Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/15



manuscript is a small quarto on vellum in the Cotton Collection in the British Museum—MS. Nero A. x. It contains three other poems, known as Pearl, Purity (or Cleanness), and Patience. They are all written in the small sharp hand which has been dated about. The ink has faded considerably, and some lines were blotted against the opposite page when the manuscript was written, so that it is not easy to read. The first transcribers deserve great credit for their care and accuracy, as evidenced in Madden's Syr Gawayne and Morris's Early English Alliterative Poems.

It was discovered by Mr. J. P. Gilson of the British Museum that this manuscript appears in a catalogue of the library of Henry Savile of Banke, Yorkshire, whence no doubt Sir Robert Cotton obtained it. It is now bound with two Latin tracts which are distinct manuscripts; when in Savile's possession it does not seem to have been bound with any other manuscript, and the present binding was probably executed for Sir Robert Cotton.

The four poems are crudely illustrated in colour, but the illustrations are somewhat rubbed and indistinct. There are four illustrations to Pearl, two to