the corpus, épinal, erfurt and leyden glossaries, viii - World eBook ...

PART III 97
this 'second glossary' material, from which selection was made
by each compiler at caprice.
That Aldhelm (whom we shall cite by Giles' pagination) was
a source of the Corpus Glossary has been generally believed since
Napier's paper, reported in the 'Academy' of 1894, p. 398 (cf. his
Old English Glosses, p. xii n.); and Goetz in the Thesaurus GIos-
sarum (apparently at Schlutter's instigation) refers several items
of EE i or of Erf ^ to Aldhelm passages (e.g. Crustu : omatu
and Corp. to Aldh. 77, 1 1 crustu interdicto). Now 'a priori
EE i
'
it would
seem likely that the material common to EE and Corpus must
be too early for Aldhelm-glosses and that the only place for them
would be in the parts peculiar to Corpus (or the Corpus College
MS.) or Erf.2 (or the Erfurt MS.). It will be well to examine
the evidence that has been alleged; especially since Napier
himself has shewn in his book that the glosses in MSS. of
Aldhelm are alien from the items in our glossaries.
Most of it is of the kind employed above (p. 85) to suggest
the possibility that St Columba's Altus was a source. Various
unusual words are cited which appear both in Aldhelm and in
a glossary. And yet the real explanation may be that these
words which seem unusual to us were not unusual to learned
writers of that time. Or else the true inference is that Aldhelm
made our glossaries (or similar collections) a quarry for supplying
his vocabulary.
Now while we find it difficult to prove that our glossaries
borrowed from Aldhelm, there is no doubt whatsoever about his
borrowings from them. There was an Abolita item, culled from
Festus, Arcites: sagittarios (the Old Latin word for 'bowmen,'
formed from arcus 'a bow' as pedites from pes. The word does
not appear in any Latin author). In our MSS. of Abolita (C. G. L.
IV 21, 18) it is miswritten Arcistes: Sagittarius. Aldhelm seems
to have found it in the form Arcister: Sagittarius, for he adorns
his letter (if it is his) to Eahfrid ^^^th the phrase 'utpote belliger
in medituUio campi arcister'; and the Epinal and Corpus Gloss-
aries have Arcister: strelhora, as well as Arcistis: Sagittarius
(-ris). An interesting list could be made (and, I hope, will be
made by some Aldhelm scholar) of all the like evidence of
Aldhelm's dependence on our glossaries (or their
predecessors).
-
L. G.