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THE RIME OF KING WILLIAM AND ITS ANALOGUESSTEFAN JURASINSKIIndiana University, USAE-mail: [email protected] the nineteenth century it has been customary to assume that the author of the
Peterborough Chronicles 1087 entry (a eulogy of William the Conqueror) drew its
end-rhymed passage from one or more illiterate ballads expressing the indignation of
the English people at the introduction of the Norman forest law. The tendency of scholars
to view the rhyming passage as a remnant of an otherwise unattested tradition of popular
end-rhymed verse in Old English inhibited any inquiries into the poems possible
relations with other post-Conquest texts. This essay is the first to catalogue the poems
numerous analogues in twelfth century literature, and demonstrates that there were few
reasons for earlier scholarship to assume that the Rime was not composed by the author
of the 1087 entry. When the Rime is seen in light of other twelfth-century texts, its
place at the head of a tradition of anti-Forest polemics becomes clear. We still know very little about the late eleventh-century poem known
as the Rime of King William, a rare example of Old English end-rhymed
verse occurring only in the Peterborough Chronicles entry for 1087.
Most discussions of the Rime occur in historical scholarship, and focus
exclusively on the poems role as an eyewitness account of William
the Conquerors establishment of the New Forest, a royal game
preserve that once took up a corner of southwest Hampshire.1 Twelfthcentury chronicles report that the foundation of the Forest (thenceforth
a specialized legal term denoting royal game preserves) was accompanied by the expulsion of villagers and the destruction of churches.2 The
forest law introduced by the Normans also is said to have prescribed
mutilation and death for poaching, penalties that were not formally
repealed until the promulgation of the Charter of the Forest in 1217.3 The
Rime seems to corroborate both of these circumstances, and is usually
seen as their earliest attestation.Emphasis of the Rimes status as historical evidence has made inquiries
into its genre and cultural setting scarce over the past century.4 The
Rime occurs at the climax of a passage that is itself a remarkable example
of post-Conquest prose composition a homiletic eulogy of William that
looks back in tone and technique to the sermons of...