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5. Priest Prays for Mother in Hell [Iv7a-2r20].
(Son Delivers Mother from Hell).
10. The Sick Lion, the Fox and the Wolf [2r21-2v30, end lacking],
(Wolf Flayed to Cure Sick Lion).
The first three tales are found in the Gesta Romanorum, the popular
compendium of exempla collected in the early fourteenth century
and extant in at least 138 Latin manuscripts.6 Numbers 7 and 8
are found in the exempla of Odo de Ceritona (d. 1247), an English -
man known for his sermons and fables in Latin, and number 9
became incorporated into his collection by the 15th century.7
Most of the extant Icelandic exempla, called “islendzk æven-
tyri” by their primary editor,8 9 are translations from Latin. How-
ever, the British Museum contains an exempla collection in Middle
English, Additional 9066,9 a 15th century manuscript which is
so consistently close in its textual correspondence to the Icelandic
that the Middle English provenance of N and O cannot be doubted.
Anglicisms in the Icelandic texts consist not only of single words,
such as emmprur N lr3a, 4, stiuardr N lr 18 (this word is known
from other sources), brann N 2r27, the verb ‘prikka’ (prickade
N 2r24; prika occurs in another source), but of expressions as well,
e.g. nu hefe ek goda uerdlld N 2r29 for ‘I have a goode worlde
atte laste’ and elldenn af heluiti N lvl3, O lvll-12 for ‘the fyre
of helle.’ Apparent syntactic borro wings are the placing of an
adverb as well as the subject before the verb: Ok Jaannenn sonurenn
hialpadi . . . N lr2 for ‘And thus the sone savede . . .’ and Leonit
einn tima giorde ueizslu N 2r6-7 for ‘The lyonne on a tyme made
a feste.’
9066 contains 96 tales, including all of the nine in N and the first
two of those in O. Two additional Middle English manuscripts
are known, Harley 7333 (here called 7333) and Cambridge Univ.
6 Ed. Hermann Oesterley, (Berlin, 1872; reprint Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 601-3,
388-9, 288.
7 Léopold Hervieux, ed. Les Fabulistes Latins, 5 vols. (Paris, 1884—99), II,
617-18, 620, IV 205-8, 394-5, 63-67.
8 Hugo Gering, Islendzk Æventyri, 2 vols. (Halle, 1882—83).
9 Referred to here as 9066. Described in H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert,
Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum,
3 vols. (London, 1883-1910; reprint 1961-62), III, 255-262.