Cairo Genizah : Poetry: the Yiddish Codex

Cairo Genizah

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Manuscript sometimes known as the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (Frakes 2004:8). It contains eight texts: (a) Moses Rabbenu (משה רבנו), ff. 1r-2r; (b) Gan ʿEden (גן עדן), ff. 2r-6v; (c) Abraham the Patriarch (אברהם אבינו), ff. 6v-17r, 105 four-line stanzas with rhyme AABB; (d) Joseph the Righteous (יוסף הצדיק), ff. 17v-18v, rhymed couplets; (e) An Old Lion (אין אלט ליווא), f. 19r-v, a fable about a sick lion; (f) a list of parašot in Hebrew, f. 20v; (g) a Hebrew-Yiddish glossary of the gemstones on the high priest's breastplate, f. 20v; (h) Duke Horant (דוכוס הורנט), f. 21r-42v, a narrative poem from a cycle of heroic narrative concerning the characters of Gudrun, Hagen, Hilde and Horant. It is made up of four-line stanzas resembling the Rabenschlacht-stanza of Middle High German literature. One hand wrote the whole codex, but some earlier names are copied along with the text, identifying either an earlier copyist or the author. The first three poems (a-c) identify their scribe/author as איזק דער שריבערא (Isaac der Schreiberǝ). At the end of text 5 (e) it has שריבער אברהם (Schreiber Abraham). Text (d) has an acrostic of which only naqdan (נקדן, 'vocaliser') is preserved. A date is written at the end of text (e), 3 Kislev 143 (= 9 November 1382 CE).</p>