2010/04/12 by Clive Tolley · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Medieval Literature and History
paper · doi:10.1093/notesj/gjq050
openalex publication_date 2010/04/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
THE Old English poem Solomon and Saturn I evokes the Lord’s Prayer as a weapon—or rather an armed host of warriors—to fight evil, specifying the strengths of each letter; the MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422 version presents the first letter, the P of ‘Pater noster’, as follows, describing this letter as a ‘prologa prima’ (lines 84 ff.): Ond se ðe wile geornlice ðone Godes cwide singan soðlice ond hine siemle wile lufian butan leahtrum, he mæg ðone laðan gæst, feohtende feond, fleonde gebrengan, gif ðu him ærest on ufan ierne gebrengest prologa prima ðam is . . P. nama; hafað guðmæcga gierde lange, gyldene gade, ond a ðone gr<im>man feond swiðmod sweopað. In his recent edition of the poem (The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), from which the citation above is taken, Daniel Anlezark translates this passage thus: ‘And he who will eagerly sing the utterance of God truly and will cherish it always without misdeeds, he can cause the hated spirit, the fighting enemy, to flee, if you first throw over him the angry one, prologa prima, which is named . . P.: the warrior has a long staff, with a golden goad, and brave he ever swipes at the grim fiend.’