The Stowe Psalter

Description

The Stowe or Spelman Psalter (London, British Library MS. Stowe 2), one of thirteen Latin psalters with a continuous Old English interlinear gloss, fits into the class of editions that are inadequate for DOE use. John Spelman’s edition of 1640 was a remarkable achievement for its day, yet it falls far below modern standards of accuracy in editing and proofreading. When in the early nineteenth century Joseph Bosworth began work on his dictionary he relied heavily on Spelman’s edition for citations; this reliance resulted in the several ghost words and numerous faulty quotations from the psalter still enshrined in the Bosworth-Toller-Campbell 'Anglo-Saxon Dictionary'. The present volume is the first edition of the Stowe Psalter since 1640, and the first accurate transcript of its text ever published. GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE vii BIBLIOGRAPHY ix SIGNS AND ABBREVIATIONS xii INTRODUCTION xiii The Manuscript xiii The Latin Psalter xv The Gloss xvii Localization xviii Method of Glossing xx The Sixteenth-Century Corrections xxii Spelman’s Edition xxiv The Vocabulary of the Gloss xxv The Language of the Gloss xxvii PRESENTATION OF THE TEXT xxxi Editorial Principles xxxi Textual Notes xxxii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxxiii THE PSALMS 1 Facsimile 2 THE CANTICLES 281