A failure to follow directions

Missal leaf, with mistakes.

In a post from last year, I wrote about some guide letters, where a scribe (or, in that case, a typesetter) indicates to a rubricator what letter should be inserted in a space. Perhaps it should go without saying, but even when the directions are clear, mistakes sometimes are made.

In the case of the small missal or breviary leaf to the left (the whole leaf measures only about 5 3/4" by 3 1/4"), at least two errors can easily be seen. 

The more obvious one involves the red (i.e., rubricated) text written into the lower margin. It is, as one might be able to see, preceded by a little red caret; the matching sign can be found in line 18 of the first column, just to the left of the two-line red "n" in the right hand column. As I hope is obvious, the position of the matching sign indicates where the added passage belongs.

Very possibly, this was a mistake by the primary scribe; at the least it seems to have been corrected by a second scribe, who uses a single-compartment a, rather than the main scribe's regular, two-compartment a. It is notable that this correction has been written on a couple of added ruling lines, provided just for this passage.

The second error, however, is clearly made by the rubricator. 

Although they may be difficult to see on the full-page image of this page, guide letters survive in the right-hand margin of this page: q, n, and n. The first two were no trouble for the rubricator, but something went wrong with the third:

Closer view of rubrication error and correction.

For whatever reason, the left-hand side of this letter was extended across three lines, not two: it looks like the rubricator intended to make a p, but certainly what was originally there could not have been easily read as an n. Not only was the letter painted in with blue, but the decorative red-pen lines were added before the mistake was corrected: someone else, presumably, came upon this and scraped away the lower part of the letter and added black ink serifs at the feet of the n, to make the letter clear. 

I find it strangely comforting to know that my own failures, at times, to follow directions are nothing new in the world, and even medieval scribes and rubricators had their off days.

Printed to look like script, 1708.

1708 Obligation bond,
in Latin and English

Naturally, when the printing press first appeared, the newly cut types were intended to look like letters. Since, until that time, manuscript letters were practically the only letters anyone knew, of course early printed books ended up looking visibly similar to manuscripts. 

On the obligation bond shown here, dating from 1708, the printed text is also intended to look like manuscript letters, but for a manifestly different reason. Here, the printed portion of the document is supposed to look like a manuscript, and--implicitly, at least--a typeset version (with more type-like letters) would not be as acceptable. 

Part-printed documents had made use of conventional typesetting for some time before this, at least in some contexts, but for one reason or another, the visual look and feel of this kind of document seems to have still benefitted from this script-like presentation. 

There are other observations we might make: it looks to me like there is a plate mark around the edge of the paper here, so it seems best to suggest that the printed portions of this bond were made from an engraving, rather than from a woodcut.

I'm not sure if it can be seen readily here, but each of the two men named Richard Thaier who seals this document (father and son), seems to use the very same seal, which features an anchor. 

It's just a simple document, but interesting, even so.

A brief post on guide letters

I was tempted to title this post "a brief guide to guide letters," but I'm afraid it's far too brief for that.

Printed vellum leaf: creases and slots on the
right hand side show that this was later
used as part of a binding.

In fact, it will cover only two examples of guide letters on a single leaf, and so it's not even much of a blog post, either.  

The leaf in question is a bit unusual, though, because it has been printed on vellum. Last week, I confessed to the soft place I have in my heart for medieval manuscripts written on paper, but only books that were intended to be deluxe copies, as a rule, were printed on vellum, because it was significantly more expensive than paper. 

This leaf, from a missal, may be from an incunable, but it's certainly from the early part of the sixteenth century at the latest. The date 1557 on one side may indicate the date of its recycling as the wrapper of another book. 

Most of the capital letters on this page were printed in red, along with the heading at the top of the page and subheadings of various sorts in the columns. But at the bottom of the right-hand column, a manuscript rubricator has added a large three-line initial in blue paint (which is now faded) with contrasting red-ink pen decoration.

The "guide letter" that the post is about is the letter (printed in black) that the printer placed in the space for the larger initial, so that the rubricator would know what letter to paint in. In many of the manuscript (and printed) examples I've seen, the large hand-painted letter often enough was designed to cover over the tiny guide letter, so it wouldn't be seen.

Manuscript "O" surrounding the printed "o"

On this example, as the close-up above shows, the printed guide letter has intentionally been left visible, and the decorative red pen-scrolls even seem to swirl around it and call attention to it. The printed letter ends up being part of the design. 

Perhaps it's just me, but I can't help but note that the visible page thus has two examples of the letter "o" here, only one of which can be used to read the text.

And apparently, this is no mistake from this rubricator, either. The three-line initial "d" on the opposite side of the leaf has the same effect, though damage from the leaf's later use as a book-wrapper makes it a bit trickier to see.

Nevertheless, it seems to be a wonderfully odd feature of this page to me, especially as it leaves two letters visible where readers use only one. But that's part of what I find fascinating about old books and leaves: the places where they do something unexpected, or at least something I do not expect. 

It's always interesting to see the moments when manuscript and print work together on the same page, and I usually think that the manual labor involved in adding decorated letters must have meant they had a higher value than the printed guide letters they were meant to replace. 

But here, the guide letters were not only not replaced, but they were allowed to keep their position of visual prominence at the center of the larger, manuscript letters' decorative adornments. Fascinating!

Golden Dragons: some recycled manuscript fragments?

I have long been interested in the recycling of manuscripts and early printed books. In truth, I'm also interested in the recycling of more recent books and textual materials, but I can't help being fascinated with those items that have survived the longest, even when they survive only as fragments.

"REGLE": pasted-in cut-outs? (Note how
the G appears to be inverted)

As a rule, recycled items were valued for something other than the words they contained: binding fragments were generally used as strengtheners, their vellum more substantial than paper. Sometimes paper incunabula pages were pasted together to make boards (pasteboards, I'd call them). 

When I get such items, however, I generally do my best to attend once more to the textual component: I try to read these fragments, and in the case of manuscript items, I often use what I know of paleography to date and localize the fragments and texts. 

In a recent purchase, however, I've come across some bits that look to me like recycled fragments of medieval manuscripts, but most of my tools for reading them and dating them fail: where there is a textual component, it is made up only of capital letters--which are not well treated in the paleographical resources I use most often. And other bits are pure decoration: gold dragons. 

And yet it seems likely that these can be dated: my best guess from what I see here is a date perhaps in the 1300s, perhaps from France (or Germany?). But I'd be happy to be corrected, or guided to a better sense of them.

All of these pieces, both letters and dragons, stand a bit above the surface of the paper pages they appear on: I think they are cut from another book and mounted here. But the nature of gold manuscript additions has sometimes involved a palpably thick buildup of material upon the page surface as preparation for receiving the gold: so I'm not 100% certain these are recycled at all. But I'm pretty.

Whatever these are, they are such fun! 

Note that the decorative blue dots and red tongues have been added at the time of remounting these pieces, and they are not part of the original dragons. Also, the dragons may originally have been oriented vertically, in the side margin, though in their current use, they are horizontal, as I've shown them. 

Thomas Rowley: Latin Poet?

Foolish though it may by, I am obnoxious enough to think that I ought to be able to solve all the mysteries that a new acquisition throws my way. One in a while, however, I buy something that might benefit from a real expert in the areas in question.  Fortunately, I have some friends and acquaintances out there with many specializations; this little blog post will leave many questions unanswered, but I'd be delighted if any of my readers could help me answer them, or even come closer to answers.

Rowley's Latin poem.

The item in question is a pair of printed binding fragments. When I purchased these, they were billed as incunabula fragments, but I suspect they are slightly later. The printed text appears to be Nicolas Panormitano's Repertorium super Decretalium, but with some additional materials I haven't traced in any actual incunabula printings (the additions are common in printings from the later 16th century; I haven't yet determined when and where they first were printed). I'd guess from the style of printing that these printed fragments derive from the first half of the sixteenth century. 

On their own, these scraps from an old legal book might not be especially interesting, but these are covered with scribbles and texts from a Englishman, Thomas Rowley, perhaps dating around 1600.

Two post-incunabula binding fragments with
Rowley's writing, none of which appears in the
center sections, corresponding to the spine
of the newer book in which they were re-used.

I haven't been able to trace Rowley: the name isn't uncommon, and Thomas Chatterton seems to have used the name for a late medieval poet who was the product of his own hoaxing imagination--a coincidence that further complicates internet searches on the name. But Rowley used these leaves (which must have been the free end-pages of a book he owned) for a variety of little bits and bobs, including the four lines of Latin verse pictured above.

To the best of my abilities in transcription, these verses read as follows:

Justitiam regnumque dei super omnia quære

Sic tibi largientur cætera cuncta satis

Cras[. . . . . . . . ] cures, curet sibi crastinus ipse

Sufficit ille dies tempus in omne malis.

This passage is followed by his signature, "Thomas Rowley" (at the bottom left of the top image, you may see his name written another time, with "Th / Rowly" just legible. Many of these items seem to be mere pen-trials). 

I am unsure of some parts of the transcription: "largientum" is probably wrong; the ellipses mark out a passage I'm even less sure of. Again, any clarification would be much appreciated. I think this is a syllable-counting verse form, rather than hexameters, but Latin meters are not my strongest suit, either.

Elsewhere, Rowley's notes here include a tag from Vergil and the poetic version of the Lord's Prayer (beginning “O pater omnipotens clarique") that was most familiar from having been used in Lyly's Grammar. Such passages are easily searchable on the web. But these four poetic lines I have not been able to trace, nor Rowley's evocative English line "The Gordian knot w[hi]ch nothing canne vnloose but death." 

With his expressive italic script, Rowley seems to have been well enough educated, and perhaps even a bit ambitious in a literary way, if we can judge his writing by so few bits. I wish I knew a bit more about him.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

It's always fun to take a look at a newly acquired manuscript item and find an interesting feature.

In the case of the leaf pictured today, I was delighted to find that a tiny hole in the parchment had not only been avoided by the scribe (as usual), but attended to by the rubricator, who circled it on one side of the leaf (see the first image, between the words "i[n]ter" and "ones"), and even sort of included it in a bit of rubricated decoration on the other side.

When the vellum had a natural flaw, I guess it was reasonable to call attention to it sometimes, rather than just ignoring it. If your vellum is freaky, then own it, I guess.

Whuh? And More Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut-tree, 
The village smithy stands

I've long feared or suspected that I have an unusual number of scraps of verse in my head: rarely complete memorized poems, but many little pieces here and there. These opening lines of Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" certainly stand as one example. I don't know where or when I learned these lines for sure, although I suspect it was at home, rather than at school.

In a book I recently purchased in a box lot (A J Demarest and William M Van Sickle, New Education Readers: A Synthetic and Phonic Word Method [NY: American Book Company, 1901]), I was pleased to run across a former student's slightly mis-remembered version of these lines, written, perhaps as a pen-trial, in the upper margin of page 25:

Longfellow probably chose "under," rather than "beneath," for metrical reasons: to begin the line with an inverted foot. But Katherine Corrigan, of Fredericktown, Ohio, who seems to have penned this version (according to other writing in the book), has produced a normal iamb here, regularizing the meter of the line a bit. The other changes are also not at all unusual for memorized verse, I think, although she must not have memorized much more of the poem than I have: "stood" would fail to rhyme only a couple of lines further on.

But I was, I can admit, wonderfully amused by the numerous examples of "huh" also written onto this page, perhaps as a kind of commentary upon the lines of Helen Hunt Jackson's "October's Bright Blue Weather," which is the printed text.

Even more remarkable and amusing was what I took for "whuh," accompanying the "huh"s. In fact, I wondered if this could be an early attestation of "whuh," which seems to me a quite modern expression, one that might also be spelled "whaa?" or the like. An expression of befuddled puzzlement, over and above what might be communicated by "what?"

I wondered how long "whuh" had been around, and in a burst of enthusiasm, I typed "whuh" in Google's "Ngram viewer" with the following result:


This was quite astonishing to me, but some digital looking around helped to clarify things, at least in part. First, in the 17th and 18th centuries, "whuh" was apparently an alternative spelling for "whew"; also, Google's OCR software seems to have sometimes misread "which" as "whuh."  In the early twentieth century, "whuh" shows up a fair number of times in representations of African-American English.

But Katherine Corrigan's "whuh" didn't seem to be any of those, especially since it was so closely linked to all these examples of "huh."

Then, I took a closer look, and realized that maybe I should read it as "uhuh," rather than "whuh."

But, even so, this first example in my book looks almost like it has a question mark, as does the "huh" above it. Almost, I say, because it's not exactly clear.

I am sorry to say that all my practice in (medieval) paleography hasn't been much help in deciding whether this is "whuh" or "uhuh." And thus all my crazy eagerness to find the earliest attestation of "whuh" has not been rewarded, either. It probably is "uhuh" here, after all.

I did, by the way, check the OED. Both "uh-uh" and "uh-huh", as it happens, are first attested in 1924, in what looks like a journal, Dial[ect] Notes; Katherine Corrigan's handwriting in this book appears to date from either 1929 or 1932. The OED's second attestation for "uh-uh", for what it's worth, is from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, in 1930. 

But part me of is content to imagine that she has written "whuh" after all, even if I cannot prove it.