lyrics for songs with rests at the start

[William R. Brohinsky]

Heyla!

I've been looking at the possibility of adding underlay to the songs in
the Odhecaton project. These are polyphonic partsongs (chansons,
rondeau, etc) from the period prior to 1501 when the book was first
printed.

I need to do two things, and so far I'm not having much luck figuring
out how:
- place the incipit text under each part in the score (ie, 'Je ne fay
plus') at the beginning of each  staff, where texts have not been
discovered
- place the texts as lyrics, in the normal fashion

As for the first, I can put the incipit text in, but I haven't found a
way to make it appear as if it belongs: the words are spaced far apart
and somewhat randomly. If there are no opening rests, it's not too bad,
because the words are autoplaced under the notes, but if there are
opening rests, the placement seems to be random and wide-spread. I've
tried grouping them and asigning time values to them (which really
messes with the music layout) and I've generated a whole lot of error
messages, but I haven't figured out a good combination.

Likewise, with the second, I haven't figured out how to clue lilypond in
that the words have to wait a while before they are applied. Is there
some kind of place holder that needs to start the lyric list which
indicates how long to wait before the first note gets a syllable? I
haven't found it in the docs yet, and frankly, all the examples have
notes starting right off. This becomes especially important with the
'original'-ish transcription of Ysaac's Benedictus: Apparently there is
a fourth part which was not included in Odhecaton, which starts the
piece. This results in the three given parts starting with rests, and no
starting notes at all. (This is a problem that should go away, because I
should be able to find one of the four sources that have the fourth
part, and intend to add it to my edition, but it still points up a
potential rough spot.)

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

raybro