In the tenth century, Anglo-Saxons produced two translations of the biblical Psalms, both of which survive in a lone manuscript. The first translation is a prose version of the first fifty psalms, and the second is a rendering into traditional Old English verse forms. […] The resulting complete (small lacunae aside) Old English Psalter is newly edited and translated into Modern English by Patrick P. O’Neill under the title Old English Psalms for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series. This edition marks the first published Modern English translation, and as such, this facing-page book makes a new leap forward in the study of this important Old English text.
The Old English Psalms were important texts to the Anglo-Saxons, and they can shed insight into Old English culture. O’Neill’s book is the ideal way to study these psalms, and I hope that teachers and scholars of Old English literature avail themselves of it.
Matthew Scribner
The Medieval Review
