536
The Greeti Bag.
from ambiguity even when it has the letter и written above it. Counsel will sometimes argue at great length that his adversar)' ought not to be r u, This may mean, according, to circumstances, either reseen or respondn, either admitted, or answered, either on the one hand that the party or pleader ought not to be admitted or allowed to bring a particu lar action, or plead in a particular way, or on the other hand that what he has said does not, in law, require an answer. The Court not uncommonly settles the matter shortly and sharply thus " R." or sometimes " Rz.," that is to say " Rcsponcz " : Answer; or the reporter says " ilfut mys par ag. (which means ' agarde ') a r. (respondre)" When, however, the Court awards ("agarde") or adjudges that one of the parties shall " r" it does not by any means necessarily follow that this must mean that he is to answer. The ex pression may occur at the end of a case thus : "futag arde qc le pleintif r. vers le dcf." and then the meaning is : " It was adjudged that the plaintiff should recover (recovereit) against the defendant." Even when the writing of the MSS. is a little more extended there are other pitfalls for the unwary. Rndre may equally mean rendre or respondre; rcc. may mean recordé or recoverir, or any tense, mood, or person of the verb recoverir or rccoverer; res. may mean either rcsoun (reason) or resomons (re-summons). If it be asked how, in the midst of such confusion, it is possible to attain precision, or anything like certainty that the right exten sion can be given, there is, it may be hoped, a satisfactory answer to the question. When several MSS. are collated, it is found that one will occasionally supply the full word where another gives only a letter. In this way all the possible extensions gradually be come known to the student. The application of the knowledge must of course depend upon his familiarity with the practice of the Courts, and, so to speak with their tone; but this comes with long experience, and, in the end, the words seem to evolve themselves out of
the symbols for them almost mechanically, and to take their different forms as naturally as different flowers or leaves developing out of similar buds. In this way one comes to understand how it was that, although there were positive misstatements of fact or law in some of the old MSS., to which their con temporaries showed that they were quite alive, yet, in the main, the reports presented fewer difficulties to the Judges and Counsel than might be supposed at first sight. The ordinary clerical errors would cause but little trouble. In case of doubt, too, the practi tioners of the day could always fall back upon the rolls as we can at the present time, and there are instances in which the reports are absolutely unintelligible without the aid of the records. Before explaining further, however, what use is to be made of the records, it may be well to mention one or two other points in connection with the manuscripts of Year Books which may possess some interest from a modern point of view. There is always a separate heading for each term, which, how ever, usually shows nothing more than the term and the regnal year. There are no headlines to the individual cases, which follow one another without any intervening space, though each case usually (but not quite al ways) begins on a new line. At the begin ning of each case there is usually in the mar gin a note to show the nature of the action, savit, e. g. QuartAcompte, iinpcdit, &c. Fonnc The majority dc doun,of Cesthe MSS. have no other side notes, except an occasional reference to an earlier or later folio on which an incomplete report may com mence to be continued, and an occasional re mark made by an owner of the book at some more recent period. To this rule, however, there are exceptions, as there is in some of the MSS. a longer or shorter abstract, in a contemporary hand, of the matters decided. Though copies made generations after wards may also be in existence, it is usually possible to find MSS. of the Year Books
