By Agnieszka Rec, Associate Editor, 出版物

As the MHS’s resident medievalist, I’ve found it a joy to get up close and personal with the Society’s early American manuscripts. From 阿比盖尔·亚当斯’s neat and regular hand to John Winthrop’s nearly indecipherable scrawl, each new manuscript that crosses my desk introduces a new scribe with all their individual idiosyncrasies. And every so often these American documents offer up clear links to their medieval European antecedents.

One such example came up recently during tandem collation work in the 出版物 department.[i] Since last July we in Pubs have been busy preparing a digital edition of the Wopanaak-English word list compiled by 小约翰·科顿. and his unnamed Native interlocutors late in the 17th century. Working from transcriptions prepared by Kathleen Bragdon and her team at William and Mary, we have nearly completed our first verification pass of the document.[ii] The vocabulary is arranged in phrase sets with Wopanaak words on the left and English on the right, sometimes with more than one phrase set to a line, as in this section on colors and kitchen implements:

另一个部分, this one concerning tides and water, uses a rather curious spelling of a common English word:

What looks like, “Kutchiskett, ffalling water,” is, in fact, “Kutchiskett, Falling water.” That double lowercase f represents a capital F.

This practice of doubling fs for capitals dates back to the Middle Ages and has been vexing readers for centuries since then. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register addressed the issue in 1893 by publishing a note from E. Maunde Thompson of the British Library.[3]

Certain English hands, particularly legal ones, did not use the usual capital F, so “ff” developed as an alternative to set off more important words. A chirograph—a kind of legal document, as opposed to chirography, 上面使用的, which is a synonym for handwriting—from 1337 written in an Anglicana script features the grantor’s name, Robert Fitz Elys, spelled with the double f in the first line.

Hands varied over the time and by situation. A new style of writing called a secretary hand developed starting in the early sixteenth century. It also often used the double f form for a capital, as in this recipe “For a quart of black ynck” found in a commonplace book from 1595–1622:

As colonists sailed west from old England to New England, they brought with them their styles of handwriting. We saw 小约翰·科顿.’s use of the double f above, and we can see it again in John Winthrop’s sermon notes, which were taken in England and brought over the Atlantic to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in its earliest years. In this note from Sept 2, 1627, Winthrop records, “Faith was now working by Love”:

As the italic and later the round hand came to predominate over the secretary, the double f slowly disappeared from use in favor of the now familiar capital F. You can still see vestiges of it today, however, in last names like Ffoster.

Armed with this new knowledge, the next time you find yourself confronted by initial double fs don’t ffall into despair, 叹息, “Oh, ffs.” Have Faith and, with a flash of recognition, think, “Oh! F!”

[i] For more on the process of tandem collation, see Ondine Le Blanc’s earlier post 到这个博客.

[ii] 小约翰·科顿.’s notebook also contains sermon notes, a 杂志, and Latin exercises in another hand. The 杂志 was previously published in Len Travers, “The Missionary Journal of 小约翰·科顿., 1666–1678,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 109 (1998): 52–101.

The Wopanaak language fell into a century’s long dormancy beginning in the 19th century. It has recently been revived through the efforts of Jessie Little Doe Baird and the team at the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project.

[3] The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 47 (April 1893): 212.