Hand: Main Hand, Beinecke 578

Name: Main Hand
Manuscript: Beinecke 578
Script: Unspecified
Scribe: Unspecified
Date: Saec. x/xi or xi1
Place: SE England

Stokes, English Vernacular Script, ca 990–ca 1035, Vol. 2 (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006)

This relatively neat if somewhat informal hand was written with an angled pen and a good deal of shading. Ascenders are short and deeply split, with a thick tapering stroke turning left and a thin spike pointing up from the right. Descenders are also short and often taper slightly. Minims are fairly straight and upright, but can be backward-leaning; they normally have approach-strokes buti, in particular, can have the same forks as ascenders, and horizontal feet appear regularly but only on the last strokes of m and n. Single-compartment a was used throughout, the top being thick, sometimes flat but sometimes rounded, and formed with the same stroke as the back. In contrast, æ is consistently horned with both sides of the a-component being quite vertical. The eyes of æ and e were formed in the same way: the hook is short and somewhat rounded, the hook-stroke bulges as it turns, and the tongue is thin, straight, and can be horizontal or angled at about 30º. Both c and e are also horned, but the lower curve is straighter than æ and more angled; the hook of c tapers as it meets the lower curve and thickens at the right. The back of d is thick, horizontal, and reaches back to the preceding letter but remains within cue-height. The tongue of f is ~-shaped and tapers at either end. The top of g is thick and flat, often with an upward hook on the left, the mid-section is very angular, and the tail is three-quarters closed; the whole body is angled to the left, looking much like a cedilla, and the letter is thus 3-shaped. The shoulders of h, m, n, and r are all rounded and slightly swollen; the minims can be angled out slightly, particularly on r. Low s was used almost exclusively, the one exception being a single occurrence of tall s+t ligature, despite the vernacular context (gast, fragment a). Low s is deeply split, the hook often branching from at or slightly below the base-line. The scribe only used þ, the bowl of which is slightly triangular. An unusual form of straight-limbed dotted y was used, in which the left branch and the tail were written in a single straight but slightly forward-leaning stroke, the thin right stroke then branching from the base-line, angled at about 30º and ending in a downward tick well below cue-height. The top of 7 is hooked up at the left and rises to the right, and the down-stroke is close to vertical.