Scribe 1

Short couplets. 340 lines in this text and in Wattie's edition, which includes a lacuna (approximately 13 lines) at f.261vb. Ends imperfect with fragments of a full column on the stub f.262ra.

Composed in the early 14th century in the South East. Its source is the Lai le Fresne of Marie de France but there are many additions, omissions and changes of detail.

Unique copy.

Edition:
M. Wattie, The Middle English Lai le Freine', Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, vol. 10, no. 3 (Northampton, Mass.: Smithe College, 1928). (Critical edition).

Other editions:
A. Laskaya and E. Salisbury, The Middle English Breton Lays (Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS, 1995). (Includes an electronic version of the text).
D. B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986).
H. Varnhagen, 'Zu Mittelenglischen Gedichten: VIII, Lay le Freine', Anglia, 3 (1880): 415-425.
H. W. Weber, Metrical Romances, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1810).

Manual I, 134; 293. Index 3869.