Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

I suggest you read the threads on this. This specific phrase is closer to German (or old Yiddish) than any other language.

so is German (it's similar to "so" in English)
nim is German (this was a common way to spell it in certain areas in the Middle Ages, now it is spelled nimm and means to take)
gaf means gave in lowland Medieval German, gas can have a number of interpretations, one being "goose"
mich is "me/to me" in German. Some have also suggested it might be short for "milch" for "milk" in German and that is reasonable as consonants were sometimes dropped from words if the word was pronounced that way.

In other words, depending on how gas/gaf is interpreted (as "f" or as "s") it might mean he gave it to me to take (in corrupted grammar typical of a foreign speaker), or so take goose milk (which might be a remedy connected with an incantation).

From the point of view of a paleographer, your comments here are no doubt just fine. But as a cryptographer suspecting evasive writing on page 116v, I would be looking for meanings of greater significance or at least a helpful hint or two for the decoding. Can any benefit be derived from insinuating that this marginalia could have been the work of a child who wanted a glass of goose milk?



On the assumption that "mich" is a cryptic truncation of the word "michel", I have to conclude that your gaf or gas is in reality gal this being a cryptic truncation of the word "gallo". Note that it truncates at the middle of the l which lacks the final downward stroke, similarly to how the r of mur was truncated, lacking the final upward stroke.

As previously indicated, the author of the VMS marginalia also wrote parts of a botanical encyclopedia including the following words:

"Nostradami Salonensis Gallo-prouincie"

To reinforce "gal" as a truncation of "gallo", the author repeats the unusual "u" of ubren (page 116v) on the top of page 17r, just to the right of where he gives special emphasis to the concept of a double l :



Note that the top of the first l in a double l situation is more horizontal than the second l similar to what we see for the l in gal.

Meanwhile, the big O that follows "mich" can stand for both Orientalem (location of the wall) and Oracula (Michel's theme).

Thus, the "gallo" serves a double function: it identifies "mur" as a French word and it identifies "mich" as a Frenchman.

In summation, the final words of the VMS quite appropriately point us to the publication of the recipes.