Here are examples from Tolkien's hastier handwriting of his initial "fa", "fi", and initial, medial, and final "p", in MSS from 1) 1918, and 2) 1948.

And here are his hasty medial "a"s from the same 1948 text, as well as texts from the late 1960s.

Aelfwine, do you possess a table for all Tolkien's letters from each period like these ? If so, would it be possible you share it ? I remember having a disagreement with the lecture Pr. Flieger had of a word on the Story of Kulllervo's manuscripts, I would be interested to finally know if I was wrong or not, in the light of your document !

Druss wrote:
Aelfwine, do you possess a table for all Tolkien's letters from each period like these ? If so, would it be possible you share it ? I remember having a disagreement with the lecture Pr. Flieger had of a word on the Story of Kulllervo's manuscripts, I would be interested to finally know if I was wrong or not, in the light of your document !

I second this.

Aelfwine many thanks for the examples. It is great to see such detailed assessment of his handwriting and too learn so much in a few snippets about how much there is to learn about his handwriting.

I'm correcting myself

@Ugo Truffelli wrote:
Could it be something like "[no fairer maid ever found could be]"? I don't know.

it couldn't be of course "ever" is two syllables
And Aelfwine settled the point.

1) Could it be that the absence of «there» in the first line in A while it's present in the Gawain-text in B1 and B2 is due to a scribal (or typographical) error and it's not absent in the original manuscript?

Erase this. Of course "the" makes the 8th syllable in A instead of "there" in the other versions.
Still, is remarkable that Tolkien came back to the first line we wrote.

I used the previous posts with a "post-it notes on a board" approach and now I'm removing some of them :D

2) 3 line survives in B2 exactly as they were written here

And one line "from dawn to dusk from sun to sea" survived in the post-Lord of the Rings versions.

5)
Could it be that the translation of Gawain’s Leave Taking was an inspiration? The metre is not the same and probably this is only a speculation, but to my hears (I’m not an expert) some lines of the translation do evoke the Gest…

(mostly 8 syllables, but of course is in a ballad form and not ryming couplets as the Lay and Sir Orfeo)

onthetrail wrote:

Druss wrote:
Aelfwine, do you possess a table for all Tolkien's letters from each period like these ? If so, would it be possible you share it ? I remember having a disagreement with the lecture Pr. Flieger had of a word on the Story of Kulllervo's manuscripts, I would be interested to finally know if I was wrong or not, in the light of your document !

I second this.

Aelfwine many thanks for the examples. It is great to see such detailed assessment of his handwriting and too learn so much in a few snippets about how much there is to learn about his handwriting.

I agree!

These examples are taken from a much, much larger table I made as an appendix to my contribution, "Editing the Tolkienian Manuscript", to the forthcoming memorial volume for Christopher Tolkien being published by the Bodleian.

The appendix itself will not be published in the volume (it is much too long). However, I will put the appendix online for anyone who cares to see it, once the volume has been published.

Any idea when that memorial volume might be published, Carl?

I haven't been told a publication date. The pandemic has no doubt delayed it (and many, many other things).

Aelfwine wrote:
These examples are taken from a much, much larger table I made as an appendix to my contribution, "Editing the Tolkienian Manuscript", to the forthcoming memorial volume for Christopher Tolkien being published by the Bodleian.

The appendix itself will not be published in the volume (it is much too long). However, I will put the appendix online for anyone who cares to see it, once the volume has been published.

I'm looking forward to it!

Does anyone know if they have done a second print of this yet? I haven't received mine yet and I'm wondering if I still have a chance of getting the first printing.