Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

In the Shadow of the Ympe-tre: Arboreal Folklore in Sir Orfeo

2008; Routledge; Volume: 89; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00138380801912909

1744-4217

Curtis R. H. Jirsa,

Linguistics and language evolution

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I am grateful to Professors Andrew Galloway and Thomas Hill for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article, and to Dr. Antonia Ruppel for her aid with my Greek transcription. Notes 1That is, around midday. See note 3 below. 2Bliss, ed., 7. All passages from Sir Orfeo are taken from the Auchinleck MS. 3Friedman, 146ff. See esp. 184 – 94, where Friedman equates the fairy king with Satan. Friedman concedes that the fairy king's satanic aspect does not justify an overly allegorical reading of the poem—one perhaps warning against the dangers of accidia: “There is little in the poem to suggest that it should be read as a Christian allegory” and “the conduct of Heurodis, however, is blameless, and the poet does not depict her as having an oversensuous nature” (190 and 185, respectively). Friedman defends his reading of the fairy king as the daemonio meridiano of Psalm 90 (whom Saint Jerome equates with Satan) on the grounds that it is the only interpretation to account for the significance of vndrentide in the poem, a time of day during which much of the action of Orfeo occurs (189 – 90). It is at vndrentide, or noon, he argues, when malevolent spiritual forces were believed to be most active. But as Friedman himself admits, the term vndrentide does not necessarily signify noon, but can also indicate a range of time from the morning to the early afternoon (188). The editors of the OED, in fact, define undern-tide, n. (1) in this particular instance as a variant of undern, n. (1), or tierce, the third hour of the canonical day, which ends at nine o'clock in the morning (although the term “tierce” itself could signify the hours from nine until noon). The Middle English Dictionary, on the other hand, glosses undern-tīde, n. (b) as it appears in Sir Orfeo as noon or midday. The reference in v. 282 to the hot vnder-tides in Orfeo would seem to suggest noon, the hottest hour of the day. For an alternate explanation for why the fairy host appears at noon, see Roger S. Loomis, 29, who notes that, in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium, Herla's phantom host was last spotted at noon. See also Bliss, xxxvii – ix. For more on Sir Orfeo's potentially allegorical shadings, see Sharon Coolidge. 4See, for instance, George L. Kittredge, whose proposed parallels with Tochmarc Etaine fail to account for the peculiar properties of Orfeo's ympe-tre. Kittredge also cites Francis J. Child's reference to modern, popular Greek lore involving fairy abductions beneath trees (190, n. 1). For other potential Irish analogues, see Brouland, 60 – 1 and Lasater. The musical, silver branch with gold apples in Echtrae Cormaic (Lasater, 358 – 9) and the regenerating otherworldly fruit in Echtra Conla Chaim (Lasater, 356 – 60; Brouland, 60) both manifest very obvious magical properties that the simple tree in Sir Orfeo lacks. 5 Ympe < Old English impa, from the verb impian, “to graft”, which corresponds with the French verb enter and noun ente, perhaps derived from a late Latin infinitive ∗emputāre, from the neuter plural of the Greek έμφυτoσ, -oυ, meaning “implanted, engrafted”. The OED proposes that OE impian and the corresponding Old High German impfôn were ultimately derived from this same Greek source (s.v. “imp, v.”). For an alternate take on the definition of ympe, see Constance Bullock-Davies, who suggests that ympe might ultimately derive from the Celtic word nemeton, whose Middle English and Old French derivatives, nympe and nante, respectively, produced ympe and ente via a process of false division or reanalysis following an indefinite article. 6In Sir Gowther the rape takes place in an orchard; in Tydorel, the queen is seduced and impregnated while sleeping under an ente qu'ele choisi (Tobin, 214, v. 30). Lasater, 355, maintains the grafted tree to be a fitting location for such supernatural sexual encounters because the begetting of a half-human child corresponds with the act of grafting together two species of a tree, just as the modern derivative of ympe, or “imp”, can denote an unwanted or devil's child. 7Tobin, 273ff. 8Micha, ed., 166, 173 – 6 (sections lxxvi, 48 and lxxviii, 1 – 4). Note both the time of Lancelot's abduction and Morgan's affiliations with the fairy realm. The passage is translated in chapters 147 and 149 of Part V of the Lancelot in Lacy, ed., 153 – 4 and 155ff., respectively. Malory includes the incident in book VI, chapters 1 – 3 according to Caxton's division (see Vinaver, ed., 253 – 7). 9Kittredge, 190. Child, ed., 340, argues that the semely tree under which Thomas encounters the queen must originally have been an apple tree due to the fact that the poem is derived from the story of Ogier le Danois, in which the tree is a fruit tree. 10Laskaya and Salisbury, eds., 216 – 17, vv. 229ff. The version of Sir Landevale contained in Bodleian MS Rawlinson C 86 preserves this reading (see Appendix C of Laskaya and Salisbury's edition, specifically 424 – 5). Marie de France's Lai de Lanval notably lacks any reference to a tree or to sleeping. See Kittredge, 190, n. 2; Lasater, 357. 11Wellmann, ed., 241. 12Beck, trans., 283 (with my emendations). 13This and subsequent quotations from the Latin text of Pliny's Naturalis historia are taken from Mayhoff, ed. 14For this and other English translations of Pliny, I consulted (and freely emended) Bostock and Riley, trans. 18Flutre and Sneyders de Vogel, eds., 500. Regarding the use of Lucan's De bello civili in Li Fet des Romains, see Flutre, 112 – 23. See also Lucas, 240, n. 157. 15Duff, ed., 352: “Suspiciens Phoebo non pervia taxus opacat.” In his twelfth-century commentary on Lucan, Arnulf of Orleans, likely influenced by Isidore of Seville's description (see note 21 below), notes at “taxus” that “Arbor est mortifera.” See Marti, ed., 344. I am grateful to Professor Andrew Galloway for bringing the Lucan passage and commentaries to my attention. 16Peterson, 18 – 19. 17“Marcentes intus tenebrae pallensque sub antris / Longa nocte situs numquam nisi carmine factum / Lumen habet” (6.647 – 9). Duff, 350 – 1, translates: “In the caves within dank darkness reigns, and the colourless mould caused by unbroken night; the only light there is due to magic.” 19For more on the influence of Pliny's Naturalis historia on the literary and intellectual traditions of medieval Europe, see Chibnall. 20Bartholomaeus, 937 (17.161). 21Seymour et al., eds., 1056, ll. 4, 8 – 9. Cf. Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (another regular source for De proprietatibus rerum), in which he describes the yew's toxicity but says nothing of its shadow: “Taxus venenata arbor, unde et toxica venena exprimuntur” (Lindsay, ed., Lib. 17.7.40). 22“iuglandum gravis et noxia, etiam capiti humano omnibusque iuxta satis” 23Seymour et al., 945, ll. 25 – 6. Cf. Bartholomaeus 17.53: “Est autem arbor, vt dicit idem[i.e. Plinius] … cuius vmbra est nociua & satis inimica frigori, serpentum generi gratissima, rumpens muros & sepulcra …” (833). Pliny, in his discussion of the hedera, or ivy, in book 16.62, also associates the cold with snakes: “inimica arboribus satisque omnibus, sepulchra, muros rumpens, serpentium frigori gratissima, ut mirum sit ullum honorem habitum ei.” 24Friedman, 146ff. 25Forshall and Madden, eds., 2:222. 26“et huius duo genera, altera minor. utraque accensa serpentes fugat” (24.36). Bostock and Riley, 5:47, translate: “There are two species of this tree, one smaller [than the other]. When either is set on fire, serpents flee.” Cf. book 24.72 of the Naturalis historia, where Pliny states that the smoke of the yew kills rats and mice: “taxi arboris fumus necat mures.” 27Forshall and Madden, 1:57. For a broader discussion of Nicholas of Lyra's influence on the LV of the Wycliffe Bible, see Hargreaves. 28Nicolaus de Lyra, SS3r. 29Bliss, 34 – 5. 30Davies, 161, 164 – 5. 31Allen. 32Grimm, 918 – 20. 33Nor does Orfeo's previous vision of Heurodis hunting with a host of ladies in spectral form preclude the possibility that she is indeed dead, as numerous other tales of the taken demonstrate, including another in Walter Map's De nugis curialium in which a knight of Brittany stumbles upon his dead wife in a large company of women. See Severs, 192 – 3. 34Child, 350. 35Ibid., 344. Additional informationNotes on contributorsCurtis R. H. Jirsa Curtis R. H. Jirsa is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Hamilton College, USA.