The storie of Asneth : an unknown Middle English translation of a lost Latin version / [ed. Henry Noble MacCracken].

THE STORIE OF ASNETH.

AN UNKNOWN MIDDLE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A LOST LATIN VERSION.

The Storie of Asneth is one of the many Jewish embroider∣ies upon the concise narrative of Holy Writ. It treats of the life and vision of Asenath, daughter of Potiphar, priest of Heli∣opolis, who was a maiden pure and proud, despising all men, till she fell under the magic spell of the personality of the great Joseph, "God's strong man." Asenath loved him, the story tells us, at first sight, and grieved so much at his refusal to kiss an idol worshipper that she discarded the gods of Egypt, fasted seven days in sack-cloth and ashes, and at last in a vision was told by an angelic visitor that her sore penance was ac∣cepted, and Joseph granted to be her lord. In proof of the truth of the message was performed upon her hand the pretty miracle of the bees of paradise. Her marriage to Joseph fol∣lowed; and when Pharaoh's son sought to carry her off with the aid of Gad and Dan, Joseph's more truly born brothers, Ben∣jamin, Simeon, and Levi, saved her from danger.

The narrative is an attractive one, as mediaeval legends go, and we can commend that fair and well-born lady's taste who desired her chaplain, or some person of the kind, to translate the Latin of the Story into English. Though he was "dull with dotage," "lame and unlusty," he "meeked him to his mis∣tress," and taking the story, not from its Greek original, but as he found it in a Latin version from which Vincent of Beau∣vais had abridged it long before for his Speculum Historiale, (VI, cxviii-cxxiv), he produced a curious hybrid of poetry, having the sing-a-song-of-sixpence lilt of Gamelyn, and the stanzaic form of Chaucer's Troilus.

This worthy cleric lived, I suppose, not far from Warwick∣shire, and not long after the death of Chaucer. He was fam∣iliar

with the vocabulary of an earlier age than his own, and had not listened in vain to the passing minstrel. He seems, as we read him between the lines of the Prologue and Epilogue, to have sincerely loved his mistress, and to have regretted her loss with real affection.

The uneven jog of his lines, and the abundance of cum∣brous rhyme-tags, rhyme-tags, hinder our enjoyment of his poem. If we forgive him these faults, we must admit that he gave his lady a not unworthy rendering of his original. What that original was, I give a hint, by printing at the foot of the page the story as it occurs in Vincent of Beauvais. The prayer of Asenath was omitted in that abridgment, along with certain minor de∣tails, such as Potiphar's reasonable desire to have his daughter married from his own door; but the phraseology of the Spec∣ulum is elsewhere reproduced by the English writer with such exact fidelity, that, except for the suppressions above noted, we must consider the Vincentian narrative an accurate copy of the earlier Latin text. Of this Historia Assenech, as Vincent calls his authority, I know no copy in existence; and leave the ques∣tion to those more familiar than myself with the history of Hebrew literature.

The Storie of Asneth exists, so far as I know, only in the volume known as the Ellesmere MS. No. 4, folios 121a—132a. The MS. contains Lydgate's Wikked Tong, Ram's Horn, So as the Crabbe, and Daunce of Machabree, and Hoccleve's De Regimine Principum, all very good texts of the first half of the fifteenth century. In a different hand, though of not much later date, occurs our poem. The writing is penned with mon∣astic care, the letters small and clear, and the abbreviations scrupulously marked. The "þ" is made like "y", and the "n" like "u", while "G" is very like "S". The divisions of the tale are marked by letters illuminated in a ribbon design, not ill drawn. The vellum is marked with a plummet for writing, 43 lines to the page, enclosed by vertical and horizontal lines the full way of the page. The quires of the small quarto are un∣marked for the binder, or if marked originally, have been

clipped. The catalogue of Lord Ellesmere's collection at Bridgewater House, soon to be published, will contain a more complete description of the MS. than here needs to be given. I am indebted to the librarian at Bridgwater House, Mr. Strachan Holme, for his kindness in arranging, after permis∣sion had been obtained from the Earl of Ellesmere, for the photographing of the MS.

My text is copied from these photographs, such alterations as I make being chiefly insertions necessary to the sense of the line, and clearly indicated. The exact MS. reading is given in such cases in footnotes. I have in half-a-dozen instances sup∣plied translations of rare words. The numerous archaic words in the poet's dialect make one suspect in him an intentional affectation of an obsolete style.

For a bibliography of the four-text edition of the Greek orig∣inal, and the Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian transla∣tions, one may consult the excellent article by the Rabbi of Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kohler Kaufman, in the Jewish Ency∣clopedia, under Asenath. Dr. Kaufman points out the pro∣nouncedly Christian character of the cross upon the honey, and the reference to bread of life. He gives an admirable summary of the story, too long to quote here. Most important for this paper, however, are his translations from the original of Asenath's prayer, which show that the English translator fol∣lowed his lost Latin original at that point with the same fidel∣ity observable in the passages covered by Vincent's version.

The heroine's name is in the original Greek "〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉", from a Hebrew Asenath. Thus the English version has a nearer resemblance to the original than Vincent's Assenech.