farfel_n01_024_015

Vol. 1475-1557
English Books & Readers Vol. 2 1558-1603 by H.S. Bennett

p. 277 Z 151 B 47 Stanford The edition of c. 1551 was evidently exhausted by 1561 when
John Kingston printed for bookseller John Wight a new edition
'with divers addicions, whiche were never in print before." These
were supplied by John Stow, the antiguary, who took them from
an hitherto unused manuscript. Unfortunately, his zeal outran
discretion, for most of the additions were not Chaucer's work
at all.

O. Ege Original leaves Z 240.9 E3 f a leaf from The Works of Chaucer - printed by Adam Islip London 1602
2nd edition - his 1st edition was issued in 1598.

p. 169 The Art of Written Forms DM Anderson
"At about the time Caxton was publishing books a curious habit developed
in English printing. When Anglo-Saxons dropped runic characters & began to
write in Latin letters, they carried over several runic signs for special sounds.
One of these was a sign for th called thorn. It looked like a cross
between a p & a y, except that it had a short ascender & a cross
stroke on it. Printers in England for some reason did not cut a
special character for the ancient sign & began to substitute y. The
word the in print appeared as a y with a tiny e on top of it.
At the time every reader knew what it meant, but subsequently it came
to be pronounced incorrectly. The ye of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe & other
quaint usages are remnants of this confusion, a last echo of runic
signs.

superior letters

superior letters {your = yo^r their = y^r or y^er thou = y^u which = w^ch
{the = y^e this = y^s they - yy with = w^th or w^t
{that = y^t w^t = what
{it = yt

"and" and et - were represented by either 1 of 2 symbols, one being the
modern ampersand &, & the other the so called Tironian sign (from
Cicero's friend M. Tallins Tiro) In C. manuscripts the Tironian
sign loooked like our printed Arabic 7.