‘He That No Good Can’: An Unrecorded Copy of a Middle English Proverb

Abstract

OXFORD, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 99 is a late fourteenth-century manuscript copied in one hand on paper. It contains a copy of the synodal statutes of William Raleigh, followed by an idiosyncratic copy of the Middle English poem The Prick of Conscience . 1 The scribe identifies himself in his colophon as ‘Frater Iohannes stanys canonic us Thetfordie’. 2 As the available descriptions indicate, this is a fascinating book, and its copying, provenance, and use merit more detailed treatment elsewhere. 3 For the present purpose, however, the key text in the book is a copy of Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse 1162.8 in a fifteenth-century hand—not the hand of the scribe—in the bottom margin of one page. 4 To my knowledge this instance has not previously been recorded. 5 It reads: The hand is essentially modelled on anglicana in its ductus and most of its letter-forms, though it has the single-compartment secretary a , as was common in fifteenth-century anglicana, and alternates between an anglicana w for ‘wylle’ and an open secretary w for ‘warvne’. (I have no explanation for the use of the form ‘warvne’ for ‘warne’, unless it is a mistake.) The sample size is very small but I would tentatively date this writing to the second half of the fifteenth century. It shares some suggestive common features with some of the writing in the collection of songs and carols which is now Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, although it is not identical to any of the hands in that manuscript. 7 For example, the hand that writes 11 r –48 r shares the approach-stroke on word-initial m , the rightwards lean of the looped ascender of h and the leftwards curve of the stem of t . The hand that copies the proverb in MS Digby 99 also displays a hint of the rightwards flick at the bottom of the descender of y which is more pronounced in MS Eng. poet. e.1. The first hand’s activity in MS Eng. poet. e.1 probably dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and it has been suggested that its dialect is locatable to South-West Norfolk; dialect is not cast-iron evidence for a manuscript’s place of production and reading, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary this localization might put this manuscript in the same part of Norfolk as Thetford, where MS Digby 99 was copied. 8 The text is a proverbial couplet, although here it is copied as a xaxa stanza. A four-part brace has been added on the right in text-ink; since the brace braces every line it must denote verse in general, or the idea of rhyme, rather than the actual rhyme-scheme. The scribe may have chosen this arrangement simply because the pages of MS Digby 99 are not very wide.