A Thirteen-Line Alliterative Stanza on the Abuse of Prayer from the Audelay MS.

Embedded in a prose extract from Rolle’s Form of Living in Bodley MS. Douce 302 (ca. 1426) is a thirteen-line alliterative stanza, mostly written in prose, on the abuse of prayer, which contains reference to two devils, Titivillus and Rofyn, who record verbal infractions committed against God. The reconstructed stanza rhymes ababbcbcdeeed, a strophic formAn appendix prints the extract from Rolle’s Form of Living with textual notes. corresponding to Audelay’s own De concordia; and both the diction and occasional neglect of alliteration recall Audelay’s own style. But the fragment probably derives from a lost work not by Audelay himself.