82 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



never will be. The wholesale destruction of original records 

 of that period has made that task impossible. Dr. Bosworth, 

 after his life -long study of Anglo-Saxon, wrote in 1865 : 

 "We are not certain as to the names of those patriotic 

 Anglo-Saxons who translated the scriptures into Anglo- 

 Saxon ; and we have no more knowledge of the exact date 

 when the gospels were first translated than we have of their 

 translators." And his words then call for no modification 

 now. Several editions of the gospels in Anglo-Saxon have 

 been printed. The 1888 reprint of Bosworth, and Waring's 

 edition of 1865, which has in parallel columns the Gothic, 

 Anglo-Saxon and two later English versions, is still easy to 

 obtain at a nominal price. 



In his preface to what is called the "Great Bible," 

 Archbishop Cranmer wrote : " Many hundred years ago the 

 Bible was translated and read in the Saxon's tongue, which 

 at that time was our mother tongue, whereof there remain 

 divers copies found lately in old abbeys, of such antique 

 manner of writing and speaking that few men have been able 

 to read and understand them. And when this language 

 waned old and out of common usage, because folk should not 

 lack the want of reading, it was again translated into the 

 newer language whereof yet also many copies remain and be 

 daily found." On this subject none of his day, nor since his 

 day, could speak with more knowledge. To the truth of that 

 the ancient books of his library, still to be seen, annotated in 

 his own handwriting, bear witness. The Bibles Cranmer 

 refers to were doubtless in greater numbers when he wrote 

 than now. For besides versions by Rolles and others of the 

 Psalms, there are left but few scripture translations made 

 from the time of the Conquest to the days of Wycliffe. 



One exception, an oasis in the desert of Middle English, 

 is the Ormulum, a gospel paraphrase in metre. Orm, or 

 Ormin, who wrote this book, was an Augustinian monk. A 

 single copy, believed to have been the author's own, is 

 preserved in the Bodleian I^ibrary. It is the only copy come 

 down from his day. Guest esteems the Ormulum as "by far 



