Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/205

MIRACLE CYCLES. 193 degeneracy in the cyclic manuscripts as compared with P is afforded by the line which appears in the latter rightly as : * Walke ye furthe youre way,' and was altered in the common ancestor of the former to the unmetrical: 'Walke yee furth in the twenty deuylles waye.' 1 A peculiar feature of H is the insertion of three single lines not found in any other manuscript. 2 None of these are required by the sense, but each serves to make two corresponding half-stanzas equal in length, and is, therefore, an obvious metrical emendation. In another place 3 H expands a single line into two, also it would seem with a view to improving the metre, though perhaps not with that result. It was clearly the adtual scribe of the manuscript H who was given to emending, for in one place we catch him red-handed. There is a line 4 in P which is certainly incorreft as it stands, for it has not got the necessary rime. The group B D W K makes an inversion in the order of the lines which is intended to mend matters, but does not. H- began by copying down the line as it occurs in P : ' You kinges also to you I tell,' then he deliberately drew his pen through the words ' also to you,' and added at the end ' with- outen bost,' thereby making it rime as it should. One other instance of the editorial function as- sumed by the scribe of H may be mentioned. The two devils who carry off Antichrist at the end of the play leave the stage with some parting jibes at 1 Line 450. 2 After lines 159, 411, and 418. 3 Line 453. Line 193.