Andrew Breeze

The Old English Orosius (subject of Jacek Fisiak’s earliest academic paper) continues to attract controversy. King Alfred’s authorship was first doubted in 1951; in 1980 it was rejected without hesitation by Janet Bately in her classic edition of the text. More problematic has been the nationality of the unknown translator. Unique features in the spelling of names have been taken to indicate a non-native speaker, whether from the European Continent or from Celtic Britain, dictating to a West Saxon scribe, who uncomprehendingly wrote down these names as he heard them pronounced by the translator. The present writer in Notes and Queries papers of the early 1990s argued further that the translator was certainly a Briton, but not a Welshman, and therefore surely a Cornishman. Crucial here is consistent use of the form Ercol ‘Hercules’, which must be Cornish or Breton, and not Ercul, as it would be in Old Welsh. This hypothesis was strengthened by Malcolm Godden’s later discovery of an Old Cornish gloss in a Vatican manuscript of Boethius from Alfred’s circle. In the light of this, Professor Bately’s view in a paper of 2017 that the translator was a Welshman can be ruled out. Any informed Celticist will confirm that Ercol is a tell-tale Cornish form, implying a Cornishman as translator. The implications for learning in ninth-century Cornwall, as demonstrated by the wealth of additions to the Latin text, are therefore considerable. Further research on them will revolutionize our knowledge of learning and literature in the Cornwall of Alfred’s day.