The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172906   Message #4192419
Posted By: Robert B. Waltz
26-Nov-23 - 06:57 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Sir Eglamore
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Kate Rusby - Sir Eglamore
Thanks for posting the link -- it was quite a recording.

Not much point in posting the lyrics, though -- for the verses which I checked, at least, it was straight out of d'Urfey, and that text is also in Bronson.

And I'm going to strike preemptively here and say that, although Bronson includes the short form of "Sir Eglamore" with "Sir Lionel" (Child #18), Child does not.

There is, to be sure, a strong relationship between "Sir Eglamore of Artois" and "Sir Lionel," but they aren't the same. "Sir Eglamore" is a romance; "Sir Lionel" is a ballad that barely existed. (Yes, there are plenty of "Bangum and the Boar" type pieces, but that's a much-reduced version of the ballad, which is itself a much-reduced version of the romance.)

"Sir Eglamore" is an odd romance; almost no one thinks it's any good, but it's among the most popular of all Middle English romances -- there are six early manuscript copies and two printed editions from 1510 or earlier:

Manuscripts:
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 261 (Bodleian 21835), folio 26
Cambridge, University Library, MS. Ff.2.38, foio 71
London, British Library, MS. Cotton Caligula A.II, folio 5
Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS. 91 [Robert Thornton MS. 1; Lincoln Thornton MS.], folio 138
London, British Library, MS. Egerton 2862 (previously Sutherland, Trentham Hall], folio 148 (fragment, one leaf only)
Ann Arbor, University of Michigan MS. 225 (fragment)

Early prints:
1 leaf surviving of an edition by Wynken de Worde around 1500, Short Title Catalog #7542
Chepman and Myllar, 1508

William Copland reprinted it (probably the De Worde text, since that was Copland's usual source, though I don't think we can prove that) perhaps in the 1550s; J. Walley printed it again c. 1570.

There is also a Percy Folio version, cut down as usual.

That makes it the best-attested Middle English romance not by Chaucer; it's very rare to find more than three copies of a Middle English romance, and many exist only on one.

The authoritative edition is: Frances E. Richardson, editor, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Early English Text Society/Oxford University Press, 1965, which has parallel texts of the two best manuscripts.

An accessible, slightly modernized edition, with glosses, is Harriet Hudson, Four Middle English Romances: Sir Isumbras, Octavian, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Sir Tryamour, second edition, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2006. This is also available online.

For a truly complete bibliography, here is the Digital Index of Middle English Verse page:

https://www.dimev.net/record.php?recID=2867.

I could go on, but no doubt I've already worn out my welcome. :-)