f17r

[geoffreycaveney]

The first word is clearly written as "mallier" in the same style as the text on 116v. Look at the long approach stroke on the "i" and the angular "L". Same style as 116v.

I really think it is a mistake to change the letters to something else in order to try to turn them into proper sentences/phrases. Maybe they are NOT proper sentences.

JKP, I respect your analysis and judgment of the handwriting in reading the first word as "mallier", but at the same time it must also be noted that if it is at all possible to read the first vowel somehow as a misshapen "u" or "o", then it does become very natural to read the entire word as a Latin/Romance language word form meaning "woman", which fits the illustration quite well, as Koen pointed out in an earlier comment in this thread. Also, "mallier" does not look like an abbreviated word, it looks like a complete word, so how solid an interpretation does anyone have for "mallier" as opposed to "mullier"/"mollier"? Maybe the writer simply made a spelling mistake with that one letter?

Stepping back to an earlier line of discussion in this thread, Old Occitan is of particular interest to me now, since my own preferred candidate as the author of (or employer of the scribes who wrote) the MS was stationed in Bordeaux (in Aquitaine) in 1401-1403 and was also responsible for territory in Gascony in and around Bayonne. (This cannot have been the date of composition of the MS, but it may have been the period when the principal brought the future scribes of the MS into his retinue.)

Geoffrey