A 900-year-old typo may solve Chaucer mystery

Telegraph

17-07-2025

A mystery surrounding a lost poem or story referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer may have been solved after scientists corrected a 900-year-old typo.
The Tale of Wade, referred to by the 'Father of English Poetry' in two of his works, was popular in the medieval period but has been almost entirely lost.
Chaucer inserted references from the Wade story into tales of romance in his own work, including passages of Troilus and Cressida and The Canterbury Tales, but nobody knew why.
The one surviving fragment of the tale was discovered by scholars in 1896, but this only added to the confusion with the story seemingly dealing with the subject of 'elves'.
But now Cambridge experts claim to have solved the mystery by correcting a typo made by a medieval scribe.
It has been revealed the word 'elves' in the Wade fragment was an error, and should have read 'wolves'.
The alteration has changed the scholarly view of the Wade story, which now appears to have been a straightforward romantic tale, and therefore more fitting for Chaucer to have referenced in his own work.
The breakthrough, detailed today in The Review of English Studies, was made by Dr James Wade and Dr Seb Falk at the University of Cambridge 's Girton College.
Dr Falk said: 'Changing elves to wolves makes a massive difference. It shifts this legend away from monsters and giants into the human battles of chivalric rivals.'
Dr Wade added: 'It wasn't clear why Chaucer mentioned Wade in the context of courtly intrigue. Our discovery makes much more sense of this.'
The breakthrough was made by looking again at the fragment found in a Cambridge library in the 19th century.
This scrap of material, which dates back to the the 12th century, was a sermon that appeared to quote a line from the tale, saying: 'Some are elves and some are adders; some are sprites that dwell by waters: there is no man, but Hildebrand only.'
Dr Wade and Dr Falk found that certain letters were poorly written by a medieval scribe, who confused a runic letter that was still found in Middle English, and pronounced 'w' with the letter 'y'.
That, they said, turned 'wlves' into 'ylves.'
By correcting the medieval spelling, they arrived at a new version, which read: 'Some are wolves and some are adders; some are sea-snakes that dwell by the water. There is no man at all but Hildebrand.'
The tale appears to be a more down-to-earth medieval romance about human characters rather than supernatural ones. Its inclusion in a sermon may also have been intended to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Dr Falk added: 'Here we have a late-12th-century sermon deploying a meme from the hit romantic story of the day.
'This is very early evidence of a preacher weaving pop culture into a sermon to keep his audience hooked.'