Sometimes scribes accidentally leave out some of the text they meant to copy. Catching the error on review, they usually just put the text out beside the original with a mark indicating that the reader’s eyes should skip over to the side.*
The scribes behind a particular edition of the Revelations of St. Brigit, now held at the British Library, were particularly sloppy, necessitating this move be made again and again. But rather than just leave it at a little mark, the revising scribes decided to add little marginal figures to the added text. This one’s my favorite:
I like it because of the 3D effect of the guy popping up out of the page, something pretty rare in medieval manuscripts. I don’t know who this dead man is, but he’s an appropriate bearer of such morbid omitted text.
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*You’re all familiar with such marks, yes? The ones that tell you to stop reading one section of text and move to another?