88 H. R. Lang, 



complete a description of it as circumstances would permit. It is 

 this account which I give here in what follows : 



The manuscript (29 x 20| 9m.) consists of 191 paper leave.s much 

 corroded by the action of the ink, and many of them with margins 

 mended and partly replaced. It is written in the so-called Ictra re- 

 donda or de juro of the latter half of the loth century, with the 

 exception of folio 117, which is in a different, later hand iletra 

 cortcsand). The first 30 folios are unnuml^ered. Then follow 161 

 numerated leaves, all utilized but one (fol. Ill v".), and including 

 the cancionero proper. This numeration, in Arabic figures of a 

 modern hand, and in red ink, corrects and supplies an older one 

 in Roman figures of the 15th century, partly lost in mending the 

 margins. The new numertition differs by ten folios from the old 

 one, the change beginning with fol. 55 which is corrected in the 

 index with red ink to 65. This difference is partly accounted for 

 by the insertion, immediately after the index, of an anonymous love- 

 song and two prose pieces not mentioned in the index and most 

 probably not belonging to the original form of the cancionero. 

 Here, then, we have an indication that the present compilation is 

 the result of one or more alterations of an older collection. A 

 similar indication lies in the fact that the index covers only the 

 contents of fol. 1—111 r"., not even including Gomez Manrique's 

 poem : Pues este negro morir, which begins in the middle of the 

 second column of fol. Ill r^. As Manrique's composition follows 

 without any break upon Juan de Mena's Canta tu, Cristiana musa, 

 and fol. Ill v**. is blank, one might suppose that the copyist had 

 simply overlooked the fact that a new poem began in the middle 

 of fol. Ill r'*. Considering, however, that Juan de Mena's Labcrinto, 

 occupying as it does over 40 folios, is also omitted in the index, 

 one must conclude that the index was left incomplete. That the 

 two pieces by Guevara and Montoro, and the one attributed to 

 Juan Alvarez Gato, so far unedited and apparently unknown, 1 are 

 later additions, is shown by the different hand in which they are 

 written. 



While it is evident, as has already been said, that our cancionero 

 is the result of one or more alterations made on an older compi- 

 lation, we have no data from which to infer what the original form 

 was nor when it was changed. The two other collections (Biblio- 

 teca Nacional ms. 13042, and Brit. Mus. Egerton 939) which are" 



^ It is neither included nor mentioned in Cotarelo y Mori's Cancionero 

 inedito de Juan Alvarez Gato (Madrid 1901). 



