Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland
© Ronald Black
Adv. MS 84.1.16 OUTER COVER OF Adv. MS 72.1.27.
Further description: Mackinnon, p.57; Mackechnie, p.167.
?14th cent. Vellum. 1 f. + fragments. Folio, 36 × 22 cms. From the ?16th cent. to 1970 this was the outer cover of NLS Adv.MS.72.1.27, a Gaelic medical manuscript. It was folded double, and became mutilated and worn, with extensive textual loss on the outside (verso). It is now pressed flat and repaired in places by lamination. The text, written in Latin in two columns in a current bookhand tending towards rotunda, appears to be a commentary on a legal treatise. Quotations are underlined in red. The following notes were added in some of the spaces on the recto, clearly after the leaf’s adaptation.
(a) “amen / fecain glesa” (scored out).
(b) “Me fein leobhar Ghillanndrias duibh & ni maith an litir so agam”.
(c) “Fechain glesa an pinn pig so amen dico vobis”.
(d) Medical notes beg. Nullus sensus sencitur .i. ni hairigter aon cedfadh.
The hand of (a) – (c) also appears at Adv.MS.72.1.27, f. 5r.b; although it states that Giolla Ainndreis Dubh is possessor of the book, this seems more likely to be the identity of hand 1 of Adv.MS.84.1.18 than of this one. Its chief characteristic is the absence of even a notional base-line, so that the writing jumps up and down. The hand of (d) is cruder still. With the manuscript are the remains of the thongs with which Adv.MS.84.1.16-17 were bound together, some bearing a script which indicates that they were cut from Adv.MS.84.1.17-18.
Bibliography:
Mackechnie, John. Catalogue of Gaelic manuscripts in selected libraries in Great Britain and Ireland. 2 vols (Boston 1973).
Mackinnon, Donald. A descriptive catalogue of Gaelic manuscripts in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, and elsewhere in Scotland (Edinburgh 1912).