The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
King Horn
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| Text name: | King Horn |
| Alternative names: | The Geste of King Horn; All been he blithe that to my song Lithe |
| Content: | Horn is the son of the king of Suddene. Saracen invaders kill the king, occupy the land, and banish Horn (lines 1-116). He comes to the land of Westernesse, where he becomes a knight and falls in love with princess Rymenhild. Horn is slandered by envious Fikenhild and exiled again as a consequence (lines 117-756). Horn now comes to Ireland, where he stays for seven years until he receives word of the planned forced marriage between Rymenhild and the king of Reynes (757-1006). He hastens back to Westernesse, kills the king of Reynes and all his guests, and gets married to Rymenhild instead (lines 1007-1260). Before consuming the marriage, he sets off to his native land of Suddene and reconquers it with a band of Irish warriors (lines 1261-1388). In the meantime, Fikenhild falsely claims that Horn has died and steals Rymenhild to lock her in a newly built fortress. Dressed as a musician, Horn sneaks into the fortress and kills Fikenhild (lines 1389-1492). Finally united, Horn and Rymenhild rule Suddene in happiness until the day they die (lines 1493-1530). For some remarks and references on literary criticism of King Horn, see Herzman, Drake & Salisbury (1997: Introduction) |
| Genre/subjects: | romance, tale, ballad, good and evil, gest, chivalry, matter of England |
| Dialect of original composition: | Southeast, London Ascertaining the dialect of the original of King Hornhas proved difficult on account of a great admixture of features. The dialect of the original "must be placed somewhere in the South-Eastern area outside Kent, near enough to the Midland border to account for a considerable admixture of Midland characteristics, and at the same time so near the Middle South as to be in some small degree affected by its peculiarities. North-West Surrey may possibly satisfy the conditions" (Hall 1901: xliv). Breier considers the original to be from the "Eastern South" (1910: 308). The phonological evidence of King Horn is "not incompatible with a London provenance" (Allen 1988: 112). |
| Date of original composition: | 1200-1280 King Horn is generally believed to be the oldest of the extant Middle English romances. It was traditionally dated to about 1225. For instance, Wells considered it "of about 1225" (1916: 8) and the online version of the Middle English Dictionary dates the original to "(?c1225)." However, Allen's (1984, 1988) work on the date of the poem has called this early date into question. The available evidence is compatible with any date of composition between "some time after the end of the twelfth century" (Allen 1988: 112) and the end of the thirteenth century. She proposes the "1270s" (ibid.: 125) as a plausible estimate. |
| Suggested date: | 1275 |
| PCMEP period: | 2a (1250-1300) |
| Versification: | couplets, two-line, aa for some comments on the metre, see French (1940: chapter 2), Hall (1901: xlv-l). |
| Index of ME Verse: | 166 (IMEV), 166 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 312 |
| Wells: | 1.1. |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Horn |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Hall, Joseph. 1901. King Horn: A Middle English Romance Oxford: Clarendon Press. 3-89 (odd pages). |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Cambridge, University Library Gg. 4.27, Part 2, ff. 11r-25v |
| Online manuscript description: | University of Cambridge
Digital Library Late Medieval English Scribes eLALME (Linguistic Profile 6800) |
| Manuscript dialect: | Southern The dialect of the manuscript has been identified as Hampshire (Allen 1988: 99) or Berkshire (McIntosh et al. 1986: 67). |
| Manuscript date: | s.xiii-ex, s. xiv-in "A consensus of opinion now gives a date of 'around 1300'" (Allen 1988: 103, with relevant references in footnote 14). The Middle English Dictionary dates the manuscript "c.1300." |
About the file:
| File name: | M2a.KingHorn.psd |
| ID: | KingHorn,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token There is an initial title and a final explicit without a line number. |
| Word count: | 6,953 (including title, explicit, fused words like ischall 'I shall ,' counted as one) |
| Token count: | 859 |
| Line count: | 1530 |
Other:
| General notes: | King Horn is preserved in three manuscripts:
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| Remarks on parses: | The parses and line breaks follow the text as in Hall's (1901) edition. There are many instances of adhortatives to give a command formed with an overt second person singular pronoun and a verb in the subjunctive, such as Horn þu vnderuonge 'May you receive Horn!' Those are not parsed as imperatives (IP-IMP) with an imperative verb (VBI), but as matrix clauses (IP-MAT) with a present tense verb (VBP). Some difficult readings are glossed as comment CODEs in the file. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Allen, Rosamund. 1984. King Horn: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.27: With an Analysis of the Textual Transmission. Garland Medieval Texts 7. New York: Garland.
Allen, Rosamund. 1988. 'The Date and Provenance of King Horn: Some Interim Reassessments.' In: Kennedy, Edward D., Waldron, Ronald & Witig, Joseph S. (eds.) Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 99-125.
Breier, Willi. 1910. 'Zur Lokalisierung des King Horn.' Englische Studien 42. 307-9. (available online)
French, Walter H. 1940. Essays on King Horn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hall, Joseph. 1901. King Horn: A Middle English Romance. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (available online)
Herzman, Ronald B., Drake, Graham & Salisbury, Eve. 1997. Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. (available online)
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)