PIRAMUS ET TISBÉ

Transcription of MS A
MS A (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 837, folios 95v-99v)
Vellum, late 13 th century, modern binding. Two columns per page, fifty lines per
column. In its present state, contains 247 short texts, including fabliaux, moral and
religious texts, lais, songs, plays, the Chastelaine de Vergi, Piramus et Tisbé, and
Narcisus. A gathering is missing after fol. 137 and after fol. 149; a single folio is
missing after fols 99, 165, 173 and 181. The text of Piramus is incomplete: a note in a
later hand at the bottom of fol. 99 reads: ‘Manque icy un feuillet; ainsi il ne faut point y
chercher la fin du fabel de Pyrame et de Tysbe, ni le commencement du fabel intitulé
“Le lunaire que Salemons fist”’. A large decorated initial E occupies the left-hand half
of the first eight lines of Piramus; smaller red initials are found in the body of the text.
The text is preceded by the rubric ‘De piramus et de tisbe’.
Transcription Notes
Large initials are indicated by underlined characters. The scribe makes moderate use of
standard abbreviations: x consistently represents us and is transcribed accordingly; <
multum is always abbreviated and is expanded to mout (vocalisation of l is consistently
represented as u: maus, autre, ostaus, aus, escout etc.); ā and ē before bl and br have
been transcribed am and em on the basis of the full forms emblez and remembree. The
standard abbreviation for par also represents per in pertuis and apertement. The full
form of the second person pronoun is uous, so u 9 has been expanded accordingly. In the
absence of any full forms, 9 has been expanded to either con or com, in line with
modern French orthographical practice (com, complaint, commence but contre,
contenance, consente, connui, conseil etc.).
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