Hand: Forty-seven Glosses (45v–62r), BL Harley 1117

Name

Forty-seven Glosses (45v–62r)

Manuscript

BL Harley 1117

Script

Unspecified

Scribe

Unspecified

Date

Saec. xi1

Place

Unknown (CaCC?)

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

These glosses were written with a fairly thin pen which was held fairly flat. Ascenders are usually quite long, and descenders are normally much shorter, but the scribe adjusted the length of both depending on the amount of space he had between the lines of main text. The wedges on ascenders are quite small, as are the bodies of letters. The strokes can be a little angular, but the general aspect is fairly typical for a competent glossing hand of the early eleventh century. Single-compartment a is found throughout, the top of which is more or less flat and the left side usually convex. A similar but wider form was used for æ, the hook of which is rounded and the tongue straight and sometimes horizontal but usually angled up. Bilinear d was used throughout, the back of which is long and extends well to the left of the body, although the straight-backed Caroline form is also found (scada, 51r40). Round e is found, the tongue and hook like those of æ. The tongue of f is flat and longer than the hook. Caroline f is also sometimes found (fereden, 47r10, also featuring Caroline r). The top of g is also flat, the mid-section is fairly angular and hangs from about the centre but angles a little out to the left before turning almost horizontally to the right, and the tail was formed with a fairly straight stroke angled back down and left once again, and the tip is sometimes straight, sometimes hooked up. The shoulders of h, m, n, and r are all rather angular and the down-strokes vertical, although one example of h has almost no pen-lift (healde, 47r13). Tall s is found initially and in ligature with t, round s was used twice (geseh, 47v11; sef, 57v18), and low s is found elsewhere. The scribe used þ exclusively in preference to ð, but there is no scope in the text for ð if the conventional distinction was followed. Straight-limbed undotted y was used throughout, the right branch hooked slightly left. The top of 7 is flat and fairly wide, and the down-stroke essentially vertical. Latin glosses were almost certainly written by the same scribe and were normally distinguished by script.