Friday’s library snapshot

This week in the Reading Room we had a reader looking at an Elizabethan poem.  I am not sure of its provenance, the catalogue record just said ‘Elizabethan Manuscript  by Dr Claire Cross [MS 233 NAD 5396]’

Although it is neatly written in English, it is very difficult to read; although the visitor had no difficulty making sense of it!

I just gazed at it ‘oldness’ and beauty and looked at the the transcript that too didn’t make much sense.  Nonetheless, I don’t often have the opportunity to capture some thing so rare and old.

‘Muse at som maydes which mariage frequent

with a vew for all virgines before they consente.

I cane but muse whenas this things

doth com into my mynde

yet many it to pas do brynge

by dayly profe I finde

its case I se, in som degre

mayde are to marryage founde

and after wysh, although they myse

that they this they hade shunde …. ‘