The Voynich Ninja

I noticed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a rather unusual layout in that the text does not run on till the right margin, making it look like some kind of poem. Might this be because the parchment in this area was found unsuitable as a writing surface? There does appear to be some damage (edge of skin?) and the reverse You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also shows a slight bend in the text margin at this location, though not nearly as much. The images don't seem to care.

[attachment=2313]

To me it also looks like a poem or song and I've often looked for hints of rhyming tokens.

But I've sometimes wondered if the staggered text on the left page is done that way because additional drawings were to be added in the right margin?

My other thought was, "Is this an unfinished page? Were they going to add more text to pad out the lines so they are more even?"

Thank you, Koen! This is a great subject for further investigation!
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Nick Pelling quoted a 1996 exchange between Landini and Zandbergen about the idea that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is poetry.
In that mail thread, Adams Douglas noted:

Quote:It would be interesting to check the character statistics for those pages
as compared with the "prose" pages to see if there is any significant
differrence. Also, assuming the characters hold the same value at least
within a given page, once could presumably check for rhymes, alliteration
and other poetic devices.

Examining the last two characters of each line (in Takahashi's transcription), I think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might show some evidence of an alternating rhyming pattern (ABA), in particular where the -ly ending is involved.

One can also note that line endings in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are more varied than in other pages.
The attached plot is based on the last two EVA characters in each line of pages at least 20 lines long.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. somehow stands out as having 19% of alternating "rhymes" and the most frequent line ending only appearing 22% of the times. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a slighter higher percentage of alternation (22%) but all occurrences of the pattern are based on -in, which ends 52% of the lines. I guess that a random ordering of lines half of which end with -in can easily result in coincidental occurrences of -in, -X, -in.
Alternation in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. involves three different endings: -in, -ly and -dy: it seems less likely to be coincidental.

Please note that this measure is not particularly reliable: it is based on what I observed in this specific page, so it is designed ad-hoc to highlight that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could indeed be "special". f81r is not much distant from the main cluster that includes most other pages. Moreover, I could have made some mistake, as it often happens.


Anyway, I think that what Adams Douglas proposed 22 years ago could well be worth pursuing...

Hi Marco, this is an interesting approach!

If I understand correctly, the Y axis is the ratio of the number of lines with the most common ending to the total number of lines.

What ratio is the X axis, how exactly do you calculate the "percentage of alternation"?

Do you consider the "ending" as two-glyph in all cases?

(23-08-2018, 01:01 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Marco, this is an interesting approach!

Thank you, Anton!

(23-08-2018, 01:01 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I understand correctly, the Y axis is the ratio of the number of lines with the most common ending to the total number of lines.

Yes, exactly. I consider the last two characters, so that the most common line endings for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are -dy and -ly, both with 7 occurrences.
7/31 (the number of lines)=22.6%

(23-08-2018, 01:01 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What ratio is the X axis, how exactly do you calculate the "percentage of alternation"?

Do you consider the "ending" as two-glyph in all cases?

I count the number of consecutive line triplets with endings -A -B -A (where B is different from A). I confirm I always consider the last two EVA characters. For You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I found these 6 matches (some are consecutive, so that line 10, for instance, takes part in two matches):

1
A <f81r.P.5;H> in-
B <f81r.P.6;H> ol-
A <f81r.P.7;H> in-

2 and 3
A <f81r.P.8;H> ly-
B <f81r.P.9;H> ey-
A <f81r.P.10;H> ly-
B <f81r.P.11;H> dy-
A <f81r.P.12;H> ly-

4 and 5
A <f81r.P.20;H> ly-
B <f81r.P.21;H> ol-
A <f81r.P.22;H> ly-
B <f81r.P.23;H> ey=
A <f81r.P.24;H> ly-

6
A <f81r.P.25;H> dy-
B <f81r.P.26;H> ys-
A <f81r.P.27;H> dy-

The number of matches is divided by the number of lines in the page: 6/31=19.4%

Hi Koen.

I don’t know if it is a poem. However, it seems to me that the layout was intended to be like that, but not a result of damaged page. In my opinion, if it was really a damaged page, the other side (f81v) should have shown the same damage, but it did not.

I think the reason why You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows a slight bend is probably that, the writer (or copier) was simply leaving the margin. As we could see, bent line initials simply follow the left-edge of the page:

[attachment=2634]

The writer did same thing on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , as shown below:

[attachment=2632]

However, the painter seems not to follow such a rule, and drew pictures wherever they wanted. As we could see, the paintings did not follow the left-edge of the pages.

An example where I think there was really a page damage is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which was explained by Emma You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The texts on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were obviously avoiding something.

I tried to print You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on both sides of a same piece of paper, and it seems that the beginning positions of line on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are roughly positions where lines end on f112r. This might imply three things below:

1. The current Voynich Manuscript is a copy of another manuscript.
   
2. The upper-right corner of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was teared away in the original document.
   
3. The writer kept the layout when copying.
   

And, depending on which of original writing or tearing came first, it might also imply other things.

In the case where original writing came first:

1. The last word of the first line of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was fake. It should have been teared away. (This does not sound real for me; the last word is neither unusual nor very common)
   
2. The first five stars on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were fake. They should have been teared away.
   

In the case where tearing came first:

1. The first line of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ended were the tearing really happened. Then the writer realized that margins should be kept since the second line.
   
2. The first five stars on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were real. Spaces (margins) for the first five stars were intentionally left when the original writer wrote.
   

It's often assumed that the drawings came first and the text came after, because the text wraps around the drawings, but maybe there are a few places where the text came first and more drawings were planned but were never added.

As You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., most of the bifolios in this quire are separate entities.

That is, the verso and reverso of the folios often seem to match up as if they were all drawn together. This folio is a very good example, the pipes vanish on one side to reappear in the same position on the back.

(11-01-2019, 06:37 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don’t know if it is a poem. However, it seems to me that the layout was intended to be like that, but not a result of damaged page.

Maybe, but it does not seem certain.  Besides the irregular edge of the panel, there seems to be something wrong with the vellum surface in that blank area.

• There is a large stain in that area where the vellum is significantly more translucent than usual.
  
• There are a few rough creases converging towards that area.
  
• The texts seems to be organized as parags, not verses.
  
• The last glyphs of several lines -- notably 1, 3, 4, 5, 14, 16, 31 -- are blurred and fainter than the general text.
  

The stain is shaped like a mushroom, about 4 cm wide and 5 cm tall, turned 90 degrees CCW, staring from the deepest part of the dent on the east edge of the panel.  Its effect on the transparency of the vellum can be judged by the blue streak from the verso that is visible where it crosses the stain.  The last few glyphs of line 16, which are fainter and blurry, lie inside that stain.

The text seems to be organized into at least four parags, whose head lines are lines 1, 8(?), 16, 24.  These parags, as in all the other pages, are tentatively determined by all or most of the following features:  enlarged puff (p/f gallows) at the start of the head line, other puffs inside the head line, extra-wide interline spacing, and a tail line that starts at the (straight) left rail but ends well before or well after the (irregular) right rail.  This last detail suggests that each parag is a running text, whose line breaks were chosen by the Scribe by the trivial line-breaking algorithm.

So here is my theory for what happened.  The vellum was very bad near the east edge.  Before the hide was cut into sheets, there was an elongated hole in it, spanning the baselines of lines 19 to 24, and above that point the edge of the hide came quite close to the current edge of the vellum.  When the hide was cut, the cut bisected the hole, and above that point it had to deviate westwards to avoid the edge of the hide.  

For some reason, during manufacture or some time after that, the vellum surface on the recto side became smeared with oil, wax, or some other liquid other than water, leaving the stain.  The vellum around that area also shrank, producing the creases.  Probably the shrinkage and the stain are related.  Perhaps the maker or the Scribe tried ironing that spot because of the creases, ruining the vellum in the process.

Anyway, the Scribe then started writing line 1, and when he got to the oly he noticed that the the strokes were coming out badly.  So he broke line 1, wrote line 2, and broke it before the crease, just to be safe.  But when he wrote line 3 he ran into bad vellum well before the crease.  He kept going that way, breaking line whenever the traces became faint and fuzzy.  After the oly on line 8 he decided to stop before the crease, and tried to honor a right rail that was straight but slanted SE. 

He finished that parag with no problems, but when he started the next parag, on line 16, he risked a longer line, but ran again into the bad surface.  On the next line, 17, he ran into the problem even earlier.  So for the next two lines he stopped 1.3 cm before that point. Then he cautiously returned to a right rail that was mostly straight and almost vertical, but still 4 cm away from the panel's edge.  On the last line, finally, he chose to cross that rail with or oraiiin in order to avoid a widow line.  With that he ran again into the problem area, but there was no going back. 

Quote: if it was really a damaged page, the other side (f81v) should have shown the same damage, but it did not.

But the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does show the same damage in that same area of the folio. In fact, it seems that the spill that cause the stain happened on f81v, and percolated through the vellum to stain f81r.  But this time it seems that the Scribe decided that the damage to the text was tolerable, so he ignored it and honored a straight left rail.

Quote:An example where I think there was really a page damage is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which was explained by Emma You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Yes! But I think that what happened on f81r/f81v is very similar to what happened there.

All the best, --stolfi