Percy Folio
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The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The folio is hand written from the middle of the 17th century. It was the most important of the source documents used by Francis James Child for his 1883 ballad collection.
Although the manuscript itself was compiled in the 17th century, some of its material goes back well into the 12th century. In addition to the ballads culled and compiled by Percy and Child, the folio contains a 14th century alliterative poem in Middle English entitled Death and Liffe and Scottish Feilde, which is a poem on the Battle of the Flodden. The manuscript contains ballads, for the most part, but also metrical romances.
Those who owned the manuscript before Percy did not treat it well; its owners had probably regarded its Middle English and border dialect as incomprehensible and worthless. When Percy found the manuscroipt, pages were being used to start fires. Percy had the manuscript bound (it consisted of loose pages), and the bookbinder inflicted additional damage in trimming the edges of the sheets, losing first or last lines on many pages. Percy did not treat the manuscript particularly well himself; he wrote notes and comments in it and tore out some pages after binding. Percy published several pieces from the manuscript, many of which were "repaired" or frankly rewritten, especially in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, but did not allow fellow historians access to the original manuscript until his death.
Despite its losses, the Percy Folio is, like the Exeter Book, the Pearl Manuscript, and the Cotton library's monstrarum librarum of the Beowulf manuscript, one of the most important documents in English poetry. A full edition of the folio's contents was not published until 1867, with a supplement of "loose and humorous" songs the following year. The original folio is in the British Library.
The handwriting in the manuscript appears to be the same throughout and bears some similarity with that of Thomas Blount but it cannot be determined for certain if he originally collected the work.
[edit] References
- Bishop Percy's folio manuscript: ballads and romances ed. John W. Hales, Frederick J. Furnivall. London: Trübner, 1867.
- Bishop Percy's folio manuscript: loose and humorous songs ed. Frederick J. Furnivall. London, 1868.
