There has been no modernization of the language save in the case of the rubrics, which are no part of the text proper and have been contributed by the scribes or editors in order to facilitate the understanding of the poem. I have thus adhered to the spirit while modifying the letter of their work. But while avoiding any change in the language of the poem or even any attempt at a uniform spelling, I have taken a few harmless liberties with its alphabet and restricted certain of the letters to their modern values, substituting for others a modern equivalent. Skeat did this in the matter of the ancient “thorn” letter = _th_. In consideration of the general reader, I have gone somewhat farther, viz.: 1 The _s_ with the ornamental curl I read as merely _s_; Jamieson and Skeat take it as, generally, = _ss_. But such alternative forms as _Parys_,[22] _purches_,[23] and _purpos_,[24] on the one hand, and the actual use of the tailed letter following the ordinary type in _dress_, _press_,[25] fix the usage I have adopted.[26] There are a few exceptions in which this letter is probably a contraction for _is_--_e.g._, II. 366, 459. [22] I. 345. [23] II. 572. [24] III. 287. [25] XIV. 246; XVI. 253. [26] _Cf._ also in Gregory Smith’s _Specimens of Middle Scots_, p. xxx. 2. I have distributed their modern values to _i_, _j_, _u_, _v_, _w_. There is no advantage in preserving such forms as _iugis_, _Evrope_, _wndyr_: the hedge of the language--to use Lowell’s simile--is prickly enough without these accessories. Moreover, I have throughout written _Edward_ for _Eduuard_ or _Eduard_ and _Inglis_ for _Ynglis_ (C). 3. As Skeat has substituted “_th_” for the “thorn” (þ), I have done likewise with the ancient English _g_ (ȝ), the “yok” letter, resolving it into the digraph _yh_. As ultimately, in almost every case, significant of the consonantal _y_, I might have simply replaced it by that letter. But alternative forms, nearly without exception, show the digraph, both in _The Bruce_ and in Wyntoun, giving _yhe_, _yhet_, _yharnit_, _fenyhe_, etc., and in Wyntoun’s extracts _feyhnnyng_, _senyhoury_, _yhystir-day_, _bayhllys_, etc. Even with the original letter the _h_ is added as often as not. Apparently the usage, which had practically disappeared from the southern practice, was in a transitional stage on its way to its full revival in later Scots, where it became fixed, at the hands of the printers, as _z_, and survives in such forms as _Cadzow_, _capercailzie_, etc.[27] In I. 16, however, it has been read as _g_ in _forget_, though _foryhet_ is to be found in _Ratis Raving_, and in XV. 75 it is obviously _z_ in _Fi(t)z-Waryne_. [27] _Cf._ Murray’s _Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland_, p. *92; and _New. Eng. Dict._, G. 4. The placing of the capital letters and the punctuation are, of course, modern.