Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 78

70
early: F. J. Amours refers to it as “the oldest text [of Wyntoun]
extant,” and States without further comment that “it has been ascribed
to a date between 1440 and 1450.”48 The published catalogue of the
Royal manuscripts in the British Library assigns it to the last quarter
of the fifteenth century, which is less obviously incorrect but still open
to misconstruction.49 No previous student of the manuscript seems to
have taken into account the faet that the copy of Wyntoun, which
occupies the first 298 leaves, cannot be more than a generation older
than the prose Chronicle of Scotland in a Part, which appears at ff.
299-308r under the rubric: “Heir is assignyt [>e cause quhy our natioun
vas callyt fyrst [>e Scottis.” W. F. Skene pointed out long ago that this
prose item in the Royal manuscript must have been transcribed c.
1530, adducing as evidence a passage referring to the expulsion of the
Picts from Scotland, where it is said that the event took place “sewyn
hundir 3eire synne, Pat is to say, Pe 3eire of oure Lord, aucht hundir
xxx. and od seiris” -, the words here italicized have nothing correspon-
ding to them in the Dalhousie and Asloan manuscripts.50 The prose
chronicle, which is directly foliowed in the Royal copy by a set of
vernacular annals not found in the Dalhousie or Asloan copies,51 is not
written by the same scribe as was responsible for the Wyntoun text in
the main body of the manuscript. On the other hånd, the Wyntoun
text and the chronicle are on paper displaying the same watermark,
similar colouring and similar ruling of the written space. The chronicle
on ff. 299-308r must accordingly have been added on blank leaves left
over at the end of the Wyntoun transcript; but in spite of the faet that
this in theory could have been done some considerable time after the
completion of the Wyntoun text, there are no physical or palæographi-
48 F. J. Amours (ed.), The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun, STS ser. I, 50,
53-54, 56-57 & 63 (1903-14), I, lxii.
49 Cf. George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, British Museum: Catalogue of Western
Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections II (London, 1921), pp. 256-57.
50 W. F. Skene (ed.), Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Sæts, and Other Early
Memorials of Scottish History, Series of Chronicles and Memorials published... under
the direction of... the Lord Clerk-Register of Scotland [1] (Edinburgh, 1867), pp. 378-
90, no. L: “Chronicle of the Scots” from Roy. 17 D. xx, at 383/30-31. Cf. introduction p.
lxxiii.
51 Skene, Chronicles of the Picts, pp. 386/17-390 prints the first part of these annals,
which covers the period down to 1388; the rest, covering the period 1400-82, is printed
in John Pinkerton, The History of Scotland ... (London, 1797), I, 502-04, Appendix no.
XXL