Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1975, Side 314
298
If the leaves were once joined, they must have been either 1
and 8 or 2 and 7 in their gathering. The third possibility, that they
were 3 and 6, can be ruled out, hecause the lost portions of the two
tales can be estimated to be about 135 manuscript lines, or 15 lines
more than the 120 which a bifolium would have offered. Thus,
at least 3 1/2 pages of unknown material must also have been lost
in the lacuna.
It is evident that a rubricator also worked on this manuscript,
for red ink has been used to embellish several upper-case letters
found in the body of the text.
The Fragment 238 XXVII
Comprising two conjoint leaves, this manuscript is occupied com-
pletely by parts of The Abhot and his Foster-Father. Leaf 1 starts
near the beginning of the tale, while leaf 2 ends with the story’s
last line. Between the leaves is a lacuna of two, four, or six leaves,
depending on the position of the extant bifolium in the original
gathering. A hole on f. 2 is older than the writing, for it has been
avoided by the scribe, but the leaves have not been moldered.
There are no traces of the fragment having been used as a bookcover,
but some lines of minute holes in the second leaf seem to indicate
that the vellum was once sewn to something, hence its preservation.
Folio 1 is easily legible, but on folio 2, especially the recto side, the
writing is so effaced that it has proved impossible to read a few
passages.
AM 657(a-)b, 4to, ff. 91 and 92
The leaves, which are joined, contain on folio 91 the end of a
tale about Furseus, edited by Alfred Jakobsen in Maal og Minne,
1960, pp. 32-35, and the beginning of a Maria legend (One Hundred-
Fold Cows), printed by the same editor in Opuscula, I, p. 268.
Another source, but in very similar form, has furnished the same
legend found in Marin saga, ed. C. R. Unger, pp. 1049-54. Folio
92 is completely devoted to a central segment of The Abhot and his
Foster-Father and was edited by Jakobsen in Maal og Minne,