About HM 144

The Huntington Library’s online Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library describes HM 144 as “Prose and Poetry, in English,” dating from the turn of the fifteenth century. Though this description is general, there’s a good reason that a brief title can’t be more specific. Like many other manuscripts of its time, the library suggests, based on the structure of the quires and blank leaves dividing the different texts, that HM 144 was initially produced in as many as 8 separate fascicles, i.e., 8 separate bundled installments.

The prose and poetry contained in the manuscript is diverse, and includes, in order, Lichfield’s Compleynte betwene God and Man, Lydgate’s How Merci & Pees Ryghtwisnes & Trouthe disputyd for the Redempciun of Mankynde, three stories of the life and Passion of Christ, the genealogy of St. Mary, the life story of Judas, two stories of the apostles, two stories about Jerusalem, Chaucer’s Tale of Melibeus, Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, two Cathos (Parvus and Magnus), several Lydgate poems and fragments, a few pages describing the times of sunrise and sunset, and an excerpt from Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon.

In today’s numbers, these more than 150 folios amount to more than 300 pages altogether. After all these pieces, folios 149v-151 are left blank; on the back of folio 151, i.e., 151v, is the “Plague Page,” where a writer at a later date than the original publication, estimated sometime in the early sixteenth century, has added a recipe for “þe medysyne þat þe kyngys grace usythe every [day] for the raynyng seknys þat now [ ] raynthe.” It is this interesting little piece that has inspired 144Dragons.