What is said above by Brother Hawkins of this early reference to the Craft does not exhibit as fully as many may desire the peculiar features of the HaU~uneU or Regius Manuscript. The book is about four by five and a half inches, the writing being on vellum, a fine parchment, and it was bound in its present cover, according to Brother lI. J. Whymper, about the year 1838. The cover bears the Royal Arms stamped on both sides with G. R. II, and the date 1757. In that year the King, George II, b an instrument that passed the Great Seal of England presented the Library containing the volume to the British Museum where the present reviser of this work had the pleasure of personally examining it. Formerly in the possession of Charles Theyer, a boox collector of the seventeenth century and listed in Bernards CatulZugous Manuscripts am Anyliac, Oxford, 1697 (page 200), and described in David Casley s Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Old Royal Library, 1734 (page 259), as a Poem of Moral levities, the contents were mistaken until J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps mentioned it in his paper on the Introduction of Freemasonry into England, read before the SocietS of Antiquaries during the session of 183tS to 1839. Two small editions of the transcript of the poem were published as Brother Hawkins tells us. The first edition contained a faesimile reproduction of four lines of the manuscript, the second similarly reproduced the first page, and he also gave a glossary which with the transcript was published in a veritable gem of a work in 1889, Spencer and Company with an introduction by Brother H. J. Whymper. Halliwell-Phillipps pointed out that the writer was probable a priest, this evidently from the allusions in line 699 (page LI). He also calls attention to line 143 (page XI), as intimating that a still older manuscript was in existence when the poem was written.
The writing is done in a neat but characteristic style of the earls period and in these modern days far from familiar to us, the English of that generation was also very different from that of our time. Brother Roderick H. Baxter, Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge and Past President of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research, has carefully modernized the transcript and permitted us to make use of his valuable labors. Before giving the work of Brother Baxter we ma) submit a transcript of the first eight lines in which mav be seen some of the difficulties met in turning such a manuscript into modern English.
Whose wol bothe wel rede and loke
He may fynde wryte yn olde boke
Of grete lord s, and eke ladyysse,
That hade mony chyldryn y-fere, y- wisse;
And hade no rentys to fynde hem wyth,
Nowther yn towne, ny felde, ny fryth:
A counsel togeder they cowthe hem take,
To ordeyne for these chyldryn sake, . . .
In the following transcript Brother Baxter has adhered strietly to the phraseology of the original with all its vagaries of person, tense and mood, and has retained the peculiarities of double and sometimes even treble negatives, the only variation being in the substitution of modern words for those now obsolete. However, where the modern words at the ends of lines could not have been used to preserve the jingle of the verses the old words have been utilized with their present equivalents added in brackets so as to avoid the necessity or referring to a glossary. The
Roman numerals on the right of the lines indicate the pages of the manuscript.
Hic incipiunt constituciones artis gemetriac cecundum Euclydem
Here begin the constitutions of the art of Geometry according to Euclid. I
Whoever will both well read and look
He may find written in old book
Of great lords and also ladies,
That had many children together, y-wisse; (certainly)
And had no income to keep them with,
Neither in town nor field nor frith: (enclosed wood)