VII. BOOK settled in Saxony before he advanced to the North.' Either the pagan Saxons were acquainted with the Runic characters, or they were introduced in the North after the fifth century, when the Saxons came to Britain, and before the middle of the sixth, when they are mentioned by Fortunatus, which is contrary to the history and traditions of the Scandinavian nations, and to probability. We may remark, that Run is used in Anglo-Saxon,* as Runar in the Icelandic, to express letters or characters.' It is true that Odin used the runæ for the purpose of magic, and that in Saxon run-cræftig, or skilled in runæ, signifies a magician; but the magical application of characters is no argument against their alphabetical nature, because many of the foolish charms which our ancestors and other nations have respected, have consisted, not merely of alphabetical characters, but even of words.' 2d. The passage of Venantius Fortunatus, written in the The barbarous Runæ is painted on ashen tablets, Now, as the Anglo-Saxons were not inferior in civilization to 3 Snorre, Ynglinga Saga. * So Cedmon uses the word, run bith gerecenod, p. 73; hwæt seo run bude, p. 86; that he to him the letters should read and explain, hwæt seo run bude, p. 90; he had before said, in his account of Daniel and Belshazzar, that the angel of the Lord wrat tha in wage worda gerynu baswe bocstafas, p. 90. 5 Schilter's Thesaurus, vol. iii. p. 693. Thus Cedmon says, the run-craftige men could not read the hand-writing till Daniel came, p. 90. 7 One passage in a Saxon MS. confirms this idea: "Then asked the ealdorman the heftling, whether through drycreft, or through "rynstafes, he had broken his bonds; and "he answered that he knew nothing of this "craft." Vesp. D. 14. p. 132. Now ryn stafes means literally ryn letters. We may remark, that the Welsh word for alphabet is coel bren, which literally means the tree or wood of Omen; and see the Saxon description of the northern Runa, in Hickes's Gram. Ang. Sax. p. 135. & Ven. Fortun. lib. vi. p. 814. Bib. tom. viii. Ed. Mag. There are various alphabets of the Runæ, but their differences are not very great. I consider those characters to be most interesting which have been taken from the ancient inscriptions remaining in the IV. sd. Though it cannot be doubted that the letters of our CHA P. Saxon MSS. written after their conversion, are of Roman origin, except only two, the th and the w, p, p, the thorn and the wen, yet these two characters are allowed by the best critics to be of Runic parentage; and if this be true, it would shew that the Anglo-Saxons were acquainted with Runic as well as with Roman characters when they commenced the hand-writing that prevails in their MSS. 10 4th. If the Saxons had derived the use of letters from the Roman ecclesiastics, it is probable that they would have taken from the Latin language the words they would use to express them. Other nations, so indebted, have done this. To instance from the Erse language: For book, they have leabhar, from liber. But nations who had known letters before they became acquainted with Roman literature would have indigenous terms to express them. 13 The Saxons have such terms. The most common word by which the Anglo-Saxons denoted alphabetical letters, was stæf; plural, stæfa. Elfric, in his Saxon Grammar, so uses it.' The copy of the Saxon coronation oath begins with," This writing is written, stæf be stæfe (letter by letter), from that 66 North. Wormins gives these, Lit. Run. p. 58. Hickes, in his Gram. Anglo-Isl. c. 1. gives several Runic alphabets. 10 The Saxons used three characters for th, D, , and p. Of these the two first seem to be Roman capitals, with a small hyphen. Astle, in his History of Writing, p. 7 and 8, gives these d's. The other, þ, is the Runic d. See Wormius, p. 58. The Runic d, in some dialects, was pronounced "In the Erse Testament, Greek letters 42 Cotton. Lib. Julius, A. 2. BOOK 66 writing which Dunstan, archbishop, gave to our lord at Kingston."" In the same sense the word is used in Alfred's translation of Bede," and in the Saxon gospels." It is curious to find the same word so applied in the Runic mythology. In the Vafthrudis-mal, one of the odes of the ancient Edda of Semund, it occurs in the speech of Odin, who says "fornum stavfom" in the ancient letters." The numerous compound words derived from stef, a letter, shew it to have been a radical term in the language, and of general application. The same word was also used like the Latin litera, to signify an epistle." The art of using letters, or writing, is also expressed in Saxon by a verb not of Roman origin. The Saxon term for the verb to write is not, like the Erse expression, from the Latin, scribere, but is "awritan," or "gewritan." This verb is formed from a similar noun of the same meaning as stæf. The noun is preserved in the Mæso-Gothic, where writs signifies" a letter." 13 Cotton. Lib. Cleop. B. 13. 14 Bede, 615. 633. 15 John, vii. v. 15. Luke, xxiii. v. 38. staven. 17 When a letter or authoritative document is mentioned in Saxon, the expressions applied to it are not borrowed from the Latin, as scriptum, mandatum, epistola, and such like; but it is said, "Honorius sent "the Scot a ge-writ," Sax. Ch. 39; desired the Pope with his ge-writ to confirm it, ib. 38. So Alfred, translating Bede, says, "the Pope sent to Augustin pallium and "ge-writ," i. c. 29. here borrowing from the Latin the pallium, a thing known to them from the Romans, but using a native Saxon term to express the word epistle. In like manner the Saxons did not derive their word for CHAP. book from the Latin liber; they expressed it by their own term, "boc," as the Northerns called it " bog." 18 I do not mean to assert indiscriminately, that whenever a word indigenous in a language is used to express writing, it is therefore to be inferred, that the people using that language have also letters; because it may so happen that the word may not have been an indigenous term for letters, but for something else; and may have been applied to express letters only analogically or metaphorically. To give an instance: the Indians of New England expressed letters, or writing, by the terms wussukwhonk, or wussukwheg. But the Indians had no letters nor writing among them; whence then had they these words? The answer is, that they were in the habit of painting their faces and their garments, and when we made them acquainted with writing, they applied to it their word for painting." But though they could figuratively apply their term for painting to express writing, they had nothing to signify a book, and therefore it was necessary to ingraft our English word "book" into their language for that purpose." On the whole, I am induced to believe that the Anglo-Saxons were not unacquainted with alphabetical characters when they. came into England. However this may be, it is certain that if they had ancient letters, they ceased to use them after their conversion, with the exception of their þ and p. It was the invariable policy of the Roman ecclesiastics to discourage the use of the Runic characters, because they were of pagan 18 Thus in the Indian Bible," and this << writing was written," Dan. v. 24. is rendered, kah yeh wussuk wheg unussukkuh whosu; "and this is the writing that was written," kah yeh wussuk whonk ne adt tannus-sukuh whosik, ib. v. 25. "Darius signed the "writing," Darius sealham wussuk whosuonk, vi. v. 9. "And the writing was" wussuk whonk no. John xix. v. 19. 19 Thus wussukhosu was a painted coat. Williams' Key to the Language of America, p. 184. ed. 1643, and see his remark, p. 61. IV. VII. BOOK origin, and had been much connected with idolatrous superstitions." Hence, as soon as the Christian clergy acquired influence in the Saxon octarchy, all that appeared in their literature was in the character which they had formed from the Romans. 23 We know nothing of the compositions of the Anglo-Saxons in their pagan state. state. Tacitus mentions generally of the Germans, that they had ancient songs," and therefore we may believe that the Anglo-Saxons were not without them. Indeed, Dunstan is said to have learned the vain songs of his countrymen in their pa an stat; and we may suppose, that if such compositions had not been in existence at that period, Edgar would not have forbidden men, on festivals, to sing Heathen songs But none of these have survived to us. If they were ever con mitted to writing, it was on wood, or stones: indeed, their word for book (boc) expresses a beech-tree, and seems to allude to the matter of which their earliest books were made. The poets of barbarous ages usually confide the little effusions of their genius to the care of tradition. They are seldom preserved in writing till literature becomes a serious study; and therefore we may easily believe, that if the AngloSaxons had alphabetical characters, they were much more used for divinations, charms, and funeral inscriptions, than for literary compositions. The Swedes were persuaded by the Pope, in 1001, to lay aside the Runic letters, and to adopt the Roman in their stead. They were abolished in Denmark in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and in Iceland soon after. Astle's History of Writing, p. 89. 22 De moribus German. 23 Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 83. 24 Wormius infers, that pieces of wood cut from the beech-tree were the ancient northern books, Lit. Run. p. 6. Saxo Grammaticus mentions, that Fengo's ambassadors took with them literas ligno insculptas, be cause, adds Saxo, that was formerly a celebrated kind of material to write upon, lib. iii. p. 52. Besides the passage formerly cited from Fortunatus, we may notice another, in which he speaks of the bark as used to contain characters. See Worm. p. 9, who says, that no wood more abounds in Denmark than the beech, nor is any more adapted to receive impressions, ib. p. 7. In Welsh, gwydd, a tree, or wood, is used to denote a book. Thus Gwilym Tew talks of reading the gwydd. Owen's Dict. voc. Gwydd. |