Scribe 1

Short couplets. Speeches assigned to personages by name. 200 lines, omitting stub and Latin speech labels. Begins and ends imperfect. The first 18 line-ends on f.35rb are additional to the version in MS Harley 2253 and probably indicate a different preface occupying about two and a half columns. At least 75 lines lost.

Probably written in the E. Midlands during the second half of the 13th century.

Two other manuscripts:
Bodleian Library MS 1687 (Digby 86). c.1275. 250 lines. Digby 86 also has in common with Auchinleck: The Sayings of St Bernard, How Our Lady's Sauter was First Found and The Thrush and the Nightingale.
BL Harley MS 2253. c.1310. W. Midlands (Ludlow). 248 lines. Harley 2253 also has in common with Auchinleck: the Alphabetical Praise of Women and The Sayings of St Bernard.

Edition:
W. H. Hulme, The Middle English Harrowing of Hell, EETS ES 100 (London: Trübner, 1907; reprinted 1961).

Other editions:
H. Varnhagen, Praemissa est Editionis Criticae Retustissimi quod Sermone Anglico Conscriptum est Dramatis Pars Prior (Erlangen, 1898). (Facsimiles of all MSS).
D. Laing, Owain Miles (Edinburgh: Privately printed, 1837).

Manual II, 449; 641. Index 185; 1258.