f17r

[-JKP-]

In the Beinecke library scans, the fourth word (which starts with a curious letter) looks like kou, while the subsequent words fade right away (despite the apparent emendation). It seems that the whole line was therefore originally a complete Occitan sentence starting with "meilhor aller lutz (kou)..." meaning mystifyingly something like "to run light better"...

It doesn't say lutz. It is lucz with a very common and conventional macron over the "cz" which means it's an abbreviation. Also, that "z" is probably not really a "z". It's an abbreviation symbol for the ending (usually "em", but it could mean other things). Most scribes wrote the "m" abbreviation the same way they wrote "z" but it was usually obvious by context which one they meant.

Here's the paleographic history on the "m" abbreviation (that resembles a "z"). Imagine if you had a word like "lucrem" and you want to abbreviate the "em". If you take an "m" shape and rotate it 90 degress clockwise, it looks like a "z", so that's how they wrote it. By rotating it, it was a way of saying "this is an abbreviation, so don't forget to add the "e" if it needs one). Two letters in the space of one.


Over time, the "em" abbreviation (the rotated "m" or "z" shape) became a more general abbreviation for common endings but most of the time, it was used for suffix "em".