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The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by an Augustinian canon named Orrm (or Orrmin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonemic orthography adopted by its author, the work preserves many details of English pronunciation existing at a time when the language was in flux after the Norman Conquest of England. Consequently, it is invaluable to philology and historical linguists in tracing the development of the language.
After a preface and dedication, the work consists of Homily explicating the biblical texts set for the mass throughout the liturgical year. It was intended to be consulted as the texts changed, and is agreed to be tedious and repetitive when read straight through. Only about a fifth of the promised material is in the single manuscript of the work to survive, which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Orrm developed an idiosyncratic Orthography. Modern scholars have noted that the system reflected his concern with priests' ability to speak the vernacular and may have helped to guide his readers in the pronunciation of the . Many local priests may have been regular speakers of Anglo-Norman French rather than English. Orrm used a strict poetic metre to ensure that readers know which syllables are to be stressed. Modern scholars use these two features to reconstruct Middle English as Orrm spoke it.Burchfield 1987, p. 280
| Where I was christened, I was |
| named Orrmin by name |
At the start of the preface, the author identifies himself again, using a different spelling of his name, and gives the work a title:
| This book is named Orrmulum, |
| for Orrm wrought created it |
The name Orrm derives from Old Norse, meaning worm, serpent or dragon. With the suffix of "myn" for "man" (hence "Orrmin"), it was a common name throughout the Danelaw area of England. The metre probably dictated the choice between each of the two forms of the name. The title of the poem, Ormulum, is modeled after the Latin language word speculum ("mirror"),Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937 so popular in the title of medieval Latin non-fiction works that the term speculum literature is used for the genre.
The Danish name is not unexpected; the language of the Ormulum, an East Midlands dialect, is stringently of the Danelaw.Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–175 It includes numerous Old Norse phrases (particularly doublets, where an English and Old Norse term are co-joined), but there are very few Old French influences on Orrm's language.Bennett 1986, p. 33 Another—likely previous—East Midlands work, the Peterborough Chronicle, shows a great deal of French influence. The linguistic contrast between it and the work of Orrm demonstrates both the sluggishness of the Norman influence in the formerly Danish areas of England and the assimilation of Old Norse features into early Middle English.Bennett 1986, pp. 259–263
According to the work's dedication, Orrm wrote it at the behest of Brother Walter, who was his brother both affterr þe flæshess kinde (biologically, "after the flesh's kind") and as a fellow canon of an Augustinians order.Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937 With this information, and the evidence of the dialect of the text, it is possible to propose a place of origin with reasonable certainty. While some scholars, among them Henry Bradley, have regarded the likely origin as Elsham Priory in north Lincolnshire,Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–175 as of the mid-1990s it became widely accepted that Orrm wrote in the Bourne Abbey in Bourne, Lincolnshire.Treharne 2000, p. 273 Two additional pieces of evidence support this conjecture: firstly, Arrouaisian canons established the abbey in 1138, and secondly, the work includes dedicatory prayers to Saint Peter and Paul, the patrons of Bourne Abbey.Parkes 1983, pp. 115–127 The Arrouaisian rule was largely that of Augustine, so that its houses often are loosely referred to as Augustinians.Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937; Parkes 1983, pp. 115–127
Scholars cannot pinpoint the exact date of composition. Orrm wrote his book over a period of decades and the manuscript shows signs of multiple corrections through time.Burchfield 1987, p. 280 Since it is an autograph, with two of the three hands in the text generally believed by scholars to be Orrm's own, the date of the manuscript and the date of composition would have been the same. On the evidence of the third hand (that of a collaborator who entered the at the head of each homily) it is thought that the manuscript was finished , but Orrm may have begun the work as early as 1150.Parkes 1983, pp. 115–127 The text has few topical references to specific events that could be used to identify the period of composition more precisely.
The parchment used in the manuscript is of the lowest quality, and the text is written untidily, with an eye to economical use of space; it is laid out in continuous lines like prose, with words and lines close together, and with various additions and corrections, new exegesis, and allegorical readings, crammed into the corners of the margins (as can be seen in the reproduction above). Robert Burchfield argues that these indications "suggest that it was a 'workshop' draft which the author intended to have recopied by a professional scribe".Burchfield 1987, p. 280
It seems curious that a text so obviously written with the expectation that it would be widely copied should exist in only one manuscript and that, apparently, a draft. Treharne has taken this as suggesting that it is not only modern readers who have found the work tedious.Treharne 2000, p. 273 Orrm, however, says in the preface that he wishes Walter to remove any wording that he finds clumsy or incorrect.quoted in Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 175–176
The provenance of the manuscript before the seventeenth century is unclear. From a signature on the flyleaf we know that it was in van Vliet's collection in 1659. It was auctioned in 1666, after his death, and probably was purchased by Franciscus Junius, from whose library it came to the Bodleian as part of the Junius donation.Holt 1878, pp. liv–lvi
Each homily begins with a paraphrase of a Gospel reading (important when the laity did not understand Latin), followed by exegesis.Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–175 The theological content is derivative; Orrm closely follows Bede's exegesis of Luke, the Enarrationes in Matthoei, and the Glossa Ordinaria of the Bible. Thus, he reads each verse primarily allegory rather than literally.Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937 Rather than identify individual sources, Orrm refers frequently to "ðe boc" and to the "holy book".Bennett 1986, p. 31 Bennett has speculated that the Acts of the Apostles, Glossa Ordinaria, and Bede were bound together in a large Vulgate Bible in the abbey so that Orrm truly was getting all of his material from a source that was, to him, a single book.Bennett 1986, p. 31
Although the sermons have been deemed "of little literary or theological value"Burchfield 1987, p. 280 and though Orrm has been said to possess "only one rhetorical device", that of repetition,Bennett 1986, p. 32 the Ormulum never was intended as a book in the modern sense, but rather as a companion to the liturgy. Priests would read, and congregations hear, only a day's entry at a time. The tedium that many experience when attempting to read the Ormulum today would not exist for persons hearing only a single homily each day. Furthermore, although Orrm's poetry is, perhaps, subliterary, the homilies were meant for easy recitation or chanting, not for aesthetic appreciation; everything from the overly strict metre to the orthography might function only to aid Public speaking.Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–175
Although earlier metrical homilies, such as those of Ælfric and Wulfstan, were based on the rules of Old English poetry, they took sufficient liberties with metre to be readable as prose. Orrm does not follow their example. Rather, he adopts a "jog-trot fifteener" for his rhythm, based on the Latin iambic Heptameter]], and writes continuously, neither dividing his work into stanzas nor rhyming his lines, again following Latin poetry.Bennett 1986, p. 31 Orrm was humble about his oeuvre: he admits in the preface that he frequently has padded the lines to fill out the metre, "to help those who read it", and urges his brother Walter to edit the poetry to make it more meet.Treharne 2000, pp. 274–275
A brief sample may help to illustrate the style of the work. This passage explains the background to the Nativity:
| Forthright anon the time came |
| That our Drighten would |
| be born in this middle-earth |
| for all mankind's need |
| he chose him soon kinsmen, |
| all such as he would, |
| and where he would born be |
| He chose all at his will. |
Orrm's main innovation was to employ two consonants to show that the preceding vowel is short, and single consonants when the vowel length.Treharne 2000, p. 273 Where two consonants occurred, one was often stacked above the other, as in for or for , with the novel letters and being employed for and , respectively. For syllables that ended in vowels, he used accent marks to indicate length. In addition to this, he used three distinct letter forms for reflexes of original : insular for the palatal approximant , as in , flat-topped for the velar stop , as in , and Carolingian for the palato-alveolar affricate , as in ,Napier 1894, pp. 71–72 although in printed editions the last two letters may be left undistinguished.Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937
His devotion to precise spelling was meticulous. For example, he originally used and inconsistently for words such as beon and kneow, which had been spelled with in Old English. At line 13,000 he changed his mind, and went back to change all the spellings to in the book, so as to reflect the pronunciation (ben and knew).Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937
The combination of this system with a rigid metre, and the stress patterns the metre implies, provides enough information to reconstruct his pronunciation with some precision. Making the reasonable assumption that Orrm's pronunciation was in no way unusual, this permits scholars of the history of English to develop an exceptionally precise snapshot of exactly how Middle English was pronounced in the Midlands in the second half of the twelfth century.Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–937
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