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The Benedicite Canticle in Old English Verse: An Early Runic Witness from Southern Lincolnshire

  • John Hines EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 9, 2015
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Abstract

An incomplete and markedly worn base-silver artefact inscribed in Anglo-Saxon runes was found in 2011 in the vicinity of Honington, Lincolnshire. The inscription can be identified as the opening of an early version of a verse paraphrase of the Benedicite verses of Daniel 3:57–3:89, a Biblical text widely used in church liturgy. A dating within the period A.D. 725–825, and a plausible local dialectal origin, can be proposed on linguistic grounds. According to the reading proposed here, the inscription includes both a hitherto unattested variant of the u rune and an unfamiliar hortative use of an archaic 1st person plural present indicative verb-form. The latter reflects a dramatic engagement with Biblical and liturgical texts in eighth-century England.

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Published Online: 2015-6-9
Published in Print: 2015-6-1

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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  4. Breaking of /æ_rC/ in Early Old English: Personal Names and Place-Names in Latin Charters and Manuscripts of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
  5. The Benedicite Canticle in Old English Verse: An Early Runic Witness from Southern Lincolnshire
  6. Tracking the Moving Ratio of þ to ð in Anglo-Saxon Texts: A New Method, and Evidence for a Lost Old English Version of the “Song of the Three Youths”
  7. The Old English Poem Deor: Its Structural Units and the Grammatical Analysis of its Refrain
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