Lexical substitutions in the Old English gloss to the "Eadwine Psalter" and its place in the Old English glossing tradition

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a study into lexical substitutions found in the Old English gloss to psalms 2-50 in the Eadwine Psalter . The major objectives to determine the possible sources of this manuscript, which clearly go beyond the traditional explanation that originally the gloss was derived from a Vespasian Psalter -type gloss, later revised by the corrector based on a Regius Psalter -type gloss. The analysis shows that the affiliation of the gloss is indeed highly complex for such a resource. Moreover, the paper shows that despite its numerous corrections, the Old English gloss to the Eadwine Psalter is in fact a valuable source of information on the twelfth-century scribal practice of the post-Conquest England.