Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/40



spelling of the manuscript is reproduced, except for corrections of scribal errors. Emendations are indicated by footnotes, where the original forms of the manuscript are quoted. No emendations have been made on metrical grounds; the details of the original metrical form are too uncertain. Contractions have been expanded without notice. There can be no doubt of the interpretation of any of them except ꝙ, expanded in this text as quoþ, in previous editions as quod; the word is nowhere written in full in the manuscript, but cf. coþe. Words which stand divided in the manuscript such as in noȝe, have been joined without indication of the manuscript division. The long i of the manuscript is printed as j except in ꟾwis and the pronoun ꟾ. Capital letters are used as in modern English, and the editors are responsible also for the punctuation. The only diacritic that has been added is an acute accent to mark an unaccented e when it stands for etymological i or OFr. é, as in meré ’merry’, bewte ’beauty’.

Since the last edition of Sir Gawain was published, Dr. Knott has pointed out the textual value of the ’offset’. When the manuscript was written the leaves were closed together before the ink was dry, with the result that here and there it stuck to the opposite page and left words illegible in their original position. By examining the offsets with a mirror, Dr. Knott recovered some of the illegible letters. These offsets the present editors have examined again, and have confirmed most of Knott’s readings; a few have not been accepted. The whole text has been collated with the manuscript and some new readings obtained.