The Voynich Ninja

Analysis of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. posted by Edith Sherwood in c. early 2019

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I do not essentially follow the translation by Sherwood. In my opinion, much more conclusive approaches have been discussed here in the "116v thread" of the forum.

Thread moved to Marginalia

What annoys me in the presentation is the presentation of the obvious.

If you have a hint where 99% of it goes, (German text) to deface it for your own purposes.

Sherwood Wrote: Some of the letters represent Roman numerals; for example, the first word of the second line “FIX” represents the number 49 and “M4VIX” represents 1459.

She doesn't explain why "F" means 4. She says that in the Middle Ages "F" meant 40 (no citation for this and it doesn't align with Greek in which mu is 40, so I don't know where she got F = 40, or why she changed 40 into "4" or "400" depending on how you interpret it).

She seems to be selectively deciding how to value a letter, along with subjectively selecting which characters are Roman numerals and which ones are not.

She also dos not explain how she turned michiton/anchiton into "[font=Verdana, sans-serif]Vinci reencounter" or how she got from [font=Verdana, sans-serif]"[font=Verdana, sans-serif]Vinci reencounter"[/font][/font][/font] to "Vinci I reencountered at O Labada".


[font=Verdana, sans-serif][font=Verdana, sans-serif]Da Vinci makes an interesting narrative. But to me, this is not research, it is story-telling.[/font][/font]

Surely a medieval f. in front of a date signifies festi, feast day? Maybe if you were really pig headed you could argue that FIX is the day after the octave of the feast of whoever, ie the first day of the new period, but no Saint is mentioned in the translation.

I had a quick look in theYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. she mentions. Couldn't find F=40 in it, but I enjoyed this translation that made it into the published edition, which may have a bearing upon Koen's "woman with a thing that might be a spindle":

Facitrice delle fuida stórte: a woman that makes or spins crooked spindles, that is, maketh her husband cuckold

Seems a strange entry, but no doubt, an essential one should you find your wife spindling crookedly.

Back to the subject at hand: InYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., F is denoted by 4. IE, In the key of C major, the first scale degree (tonic) is C, the fourth (subdominant) is F.

Possibly Edith came across this and got confused, although this is a solidly 18th century Germanic tradition.

FOUND IT. From this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (with no citation either. There is a general citation to Capelli, but I fail to find anything specific upon F in his chapter on Roman numerals):

Quote:40
F
Presumed abbreviation of English forty.

Hmmm.....

(30-04-2020, 10:22 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

FOUND IT. From this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (with no citation either. There is a general citation to Capelli, but I fail to find anything specific upon F in his chapter on Roman numerals):

Quote:40
F
Presumed abbreviation of English forty.

Hmmm.....

Well that's problematic...

Sherwood says the VMS text is Italian, but she uses a questionable ENGLISH abbreviation for forty (F is also an abbreviation for many other words).


David, thank you for the other information in your post as well. All very interesting.

(30-04-2020, 10:22 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Facitrice delle fuida stórte: a woman that makes or spins crooked spindles, that is, maketh her husband cuckold

Seems a strange entry, but no doubt, an essential one should you find your wife spindling crookedly.

This seems very similar in concept to the Dutch expression een scheve schaats rijden, "to ride a crooked skate". The underlying thought is probably that if the blade of your ice skate has become crooked, you will veer from the straight (moral) path.

(30-04-2020, 07:14 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.posted by Edith Sherwood in c. early 2019

How did you find the date of publication, JKP? I have scanned this site several times and I have seen no indication of its author's desire to cooperate with anyone; no publication date, no comments possible.

It was announced on other websites like Reddit and there were comments responding to the announcement. There was not an exact date, however. It says "1 year ago". I don't participate on Reddit, so I don't know how dates work there.


There are different copyright dates at the bottoms of the various articles on Sherwood's site and the copyright date on this article is 2017 (I just noticed this now), so perhaps the announcement came sometime after the article was posted (I hadn't realized that when I saw the announcement, it was a Google search that took me there).