A New Analogue for the Portent of the Talking Lamb in the <i>Old English Martyrology</i>

The entry for the Birth of Christ in the Old English Martyrology includes a list of Livian portents taking place at Christ's birth. 1 These portents are as follows: three suns; three moons; a fiery ball and golden ball falling from the sky; ears of wheat growing on trees; blood flowing from a loaf of bread as though from a wound; milk raining from the sky; a lamb speaking in Egypt; and an ox speaking to a ploughman in Rome.Though James Cross and Thomas Hall have demonstrated that many of these portents are commonplace in annalistic and homiletic texts, the talking lamb is rarely attested, and absent from any extant book of Livy. 2 Moreover, as Cross notes, the portent's Egyptian location 'could preclude Livy'. 3A heretofore unnoticed analogue and antecedent source for the portent of the speaking lamb in Egypt is to be found in Eusebius' Chronicon, via Jerome's Latin translation.This source considerably predates the analogues previously identified and therefore grants further insight into the (as yet unknown) collection of portents employed by the martyrologist as a source for this section.Moreover, Eusebius' depiction of the talking lamb is in itself indebted to an earlier Egyptian tradition.The use of this portent in the Old English Martyrology therefore represents a complex