ANGLO-SAXON POETIC TEXTS

The base texts were originally created from Oxford Text Archive text U-1936-C which was deposited by:

O.D. Macrae-Gibson (enl011@aberdeen.ac.uk)
Departments of English and Computing Science,
University of Aberdeen

Conversion to HTML by:

Tony Jebson (aj@wg.icl.co.uk)
International Computers Ltd,
Manchester

These original base texts have been modified to add the following apparatus:

An Alphabetic Index
A title
Information about dialect and period (e.g. Verse Early Saxon)

Conversion to HTML

Character Representation

In converting to HTML, the following markup conventions have been used:

The characters 'thorn', 'eth', and 'ash' are now rendered as "þ" (þ), "ð" (ð), and "æ" (æ) respectively.
e-caudata is rendered as æ.
Short sections (less than half a verse) of missing text are indicated by a three dot ellipsis: "...". Where there is a larger section of missing text (at least half a verse), this is indicated by a six dot ellipsis: "......".
Some texts contain fragments of Latin. These Latin fragments are shown in italic text.
Half-verses are separated by the following character sequence: "         ". This is displayed by Arena, Netscape, XMosaic, WinMosaic, Chimera, and Cello as " ". Unfortunately, Lynx gets this slightly wrong, but is vaguely acceptable.
Runic characters are rendered using the futhorc needed for the Rune Poem. For example, Cynewulf's runic signature will be rendered as " ". The full set of runes and runic texts is shown here.

Files, Headings and Line Numbers

In the HTML edition, each poem is held in a separate file with an appropriate title added. Generally these titles are from the index to the DOE corpus. For example, <a2.5> has the following header added:

<!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "html.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Dream of the Rood</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Dream of the Rood</h1>
<p><cite>Verse Indeterminate Saxon</cite></p>

Line numbers are output every five lines (marked by a '|' character in the original), For example the following source:

line 1 |
line 2 |
line 3 |
line 4 |
line 5 |
line 6 |
line 7 |
unnumbered line 
line 8 |
line 9 |

Will be translate to the following HTML:

<dl compact>
<dt></dt>
<dd>
line 1<br>
line 2<br>
line 3<br>
line 4<br>
</dd>
<dt>5</dt>
<dd>
line 5<br>
line 6<br>
line 7<br>
unnumbered line<br>
line 8<br>
line 9<br>
</dd>
</dl>

Which will be rendered:

: line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
5: line 5
line 6
line 7
unnumbered line
line 8
line 9

Emendations and Reconstructions

Restored words and editorial emendments fall into two categories: those with notes supplied; and those with no notes but are known to be restorations or emendments.

Where notes have been supplied, then restored words and editorial emendments are surrounded with a hypertext link to a note (added after the text of the work).

If a note is not supplied, then restored words and editorial emendments are shown in bold type-face.

The text of these notes is supplied in a separate file for each work. For example, the notes for <a2.5> (The Dream of the Rood) would be supplied in file "notes/a2.5". An example file is shown below:

2   1  2   1  {<em>MS</em> h&aelig;t}
17  4  17  4  {<em>MS</em> wealdes}
20  11 20  11 {<em>MS</em> surgum}
59  5  59  5  {<em>sorgum</em> supplied from the Ruthwell text}
70  4  70  4  {<em>MS</em> reotende}
71  6  71  6  {<em>stefn</em> supplied by Kluge}
77  1  77  1  {<em>ond</em> supplied by Grein, however no addition is necessary}
117 7  117 7  {<em>MS</em> unforht}
142 2  142 2  {<em>MS</em> he}
-1

The four numbers specify the start line, start word, end line, and the end word for the hypertext link. Note: the half-verse character "#" counts as a word!

At present notes supplying manuscript readings for restored words/editorial emendments have been provided for:

<a2.5>: The Dream of the Rood
<a3.5>: Juliana
<a10.1>: The Battle of Brunanburh
<a10.2>: The Capture of the Five Boroughs
<a10.3>: The Coronation of Edgar
<a10.4>: The Death of Edgar