Chapter II: Introduction

§ 1. _The MS. and Halliwellâs edition_, p. v.

§ 2. _Metre and Versification_, p. vi.

§ 3. _Dialect_, p. x;
_short vowels_, p. xi;
_long vowels_, p. xii;
_inflexions_, p. xiii.

§ 4. a. _The contents of the Romance_, p. xvi;
b. _its character_, p. xx;
c. _Origin of the story of Torrent_, p. xxi;
d. _Legend of Eustache or Plasidas_, p. xxii;
e. _Sir Isumbras_, p. xxiv;
f. _Romances of Octavian_, p. xxv;
g. _Sir Eglamour_, p. xxvi;
h. _Comparison of Torrent and Eglamour_, p. xxvii;
i. _the 2 Romances independent_, p. xxx.

§ 5. _Arrangement of this Edition_, p. xxxii.

§ 1. The manuscript from which the following romance of _Sir Torrent of Portugal_ is taken, is a folio volume on paper, of the fifteenth century, preserved in the Chetham Library at Manchester.

A description of this volume is given by Halliwell in his _Account of the European MSS. in the Chetham Library at Manchester_, Manchester, 1842, page 16, and by Prof. Koelbing in his _Englische Studien_, vii. 195. The only edition of this romance that we have hitherto had was done by Halliwell. As he had, besides his own transcript, another copy made by Madden, his text is a pretty accurate one, and therefore the results of Prof. Koelbingâs collation, printed in his _Englische Studien_, vii. 344 ff., concern, for the most part, things of little importance, except one very curious passage, l. 88, where Halliwell renders the quite correct reading of the MS., _p la more de dewe_ = _par lâamour de dieu_, by _Pericula more bedew[n]e_. Also, from l. 1720, the counting of the lines is wrong by 100 lines.

A few short fragments of a printed edition were found by Halliwell in the Douce Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, and added to his work as an Appendix. They contain the following passages of the MS.:

Fragment III. = lines 462-489.
â II. = â 492-520.
â VI. = â 820-851.
â V. = â 917-948.
â IV. = â 949-970.
â I. = â 1807-1866.

A seventh fragment, of which not much more than the rhyming words are preserved, was omitted by Halliwell, and was printed for the first time in Prof. Koelbingâs collation.

This Chetham MS. contains the romance in a very debased and corrupt form, so that the original reading in many passages can hardly be recognized.[1] The scribe, who copied the poem from an older MS., lived (no doubt) at a far later period than the poet; he did not therefore understand a great many old expressions, and these he used to supplant by words of his own; he also transposed and even omitted many lines, and spoiled the rhyme, because he had not the slightest idea of the nature of the stanza in which the poem is composed. Halliwell did not trouble himself about the restoration of the true readings; he merely reproduced the traditional text, even where it would have been very easy to do more, though many passages are hopelessly corrupt; still worse is the fact, that he did not recognize the metre as the tail-rhymed twelve-line stanza, for he prints six-line stanzas.

[Footnote 1: Halliwell says, Preface v f.: âIt is very incorrectly
written, and the copy of the romance of Torrent of Portugal, which
occupies 88 pages of the book, contains so many obvious blunders
and omissions, that it may be conjectured with great probability
to have been written down from oral recitation.â]

In consequence, the whole of the philological work on the text had still to be done, and a new edition was plainly necessary; the more that this poem, though not written in the best period of romance poetry, treats of a legendary subject widely spread in the Middle Ages, and is nearly related to another poem, _Syr Eglamour of Artois_.

§ 2. METRE AND VERSIFICATION.

As I mentioned before, the romance of _Sir Torrent_ is composed in the well-known tail-rhymed twelve-line stanza, and belongs to that class of it in which the first and the second couplets have different rhyme-sounds (cf. Koelbing, _Amis and Amiloun_, p. xiv ff.). Only the incompleteness of many stanzas, and the many defects in reference to the rhyme, can excuse Halliwell for not apprehending the character of the metre. As to the structure of the eight lines of the four couplets, each contains (or at least ought to contain) four accents, the _caudæ_ three; but as we, unfortunately, possess only one MS., a conclusive statement on this point is impossible. There is no doubt about the fact that neither the really incorrect rhymes nor the wanting of them can be due to the author of the poem: even when romance poetry was decaying, the poets were fairly perfect rhymers: with all deficiencies in this department, the copyists are to be charged.

_Consonant_ rhymes (s. _Schipper Altengl. Metrik_, p. 299) are found in _Torrent_ in the following passages: l. 141 _rode--rode_ ags. _rôd--râd_. 450 _the--the_ ags. _þeón--þe_. 1558 _indede--dede_. 2205 _lay--lay_, _sg.--plr. prt._

_Identical_ rhymes are frequent, especially in the _caudæ_: 81 _stond--stond_. 177 _there--there_. 500 _he--hee_. 1887 _there--there_. 2538 _blithe--blithe_. 39 _take--take_. 342 _bold--bold_, a. s. o.

_Assonances_: 195 _bon~--Rome_. 518 _undyrstond--strong_. 537 _name--alone_. 699 _yod--fotte_. 758 _name--tane_. 896 _bryng--wynd_. 1257 _overcom~--Aragon~_. 1768 _man~--cam~_. 2164 _anon~--fome_. 2544 _sithe--hide_.

Besides the rhymes we find abundant alliteration, as in most of the Middle English Romances. On alliteration, cf. Regel, Die alliteration in LaÈamon, _Germ. Stud._ I. 171; F. Lindner, The alliteration in Chaucerâs Canterbury Tales, _Essays on Chaucer_, Pt. III., p. 197 ff. Koelbing, _Sir Tristrem_, p. xxxvii, and _Amis and Amiloun_, p. lxvi. Lindner as well as Koelbing has adopted Regelâs classification, and so shall I. The most frequent is two alliterative words in one verse; they can be classed in the following way:--