MS 56: Celtic Psalter, c 1000

The ornament consists of large and small initials, line-endings, and a few scrolls in the lower margins, with two complete pages of illumination.

The verse initials have their centres coloured purple, green, blue, yellow, or red. Psalm initials show a considerable variety of fine interlaced work, the terminals being frequently animal heads. All the letters are surrounded by a single line of red dots. The colours used are purple, blue, green, red, and yellow. One initial, on f. 21v, is in the form of a fish, a somewhat unusual convention in such manuscripts.

In addition to spiral or triangular scroll line-endings touched with colour, a number of the leaves have in the lower margin a curious elongated grotesque animal form, which seems to resemble the convention known as the elephant symbol found on Pictish stones in Scotland. The frequent occurrence of this form of ornament, together with the fish, which is also found on these stones, may eventually be discovered, in Mr. Ludovic Mann's opinion, to have some significance as connecting the book with Pictland.

As in most Celtic Psalters, there has been the triple division, marked by more elaborate illumination at Psalm 1, 51, and 101. Unfortunately, however, the first page of the Psalter is missing, and the first leaf of Psalm 101 is left blank, so that only one of the more elaborate illuminations remains, namely at at the beginning of Psalm 51 (f.50r). Here there are two pages of illuminations, the second of which (f.50v) remains as it was originally written, showing the second verse of the Psalm written in six lines of half-uncials on a yellow ground, divided horizontally by narrow bands of purple, blue, and red, a seventh line being rilled with the familiar triangular scroll pattern, and the twhole surrounded by a good interlaced border.

The recto of this leaf has originally been similarly treated, for the outer edge of an interlaced border can still be seen, but over it has been superimposed a late imitation of English 11th century work. Quid gloriaris is written in capitals, the rest of the verse in minuscules, in gold upon a dark background of blue-grey clouds framed in double lines of gold. The date of this insertion is difficult to determine. It may not improbably belong to the same period as the prayer inserted before it, that is, to the 14th century.

Unfortunately the margins are badly cropped, all catchwords having disappeared, and a few of the initials have been partially mutilated.

A.P. Laurie has also noted the following features: There are distinct indications that, while the early decorations are Celtic in character, the original decorator had not completed his work, and that additional decorations were done at a later date. There is one page on which gold appears, which is never found on Celtic manuscripts, and this gold is of a remarkable character. It is not gold leaf, but seems to be finely-sifted gold dust obtained from river washings. The use of gold dust of this character is to be found on a Canterbury Gospel supposed to be of the late 8th century, and on King Edgar’s Charter to Winchester of 966, and again on a Canterbury Psalter of between 1012 and 1023. Laurie has never noticed this river-washed gold dust at a later date, and therefore its presence on the Celtic manuscript already referred to suggests that at some time it has been in the possession of an English monastery, and that its date is probably very early in, or even earlier than, the 11th century, as suggested by Lindsay (see below for a more exact dating). This date means this manuscript is probably the latest example that we have of river-washed gold dust. Of course, there may have been quite a short interval of time between the work done by the original Celtic monk and the decoration of this particular page in the English monastery, but whatever the real history of this manuscript may be, the presence of this rare form of decoration, and the fact that it is never found after the 11th century, help to confirm the conclusion come to by Professor Lindsay, that it is certainly not later than that date. (See also Laurie's work in the 'Bibliography'.)

Analysis of the pigment in this manuscript suggest manufacture somewhere around 1000CE, but no later. The blue is all lapis lazuli, the yellow orpiment, the red is red lead, and properly manufactured.