
single generation, and thus that D does not reinsert this genealogy, although the
reduction of the genealogy should probably be attributed to the Northern Recen-
sion.
22 The genealogy in annal 738 is present in both D and E. This is the only genealogy
of the Common Stock that does not seem to have been removed during the prepara-
tion of the Northern Recension. It may be significant that (at two generations long)
it is both the shortest of the Common Stock genealogies and the most syntactically
integrated of them, and was hence both the least intrusive and the most difficult to
excise.
23 Annals 449 and 593, of course, are missing entirely from the D manuscript, so the
E witness is the only one upon which we can rely for information about the North-
ern Recension. The F manuscript summarizes 449 without the genealogy and
leaves out annal 593 entirely.
24 We might note, in addition, that the middle tenth century had already seen a great
deal of conflationary activity with respect to the Chronicle: the incorporation of the
Mercian Register into the BC ancestor; and the addition of annal 710 by the Parker
Chronicle's scribe 3. If these activities are any indication, by mid-century chroni-
clers were already trying to rectify and minimize the diversity of existing Chroni-
cles rather than producing new versions.
25 Even the details are sometimes important: litterae notabiliores are used in the 871
annal to mark the sentence that narrates the accession of Alfred to the throne in all
of the Chronicle manuscripts, including D and E. This important moment in West
Saxon history is not downplayed in the Northern Recension.
4: The Chronicle Poems
1 See, for example, the comment of John C. Pope: The later poems of the Chronicle
also begin with Her, and in one of them, The Coronation of Edgar, it is clearly
required by the metre. Perhaps some or all of these later poems were written specif-
ically for the Chronicle, as The Battle ofBrunanburh in all likelihood was not.'
(Seven Poems 58). More recently, Paul E. Szarmach writes: The insertion of the
Battle ofBrunanburh as the 937 entry may be the most famous literary interven-
tion' into the Chronicle ('/Edelflaed' 107).
2 There was no greater slaughter on this island ever yet, of folk felled by the edges
of swords, before this, as the books tell us, the old authorities, since here from the
east Angles and Saxons came up over the broad waves, sought Britain. The proud
war-smiths overcame the Welsh; fame-eager warriors seized the (home)land.' As
here, the canonical Chronicle poems will generally be cited from theASPR, unless
otherwise indicated, except in cases where manuscript forms are the salient fea-
tures of the illustrative quotations.
3 A fuller reading of Brunanburh (and of this passage from it) is included below in
section 4.3.
4 The ASPR prints the poems found in annals 937ABCD (The Battle ofBrunanburh),
942ABCD (The Capture of the Five Boroughs), 973ABC (The Coronation of
Edgar), 975ABC (The Death of Edgar), 1036CD (The Death of Alfred), and
1065CD (The Death of Edward). In addition, Plummer prints portions of the fol-
lowing annals as poems: 959DE, 975DE, 975D, 979DE, 1011CDE, 1057D, 1067D,
1075E/1076D, 1086E (William the Conqueror), and 1104E. Since two separate
passages appear in the 1075E/1076D annal, this gives a total of seventeen poetic
passages. The hypothesis that lies behind this chapter is my belief that we should
read all of these passages as poems rather than as prose; one of my goals will be to
show that such is the case. For ease of reference, I will generally refer to poems
simply according to the annal they appear under (as listed here), though, necessar-
ily, I will distinguish the 975ABC, 975DE, and 975D poems and the 1075E/
1076Da and 1075E/1076Db poems. I will also occasionally refer to these poems by
their familiar titles, where they have them and where doing so will not cause
confusion.
5 It is worth remembering that the Chronicle was fairly well studied in the sixteenth
century by early Anglo-Saxonists such as Robert Talbot, John Joscelin, and Lau-
rence Nowell. See Lutz's important article on these last two scholars' contributions
to study of the Chronicle.
6 O'Brien O'Keeffe's argument demands that the poems she considers spring from a
formulaic tradition that is heir to a purely oral-formulaic tradition. Since neither
she nor anyone else (so far as I am aware) argues for a tradition of oral-formulaic
composition of rhyming poetry in Anglo-Saxon England, it is not at all clear to me
why she includes a consideration of the 1036 poem, unless she simply feels com-
pelled to examine it because of its presence in the ASPR. For a fuller account of
O'Brien O'Keeffe's argument in this book, see below.
7 Note also that O'Brien O'Keeffe generally characterizes the second scribe of man-
uscript D as barely competent; she likewise dispenses with both the 1036 and 1065
poems in less than a page.
8 I follow Ker's reading of the manuscripts here for the identification of the various
scribes; scribes identified with annal numbers are those responsible for annals that
were apparently written up at short intervals, presumably close to the events
described.
9 Many of my observations here about the visual presentation of the Chronicle
poems are also included in my essay The Boundaries between Poetry and Prose in
Old English Manuscripts.'
10 One expects to see a comment on the pointing of 973A on page 133 of O'Brien
O'Keeffe's Visible Song, but there is none. I see fourteen points after b-lines and
eleven points after a-lines in this twenty-line poem.
11 'He forbid the [hunting of] harts, and so likewise of boars; he greatly loved the
stags as if he were their father; likewise he ruled about the hares that they might go
free.' For what I hope are obvious reasons, poetic passages cited in this section will
generally be presented as this one is: with the manuscript punctuation and capitali-
zation, but with abbreviations expanded and marked by italics. I use modern con-
ventions of layout to highlight poetic structure. The letter erased before 'faran' in
the passage above appears to have been an/.
12 'But they must in all follow the king's will.'
13 'With bodily heart, in this short life.'
14 Interlined above 'lichoman' in this poem are the letters 'Here,' apparently to give
'lichomlicre.' There is, however, no mark of deletion present.
15 The 1075E passages are not helpful here because in the first couplet, the first
(unpointed) rhyme word falls at a line end, where the lack of a point may not be
particularly significant; in the second passage, rhyme is less of a feature than in the
corresponding 1076D passage.
16 Note also that capitals are used in the D version of the 975DE poem at the begin-
nings of (poetic) lines 1 3, 5, and 7; it is possible that these capitals serve primarily
to distinguish this passage from prose. Also in manuscript D, the poetic passage
from annal 979 is followed by a small space and a prominent letter ('Her feng
aepelred to rice,' etc.). Since the space is here relatively small, however (no more
than two letters long), and since this poem has six capitals in the D manuscript, it is
difficult to determine if this is intended to mark the end of the poem visually or not.
It is possible, though, that the D scribe uses litterae notabiliores within the poem
(and after it) to help readers to differentiate poetry and prose. See also my com-
ments below on the spatial layout of the relevant passages in 958F and 979F.
17 'Kings widely honoured him greatly.' This is how this line appears (sans capital
letter) in the editions both of Classen and Harmer and of Cubbin, though Cubbin, of
course, prints the entire passage as prose. Neither edition marks the probable inser-
tion of s discussed below.
18 'Kings honoured him far and wide.'
19 This possibility is difficult to prove, however. Certainly, the ascender in the d in
this word is shorter and more nearly horizontal than in other occurrences of this let-
ter in this annal, but it is still not nearly as horizontal as are the ascenders in most
examples of his d. The basic form of the letter, then, seems almost intermediate
between this scribe's usual shapes for d and d. See Plate VIM.
20 There was that bridal feast which was the bale of many men.'
21 There was that bridal feast, to the bale of men.'
22 'Some, they were blinded, and some banished from the land, and some harassed
into ignominy; thus were the king's betrayers brought low.'
23 'Some, they were blinded, and some driven from the land; so were William's
betrayers brought low.'
24 The presence of three rhyming half-lines in the D manuscript alongside two (prob-
ably) alliterating half-lines in the E manuscript suggests that the E version is
reduced from a longer version; the elimination of an unpaired half-line might well
be intended to improve the quality of this poem's form. Nevertheless, we cannot
exclude the possibility that the D text here innovates to provide both rhyme and a
third half-line. Though the D and E versions of this annal clearly share a great deal
of material and presumably share a source, they vary widely from one another, both
at the level of word order and phrasing and at the level of information contained
and viewpoint. The divergences are great enough to make us wonder if the differ-
ences between the poetic passages might not be related to the different political
perspectives adopted in the two manuscripts.
25 Prose passages that are shared by D and E from the late tenth century are frequently
quite similar to one another, without significant evidence of innovation, perhaps
because of their general brevity. In a longer entry such as that in 972, however, we
certainly can see the sorts of textual variations seen in the prose of the 755 annal.
Compare the following readings from D and E in this annal:
D reading E reading
pentecostenes msssedaeg pentecoste mzessedaei
his scipfyrde his sciphere
7 ealle wid hine getreowsodon 7 ealle wid trywsodon
As chapter 2 suggests, such variations seem to be quite typical of prose, and these
can serve as a useful contrast to the stability of the 959 poetic text in the D and E
manuscripts.
26 The E manuscript clearly prefers (but not exclusively) the monosyllabic form; note,
however, that E preserves the disyllabic 'cyning' twice in 959E, once in the poem
proper and once in the material preceding the poem. The monosyllabic form, of
course, is typical of late West Saxon: see Campbell, OEG §391, page 160. The
other three innovative variations between the D and E records of this passage are
Mibbendan' (D)/'libbendu~' (E); 'heofonlic' (D)/'heofonlica' (E); and 'asft' (D)/
'aerest' (E).
27 All four of the words capitalized in the E manuscript's record of the passage in
question are also capitalized in D. In addition, two other words are capitalized in
the D version.
28 The D version seems much the more likely candidate of the two for scribal recogni-
tion of the passage's poetic nature, however: see my comments on the use of capi-
tals and space in annal 975D in note 16 above.
29 Assuming w/hw alliteration. See Amos 94-5 for comments on /z-cluster alliteration.
Even if not employed to the same degree, such a complex use of varying poetic
devices, of course, can be paralleled in the 1036 poem as well as in some of the
metrical charms.
30 In Plummer's lineation of the 959DE poem, the lines corresponding to 958F lines
3b—4b are lines 12-13; these lines are placed (in F) between lines corresponding to
the 959DE poem's lines 3 and 4. 958F's lines 5bff correspond to 959DE's 16ff. The
F version of this poem is thus a sophisticated revision of the longer DE poem.
31 Those earthly slayers wished to destroy his memory on earth, but the Avenger
above has multiplied his memory in heaven and on earth. Those who did not wish
before to bow to his living body, now happily on their knees bow to his dead
bones.'
32 'But the Lord above has multiplied his memory in heaven and on earth, because
those who would not before bow to his living body, they now happily on their
knees bow to his dead bones.' It is important to note that of the variations described
before between the D and E records of the 979 poem, the F manuscript agrees with
E at both places where the F text includes the relevant material. These are 'aerast'
(where D has 'ajft') and 'libbendu-' where D has 'libbendan.' These innovations,
then, seem to lie either with the E archetype (rather than with E itself) or with D.
33 When we recall that a half-page is left blank at the point in manuscript F where we
would expect to see Brunanburh, the possibility that the F scribe recognizes poems
but does not generally wish to include them seems more than reasonable. Perhaps
the F scribe's concerns about the space available to him led to his wish to avoid or
shorten the often lengthy verse passages available in his exemplars.
34 'Here Edward aetheling came to England; he was the nephew of King Edward.
Edmund the king was called "Ironside" for his boldness.'
35 'He was then a captive, who before was the head of the English and of Christen-
dom. There one might see wretchedness, where one before saw bliss, in the
wretched city from which first came to us Christendom and bliss, before God and
before the world.'
36 Significantly, in the 101 IF annal, there is a point after 'mid him.' Presumably, the F
scribe alters the punctuation of the E archetype. Other features of this passage,
however, are shared by E and F, suggesting that they go back to the common ances-
tor. See below.
37 Though the relationships between manuscripts are not as clear in this part of the
Chronicle as they are for the Common Stock, the order of the words 'angelcynnes
heafod' is probably best interpreted as an innovation in the EF family (i.e., in the
E-archetype), rather than in CD. See Cubbin's edition, xxxix ff for the suggestion
that D's version draws from ancestors of both E and C for this annal.
38 'Among them then was a prisoner, who before was the head of the English people,
and of Christendom. There one might then see misery where one often before saw
bliss, in the wretched town from which came first Christendom and bliss before
God and before the world.'
39 Classical metrical patterns would not allow the second half of the compound
'angelkynnes' to provide the alliterating element, but such alliterative patterns may
well have been acceptable in non-classical verse. See below, section 4.2.
40 'Here died Eadgar, ruler of the English, friend of the West Saxons and protector
of the Mercians. It was widely known among many nations over the gannet's bath
that kings widely and greatly honoured the offspring of Edmund, bowed to the
king as was appropriate to him. There was no fleet so proud, nor an army so
strong, that it fetched carrion to it amongst the English while the noble king ruled
the throne.'
41 In line 5, 'cyninges' ought to alliterate, rather than 'wide'; in 6, we seem to have a
light A3 verse in the b-line; in 9, the adjective 'aebela'ought to alliterate, rather than
'cyning.'
42 Note also that Maldon has conjunctions as syllables in anacrusis; e.g., 182a: 'and
begen ba beomas' and 193a: 'ac wendon fram bam wige.' It seems reasonable to
conclude that such usages must be a feature of later verse.
43 In the discussion that follows, I will assume that readers are more or less familiar
with the standard 'five-types' formalism introduced by Sievers and in widespread
use in accounts of Old English verse. A standard (if brief) explication of the basic
elements can be found in Mitchell and Robinson's introductory textbook. I will,
nevertheless, necessarily have to depart from the Sieversian formalism because of
its inability to account for forms such as those seen in the non-canonical Chronicle
poems.
44 The following summarizes (and probably oversimplifies, to an extent) Russom's
explication in Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory, 75ff.
45 In Russom's formalism, 'S' designates a fully stressed syllable or its resolved
equivalent; Y designates the same entities with secondary stress, and 'x' desig-
nates an unstressed syllable. Thus a basic A-verse is /x /x in Sieversian formalism,
Sx/Sx in Russom's formalism.
46 Cross alliteration is the supplementary alliteration across the caesura of stressed
syllables in addition to the primary alliteration; it is frequently abbreviated as
ABAB alliteration. One should note that many of these classically anomalous
forms appear also in other verse such as the metrical charms, e.g., 'ofer 5e bryde
bryodedon, ofer be fearras fnaerdon' (The Nine Herbs Charm 10; AABB); 'Saharie
and ec Marie, modur Cristes' (A Journey Charm 17; XAAY). Alliterative 'anoma-
lies' such as these in many of the charms suggest that the charms' verse forms may
be closely related to the verses under discussion here; Maldon and the metrical
charms will be my basic texts in this section for providing 'canonized' examples of
many of the metrical forms seen in the Chronicle verse.
47 That is, an exclusion of light A3 verses from the b-line seems to depend upon the
notion of subordination that marks b-lines as 'weak.' For other places where such
A3 verses show up in b-lines, compare again the charms 'ge hit bebicgan' (For
Delayed Birth 19b; alliterating on b) and 'paet he hit odlasde' (For Theft of Cattle
lOb; alliterating on /).
48 In such a scansion, of course, I simply treat the stressed syllables as S posi-
tions, regardless of their length, rather than treating the combination of 'stressed
short syllable plus unstressed syllable' as an S position. As will become clear, I
use Russom's formalism here in ways that his own work, based as it is on the
metre of Beowulf, would not sanction. Nevertheless, Russom's formalism is both
illuminating and flexible, and it seems the best fit for the perspective I adopt
here.
49 In other words, the following patterns might result from the breakdown of resolu-
tion:
Forms with Resolution Forms without Resolution

x/Ssx x/Sxsx
x/Sxs x/Sxsx
and so forth. Syllables and sequences that previously were limited to preceding
Ssx or Sxs sequences (i.e., at the beginning of B and C verses) might thus begin
appearing before SxSx sequences, resulting in the expanded sorts of 'anacruses'
identified here. Note that while Cable suggests that a substantial preference for
'five-position' verses is a feature of Old English prose (Meter and Melody), this
process produces 'five-position verses' quite naturally. Five-position verses may
simply become common in late verse if resolution ceases to be a productive proc-
ess. Note again that the breakdown of resolution seems tied to a resultant confusion
over foot boundaries; it is fascinating to speculate that a perception of parallelism
between verse forms such as x/Sxsx and x/Sx/Sx corresponds to a breakdown in
metrical subordination. A fuller analysis, then, might suggest that the metrical
changes evidenced in the 975DE poem might all result from one poetic change, the
loss of resolution.
50 Compare to the following line from the canonical Coronation of Edgar from annal
973: 'wintra on worulde, pa bis geworden wss' (Coronation 19). Here, too, we
see alliteration on the final stress of the line.
51 Three-stress half-lines are also attested among the charms; for example, 'Erce,
Erce, Erce' (For Unfruitful Land 51 a), which goes even further to suggest that not
only could three stresses appear in a verse, but all three could receive alliteration.
52 'In his days, on account of his youth, God's enemies broke God's law: ealdorman
Êlfere and many others. And they hindered the monastic rule, and dissolved mon-
asteries, and drove out monks, and drove away the servants of God whom King
Edgar had earlier commanded the holy bishop jEthelwold to establish. And they
robbed widows often and frequently, and evil unlawfulnesses rose up afterwards,
and always after that, it grew even worse.'
53 Even line 6 is probably explicable with the following scansions
6a: be Eadgar kyning het a;r (x)/Ss/Sx/Sx

6b: bone halgan biscop (xx)/Sx/Sx
In other words, 6a seems to have three 'feet,' and the whole line does have allitera-
tive linking between its halves.
54 A familiar example of the alliteration of the second element of a compound name

can be seen in Maldon 282a: 'Sibyrhtes brodor.' This line from Maldon, of course,
is one of the two lines where rhyme rather than alliteration seems to function as a
linking device. The full line, 'Sibyrhtes brodor ond swide maenig ober,' would fit
well within the tradition of verse we see in the Chronicle, although it is obviously
problematic from a classical perspective.
55 1 do not intend to make any argument here about the status of Wulfstan's other
compositions. I simply wish to suggest that this passage is best interpreted as a
poem, both on formal grounds and (as in the next section) based upon its position
and function in the Chronicle itself. The rest of Wulfstan's body of work would
demand a separate and extensive analysis, of course.
56 'He took that by weight, and with great injustice, from his people for little need. He
was fallen into avarice, and loved greediness above all. He set up great game-
preserves, and laid down laws therefore/
57 At least one other b-line has double alliteration ('b~ he mosten freo faran').
58 My reading of the tenth-century poems parallels, in some ways, that of Martin
Irvine (The Making of Textual Culture 451-60), although with some important dif-
ferences. For one, Irvine limits his discussion to those poems present in CCCC 173,
while I consider all of the tenth-century Chronicle poems. See also Irvine's 'Medi-
eval Textuality and the Archaeology of Textual Culture.'
59 The entire day, the West Saxons, in splendid troops, followed forth on the track of
the hateful people, hewed the army-deserters, pierced from behind by mill-sharp
swords. The Mercians refused hard hand-play to none of the warriors who, with
Anlaf, over the mixing of waves, on the sea's bosom, sought the land.'
60 'There was no greater slaughter on this island ever yet, of folk felled by the edges
of swords, before this, as the books tell us, the old authorities, since here from the
east Angles and Saxons came up over the broad waves, sought Britain. The proud
war-smiths overcame the Welsh; fame-eager warriors seized the (home)land.'
Though points now appear in the A text of Brunanburh, they do not appear to be
original to scribe A3, and I leave them out of my transcription; see O'Brien
O'Keeffe, Visible Song 131-2.
61 Compare the commentary of Nicholas Howe on Brunanburh in Migration and
Mythmaking 30-1, and more recently, Irvine, Making of Textual Culture 452ff.
62 Commentary on the spelling of this word (which appears as 'wealas' in BCD) gen-
erally focuses on the doubled e spelling, which is paralleled earlier in the A version
of this poem by the spelling 'heeardes'; Bately, for example, notes both spellings
(MS A cxxxi) and directs readers to section 26 of Campbell's Old English Gram-
mar, which includes the following comment: 'Vowel length is occasionally indi-
cated, especially in early manuscripts (e.g., Cp. [i.e., the Corpus Glossary, CCCC
144, from the eighth or ninth century]), by doubling the vowel. Some mistakes
occur in the application of this device' (OEG 12-13). As 'wealas' has a long vowel
in the root syllable, this ought to be an example of the regular functioning of the
'vowel doubling device' (though A3's 'heeardes' must therefore be a mistaken
application of it). The doubled / and the final vowel e, however, would seem to
indicate that the A3 scribe in fact intends 'we ealles.' Intentional or otherwise, this
would seem to be an interesting case of formulaic (or at least metrically appropri-
ate) substitution.
63 It is interesting to compare Brunanburh 's citation of historical authority with a sim-
ilar passage from the Common Stock, found at the end of annal 851: '7 hi- g~feaht
wib aepelwulf cyning 7 aepelbald his sunu aet aclea mid west seaxena fierde 7 pasr
p~t maest wael geslogon on haepnu- herige be we secgan hierdon op bisne 7
weardan daeg 7 paer sige namon' (851 A; CCCC 173 fo. 12r: 'And ^thelwulf the
king and ^thelbald his son fought with them [the Danish here] at Aclea with the
West Saxon home-army, and there accomplished the greatest slaughter that we
have heard tell of until this present day, and there [they] took victory'). Brunanburh
replaces the Common Stock's (formulaic) claim to oral authority ("secgan hier-
don') with a claim to textual authority. Further, by echoing this very passage, Brun-
anburh explicitly contrasts Mhelstan's victory to ^thelwulf's: it is precisely this
claim in the 851 annal that gives the claim in Brunanburh its force; again, the
Chronicle itself thus provides the poem's most effective context, despite some
readers' feelings that Brunanburh was imported into the Chronicle from some
other source.
64 Recall that the 959 and 975D poetic passages were almost certainly not entered into
the Chronicle until after Wulfstan became a bishop (996) and most likely not until
he became archbishop of York in 1002. These passages will be treated in the fol-
lowing section.
65 The Danes were earlier, under the Northmen, beset by oppression, in the shackles
of heathens, a long time, until afterwards, the protector of warriors released them
for his honour, the son of Edward, Edmund the king.'
66 In her commentary on this passage, Janet Thormann notes that the B manuscript
reads 'denum' for 'daene' (83, n34), a reading that would place the Danes and
Norsemen in apposition. Thormann's essay is one of the few treatments of the
Chronicle poems to include consideration of the passages 'of irregular metre,'
though she limits her discussion to tenth-century poems and makes no mention of
the 979 and 975D passages. Nevertheless, her general argument that the Chronicle
poems 'further a national ideology when they develop a discourse of history' (78)
fits well with my own argument about them.
67 'Here Edgar was, ruler of the English, with great ceremony consecrated as king.'
68 'And then was passed ten hundred winters, counted in numbers, from the birth-day
of the glorious king, shepherd of the lights - except there was yet a remainder of
winter-counts (as writings say) seven and twenty: so near was a thousand [years] of
the Lord of glory run by when this occurred.'
69 It may be significant that the Parker Chronicle's fifth principal scribe writes not
only both of these poems (973 and 975ABC) into CCCC 173 but also the annals
and annal numbers through the year 1001.
70 'Here ended the earthly joys of Edgar, king of the English.'
71 This observation, of course, is only true regarding 975E; in 975D a second poem
appears in the style of archbishop Wulfstan and will be discussed below. It is not
entirely clear whether the final portions of 975E are a simplified prose version of
this poem or whether Wulfstan's version in 975D is an expansion of a previously
existing prose account. Whitelock suggests that the latter is the case: regarding the
975D passage, she writes, 'E has replaced this with a brief summary' (Peterbor-
ough Chronicle 28). For a fuller comment on this question, see below, note 80.
72 'Here Edgar passed on, ruler of the English, friend of the West Saxons and protec-
tor of the Mercians.'
73 There was no fleet so proud, nor an army so strong, that it fetched carrion to it
amongst the English while the noble king ruled the throne.'
74 No such indication of the day occurs in the 975E annal (or in the 975F annal).
75 Though the poetic forms of the poems are quite different, it is important to note that
at least one half-line is shared by both: 'ofer ganetes bad' (Plummer I, 121).
Though used in reference to different figures, this repeated half-line may indicate
that the 975DE poet knew the 975ABC poem. The fact that the DE poem also
explicitly notes Edgar's father ('aferan Eadmundfes]'), while the ABC poem does
not, may likewise suggest that the 975DE poem is designed to do the work of both
the 973 poem and the 975ABC poem. The 973 poem, of course, does not apppear
in manuscripts D and E.
76 There was no worse deed done to the English people than this was, since they first
sought Britain.'
77 It is this contextual link, I think, that makes the strongest argument for the inclusion
of the 979 poem among the Chronicle poems, even though there was little clear
evidence from the manuscript presentation that it was always read as a poem by its
scribes. See above.
78 Hal Momma's recent book, The Composition of Old English Poetry, reconsiders
Mclntosh's characterization of various registers of Old English style, concluding
that Êlfric's prose is more 'verse-like' than Wulfstan's, and that Wulfstan's style
is, necessarily, more 'prose-like.' See especially 7ff.
79 'One misdeed, however, he performed too greatly: that he loved foreign vices and
brought heathen customs within this land too securely, and established outlandish/
foreign [customs? people?] herein.'
80 Jost (121) suggests that this poem has in fact simply been expanded from a pre-
existing text such as we read in 975E. His argument is, at least in part, a metrical
one ('v.6a hat zuviele Hebungen und ist rhythmisch sehr ungeshickt' and thus may
be a carry-over from the process of transforming prose to verse [121]). But since,
as I argued in section 4.2, this poem does not conform to the standards of classical
verse, such an argument may not carry much weight. Whitelock appears to believe
that the E version is a simplified version of Wulfstan's poem: the 'passage in 975D
[is] replaced by a brief abstract in E' (Peterborough Chronicle 29; see also White-
lock, ASC xiv). At the least, we can be sure that none of the characteristically
Wulfstanian words or phrases appears in the versions in E and F; the possibility
that a reviser has excised them as excess verbiage cannot be eliminated.
81 The sentence about Oslac that follows Wulfstan's comments about the expulsion of
the monks can conceivably be scanned as verse, but may best be read as prose. Its
status is thus uncertain. See my comments on this passage in 'Boundaries.'
82 I leave out of consideration here the very brief poems in 1075E/76D and 1104E, as
they seem less like examples of 'Chronicle poems' than examples of current poetic
tags (almost proverbial in nature) that make their way into the Chronicle. They are
thus more useful in identifying the late tradition of rhyming poems than in defining
the essential characteristics of Chronicle poems in general.
83 'There was no bloodier deed done in this land since the Danes came and here made
peace.'
84 The son of Êthelred ruled, greatly distinguished, the Welsh and the Scots, and also
the British, the English, and the Saxons.'
85 'Though he long earlier, deprived of his land, dwelt upon the exile-paths, widely
over the earth, after Cnut overcame the family of Êthelred, and the Danes ruled the
dear kingdom of England, enjoyed [its] riches for the count of 28 winters.'
86 Obviously, such a perspective demands that we see the 1065 poem as being a post-
Conquest production. The poem's appearance in manuscript C (which famously
ends with the 1066 annal) might be seen as suggesting that the poem is pre-Con-
quest, but its entry into the D manuscript must have taken place after the Conquest,
during the work of the historian(s) responsible also for the 1057D and 1067D
poems. It seems appropriate, then, to read the 1065 poem in this post-Conquest
context. For the 1057D and 1067D poems, see below; for a suggestion that the end-
ing of the C Chronicle in 1066 was probably a post-Conquest contrivance (in an act
of chronicling that might well include the 1065 annal), see chapter 6 below.
87 Julie Townsend's 1996 essay, 'The Metre of the Chronicle-Verse,' concludes that
'generally the Chronicle-verse precisely follows the rules of Anglo-Saxon poetic
composition identified by Bliss' (158). Townsend considers only the five 'classi-
cal' poems included by the ASPR, avoiding consideration of the 1036 poem. Nev-
ertheless, she also concludes about the 1065 poem under consideration here that
The Death of Edward-poet seems the least skilful! of all the poets,' citing espe-
cially the lack of metrical variety in this poem (158).
88 Note that the final word in this verse appears as the monosyllable 'cing' in the BC
versions of the 942 poem.
89 Note the B and C spellings of A's 'Seaxe': 'sexan' (B) and 'sexe' (C). The spellings
here and those noted in note 88 would seem to indicate that the composer of the
1065 poem had a version of the Chronicle poems before him that resembled the
surviving BC text more closely than the A text.
90 The identification of the hand of these late annals with the hand of scribe D3 (who
writes the 'replacement section' 1016-52) provides the most interesting reason for
considering the possibility that the 'replacement section' might intentionally
include a component of revisionary history, perhaps downplaying the C Chronicle's
antipathy for Godwine in 1036, for example. A reconsideration of this complex
question, however, lies outside the scope of my inquiry here, though I might point
out that the D Chronicle's interest in the West Saxon-descended Edward the aethe-
ling and Margaret of Scotland would seem to make the rehabilitation of Godwine
unnecessary after the death of Harold.
91 'Here came Edward the aetheling to England; he was nephew to king Edward. King
Edmund was called "Iron-side" for his boldness.'
92 'But he was so strong that he cared not for the enmity of them all, but they must in
everything follow the king's will, if they wished to live or have land, land or pos-
sessions or even his favour.'
93 Taking 'forleon' as if for 'forleton' (or some such): These things we have written
about him, both good and bad, so that the good men will take after their goodness,
and let go of all evilness, and go on the path that leads us to the kingdom of
heaven.'
94 This reading of the 1086E poem contrasts with a recent reading offered by Seth
Lerer. Lerer, following the conventional wisdom that the use of rhyme as a struc-
tural verse principle is due to the influence of French, suggests that the 1086E
poem is 'an attempt to phrase William's life and rule not in the traditional metrics
of Anglo-Saxon England but in the Continental verse forms of the Conqueror's
own court' ('Genre' 134). As I have suggested in this chapter, it seems important to
me to note that the use of rhyme as a structural principle can easily be traced in the
Chronicle in poems in 1067D and 1036CD, with even the 975DE poem featuring
rhyme in two of nine lines. A failure to pay attention to the context these earlier
poems provide appears to lead Lerer to underestimate the power of rhyme in late
Old English poetry, especially in the poetry of the Chronicle. It would seem diffi-
cult to avoid the conclusion that the ASPR's focus on alliterative poetry of a partic-
ular metrical form has obscured the significance of those Chronicle poems
structured according to different principles.
5: Latin in the Chronicle
1 For a full listing of the E manuscript's Latin annalistic material, see the Appendix
to Dumville's 'Some Aspects' 55-7.
2 There may well have been additional translations of the Chronicle from the Anglo-
Saxon period, as there certainly were translations into Latin later. The annals on
folio 111 of manuscript 17 at St John's College, Oxford, appear to translate the
annals from 1 to 99 of some manuscript of the Chronicle, but since these early
annals do not concern the history of Anglo-Saxon England, I do not consider them
in detail here (see Hart, 'B-Text' and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at Ramsey').
The suggestion has also been made that the Annals of St. Neots (or a portion of
them) were, in fact, translated from the Chronicle during the Anglo-Saxon period
(Hart, 'East Anglian Chronicle'; John, Reassessing 159-60, n5). My general argu-
ment in this chapter might well be supplemented by a consideration of these addi-
tional translations, but the familiar texts of Asser and jCthelweard are, necessarily,
at the heart of my arguments about translation.
3 The general rule, of course, has exceptions. Annal numbers are virtually non-
existent for a long stretch of the B manuscript (annals 653-946); in manuscript F,
the 'AN-' abbreviations extend only through annal 30 at the bottom of folio 32r;
beyond this point, only Roman numerals are used by the F scribe. Magoun's edition
of the F text's Latin annals makes the curious choice of representing those annals
accompanied by 'AN-' with an expansion of the abbreviation and Roman numer-
als; bare Roman numerals in the manuscript are represented in Magoun's edition by
Arabic numbers. Further important exceptions are noted below.
4 The Chronicle probably owes an even greater debt to Bede's epitome: both begin
with Caesar's invasion of Britain (in both texts dated to sixty years before Christ's
incarnation), and both proceed with sequentially numbered annals with years num-
bered according to the number of years elapsed since that incarnation. The Chroni-
cle obviously includes much more material than Bede, but the underlying structure
of the Chronicle almost certainly derives from that used by Bede.
5 Contrarily, Clemoes, who is perhaps the only scholar to address the question of
how the annal numbers were read, takes the 'an-' abbreviation as standing for the
nominative 'annus' ('Her' 31; see also his n7, p. 33).
6 The annals from manuscript 17 at St John's College, Oxford, provide additional
confirmation for reading 'an-' as 'anno': here most annals are preceded by bare
roman numerals, but annal 34 begins with 'Anno, xxxiiii,' and the barren annal
number 40 is also preceded by 'Anno.' The treatment of annal 2, however, is
especially intriguing in this context; for the year 2, we read: 'II Anno magi
ueniunt' ('2: In [this] year the magi came'; Hart, 'B-Text' 295). At this early
point in this translation, the Old English Chronicle's 'Her' is apparently trans-
lated as 'anno' as the position suggests; later in the St John's College translation,
'Hie' is regularly used.
7 Note that Cecily Clark's edition of annals 1070E to 1154E is quite careful in indi-
cating the forms of the annal numbers.
8 Why the mark of suspension is used in the 'M~' abbreviation is not clear, however.
One ought to expect the simpler 'M' to stand as the abbreviation for 1000. It is at
least possible that the use of 'M~' indicates that the implied word is an inflected
form, rather than the bare 'mille.'
9 Roman numerals were, of course, frequently used in manuscripts in place of Old
English words, as (for example) the use of Roman numerals in poetic manuscripts
confirms. Thus 'M~' can plausibly represent either 'mille' or 'pusend.' The diver-
sity of treatments for the year 1000 itself is worth noting: in A (Bately's hand 5),
we see only 'M~,' perhaps best expanded 'Mille' ('one thousand'); in C, we see
'mille ann~' and in D we see 'Mille anni' ('one thousand years'); E reads 'An~.
mill~mo' ('in the thousandth year'); and in F we see 'Millesim'' (i.e., 'Milles-
imus': 'the thousandth [year]'). Cf Bately, 'Manuscript Layout,' 25 and note 33.
10 Clemoes, too, notes the lack of syntactic continuity: 'The number was glossed by
the adjacent wording, "an- dclxxxuiii. Her Ine feng to wesseaxna rice ..." means
" 'Year 688' = 'Ine succeeded to the kingdom of the West Saxons' "' (31).
11 'Bedwig, son of Sceaf. That is, the son of Noah; he was born in the ark of Noah.
Lamech, Methuselah, Enoch, Jared, Mahalaleel, Cainan, Enos, Seth, Adam: the
first man and our father: that is, Christ.' I quote this passage from manuscript C
because it appears to be defective in A (the A scribe has apparently skipped three
generations of the genealogy and the phrase 'Id est filius noe,' perhaps by skipping
an entire line in the exemplar). The B version is more complete but lacks the /in the
first 'Id,' which was apparently left to be filled in during rubrication. The / in this
position in the C manuscript is preceded by a half-line of writing space left blank. It
is rubricated, as tall as three lines of writing, and placed in the left-hand margin.
12 See Thomas D. Hill's essay The Myth of the Ark-Born Son of Noe.'
13 In all four of the manuscripts where the 855 genealogy appears, the Latin ending of
the genealogy is clearly marked as a terminal point. In manuscripts B and C, points
follow the last Latin word, and the text resumes at the beginning of the next line (or
at the beginning of the next page, in C) with a capital O in the left-hand margin.
Manuscript D uses heavy punctuation followed by a capital '#'; manuscript A fol-
lows the genealogy with 'am-' ('amen'), heavy punctuation (the sort usually used
for annal endings in manuscript A), and a following capital O.
14 Note that the bracketing use of Latin here seems to confirm that this portion of the
genealogy was a single addition to the genealogy of Mhelwulf; as noted above in
chapter 1, ^thelweard's record of Êthelwulf's genealogy may preserve its imme-
diately preceding state.
15 This abbreviation for '-us' appears in at least a dozen Latinate names on folios Iv-
2r, but is also used at least once in an Old English word: 'weorp3te' in 878A, folio
15r.
16 The fact that patronymics stop appearing at the same point stands as an additional
marker of difference between the two portions of the genealogy.
17 The highlighting is accomplished in another fashion in the B and C Chronicles,
where the beginning of the Latin passage in question was (or was intended to be)
marked by a rubricated capital placed in the margin. See note 11 above.
18 The alternative explanation for the Parker scribe's willingness to abbreviate the
Latin passage to such a degree would involve the conclusion that he imagined an
audience easily able to decipher the Latin material's more abbreviated form. While
such a conclusion is possible, it goes against the grain of the general understanding
of late-ninth-century literacy, which suggests (along with Alfred's Preface to the
Pastoral Care) that English literacy was more widespread than Latin literacy. To
put it another way, if we feel that the production of a vernacular Chronicle took
place at the same cultural moment as Alfred's translation program, we must have
difficulty imagining an audience of sophisticated Latin readers who were unsophis-
ticated readers of Old English. Thus, it seems to me that the complexly abbreviated
passage we see in 855A was intentionally complex (perhaps even mystifying)
rather than merely convenient.
19 For a more detailed consideration of the post-Conquest contributions to the manu-
scripts of the Chronicle, see chapter 6.
20 Magoun concludes that the Latin version of the Chronicle in F was not, in fact, a
translation of F's Old English annals because of their occasional differing content
(240f). Yet the general appearance of F as a working draft seems to suggest other-
wise, and it seems more plausible that the F scribe only incompletely coordinated
his translation and redaction.
21 For a consideration of Matilda's role in the production of /Ethelweard's Chronicle,
see van Houts.
22 'Oslac was a Goth by race, for he was descended from the Goths and Jutes, and in
particular, from the line of Stuf and Wihtgar, two brothers - indeed, chieftains,
who, having received authority over the Isle of Wight from their uncle King Cerdic
and from Cynric his son (their cousin), killed the few British inhabitants of the
island whom they could find on it, at the place called "Wihtgarabyrig"' (translation
from Keynes and Lapidge 68). The information that Stuf and Wihtgar are nephews
of Cerdic comes from annal 534: 'Her Cerdic forpferde, 7 Cynric his sunu ric-
sode forip .xxvi. wintra; 7 hie saldon hiera tuaem nefum Stufe 7 Wihtgare \eall/
Wi[e]ht[e] eal[o]nd.' ('Here Cerdic died and Cynric his son ruled for 26 further
years; and they gave the Isle of Wight to their two nephews Stuf and Wihtgar';
Bately, MS A 21; the interlineation may be the work of scribe 8 (i.e., the F scribe).
23 This passage from Bede about the three tribes of the invasion does not appear in the
Chronicle's Common Stock, although it was added to the Northern Recension.
From there it was also added into the Parker manuscript by the F scribe. Asser,
therefore, must draw the information directly from Bede.
24 'Here came the West Saxons into Britain with 3 ships, in the place that is called
"Cerdic's Shore"; and Stuf and Wihtgar fought with the Britons, and put them to
tlight:
25 Significantly, the use of the term 'Westseaxe' in annal 514 is the first occurrence of
this designation in the Chronicle's Common Stock: the Common Stock apparently
does not use the term again until annal 560, when we read, 'Her Ceawlin feng to
rice on Wesseaxum 7 Elle feng to Norbanhymbra [rice]' (Bately, MS A 23; 'Here
Ceawlin succeeded to the kingdom in Wessex and Elle succeeded to the Northum-
brian [kingdom]'). One must suspect that annal 514 introduces some sort of anach-
ronism here in its use of 'Westseaxe,' which would otherwise seem to imply a
division of the continental Saxons into Western and Eastern factions. At the least,
the linking of Stuf and Wihtgar to the West Saxons in this annal seems significant.
26 A further historical/genealogical problem is associated with Asser's account in his
chapter 2, as Keynes and Lapidge note: 'In describing Cynric as Cerdic's son,
Asser thus follows the Chronicle, but contradicts the genealogy [of Alfred] pro-
vided in chapter 1 which makes Cynric son of Creoda grandson of Cerdic' (230,
nlO). This difficulty, however, is one inherited by Asser from the Common Stock;
for a discussion of the Creoda problems, see Sisam, 'Royal Genealogies' 157-8,
195-6. Neverthless, the proximity of the contradictory genealogical statements in
Asser's text (chapters 1 and 3) suggests that Asser may be paying less attention
than the first Parker scribe (or his ancestor), who corrects the 'Creoda problem' in a
book where the points of conflict are far more widely separated.
27 "... Cerdic; who was [son ot] Elesa; (who was [son of] Esla;} who was [son of] Geu-
uis. from whom the Britons call all that race "Geguuis"; (who was [son of] Wig;
who was [son of] Freawine; who was [son of] Freothegar;) who was [son of]
Brond; who was [son ot] Uuoden.' The translation is my own; Keynes and Lapidge
do not translate Stevenson's bracketed additions. Note that Asser's clauses in the
quoted passage are somewhat weak syntactically: he begins the genealogy as fol-
lows: 'Alfred rex, filius /Ethelwulfi regis; qui fuit Ecgberhti; qui fuit Ealhmundi'
( ' K i n g Alfred, son of King Êthelwulf; who was [son] of Ecgberht; who was [son]
of Ealhmund'). The use of genitive forms to express the father's relation to the son,
however, disappears at this point in Asser's genealogy, and readers are left with the
less effective forms seen above in the Cerdic-to-Woden portion of the genealogy.
Cf the Historia Brittonum's genealogies and the comments on them in chapter 1.
28 Smyth (Alfred the Great 173-4) explains the omissions of these names in Asser as
the result of familiar sorts of copying errors, but the coincidence implied in Asser's
text's omission of precisely the names not witnessed in the other genealogies cited
by Sisam strains credulity. The form of this genealogy must stand as one of the
strongest pieces of evidence that Asser had access to a West Saxon genealogical
tradition predating that seen in the Chronicle and the WSRT, and hence as evidence
of a 'genuine' Asser. Nevertheless, the genealogical problems seen in chapter 2 of
Asser's text (described above; some of the same problems in Asser's chapter 2 are
also described by Smyth 174) might indicate an unfortunate degree of carelessness
or even sloppiness on Asser's part.
29 '... the son of Geat (whom the pagans worshipped for a long time as a god). The
poet Sedulius mentions Geat in his poem Carmen Paschale, as follows:
Since the pagan poets sought in their fictions to swagger either in high-
flowing measure, or in the wailing of tragedy's speech, or with comedy's
absurd Geta, or by means of any sort of verse whatever [plus the remain-
der of the verse, then,]
Geat was the son of Taetwa' (translation from Keynes and Lapidge 67; my
ellipses).
30 Significantly, the Chronicle's 'bridge' moment between Scef and Noah (discussed
above) is obscured by Asser's text, which simply reads 'Hwala; qui fuit Beduuig;
qui fuit Seth; qui fuit Noe' (Stevenson 3; 'Hwala; who was [son of] Beduuig; who
was [son of] Seth; who was [son of] Noah'). Asser's Latin text, of course, cannot
use the lack of patronymics to indicate the shift, but his failure to mention the sup-
posed birth of Sceafing/Seth on the Ark may hint at the motive for the quotation
from Sedulius: Asser, too, may have felt a need to provide some sort of bridging
mechanism to the world of classical learning, and the Geta/Geata material allowed
him to link an ancestor with a well-known Germanic pedigree to a well-known
poet.
31 To put it another way, the Chronicle puts world events into the context of English
history, since the Chronicle begins with Caesar's invasion of Britain and continues
throughout to focus on events with a relevance to Britain. jEthelweard's Chronicle,
however, puts the focus on Britain into a world history context by its use of the his-
tory of the world as an opening strategy. Almost certainly, this change of emphasis
stems from ./Ethelweard's intended audience outside of Britain.
32 In Book One, chapter 3, which consists of material derived from Bede's Historia
ecclesiastica, Êthelweard also includes the information that Hengist and Horsa
were descended from Woden. The same events are narrated later in the translation
of the Chronicle but (as in the Common Stock) without the genealogical informa-
tion.
33 'AUle, son of Yffe, took his place in the Northumbrian succession [of kings], whose
race goes back right to the most universal ancestor, that is to Woden' (Campbell's
translation).
34 Note that ^thelweard abbreviates at least one other genealogy as well: the 547
genealogy of Ida extends to Geat in the Common Stock, but ^thelweard comments
only that his family derives from Woden (Campbell 12). Note also that the Com-
mon Stock analogues to the 560 genealogy quoted above extended beyond Woden
in 560AG, but not in 560BC.
35 On the omission of 'Cuba,' see chapter 1, above.
36 Campbell notes that 'Brittanum' must be omitted for metrical reasons and does not
translate it (56), though I have included it here, ^thelweard's competence as a poet
seems to me to make it uncertain how far we ought to allow metrical arguments to
determine the text here.
37 Two observations must be made at this point. First, it might be hypothesized that
Êthelweard does not translate the parts of The Death of Edgar that do not fit the
Chronicle's tradition of poetry very closely (i.e., 11 13-37, which do not really con-
cern themselves with royal affairs). But Ethelweard also does not translate lines
10b-12b, which recount Edgar's son Edward's accession to the throne. Thus
.Ethelweard must choose his stopping point in the translation of the 975 poem.
(This line of argument would seem to indicate that Êthelweard's Chronicle does
not provide evidence for a Chronicle tradition that featured a shorter version of the
975ABC poem.) The contents of/^thelweard's 975 poem are also sufficient to rule
out the possibility that his exemplar contained a poem like that in 975DE. In addi-
tion, however, it is important to note that the list of chapter headings for Êthel-
weard's fourth book (Campbell 34) promises two further chapters after the death of
Edgar, chapters that were apparently not included. The question of 'the end' of
/Ethelweard's Chronicle, then, is somewhat vexed.
38 This conflict was Barker's primary reason for claiming that Savile had used a man-
uscript differing from the Cotton Otho A x manuscript; Campbell suggests that
The explanation probably is that Ethelweard's MS of the Old English Chronicle
did not provide any matter after the death of Edgar, and he did not feel equal to
original historical composition' (/Ethelweard xi-xii).
39 The dating of this 'continuation' is notable: if B is dated to the later 970s, we can
conclude that the 973 and 975 poems make it into all three branches within a
twenty-year span or so: the A continuation containing these poems is clearly to be
dated around 1000, as is /Ethelweard. The D Chronicle presumably takes the 973
poem from his collation of the BC ancestor.
6: Conclusions
1 The order of the Parker manuscript's contents at the turn of the twelfth century was
almost certainly different from their current order (as it also differed from their
order in the middle tenth century). As Parkes notes, from the evidence of manu-
script G, around the turn of the eleventh century the manuscript's order must have
been as follows: WSRT, annals to 1001, list of popes (to Damasus), episcopal lists,
Laws (Parkes, 'Palaeography' 170). The papal and episcopal lists now follow the
Laws, but I presume that the order around 1100 was the same as it was around
1000. Parkes (151-2) cites Thomas James's 1600 description of the manuscript to
show that, at that time, the Sedulius portion of CCCC 173 apparently preceded the
Laws', whether the current booklet 4 (containing the lists) was appended to the
Chronicle or the Laws in 1600 is unclear.
2 The list entered onto CCCC 173 folio 54v originally ended with the pairing 'Urba-
nus Anselmo' ('[Pope] Urban [sent the pallium] to Anselm'). A later hand has
added the pairing 'Paschalis Radulfo' ('Paschalis to Radulf).
3 Plummer identified the scribe of the Acts ofLanfranc as the scribe of 'some of the
lists,' but also identified this hand as the F scribe (II, xxvi). Bately (MS A xliii)
agrees with Taylor's identification of the hand of the Acts and of the conclusion of
the papal list; she further agrees with Taylor (against Plummer) that this hand is not
the F scribe.
4 The possibility that C had once extended beyond the 1066 annal and was deliber-
ately truncated at 1066 at the time the twelfth-century portion was written can be
neither proved nor disproved; it is simplest, therefore, to treat C as if it ceased to be
a living Chronicle in 1066.
5 Ker's gathering 24 appears to have been bound in the wrong order; according to
their annalistic material, the proper order for folios 160-3 is: 161, 163, 160, 162.
6 Note that the 1065C annal and the beginning of the 1066C annal are in the same
hand, while the remainder of 1066C (excluding the twelfth-century addition) is in
another hand. 1065C, then, could not have been entered into the C Chronicle before
1066. See Ker, Catalogue 253.
7 The possibility that C may have been intended to end at 1066 may well be sup-
ported by the fact that Ker's gathering 24 consists of only four leaves; it is possible
that, when the 1065 and 1066 annals were entered into this manuscript, the two
inner sheets of a gathering of eight leaves were removed. That is, the annals of the
1050s in gathering 24 may have been entered onto the first two leaves of a full
gathering of eight, but when the 1065-6 material was added the two inner sheets of
the gathering were removed, leaving a four-leaf gathering. The possibility must
probably remain purely hypothetical, but such an explanation might account for the
structure of the end of the C Chronicle remarkably well.
8 'Her father was Edward the aetheling, son of King Eadmund: Eadmund, son of
^thelred; Êthelred, son of Eadgar; Eadgar, son of Eadred; and so on in that noble
race.'
9 Edgar is the subject of the following poems: 959DE, 973ABC, 975ABC, and
975DE.
10 Gransden's comment on the continuance of the E Chronicle suggests another possi-

bility: 'the Peterborough version survived the longest presumably because it was
written in an area which became a center of English resistance' (40).
11 Although Dumville would hesitate to place the 1121 ancestor of E at Christ
Church, Canterbury, the F scribe's removal of genealogies from A and his treat-
ment of poems in F makes the possibility mentioned above that the F scribe may
have contributed to the 1121 VE very provocative. Certainly, more work needs to
be done to date the activities of the F scribe and to localize VE and determine
exactly what it might have looked like.
Bibliography
Manuscripts consulted
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College

CCCC 92
CCCC 173
CCCC 183
CCCC 383
Cambridge University Library

C U L K k . 3. 18
London, British Library

Additional 23,211
Additional 34,652, fo. 2
Additional 43,703
Cotton Domitian viii, fos 30-70
Cotton Domitian ix, fo. 9
Cotton Otho B x
Cotton Otho B xi, fos 39^7
Cotton Tiberius A iii, fo. 178
Cotton Tiberius A vi, fos 1-35
Cotton Tiberius B i, fos 115v-64
Cotton Tiberius B iv, fos 3-86
Cotton Vespasian B vi, fos 104-09
Oxford: Bodleian Library

Bodleian Laud Misc. 636
214 Bibliography
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Index of Annals and Manuscripts
Chronicle Annals ject Index under Chronicle poems;

annal 1011: see Subject Index under
annal 547: 35, 131, 174n 1; annal 552: Chronicle poems; annal 1031: 191nl8;
174nl;annal560:35. 131-2, 174n1, annal 1036: see Subject Index under
176nl6, 207n25, 209n34;annal 597: Chronicle poems; annal 1057: see Sub-
131, 174nl: annal 611: 174nll; annal ject Index under Chronicle poems;
626: 35, 174n1;annal 648: 174n1; annal 1065: see Subject Index under
annal 670: 174nl; annal 674: 131, Chronicle poems; annal 1067: see Sub-
174n 1; annal 676: 174n 1; annal 685: ject Index under Chronicle poems;
174n 1; annal 688: 131, 174n 1; annai annal 1075: see Subject Index under
694: 174nl; annal 728: 174nl: annal Chronicle poems; annal 1086: see Sub-
731: 68, 174nl, 191n22; annal 755: ject Index under Chronicle poems;
10-11, 39-61, 76, 79, 85, 131, 146-8, annal 1130:74
152, 155-70. 174n I ; annal 784: 39, 54;
annal 836: 184n3; annal 851: 200n63; Chronicle Manuscripts and
annal 855: 10. 12, 20, 68, 123-4, 131, Specific Annals
174nl; annal 871: 49-52, 59, 76, 152,
192n25; annal 901: 62, 64, 69-70; A (CCCC 173; 'Parker Chronicle'), 4-6,
annal 902: 65-6; annal 937: see Sub- 11-12, 21-3, 26-9, 66-7, 71, 78-9,
ject Index under Chronicle poems; 119-21, 125-6, 134, 138-41, 143, 145,
annal 942: see Subject Index under 150, 170, 172nlO, 174nl, 177n27,
Chronicle poems; annal 956: I90nl2; 177n29, 179n48, 191n20, 207n23;
annal 959: see Subject Index under annals: 30A, 121;39A, 120;514A,
Chronicle poems; annal 973: see Sub- 128;547A,22, 177n34;552A, 178n35;
ject Index under Chronicle poems; 560A, 177n30; 597A, 22; 611A, 22;
annal 975: see Subject Index under 626A, 177n30; 648A, 22; 670A, 22;
Chronicle poems; annal 979: see Sub- 674A, 22; 676A, 177n31; 685A, 22;
222 Index of Annals and Manuscripts
688A, 22; 694A, 177n31; 710A, 205n9; 1067D, 142-3; 1079D, 141-3;
172nl 1, 191n24; 716A, 22; 731 A, 1130D, 141
177n33; 755A, 22, 42, 45-6, 55-6, E (Bodleian Laud Misc. 636; 'Peterbor-
58, 179n48; 833A, 186n24; 853A, ough Chronicle'), 5, 12, 62, 68-70,
186n24; 855A, 21-2, 27, 122-3, 153, 78-9, 119-21, 124, 126, 138, 144-5,
177n34, 179n48, 205nl3; 867A, 150-1, 172n9, 172nll, 184nll;
186n24; 868A, 186n24; 870A, annals: 449E, 69-70, 174nl, 179n51,
186n24; 871 A, 49, 51-2; 878A, 123, 180n55; 593E, 69, 174nl; 755E,
186n24, 206nl5; 892A, 63-4; 893A, 43-5,55-6,70,85, 191n21;871E,49;
186n24; 893-6A, 62-3; 897A, 65; 937E, 133; 972E, 195n25; 975E, 108,
900A, 61-2, 66, 72; 903A, 66; 904A, 116, 201n74; 1000E, 205n9; 1086E,
65-6; 911A, 63^; 912A, 63; 924A, 7, 116;1154E, 146
63-^; 937A, 52, 72-3, 101; 973A, F (BL Cotton Domitian viii), 5, 12, 79,
193nlO; 1000A, 205n9; 1070A, 119, 116, 121, 124-6, 138-41, 145, 150,
125, 140 172n9, 172nll, 174nl, 186n26,
B (BL Cotton Tiberius A vi), 4-5, 11, 191nl 8,204n3; annals: 449F, 191n23;
21, 27, 29, 64-8, 71, 78-9, 121, 134, 755F, 155; 958F, 74, 86, 88,91; 975F,
138-41, 143, 145, 150, 152, 154, 201n74; 979F, 74, 86-8, 91; 1000F,
1 7 2 n l l , 178n36, 184nll, 191n20, 205n9; 1011F, 74, 196n36; 1058F,
204n3; annals: 755B, 27-8, 43-5, 140
46-7, 51, 55-6; 855B, 21, 27-8, 33, G (BL Cotton Otho B xi), 6, 27-8,
132, 175n 13,205n 13; 871B, 49,50-1; 138-9, 150, 154, 172nlO, 177n29;
937B, 29 annals: 755G, 42-3, 45-56; 855G, 2;
C (BL Cotton Tiberius B i), 4-5, 11, 871G, 49
27-9, 64-9, 71, 78-9, 121, 134, 138, H (BL Cotton Domitian ix, fo. 9), 6, 126,
141-3, 145-6, 150-1, 172nnlO-ll, 138, 144-6, 150, 172n9
178n36, 184nll, 191n20; annals:
491C, 180n54; 755C, 43, 45, 55-6; West Saxon Regnal Table (WSRT)
855C, 122, 132, 205nl3; 871C, 49;
937C, 29; 1000C, 205n9; 1065C, 142, BL Additional 23,211 (including East-
180n54; 1066C, 141-2, 202n86 Saxon genealogies), 20, 23, 26-7, 35,
D (BL Cotton Tiberius B iv), 5, 8, 177n27, 179n47, 183n72
69-70,78-9, 113,115, 117, 121, 138, BL Additional 34,652, fo. 2 (associated
141-3, 145-6, 150-1, 172n9, 172nll, with manuscript G of the Chronicle),
184nl 1; annals: 694D, 69; 716D, 69; 6, 27-8
728D, 69; 731D, 68; 755D, 43, 45-7, BL Cotton Tiberius A iii, fo. 178 (asso-
55-6, 69, 191n21; 801D, 68; 802D, ciated with manuscript B of the
68; 855D, 28-9, 68, 205nl3; 871D, Chronicle), 4
49; 901D, 69; 910D, 68-9; 972D, CCCC 173 (Parker WSRT), 20-2, 26, 29,
195n25; 975D, 82-3, 116; 1000D, 177n27, 182n67
Index of Annals and Manuscripts 223
Other Manuscripts CCCC92: 178n43

CCCC183:10, 34-5, 178n43
BL Additional 43,703 (Laurence CCCC 383: 27
Nowell's transcript of manuscript G): CULKk. 3. 18:27
6, 43, 184nlO; annal 755: 43, 45-6 Oxford, St John's College 17: 204n2,
BL Cotton Otho A x: 134 204n6
BL Cotton Tiberius Bv: 178n43, 183n71 Rochester, Rochester Cathedral A. 3. 5:
BL Cotton Vespasian B vi: 10, 16-25, 25,27,29, 183n71
32^,37, 147, 181n61, 181n63,
182n70
Subject Index
Abegg, D., 75 back-to-the-manuscripts approach, 8-9,

Acts ofLanfranc, The, 4, 119, 125-6, 137,172nl2
140, 147 Baker, P., 6
/Ethelflaed, daughter of Alfred, 11, 65, Barker, E.E., 209n38
67, 148 Bately, J., 4, 63-4, 125, 127, 171nn2-3,
/Ethelred (The Unready'), King, 106, 172nl3, 177n27, 177n29, 184nll,
110-12, 115, 134, 143 187n32,188nl,189n4,189n8, 199n62,
^thelstan, King, 34, 70, 72, 100-2, 149, 205n9, 210n3
183n71 Battaglia, E, 53-4,57, 187n4
jEthelwulf, King, 11, 35, 54, 58, 117, Battle ofMaldon, The, 92, 197n42,
146. See also under genealogies 197n46, 199n54
Alfred, King, 6-7, 10-12, 15, 33, 35-8, Bede (author of the Historia Ecclesias-
49, 58-68, 71-3. 101, 103, 127-32, tica), 14-15, 31, 35-6, 38, 67-9, 116,
147-8, 150, 183n74 119-20, 122, 127-9, 131, 176n21,
alliteration, 17-18, 21, 34-5, 84-5, 87, 179n51,181n58
91-4,97-9, 129-30, 153 Benedictine Rule, The, 125
Amos, A.C., 169, 195n29 Beowulf, 92-3, 95-6, 132, 174n8,
anacrusis, 21-3, 92, 94-9 175nl2, 177n25, 197n48
Annals of St. Neots, The, 127, 204n2 Bessinger, J.B., Jr, and P.H. Smith, 75
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, The bilingualism, 5, 12, 119, 125-6, 141, 146,
(ASPR), 74-5, 78, 83, 116, 149, 174n8, 150, 153
193n6,202n87 Bredehoft, T.A., 193n9, 202n81
Asser (author of the Life of Alfred), 12, Bremmer, R.H., Jr, 188n38, 189n3
23.24-5, 119-20, 124, 126-32, Budny, M., 76
135-6, 150, 153-4, 175nl3, 182n69,
183n74 Cable,!., 97, 176nl5, 198n49
226 Subject Index
Campbell, A., 66, 131, 133, 175nll, 1086E (William the Conqueror), 7,
195n26, 199n62 74-6, 79-82, 98, 100, 110, 115-18,
Capitula of Theodulf, The, 125-6 144, I49_5i
Cerquiglini, B., 42, 185nl9 Clark, C, 5, 189n4, 205n7
Chase, C, 183n73 Classen, E., and F.E. Harmer, 5, 119,
Chronicle of A^thelweard, The, 12, 23, 187n32, 194nl7
33-6, 64-7, 71,119-20, 124, 126-7, Clemoes, P., 121, 204n5, 205nlO
131-6, 150, 153-4, 189n8 Cnut, King, 110-11
Chronicle poems, 7, 10, 29-30, 72-118, Common Stock (of the Chronicle), 4,
142-4, 146-7, 149-50; specific 10-11, 14-16, 20, 23^, 33, 38-9, 45,
poems: annal 937 (The Battle ofBrun- 55, 60-3, 67-72, 101-2, 117-18,
anburh), 3, 12, 29, 52, 70, 72-6, 120-2, 124,128-9,132, 135,
78-80,99-103, 106, 110, 113, 117, 142-4, 147-52, 207n23
133, 149, 151-2, 196n33; annal 942 Conner, P., 191nl7
(The Capture of the Five Boroughs), Cubbin, G.P., 5, 68-9, 113, 172n7,
70, 74-80, 82, 99, 102-3, 108, 113, 194nl7, 196n37
133; annal 959, 74-5, 79, 85-8, 97,
99, 106, 107, 109, 115-16, 200n64; Davis, C.R., 123
annal 973 (The Coronation of Edgar), Doane, A.N., 59
70, 74-6, 79-80, 99, 102-4, 106-9, Dumville, D., 6, 34, 63, 138-41, 146,
113, 131, 133-4; annal 975ABC (The 171n2, 171n4, 174n4, 178n40,
Death of Edgar), 70, 74-6, 79-80, 99, 179n47, 182n70, 183n71, 188n36,
102-6, 131, 133^, 198n50; annal 204nl
975DE (The Death of Edgar II), 70,
74,76,79,81^,91-6,99, 102, Eadred, King, 134
104-5,116; annal 975D, 74,79, 97-9, Eadwig, King, 107, 134
106-9, 200n64; annal 979, 86-8, 99, E-archetype (\/E; ancestor of E manu-
102, 106, 109-10, 114, 200n64; annal script), 5, 68, 124-6, 139, 141, 144-5,
1011, 74, 79, 88-91, 99, 106, 108-10, 151, 195n32, 196nn36-7
117, 149; annal 1036 (The Death of Edgar, King, 103-5, 107-9, 116, 133-5,
Alfred), 74-6, 79-82, 96, 100, 110- 142-3
11,114, 149; annal 1057D, 74, 78-9, Edmund, King, 70-2, 100-1, 103, 105
88-9, 100, 110, 113-14, 118, 142-3, Edward (The Confessor'), King, 12,
200n86; annal 1065 (The Death of 110-14, 142
Edward), 74-6, 78-80, 82, 100, Edward (The Elder'), King, 61-7, 72,
110-15, 117-18, 149-50, 153; annal 101, 103, 148
1067D, 74, 78-9, 81-2, 100, 110, Edward (The Martyr'), King, 104, 106,
114-16, 118, 142, 151, 153,202n86; 109, 134, 171n5
annal 1075E/1076D, 75-6, 79, 81-2, Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang, The,
84-5, 91, 100, 110, 202n82; annal 125
Subject Index 227
Ferro, K., 53-4, 187n32 Keefer, S.L., and K. O'Brien O'Keeffe,

Fleischman, S., 42 172nl4
formulaic reading, 51-2, 77, 84, 152 Ker, N.R., 5, 78, 113, 144, 172nn6-7,
formulas and formulaic expression, 189n8, 210nn5-7
11-12, 50-3, 59-60, 76, 119, 147, Keynes, S., and M. Lapidge, 207nn26-7
152
Fulk, R.D., 175nll, 176nl3 Lapidge, M., 135, 172nl4
Laws of Alfred and Ine, The, 4, 6-7, 139,
genealogies, 3,10-11,13-38,54, 61, 69, 172nlO, 189n7
70-2,92, 123, 134, 137, 142, 144, Lerer, S., 183n74, 203n94
146-8, 151-2; genealogy of ,-Ethel- literacy and literate practice, 8-10, 23,
wulf (WSRT, annal 855), 10, 12, 20-3, 49,77, 120, 122, 124, 137, 151-3
26, 31, 33-4, 36-8, 40, 60-1, 117, litterae notabiliores, 11, 55-6, 78, 80,
122-4, 129-30, 132-3, 135, 172nll, 82-3,85,87, 148, 155, 185nl4,
175nl3, 177n28, 178n35, 179n47, 192n25
179n50, 180n52; genealogy of Offa Liuzza, R.M., 52
(annal 755). 39-40, 69-70, 148, Lord, A.B., 184n9
191n21 Lutz, A., 6, 43, 46, 119, 170, 177n29,
Gibson, E., 74 184nlO, 193n5
Godwine, Earl, 110, 203n90
Gransden, A., 21 In 10 Machan, T., 184n9
Greenfield, S., and D. Calder, 186n22 Mclntosh, A., 92, 96, 99, 106-7
McTurk, R.W., 48, 184n6
Harold, King, 141-2, 203n90 Magoun, P.P., 53^, 57, 184n4,
Hart, C, 171n5, 204n2, 204n6 187nn28-9, 187n32, 204n3, 206n20
Heinemann, F.J., 184n5 Margaret of Scotland, 142-3, 203n90
Henry of Huntingdon, 126, 153 Maxims II, 5, 180n54
Hill, T.D., 37, 205nl2 Meaney, A., 171n2
Historic! Brittonum, 10, 14-15, 19,31-2, Menologium, The, 5, 180n54
35-8, 182n70 Mercian Register, the, 11, 64-8, 71,
Howe, N., 179n44, 199n61 146-8, I 7 2 n l l , 191n24
metrical charms, 195n29, 197nn46-7,
Ingram, J., 74 198n51
Irvine, M, 199n58, 199n61 metrical subordination, 92-4, 97, 99,
117, 149
Johansen, J.G., 184n5, 187n34 Mitchell, B., and F.C. Robinson, 41,
John, E., 188n37, 204n2 184n4, 185nl5, 186n22, 187n32,
John of Worcester, 126-7. 135, 153 197n43
Joscelin, J., 5, 193n5 Moisl, H., 174n6, 178n38
Jost, K., 202n80 Momma, H., 201 n78
228 Subject Index
Moorman, C., 184n4 174nn2-3, 184n3, 186n22, 187n32,

mouvance, 43, 48, 184n8 195n30, 210n3
Murray, A.C., 183n73 pointing of manuscripts, 15, 25-30, 39,
55,76-83,85,87,90-1, 116, 137,
Nicolaisen, W.F.H., 184n9 152, 155
Norman Conquest, 12-13, 110, 112-14, PopeJ.C., 192nl
117-18, 119, 124-5, 136^6, 149-51
Northern Recension, 11-12, 45, 62-3, resolution, 18, 20, 92, 94-6, 99, 117,
67-71, 105, 140, 146, 148-9, 151, 149, 174nlO
170, 172nl 1, 179n51, 181n58, 189n8, rhyme, 12, 77, 80-6, 91-4, 97-9, 116,
207n23 149, 153
Nowell, L., 6, 43, 193n5. See also under Robinson, F.C., 8, 172nl2, 173nl6
BL Additional 43, 703 Robinson, F.C., and E.G. Stanley, 75-6,
92
O'Brien O'Keeffe, K., 5, 8, 25,29,48-9, Rositzke, H.A., 119, 187n32
52, 59-60, 75, 77-8, 80, 82, 172nnl3- Rulon-Miller, N., 184n5
14, 173nnl6-17, 199n60 Russom, G., 17, 92-4, 97, 174n7,
Old English Bede, The, 6-7, 15, 30, 33, 176nl8, 197n48
69, 172nlO, 179n51
Old English verse, 9-10, 12-15, 17, 23, Schrader, R., 75
29-30, 52-3, 59-60, 72-118, 127, Scragg, D., and P.E. Szarmach, 172nl4
137, 152; 'classical' verse, 3, 12, 18, scribal activity or practice, 9, 11, 16,
30, 37, 77, 92-5, 99, 112-13, 117, 24-30, 41-2, 44, 46-8, 50-5, 63,
149,151, 153, 196n39; 'non-classical' 73-91,96, 116-17, 120, 137, 148,
verse, 12, 23, 73, 77-9, 82, 91-9, 112, 152-3
117, 149, 151, 153, 196n39 Sedgefield, W.J., 75
Ong, W., 184n9 Sievers, E., 75, 78
oral-formulaic theory, 48, 52, 77, 152-3 Sisam, K., 21, 32-4, 36, 132, 174n5,
orality, 10, 24, 37, 39^1, 48-50, 53, 55, 175nl3,176n21, 179n47, 181n61,
77-8, 137, 148, 152-3 182n70, 183n73, 207n26, 207n28
Orchard, A., 186n21 Smyth, A.P., 207n28
Orosius (author of History against the Stenton, P.M., 107
Pagans, translated by King Alfred), 5- Stephen, King, 145-6
6, 172nlO Stevenson, W.H., 130
Swanton, M., 15-16,76, 183nl
Parkes, M.B., 63, 139, 171nl, 171n4, Sweet, H., 178n41
187n30, 189n7 Szarmach, P.E., 65, 172nl3, 189n9,
Pasternack, C.B., 173nl5 192nl
Plummer, C., 5, 41, 45, 62, 65, 67-8, 74,
76,83,89-91,98, 115-16, 119, 169, Talbot, R., 193n5
Subject Index 229
Taylor, S., 4, 44, 47, 139-40, 187n32, Wheelock, A., 74, 170, 172n8, I84nl0
190nl2 White, H., 183n75
textual innovation, 11, 42-53, 55, 60, White, S.D., 57, 184n5
84-5,90, 142, 152, 168-9 Whitelock, D., 5, 39, 41, 65, 67-9, 107,
textual spatialization, 10, 24-6, 30, 78- 113, 115, 124, 142, 172nll, 174n3,
83,91,99, 137, 152, 155 184n4, 186n22, 187n32, 189n6,
textual variation, 11, 40-2, 46, 52-3, 59, 201n71,202n80
78,83-5, 148, 152-3 Whiting, B.J., 80
Thormann, J., 200n66 Widsith, 36, 95-6, 177n25, 179n44
Thorpe, B., 74, 86 William (The Conqueror'), King, 142-
Towers, T.H., 57, 184n4, 186n27, 4, 146, 150-1
187n32 William of Malmesbury, 127, 135
Townsend, J., 202n87 Wilson, J.H., 53^, 184n4, 186n27,
187n28, 187n32, 188n35
vanHouts, E., 206n21 Wonders of the East, The, 125
variance, 41-4, 46-8, 49-50, 53, 55-6, Wrenn, C.L., 48, 184n4, 187n32
148 Wulfstan, Archbishop (the homilist), 82,
85,97-9, 106-11, 115, 126, 186n21,
Waterhouse, R., 54, 57, 184n4, 187n32, 200n64, 201n71,202n80
187n34
West Saxon Regnal Table (WSRT), 4, 6, Yorke, B., 128-30
10, 14-15, 20-3, 25-30, 32-3, 58,
139, 179n47, 182n67, 191n20 Zumthor, P., 184n8

Textual Histories Readings in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

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TEXTUAL HISTORIES: READINGS IN

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Anglo-Saxon chronicle. 2. English prose literature - Old English,

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing

1: The Common Stock Genealogies 14

2: Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the Context of the Common Stock 39

3: The Post-Alfredian Annals 61

4: The Chronicle Poems 72

5: Latin in the Chronicle 119

Illustrations follow page 100

This project (I am somewhat mortified to discover) has occupied nearly a dec-

Plate I BL Cotton Vespasian B vi, fo. 109r

BL (in citations of manuscripts) British Library, London

/Ethelweard The Chronicle of AZthelweard, cited from the edition of

One should, perhaps, respond to my title as Shakespeare's Benedick responds

employing different textual and historiographic strategies. The Chronicle's,

It is both conventional and convenient to begin with the Parker Chronicle

The sheer extent of the Chronicle, in its various manifestations, makes it

1.1 The Metrical Form of the Genealogies

As Dumville's own layout suggests, each genealogy in Vespasian is written in

Group 1: Ss/Ssx (D*). 33 occurrences (plus I exact repetition)

Group 2: Ss/Sx (A2a). 26 occurrences (plus 1 exact repetition)

uncontracted forms: *Ss/Sxx, *Ss/Ss (with resolution of secondary stress in

Group 3: Sx/Ssx (D*). 18 occurrences (plus 5 exact repetitions)

Group 4: Sx/Sx (A). 15 occurrences (plus 1 exact repetition)

Group 5: Hypermetric verses

Group 6: Sxs patterns

Group 7: Unusual verses

To summarize, we might note that these metrical groupings can be character-

Ants[ecg] Gesecging Ss/(x)Sx

Cynric Cerdicing, Cerdic Elesing,

Freawine Fribogaring, Fribogar Branding,

Verse forms appearing in this passage, but unattested in Vespasian, include

Additions to the Parker WSRT. In the genealogy of /Ethelwulf in the Parker

1 ine Cenreding, (x)Sx/Ssx

As my scansions indicate, we might interpret these genealogical comments

Geat Taetwaing S/Sxx

Hadra Hwalaing Sx/Sxx

Verse form Location/Annal Scansion

Ond se /EfQelwulf] waes Ecgberhting Additional WSRT (xx)Ss/(x)Ssx28

nation of the innovative genealogical forms seen in BL Additional 23,211 and

1.2 The Manuscript Presentation of the Common Stock Genealogies

As discussed above, two ninth-century manuscripts (BL Additional 23,211

Se aepelwulf waes ecbryhting ecg

cupaing. cupa cupwining. cupwin[

The G scribe's exemplar in the Parker manuscript, of course, is completely

gewissung. wig freawining. freawine. freobe

1.3 The Historiographic Function of the Common Stock Genealogies

Waeron da aerest heora latteowas 7 heretogan twegen gebroSra Hengest 7 Horsa.

The chronicler's inclusion of the genealogies in their alliterating form, then,

corded in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, finished in 731. Bede includes three

Significantly, this catalogue of the eponymous ancestors of the various Euro-

A reconsideration of the genealogies of the Common Stock, as this chapter

The well-known 'Cynewulf and Cyneheard' narrative contained in the Com-

2.1 Variation and Innovation in Annal 755: Orality and

ines authorial activity as paramount, and scribal deviations from authorial

tion and Nowell's transcript in BL Additional 43,703 allow us to reconstruct

Yet, as Table 2.1 suggests, such examples of indeterminate innovation are

1 The B text is highly innovative. The B scribe in particular seems concerned

Totals 8 14 30 11 12 9 5 23= 112

uncontracted forms: Ss/Sxx, Ss/Ss (with resolution of secondary stress in