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More difficult to establish is the precisefunction of grxs. Formally this can only benominative or accusative. An emendation todative (instrumental) grxse is not probable atall.6 It is likely that grxs ungrene7 functions asthe complement offolde wxs . . .: We wouldthen translate 'the earth was still grass ungreen(=ungreen grass)'.8

If this interpretation is upheld, then we areconcerned with a nominal clause whose sub-ject is folde whereas wxs grxs ungrene func-tions as the predicate. Although nominalclauses frequently contain adjectives function-ing as the predicate (Beowulf wxs breme {Beo-wulf, 18a)), substantives may also occur inthis position. Schematically this kind ofclause can be represented as X is Y. Examplesare particularly abundant with a personal or ademonstrative pronoun functioning as X: Iceom fxdera pin (Genesis, 1900b), Ic eom sewaldend (Genesis, 2201a), We synt Higelacesbeodgeneatas (Beowulf, 342b-3a), pxt wxs godcyning (Beowulf, l ib). But substantives alsooccur in the position X: God wxs Sxt word'Deus erat verbum' (The Gospel according toJohn 1:1), wxs da frod cyning eald epelweard(Beowulf, 2209-10).9

Therefore a construction folde wxs . . . grxsungrene 'the earth was . . . grass ungreen' iswholly acceptable. Forty years ago this inter-pretation was given by Huppe10 who notedthat

the poet's phrase 'The earth was yet grassungreen', is an effective and meaningfulequivalent for 'The earth was idle andempty', particularly in the light of the

Darstellung der Komposita in altenglischen Wdrtertbu-chern' in Alfred Bammesberger, Problems of Old EnglishLexicography, Studies in Memory of Angus Cameron(Regensburg, 1985), 270 and 299 raised decisive objectionsagainst a compound of this type. It seems certain that grxsand ungrene must be considered as two separate words.

6 The grammatical analysis of grxs was discussed byKrapp, The Junius Manuscript, 162. But Krapp's note doesnot lead to a really convincing interpretation of the passage.

7 Metrically grxs ungrene is a regular D-verse.8 An attributive adjective may either precede or follow its

head noun, as can be seen from examples like Msere peoden,xpeiing xrgod (Beowulf, 129b-30a).

' Many editions offer a comma after cyning, but thisseems unnecessary; the clause means 'then the wise king wasthe old guardian of the homeland'.

10 Bernard F. Huppe, Doctrine and Poetry. Augustine'sInfluence on Old English Poetry (New York, 1959), 144.

exegetical connotations of the biblicalphrase."

The passage was probably understood byAnglo-Saxons in the sense that 'the earth wasstill grass without (= not having) greenness (=growth)',12 which could mean that the grasswas not yet of any use for animal husbandry.13

At a further stage of the creation the earth issaid to be grene (Genesis, 1018a (folde), 1561b(folde)) and xlgrene (Genesis, 1517a (eorSe),1751a (foldari), 1787b (eorSe)); grene appliesspecifically to grass14 in 1137a.15

ALFRED BAMMESBERGERKatholische Universitat, Eichstatt

' ' I have briefly dealt with this passage in my LinguisticNotes on Old English Poetic Texts (Heidelberg, 1986), 18-19.

12 It may be mentioned in passing that the sense of thistranslation agrees with the etymology: Gmc. 'gro-nija- > OEgrene is related to the verbal root found in OE growan'grow', the basic meaning of *gronija- was perhaps 'havinggrowth'.

13 But first of all green was certainly understood in ametaphorical sense: ' . . . the earth without the vivifying forceof the Spirit of God is like grass without its living mark ofidentity, its greenness' (Huppe, 144).

14 The sequence grxs grene may well have been formulaic.It is worth noting that it occurs also in Old Saxon: an grasegruonimu (Heliand 2850).

15 A number of poetic passages containing the adjectivegrene 'green' were dealt with by Doane, "The green street ofParadise: A note on Lexis and Meaning in Old Englishpoetry', Neuphilologische Milteilungen, lxxiv (1973), 446-65.

BEOWULF, line 600a: OE SENDEP

AFTER his honourable reception by KingHrothgar in the hall Heorot, Beowulf haddeclared his firm intention of fighting the nightlyintruder Grendel. Unferth doubted BeowulPsphysical strength, whereupon the Geatish herogave an account of his previous achievements.In his retort Beowulf pointed out that evidentlynobody in Denmark was able to free Heorotfrom the monster Grendel. Indeed Grendel hadfound out that he did not have to worry at all, hecould carry out his nightly incursions withoutencountering any trouble:

Secge ic be to soSe, sunu Ecglafes,f>aet naefre Gre[n]del swa fela gryra gefremede,atol aeglaeca, ealdre binum,hyn5o on Heorote, gif bin hige waere,sefa swa searogrim, swa bu self talast;ac he hafaS onfunden bat ba fsehSe ne bearf,atole ecgbrace, eower leodeswiSe onsittan, Sigescyldinga;

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nymeS nydbade, nanegum araSleode Deniga, ac he lust wige3,swefe3 ond sendep, secce ne wene)>to Gardenum.

(Beowulf, 590-60la)'

The general purport of the quoted passage ishardly in doubt, but no agreement on theprecise analysis of the form sendef) in the half-line swefed ond sendep (600a) has been reached.Although sendep is readily analysable as thethird person singular present indicative ofsendan 'send', translations like 'he kills andsends (dispatches)' do not make sense. Inspite of various attempts to assign specialmeanings to sendan in our passage, it is clearthat this approach does not lead to a convin-cing solution.2 Since swefed means 'kills' (lit-erally 'puts to sleep'),3 sendep is likely to referto an action somehow connected with killing.

In the most recent Beowulf edition4 the half-line is printed as swefeS ond sxndep. The follow-ing comment is offered on sxndep:

Context suggests strongly that this verbmeans 'devours'. We propose sxndep as ametathesized form of OE snxdep, whichmeans 'eats, takes a meal'. It is cognatewith a more fully documented ON wordsnxda 'to eat, take a meal', and the rootappears in the OE noun snxding 'meal,snack', as well as in snxd, which describesGrendel's devouring a corpse in 1. 743.5 The

' The quoted text follows basically the facsimile, JuliusZupitza, Beowulf reproduced in facsimile from the uniquemanuscript British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius A. XV,2nd edn, Norman Davis, EETS, o.s. 245 (1959), 29. Punctua-tion marks and capitals have been inserted, but length marksare used only when necessary for the sake of lexical orgrammatical clarity.

2 Anatoly Liberman, 'Germanic sendan "to make a sacri-fice" ', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, lxxxvii(1978), 473-88, tried to justify the manuscript reading, butthe evidence for his interpretation seems weak. The olderscholarship on the question is dealt with by E. V. K. Dobbie(ed.), Beowulf and Judith, ASPR, V (1953), 147. See also theexcellent note by E. von Schaubert in the Kommentar volumeof her edition of Heyne-Schuckings Beowulf (Munich, Pader-born, Vienna, 1961), 52.

J The weak verb OE swebban (< Gmc. *swab-jan-) is thecausative ofswefan 'sleep'.

4 Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson (eds.), Beowulf. AnEdition (Oxford, 1998); henceforth referred to as Mitchell-Robinson.

5 This is not completely correct: In synsnxdum swealh(743a) the verb swealh means 'he devoured', whereas theinstrumental synsnxdum means 'in big morsels' or, possibly,as Mitchell-Robinson, 295, translate, 'in sinful morsels'.

scribe, confused by the metathesis, mistookthe word for the familiar verb sendep 'sends'(which is sometimes spelled sxndep).6

Some details require further discussion.Admittedly 'devours' is possible in the quotedpassage. But it should be stressed that themeaning 'eat' for snxdan is attested only in aneleventh-century Chronicle entry.7 The seman-tics of this verb in late Old English may havebeen influenced by its Norse cognate.8 For theearly period of Old English the verb snxdan isreliably attested in the Leiden Glossary, wheresnedit translates putat.9 The meaning 'cut' indi-cated by this gloss is what we expect from theviewpoint of historical morphology: OEsnxdan (< Gmc. *snaid-ijan-)w is derivedfrom the root found in OE snldan 'cut', andwe can theoretically expect the meaning of thesecondary verb to be 'cut (repeatedly)'." Theview that snxdep (MS sendep) in line 600ameans 'cuts up, slices up'12 could also besupported contextually. Two further Beowulfpassages must be briefly dealt with in order todemonstrate this.

After Heorot had been built and HroSgartherein offered generous entertainment to his

6 See Mitchell-Robinson, 68.7 The Chronicle (E) entry for 1048 contains the following

clause: pa he com to Cantwarbyrig east pa snxdde hepxr & hismenn; see Charles Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles(Oxford, 1892), 172. It may be pointed out that snxdde in thequoted passage means 'ate, took a meal', but certainly not'devoured'.

8 Terms for various kinds of food may easily arise fromthe notion of 'cut'; one can mention German Schnitzel andEnglish cutlet in this context. The late Old English verbsnxdan would then have adopted secondarily the meaning'eat' under the influence of a corresponding noun.

9 J. H. Hessels, A Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of the Leiden Uni-versity (Cambridge, 1906), 49 (xlvii 102) and Henry Sweet,The Oldest English Texts (London, 1885), 117 (249). In otherOld English texts the verb snxdan 'cut, slice' is securely,although not frequently, attested.

10 Cognate with snxdan is Old High German sneiten; seeE. Seebold, Vergleichendes und etymologisches Worterbuchder germanischen slarken Verben (The Hague, 1970), 443.

'' A number of weak verbs have an iterative nuance, e.g.OE hwierfan 'revolve' (< Gmc. *hwarb-ijan-) in contrast tothe strong verb hweorfan 'turn'.

12 F. Hollhausen (ed.), Beowulf nebst den kleineren Denk-matern der Heldensage, II. Teil: Einleitung, Glossar undAnmerkungen, 5th edn (Heidelberg, 1929), 119, commentedon sendep: 'Darf man snxdep "zerschneidet" dafur lesen?' Inthe seventh edition (1938) he indeed offered the readingsnxdep in line 600a.

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subjects, Grendel entered the hall and wroughthavoc, which is described as follows:

With unhaelogrim ond gnedig gearo sona was,reoc ond rejpe, ond on rseste genamJ^ritig pegna, p anon eft gewathuSe hremig to ham faranmid psere wxlfylle wica neosan.

(Beowulf, 120b-5)

This passage is clearly intended to convey thenotion that Grendel killed thirty sleeping war-riors, but it does not mean that he devoured allof them. On the contrary we are explicitly toldthat he carried off part of his loot for laterconsumption. A corresponding indication canbe derived from Beowulf s account of his expe-dition to Denmark. On returning to his home-land Beowulf informed Hygelac about hisexploits. He narrated that Grendel after enter-ing Heorot had killed and devoured Hondscio(2076-80), but that was by no means all heintended to do. Grendel had a big g/o/'pouch'hanging by his side (2085), which he planned tofill with human bodies. We can therefore readilyassume that Grendel killed a number of victimson any one of his incursions in Heorot, devouredperhaps one of them, but carried away theremainder. It appears logical that he should'cut up, slice up'13 what he did not immediatelydevour. Therefore it seems indeed likely thatsendep in Beowulf'600a represents a form snxdepin the original version; its meaning, however, is'he cuts up, he slices up' (not 'he devours').14

But the problem of unparalleled metathesis,15

13 It may also be mentioned that the verbal form slat 'hesliced up' occurs in the account of how Grendel killedHondscio: ac he gefeng hrade forman side shependne rinc,slat unwearnum, bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, synsnxdumswealh (Beowulf, 740-1).

14 The notion that snxdan should mean 'eat' in Beowulf600a seems to go back to Imelmann, Englische Studien, lxvi(1932), 324-31. Imelmann thought that the Beowulf poetcould have used the verb ironically in line 600a: ' . . . wird eres grimmig-scherzend in dem Sinne "halt eine Mahlzeit"gebraucht haben' (330). Imelmann's interpretation wasaccepted by Johannes Hoops, Kommenlar zum Beowulf(Heidelberg, 1932), 84.

15 This would in all likelihood be a scribal metathesis; onmetathesis in Old English in general see F. C. Robinson,'Metathesis in the Dictionary: A Problem for Lexicogra-phers', in Alfred Bammesberger (ed.), Problems of OldEnglish Lexicography (Regensburg, 1985), 245-65. Transpo-sitions of individual letters have been pointed out by H. D.Meritt on various occasions; see Meritt, Fact and Lore aboutOld English Words (New York, 1967) and Some of theHardest Glosses in Old English (Stanford, 1968).

consonant + n + long vowel to consonant + longvowel + n, remains. Palaeographically theMitchell-Robinson approach is not immedi-ately plausible, and the editorial methodrequires a short note. If the half-line in questionoriginally read swefep ond snxdep, then twostages of miscopying have to be postulated tolead to sendep. By transposing individual letterssnxdep was miswritten as sxndep. Vowel lengthbeing unmarked, sxndep could be taken for thecorrectly shaped third singular present indic-ative of sxndan > sendan. A later scribe thenwrote sendep. If we want to restore the author-ial text, we must write snxdep. Theoreticallyeditors have two options: Either they keep themanuscript readings in a diplomatic editionand explain in notes how miswritings mayhave come about, or they emend, but in thiscase the emendation should yield a linguisti-cally correct form. If we assume that the ori-ginal reading of line 600a was swefep ondsnxdep, then this is clearly what the editedtext should offer. Mitchell-Robinson's sxndepis logically inconsistent:16 the manuscript read-ing sendep is viewed as incorrect, but the emen-dation embodies an intermediate stage in thesequence (snsdejj) -» (saendej?) -> (sende)?).

ALFRED BAMMESBERGERKatholische Universitat, Eichstatt

16 A similar objection may be raised against the readingsnedep adopted by KJaeber, Beowulf and The Flight atFinnsburg (Boston, 1950), 23. The /-mutation of Gmc. *ai> a could be e in Kentish only, and it would be improbableto posit a transmission stage through this dialect. In hisSupplement KJaeber withdrew the emendation: 'It seemsafter all safer not to give the emendation snedep a place inthe text. A form like snedep (...) would be unique in Beowulf(454).

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THEORIGINS OF OXFORD, BODLEIAN

LIBRARY, MS DIGBY 86ONE of the most interesting, yet least known,texts contained in the late thirteenth-centurytrilingual miscellany Oxford, Bodleian Library,MS Digby 86 appears under the rubric 'Cicomence lestrif de .ii. dames'.1 The work, on

' This is item no. 67 in the recent Facsimile of Oxford,Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, with introduction by JudithTschann and M. B. Parkes (Oxford, 1996). On the manu-script see also my 'The Compilation of Oxford, Bodleian

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