OLD ENGLISH MS.

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1938, Page 10

OLD ENGLISH MS.

SECRETS REVEALED

EFFECT ON OTHER TEXTS

LONDON DISCOVERY

(United I'rcas Association —By Electric

Telegraph—Copyright.)

'Received January 25, 11.35 a.m.)

LONDON, January 24.

, Unread for a thousand years, a cen-turies-old manuscript of "Beowulf," tha most precious of old English relics, has yielded its secrets to ultra-violet ray photography, says the "News Chronicle."

Dr. A. H. Smith, of University Col» lege, London, using a camera of his own design, has proved that "Beowulf's" funeral pyre was built besida the sea. He found the word "hoe," meaning promontory, as in Plymouth Hoe. Dr. Smith is convinced that so much has been revealed that it will necessitate new transcriptions of all the ancient texts from King Alfred' 3 translation of the "Consolations of Philosophy," by Boethius, to "The Canterbury Tales."

"Beowulf," the epic poem, is the most precious relic of OM English and has come down to us as a single manuscript written about AJ3. 1000. It is in the Cottonian Collection now in'the British Museum. The poem deals with the exploits of Beowulf, the son of Egtheow. Those portions of the poem that relate the career of the hero in progressive order contain a lucid and well-constructed story, yet the general impression of it is one of chaos. This effect is due to the multitude and character of the episodes, a very great part of what the poem tells about Beowulf himself not being presented in regular sequence but by way of retrospective mention.

The "Consolations of Philosophy" of Boethius was translated both by King Alfred and Chaucer, by the one into Anglo-Saxon, and by the other into English.