Sir Orfeo

Publication Statement:

This file is part of the facsimile-edition of the Auchinleck Manuscript was co-edited by Professor David Burnley and Dr Alison Wiggins. The HTML versions of the resource are freely available at http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck/

Notes:

This manuscript file was originally supplied as orfeo.html and the header file was located in heads/orfeo_head.html both of which were converted to TEI XML by Dr James Cummings of the Oxford Text Archive. The notes below were taken from the header file and each HTML paragraph placed in a separate note.

Scribe 1

Short couplets. 604 lines in Bliss's edition, which includes a 38-line prologue borrowed from Lay le Freine; see: A. J. Bliss, 'Sir Orfeo lines 1-46', English and Germanic Studies , 5 (1952-53): 7-14.

Two other manuscripts:
BL Harley MS 3810. Early 15th century. Warwickshire? Complete text of 509 lines including prologue.
Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61. Late 15th century. N. E. Midlands. Complete text of 603 lines.

Edition:
A. J. Bliss, Sir Orfeo, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966).

Other editions:
A. Laskaya and E. Salisbury, The Middle English Breton Lays (Michigan: Medieval Publications for TEAMS, 1995). (Includes an electronic version of the text).
D. B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986).
B. Ford, The Age of Chaucer (With an Anothology of Medieval Poems) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969). (Normalised text based on Sisam).
W. H. French and C. B. Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930).
K. Sisam, Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921).
A. S. Cook, A Literary Middle English Reader (Boston: Ginn and Co, 1915).
M. Shackford, Legends and Satires (Boston: Ginn and Co, 1913). (After Laing).
O. Zielke, Sir Orfeo (Breslau: Koebner, 1880). (Critical edition of all MSS).
D. Laing, Selected Remains of Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland (Edinburgh: Printed for Wm. & D. Laing by Balfour and Clarke, 1821-22). Revised by W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland (London: Reeves and Turner, 1895).

Manual I, 135; 293. Index 3868.

Source:

The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS Adv MS 19.2.1) is one of the National Library of Scotland’s greatest treasures. Produced in London in the 1330s, it provides a unique insight into the English language and literature that Chaucer and his generation grew up with and were influenced by. It acquired its name from its first known owner, Lord Auchinleck, who discovered the manuscript in 1740 and donated it to the precursor of the National Library in 1744.