ORMULUM, THE

(ca. 1200)

The Ormulumis an early MIDDLE ENGLISH poetic text of some 20,000 short, unrhymed lines, produced in the North East Midlands (possibly in the abbey of Bourne in southern Lincolnshire) late in the 12th century. Its author, who was apparently also the scribe of the poem’s surviving manuscript (Oxford Bodleian ms. Junius 1), identifies himself asOrm(an Old Norse name meaning “Serpent”), and says that he is an Augustinian canon. He addresses his manuscript to his brother and fellow Augustinian Walter, who seems to have been in an administrative position in the abbey in which Orm lived and worked. At Walter’s request, Orm says in his dedication, he is producing an English translation of the entire year’s gospel texts as listed in the Mass book, with each text accompanied by an interpretive homily in English verse.Perhaps the book was intended to be of use to preachers in the vernacular.

Orm lists 242 texts and homilies in his table of contents. The extant manuscript, however, contains only 32 entries. Possibly part of the manuscript has been lost, but most scholars believe that the prodigious task Orm set for himself was never finished. The text is arranged chronologically around the life of Christ as presented in the chosen Gospel texts, except for a few intended homilies on Peter and Paul that were to have appeared near the end of the manuscript. It is possible that those particular saints had some special connection to Orm’s and Walter’s abbey. At any rate, Orm must have worked on this major project for many years, perhaps decades, and the manuscript shows signs of both large-scale revisions and smaller corrections. It may have been abandoned upon the death ofWalter, or Orm may have grown too old or weak to finish the task.

Readers are generally agreed thatThe Ormulumis a very tedious work. But whatever its shortcomings as a literary text,The Ormulumis of great interest to linguists, especially because of the spelling system adopted by Orm, who consistently doubles consonants after short vowels.

■ Fulk, Robert D. “Consonant Doubling and Open Syllable Lengthening in theOrmulum,”Anglia114 (1996): 481–513.

■ Mancho, Guzmán. “IsOrrmulum’sIntroduction an Instance of an Aristotelian Prologue?”Neophilologus88 (2004): 477–492.

■The Ormulum. Edited by Robert Holt,with notes and glossary by R. M.White. 2 vols. 1878. New York: AMS Press, 1974.

■ Parkes, M. B. “On the Presumed Date and Possible Origin of the Manuscript of the ‘Ormulum’: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 1,” inFive Hundred Years of Words and Sounds: A Festschrift for Eric Dobson, edited by E. G. Stanley and D. Gray. Cambridge: Brewer, 1983, 115–127.

■ Worley, Meg. “Using theOrmulumto Redefine Vernacularity,” inThe Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity, edited by Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson.University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, 19–30.