ESC: English Studies in Canada

R E V I E W S T h e O ld E n g lish “ R u n e P o e m ” : A C r itic a l E d itio n , edited and with an introduction by Maureen Halsall (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). x, 197. $20.00 This is a critical edition of a poem that, in a sense, simply “isn’t there,” its manuscript, Cotton Otho B. x, having been severely damaged in the 1731 fire at Ashbumham House, while the folios containing the R u n e P o em were completely destroyed. All editions, and indeed all criticism of the poem, thus rest on George Hickes’s 1705 L in g u a ru m V e te r u m S ep ten trio n a liu m T h esa u ru s, which contains the R u n e P o e m on page 135. HalsalFs supposi­ tion that the copy of the poem provided Hickes by Humphrey Wanley was a veritable “hand-drawn facsimile,” and that the typesetter was thus work­ ing from “what for all intents and purposes was the Old English manuscript page itself,” is probable, if not certain. It remains, however, the necessary premise of any attempt to grapple with the poem. Halsall’s intention, as set out in her P r efa ce, has three parts: to treat the poem as literature by providing the runic background necessary for a reader to understand the material with which the poet worked; to provide a short handbook of runology; and to open the poem to the scrutiny of under­ graduates as well as scholars by providing translations of all foreign lan­ guages, Old English included. She is successful on all counts. The handbook on runes, contained in the section “Runes and their Use,” is interesting and valuable in itself, particularly for the non-specialist. Here we learn, among other things, that fu th o r c, which appears sometime in the late second century among Germanic tribes bordering the Baltic, appears to have been derived from the Etruscan alphabet; that the symbols are com­ posed of straight lines so that, incised on a grained surface at an angle, they would be readily distinguishable from that grain; that, although considered of divine origin (Halsall cites relevant sections of the P o e tic E d d a and H a v a m a l in support), and clearly used at one time or another for cultic and ritual purposes, the preponderant evidence, particularly from Norway, English Studies in Canada, ix, 4, December 1983 indicates that runes were employed, like any other alphabet, for secular, indeed domestic, purposes. Of particular piquancy is the run akelft, or runestick , cited by Halsall which contains a message from a lady to her man: “Gytha says to go home.” We are far, here, from Odin hanging on Yggdrasil to learn rune-lore. Halsall’s comparison of the common Germanic fu th o r c of some 24 sym­ bols, and the reduced Norse of 16, with the Old English fu th o r c of between 28 and 33 symbols is instructive, since it indicates Anglo-Saxon ingenuity and creativity: by co-opting additional symbols, Old English fu th o r c was able to represent the language’s phonological structure “with a considerable degree of accuracy.” (I am reminded here of the elegant Gothic alphabet, eclectically put together by Bishop Wulfila, which expresses that language’s phonology so well.) Her comparison of the attitude of continental and insular ecclesiastical authorities towards the Germanic alphabet is instructive in a different way, though it, too, demonstrates Anglo-Saxon creativity. In Ice­ land and generally on the continent, except in those monastic centres directly influenced by the Anglo-Saxons, fu th o r c was banished after the conversion, presumably because of its pagan ritual affiliations. In England, and in continental monasteries within the Anglo-Saxon orbit, the alphabet was given a place within the catholic embrace of insular Christianity. One need only recall the runic signatures of Cynewulf (which are included in the book as “Appendix A,” and translated), or the...