From the Seat of the Pyle? A Reading of Maxims I, Lines 138-40.(Critical Essay)

The three-part collection of Old English poetic maxims and other gnomic material in the Exeter Book which is known as Maxims I contains several discrete, individually-structured, short-item lists. Examples are lines 71-74, Forst sceal freosan, fyr wudu meltan etc.,(1) and 129-31, Scyld sceal cempan, sceaft reafere etc.(2) One list of this kind occurs at the beginning of the third and final section into which the collection is divided in the manuscript. Containing six brief items, and occupying lines 138-40 of Maxims I, it is distinguished by its position at the head of the new section and by the special treatment given to its first word: Raed is fully capitalized, begins a new line after a break, and has an initial letter which is both very large and lightly decorated. The list itself comprises a series of parallel phrases, all grammatically dependent on the verbal auxiliary and sentence subject (sceal mon) in the first half-line, and its end is clearly marked, both by a scribal punctuation point (a raised dot after onettan) and by the beginning of a new sentence in the following line: Til mon tiles ond tomes meares ("A good man is mindful of a good and tame horse," 1. 141). The manuscript text, which is very clear with no alterations or erasures, is as follows:(3)

 
   RAED sceal mon secgan rune writan leop gesin gan leofes gearnian dom 
   areccan daeges onettan. 

This makes good sense as it stands (as will be argued in detail below) but only one editor, W. S. Mackie, retains the manuscript reading.(4) Other editors, beginning with Benjamin Thorpe in 1842(5) and including Bernard Muir in 1994, have emended leofes to lofes. The list has been variously translated, either following the manuscript:

 
   One shall utter good counsel, write runes, sing poems, desire a friend, 
   expound judgement, be diligent daily. (Mackie, p. 43) 

Or following the emended text:

 
   Counsel shall a man utter, runes write, songs sing, praise merit, judgement 
   declare, by day hasten. (Thorpe, p. 342)(6) 
 
   A man shall utter wisdom, write secrets, sing songs, merit praise, expound 
   glory, be diligent daily.(7) 
 
   Good advice should be said out loud, a secret written down, a song sung; 
   fame is to be earned, a judgement pronounced, a man should be busy in the 
   daytime. (Shippey, p. 71) 

Of these translations, those of Thorpe, Mackie, and Gordon follow the original structure of the list closely, retaining the parallel phrasing and reflecting the dependence of all the items on the initial sceal mon; Shippey's departs from it significantly, dispensing with both these features and moving the subject (mon) from the first item to the last. Gordon has a slightly different interpretation of the first item, choosing to interpret raed as `wisdom,' whereas the other translators give it the more usual meaning `counsel, advice.' In addition, Shippey gives a particular interpretation to the verb secgan (`said out loud'), which is not overtly present in the text--as he also does to writan (`written down') in the next item. Both Gordon and Shippey have chosen to translate run with its more common meaning `secret,' rather than the less common `runic symbol/character,' and both have followed Thorpe's emendation to lofes. Mackie has adopted `runes' and retained leof, `a friend'; his choice of `desire' follows Grein and Wulker's suggestion(8) that gearnian, which most scholars see as a contraction of ge-earnian `to earn, merit, deserve,' might possibly be a verb geornian, related to the adjective georn `desirous, eager.' Mackie's interpretation is shared by Muir who, in his commentary, translates the unemended version of this item as "be eager for a loved one."(9) The other translators read gearnian as a contraction of ge-earnian, but then they all accept the emendation of leofes to lofes: that is, they translate the item as "merit praise" or "earn fame" rather than as "merit a friend." Gordon's translation of dom areccan as "expound glory" fits well with the emended fourth item concerning praise/fame (although what to "expound glory" actually means is problematic), whereas the choices of Thorpe ("judgement declare") and Shippey ("a judgement pronounced") are clearly understandable and more in line with the tenor of the (unemended) first three items.