text with the manuscript again. The outcome of all this is that in comparison with the first edition there are a few different readings, some new emendations, and a rather larger number of different interpretations of particular words and passages. ¹

The bibliography has been altered, but remains highly selective. It is designed to guide the reader to reference books that will help him to understand the poem in its setting, and to editions of texts referred to more than once in the notes. In recent years the flow of articles on the poem has grown to a flood, and any bibliography of them would be out of date before it was printed. Only books are therefore given, and the numerous current bibliographies must be consulted for the rest. For work up to 1940 Gollancz's bibliography is excellent.

My thanks are due to many colleagues for suggesting revisions, and especially to Mr. C. A. Robson for invaluable help with the Old French forms in appendix and glossary. I salute, forbe al Ƿyng, Professor Tolkien's fraunchyse and felaȝschyp in letting this be done to his book.

N. D.

Oxford, August 1966

-vi-