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Harley MS 2380

Record Id:

040-002048211

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002048211

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x000378

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 2380

Title:

Collection of medical recipes and charms, with four religious songs in Middle English

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r-5v: Table of contents, beginning: 'Pro capite Dolor capitis [later addition] / For wert and vanite in þe hed', followed by additional entries by a 17th-century hand.

ff. 6r-61v, 63v-64v. Collection of over 250 medical recipes in Middle English, inconsistently numbered (ff. 6-50) up to no. '151' in the margin (ff. 43r-43v probably is a later insertion), beginning with the title [later marginal addition] 'Capitis dolor', and imperfectly beginning mid-sentence of a recipe: 'and anoint þy head þerewit a boun. Take averoyne and bray with hony'; listed in eVK2, nos. 5093.00, 2299.00, 4522.00, 5816.00, 5094.00, 5697.00.

ff. 61v-63v, 65r-69v. Collection of medical recipes and charms in Middle English and Latin, with the rubric 'To sla þe canker', beginning: 'Herba roberti cum sale trita et sovraposita curat cancrum pulvis'; with a charm for staunching blood on f. 65r, beginning: ‘In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti longinus miles [...] lancia latus christi vulneravit in dextero'; charms against spots in the eye and swelling on ff. 67r-67v: ‘Ad maculam oculorum’, ‘Carmen contra maculam in oculo’ and ‘Carmen contra ffeloun’; and a charm against farcy on f. 69v.

ff. 69v-70v. Four medical recipes in Middle English, beginning: 'Take thre lefis of sauge and thre croppis of rue and / wasch tham in clene watir'. Listed in eVK2, no. 6341.00.

ff. 70v-79v. Religious songs in Middle English, with the added title: 'an old songe'; beginning: ‘þis endres nyght’. The collection includes a cradle song of the Virgin Mary (ff. 70v-71r); The Complaint of God (ff. 71v-72v); 'Parce mihi domine', allegory of the Bird with the Four Feathers (ff. 72v-74r); and the Abbot and the Child, a miracle of the Virgin Mary (ff. 74v-78v); the songs are listed in Brown, A Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse (1916-1920), I, p. 332; II, pp. 316 [no. 2115], 345 [no. 2310], 357 [no. 2396]; NIMEV, nos. 3309/1, 3597/1, 3612/3, 3714/1; DIMEV, nos 5214-1, 5684-1, 5707-4, 5909-1.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002048211", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2380: Collection of medical recipes and charms, with four religious songs in Middle English" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002048211

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 2380 : Collection of medical recipes and charms, with four religious songs in Middle English

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[2381]/040-002048211

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1400

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: paper; parchment (ff. 16-17, 29-30, 51).

Dimensions: paper leaves of 210 x 140 mm, but the fore-edge has been restored with paper altering the present width of the leaves to 165mm; parchment leaves of 205 x 130 mm, mounted on guards (text space: 155-165 x 95-110 mm; ruled in metal point and ink, single vertical bounding lines, for double [ff. 1r-5r] and single columns of 19-37 lines [49 lines on f. 43r, which is probably a later insertion], text below top line).

Foliation: ff. 79 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); ff. 73-79 fragmentary, especially ff. 78-79; 1 unfoliated paper stub after ff. 66, 67, and 68; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. [ii]recto (bibliographical notes); old pagination in pen '1-140' (ff. 6-65); modern foliation in pencil '1-79' (followed here).

Collation: the present gathering, which probably alters the original arrangement, is as follows: i6-1, ii22, iii4, iv46, v2.

Script: written in English Secretary script (littera cursiva currens) by different hands.

Binding: British Museum in-house; brown half leather binding with the Harleian arms gold stamped on the outside covers; marbled endpapers.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

Nathaniel Noel (fl. 1681, d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie: sold to Harley on 1716 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 253).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘Bought by my Lord of Mr Noel A.D. 1716’ (f. 1r). The Harley shelfmarks '100.C.10 / 2380' in dark brown ink and 'I/III D' in pencil inscribed on f. [iii]recto.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 675.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 253.

Linda Ehrsam Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference, CD-ROM, 2nd edn (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006) [= eVK2], nos. 5093.00, 2299.00, 4522.00, 5816.00, 5094.00, 5697.00, 6341.00 2006.

Carleton Brown, A Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse (Oxford: Bibliographical Society, 1916-1920) [=NIMEV], I, p. 332; II, pp. 316 [no. 2115], 345 [no. 2310], 357 [no. 2396].

Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: The British Library, 2005) [= NIMEV], nos. 3309/1, 3597/1, 3612/3, 3714/1.

'London, British Library Harley 2380', in The Digital Index of Middle English Verse [=DIMEV] [accessed 1 June 2022].

The cataloguing of this manuscript was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Noel, Nathaniel, bookseller, fl 1681, d c 1753

Places:

England