Charts & Graphs

Marginalized

Notes in manuscripts and colophons made by medieval scribes and copyists.

~ New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.
~ I am very cold.
~ That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.
~ Let the reader’s voice honor the writer’s pen.
~ This page has not been written very slowly.
~ The parchment is hairy.
~ The ink is thin.
~ Thank God, it will soon be dark.
~ Oh, my hand.
~ Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink.
~ Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.
~ St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.
~ While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.
~ As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.
~ This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, “The hand that wrote it is no more.”