Hi guys, I’m posting about a specific document, a link to which I’ve included below. I believe this is in old English, but I can’t read it and I don’t know how old it is. Can anyone tell me what I’m looking at? I was drawn to it because I speak Irish and I thought I was looking at insular letters d and s. Thanks!
It looks a lot more like Merovingian or Visigothic script than Insular. I'm thinking of the E and G shapes specifically but other letters are more continental than insular as well.
However, I think maybe more importantly, it doesn't seem to actually say anything! For example the first line (after the rubric, which I can't see) looks to me like "lymaplieasictusseraectinictmerho". Manuscripts old enough to be written in Visigothic/Merovingian probably wouldn't have spaces between the words, but even so, they would be written in Latin and it would be relatively easy to read.
I suppose it's possible that it's Insular and written in Irish or Old English, but it looks like just random letters to me.
Maybe it's a practise sheet, the scribe was testing his pen and ink or practising his letter forms. Or maybe it's much more recent and someone was trying to emulate an old style?
Do you have any more information about it? Where did you find it?