THE trials and martyrdom of St. Margaret appear to have been popular in England in early times. Several versions of the legend, in prose or verse, are found from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries: four in Old English, several in Latin. The former have been printed by Mr. O. Cockayne; [Seinte Marherete, the Meiden ant Martyr, edited by Oswald Cockayne for the Early English Text Society, 1866. This contains three Old English versions; the fourth he printed in "Narratiunculæ." (See Foreword, pp. vi. vii.)] and one of them, a poem, copied about A.D. 1330, was reprinted by E. Mätzner. [Altenglische Sprachproben, Berlin, 1867, 1st Abtheilung, p. 200.]
The Auchinleck MS. at Edinburgh (date about 1310), fo. 16 b, contains another redaction, and a later one still is found in a MS. at Oxford, written about 1450 (Ashmolean, 61, fo. 145). These two have been printed by Dr. C. Horstmann. [Altenglische Legenden, Heilbronn, 1881, p. 236.] The story of the saint was also told in verse by Osbern Bokenham in 1445, among whose thirteen Legends [Roxburghe Club, 1835. A recent edition, by Dr. Horstmann, with an interesting introduction, has also been issued in Professor Kölbing's Altenglische Bibliothek, Heilbronn, 1883.] of Saints that of. Margaret stands the first.
Our Brome example is another copy of the Ashmolean poem; there being, indeed, not many years between the dates of the two MSS. The verbal variations made by the scribe are numerous, but not for the most part very important; but while, on the one hand, omitting two or three lines found in the Ashmole (which are here printed between square brackets), on the other several fresh lines are given (here marked by a, b, &c.), which are evidently omitted in the Ashmole copy. Unfortunately, however, the Brome copy is incomplete, stopping short at line 365 of the Ashmole, of which the concluding 253 lines are wanting. The numbering of the lines is made to correspond with that of the Ashmolean copy, as printed by Dr. Horstmann.
