By some of my learned friends, who are acquainted with the manuscripts of the preceding poems, I may be censured, perhaps, because I have rendered the contraction
by ss, instead of making it to denote is. I have not done so unadvisedly; and I could not have acted otherwise without sacrificing my own conviction. I preferred this mode for several reasons.
Another well known contraction, totally different in form, is used throughout these manuscripts, where there can be no doubt that is is meant. Had I adopted a different plan, I would have been laid under the necessity of rendering the contraction in a variety of modes. I must frequently have viewed it as signifying se. But here, in many places, I met with an obstacle that seemed insurmountable;—a different contraction being employed for denoting a word of this form, sometimes in the same verse, as in The Bruce, B. VIII. 353.
The king thus, that wes wycht and wys,
And rycht awise at diuiss, &c.
Here both contractions occur. If I did not give to the sign so ambulatory and indefinite a character, I must often have used a double i, where it could not be supposed that the writer meant to introduce it. Thus I must have given maiss, makes, in the form of maiis; raiss, arose, as raiis; cheiss, choose, as cheiis; pass, a strait and steep passage, as pais; and leiss, loss, as leiis, &c. &c.
The rhythm, as well as the sense, would also, in different instances, have materially suffered. Thus, in B. IX. 259, where we read;
And with all thair mycht schot egrely