After last week's fantastic effort from our readers, the Guess the Song Competition™ is back! The rules are simple: can you guess the song from the medieval manuscript images below?

So how does it work? These manuscript illuminations make up the lyrics to a classic song. If you're in the mood, try to guess the artist and song title. We'd love you to send us your answers via Twitter (did we ever mention we're on Twitter?) or using the comments page below this post. We’ll endeavour to retweet and publish the best answers, especially the ones that most amuse us.

Update (21 August): the answer is given below, but don't cheat!

Image 1, from a medical miscellany, last quarter of the 14th or first quarter of the 15th century, Sloane MS 981, f. 68r

 

Image 2, from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, c. 1327–1335, Add MS 47682, f. 33v

 

Image 3, from a bestiary with theological tracts, c. 1200–c. 1210, Royal MS 12 C XIX, f. 45r

 

Image 4, from the Luttrell Psalter, 1325–1340, Add MS 42130, f. 160r

 

Image 5, from a herbal, c. 1440, Sloane MS 4016, f. 96r

 

Answer

1. Eye  2. Shroud  3.  Bee  4. Slow  5. Lucky  = 'I Should Be So Lucky' by Kylie Minogue (corny, we know!

You are turning the pages of an ancient and beautiful manuscript. It is about the size of a modern A4 volume, although wholly different in smell (parchment has the kind of ineffable musk that makes fans of history swoon), appearance (it is bound in leather with handwritten text on its parchment pages), and weight (all that wood and animal skin adds up).

In almost every direction there are pen drawings of animals. The pictures are lively, sometimes with whole scenes showing creatures performing seemingly bizarre acts: a self-castrating beaver; a colourful tiger staring at a disk. What is more, nearly all these images are outlined with little pin holes. The book is an important member of an entertaining category of medieval illuminated manuscript: the bestiary. Those pin holes are also crucial, since they indicate that at some stage someone may have copied the images in this book.

Close scribal and artistic collaboration would have been necessary to produce pages like this double-spread showing images of birds: Add MS 11283, ff. 22v–23r

Bestiary texts offer animal-lore as a source of allegorical lessons for moral spiritual guidance. The earliest bestiary manuscripts date to the beginning of the 12th century. They were made throughout North-Western Europe, but the genre flourished most in England, eventually declining in popularity in the late 13th and 14th centuries. It may not surprise you to learn that bestiary images of animals were not drawn from nature, but from established artistic conventions.

This particular book has 102 images, drawn in pen and occasionally coloured. They would have been inserted after the text was written, so the scribe left gaps for the artist to fill.

A beaver self-castrates to escape a hunter, Add MS 11283, f. 4v

Here we can see a beaver fleeing a hunter. It has removed and dropped its testicles — valued for their medicinal properties — in order to save its own life. This alarming depiction provided an allegorical model for the moral lesson that humans should cast away their vices to give the Devil no cause to pursue them.

A colourful tiger nurses its own reflection, believing it has found its stolen cub, Add MS 11283, f. 2r

On another page we see the sad plight of the tiger. It is coloured with blue, green and red circles and stripes, pawing a disk decorated with the same colours. A man on horseback rides away, carrying a colourful cub in his arms. The text explains that if someone steals the cub of a tiger and they are chased by its mother, she will be distracted if a circle of glass or mirror is thrown before her, mistaking her own reflection for the lost cub in order to nurse it.

Pouncing

If you are fond of wordplay, you may think it apt that as well as the prowling, prancing, crawling and flapping subjects of this manuscript, it also bears the marks of having been used for ‘pouncing’. Pouncing was a post-medieval way of copying of images. Lines of holes would be made around the picture into a sheet below. This would then be removed, held over the surface intended to receive the copy and dusted with powder such as chalk or charcoal. The outline of the first image would be quickly and effectively transferred onto the new surface.

This image of a group of hoofed animals may have been outlined with pin holes in order for it to be copied via a technique known as pouncing: Add MS 11283, f.11v

Just as medieval scribes could copy texts from ‘exemplars’ (another manuscript used as a model), so later artists could copy their images. At some point, the images of this bestiary were outlined with pin holes, probably to allow them to be copied. We do not know when these holes were made in this particular manuscript, but they typically date to the post-medieval period. It is poignant to think that these holes were left by someone who admired the images as much as us. 

Amy Jeffs

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Dans le nord-ouest de l’Europe, entre les XIIe et XIVe siècles, les bestiaires étaient un genre de manuscrits très populaire. Comme tous les bestiaires, Add MS 11283 décrit des animaux pour en tirer des leçons morales. Ce manuscrit est rempli d’illustrations amusantes : beaucoup d'images sont contourées avec des trous d'épingle, ce qui permettait de les transposer à l'aide d’un marquage au pochoir.

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Here at the British Library we have just completed our latest digitisation project, with over 100 manuscripts added to our website between January 2016 and July this year. The project, funded by a private donor, has focused on collection items in French and other European vernacular languages that are notable either for their illuminations or for texts of particular interest. A list of the manuscripts digitised in this project is available at online: Download French and Vernacular Illuminated project digitisation list. Here are examples of some of the most remarkable items from our collections newly available on Digitised Manuscripts.

God with the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, surrounded by angels and cherubim, a winged woman with a crown addressing a council of the Church, the four Evangelists and scenes from the Old and New Testament in roundels, from the Bible Historiale, France, Central (Paris), c.1420, Add MS 18856, f. 3r

Manuscripts in French

Among the numerous French manuscripts digitised are the Library’s remaining copies of the Roman de la Rose, a popular French allegorical poem beginning with a dream-vision of love, and developed by a second author into a discussion of the philosophical and scientific knowledge of the day. There are now 14 copies of this very popular text on Digitised Manuscripts. For details of the Rose manuscripts in our collections, see our blogpost, ‘Everything’s coming up Roses’.

The Lover’s dream, from Roman de la Rose, France, Central? (Paris?), c. 1380, Add MS 31840, f. 3r

Some of the most beautifully-illuminated manuscripts in French tell familiar stories from the Bible and the classical past, allowing for imaginative depictions of well-known episodes and characters like Alexander the Great. The first image in this post is of a Bible Historiale, an illustrated collection of Bible stories and commentary. The Roman d’Alexandre is another example.

 

The coronation of Alexander and the wedding banquet of King Philip and Cleopatra, from the Roman d’Alexandre, Low Countries, 1st quarter of the 14th century. Harley MS 4979, f. 17v

Anglo-Norman is the version of French that evolved in England after the Norman Conquest, and in the 14th century it was still being used alongside Middle English and Latin. This volume is a compilation in all three languages, believed to have been produced in the Hereford area around 1320–1340, with an assortment of religious, mathematical, legal and astrological texts. This book is copied in an everyday cursive script with only minor decoration, but it is of great importance for the unique texts it contains, including the only known manuscript copy of the Romance of Fulk le Fitz-Warin, recipes in Anglo-Norman French and macaronic verses (with alternating lines in French, Latin and English).

Macaronic satirical verses from a prose and verse miscellany, England, Central (Hereford), 1st half of the 14th century, Royal MS 12 C XII, f. 7r

Manuscripts in Middle English

Manuscripts containing key Middle English texts have also been included in this project: we have digitised 8 of these, including works by Chaucer, Lydgate and Gower.

Detail of a miniature of the discovery of Edmund's head with a scroll with gold inscription 'heer heer herr', with a wolf guarding it, and a man blowing a horn, from John Lydgate's Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund, between 1461 and c. 1475, England, S. E. (Bury St Edmunds?), Yates Thompson MS 47, f. 54r

A Carthusian anthology of theological works in English includes works on contemplation by Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle, 'The myrroure of symple saules' a Middle English translation of a French text by Marguerite Porète, from the ‘Amherst Manuscript’, England, mid-15th century, Add MS 37790, f. 137r

Among the manuscripts digitised is a copy of the Canterbury Tales, with the spurious ‘Tale of Gamelyn’, not written by Chaucer, but of particular interest for the themes it shares with the contemporary Ballad of Robin Hood.

Prologue and opening lines of the Squire’s Tale from the Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, England; 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 15th century, Harley MS 1758, f. 68r

 

Manuscripts in other European vernacular languages featuring in the project include:

Middle Dutch

This version of the Medea legend in Middle Dutch has some extremely graphic images of Medea’s horrific actions and is followed by a work on the game of chess.

Jason, Creusa and her father, the King of Corinth are seated at the wedding table; Medea enters with four dragons and tears her son to pieces in front of them, from Medea and Dat Scaecspel (Chess Book) in Dutch, Add MS 10290, f. 138r 

Jacob van Maerlant’s Middle Dutch work, Der naturen bloeme (The Flower of Nature) is a natural encyclopaedia and bestiary in verse, written around 1270 at the request of the nobleman Nicolaas van Cats to contain all available knowledge about the natural world. Almost every page is illustrated, with some creatures more easily identifiable than others. This manuscript seems to have been a lending copy, and it is also notable for its book curse.

A page from Der Naturen Bloeme  featuring a steer, a mole and other creatures, c 1300–c 1325, Netherlands, Add MS 11390, f. 25v

 

Occitan (Langue d’Oc) and Catalan

The Breviari d’Amor, composed by Matfre Ermengaud in 1288–1292 in Occitan (or Langue d’Oc, the dialect of Southern France), is a poem containing a compendium of contemporary knowledge under the umbrella of faith, and seen as a manifestation of God’s love. Ermengaud describes himself as a senher en leys e d’amor sers, in other words a master or doctor of law but also a poet who serves the ideal of love.

The Tree of Love or 'Arbre d'Amor', with the figure of 'Amors Generals' at the centre, from the Breviari d’Amor in Occitan, early 14th century, France, S. (Toulouse?), Royal MS 19 C I, f. 11v

The work was adapted into Catalan prose. This magnificent copy comes from the collection of illuminated manuscripts formerly belonging to Henry Yates Thompson.  

The Offices of the Angels from the Breviari d’Amor in Catalan prose, Spain, E. (Catalonia, Gerona?); last quarter of the 14th century, Yates Thompson MS 31, f. 39v

Two other Yates Thompson manuscripts, MS 47 (see above) and MS 21, a copy of the Roman de la Rose have also now been digitised. For information on this collection, see the virtual exhibition in our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.   

Mantuan dialect of Italian

The extremely influential scientific work, De proprietatibus rerum, was compiled in the 1240s by a Franciscan, Bartholomeus Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman), for the instruction of his fellow Franciscans. This copy was translated from Latin into Mantuan for Guido dei Bonacolsi (d. 1309).

Map of the world, supported by Christ, with the Continents depicted as different buildings, from De proprietatibus rerum, Italy, N. (Manua), c 1300–1309, Add MS 8785, f. 315r

A home-grown alphabetical encyclopaedia in Latin

Encyclopaedias have been a theme running through this project: to the De nature and the Breviari above, we can add the Omne Bonum, a huge alphabetical reference work compiled in the 14th century by the Englishman James le Palmer, who was clerk of the Exchequer under Edward III. Most of the entries are illustrated.

‘Ebrietas’ (Drunkenness), from the Omne Bonum, England, S. E. (London), c. 1360–c. 1375,  Royal MS 6 E VII/1, f. 1r

For further details, see our recent blogpost that accompanied the digitisation of these manuscripts. 

lluminated Apocalypse Manuscripts

And last but not least, the Apocalypse (the biblical book of Revelation with a commentary) was among the most popular works of the medieval period, and numerous illustrated copies were produced in England. 11 manuscripts in Latin, French or Middle English, and some in dual-language versions, have been digitised in this project, so that all 20 illuminated copies of the Apocalypse in our collections are now online. See our recent blogpost ‘The End of the World as we know it’ for the complete list.

This copy is in three languages, with the main text in Latin, a verse translation and prose commentary in Anglo-Norman French and an added paraphrase in Middle English prose.

The dragon attacks the mother and child, from the Apocalypse in three languages, England, 2nd half of the 13th century, Add MS 18633, f. 22v

Chantry Westwell

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Here at the British Library we are dedicated to coming up with silly entertaining highly educational competitions to entertain our readers, and today is no different! The rules are simple: can you guess the song from the images below?

The following manuscript illuminations make up the lyrics to a classic song, and we want you to get on your thinking caps (and dancing shoes) to guess the artist and song title. Answers via Twitter please or through the comments page below this post. We’ll retweet and publish correct (or the most amusing) answers.

Update: thank you to everyone who took part: the answers are below (no peaking).

 

Image 1, from John Lydgate’s Troy Book and Siege of Thebes, 1457–c. 1530, Royal MS 18 D II, f. 30v

 

Image 2, from the Coldingham Breviary, c. 1270-1280, Harley MS 4664, f. 125v

 

Image 3, from the Chroniques of Jean Froissart (the ‘Harley Froissart’), c. 1470–1472, Harley MS 4380, f. 1r

 

Image 4, from a devotional miscellany, first half of the 14th century, Egerton MS 745, f. 68v

 

Did you have fun figuring out the answer to our guess-the-song competition? Find the solution below, well done everyone for taking part and stay tuned to our Blog for more quizzes!

Image 1 Lyric: That big wheel keep on turning

Image 2 Lyric: Proud Mary

Image 3 Lyric: Keep on burning

Image 4 Lyric: Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river

Song and Artist: Proud Mary, by Creedence Clearwater Revival / Ike & Tina Turner

 

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Have you ever wondered how medieval manuscripts get their modern names? Did you know, for instance, that the so-called 'Bosworth Psalter' (British Library Add MS 37517) isn't named after the Battle of Bosworth Field (give yourself an extra bonus point if you knew that took place on 22 August 1485) but is instead so known because it may once have been kept in the library at Bosworth Hall in Leicestershire?

The beautiful Bosworth Psalter has recently been digitised as part of The Polonsky England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200. We're delighted that you can now explore it in full on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts site, where you can drool over its sublime decoration and sumptuous script. You can also learn more about Psalters and Psalter commentaries in the  'Glossed Psalters' article on the Polonsky Medieval England and France website.

The Beatus-initial (Beatus vir), which begins the book of Psalms. Add MS 37517, f. 4r. Possibly from Canterbury, 4th quarter of the 10th century.

The Bosworth Psalter is written in Latin, in one of the translations traditionally ascribed to St Jerome (d. 420). Over a period of nearly twenty-five years, St Jerome worked on translations of biblical texts from Greek and Hebrew into the Latin vernacular; he completed three versions or revisions of the Psalms. The first was made from the Greek Septuagint version, and is now commonly known as the Roman or Romanum Psalter because it was adopted by the church in Rome. One reason the Bosworth Psalter is so special is the purity of its text of St Jerome’s Roman version of the Psalms.

Beginning of Psalm 51 (52), Quid gloriaris. Add MS 37517, f. 33r.

The Psalter’s large initials together with multi-coloured script divide the text in three parts at Psalms 1, 51 and 101, in a division of the so-called ‘three fifties’ that is found in English, but not most Continental manuscripts. The scribe used initials with interlace decoration, some zoomorphic elements and capital letters of varying size and colour to enhance the importance of these pages. At the beginning of Psalm 101, the first letter ‘D’'(omine) (Lord) is enhanced by delicate foliate forms.

The beginning of Psalm 101 (102), Domine exaudi. Add MS 37517, f. 64v.

In addition to this threefold division, the other major divisions of a Psalter are also marked by large decorated initials, as in this initial for the beginning of Psalm 109, which in Benedictine monasteries is the Psalm sung at Vespers on Sundays.

The Bosworth Psalter was designed for use of a community following the Rule of St Benedict. In fact, it's the oldest English manuscript that includes all of the important texts of the Benedictine Office (Psalter, canticles, hymns and monastic canticles). 

Beginning of Psalm 109 (110), Dixit Dominus. Add MS 37517, f. 74r.

It is the earliest surviving manuscript of the 'New Hymnal' from England. This hymnal was developed on the Continent in the 9th century, and expanded the number of hymns used in monastic services. The greater diversification of hymns meant that monks were able to avoid daily repetition of same hymns. The practice of singing a much expanded variety of hymns spread to England with the English Benedictine Reform movement in the second half of the 10th century. Because of this inclusion, it is generally thought that the Bosworth Psalter was made in and for one of the monastic houses in Canterbury during the archiepiscopate of St Dunstan (r. 959–988), a prominent proponent of monastic reform in Anglo-Saxon England.

Beginning of the Hymnal. Add MS 37517, f. 105r.

The manuscript acquired different layers of additions: some pages are covered with Latin commentaries spreading from margin to margin.

Some pages are filled with commentaries in Latin. Add MS 37517, f. 52v

Another remarkable feature is that parts of the Psalter and some of the canticles were glossed with Old English words, written above the Latin text, in the early 11th century.

Beginning of Psalm 86 (85) Inclina domine aurem tuam ad me, with interlinear Old English gloss: onhyld drihten eare þin to me. Add MS 37517, f. 54v

We're sure you'd agree that the Bosworth Psalter is another superb addition to our Digitised Manuscripts collection. The magnificent artistry in the initials, and the importance of its text and annotations, make this a very special manuscript. Do go and explore this unique historical book online!

Tuija Ainonen

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Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project

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It’s now August (!), which means we’re back with the fun figures of Additional MS 36684 to celebrate the start of the 8th month. If you’d like to know more about the manuscript as a whole, check out January’s post, and for more on the traditional form and function of medieval calendars, please see our calendar post from 2011.

 

Calendar pages for August, from a Book of Hours, St Omer or Thérouanne, c. 1320, Add MS 36684, ff. 8v–9r

August begins with an intriguing pair of hybrid figures stationed at the top of the page: a two-legged creature with a long, birdlike bill perches on the back of a woman with an extended neck/torso atop green legs, ending in a long tail. The birdlike creature pecks the woman’s neat hairnet; she does not look amused.

Hybrid creatures, Add MS 36684, f. 8v

August’s labour of the month appears below the feast days for the first half of the month, and depicts the traditional summer harvesting of wheat. Dressed in a short tunic and a rather elaborate orange-trimmed cap, the peasant within the niche clutches a curved sickle, bending over as he cuts the long grain. He will most likely tie up in the wheat in bundles, known as sheaths, and use them to feed his animals in the winter.

Labour of the month for August, Add MS 36684, f. 8v

Interestingly, the traditional zodiac symbol for August, Virgo, usually represented as a single woman, is here replaced with the unmistakable sign for Libra, holding scales:

Libra, Add MS 36684, f. 9r

Libra is normally depicted in September calendars, as the zodiac period ranges from late September–late October, while Virgo goes from late August–late September. It is unclear why the artist of Additional MS 36684 skipped poor Virgo and went ahead to Libra – was it a simple mistake, or something done deliberately? In any case, our artist gets himself into trouble come December, when he has run out of zodiac signs, and leaves us with one of his clever hybrid creatures instead, as we will see in a few months.

Let us know what you think – did our artist make a mistake or did he skip Virgo on purpose? You can have a look for yourself at all of Additional MS 36684, fully digitised on our Digitised Manuscripts website. Until next time – sorry, Virgos!

Taylor McCall
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