J.R.R.

TOLKIEN AS A PHILOLOGIST: A RECONSIDERATION

OF THE NORTHERNISMS IN CHAUCERS REEVES TALE
In his analysis of the portrayal of Northern dialect in the Reeves Tale Tolkien
assumed that Chaucer was aiming at complete consistency in his representation
of Northern dialect features.1 Tolkiens article presented Chaucer as a philologist and argued that his linguistic joke could therefore only be truly appreciated by philologists.2 In the critical text appended to the article Tolkien
attempted to reconstruct a Chaucerian original which was very purely and correctly Northern (16); a text free from the mongrel blends and corruptions introduced by scribal copyists with no formal philological training.
However since Tolkiens article was published a great deal of work has been
done on the text of Chaucers Canterbury Tales, which serves to cast doubt on
many of Tolkiens assumptions and conclusions. The vast editorial enterprise
carried out by J.M. Manly and E. Rickert based upon a complete collation of
all the extant manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, concluded that the Hengwrt
manuscript [Hg] preserved a very accurate text, close to the authors original.3
Furthermore Manly and Rickert claimed that the Ellesmere manuscript [El],
which formed the basis of F.N. Robinsons edition of 19334 and Tolkiens critical text of 1934, had been subjected to a degree of editorial sophistication. Following Manly and Rickerts work a number of their assumptions and their
methodology have been called into question, although their belief in the importance of the Hg manuscript has been accepted by many textual scholars. The
strongest supporter of the Hg manuscript is N.F. Blake whose argument that
Hg represents the text closest to that of Chaucers lost holograph led him to use
Hg as the basis of his 1980 edition of the Canterbury Tales.5 Recent stemmatic
analysis of the manuscripts of the Wife of Baths Prologue using sophisticated
1

4
5

J.R.R. Tolkien, Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeves Tale, Transactions of the Philological
Society (1934), 1-70.
For the joke of this dialogue is (and was) primarily a linguistic joke, and is, indeed, now one
at which only a philologist can laugh sincerely (2).
J.M. Manly and E. Rickert (eds), The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), 8 vols.
Manuscript abbreviations are those established by Manly and Rickert. The Hengwrt manuscript is National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 392D and the Ellesmere manuscript is San
Marino, Huntington Library MS El. 26.C.9.
F.N. Robinson (ed.), The works of Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1933).
N.F. Blake, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: edited from the Hengwrt Manuscript
(London, 1980). For a discussion of Blakes view of the status of Hg and the genesis of the
textual tradition of the poem see N.F. Blake, The Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales
(London, 1985). For a critique of the Manly and Rickert edition see George Kane, John M.
Manly and Edith Rickert, in Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. P. Ruggiers (Norman, 1984), pp. 207-230; N.F. Blake, The Editorial Assumptions in the Manly-Rickert edition of the Canterbury Tales, ENGLISH STUDIES 64 (1983), 385-400.

English Studies, 2001, 2, pp. 97-105

0013-838X/01/02-0097/$15.00
2001, Swets & Zeitlinger

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S.C.P. HOROBIN

computer collation software by The Canterbury Tales Project has further served
to assert the primacy of the Hg manuscript.6
In addition to the important textual work that has been carried out since
Tolkiens 1934 article, we now know much more about scribal practice. Rather
than viewing scribal copies as corruptions of an accurate authorial exemplar, recent studies have treated these copies as contemporary critical responses to an
authors language and text. Study of bad texts has revealed the significance of
such documents as evidence of the ways in which such texts were read and understood by their early audiences, to establish an authentic contemporary, or
near contemporary, commentary.7 In an important article which examines
scribal copies of Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde, B.A. Windeatt demonstrates
how scribes can offer us the earliest line-by-line literary criticism of Chaucers
poetry, a reaction to what in the poets text makes it distinctive and remarkable
in its own time.8
Furthermore the traditional view, as expressed by Tolkien in his classic article on AB language, that the language of a ME text is a product of its textual
history has also been refuted by ME dialectologists.9 Recent approaches to ME
dialectology have demonstrated that scribes in the late ME period regularly
translated the language of their exemplar into a single consistent variety of
ME.
Thus rather than viewing the language of a ME manuscript as a confused
blend of archetypal and scribal forms, it is now possible to consider such texts
as evidence for a single consistent dialect of ME. In addition it seems that a consideration of the treatment of the Northernisms by later copyists may offer insights into how scribes responded to Chaucers use of dialect, and how these
responses were affected by the dynamic processes of textual transmission and
linguistic change.
Study of the representation of Northern dialect in the Hg manuscript reveals
a number of inconsistencies in the realisation of Northern features in the speech
6

98

P.M.W. Robinson, A Stemmatic Analysis of the Fifteenth-Century Witnesses to The Wife of

Baths Prologue, in The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers Volume II, eds N.F.
Blake and P.M.W. Robinson (London, 1997), pp. 69-132.
Kate Harris, John Gowers Confessio Amantis: The Virtues of Bad Texts, in Manuscripts
and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. D.A. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 27-40.
B.A. Windeatt, The Scribes as Chaucers Early Critics, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1
(1979), 119-41, repr. in Writing After Chaucer: Essential Readings in Chaucer and the Fifteenth
Century, ed. D.J. Pinti (London, 1998), pp. 27-44.
See J.R.R. Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiad, Essays and Studies 14 (1929), 104-126:
I start with the conviction that very few Middle English texts represent in detail the real language ... of any one time or place or person ... Their language is, in varying degrees, the
product of their textual history, and cannot be fully explained, sometimes cannot be understood at all by reference to geography. The notion of consistent scribal translation is set out
in A.I. McIntosh, A New Approach to Middle English Dialectology, ENGLISH STUDIES 44
(1963), 1-11, and A.I. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin, General Introduction, A
Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, vol. I (Aberdeen, 1986). See also M. Benskin and
M. Laing, Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English Manuscripts, in So Meny
People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Medieval English presented to
Angus McIntosh, eds M. Benskin and M. L. Samuels (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 55-106.

CHAUCERS REEVES TALE

of the undergraduates. For instance the reflex of OE a which remained unrounded much longer in the North is generally written <a> in the students
speech, eg. bathe, swa, banes. However there are several examples of
spellings with the Southern rounded vowel <o> in this position, eg. bothe,
none, told. In addition to these forms there is another spelling which may
show OE a reflected in <ee>, heem HOME.10 Another apparent inconsistency
may be seen in the use of <th-> forms of the third person plural pronouns. The
usual practice in the Hg manuscript is to use the ON derived form they, but
to retain the OE forms hem and here for the oblique forms. The only use of
the form thair in Hg is in the speech of the undergraduates and was evidently
included as a Northernism. However the students also use the Southern form
hem rather than the expected Northernism them.
Similar inconsistencies may be found at the level of morphology. For instance
the Hg manuscript is extremely consistent in the preservation of the formal
grammatical distinction between weak and strong adjectives.11 However in the
students speech Hg preserves an example of an uninflected form of the weak
adjective in the line this lang nyght. This reading seems appropriate considering the earlier simplification and loss of the OE inflexional system in Northern
dialects. However Hg also has several examples where the students speech preserves final <-e> in its correct Southern grammatical environment, eg. this
shorte nyght.
When we consider the treatment of the Northern dialect forms by later
scribes, we find a wide range of responses. I shall begin by considering the treatment of orthography and phonology.12 Study of the treatment of the Northern
orthography across the earliest manuscripts reveals an impressive consistency in
the accurate transmission of the dialect spelling features. In addition to the consistent preservation of many Northern spelling features, many scribes adopted
a number of Southern spellings in the students speech. For example the use of
<s> to represent // is frequently changed to the widespread standardised
spellings <sh, sch> (Ha4, La, Gg, Dd). The Northern form of SUCH swilk is
regularly preserved except in Gg where it is consistently replaced by the Southern form swich. Gg seems particularly intolerant of Northern forms and is the
only manuscript to translate the single occurrence of the pronoun thair to the
Southern here. The Northern spelling gif IF is frequently changed to if or
if (Ha4 Cp La Gg), although both Dd and El preserve this form and even
10

11

12

For a discussion concerning the spelling heem in Hg and the related forms neen and geen
in El see J.J. Smith, The Great Vowel Shift in the North of England and some forms in
Chaucers Reeves Tale, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95 (1995), 433-37; for an alternative
explanation see S.C.P. Horobin, Some Spellings in Chaucers Reeves Tale, Notes and
Queries, N.S. 47 (2000), 16-18.
See J.D. Burnley, Inflexion in Chaucers Adjectives, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 83
(1982), 169-77.
Study of the orthography, phonology and morphology has been focused on the earliest manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales: Cp, Dd, El, Hg, Gg, Ha4, La. The study of the scribal treatment of vocabulary later in the article is based upon variant readings of all the extant
manuscripts, provided in Manly and Rickert (1940).

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S.C.P. HOROBIN

change a single instance of if to gif in order to make the representation consistent. Spellings like no (Ha4, La, Gg) show the adoption of the rounded
vowel as the reflex of OE a typical of Southern dialects, rather than the unrounded vowel preserved in the North, eg. na. Despite this tendency to Southernise such forms scribes were careful to preserve the Northern spellings in
rhyme eg. alswa: raa and bathe: lathe. Only the Gg scribe makes such adjustments in rhyming position, and in one instance this spoils the rhyme, eg.
bonys: atonys, bothe: lathe. Despite this general tendency to change such
forms there are a number of examples across the manuscripts where scribes
write <a> where the Southern <o> is found in Hg, eg. bothe ] bathe El Ha4;
none ] naan Cp Ha4 Dd; told ] tald El Ha4 Dd; woot ] wat Dd; mysgo ] mysgaa
Dd.
Consideration of the treatment of Northern morphology in these same manuscripts reveals a similar tendency to mirror the features found in the Hengwrt
manuscript. In addition to the inclusion of such forms there are further examples of the same process of southernising recorded at the level of orthography. For instance the Northern third person singular inflexion of the present
tense is often replaced with the Southern equivalent <-(e)th>, eg. gas ] goth La
Gg, has ] hath Ha4, La, Dd. The use of the uninflected genitive form in god
hert which reflects the earlier loss of such inflexions in the North, is changed in
most manuscripts for the inflected form goddes hert (Ha4 Cp Dd La).13 We
have already seen that the Hg manuscript shows the Northern loss of grammatical final <-e> in this lang nyght, and it is interesting to note that all manuscripts have the weak adjectival inflexion: this lange nyght (El Ha4 Cp Dd La
Gg (longe)). It seems likely that Chaucers use of this inflexion was as a formal,
metrical device and that final <-e> no longer played a part in the spoken language. David Burnley has demonstrated the consistency in the preservation of
these inflexions in Hg and he argues that while the language of Hg is undoubtedly close to spoken forms, [it] is nevertheless in some respects an idealised written version of them.14 It seems that these scribes felt that this
grammatical feature was an integral part of Chaucers language and must be
preserved or even added in such environments. Given the loss of the inflexion
in their own spoken and written dialects it seems unlikely that these scribes
would have recognised the uninflected form as a Northernism and they were
therefore content to regularise accordingly. Two manuscripts, El and Gg, provide the only example of the use of the <y-> prefix in the past participle
yshapen for the Hg form shapen. Chaucers use of this prefix is inconsistent
and he seems to have exploited the variation allowed within the London dialect
for metrical effect. However the El and Gg scribes seem to have felt that it was
a necessary feature of Chaucers language. There is only a single example of two
scribes increasing the Northern flavour of the morphology of the text, where
Hgs southern form maketh becomes makes (Ha4, Dd).
13

14

For the argument that the uninflected genitive form represents a Northernism see N.F. Blake,
Another Northernism in the Reeves Tale ? Notes and Queries (1977), 400-401.
Burnley, Inflexion in Chaucers Adjectives, pp. 173-4.

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CHAUCERS REEVES TALE

Finally I wish to turn to a consideration of the treatment of dialect vocabulary. Despite the mirroring of many of the characteristic Northern lexical items
found in Hg, many manuscripts substitute such words with more widespread,
Southern equivalents. Other instances provide examples of scribes increasing
the Northern flavour of the students dialect by replacing Southern words with
more provincial, Northern items. There are also a number of examples where
the scribes were unsure as to the meaning of a particular word and replace it
with a word of similar appearance, or a word which seems to fit the general
context. Given the greater volume of lexical variation found across the manuscripts, this section will deal in turn with all variation which seems to indicate
these kinds of substitution.
4027 bihoues
One possible example of southernising of vocabulary is found in the replacement of the verb bihoues with muste in Gg, Ps and To. The verb bihoven
does appear in a number of Northern texts, such as Cursor Mundi, Patience and
Pearl.15 However this verb is not restricted to a Northern provenance; it is
found elsewhere in Chaucer in the Tale of Melibee (B. 2406), The Franklins
Tale (F. 1359) and in other London texts. This may therefore be simply an example of these scribes substituting a difficult reading with an easier one. The
reading falles, found in Ha4 and Ii, provides an example of a change in the
verb but a preservation of the Northern 3rd person singular inflexion <-es>.
4028 fool
The reading fon found in Ha4 seems to indicate a substitution for a more
northerly word, found generally in Northern and Eastern texts.16 However the
word is found within the Hg text at line 4089 and it seems likely that the Ha4
scribes substitution was prompted by this occurrence in his exemplar. The Ha4
copyist, Scribe D, was clearly unhappy with the use of fool within the Northern speech as he incorporated a further change in the other Canterbury Tales
manuscript also in his hand, Cp.17 However the substituted OF word folt
seems to be a word of fairly widespread Midland and Northern distribution, although it may be that in the early fifteenth century its use was more restricted.18
4029 hope
The use of this verb to express expectation rather than volition has a relatively
restricted Northern distribution, with a large number of examples in the North15

16
17

18

See Middle English Dictionary [MED], ed. H. Kurath et al. (Ann Arbor, 1954-), s.v., bihoven
v.
See MED s.v. fonne n..
For a discussion of Scribe D and his copies of Chaucer, Gower, Langland and Trevisa, see
A.I. Doyle and M.B. Parkes, The production of copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the early fifteenth century in Mediaeval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries:
essays presented to N.R. Ker, eds M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson (Aldershot, 1978), pp. 163210.
See MED s.v. folt n.

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S.C.P. HOROBIN

ern Homily Cycle, Robert Mannyngs Handlyng Synne, and Cursor Mundi.19
Despite this the verb is preserved in this position in nearly every copy of the
Reeves Tale, with three exceptions. Fi replaces the verb with the more common
Southern form wene, while Cn and Ma rewrite the line I hope he wol be deed
as is seke and like for to be deed.
4030 wanges
The word wanges seems to have been relatively uncommon in ME and many
scribes replaced it with the more common vaynes. This substitution suggests
that these scribes did not fully understand the word wanges, meaning backteeth. Lack of comprehension seems clearly evident in the replacement with
anguysh in Ra1, and the attempt to rewrite the line by the Fi scribe: So
greueth hit hym in body and hede.
4033 heythen
The ON word heythen is recorded primarily in texts copied in areas of strong
Norse influence, such as the Ormulum and Havelok, before its appearance in the
Reeves Tale.20 However appearances of this form in several texts preserved in
the Auchinleck manuscript, such as Guy of Warwick and the Harrowing of Hell,
suggest a wider, metropolitan distribution. Despite this the form heythen is replaced with hens or henne in 27 manuscripts, and omitted in a further four.
4037 how
The use of how in this line and subsequently in lines 4039, 4042 is changed in
a number of manuscripts for how gates. This is a Northern expression found
most frequently in the Northern Homily Cycle and Cursor Mundi. Therefore the
inclusion of this form is evidence of a scribal tendency to increase the Northern
flavour of Chaucers text.
4045 ille
The use of the Northern word ille, derived from ON illr, provokes a number
of scribes to replace this with an OE equivalent. The most common substitution
is evel, although there is a single instance of the replacement with badde (Py).
4078 whilk wey
One interesting variant of this reading is given by the closely related manuscripts En3 and Ad1 which read whiche gate. In these manuscripts the Northern spelling whilk has been Southernised, while the OE wey has been replaced
with a Northern equivalent, gate, derived from ON gata.
4086 wight
The use of this word as an adjective meaning swift seems to have been relatively rare in ME, although there are other occurrences within Chaucers work.
19
20

See MED s.v. hopen v., 2b.

See MED s.v. hethen adv.

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CHAUCERS REEVES TALE

For instance the word is found in the Monks Tale (B2. 2267). However despite
this a number of scribes translated the word into a more familiar equivalent,
swift. The scribe of He clearly misunderstood the meaning of wight and substituted the word white, making nonsense of the line.
4110 hethyng
The ON word hethyng shows a very coherent Northern distribution and posed
certain problems for copyists of Chaucers text.21 A number of scribes clearly
did not understand the word and substituted other forms, based on visual similarities. For instance the following scribes clearly understood hethyng to be a
present participle and replaced it with other present participles which roughly
fit the general context, eg. heuing (Ds Sl2), laughinge (Hk), brething (Tc1).
Other manuscripts substituted this word for others of similar appearance which
also make little sense of the line, eg. hethyn (Mc, Ra1, To).
4132 get vs som
This expression is replaced with gar vs have in two closely related manuscripts,
Dd and En1. The use of gar to mean make or do is of Norse origin and
found in Northern texts from this period.22 It is therefore evidence of the scribe
of Dd increasing the Northern flavour of the text by introducing further dialect
vocabulary.
4171 ymel
The word ymel, derived from ON milli, is substituted by a number of scribes
for Southern equivalents, such as betwix, atwene (Cx1), amonge, in manges
(Lc).
4178 wenche
The common word wenche is changed in two manuscripts (Dd, Bo2) for a
form of restricted Northern provenance, lasse. This word is found in only a
few texts, most of which are of known Northern provenance, eg. Northern
Homily Cycle and Cursor Mundi.23
4208 daf
This word is relatively common in Southern, especially metropolitan, productions and was clearly not considered to be Northern.24 The scribe of Ma replaced it with the ON derived dastard, which shows a much clearer Northern
distribution.

21
22
23
24

See
See
See
See

MED
MED
MED
MED

s.v.
s.v.
s.v.
s.v.

hething n.
geren v., 3b.
lasse n.
daffe n.

103

S.C.P. HOROBIN

4239 sel
The use of this word with the sense prosperity is relatively restricted in ME,
appearing in mostly Northern texts, such as Gawain, and the York Plays.25 This
word seems to have caused some confusion amongst later copyists who regularly substitute the more familiar word heele, thus preserving the rhyme with
farewel. Other attempts to replace this word with a more familiar equivalent
produce the forms whele (Bo1), wele (Ph2), helle (Cn), ele (Ha3), swell
(Bo2).
This study has shown that in general scribes did recognise the integrity of the
Northern dialect features to the text of the Reeves Tale, and preserved these in
most occurrences. Certain scribes, especially that of Gg, effected a wholesale
translation of these forms, replacing them with current Southern equivalents.
Other scribes responded to Chaucers use of dialect by increasing the Northern
flavour of the text. This is particularly apparent in the work of the Dd scribe
who made a number of changes to increase the number of Northern features
within the text. Many scribes attempted to make the representation more consistent by regularising the text, while a number added Northern features not
found at all in the Hg manuscript. Other scribes did not understand certain
Northern forms and replaced them with words of a similar appearance, or
words which seemed to fit the general context. Study of Chaucers representation of Northern dialect in the Reeves Tale suggests that Tolkiens assumption
that inconsistencies were due to the negligence and rape of Chaucers earliest
scribes is unlikely, especially given the general accuracy of the Hg manuscript,
and the widespread preservation of many of the Northern dialect features
across the manuscript tradition. It seems more likely that Chaucer was concerned with imposing a flavour of the Northern dialect on the students speech
rather than achieving absolute philological accuracy or consistency.26 Chaucers
representation of dialect was no doubt further constrained by the nature of his
Southern, courtly audience, who would perhaps have had difficulties comprehending the more extreme provincialisms of Northern speech.27
A further complicating factor in Chaucers representation and the scribal
preservation of Northern forms concerns the dynamic nature of the London
language during this period. During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries London English was being heavily influenced by Midland dialects following waves of immigration into the capital.28 Therefore it may be that the
25
26

27

28

See MED s.v. sel n.

N.F. Blake argues that Chaucer intended to give only a general flavour of a northern dialect in Non-standard Language in English Literature (London, 1981), p.33.
John Trevisa famously described the difficulties Southerners experienced in understanding
Northern dialect in a passage in his translation of Ranulph Higdens Polychronicon: Al the
longage of the Northumbres, and specialliche at York, is so scharp, slitting, and frotynge and
vnschape, that we southerne men may that longage vnnethe vnderstonde. See B.M.H.
Strang, A History of English (London, 1970), p. 160.
For a discussion see M.L. Samuels, Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology, in
Middle English Dialectology, ed. M. Laing (Aberdeen, 1989), pp. 64-80, M.L. Samuels, Linguistic Evolution with special reference to English (Cambridge, 1972), ch. 8.

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CHAUCERS REEVES TALE

treatment of Northernisms by later scribes reflects changes in the London language itself.29
Tolkien assumed that scribes did not get Chaucers joke and thus translated
the Northern forms into Southern equivalents.30 The appearance of Northern
forms in later manuscripts was thus explained as the chance survival of authorial spellings. However analysis of the treatment of Northernisms by the earliest copyists shows that these scribes preserved many of these features, despite
the pressures of dialect translation and linguistic change. Indeed certain instances show these scribes attempting to increase the dialectal flavour of the text
by adding extra Northern features or increasing the consistency. There are also
a large number of examples of scribes replacing Northern features for equivalent Southern forms. These processes can tell us much about the status of certain linguistic features during this period of dynamic language change, and the
ways in which scribes understood Chaucers use of dialect.31
Department of English Language
University of Glasgow

29

30

31

S.C.P. HOROBIN

For instance this period saw the adoption of the third person plural pronouns them, their
into the incipient London standard language, thereby reducing the Northern connotations in
the students use of the pronoun thair.
Nonetheless, it has been held, and may still be, that this idea was variously improved or enlarged upon by individual copyists it is hardly credible that each of these scrivains (and
their predecessors) should at odd moments have had the fancy to improve his attempt (12).
I am grateful to Dr Jeremy Smith for reading a draft of this article and for making many
helpful suggestions.

105