MARGINAL ANNOTATION IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE MANUSCRIPTS

Looking more closely at the note marking the death of Lot, it is possible to gain a
further understanding, not just of how the Balin notes work in their immediate textual
environment, but how they display an awareness of the Balin’s place in the Morte as a
whole. For most of the notes we have so far examined, the overwhelming preoccupation
is with the individual section or tale. Unusually within the manuscript, though, the
annotator seems in the Balin to have a keen sense of the tale’s place within the larger
drama of the Morte, and to view its importance as, in a large degree, the setting-up of
events to play out later on. 674 Some of this is evident in his choice to forefront the
Dolorous Stroke plotline, a narrative strain that does not really come to its fruition until
the Sankgreal. Indeed, the anticipatory character of this plotline is emphasized in the
notes when the last stage of the narrative is not the Dolorous Stroke itself, but the
“pronosticacion of the Sank Greall,” a note which could be read as foretelling either the
Grail or the Sankgreal. Furthermore, the apparently eccentric “Hyre ys ϸe dethe of kynge
lot” marks perhaps the other major event besides the Stroke that sets up later events to
come, not just thematically, but through direct logical causality. 675 The desire of the
674 In showing this interest, the annotator is once again sympathetic to Malory’s own apparent
aims, as the Balin is one of the richest sections of the Morte in terms of providing overt cross-referencing
within the text. Merlin appears repeatedly throughout the tale, and each time he does, it is to make some
prediction of future events, usually to be fulfilled in the Sankgreal or Tale of the Morte Arthur. Cf. Malory,
Works, 45.13–15 (a fight between Lancelot and Tristram), 45.31-37 (the Dolorous Stroke), 49.38-42 (the
battle between Arthur and Mordred), and 58.24-28 (the coming of Galahad and, in somewhat confused
fashion, the death of Gawain at Lancelot’s hands). This collection of prophecies, substantial in itself,
leaves aside those made by Malory himself in the form of the narratorial voice directly informing the reader
of events to come. See, for example, ibid., 48.40–44: “But kynge Pellynore bare the wyte of the dethe of
kynge Lott, wherefore sir Gawayne revenged the deth of hys fadir the ten yere aftir he was made knyght,
and slew kynge Pellynor hys owne hondis.” The “pronosticacion” marked in the notes is, in fact, of this
latter type.
675 For treatments of the importance of the feud generated by Lot’s death, and the ramifications of
that feud for the finale Tale of the Morte Arthur, see Thomas C. Rumble, “Malory’s Balin and the Question
of Unity in the Morte Darthur,” Speculum 41, no. 1 (January 1966): 79–82; W. M. Richardson, “A Tragedy
within a Tragedy: Malory’s Use of the ‘Tale of Balin’ as a Thematic Analogue,” The Arlington Quarterly 2
(1970): 61–71.
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