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Manuscript Description
Wales, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21972D
 
MS Appellation:Merthyr Fragment, Me (Manly and Rickert)
Title:Canterbury Tales (fragment)
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Canterbury Tales: fragment of Nun's Priest's Link and Tale.
Language:English
Date Range:1395-1415
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Material:Parchment
No of Folios:3 folios only
Page Size:Damaged folios with upper portion missing; projected size before damage 265x190
Frame:No ruling for text or margins. Initial letters of lines set apart.
Writing Space:Damaged folios with upper portion missing; projected size 200x140
Incipits and Explicits:'Here endeth the p(ro)loge and bygynneth the tale'
Flourished Initials:Manly and Rickert believed that a 3-5-line initial may have begun the Tale since the text on that folio is displaced to the right. However, there is no surviving evidence in the margins of any elaborate decoration of such an initial.
Other Names (not owners):The three leaves of 'Merthyr' were deposited in the National Library of Wales in 1937 by Reverend Lewis Simmons of Bridgend, Glamorganshire. They had been discovered pasted into the back of a copy of 'Antiquae Linguae Britannicae Dictionarium Duplex'
Miscellaneous Info:See the Hengwrt Chaucer CD-ROM for information on provenance and translation and commentary on the Welsh marginalia to be found on the fragments. This was contributed by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan formally of the National Library of Wales.
Further Information:Manly and Rickert I: 361-364. Seymour II: 247. Huws, Daniel. National Library of Wales Journal 25 (1987), 114-118. Stubbs, Estelle. ed., The Hengwrt Digital Chaucer, [CD-ROM]. Leicester. Scholarly Digital Editions,2000.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP