The historiated initial E at the beginning of Psalm 80 shows King David, depicted as usual wearing his crown and playing a musical instrument; a harp, psaltery or cithara. This gives a direct reference to the following text, and could serve as a prompt for the location and reading of the passage. Unfortunately we cannot see the pounced gold surface of the background.
While the Luttrell Psalter is famed for its little genre scenes of rural English life in the marginalia, this page is one from another set, containing some truly bizarre hybrid figures with human and animal characteristics. It is difficult to relate them to the text, but they do make each page strikingly recognisable.
Luttrell Psalter (British Library, add. ms. 42130, f.149, formerly in Lulworth Castle Library), c.1340. Images from The New Palaeographical Society, 1904.
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Click on each of the above to walk your way through a segment of the text. The transcript will appear in a separate window so that you can use it for reference at any time. These exercises are designed to guide you through the text, not test you, so you can cheat as much as you like.
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This site is created and maintained by Dr Dianne Tillotson, freelance researcher and compulsive multimedia and web author. Comments are welcome. Material on this web site is copyright, but some parts more so than others. Please check here for copyright status and usage before you start making free with it. This page last modified 26/2/2004.
