1911 Articles

On the Text of Richeut

Lecompte, Irville C.

The Old French poem Richeaut was published by Méon in 1823 in the first volume of his Nouveau Recueil de Fabliaux et Contes, pp. 38-79. The manuscript of the poem (Bern 354, fol. 124-135) is evidently incorrect in many places, but Méon is often at fault in his reading of the manuscript. At the end of his article Le fabliau de Richeut, published in Études romanes dédiées à Gaston Paris, Paris, 1891, Professor Bédier gives somewhat more than a page of conjectured and corrected readings from a collation of the manuscript. Professor Bédier makes no claim to completeness, saying frankly, "Sans prétendre aucunement lever même la moitié des difficultés du texte, je crois utile de proposer ici les quelques corrections qui suivent." In his review of the volume which contains Professor Bédier's article (Romania, XXII, p. 137 ff.) Gaston Paris, without seeing the manuscript, adds another page of probable corrections, many of which I find supported by the manuscript, which Professor Bédier seems to have examined rather hastily.