Charms, Proverbs, Recipes: Traces of Orality in a 12th-Century Swiss Manuscript

A scribe at work, MS Royal 13 B.VIII, f.22, the Gospels of Kildare (Source: British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts)

I love that the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London has lectures on every night of the week. I hate that there are so many lectures – each night, not just each week – that I cannot possibly attend all those that catch my eye. Fortunately, several lectures are recorded and subsequently made available online as podcasts. Yet for all that I appreciate listening to the lectures in my own home, the experience of actually attending the lecture is very different. In the case of Dr Henrike Lähnemann (Chair of German Studies at Newcastle University)’s lecture ‘Charms, Proverbs, Recipes: Traces of Orality in a 12th-Century Swiss Manuscript’, arranged by the Institute of German and Romance Studies, the most immediately striking difference was the sherry provided for our refreshment.

The 12th-century Swiss manuscript in question is Zurich MS C 58, and various related fragments; officially part of the Zentralbibliothek collection in Zurich, it is currently on long-term loan to Saint Gall Library. Dr Lähnemann had nominated it to be part of the e-Codices project, whose “goal of the e-codices project is to provide access to all medieval and selected early modern manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library” (e-Codices, last accessed 25 January 2013). Thus far, 961 manuscripts from 42 different libraries have been digitised, and there is an ongoing call for collaboration on the project’s homepage. Each manuscript is digitised in its entirety, including bindings, and is accompanied by a full bibliographical record. Zurich Zentralbibliothek MS C 58 will soon be in the collection too.

As befits a discussion about orality, Dr Lähnemann began with an acknowledgement of the difficulty of finding, and capturing, a genuine, natural spoken voice, a “living voice”. Consider your own phone voice! The British Library is working on preserving regional accents from across the United Kingdom, by asking the people of all regions to record themselves reading Mr Tickle. How much more difficult is it, then, to find the living voice of a man of the 12th century? Dr Lähnemann has found various brief examples of written German in the Latin Zurich MS C 58, and such use of a local language throughout a large book written in the then formal written language of Europe is one of the few ways in which we will ever be able to hear a medieval Mr Tickle.

The single scribe of Zurich MS C 58 was a student from Schauffhausen, studying in France, either Paris or Chartres, but probably the former. Approximately 4% of the manuscript is written in High German; he studied overseas for several years, and the proportion of German interspersed with Latin increases over the years. He writes poems expressing his years of study overseas as a pilgrimage. He shows off his learning in his native tongue, first through his copying of school texts, natural science texts and moral/devotional texts. Dr Lähnemann’s observation that the manuscript has the pattern of an arts student taking lecture notes sparked my interest. I wonder about the possibilities of comparing this to the notetaking of arts students today. Furthermore, could the act of glossing be compared to the use of annotating both physical and electronic texts? In the latter case, I’m thinking of the use of tools such as Mendeley.

The discussion of the spell intended to cure a lame horse was particularly fascinating. The text is as follows:

Primo dic pater noster. in dextram aurem.

Marh phar.
niene tar.
mvnt was.
marh was.

war come du do.
var in dinee.
cipríge.
in dine.
marisere.

daz dir ze bvoze.
ter et pater noster.
(Zürich Zentralbibliothek MS C 58 fol 47r)

The word “marh”, translated as “goblin”, was the focus of much of the post-lecture discussion. It was suggested by another member of the audience that “marh” could be semantically linked to various Celtic words for “horse” – the Cornish “margh”, the Old Irish “marc”, and the Welsh “march”. Such talk took me back to my days of studying the Tristan and Iseult stories, and the horse-eared King Mark. My research focused on the French versions of the story, in particular that of Beroul, but I know the German versions as well. The idea of the goblin making the horse lame, and the use of the word “marh” combined suggest the malevolent dwarf who poisoned King Mark against his nephew; I don’t know yet if this is a point worth pursuing. I would say that it is much more likely that “marh” as used here is semantically related to “nightmare”, and that a better translation than “goblin” would perhaps be “incubus” or “succubus”. Dr Alaric Hall of Leeds University describes how

in the medieval Germanic languages [there] is a group of cognate words which denote supernatural females associated with nocturnal assaults on people, including Old English mære (the etymon
of nightmare), Old Norse mara and more distantly mǫrn (‘giantess’),
and Old High German mara. These are etymologically related to an
Indo-European root *mer-, to do with crushing, pressing and oppressing (Pokorny 1959–69, s.v. 5. mer-; de Vries 1961, s.vv. mara, mǫrn; cf. Lecouteux 1987, 4–5).
(Dr Alaric Hall, “The evidence for Maran, the Anglo-Saxon ‘nightmares’“, in Neophilologus, 2007, vol.91, p.299)

MS Stift St. Paul Cod. 86b/1, page featuring Pangur Ban poem

While I greatly enjoyed this particular part of the lecture and of the following discussion, it was serendipitous and not the reason why I chose to attend. You could say that it’s because I’ll attend pretty much any lecture that has something to do with medieval manuscripts – no comment – but in this case it was more to do with the fact that I wanted to learn about the “traces of orality” in written texts. As she talked about the small fragments of German spread out through the Latin texts, I was reminded of one particular example of such orality that I had already come across, and which remains one of my favourite poems. When I began learning Old Irish, one of our texts was the poem written by a monk about his cat and was found in the Reichenau Primer (MS Stift St. Paul Cod. 86b/1), a ninth-century manuscript which comprises of said monk’s Greek language study notes. Compare it to Zürich Zentralbibliothek MS C 58; as mentioned above, Dr Lähnemann described it as an arts student’s lecture notes. The poem has become known as Pangur Bán:

Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindan:
bíth a menmasam fri seilgg,
mu memna céin im saincheirdd.

Caraimse fos (ferr cach clu)
oc mu lebran, leir ingnu;
ni foirmtech frimm Pangur Bán:
caraid cesin a maccdán.

O ru biam (scél cen scís)
innar tegdais, ar n-oendís,
taithiunn, dichrichide clius,
ni fris tarddam ar n-áthius.

Gnáth, huaraib, ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna línsam;
os mé, du-fuit im lín chéin
dliged ndoraid cu ndronchéill.

Fuachaidsem fri frega fál
a rosc, a nglése comlán;
fuachimm chein fri fegi fis
mu rosc reil, cesu imdis.

Faelidsem cu ndene dul
hi nglen luch inna gerchrub;
hi tucu cheist ndoraid ndil
os me chene am faelid.

Cia beimmi a-min nach ré
ni derban cách a chele:
maith la cechtar nár a dán;
subaigthius a óenurán.

He fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du-ngni cach oenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud cein am messe.

Whitley Stokes’ translation is available here. You’ll find that the poem compares the study of Greek to the cat’s hunting of a mouse, and it makes for a most entertaining read. I don’t doubt for a second that all cat owners will see their own cat’s adventures as they read. As I’ve been writing this part of the blog, I’ve started thinking about comparing the two manuscripts in more detail, looking at the overall structure, glosses and use of the two monks’ use of their vernacular. One of my favourite examples of marginalia appears in the ninth century St Gall Priscian (St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, ms 904), a copy of the Grammar of Priscian of Caesarea, which is also on e-Codices. Among the hundreds of glosses, in both Latin and Old Irish, we find a monk’s poem celebrating the rough seas which will keep the Vikings from invading.

Is acher in gaíth innocht
fu-­fuasna fairggae findfholt
ni ágor réimm mora minn
dond láechraid lainn ua Lothlind

(The wind is fierce tonight
It tosses the sea’s white hair
I fear no wild Vikings
Sailing the quiet main)

These three manuscripts offer an interesting glimpse into the real lives of the scribes and monks. Their notes and interests can be useful in establishing the provenance of their work. To return to the manuscript that was the original focus of Dr Lähnemann’s lecture and of this blog post, the student’s collection of obituaries made it possible to date the manuscript’s date and place of compilation; notably, none of the obituaries are of Germans, but include figures such as Abbot Suger, of the Abbaye Saint-Denis and King Louis VI of France’s most trusted advisor, who died in January 1151.

One final piece of advice: if you have never been to visit the Abbey Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The Library itself is a beautiful space, and while you won’t be given a pair of white gloves and encouraged to handle the books, you will be given a pair of soft-soled slippers to wear in order to protect the beautiful wooden floor. And that might actually be just as much fun, in the end.

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