ABSTRACT
The historians of lace proper, when they refer to the Directions, rightly dismiss them as irrelevant; indeed, they confess that they have not been able to understand them. Henry Bradley seems to have set aside Wanley’s dating in favour of “a1500” because he thought of lace, not laces, and knew that there was no lace in the middle of the fifteenth century. The text preceding the Directions in the Harley MS is the poem He þat wol herkyn, the composition of which is dated by Willard E. Farnham on linguistic grounds as “very early fifteenth century,” a date generally accepted. There is the “he” off. 53r, the man who reads out the Directions, for the knotter is too busy with the actual working of the laces to be able to keep an eye on the Directions too. For some more complicated laces the knotter will require a fellow, and the Directions use the second person plural for the pair of knotters.
