Friday 30 August 2013

BL Yates Thompson MS 13 – Graphical stories 1

Recently I've been trawling through various manuscripts looking for marginalia to use in a possible future project (more on that another time, if it gets off the ground!). This evening / early morning I've been flicking through the BL digitisation of the Yates 13 mss, which has a long series of bas-de-page scenes. Unlike some mss these neither link to the nearby text nor are (semi) random images that the illustrator liked. All these seem to be depictions of events in a story-like format. I don’t know enough about this specific manuscript to know whether there is a known reason for why these illustrations are shown, but I loved them so I thought I’d share with the BL’s descriptions of the scenes alongside. The one that particularly caught my eye was a scene of hunting ladies, particularly because they show archery and hawking. There are three women shown, I think, which the last image seems to back up. I have identified them to myself as Blue Lady, Red Lady, and Purple Lady, because I'm creative like that! I may do the preceding story later as it’s a retelling of a short story of the 'elderly knight Enyas' (BL description) rescuing a damoysele from a Wildman, some of which have captions in Middle French. I've tried to lay the images out so you can easily see which were facing one another. For context, the text at this point is the part of the Hours of the Virgin. The manuscript itself is dated to the 2nd quarter of the 14th Century, and is in the use of Sarum.


Hunting scene story



Cy comence jeu de dames...
(Here begins the game of the ladies...)
f. 68r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady with a bow and arrow, and a hare, with a caption beneath reading, 'Cy comence jeu de dames'.
f. 68v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady shooting an arrow at a rabbit. f. 69r: Bas-de-page scene of a castle, with two ladies in the battlements, and another lady sending her hound after a rabbit, which scampers up a hill at the right.
f. 69v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hunting, beating a bush for rabbits. f. 70r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady setting a net over a rabbit warren to catch rabbits.
f. 70v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady sending a hound into a rabbit warren in order to flush out rabbits. f. 71r: [...] bas-de-page scene of a lady feeding the entrails of a slaughtered rabbit to her hound.
f. 71v: Bas-de-page scene with a lady tying two or three rabbits she has caught. f. 72r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady walking towards a tower, carrying rabbits on a stick in one hand, and leading two hounds from a leash in the other.
f. 72v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking by a golden fountain, beating a gong to frighten two ducks. f. 73r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking by a stream, releasing her hawk to fly at a duck.
f. 73v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking observing her hawk bringing down a duck. f. 74r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking, bringing in her hawk with a feathered lure, while a rabbit flees to the left.
f. 74v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking, carrying a dead duck in one hand and her hawk in the other. f. 75r: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking, perching her hawk.
f. 75v: Bas-de-page scene of a lady hawking, bringing her hawk to another lady. f. 76r: Bas-de-page scene of a huntsman kneeling before the entrance to a castle to inform the nobles within that game has been sighted.
f. 76v: Bas-de-page scene of two ladies riding out of a castle gate, followed by another horse. f. 77r: Bas-de-page scene of two hunting ladies dismounted ; one holds her horse whilst the other carries a boar spear.
f. 77v: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady, piercing a boar in the throat with her spear. f. 78r: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady blowing the mort, carrying a boar’s head on her spear.
f. 78v: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady whipping her horse, urging it onwards. f. 79r: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady mounted, stringing her bow as she rides.
f. 79v: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady shooting an arrow from horseback. f. 80r: Bas-de-page scene of a stag rearing on its hind legs, having been just shot through the throat by a hunting lady.
f. 80v: Bas-de-page scene of a kneeling lady in the middle of a hunt, with two hounds on a leash and a bow in her hand. f. 81r: Bas-de-page scene of a grazing stag (the prey of a hunting lady).
f. 81v: Bas-de-page scene of a kneeling lady in the middle of a hunt, having just shot an arrow towards her quarry. f. 82r: Bas-de-page scene of a fleeing stag (the prey of a hunting lady).
f. 82v: Bas-de-page scene of a hunting lady holding back one of her hounds. f. 83r: Bas-de-page scene of a hound leaping on a downed stag (during a lady’s hunt).
(End)
f. 83v: Bas-de-page scene of three ladies cutting up a stag they have hunted, whilst another lady blows the mort.


I admit to some small disagreements queries on these interpretations:
  1. f. 75v - the bird looks more like a dead duck than a hawk. The beak is more hawklike than the other ducks shown, so I can accept this one with a bit of squinting
  2. The ladies at the beginning have their hair covered, but the later ones don't. Why? A simplistic interpretation could be that it was meant to show them loking 'immoral' or even more 'manly'? Their dress seems definitely female so not at all sure what, if any, significance their uncovered heads may have.
  3. What's with heads on poles? Both the boar and the deer heads are held aloft - just standard trophy taking?

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