This collection provides a new, authoritative and challenging study of the life and works of Ælfric of Eynsham, the most important vernacular religious writer in the history of Anglo-Saxon England.

The two extant Old English lives of the virgin-martyr St. Margaret of Antioch, in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library 303, reflect the specific interest in this saint that appears to have developed in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. More broadly, they are representative of the widely evident interest in this period in making hagiographical material available, in prose, to vernacular audiences. Although Ælfric played the leading part in that enterprise, numerous translations (...) and adaptations not by him also survive from late Anglo-Saxon England, presenting a wide range of approaches to inherited material. In that connection it should be noted that there is no mention of St. Margaret in the writings of Ælfric, nor does the passio of St. Margaret appear in the Latin legendary believed to have served as Ælfric's principal source for his saints' lives. (shrink)

One of the most attractive of the many images of drinking cups in Old English poetry is that in Riddle 30a, where the poet describes a wooden cup being passed from person to person and “kissed” by men and women.