Clitheroe, Stonyhurst College, Society of Jesus 69
69
General Information
386
A collection of texts written in s. xii and xiii. Old English is included in Cuthbert's letter of Bede's Death-Song on fol. 15. Ker notes: 'This copy of the letter belongs to the 'Digby group', but the abnormal word-divisions, characteristic of the Death Song in other manuscripts of the group, do not occur here' (1957, pp. 456-57).
Item: fol. 15
Title (A.33.3): Bede's Death Song: West Saxon Version
Bibliography:
Dobbie 1937, p. 77
Ker 1957, item 386, p. 456
Object Description
Codex
Parchment
Hand Description
Number of Hands: 1 in Old English
Hand: Main text
Scope: Major
Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
Summary of the characteristics of the hand: According to Ker 1957, Old English letter-forms differ from the Latin's ones, he then reports the following characteristics:
- d is rounded in Old English.
- g is insular in the last two and a half lines.
- h is insular in the last two and a half lines.
- Long-tailed Caroline r in Old English.
- ð is not used. y is dotted.
- descenders are short and turn sharply to the left at the end.
Additional Information
Manuscript described by Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato, with reference to published scholarship (2010; 2013).
History
Unknown.
Acquisition: Ker 1957 observes: 'The manuscript was given to Stonyhurst College by the Rev. John Middlehurst, S. J. Previously it had been bought from a pedlar for 2s. 6d'.
Unknown
Dobbie, Elliott van Kirk, The Manuscripts of Cædmon's Hymn and Bede's Death Song, with a Critical Text of the 'Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae', Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 128 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937)
Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 386
Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato