article_snippet.sent: Stunned researchers have found one of the UK's most important manuscripts is full of ghosts.
article_snippet.sent: It's easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like Black Book of Carmarthen but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of we eyes has been incredibly exciting,' said Myriah Williams of Cambridge's Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.
article_snippet.sent: Williams and Professor Paul Russell from Cambridge's Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC), believe that a 16th century owner of Black Book of Carmarthen, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth, erased centuries' worth of additional verse, doodles and marginalia which had been added to a manuscript like the Black Book as a manuscript like the Black Book changed hands throughout the years.
article_snippet.sent: The Black Book was particularly heavily annotated before the end of the 16th century, and the recovery of erasure has much to tell us about what was already there and can change us understanding of The Black Book.'
article_snippet.sent: Williams and Russell will present a lecture at The National Library of Wales today, part of a larger exhibition on the life and work of Sir John Price, one-time owner of The Black Book.
article_snippet.sent: Despite the manuscript value today, The Black Book the manuscript was not an elaborate production, but rather the work of a single scribe who was probably collecting and recording over a long period of his life.
article_snippet.sent: Measuring approximately only 17cm by 12.5 cm, The Black Book is made up of 54 pages of vellum (animal hide) and came to the National Library of Wales in 1904 after being bought, alongside other manuscripts, by the Library's founder, Sir John Williams.
highlights_snippet.sent: Believed 'ghost' images were in the original, but erased by a 16th century owner of Black Book of Carmarthen, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth .