marked by a (W) sign. The few glosses, either in Latin or in English, scattered in the margins or above the lines, are more generally in black. Both titles and glosses are occasionally framed in red. As to the dates to which those various additions are to be ascribed and to the hands from which they originate I can state nothing precise.
A few minor peculiarities are pointed out in the footnotes.
§ 3.–As pointed out above, a full comparison of the text of ms. O with that given by other mss. lies outside the scope of the present work.[1] It may be of interest, however, to those acquainted with the Medicina as it is printed in Cockayne’s Saxon Leechdoms[2], to have an idea of the chief differences between ms. O and ms. V on the one hand, and mss. B and H on the other.
Unlike the Herbarium, the Medicina is transcribed in ms. in the same order as in the other mss. If we leave out of consideration a few titles and two portions of lines which do not belong to the text[3], it may be said that it differs from ms. V in the following respects.
l0. It is considerably shorter, a number of paragraphs which occur in V not being found in O. Among the more important omissions are the following:
- ↑ My object being not to make critical a text of the Medicina, but to being out the characteristic point of its early ME. form, I abstain from including here the lists of readings from mss. V, B, and H which I have drawn up.
- ↑ Vol. I, p. 326 ff. I refer the reader to the preface of that work for particulars about the Latin source and the English mss. older than O, as also about our knowledge of the remedies, charms, and superstitions used among the ancients. I may add here that in that preface Cockayne expressed the opinion that ms. O, which he had not thought it fit to collate through, might some day be printed in full as a contribution to the history of the English language.
- ↑ cf. note to p. 84.
