CHAP. IV.

On the Menology and Literature of the PAGAN SAXONS.

IN their computation of time our ancestors reckoned by nights instead of days, and by winters instead of years. Their months were governed by the revolution of the moon. They began their year from the day which we celebrate as Christmas-day', and that night they called Moedrenech, or mother night, from the worship or ceremonies, as Bede imagines, in which, unsleeping, they spent it. In the common years, they appropriated three lunar months to each of the four seasons. When their year of thirteen months occurred, they added the superfluous month to their summer season, and by that circumstance had then three months of the name of Lida, which occasioned these years of thirteen months to be called Tri-Libi. The names of their months were these:

Giuli, or æftepa Leola, answering to our January.

Sol monath

Rehd monath

February.
March.

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IV

THEY divided the year into two principal parts, summer and winter. The six months of the longer days were applied to the summer portion, the remainder to winter.

1 The Francs began the year in the autumnal season; for Alcuin writes to Charlemagne : — "I wonder why your youths begin the legitimate year from the month of September." Oper. p. 1496.

CHAP.

IV.

Their winter season began at their month pýntýn fýlleth, or October. The full moon in this month was the æra or the commencement of this season, and the words pyntyt fylleth were meant to express the winter full moon.

THE reason of the names of their months of Sol monath, Rehd monath, Єostur monath, Halıg monath, and Bloth monath, we have already explained. Bede thus accounts. for the others:

Tri-milchi expressed that their cattle were then milked three times a day. Liba, signifies mild or navigable, because in these months the serenity of the air is peculiarly favourable to navigation. Wenden monath implies that the month was usually tempestuous. The months of Leola were so called because of the turning of the sun on this day, and the diminution of the length of the night.2 One of the months preceded this change, the other followed it.

IT has been much doubted whether the Anglo-Saxons had the use of LETTERS when they possessed themselves of England. It is certain that no specimen of any Saxon writing, anterior to their conversion to Christianity, can be produced. It cannot therefore be proved that they had letters by any direct evidence, and yet some reasons may be stated which make it not altogether safe to assert too positively, that our ancestors were ignorant of the art of writing in their pagan state.

1st. ALPHABETICAL characters were used by the Northern nations on the Baltic before they received Christianity 3, and the origin of these is ascribed to Odin, who heads the genealogies of the ancient Saxon chieftains as well as those of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; and who is stated to

2 This valuable account of the Saxon year is in Bede, de Temporum Ratione, in the second volume of his works, in the edition of Cologne, p. 81. Other Saxon menologies may be seen in Wanley, 185. and 109.; and a comparative one of the Anglo-Saxons, Francs, Icelanders, Danes, and Swedes, is in Hickes's Gram. Anglo-Sax. p. 214.

3 I would not attribute to the Runic letters an extravagant antiquity, but the inscriptions on rocks, &c. copied by Wormius in his Literaturæ Runicæ, and by Stephanius, in his notes on Saxo, proved that the Northerns used them before they received Christianity.

4

have 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 For-
tunatus, 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 pun-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 al-
phabetical characters, but even of words. 8

6

2d. THE passage of Venantius Fortunatus, written in the middle of the sixth century, attests that the Runic was used for the purpose of writing in his time. He says,

The barbarous Runæ is painted on ashen tablets,
And what the papyrus says a smooth rod effects.9

Now as the Anglo-Saxons were not inferior in civilisation to any of the barbarous nations of the North, it cannot be

4 Snorre, Ynglinga Saga.

5 So Cedmon uses the word, nun bith genecenod, p. 73.; hpæt seo nun bude, p. 86.; that he to him the letters should read and explain, hyæt seo nun bude, p. 90.; he had before said, in his account of Daniel and Belshazzar, that the angel of the Lord pɲat tha in page porda genýnu baspe bocftafas, p. 90..

6 Schilter's Thesaurus, vol. iii. p. 693.

7 Thus Cedmon says, the pun-cræftige men could not read the handwriting till Daniel came, p. 90.

8 One passage in a Saxon MS. confirms this idea: "Then asked the ealdonman the hertling, whether through dnycpert, or through nуnstaƑes, he had broken his bonds; and he answered that he knew nothing of this craft." Vesp. D. 14. p. 132. Now nynftarer 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 Runæ, in Hickes's Gram. Ang. Sax. p. 135.

9 Ven. Fortun. lib. vi. p. 1814. Ed. Mag. Bib. tom. viii.

CHAP.

IV.

CHAP. easily supposed that they were ignorant of Runic characters 10, if their neighbours used them.

IV.

3d. THOUGH it cannot be doubted that the letters of our 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 Runic11 parentage; and if this be true, it would show that the Anglo-Saxons were acquainted with Runic as well as with Roman characters when they commenced the handwriting that prevails in their MSS.

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 used to express them. Other nations so indebted, have done this. To instance from the Erse language:

For book, they have leabhar, from liber.

letter,

liter 12,
[ scriobham,

litera.

scribere.

to write,

grafam,

γράφω.

But nations who had known letters before they became acquainted with Roman literature would have indigenous terms to express them.

THE Saxons have such terms. The most common word by which the Anglo-Saxons denoted alphabetical letters was ræƑ; plural, rtæça. Elfric, in his Saxon Grammar,

10 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 North. Wormius gives these, Lit. Run. p. 58. Hickes, in his Gram. Anglo-Isl. c. 1. gives several Runic alphabets.

11 The Saxons used three characters for th, D, x, and þ. 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 th: so dus, a giant, or spectre of the woods, as given by Wormius, p. 94., is by other writers written thus. I consider the p to be taken from the p.

12 In the Erse Testament, Greek letters are expressed by litrichibh Greigis. Luke, xxiii. 38.

13

" 14

15

so uses it. The copy of the Saxon coronation oath begins with, "This writing is written, stæƑ be sʊæfe (letter by letter) from that writing which Dunstan, archbishop, gave to our lord at Kingston." In the same sense the word is used in Alfred's translation of Bede 15, and in the Saxon Gospels. 16 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. 17

THE numerous compound words derived from stef, a letter, show it to have been a radical term in the language, and of general application.

Stæf-creft,

CHAP.

IV.

the art of letters.

the alphabet.
a syllable.
learned.

to teach letters.

a game at letters.
wise in letters.

the head of the letters.

the names of the letters.

The same word was also used like the Latin litera, to signify an epistle. 18

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 "appitan," or " gepɲpitan." This

13 Cotton. Lib. Julius, A. 2. 15 Bede, 615. 633.

14 Cotton. Lib. Cleop. B.13. 16 John, vii. 15. Luke, xxiii. 38. 17 Edda Semund, p. 3. In the Icelandic Gospels, for Latin and Hebrew letters we have Latiniskum and Ebreskum bokstefum. Luke, xxiii. 38. The Franco-theotisc, for letters, has a similar compound word, bok-staven.

18 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 geprit," Sax. Ch. 39.; desired the Pope with his ge-prit to confirm it, ib. 38. So Alfred, translating Bede, says, "The Pope sent to Augustin pallium and ge-prit," 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.