Manuscript futhorc rows
Not an object but a class of witness: rows of the futhorc copied into manuscripts by scholars, with the rune names written out. They are where the English rune names actually come from, and they are writing about runes, not writing in them.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- Date
- Late 8th–11th century
- Where
- England and the Continent
The text
Why none is reproduced here.
This entry covers a class of source rather than a single object, so there is no one text to give. Look it up under its name in the standard catalogues, where the readings are given with their apparatus.
Where it survives
Scribes copied runic alphabets into manuscripts alongside Hebrew, Greek and other exotic scripts, usually as curiosities in grammatical or computistical collections. The principal witnesses are Codex Vindobonensis 795, compiled at Salzburg around AD 798; Cotton Domitian A.ix; Byrhtferth's Manuscript; and Cotton Galba A.ii.
Why it matters
The Old English Rune Poem heads each stanza with the rune itself and never spells the name out, so it is not in the first instance where the names come from. They come from these rows. That distinction matters, because a manuscript row is a scholar's record of an alphabet he may never have seen cut, and it is a different kind of evidence from a name recovered off an object.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
Cotton Domitian A.ix is regularly cited as an Anglo-Saxon witness to the rune names. Almost all of its name-glosses were added in the 16th century by the antiquary Robert Talbot (apart from ing and ear), so as a source for the names it is some six hundred years later than the leaf it is written on.
The four Northumbrian additions and the extended 33-rune row belong overwhelmingly to this tradition rather than to inscriptions. Charts that list all 33 as equals flatten the difference between a rune cut on a cross and a rune drawn in a scriptorium.
Runes attested here (5)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- IorFuthorc
Rows of the alphabet copied into manuscripts, where the later English runes are far better attested than in carved inscriptions.
- CweorðFuthorc
The extended rows in which the Northumbrian additions appear. There is no rune-poem stanza for any of them.
- StanFuthorc
Cotton Domitian A.ix and the alphabet lists related to it, where stan is the thirty-second of 33 runes. There is no rune-poem stanza for it.
- GarFuthorc
Extended alphabet rows, where the Northumbrian additions are best attested. Gar closes the 33-rune row.
- CealcFuthorc
Extended alphabet rows copied by late English scribes.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.