ABSTRACT
BL MS. Harley 2253 is an anthology of verse and prose in French, Latin and English, and contains the most important and varied collection of medieval English lyrics. The scribe worked in Ludlow, on the Shropshire-Herefordshire border, from at least 1314 to 1349, and compiled this ms. in about 1340; see Revard (1979, 1981, 1982). Historical references in the text range from the Battle of Lewes of 1264 to the taxation of 1337-8; see Stemmler (1962:30). The scribe evidently collected his poems from a wide area; Brook (1933) judges the dialects of the poems edited here to be as follows: south-east or south midlands III, IV; north-west and north midlands II, VI; northern V, VIII. Subject-matter and language show that IX is also northern.
