Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 63
59
Nicolson with the factual imprecision and loose syntax characteristic
of this time. Were that the case, the passage would add nothing to the
information already contained in the Account of the Islands of Orkney
published in London two years earlier by James Wallace, Junior, son
of the Rev. James Wallace, minister of Kirkwall. The latter had com-
piled a Description of the Isles of Orkney that was posthumously pub-
lished by his son in Edinburgh in 1693. The Account published seven
years afterwards in London was a reprint of the Description with
alterations and additions by James Wallace, Junior, who now pre-
tended to be the author of the whole work.13 Among the additions
appearing in the Account is a transcript of art. 2 in the Dalhousie
manuscript. The editor remarks that he had copied it “from an ancient
Manuscript, now in the hånds of the Reverend Mr. Robert Norry
Minister of Dundee,,,u from which it may be inferred that the manu-
script was already in Norie’s hånds by the turn of the century. That the
same applies to the printed book appears, however, from the reference
by William Nicolson, who says that Norie’s manuscript “belong’d
formerly to Bishop Reid." This must be a deduction from the text of a
fragmentary note written in Scots on the originally blank back page of
the copy of the Fasciculus temporum. The text of this note has been
printed three times previously,15 but its importance is such that an
extract from it must be given here:
This buk pertenis to Thomas Tulloc/U of Flurw be pe gift of his maisteir
Robert beischop of Orknay anno 1554: and was maist fameliar with pe said
beischop pe space of xxiij 3eir«, viz fyf 3eins chalmer cheld and pursmaister to
hym and xviij constabill and chalmerlane to hym in Orknay, quhill he depertit
of pis mortall lif efter pat he retumit fra pe marrage of our souerane lady
Marye Quene of Scotis... quhilk maraige was pe xxiiij daye of Aprile an no
1558 with greit honor and treumphe at Paris...16
Here we learn that Robert Reid, bishop of Orkney, four years before
his death in 1558, had presented “this buk” to his servant Thomas
13 Laing, BM III, 28.
14 James Wallace, Jr., An Account of the Islands of Orkney (London, 1700), p. 121.
15 Munch, Symbolce, p. IV, repr. in Storm, Monumenta, p. XVI; Laing, BM III, 27-
28.
16 Punctuation and capitalization supplied. Here and in other early Scots quotations
the thorn-symbol is used for MS y when the latter represents th.