| Description Of Item | From the collection of John Drummond. The volume consists of poems in the form of homilies on various religious subjects, written in at least three different hands, and probably at different times, in double column, with approximately 45 lines per column. A note with the volume indicates that, according to a researcher in 1977, folios 16-36 contain the earliest known version of the unexpanded 'Northern Homily Cycle' which were written for the four Sundays in Advent, Christmas, the Sunday after Christmas, Epiphany, the five Sundays after Epiphany and the Purification.
There are fifty pages of text, with five additional pages of fragments which have been mounted and bound into a volume. At the front is a note on the text, particularly lost leaves, by L Toulmin Smith, 6th October 1877 which was presumably when the binding was done. Also with the volume are proof pages 539-540 from 'Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries II' by N R Ker which explains the text.
'English Metrical Homilies from MSS of the 14th century', by John Small, Edinburgh, 1862, and 'Cursor Mundi', edited by Richard Morris for the Early English Text Society, volume 3, London, 1892 contain transcripts of the poems. Both are available in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh's library. |