Taunton, Somerset County Record Office, DD/SASC/1193/77

Number of Hands: 1

Summary: main text

Scope: sole

Scribe: Taunton SC1

Script: Insular minuscule

Description: Pages 1-8. 'Anglo-Saxon minuscule of an unpretentious kind' (Gretsch 2004), which Gretsch dates as mid-eleventh century, citing Gullick who guesses at 'post-Conquest'. Dating is very difficult, since the hand seems archaic if it is eleventh century, belonging, perhaps, to a centre that is not at the forefront of script innovation (see Treharne 2009). This is a hand whose cognates are themselves difficult to localise, date and define: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 41 is the one of the closest analogues in terms of both general aspect and specific features. In the Taunton Fragment, the aspect is upright (with the slightest leftward slant), and squarish, with a broad horizontal expansiveness. Interlinear space is generous, lines are long with an average of seven to eight words per line. Abbreviations are common in the Latin, less so in the English. The mise-en-page emphasises legibility, but many of the spellings are idiosyncratic ('drihtin', 'blitsiende', 'weruld'), again suggesting a writing environment which is less, rather than more, formal.

Summary of the characteristics of the hand:

• a is usually insular in the Old English and the Latin, and is often tear-drop shaped. On one occasion a tall-backed Caroline a is used.
• The ascender of b has a tag to the left.
• d is round-backed in English, with an upstroke that is higher than earlier eleventh-century minuscule. Round-backed d is also used in the Latin on occasion.
• f is insular in the English script and Caroline in Latin. In the former, the middle stroke of f is longer than the headstroke.
• g is usually insular with a rounded, nearly circular bowl in the English. The tail begins from the middle of the headstroke. A distinctive Caroline g appears in the Latin with a large, sweeping and unclosed tail.
• The ascender of h has a tag to the left. The form is insular in both Latin and English.
• The ascender of l has a mannered finial.
• r is Caroline.
• s is low or high in both English and Latin.
• The ascender of þ has a tag to the left.
• The upstroke of ð is the same height as other ascenders. The cross-stroke starts from the right of the upstroke.
• y is straight-limbed, formed with two strokes and often dotted.
• ascenders are straight and wedged, tagged to the left, or slightly split.
• descenders are straight and very occasionally have the slightest curve to the left.

Punctuation: punctuation is most frequently the punctus, placed at medial height; the punctus versus, with a long comma; and the punctus elevatus, with a good deal of space between the punctus and the tick.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations are denoted by a very characteristic straight macron, placed a few millimetres above the graph. The abbreviation for 'that' is notable: the oblique line through the ascender of æ is very straight.

Ligatures: There are a few examples of the ct ligature, written so that the two letters are very separate from each other, and one of the final nt ligatures. (Gretsch 2004, pp. 147-9)