ARTIFACTS IN THE TEXT.

[farmerjohn]

It could just be a shorter variant of the normal writing, with unknown purpose. 

Well, one interesting purpose may be not to write two gallows in a row. From this point of view these funny ligatures may be shorthands for gallow+gallow.

One can also try more general approach: ligature is shorthand of what we usually do not see in the manuscript. Two gallows in a row and comma/point are the most famous examples. But there are more - combination gallow+r is even rarer(!) than gallow+gallow, gallow+s is also very rare...

The author obviously avoids writing two tall letters in a row, but the underlying language probably allows undesirable combinations, so maybe that's why need for composed symbols arises.