It looks to me more like he tried to write a single story a but fumbled it into some inverted p-shape, then went again with a more appropriate loop.

I feel quite sure that the first word is meiller, not maller, look at the next word, which has an obvious a, aller. It is the same on 116v, the word there is geis, not gas

Shouldn't it be at least meillier or meilher then?

The 17r/116v scribe/author does not write 'correct' usage, the best example is the mi[l]ch on 116v, his most remarkable feature is that he leaves out letters. And to make emendations is not a good idea in most cases.

I'm sorry, Helmut, I don't know where you are seeing the "i".

There are definitely two ells there, with loops of slightly different shapes, but on 116v (which I'm almost certain is the same writer), the loops on the ell are also several different shapes, so the writer seems to draw the loop differently each time, just as the figure-8 character is drawn differently every time.

One thing the writer DOES do consistently is to start the "i" shape with a long serif. All of them have it, including the one in "...llier".


Are you saying the "e" and "i" are joined? I have never seen that. I have seen many many ligatures, they definitely join a LOT of letters, but I have never seen "e" and "i" squished together.

I really do think it's a double-story "a". It's the right shape and the right height (they are always taller than the other lower-case letters) and the right distance from the letters before and after even if the stroke order is funny. If it were "e" and "i", why would they be taller than the other "e" and "i"s?

(01-06-2019, 09:24 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I really do think it's a double-story "a". It's the right shape

Does it happen in other MS that the top line loops down and back to touch the vertical line? That would certainly make it the right shape. Otherwise I'd say it's open to interpretation.

(though I also have a hard time seeing "ei" there, unless it's some ligature I don't know).

I haven't keyed my data for double-story "a" yet so it's not easy for me to pull out the ones that are most similar to the VMS text (it would take hours to find them), but I can show a page of samples that illustrate how widely this particular letter varies.

These are from early medieval texts (where the double-story letter was common) and from later medieval texts similar to the VMS 116v script that still used this form of "a" (some used both single- and double-story interchangeably):



I have a lot more, but this chart is probably enough to give the gist of how varied they can be.

Oh wow. That's pretty good evidence. The unusual thing is not really the looping back but rather the piercing of the bottom loop, which can be more easily accepted as the result of mixing two a-forms.

I agree that the loop piercing the bottom is distinctive.

One thing I have found quite a number of times is the top of the upper loop kind of fading out in the middle (almost like it's missing). It must have something to do with how some scribes handle their pens. Also, the bottom of the loop is often left open.


But the pierced bottom loop is not something I specifically recall having seen.

Just a correction, there is a typo in post 432, I meant meillier.


No reason to be sorry JKP, nevertheless I think you are wrong. You ignore one of the basic rules in  reading a difficult to read ms., that is to build up an alphabet out of the ms. not caring what you have seen elsewhere and i think you have an e and a (slighty touching) i in meillier and another e, in aller you have an obvious a in the beginnng, which in this case makes all the difference and another e. The e  is slightly open, but is an e nevertheless