248 Proceedings of the Roi/al Irish Academy. 



the rules ; on the rest not even so much as that had been done. The scribe 

 had obviously some difficulty in procuring the material for his \York. The 

 ruled pages were intended each to receive 25 lines of writing. It seems that 

 with only three exceptions' that was the number of lines actually written 

 on every page, ruled or unruled. 



The manuscript is written throughout, as I believe, by one hand. The 

 script is good, and on the whole regular, though varying somewhat in size. 

 The style of the writing is not such as to lend itself to rapid work, most of 

 the letters being formed by several strokes, after each of which the pen must 

 have been raised. This is specially manifest in one of the two forms of the 

 letter s used by the scribe, in which there are three distinct strokes, all drawn 

 from left to right, and not in contact with each other. 



Nevertheless some signs of haste, if not of speed, appear. Errors are by 

 no means rare, and most of them are due to carelessness. I have counted 

 nearly 250 — an average of about one in ten lines : and my list has no claim 

 to be regarded as complete.- Among these a good many cases occur in 

 which one or more letters of a word have been omitted.' Only a com- 

 paratively small number of these slips has been corrected.* This fact 

 suggests that the scribe did not systematically compare his manuscript with 

 the exemplar after the work of copying was completed. But there are not a 

 few errors whicli have been corrected either by the original scribe or by 

 some subsequent reader of the manuscript,* and which, in view of this 

 suggestion, deserve a careful examination. Let us consider first the large 

 class in which the correction is effected by the erasure (or in one case expunc- 

 tion) of one or more letters. I have noticed over seventy corrections 

 made in this way.' In some cases it is obvious that the scribe had written a 



1 Ff. 18% 28', 50'. 



* It is probable that many readings which have the appearance of genuine variants 

 should be referred to this class — c.r/., twice deus is written for dominus, and eight times 

 dominus for dexis. These words are easily confused when contracted. 



3 See xxxi. 5, 6 ; x.\xiv. 3, 25 ; xxxvi. 37 ; xxxvii. 21 ; xxxviii. 12 ; xl. 10 (his) ; xli. 

 3 ; xliv. 10 ; xlv. 3 ; xlviii. 7, 16, 19 ; xlix. 21 ; liv. 24 ; Ivii. 1 ; lix. 2 ; Ix. 5 ; Ixii. 6 ; 

 Ixvii. 26 ; Ixviii. 8, 14, 29 ; Ixix. 3 ; Isx. 1, 19 ; Ixxiii. 23 ; Ixxiv. 3 ; Ixxvi. 18, 21 ; Ixxvii. 

 31, 38, 39, 54 ; Ixxix. 2, 3, U ; Ixxx. 14, 16 ; I xx xi. 7 ; Ixxxvi. 4 ; Ixxxviii. 8 ; xci. 13 ; 

 xcvii. 17 ; civ. 4, 37. 



* xxxviii. 12 ; xl. 10 ; xlv. 3 ; xlviii. 7 (partial correction) ; xlix. 21 ; Ivii. 1 ; Lxxvii. 

 26 ; Ixxx. 16 (corr. by later hand) ; cv. 9. 



° I have counted about 120. 



5 See XXX. 20, 23 ; xxxii. 4 ; xxxiii. 9, 21 ; xxxiv. 21 ; xxxv. 5 ; xxxvi. 26, 38 ; xxxvii. 

 12 ; xxxviii. 12 ; xli. 4 ; xliv. 11 ; xlviii. 19 ; xlix. 21 ; 1. 18 ; Iv. 6 ; Ivi. 6, 7 ; Iviii. 3, 

 16 ; Ix. 3 ; Ixiii. 6 ; Ixiv. 8, 9 ; Ixv. 5 ; Ixvii. 7, 9, 23 ; Ixviii. 8, 10, 19, 21, 33 ; Ixx. 9, 20 ; 

 Lxxi. 9 ; Lsxiii. 2 ; bcxv. 12 ; Ixxvii. 2, 3, 8, 14, 17, 32, 55, 59 ; Lxxviii. 11, 13 ; Ixxx. 6 ; 

 Ixxxii. 19 ; Ixxxiii. 6 ; Ixxxvii. 12 {bis), 16 ; Ixxxviii. 11, 36 ; xc. 10 ; xci. 12 ; xcv. 6, 7, 

 10 ; xcvi. 5 ; xcLx. 3 ; c. 5 ; cii. 13, 21 ; ciii. 13, 16 ; civ. 35, 40 ; cv. 6. 



