Hand: Forty-eight Glosses, BL Royal 12.C.xxiii

Name

Forty-eight Glosses

Manuscript

BL Royal 12.C.xxiii

Script

Unspecified

Scribe

Unspecified

Date

Saec. x2 or x/xi

Place

Unknown (CaCC?)

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

Most of these glosses were written in lighter ink with a very thin pen. The letters are often ill-formed, with strokes often not properly connecting, although some glosses are more regular and better formed. The glosses were also often written in the margins rather than interlinearly. Ascenders are usually long and lack decoration. Descenders are straight. Minims and descenders have short, straight approach-strokes. The body of a can be quite wide and with a rather angular left side, but the body is usually squarer and is often flat-topped. Only one occurrence of æ is found (æ, 103r), in which the a-component is round and open-topped, and the hook of e is rounded and rises somewhat above cue-height. Rounc c was used, as was bilinear d most often, although Caroline d is also found on occasion. Round e was used, usually with a long straight tapering tongue, and tall e is not found. The tongue of f is short, and the hook is also short and branches from close to the base-line. The top of g is flat, the mid-section starts in the centre and drops vertically, then turns sharply right at the base-line and curves around in a wide, open tail with a horizontal tip. Caroline g was used once (tryninge, 90r) in a gloss which may have been written by a different scribe. The shoulder of h branches from close to the base-line and the minim lacks a foot but does not curve back in to the left; it is therefore a hybrid of Insular and Caroline forms. The shoulders of m, n, and r are all usually quite angular, and the minim-strokes of m and n often lack feet. Tall s was used throughout, the letter usually standing on or descending very slightly below the base-line. The conventional distinction between þ and ð was usually followed (but ða, 97r). The back of ð is long, concave-down, and sometimes curved down slightly at the tip, and the through-stroke is straight. Straight-limbed y was used throughout, usually without a dot (but dotted in cynnes, 90v, and goldwyrt, 91r).