Spent a fantastic few hours on 4 December being introduced to the Gaelic manuscripts in CRC at Edinburgh University Library. There was a particularly interesting series of medical texts and fragments dating to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: The McBeath Gaelic Medical Manuscript, 16th century, a late-15th C Materia medica, a fragment of the treatise Maighistir Ricairdi.

The pigments used appear intriguing; rubrication in silver in one instance and the vivid use of red and yellow for initials in others. There is more work to be done here on what these pigments and metals are. Also look at this binding and the clasps – beautiful.

Courtesy of Edinburgh Uni Library)