Describe the layout. How does it suit its function as a service book?

• Page is left-justified, and roughly right-justified.

• It uses what we would call a hanging indent. A separate column to the left contains the capital letters of the opening word of each verse of the psalm. These are of a different size and colour to the body of the text, and are separated from it visually both by a gap, and by being enclosed in a grid pattern of red dots which follows the baselines of the text. Attention is thus drawn to the layout of the script.

  
  
• The base-lines are c. 8mm apart: since the letters are c. 3mm high, this leaves more than as much space again between lines. This makes following the text easier.
  

• The opening word of the Psalm is much larger than the rest of the text, in a different script, and illuminated.
  

• At the head of the text is a rubric (in red) giving the authorship of the Psalm. To the left is the Psalm number.

What information does the page give you besides the words of the Psalm?

The layout is important because a Psalter is for singing from. You therefore need to know

1. which Psalm it is - you need the right number for the day and service;
   
2. where it starts on the page;
   
3. where each verse begins and ends, because you sing each to a particular sequence of notes;
   
4. preferably some kind of anchor on the page to remind you what you have just sung so you don’t repeat yourself.

1. The Psalm number is conveniently placed in the left-hand margin at the top, in a different script (see below) and a different colour so that you don’t think it is part of the text.

   
   

2. The large display letters show you the opening word of the Psalm.

   
   

3. The first letter of each verse is distinguished by being in a different size of script and a different colour from the rest of the text: because it is physically separated from the body of the text it is easier to identify.

   
   
4. The text itself is laid out per cola et commata, ‘according to clauses and phrases’.
   The colon is a longer section of a syntactical unit, hence the name for our punctuation mark which ends
   such a unit [:].
   The comma is a shorter syntactical unit, hence our name for the punctuation mark [,] which ends such a unit.

   
   In the case of the Psalms, the colon is a complete half-verse. Hebrew poetry tends to be very balanced, with two parts to every verse. When the verse ends, the rest of the space is left empty on the page, as it is with our convention for lines of verse.

   Memor fuit misericordiae suae Iacob et veritatis suae domus Israhel.

   He hath remembered His mercy: and His truth toward the house of Israel.

   In this text it is also marked with a line of three dots.

   
   

   • Wherever possible, the lines on the page correspond with the natural syntax of the verse. See the modern layout of the psalm for comparison.

   • In a few cases (lines 4, 12, 18) abbreviations have been used to make this possible.

   • In another case (line 20), two letters, N and T, have been run together to save space at the end of a line. In spite of this, the line has still overrun, and the scribe has tucked the last two words into the bottom margin on the right.

   
   

5. The first letters of each verse appear in alternating colours, red and blue. This might well be mnemonic in function.

6. Besides this, the extra information about the Psalm, in this case its authorship, is included, but again in a different script and colour so that you do not confuse it with the text to be sung.

7. And finally, in the mid 9th century an Anglo-Saxon scholar added the gloss, a word-by-word translation of the Latin into his native language.

   gemyndig wes mildheortnisse his

   MEMOR FUIT MISERICORDIAE SUAE

   'He was mindful of His mercy'

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