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The Collation

Hard hands and strange words

Until you get the hang of it, Henry Oxinden’s secretary hand is just plain difficult. Take a stab at this passage from p. 469 of his Miscellany (ca. 1642-1670), Folger MS V.b.110, extracted from a sermon delivered by Charles Herle at Winwick, Lancashire, in 1654. It is typical of the entire manuscript.

Henry Oxinden's lovely secretary hand. Folger MS V.b.110, p. 469.

Henry Oxinden’s lovely secretary hand. Folger MS V.b.110, p. 469.

What does it say? Our crack team of advanced paleographers transcribed Oxinden’s messy and abbreviated secretary hand as follows:

Certainly if there bee any thing glorious in the world it is
a minde that contemnes that glory. Diogenes had more
of the two, more of it by his contempt, then Alexander
by his command of it, even then when he commanded himselfe
to bee made a God. p.21.

When perusing early modern English manuscripts, it is tempting to skip the words that don’t make sense and focus on the ones that do. In the presence of copious content that is legible and interesting, why get stuck on a few words that probably aren’t that important anyway?

But what if they are important?

  1. Class participants were Claire Bourne, Julie Bowman, Sarah Case, Joshua Eckhardt, Daeyeong Kim, Victor Lenthe, Erika Lin, Ivan Lupic, Brid McGrath, Dianne Mitchell, Marcy North, Sarah Powell, Gerit Quealy, Emily Rendek, Dylan Ruediger, Callum Seddon, and Amy Tigner.
  2. Tityre tu are the first words of Virgil’s first Eclogue.

Comments

I would have thought the writing clearly says “Gillam”. This is a fairly common surname, and rather a boring ‘solution’ but I suspect it is rather like the names written at the side.
Cliff Webb

Cliff Webb — December 16, 2014

Reply

It might be Gillam, but we were expecting it to be more like a commonplace heading, such as “Trifles,” which appears as a heading elsewhere in the pamphlet. The other names are written along the side in a different hand and are not related to the text, whereas this word seems more integrated, no?

Heather Wolfe — December 16, 2014

Reply

I maintain my support for Gillam.

Joshua Eckhardt — December 16, 2014

Reply

Surnames are commonly derived from place-names. I cannot find an English village with the name ‘Gillam’ or ‘Gilham’ (say) but unless it is a version of ‘Guillaume’ or ‘William’, the name might be that of a hamlet or ‘lost village’. Would this make any sense in the context ?

John Drackley — December 17, 2014

Reply

Thanks for your comment! You could be right. Here is the image of the third leaf with the word “Trifles” at the top, which made me think that it had to be another commonplace heading. But perhaps I am letting that influence me too strongly!

Heather Wolfe — December 17, 2014

Reply

Heather, I’m wondering if you could clarify what’s going on with that tear in the page. Zooming in on Luna, it looks like there is a rift above that descender, and that those first two strokes are actually attached to fol. 2r. Does it look to you like the page was originally folded over the top and that the tear is the result of the fold having been sloppily slit?

Misha Teramura — December 17, 2014

Reply

Hi Misha,
Here’s an image of the next opening, which makes the situation a bit clearer: http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/22n59v. It looks like the two leaves got stuck together at the top for some reason, and the tear happened when they were pulled apart. The top part of the first letter on the first leaf is therefore stuck to the top of the blank second leaf.

Heather Wolfe — December 17, 2014

Reply

Thanks, Heather! I think what threw me off was that the top edge of that dislocated fragment is so straight (and aligned with the top edge of fol. 2) that it struck me as a fold. One almost wonders whether the right-angled strokes on the separated fragment might rather be moved up and to the right, aligning them with the descender and the i’s dot, thereby creating an “F” shape—but that’s a stretch!

Misha Teramura — December 17, 2014

Reply

If you need a running start to decipher these manuscripts, many of them are included in the Folger Digital Image collection, LUNA Insights.

Julie Ainsworth and her team in the Folger Photography and Digital Imaging Department have been doing amazing work with full-text captures: http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/New_in_LUNA

Owen Williams — December 17, 2014

Reply

Stare at those double Ls long enough and they become an upside-down U.

Tom Reedy — December 17, 2014

Reply

Elisabeth Chaghafi offered a solution:
for my money, that first letter is a q rather than a g (if you zoom in, the tail doesn’t seem to curve to the left at all, it’s basically just a vertical line). If the word is “qillam” rather than “gillam”, it could be a variant of “quillet, n3” in the OED: “A verbal nicety, a subtle distinction; a frivolous or evasive argument; a quibble.” (There’s probably a connection between that word and the nonsense date “Anno millimo quillimo trillimo”, though that one isn’t in the OED). Anyway, I think that heading might suit the context of the manuscript page quite well, because all the stories on it seem to involve verbal quibbles of some sort, no?

Heather Wolfe — September 27, 2019

Reply

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