Differences in the way editors have read the original MS

The following editions of the English Havelok have been consulted for this Web version.

• W.W. Skeat (ed.), The Lay of Havelok the Dane, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1902.
• F. Holthausen (ed.), Havelok, 3rd edition, Heidelberg, 1928.
• W.H. French & C.B. Hale (eds.), “Havelok the Dane”, in Middle English Metrical Romances, New York, 1930, pp. 73–176.
• G.V. Smithers (ed.), Havelok, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.

All scholarly editions include notes giving the original text of the MS where the editor has changed it. Thus the original text of Havelok can be reconstructed from each of the above editions. A comparison of the results reveals more discrepancies than might have been expected. They can be divided into four classes:

1. Differences in capitalization of words. Some of these differences may be spurious, as the editor (or printer?) may have capitalized a word in the notes without meaning that it is capitalized in the MS.
2. Words in which Holthausen prints u but the other three editions print v. (The letter v occurs only twice in Holthausen’s text.)
3. Words in which some editions have th where others have þ. Printing one for the other (usually th for þ) seems an easy slip to make.
4. Other differences.

The following is a list of discrepancies between the original text as reconstructed from different editions. It usually excludes instances where one editor has read as a single word what another editor has read as two, e.g. godemen versus gode men in line  1. Such differences are included only if the reading as a single word seems odd, e.g. gety versus get y in line 511.

Note. The line numbers are those used in the first three editions cited. From line 547 onwards, the line numbers printed by Smithers are one higher. This is because, while all editions insert a line after line 546, only Smithers includes it in the numbering.