Hand: Hand 1 (fols. 1–18r10), BL Cotton Otho B.ii

Name: Hand 1 (fols. 1–18r10)
Manuscript: BL Cotton Otho B.ii
Script: Unspecified
Scribe: Unspecified
Date: Saec. x2 or x/xi
Place: SE England

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

This scribe used a rather flat, rather thin pen and wrote a relatively angular script without much shading. The hand is particularly close to S.898-1. The script has a fairly level cue-height and few tall letters. Ascenders are short or long and have wedges or short approach-strokes which join just below the tip of the ascender. Descenders are short and straight, and minims have long thin wedges and horizontal feet. Flat-topped a and æ are found, and the left side of both letters is convex and has an angular upper-left shoulder. Caroline a is found occasionally (6r24, col. a, at the end of the section). The tongue of æ is fairly flat, and the hook is rounded and low but forms a low ligature with g and t. Round c was most often used, although the horned form is also found. The back of d is short, thick, fairly straight, and angled at about 45°, although it can have a vertical tip. Horned e was used, the back of which is straight and the lower curve fairly flat; the tongue and hook are as for æ, but the tongue is long and hooked down when final. The tongue of f is fairly flat and fairly long. The top of g is wide, the mid-section hangs from the right, is quite angular, slopes down and left, and then turns sharply down and right before curving into a round open tail. The shoulders of h, m, and n all start from below cue-height, have a straight rising section, and then turn into a vertical down-stroke. That of r is similar but can be much more angular. Long and low s was used throughout, the long form far more common but the low used either before or after the long when doubled. Both the descender and descender of long s are short and so the letter is essentially Caroline. The scribe preferred ð to þ, the latter appearing infrequently but was used consistently in cwæþ. The body of ð is the same as d, and the through-stroke is hooked down. The stroke to the lower left in x is long and curved up at the tip, and the upper strokes turn down. Straight-limbed undotted y was used, the right branch of which is hooked left. Bilinear z was used, and the two horizontal strokes are ~-shaped. The top of 7 is wide, straight, and slightly rising, and the down-stroke is vertical and has a small serif.