Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 64
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Tulloch.17 As we have observed, the note is written on what was
originally the back cover of the copy of the Fasciculus, and it must
therefore be assumed to refer to the printed book itself and not neces-
sarily to the manuscript. The statement by Nicolson, who perhaps had
corresponded with Norie about the manuscript,18 presupposes that the
printed book had already been brought into association with the
manuscript in such a way that the note by Thomas Tulloch could be
taken to be a witness to the provenance of the latter rather than the
former. The available evidence is insufficient for us to be able to
decide who was really responsible for this misunderstanding. How-
ever, since there are grounds for suspecting that the two items were
unbound when they reached Norie, and direct proof that Norie had
lent the manuscript to Wallace, one might suppose that Norie had
caused a binding to be made before allowing the material out of his
possession and that Nicolson, having borrowed the volume in its
bound State, made a false deduction from the juxtaposition of the first
page of the manuscript with the note by Tulloch now appearing on the
left-hand side of the same opening. Be this as it may, the misunder-
standing first found in Nicolson’s publication acquired the status of
universal opinion when P. A. Munch printed his description of the
manuscript in 1850. Here we read that the note by Tulloch is written
on a folio “ad maximam partern vacuum, manifeste ad codicem manu-
scriptum, non ad librum impressum pertinens,”19 which is quite
erroneous but is stated with such emphasis that no one has previously
questioned Munch’s authority. It will now be necessary to subject
Munch’s other pronouncements on the manuscript to critical re-
examination.
II
A considerable portion of the Dalhousie manuscript was printed for
17 For biographical data on the Cistercian Robert Reid see D. E. R. Watt, Fasti
ecclesiæ scoticanæ medii ævi ad annum 1638, second draft (St Andrews, 1969), pp. 232,
244, 254.
18 Leckoway, where Nicolson States that Norie was minister, is not the name of any
known parish; but it may have been the place from which Norie corresponded with
Nicolson (cf. Laing in BM III, 30, n. 2).
19 Symbolæ, p. IV.