Another Fragment of the Old French Romance Meliacin, and Some Observations on Its Place among the Other Earliest Witnesses to the Text

Abstract

This article presents a small fragment (only 42 x 138 mm) of a leaf from a manuscript of the Old French poem Meliacin, which once formed part of the stock of the manuscript dealer Erik von Scherling (1907–1956), and came to light in a private collection in 2009. Unknown to the present author, another similarly sized fragment from the same parent-codex, discovered in the binding of a printed book dated 1699, had been published in 2016 by Aurélie Houdebert and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. The physical materiality of the fragment discussed here agrees with many of Houdebert’s and Ó Cróinín’s conclusions about the dismembered and otherwise lost parent manuscript, and perhaps takes further what we can say about that original codex, its place among the other early witnesses to the text and its intended audience or owners. Furthermore, this scrap of a leaf has more to tell us about the uses and reuses of manuscripts, as distinctive cuts and red ink staining show it to have been reused in early printing as a frisket, most probably in the sixteenth century, before a final reuse to strengthen a later book binding.