About this Web version of Havelok

This Web version of the English Havelok reproduces the text published by Walter W. Skeat in 1902, in parallel with the original MS version as deduced from Skeat’s footnotes. As a check, the original text was also derived from editions by Holthausen, French & Hale, and Smithers, and the results were compared electronically. After removal of scanning and typing errors, the list of differences is still quite long.

Skeat’s edition is the one reproduced here, because it is out of copyright. Otherwise a more conservative edition (e.g. French & Hale) might have been preferred; sometimes Skeat seems to alter lines to make them fit his metrical theories.

No account is taken here of abbreviations in the MS. Skeat follows the common practice of expanding abbreviations and using italics to mark the letters so added; e.g. where the scribe abbreviates ‘man’ to ‘mā’, the editor will print ‘man’. This Web version simply has ‘man’ in both columns.

Colour coding is used to highlight Skeat's editorial changes, thus:

Text on the left marked thus hauede has been deleted by Skeat.
Text on the right marked thus þat has been added by Skeat.
Text on each side marked thus wat … quath has been amended by Skeat.
Highlighting thus made he … he made shows where Skeat has merely changed the word order.

When the MS was written (c. 1300) final e in English was often sounded. Skeat places a dot under an e that in his opinion should be silent. Also, he occasionally uses an accent to mark the stress where in his opinion it differs from modern English, e.g. Lincólne.

Here are some brief remarks about the MS; see Skeat’s Introduction for a detailed discussion.

• There is no punctuation; all punctuation in modern editions is editorial. The only exception is that the MS uses a large capital letter to mark a new paragraph; see the specimen for an example.
• Rather than the modern convention of v for consonant and u for vowel, the MS uses v at the beginning of a word and u elsewhere, e.g. vnto, haue. Similarly, i is occasionally a consonant, e.g. iustise.
• Where modern English has th the MS very often has the letter þ (thorn). The scribe tends to use th at the end of a word and þ elsewhere; see the specimen for examples.
• But apart from that, the scribe has an odd habit of writing th where ht would be better, e.g. lith for liht (meaning ‘light’, and pronounced like German or Scots ‘licht’). So also knith, nouth (= ‘nought’), etc.
• Long vowels are not marked, so that e.g. red can mean either ‘red’ or ‘rede’ (advice). Note especially that ‘the’ and ‘thee’ both appear as þe in the MS (in the specimen, þe with is an error for þerwith).
• He means either ‘he’ or ‘they’. If the meaning is ‘they’ the verb is in the plural, shown by the ending -en; thus he hauede = ‘he had’, he haueden = ‘they had’. The poem also uses the modern they (spelt þey or þei) but not them or their. The pronoun I appears both in the modern form (i or y) and in the older form ich.