The indexes linked below were constructed from the floppy-disc originals of my editions for Middle English Romances. Each edition was stripped of its glosses and notes using WordPerfect macros and then processed with the Micro Oxford Concordance Program (Micro-OCP), a wonderful resource for researching electronic texts. Word indexes can, of course, be very useful for identifying lexical or rhetorical patterns or for simply locating particular references within texts. Remember that Middle English spelling is not standardized even within texts copied by the same scribe. Electronic or even manual searches through non-indexed text (i.e., plain editions) can therefore be difficult unless you are confident that you know all of the possible variations of spelling for the word you are researching. Alphabetized indexes, however, reduce the difficulty by placing most variants in close visual proximity. For example, a search for references to angel(s) in The Sege off Melayne will readily reveal angele, angelle, and angells as the possible variants.

You can either scroll through each index or apply the search facility of your web browser to try to locate a particular word with digital speed. If you do conduct an electronic search, choose as economic a subset-search model as you can to obtain the most hits (e.g., entering "angel" will generate hits for all three variants listed above). Alternatively, if you have software which will allow more sophisticated searches incorporating wild-cards, feel free to copy each index; simply load the index of your choice and save it to your home machine by selecting "Save" or "Save As..." from your browser's "File" menu. Each file is effectively in ASCII (DOS) format already, with a few easily-removed HTML tags.
Hyphenated forms are read as one word.
[ Thus, for example, a-dreynt (Sir Orfeo 397) is listed with words beginning with "a"; and all passive verbs and verbal adjectives beginning with "i-" or "y-" are listed with words beginning with "i" or "y".]


Havelok [122k]
Ywain and Gawain [176k]
Sir Orfeo [26k]
Sir Launfal [42k]
Sir Landevale [24k]
The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne [41k]
The Trental of St. Gregory [11k]
The Weddyng of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell [39k]
The Marriage of Sir Gawaine [11k]
The Sege off Melayne [70k]
Capystranus [24k]


Return to the On-Line Companion Homepage