Page:The Legal Code of Ælfred the Great.djvu/24

12 Only once (oððe æt his swister borenre 42,7) is anything of importance added above the line and then the customary comma-like mark designates the place of insertion. It is worth notice that the first three y's (scyle, borȝ bryce, cynges) are in the old form, with points toward the left, in imitation, no doubt, of the Ælfredian original. Besides the common A.-S. s, the long s is also found throughout the Ms. There are a considerable number of accents.

On palaeographical grounds this Ms. is to be assigned to the second quarter of the tenth century.

This manuscript is in the British Museum catalogued as Cottoniana Otho B XI. The volume is now a collection of 53 badly burned leaves, carefully reset in pages of thick paper and beautifully bound. The Ms. came to the Museum with the Cotton collection after it was partially destroyed in the great fire of 1731 at Ashburnham House. Originally ) the Ms. contained the Chronicle to 1001 copied from the Parker Chronicle, Ælfred's Beda, our Code, and part of the Laws of Æðelstan. The Code is in the same hand with the Chronicle and was therefore probably made at Winchester, possibly at Canterbury. )—No use seems to hare been made by editors of this Ms. of the code. Lieb. ) gives some variants from the first two of the three leaves.

The Ms. was an octavo volume of good parchment. All that now remains of our code, are the charred fragments of three leaves, reset, wrong side first, as f. 49,50 and 52—3 (the last leaf is set in two pieces, whose relation to each other escaped apparently the restorer). Fol. 49 contains the chapter headings to LIII, fol. 50 the Laws XXXVI (40) hundnigontig to XXXIX (43) weorþunge, 52—3 contains CX (Ine 66) to end. The handwriting is exceedingly regular and ornate; in shape it is more elongated than that of E. There are 27 lines on the page. Enough can easily be deciphered to show that