The Story of Genesis and Exodus: An Early English Song, about 1250 A.D. — Reading Companion

The Editor’s Unseen Manuscript

Morris’s preface candidly admits he never examined the manuscript himself. Instead, he relied on Furnivall’s copy and Skeat’s collation. This indirect method raises questions about textual authority, yet Morris insists that every doubtful passage was checked against the original. The manuscript itself is described as a small vellum volume (8 × 4½ inches) with eighty-one leaves, written in a clear hand around 1300. Initial letters are marked with red dabs, and the text uses long final s’s. Such physical details ground the poem in a specific material culture, even as the editor works at a remove.

Lexical Glimpses of a Lost Vocabulary

The glossary and footnotes reveal words that have since vanished or shifted meaning. For instance, fendes fleiðing (devil’s flaying) appears in Shoreham’s poems; arsmetike is a form of arithmetic; vn-achteled means unestimated or immense. The note on wol wel compares it to Old High German vil wol (very well). These annotations do more than define—they trace cognates across Germanic languages and cite parallel texts like Layamon’s Brut and the Owl and Nightingale. Readers interested in historical linguistics will find a rich vein of comparative evidence.

Narrative Compression and Poetic Form

The poem condenses two biblical books into roughly 4,000 lines of verse. Morris’s marginal analysis breaks the story into episodes, but the excerpts show how the poet handles transitions. For example, the line Thare let hur, and ðeðen he nam (Terah left Ur and thence he went) uses let for “left” and nam for “departed,” compressing action into a single couplet. The meter is irregular, often with internal rhyme or alliteration, as in hunger bond (famine). The poet also inserts moralizing comments, like giscinge of louerd-hed (greed of lordship), which reflect a homiletic purpose beyond mere translation.

Readers approaching this text should treat Morris’s edition as a scholarly reconstruction, not a facsimile. The glossary is essential for navigating the Middle English vocabulary, and the footnotes often clarify textual cruces. Because the poem survives in only one manuscript, every variant reading carries weight. Those interested in the development of English verse or medieval biblical adaptation will find this a rewarding primary source, best read alongside the biblical passages it paraphrases.

There’s something tender about a poem sung plainly, a story carried in rough meter—these old verses feel like a voice from a cold hall, still warm. It reminds me of the quiet joy in Milton’s pastoral scenes, where light moves slowly through woods. L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas — Reading Companion sits beside that same patient reverence for what words can hold.