The texts available here are to be considered portions of work in progress, quite varied in their states of completeness: for instance, the books of the bible are as complete as I can currently make them, whereas the version of Trumbull's dictionary (Natick-English portion) changes as I find ways of augmenting or revising the entries, sometimes with quite speculative remarks. I hope to provide a new version of this particular item every few months, probably as each book of the bible is completed. The commentary files should be consulted for more information, where these exist. Some of the shorter texts are provided without comment, or with at most some commentary inserted at the start of the file.
The provenance of the texts is usually stated in fairly explicit terms, either as part of the heading internal to a text-file, or in a commentary file. As far as possible, I have used original printings or facsimiles of them.
Unless otherwise indicated, the files are in plain ASCII format. See the earlier general introduction to the texts for more information. Since it is easy to update a ZIP file to incorporate files that have been modified, I can be fairly sure that files that have been corrected or relevant new files will be present in a ZIP file, and therefore that version should be preferred for the biblical texts. I give an indication of the date and size of other large files. File sizes are those reported under DOS prior to transfer.
Progress report, 2006.VIII.16: Despite appearances, work on the bible text has not ceased; it has merely been delayed far more than had been expected by work on an e-text edition of the unique 1655 printing of Genesis, carried out in conjunction with a comparison with the second edition, with occasional glances at the first. This has occupied me for almost two years now, with the generation of a fairly large Notes and Queries file ranging over a (small) number of the issues that clearly demand attention in this puzzling translation. (It is now obvious to me that the questions that arise could keep a committee of specialists well occupied for a considerable period of time.) I am at present into chapter 45, and hope to have the basic work--i.e. what I can reasonably do, given various limitations of knowledge, time, and energy--finished by the end of this year (2006). At that point, I shall provide the new e-text and a revised version of the e-text of Genesis from the second edition on this web-site. Reading and revising the notes may take me well into the new year, but after that I hope to be able to proceed with Judges. Of course, there is nothing to stop other people doing all that typing ... See under Trumbull for the latest version of the Natick dictionary, and under Cuoq for a version of his Algonquin dictionary, both also provided in ODT (OpenOffice.org, v. 2) format.
The majority of the contemporary texts here are those attributed to John Eliot as author or translator, and it is convenient to list them separately. Others are in fairly closely related varieties, most notably those attributed to Josiah Cotton and Experience Mayhew. The dictionary due originally to James H. Trumbull, published posthumously in 1903, is treated separately. See the section below for two versions, one as a plain ASCII file, the other as an ODT file. As time allow, the results of various kinds of work on the texts will be added, in a section of pedagogical and grammatical materials. At present (June 2004), this contains a grammatical commentary on The Book of Ruth, together with two versions of the text.
Initial note on downloading the bible texts: Owing to the large number of texts and the tediousness of dealing with each in turn through a browser, it may be found preferable to download all the relevant texts (Eliot's version, Mayhew's version, and certain ancillary files, including the commentaries and "Notes and Queries") as a single ZIP file. This can be accessed here: (ZIP file) Size: 1.11 MB; Date: 2006.VIII.17. It will be updated as further books are completed or corrections are made.
The Notes and Queries files will be listed below following the relevant book of the bible, and bear the extension .N&Q. They are written in the usual ASCII character set with rudimentary formatting.
Various kinds of analytical work suggest themselves during the preparation of the texts, and these will be provided as they reach some state that seems likely to be useful. Most will be quite brief, either collections of fairly raw data, such as paradigms of common "hard" verbs, or collections of examples of some unfamiliar or interesting phenomenon.
Commentary on The Book of Ruth and associated texts
The three files listed below belong together, comprising an extended commentary (in pdf format) on the translation of The Book of Ruth from the second edition of the Massachusett bible attributed to John Eliot, and two versions of the text itself, one an interlinear version of the Massachusett and English texts, and the other a version (also in pdf format) of the text from a reprint of the English bible of 1611. The commentary can be searched and has been left open to being copied, to the extent that the Acrobat reader allows. Unfortunately, Acrobat does not come with any documentation that indicates what the character coding is, and various features of the pdf version such as arrows and IPA transcriptions may not survive any attempt to transfer the file to a more congenial format. It nevertheless provides the simplest general purpose compromise that I know of, and I have not been able to produce by translation from the original format an rtf or html version that is as accurate. It can of course be printed.
The commentary has undergone a number of revisions, but no doubt could do with several more. I cannot justify spending any more time on it at present. It is made available, as they say, "as is".
- Higgins. A beginner's commentary, principally grammatical and occasionally textual to The Book of Ruth/Wussukwhonk papaume Ruth.... (PDF format) Size: 558KB; Date: 2003.X.27.
- The Booke of Ruth. (Quasi-facsimile of the edition of 1611.) (PDF format) Size: 371KB.
This file contains a scanned facsimile of the text of the Book of Ruth from The Holy Bible: An exact reprint in Roman type, page for page of the Authorized Version published in the year 1611 with an introduction by Alfred W. Pollard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911. This is itself a reproduction by "a mechanical process" of a "line for line reprint of the editio princeps, the extraordinary accuracy of which has been everywhere acknowledged" published in 1833 (A.W. Pollard's introduction, p. 53). The reference to roman type indicates one divergence from the original: "The text of the Bible is printed in black-letter with the inserted words (now printed in italics) in small roman, and roman type is also used for the summaries at the head of each chapter, for the subject headlines at the top of each page, and for the references to parallel passages in the margin; the alternative renderings in the margins are in italics." (ib., p. 45) (Black-letter type is commonly called Gothic.) Incidentally, this facsimile of the first edition reproduces the version of the Authorized Version dubbed "The Great 'He' Bible", the reason for the nickname lying in Ruth 3.15. A second printing of slightly later date is "The Great 'She' Bible". The two texts provided will clarify this point.
Those that have access to Early English Books Online should be able to download a facsimile of the 'He' Bible text, under STC 2216, images 186-188; the corresponding 'She' Bible text is under STC 2217, images 159-161.- VVUSSUKWHONK PAPAUME RUTH, from the 1685 edition of MAMUSSE WUNNEETUPANATAMWE UP-BIBLUM GOD, with an interlineated modern English text of the Authorized Version. Size: 27KB.
Those that have access to Early English Books Online should be able to download a facsimile of the Massachusett text, under Wing B2756, images 135-136.Data files
The files provided here for public consumption, with attendant risks of indigestion, are simply collections of examples of particular grammatical phenomena (largely morphological and syntactic) that have caught my eye while producing the e-texts. Some will undoubtedly be filled with chimeras, but they are a way of bringing together things that seem for the time being to belong together, the stuff that used to be on 3"x5" cards as a preliminary to later analytical work. They are given a rough organization as far as I can manage it in their inchoate state of existence and presented more or less in the same way as in the dictionary, with queries and comments usually in braces (curly brackets). I shall try to add examples to the more significant or puzzling collections as time allows. These are pure ASCII files, as described in the general introduction to the texts.
- Bahuvrihi verbs. Size: 9KB.
For some discussion, see the commentary on Ruth.- Verbs of possession. Size: 17KB.
For some discussion, see the commentary on Ruth.