Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 92
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left-hand margin, e.g. at f. 70V1); the occurrence of display script in
connexion with chapter-incipits at f. 70r,v (three times in all); the
florid ornamentation of initial capitals (here touched with red ink) at
ff. 32v, 85r and some half dozen other places, always marking import-
ant divisions in the text; the frame ruling of the written space; the use
of a diagonal stroke in hyphenation; and the combination of diagonal
stroke and point as a full stop symbol (compare for example plate IVb,
line 10 with plate III, line 7).
The identification of the Dalhousie and Haye scribes brings the
Dalhousie manuscript into immediate association with one of the most
famous literary manuscripts from late medieval Scotland, namely
Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Arch. Selden B. 24, which contains
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and other poems by Chaucer, Lydgate,
Hoccleve, Clanvowe and Walton, as well as the unique copies of the
Scottish Chaucerian Kingis Quair and Quare of Jelusy.80 The original
part of this manuscript is written in two distinet hånds, the first of
which has been stated by John Norton-Smith to be the same as that of
the Haye manuscript.81 This palæographical equation, which is sup-
ported by Matthew P. McDiarmid and N. R. Ker,82 can be verified by
reference to the sample given here in plate IVa. Again following the
order of characteristic letter-forms observed in the Dalhousie manu-
script, we find the Capital S- in line 15 Se; the high g in line 4 Record-
ing; the long i (not so nearly circular here) in line 4 in; the initial v- in
80 Cf. Falconer Madan and H. H. E. Craster, A Summary Catalogue of Western
Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford 11,1 (Oxford, 1922), pp. 614-16, no.
3354. For descriptive remarks of more recent date see inter alia John Norton-Smith
(ed.), James 1 of Scotland: The Kingis Quair (Oxford, 1971), pp. xxxi-xxxiv; Matthew P.
McDiarmid (ed.), The Kingis Quair of James Stewart (London, 1973), pp. 2-7; and J.
Norton-Smith and I. Pravda (eds.), The Quare of Jelusy, Middle English Texts 3
(Heidelberg, 1976), pp. 10-14.
81 Letter in The Times Literary Supplement, 4.6.1971, p. 649; cf. Norton-Smith, The
Kingis Quair, p. xxx, n. 1. This is the hånd illustrated and discussed by Parkes (as n. 78
above). It is also illustrated in Robert Kilburn Root, The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s
Troilus with Collotype Facsimiles of the Various Handwritings, Chaucer Society ser. I,
no. XCVIII (London, 1914), plate XXII, and in the old editions of The Kingis Quair by
Alexander Lawson, The Kingis Quair and The Quare of Jelusy, St Andrews University
Publications 8 (London, 1910) and Walter W. Skeat, The Kingis Quair: together with A
Ballad of Good Counsel, second and revised edition, STS n.s. 1 (1911).
82 McDiarmid (as n. 80), p. 4, n. 1; Ker, description of the Haye manuscript in
Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries II (Oxford, 1977), pp. 1-2.