PREFACE

Summary

The treatise de Nugis Curialium of Walter Map is preserved in a single manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century in the Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 851. A detailed description of the contents, which I owe to the great kindness of Mr. R. L. Poole, Keeper of the Archives, will be given in due course. It may be prefaced by a few remarks upon the provenance and externals of the volume.

It comes from Ramsey Abbey. On the verso of f. 6, facing the beginning of the de Nugis, is a finely executed drawing in delicate stippled work and pale colours of which the central part consists of the word Wellis in large gothic letters formed out of ribbons or scrolls and placed on a label. The top of the W is prolonged to the left and inscribed Iste liber constat ffratri Iohanni de (Wellis), and the concluding words monacho Rameseye are written on the tops of the two l's which are similarly prolonged to L and R. On L is a rock on which sits a lion, his back turned to R, and his head, twisted round, looking to R. Round his neck is a chain which passes through the uprights of the W and is secured in the centre of the R portion of that letter. Out of a round hole in the rock a spring of water gushes up and flows to R.